By now, most people are aware of President Obama's 2008 campaign promise to bankrupt the coal industry'which he acknowledged would "necessarily" cause electricity to skyrocket. Seven years later, that is a campaign promise he is keeping.

Since moving into the White House, Obama has used bureaucratic weapons and administrative agencies to assault America's coal industry. Between 2008 and 2012, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports 50,000 coal jobs were lost'that number would certainly be much greater today. West Virginia has been hit particularly hard with unemployment rates in double digits. Addressing the job losses, the Charleston Gazette-Mail blames the "liberal environmental policies that have accelerated coal's decline"'which it says have left "hard working men and women" jobless.

In addition to the job losses, Obama's policies'such as the Regional Haze rule, the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) rule, and the Clean Power Plan'have "helped spur the closing of dozens of coal plants across the country," according to Politico. The November 2015 report states: "More than one in five coal-related jobs have disappeared during Obama's presidency, and several major U.S. coal mining companies have announced this year that they would or may soon seek bankruptcy protection."

On Monday, January 11, Arch Coal became the biggest domino to fall when it filed for bankruptcy. Arch follows Walter Energy, Alpha Natural Resources, and Patriot Coal Corp.'all of which filed for bankruptcy in 2015. James River Coal went bankrupt in 2014. The WSJ says: "Over a quarter of U.S. coal production is now in bankruptcy, trying to reorganize to cope with prices that have fallen 50% since 2011." As a result, a "record number of mines are for sale" and remaining workers are receiving lower wages. In hard-hit West Virginia, starting wages have been cut 50 percent in the past few years: from around $40 an hour to $20.

In 2008, Alpha Natural Resources, which filed for bankruptcy in August 2015, was offered a buy out at $128 a share. Today, Alpha, according to Fortune, has 8900 employees but its stock is worthless. CNN Money states: "Since Obama took office in January 2009, shares of many coal companies have plummeted more than 90%."

The Obama administration's latest stab at killing coal is Friday's, January 15, announcement of a federal-lands-leasing moratorium for coal mining. Bloomberg reports that "about 40 percent of U.S. coal now comes from federal land." The announcement came just days after Obama's State of the Union Address pledge "to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet." In short, the plan is to halt federal leasing while the Department of Interior completes a "Programmatic Environment Impact Statement" that the agency says it can complete in three years'though government projects are seldom completed on schedule. The years-long process will include public review and participation under the National Environmental Policy Review Act. As a result, it is expected that companies will have to pay more to mine coal on public lands.

"With this latest regulatory assault," Luke Popovich, Vice President of External Communications for the American Mining Association, told me, "Obama has ensured his legacy as the only President to destroy the industry that has done more than any other to keep American power costs the lowest in the industrialized world."

While mining can continue under existing leases, and the pause will likely have minimal impact as interest in leasing has declined with many government lease sales only having a single bidder, it sends a clear signal regarding administrative assassination. Addressing Friday's announcement, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, declared: "If there were any lingering questions about whether the Obama administration is intent on decimating America's coal industry, this should answer them."

Bloomberg points out that the Obama administration is "facing mounting calls from conservationists to thwart new fossil fuel development as part of the G