Posted on 7/14/2009, 1:35:54 PM by Kaslin
With 9.5 percent of Americans out of work and rumors of yet another costly stimulus, President Obama and White House officials regularly say that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to getting our economy back on track.
But after six months in office, President Obama should revise his statement to reflect his Administration’s unspoken policy that “nothing is off the table – except for the creation of many types of energy jobs.”
Although the President regularly expresses verbal support for a comprehensive energy plan, his Administration has demonstrated that no matter how many Americans are out of work, it will continue to take steps to proactively discourage certain types of economic development – including the creation of natural gas jobs, oil drilling jobs and nuclear jobs.
Today – July 14, 2009 – epitomizes the Administration’s prejudice against job creation and expanded employment for Americans in the oil and natural gas industry. Exactly a year ago, President Bush issued an executive order lifting the ban on offshore oil and natural gas drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) and opened the door for new energy production and the creation of millions of new energy jobs in our country. But today, a defacto ban remains in place only because the Obama Administration has actively blocked the new 5-year leasing program which would open areas for offshore exploration and development.
The Administration’s decision has prevented Americans from enjoying 1.2 million new, well-paying jobs annually across the country and $70 billion in additional wages each year (source: American Energy Alliance). And it also prevents the federal government from receiving over $2.2 trillion in total tax receipts – revenue that would go a long way towards addressing the historic $1.8 trillion deficit that reportedly keeps the President awake at night.
In addition to obstructing the creation of future American energy jobs, the Administration is also eliminating current energy jobs. On February 4th, the Interior Department withdrew areas offered for 77 oil and gas leases in Utah that thousands of Utah citizens were depending on for employment. When Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes traveled to Utah recently to attempt to explain this decision, he got an earful from local residents. As the Salt Lake Tribune reported on May 27th, “a hostile crowd of about 500 oil and gas field workers and their families gathered in the Western Park Museum auditorium. Their message: Halting those leases on 103,000 acres…meant lost jobs, hungry kids and a lack of commitment to energy independence.”
Environmentalists may cheer the Administration’s obstructionism as a victory against “Big Oil” but the truth is that fewer drilling leases equal lost jobs, higher unemployment, a higher national deficit, and increased dependence on foreign oil.
Unfortunately, after all of these decisions, the Obama Administration’s quiet campaign against oil, gas and nuclear jobs hasn’t gotten much national press coverage. Instead, Americans read about President Obama’s efforts to create new green jobs. I appreciate and support efforts to create more green jobs – but the truth is that the federal government should make it easier for the 14.7 million unemployed Americans to find all kinds of energy jobs - including nuclear jobs, offshore drilling jobs, green jobs and manufacturing jobs. When unemployed moms and dads across our country are trying to put food on the table for their family, they don’t have the luxury of waiting for the most politically popular form of employment.
Republicans believe there is a better path forward for our country that will help more Americans get back to work, reduce carbon emissions, protect the environment and make the United States more energy independent.
We have proposed an “all-of-the-above” energy plan that responsibly uses our natural resources to create new energy and make our environment cleaner. In June, we introduced the American Energy Act (H.R. 2846) to encourage development of renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, hydropower, nuclear and biomass, while also producing more American-made oil and natural gas.
As President Obama and Democrats in Congress consider how to prevent double digit unemployment, they should finally drop their National Energy Tax bill and support a comprehensive energy plan that encourages the creation of all types of American energy jobs.
nothing is off the table except fekking up America and its legitimate interests
Ain’t he a great POTUS? He does all he can to destroy the US on a continual basis.
Sooner this dirtbag is exposed and ejected the better.
I have a brother in the power plant business.
He says that all construction and plans for construction of coal plants have totally ceased, and the only nuke plants being built are in China & other foreign countries.
The dems are very consistent. For virtually every political question—terrorism, the environment, jobs, affirmative action, abortion, energy independence, whatever—they figure out what would be the right position to take, and then they take the opposite one. And 52% of the sheeple vote for them.
Indeed, and this is the reason that we absolutely have to win the majority back in 2010. Without it, we have no chance
We, the People, are waiting to be screwed.
Here is how it will work, and this really happened. Several years ago, a large group of environmentalists highly critical of the internal combustion engine and its effect on air quality had a conference in Colorado. They flew to Denver, rented cars and drove 160 miles to Steamboat Springs for their meeting. They are the nomenklatura in waiting.
We've BEEN getting screwed for quite some time now.
Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY ..... during the Carter Administration?
Anybody? Anything?
No?
Didn’t think so !
Bottom line .. we’ve spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency ... the reason for which not one person who reads this can remember.
Ready?
It was very simple.... and at the time everybody thought it very appropriate... The ‘Department of Energy’ was instituted on 8- 04-1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.
Hey, pretty efficient, huh?
AND NOW IT’S 2009, 32 YEARS LATER ...
AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS NECESSARY DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR
IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!
THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY
• ‘WHAT WAS I THINKING?’
ah, yes, good ole bureaucracy.
God Help Us!
Email Your Senators!!!
Any Department that has been a total failure after 32 years does not deserve a ‘second’ chance. Dept of Energy has had 32 chances already.
ABOLISH the Dept of Energy!
“And 52% of the sheeple vote for them.”
The word scu&bag to describe those who voted for these Democrat, visceral, psychotic punks is inadequate.
The word complicit isn’t adequate either.
The only words that even begin to describe what happened was maybe an “epidemic of mass psychosis”. But, not even psychosis covers it.
Maybe cosmic psychosis, or maybe a complete surrender to
creatures in human form who are beyond psychosis.
The whole darned thing is unfathomable.
IMHO
Excellent post!!! Thanx for that.
Can you imagine a socialist pacifist like BHO denying the available resources in our nation when his heroes in Europe are building nuclear plants, drilling in the North Sea and getting new coal up to speed? What a dolt! And yet, no one is forcing this issue every day.
I am convinced that the reason why Zer0 and his handlers do not wish to promote domestic drilling, even though gas is far more environmentally friendly than coal or oil, is because its promotion would give more money to the oil and gas companies.
The left despises “Big Oil” (although they know that virtually all domestic drilling is done by the littel companies).
Only if they could take their profits in some manner would they ever agree to a scheme to benefit oil companies.
You are so right. Government is eroding our Natural Rights at an accelerating pace. A representative of our social, political and Constitutional decadence will soon be the next associate justice of the US.
The way I look at it, we had plenty of energy, and plenty of cheap energy, until the federal government created the Department of Energy. It has been getting scarcer and more expensive ever since. Likewise, the public schools worked fine until the federal government got involved. Ditto with just about everything else the feds touch. It is the opposite of Midas; instead of turning to gold, it turns to (very bad word.)
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