This week on one of the Bluegrass Institute's favorite radio talk shows - Mandy Connell's, of course - the President of the Kentucky Coal Association, Bill Bissett, made an appearance to discuss the state of Kentucky's energy sector in the wake of President Obama's announcement of an executive order to impose unprecedented regulations on carbon emissions.

As we showed in our 2013 Bluegrass Energy Report, regulations are set to cost all Kentuckians big time, not just those in Appalachia.

In fact, as Bissett noted on Tuesday, Obama's newest regulations are set to cost Kentucky disproportionately compared to states which supported the president in 2012. Coincidence?

Bissett stated,

"There are folks who would suggest that’s political reprisals from 2012…and I don’t know if that’s necessarily true but he’s definitely paying far more attention to high-energy states…like the western seaboard, like New York and others. And if you create, kind of, a standardized, you know, electric rate for this country, you’re really going to harm those, you know, coal dependent states like Kentucky, West Virginia, et cetera."

The hardest part to swallow is that it's precisely states like Kentucky and West Virginia which cannot afford the type of burdens the president expects us to bear:

"And it’s really sad because a lot of times you hear the administration talk about, you know, they’re trying to help people in need the most. But in fact they’re kind of generating poverty by their actions...It’s pretty insidious in a way. And that’s very bothersome to us, especially those of us originally from coal country."