Sunday, November 13, 2011

Obama Kills Another 20,000 Jobs

Clueless Leader Barack Obama just can't seem to decide which radical faction of his core constituency to support on any given day. He babbles on about creating jobs, meaning government jobs or government-funded jobs. But when it comes to creating real jobs in the private sector with no real need for deep government involvement, his record is a bust.

Obama had appeared to be in favor of the Keystone XL Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline. The pipeline had gone through three years of rigorous environmental impact reports and was found to be safe and of no danger to the environment. Some changes had been made to satisfy the concerns of certain state residents, particularly those in Nebraska. So the proposed pipeline route was altered somewhat, putting it next to the old Keystone Pipeline which has been operating safely for years.

The US was about to enter into an oil-producing project with an ally on our border instead of continuing to rely solely on oil from Middle East "partners." Construction and oil companies were gearing up for a project expected to put an estimated 20,000 Americans to work. But then the ecofreaks started manning the barricades. Protests from green weenie and anti-oil radicals broke out all over. Significantly, the more organized groups threatened to withhold support for Obama if he didn't stop the pipeline.

These groups are an important leftist Obama constituency. Suddenly, The Jobs President proclaimed "I support the State Department's announcement today regarding the need to seek additional information about the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal." Could this man be any more obvious? The project wasn't scrubbed, but magically its actual implementation would be put off until after the 2012 elections. And I'll bet you thought the State Department was supposed to be dealing with foreign nations, not setting policy in Nebraska.

Says Obama: "Because this permit decision could affect the health and safety of the American people as well as the environment we should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood. The final decision should be guided by an open, transparent process that is informed by the best available science and the voices of the American people." What does this fool think was done in the process that already wasted two years? The "new" study will find nothing different from what the previous study concluded, but the ecofreaks won't see any ground broken before the Jobs President has been reelected (or so he hopes).

The controversy, if it can be called that, is over the pipeline passing through the Nebraska sandhills and the Ogallala Aquifer. The ecofreaks say that the pipeline will damage the pristine sandhills and pollute the aquifer which provides much of the water for Nebraska and adjacent states. Of course nothing of the kind has come even close to happening with the old pipeline which runs nearly parallel to the proposed new pipeline. These people are the descendants and contemporaries of the ecofreaks who told anyone who would listen that the Alaska oil pipeline would destroy the trees, kill off the local wildlife, destroy the groundwater, and cause the extinction of the caribou by cutting off their annual migration. None of which actually happened.

The pipeline would meander through about 1700 miles of American land, running through Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and portions of Illinois and Missouri. It is estimated to produce about a million barrels of oil daily from Canada's Alberta tar-sands to Texas refineries. The project would produce about 13,000 American construction jobs and another 7,000 manufacturing jobs, none of them government jobs. That's a genuine stimulus rather than a government handout.

Here's something to ponder. A spokesman for the State Department declared that the Obama administration had no influence on the decision to delay. Say what? Isn't the State Department the premier department within any administration? The Secretary of State serves at the will of the president and is expected to carry out the president's policies. The State Department is far more intimately intertwined with the presidency politically than the [theoretically] politically-independent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which would seem to be the far more logical bureaucracy to be making this decision in the first place.

Another important job for the State Department is establishing good relations with our allies. Canadians, and particularly the Province of Alberta, are furious. They thought they had a deal. They were already gearing up for the project, put millions of dollars into its development, and were looking forward to the thousands of jobs the project would create in their nation. In fact, it now looks like the Canadian backers of the project will continue to go full-bore with the project. Except that the pipeline will now run west to other Canadian provinces instead of south to the United States.

The same people who are trying to kill the project are the ones who have also time and again killed projects within US borders or US control that would produce oil from our own resources rather than importing it. The same oil sand that exists in Alberta also exists in abundance in the Dakotas, but those projects were killed years ago by the ecofreaks without needing the assistance of the State Department.

Republican House Speaker John Boehner says of the decision: "By punting on this project, the President has made clear campaign politics are driving US policy decisions--at the expense of American jobs. More than 20,000 new American jobs have just been sacrificed in the name of political expediency."

Proving that politics make strange bedfellows, Boehner's announcement was made at the same time as that of Terry O'Sullivan, president of the Laborers' International Union of North America. O'Sullivan said: "We are disappointed that a jobs decision was made on the basis of a political calculation." And president Russ Girling of TransCanada (the major contractor in the project) says: "This is a decision to kill 'shovel-ready' jobs." I never knew the Canadians were that good at ironic humor.

Obama may have made a serious miscalculation. The ecofreaks may see his delay as inadequate. They want the project permanently killed, not merely stalled. The unions that would have benefited may find their enthusiasm for the Jobs President dampened, and that means less money in the Obama reelection coffers. On the other side, this could create previously non-existent political activism among those who didn't realize just how many jobs and how much oil could be brought to America without having to kiss the hem of a Middle East tyrant's robes.

In Obama's own words, this is a jobs project which could have been accomplished "right away." The infrastructure was already in place. The workers were waiting for the phone calls to come to work. The companies were ready to invest and hire. Now, thanks to Obama's love for his destructive leftist base, none of that is going to happen in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the oil sheikhs are rubbing their hands with glee.

25 comments:

Tehachapi Tom said...

Hawk
Is there any hope of sanity in this administration?
We haul oil in increments (ships)half way around the world.
We have at sea spills that are extremely difficult to control and clean up after.
Here is the opportunity to have a safe over land continual flow that cost the least to transport per unit and the waffler in Chief doesn't have the character to do what is best for the country he supposedly leads.
SHAME SHAME SHAME

Unknown said...

Tehachapi Tom: In order to feel shame, a man first needs to have honor. Since Obama has none, cares little for the welfare of the whole American people, and drifts with the political winds, he can't feel shame. He is so robotic that I doubt he feels much of anything.

tryanmax said...

The main organization shaking things up in Nebraska is called BOLD Nebraska (I don't think BOLD actually stands for anything) and is an offshoot of ProgressNow (surprised?)

What is really sick is that BOLD NE, well know around these parts for towing the leftist line, is tweaking the rural population with talking points just as backwards as the sod-heads who buy them. For example:

- Sure, they have their oil-spill scare tactics, but they don't frame it as environmentalism, they frame it as an agricultural threat: poisoned livestock, contaminated irrigation water, prairie fires. Farmers used to subsidies and government insurance are so risk-averse they'll call their senators and congressmen saying "there oughta be a law" at the mere suggestion that they might lose a nickel.

- And if you want to make a farmer mad with fewer than three words, just mutter "eminent domain" within earshot. Make it worse by blaming Canada. (I wish it were a joke.)

- For some reason, suggesting that so much as a drop of the oil might wind up in China or Russia sets tongues wagging around here. Nevermind how much US money is winding up in S. America and the Mideast.

- But if foreign animosities aren't enough, how about state rivalries? Apparently Oklahoma stands to gain from the pipeline, too. Some folks would rather starve than split a meal with a damned Okie.

- Then they double up to make the self-contradictory argument that the government is inept to govern the pipeline--citing a "lack" of pertinent laws--so they should hold up the pipeline while they craft some new laws.

Here is a link to their talking points: boldnebraska.org/transcanada-pipeline

T-Rav said...

Lovely. It does, at least, show that Obama is a man of the New Left, not the Old Left: make it a choice between the working-class labor unions and the radical green agenda, and he'll side with the latter. It's exactly what the radicals did back in the '60s. This ought to be brought up every time a liberal starts to jaw about the GOP being job-killers.

Tennessee Jed said...

what is transparent here is the amount of bullshit being tossed out by the state department and b.o. administration.

AndrewPrice said...

What's 20,000 jobs when there's a liberal point to be made?

Individualist said...

Lawhawk says:

"And president Russ Girling of TransCanada (the major contractor in the project) says: "This is a decision to kill 'shovel-ready' jobs." I never knew the Canadians were that good at ironic humor."

Darn Lawhawk, I have my Beet Shovel and have been waiting at the train station all day. No wonder it did not come.....

Unknown said...

tryanmax: I had read about BOLD when preparing the article. Thank you for providing the additional information. Every state has its enviro-wackos, and Nebraska is no exception. BOLD actually differs somewhat from others by the cleverness of their "we're with you" propaganda for the farmers. The green weenies here in California have no such need, feeling free to advance the cause of a useless fish over human need while condemning the farmers for "destroying the ecology."

Unknown said...

T-Rav: That's a very astute observation. I tend to agree, though at the same time I think the weak-spined Obama also has a tendency simply to heed the voices of those leftists who are at any given time shrieking the loudest. He will now have to find a way to placate the unions, which probably means more government jobs in the midwest.

Unknown said...

Andrew: Just wait until we hear about the 40,000 shovel-ready jobs he is creating for union laborers in Nebraska to build the perpetual motion machine which will replace all other forms of energy within two years.

Unknown said...

Indi: Don't despair. They just had to borrow the engineer and conductor of that train to practice running the bullet train to nowhere in California. Be patient, the train will arrive--sooner or later.

Eric P said...

"Jobs President." This being a family site, I'll refrain from a few applicable prefixes in front of the first word.

Unknown said...

Eric P: I have holes in my tongue and scars on my typing fingers from having to avoid using those very same prefixes. LOL

tryanmax said...

The problem is Nebraska is only worth five electoral college votes and even though we can split them, no fewer than four are going Republican unless the apocalypse arrives in the next year.

Joel Farnham said...

LawHawk,

Can't make up his mind? Or just wants to tease us?

Killing it off would get never help with the election. It would satisfy the Green weenies, but then they would not have any reason to vote for Obamanite. (Obama + kryptonite = Obamanite Dangerous to the U.S. and the American Way of Life.) Also, it would be a great way of demonstrating that Obama isn't into jobs, which he can't deny. Slowing it down, Obama can say he is for jobs, just not at the expense of the environment.

Not shutting it down would prove to the Green weenies that Obama doesn't love them and the environment. The rest of us, we are the ones who cling to their guns and bibles. We don't count.

It would be hard for me to believe that Obama didn't kill it or slow it down. What is unexpected is that this pipeline project actually exists. This is the first I heard of it.

Hopefully this gets full play, but I doubt it. The MSM is too much interested in destroying Conservatives.

StanH said...

Barry is a blithering idiot! Yet another ad for the 2012 election.

Unknown said...

tryanmax: It's true that Nebraska doesn't have a lot of pull electorally. I guess it is possible that Obama figured he could get his green weenie base back without major political repercussions on election day. I'm not so sure that was a good calculation.

Unknown said...

Joel: Remember that old saying, "fool me once, shame on you--fool me twice, shame on me." If the green weenies buy into this, they'll get that second chance. Obama didn't stop the project, he just stalled it long enough to sell them the green snake oil then betray them after the election. The fun part is that they'll repent at leisure since they'll be stuck with him for another four years--along with the pipeline.

Unknown said...

Stan: I agree. I just hope that the Republican presidential candidate has a good war room where his colonel's know how to fight a good brawl. This is a clear destruction of 20,000 shovel-ready jobs with Obama's fingerprints all over it. It should be used well and often.

Game Master Rob Adams said...

Oil is evil. Everyone knows that when you make something from death all you get it death - and transportation. It's the reason that so many oil workers die when laying pipe. Wait? No one dies while laying pipe? Ok. Well it's the reason that gas is so expensive! Wait? The reason gas is so expensive is because OPEC to controls the cost of a barrel of oil? Well then everyone knows that oil makes billions. Wait? What? What's an ROI? Well everyone knows it because I said it so it's evil and that's the end of it. So there.

Unknown said...

ACG: And let's not forget--oil wells are ugly and wind turbines and solar panels are beautiful.

tryanmax said...

Unless that wind turbine is in my backyard. They should go near people we don't care about.

Unknown said...

tryanmax: Thank you, Senator Kennedy. LOL

Game Master Rob Adams said...

Exactly - Not Martha's Vineyard! let's put it in the evil tea parties' lawns - you know - the middle class.

tryanmax said...

UPDATE: email from Americans for Prosperity-Nebraska

Just as TransCanada announced it would voluntarily reroute the Keystone XL pipeline from the contentious Sand Hills route, Jane Kleeb with the environmental group Bold Nebraska continued to attack the project.

"We are still standing shoulder to shoulder with those who do not want to see a permit for this pipeline approved," said Kleeb to the LA Times.

While many Nebraskans are pleased to hear the pipeline will be re-routed, we are flabbergasted to learn that the liberal environmental groups are still attacking the project.

Kleeb and Bold Nebraska went on to attack the project, telling the Lincoln Journal Star “we still have concerns about TransCanada, we don’t think they build safe pipelines.”


* * *

Of course, we and AFP-NE know that BOLD Nebraska's opposition isn't about routes or pipelines or even the oil in the pipelines. It's about strangling the US economy and cutting America "down to size."

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