Obama, The Job Killer…..Again!
“Only days after we learned that at least 9 percent of Americans were unemployed for the 30th straight month, the president has made a decision that will only prolong this suffering,” <Republican Candidate Newt> Gingrich said in a statement.
The Obama administration’s decision to delay a controversial oil pipeline was cast by critics as a political ploy to placate environmentalists ahead of the 2012 election.
But if that’s the strategy, it could backfire.
While the decision pleased environmentalists who had earlier suggested they might withhold support for President Obama over the project, it did not please the labor unions who were banking on the estimated 20,000 jobs tied to the pipeline. (Not counting any ancillory jobs i’m sure because they wouldn’t be union)
And in a jobs election, the support of unions and business interests is arguably more critical than that of the green base.
But I’m betting, he’s betting that since the Unions are already incestuously in bed with him anyhow they will still vote for him regardless because the alternative, a Republican, is like a vampire voting to have Buffy The Vampire Slayer as President. It ain’t going to happen.
They’ll bitch and moan, he’ll buy them off with some other “stimulus” or some other pork. But he keeps his greenie-weenie loonies from bolting on him.
Republican strategist Brad Blakeman said he was puzzled by the decision on the pipeline project — diplomatically, politically and economically.
“The reasons not to do it are far outweighed by the reasons to do it,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense to punt it until after the election, when you could have a victory on numerous levels today.”
But that’s Obama. And you know it’s all politics. And it’s all about him!
“The administration chose to support environmentalists over jobs — job-killers win, American workers lose,” Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, said in a written statement.
The incestuous couple is having a spat. Obama will just have to buy them an even bigger “make-up” gift- at someone else’s expense, of course.
“By punting on this project, the president has made clear that campaign politics are driving U.S. policy decisions — at the expense of American jobs,” House Speaker John Boehner said.
The Chamber of Commerce chimed in with a similar lament.
Administration officials, though, deny politics was in any way at play.
“This is not a political decision. We have been … out there as listening to what the public has to say,” said Kerri-Ann Jones, an environmental official in the State Department.
Everything Obama and the Liberals do is political. The fact that they had a flunky deny it means that’s precisely what they were doing.
The president and his team were in a tough spot with the Keystone XL pipeline. On one side, unions were clamoring for jobs. On the other, liberal activists warned of the health and environmental impact of the pipeline and were protesting in large numbers near the White House.
Occupy Obama! 🙂 And boy did he cave in fast!
Maybe We the People should Occupy The White House! 🙂
In the end, the administration gave a nod to the latter.
“We should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood,” Obama said, citing “health and safety “concerns, as well as environmental concerns.
The very same platitude he’s been using.
May 2011: “safe and responsible” oil production. “We should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood,” Obama said, citing “health and safety “concerns, as well as environmental concerns.
Sound familiar? This leopard never changes his spots. He just gets other (mostly in the media and his flunkies) to make you think he’s changed.
Pelosi also said that same day: The Democrats’ energy plan “eliminates breaks for Big Oil; encourages oil companies to drill on the public land they already control; increases safe oil production in Alaska and in the Gulf; and uses the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to increase the oil supply and combat gasoline price hikes from Wall Street speculation,” Pelosi said.
Was that Politics? 🙂 You Betcha!
A new environmental review would likely push off any decision until 2013, after next year’s elections.
“Other alternatives are being pursued to ensure market access over the medium term,” president David Collyer said. “Delaying Keystone XL
will motivate exploration of other markets for Canadian crude oil products,”
The sentiment was echoed by federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who questioned the project’s survival if subjected to another lengthy regulatory review.
“It may mean that we may have to move quickly to ensure that we can export our oil to Asia through British Columbia,” Flaherty said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Honolulu.
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