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Obama pleases environmental lobby by killing 20,000-job Keystone XL pipeline

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Obama Economic Record November 2011
Obama Economic Record November 2011

From the Daily Caller.

Excerpt:

Roughly 20,000 oil industry construction jobs are being thrown under Obama’s 2012 campaign bus, largely because the president needs to pump up his sagging support among the environmentalists.

The pitch came Thursday when President Barack Obama put his leadership behind a State Department plan to study alternative routes for the pipeline, which is intended to bring oil from Alberta in Canada to oil refineries along the Gulf Coast.

“We should take the time to ensure that all questions are properly addressed and all the potential impacts are properly understood,” said Obama’s afternoon statement.

The construction jobs, and the revenue from operating the Keystone XL pipeline, may now go to Canadian workers.

That’s because Canadian government officials are already planning to help build a competing pipeline from Alberta’s oil fields to new West Coast ports near Vancouver. The likely destination point is the port of Kitimat in British Columbia.

The U.S. Department of State will begun studying an alternative route for the Keystone pipeline, even though an earlier department study had concluded the proposed route is the best of several alternatives. The new study will delay any final approval until after the 2012 election, allowing Obama to boost his support among environmentalist groups, activists and voters.

But the delay may kill the U.S. segment of any pipeline, because the decision increases the environmentalist movement’s clout during any future round of approval disputes, and also spurs the development of a pipeline through Canada.

The job-killing decision was panned by GOP legislators and business groups.

“More than 20,000 new American jobs have just been sacrificed in the name of political expediency,” said a statement from Ohio Rep. John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

“This is clearly a political decision and everyone knows it… Politics has trumped jobs in this decision and we can only wonder if the Administration’s delay will cause Canada to turn their pipeline west and ship their energy and American jobs elsewhere,” said  statement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

But the decision helps the Democratic-allied green-energy industry, which is now reliant on government subsidies to compete against the oil energy industry.

The oil that would be pumped through the Keystone XL pipeline would make gas cheaper for drivers, and worsen the competitiveness of the green-tech companies.

The stock value of green-energy companies, and their supply of commercial investment, has already dropped in the last several months because investment analysts believe an Obama loss in 2012 will prompt GOP legislators to cut federal subsidies.

Before his 2008 election, Obama predicted he would raise oil-energy prices to spur the green-energy industry.

The Wall Street Journal explains more.

Excerpt:

In April 2010 and again this August, State produced multivolume environmental impact statements that concluded the pipeline would have “no significant impacts” on the environment. That should have ended the matter.

But the President’s environmentalist friends have decided to make Keystone a test of his green virtue. “We’ll see if [Mr. Obama] is an oil guy or a people guy,” eco-agitator Bill McKibben recently warned at an Occupy Wall Street event, and the Sierra Club has threatened that it won’t “mobilize the environmental base” in 2012 if he approves the project. Various Hollywood worthies have marched in front of the White House in protest.

[…]We’re guessing this decision to abdicate was really made by President Plouffe, as in David Plouffe, the White House political aide who seems to be running most of the executive branch these days. The Keystone cop-out couldn’t be a clearer expression that this Administration puts its anticarbon obsessions—and Big Green campaign donors—above job creation and blue-collar construction workers. He’s President of the 1%.

This reminds me of the way that Obama hurt the economy by delaying three free trade deals for three years, in order to appease his union supporters.

When Obama tries to create jobs, he ends up doing thinks like giving $535 million taxpayer dollars to Solyndra – to repay his Democrat fundraisers. And then they go bankrupt, because green energy is a hoax. The right way to create jobs is by letting businesses keep the money they earn, and keeping government out of their operations. Unfortunately, Obama doesn’t like it when people earn money by selling services and products, and he thinks that government needs to regulate businesses. So, we are stuck with high unemployment.

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E-mails reveal that Obama fundraiser discussed Solyndra loan with White House

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FBI agents remove evidence from Solyndra Headquarters
FBI agents remove evidence from Solyndra Headquarters

From the leftist Washington Post.

Excerpt:

A major donor to President Barack Obama discussed with White House officials a solar energy company that received a half-billion dollar federal loan and later went bankrupt, newly released emails show.

The emails released by a House committee appear to contradict repeated assurances by the Obama administration that the donor, George Kaiser, never talked about Solyndra Inc. with the White House.

Solyndra’s name came up at a White House meeting with Kaiser last year at a time when the California company was seeking a second federal loan, after it had already received a $528 million loan in 2009, the emails show.

The second loan was not approved. Instead, an investment venture controlled by Kaiser made a private loan that resulted in the firm and other investors moving ahead of taxpayers in line for repayment in case of a default by Solyndra.

Solyndra, the first renewable energy company to receive a federal loan under the 2009 stimulus law, declared bankruptcy in September and laid off its 1,100 workers, leaving taxpayers on the hook for more than a half-billion dollars.

The company’s implosion and revelations that administration officials rushed to complete the loan in time for a September 2009 groundbreaking have become an embarrassment for Obama and a rallying cry for GOP critics of his green energy program.

Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire, was a “bundler” for Obama’s 2008 campaign, raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the president, records show. He also was a frequent White House visitor in 2009 and 2010. White House officials for months have denied that Kaiser talked about Solyndra during those visits. One the nation’s richest men, Kaiser owns an oil company and other energy interests and is chief donor to the George Kaiser Family Foundation, which invests in early childhood education and community health.

In one email released Wednesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Kaiser said that when he and a foundation official visited the White House last year, officials showed “thorough knowledge of the Solyndra story, suggesting it was one their prime poster children” for renewable energy.

In another email, a Kaiser associate appears confident that Energy Secretary Steven Chu would approve a second loan for Solyndra.

“It appears things are headed in the right direction and Chu is apparently staying involved in Solyndra’s application and continues to talk up the company as a success story,” Steve Mitchell, managing director of Kaiser’s venture-capital firm, Argonaut Private Equity, wrote in a March 5, 2010, e-mail. Mitchell also served on Solyndra’s board of directors.

It’s very important for voters to understand what the Obama administration means when it talks about “jobs bills”, “shovel-ready projects”, “infrastructure development” and “economic stimulus”. What they mean by those words is giving taxpayer money to their campaign fundraisers. And that’s why the unemployment rate has been over 9% for the last three years, and we are running 1.3 trillion dollar deficits.

Do you know what Republicans would do if they were in office? They would let you keep more of the money you earn, and to hell with corruption. That’s what a tax cut is – more money for you, and less money for politicians. Think about it. The smaller the government, the less opportunity there is for this sort of greed and corruption.

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132 economists prefer the Republican job creation strategy

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From John Boehner’s web site.

Excerpt:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today released a list of 132 American economists who believe the job creation strategy used in the House GOP Plan for America’s Job Creators will do more to boost private-sector job growth in America in both the near-term and long-term than the “stimulus” spending approach favored by President Obama.

“This list underscores the need for immediate action on the now-22 bipartisan jobs bills passed by the Republican-led House that are awaiting a vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate,” Boehner said.  “All 22 of these bills passed the House with bipartisan support, but to date have not been brought to a vote by Senate Democrats.  To help support job creation in both the short-term and long-term, we need bipartisan action to halt unnecessary government regulations and fix the tax code to help private-sector job creators.  Our plan does that.  The Senate needs to pass these 22 bills and send them to the president’s desk.” 

Last month, Boehner asked a group of economists across the nation: which do you believe is more likely to provide a boost for private-sector job growth in America in both the near- and long-term: a plan focused on billions of dollars in additional “stimulus” spending by government – or a plan focused on halting excessive government regulations and fixing the tax code to help private-sector job creators?  A total of 132 economists indicated they clearly favor the latter strategy.  The list of 132 economists includes experts from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Carnegie Mellon University, and Harvard University; economists from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Manhattan Institute, and the American Action Forum; and many others.

On Friday, in response to the U.S. Department of Labor’s announcement that October 2011 marked the 33rd consecutive month in which the national unemployment rate exceeded eight percent, Boehner asked President Obama to prod the Democratic-controlled Senate for action on the stalled jobs bills.  Boehner and other Republicans have called for President Obama to be more engaged in the legislative process this fall and less focused on his re-election campaign.

“I urge the president to call on Senate Democrats to bring these common-sense jobs bills to a vote,” Boehner said.  “As long as these bipartisan jobs bills are stalled in the Senate, it is unacceptable for the White House to be anything less than 100 percent engaged in the legislative process.”

Here’s the plan:

Empower Small Business Owners and Reduce Regulatory Burdens:

  • Require congressional review and approval of any government regulations that have a significant impact on the economy or burden small businesses.
  • Audit existing and pending regulations to identify and address those that hinder economic growth.

Fix the Tax Code to Help Job Creators:

  • Increase American competitiveness to spur investment and create more American jobs by streamlining the tax code and lowering the tax rate for businesses and individuals including small business owners to no more than 25%.
  • Reform the tax code to allow American businesses to bring back their overseas profits without having to pay a tax penalty so they can invest in our economy and create American jobs.

Increase Competitiveness for American Manufacturers:

  • Pass the three pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea to create up to 250,000 jobs.
  • Continue to open new markets to American made products. Encourage Entrepreneurship and Growth:
  • Modernize our patent system to protect our nation’s innovators, discourage frivolous lawsuits, and expedite patent reviews.
  • Re-Authorize and improve federal programs and approval processes to streamline development of new products.
  • Remove barriers to building a first class workforce so that the United States can compete in the global marketplace and lead the way in technological development and growth.

Maximize Domestic Energy Production to Ensure an Energy Policy for the 21st Century:

  • Promote lower energy prices through increased domestic production.
  • Encourage all forms of energy production.
  • Pay Down America’s Unsustainable Debt Burden and Start Living Within our Means:
  • Build upon the House Republicans’ Budget by enacting significant spending cuts.

And they already passed about 20 bills through the House with bipartisan support.