OBAMA’S JOB-DESTROYING MACHINE GRINDS ON
John Hinderaker, Powerline
I can’t figure out whether it is due to malice or incompetence; all I know is, if you wanted to hurt America’s economy, you would do pretty much everything the Obama administration does. Energy policy is the absolute worst. First Obama delayed (and perhaps killed) the Keystone pipeline. Michael Ramirez sums up that decision, which can be explained only as an economically irrational attempt to shore up the president’s liberal base in advance of next year’s election:
It seems that every day brings a new Obama administration outrage. Today, it was the USDA’s decision to delay shale drilling in Ohio:
President Obama’s United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing. …
Speaking of the WNF gas drilling, one environmentalist group spokesman suggested that moving forward with drilling “could turn the Ohio Valley into Ozone Alley,” even though Wayne National Forest already has nearly 1300 oil and gas wells in operation which this study does not affect.
It has been estimated that that drilling in the Utica shale will produce up to 204,500 jobs by 2015. The Obama administration claims that those jobs have only been delayed and are not gone forever. Sure. In the unlikely event that Obama is re-elected, the only constraint on his economically destructive policies will be gone, and we can expect him to do everything possible to kill energy production and destroy job creation.
