President Barack Obama says he will get focused on the jobs problem just as soon as he returns from his August vacation in Martha’s Vineyard.
Like the more famous Hamptons, the Vineyard is a playground of the rich and famous out to find some summer enjoyment on the Atlantic shore.
Just before leaving, Obama articulated his number one goal is to grow the economy.
But while Obama is playing jetsetter, back in Washington a crucial regulatory agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, has been captured by a group of extremists who actually believe the USA would be better off with a smaller economy.
In some of the economy’s most hopeful corners, these bureaucrats are wielding all of the levers of regulatory authority in their arsenal to kill growth. Just as the “green shoots” of recovery sprout, they come along with a can of herbicidal regulations and kill the sprout. As long as Obama leaves these extremists in charge of the agency, the economy is unlikely to recover and will suffer.
Having a reliable national electrical infrastructure is vital to new job creation.
Yet new EPA regulations will significantly reduce the amount of electricity generated from coal-fired energy flowing from our power grid. The EPA told the public that the agency was working with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to determine the impact of its regulations on the reliability of the nation’s electricity capacity. This was to include a joint modeling effort.
However, responses from FERC Commissioners to an inquiry from Congress regarding the degree of agency coordination on the impact of the agency’s new rules clearly shows the EPA statements were not truthful. Correspondence from the FERC chairman and commissioners revealed the commission is not working on a formal assessment of the impact of the EPA regulations on the ability of our power grid to reliably deliver electricity to the nation’s homes and businesses.
“The EPA’s deception of the public is outrageous and it exposes the agency’s underlying zeal to regulate without regard to the consequences of its actions. EPA’s actions may very well put the reliability of our electricity supply in jeopardy,” said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project.
These job killing EPA regulations are part of a wider program to “curb man made climate change” or global warming. But the science behind this believed threat to the planet’s existence keeps melting away under scrutiny.
The latest example is the polar bear’s supposed struggle against extinction.
According to a report in “Human Events,” “special agents from the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office are questioning the two government scientists about the paper they wrote on drowned polar bears, suggesting mistakes were made in the math and as to how the bears actually died, and the department is eyeing another study currently underway on bear populations.”
The biologist in charge, Charles Monnett, has actually been placed on administrative leave because of findings in the investigation. His fellow biologist Jeffrey Gleason, is also being questioned, but has yet to be suspended.
“Human Events” also reports, “the disputed paper was published by the journal ‘Polar Biology’ in 2006, and suggests that the ‘drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open-water periods continues.’”
The polar bear story is not an isolated illustration of the problem. Every time the topic of oil and gas development comes up for the Arctic region, the bears are an obstacle and used as the reason we cannot hire people to begin the process of extracting these resources.
A deeper look reveals hundreds of economic development projects have been stopped because regulators are more concerned with protecting the “goddess Gaia” (the mother earth goddess), than they are getting Americans back to work. There are mountains of examples of junk science methodology being used by federal and state regulatory agencies which are blocking economic growth in nearly every state.
 If Obama is really serious about the nation’s staggering unemployment, he will solve this regulatory stranglehold that is stunting economic growth.
(To comment on this column, e-mail browns@caglecartoons.com.)