Feds order Washington power plant to keep burning coal
6 comments
·December 21, 2025netsharc
OutOfHere
Trump's coal friends funded him into power, so now he is funding them.
I don't know when we will realize that big money and an imposing federal government both are evil. Money and power should ideally be distributed, not vastly concentrated. The Gini index and similar indexes come to mind. The purpose of a federal government should be to grant rights, not restrictions.
tanaros
> The purpose of a federal government should be to grant rights, not restrictions.
If the federal government is about granting rights, does that imply the default state is “no rights”? That seems objectively worse.
jmclnx
Simple solution, add a large state tax on coal fired plants and prevent the tax from being paid by residential consumers.
The Supreme Court ruled the federal gov. cannot override states taxes, so adding the very large tax will force the owners to do something.
jasinjames
Unfortunately the gov cannot decide who ultimately pays for the tax, just who ends up needing to put it on their balance sheet. If residential consumers demand is inelastic, relative to the commercial customers, then they will pay the tax. I have zero insight into whether domestic or commercial customers have higher demand elasticity, but it's worth being aware of this general principle [0].
[0]https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics/...
vincekerrazzi
This feels like a great idea on the surface, but will likely be overcome by a federal government no longer playing by the rules, requires swift and decisive action on the state government’s side that has not been consistent across the US, even when there’s an obvious issue and solution.
Is this the act of the federal government acting like a 5-year old petulant child, who does the thing that its been told to stop to do because it's something bad? Or is some friend of Trump getting paid to sell coal to them?