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By Watchdog.org Virginia Bureau
ALEXANDRIA — The coal industry may take a hit, university professors are making it rain on one lucky side of the aisle, and George Allen is looking to do his best Snidely Whiplash on Tim Kaine.
EPA regulations may smite coal industry
New environmental regulations are a souce of worry for the Virginia coal industry.
Coal provides the Old Dominion with 30 percent of its electricity, and there are fears the Environmental Protection Agency will close plants, reducing the generating capacity by 7 percent.
“The EPA environmental regulations make it impossible to obtain permits or comply with greenhouse gas standards without reducing production. This creates higher prices for energy because there is not as much coal available,” said Ibbie Hedrick, spokeswoman for Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling.
While regulations have caused energy prices to rise, the coal industry, a jobs staple in southwest Virginia, could be under threat as companies look for cheaper fuels.
College professors pour on the campaign donations for Obama
Virginia’s public university professors are making no qualms about who they want to see in the White House.
Across the state, college faculty have given more than $100,000 to Barack Obama’s campaign, compared with $11,000 to presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
Daniel Klein, an economist at George Mason University in Fairfax, said an air of intellectual superiority leads many professors to sway toward the Democrats in their political donations.
“I think most of them think that being smart leads you to be a leftist,” Klein said. “And so they sort of do associate smartness with being left.”
Allen seeks to slip past Kaine with MWAA controversy
The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has become a political liability, particularly for U.S. Senate candidates George Allen and Tim Kaine.
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-District 10, introduced a bill Tuesday that would reduce the troubled airport authority’s board of directors from 13 members to nine, giving Virginia a majority of seats with six. Maryland, the District of Columbia and the federal government would claim the remaining three.
Allen, a Republican, and Kaine, a Democrat, want off this train, supporting the measure in an attempt to distance themselves from continued charges of malfeasance and cronyism plaguing MWAA.
On his website, Allen posted a news release blaming Kaine for MWAA’s continued problems.
“It was Tim Kaine’s appointees to MWAA who advanced Project Labor Agreements that ‘stack the deck’ in favor of union bosses and discriminate against 96 percent of Virginia workers who have chosen not to join a union,” Allen’s release said.
Email Cordell and Watson at carten@olddominionwatchdog.org, and katie@olddominionwatchdog.org
