1,100 Alpha miners in W.Va. warned of layoffs

[theHandpuppet]

3. A lot of those contracts with India and China have been cancelled

The bottom has literally fallen out of the coal market. I track the information here:
http://www.eia.gov/coal/news_markets/

Our nation should have been reinvesting in Appalachia for decades but it was not in the corporate interests to do so. The rape of Appalachia has been going on for over a century but as long as folks needed coal, no one gave a damn what it was doing to the land and its people. Even a major investment now in reshaping that economy would take decades to truly come to fruition. In the meanwhile, miners and their families will simply starve and many -- even people who consider themselves progressives -- will say they're getting what's coming to them. It's disgusting.