Today¡s Guest Saturday post comes to us from A Conservative Teacher. It was originally published on Friday, May 25, 2012.
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Obama Administration Suppress News that It Killed 7000 Jobs in Coal Industry
From The Washington Free Beacon:
Obama administration officials may have pressured government contractors to change job loss estimates associated with coal regulations, audio recordings reveal.
The tapes show that unnamed officials with the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSM) asked government contractors to change their calculations of job losses associated with the Stream Protection Rule.
A preliminary draft of an environmental impact statement estimated that up to 7,000 coalminers could lose their jobs under the administration’s “preferred” regulation. After a leaked copy of the report went public, officials asked the contractors to compare job estimates to a model in which another regulation was enforced, rather than the real world numbers.
“It’s not the real world, this is rulemaking,” an OSM official tells a skeptical contractor on the recording….
…The agency fired the contractors studying the rule less than one month later.
The House Natural Resources Committee obtained the tapes from an unidentified third party after OSM provided heavily redacted transcripts—the exchange above, for example, was blacked out—and withheld the audio recordings…
This story brings to light some troubling aspects of our government that need to be addressed.
First, government agencies should not be producing ‘heavily redacted transcripts’ and blacking out and withholding audio recordings. The first person that should be fired in every agency in our government (except when reasonable) is the person who’s job description is ‘hide information from the taxpaying public.’ This is corruption, and I am sure it occurred during the Bush administration, but we see here for a fact that it is occurring during the Obama administration and not being addressed in any meaningful way. One wonders if this is a usual and regular practice of our government now- the hiding of information, the releasing of edited information, the suppression of records, etc.
Second, at first glance it appears that the agency fired the contractors studying the rules because they were asking too many important and relevant questions and probably were on to the fact that the Obama-run agency was trying to hide the truth, bury important facts, and kill thousands of jobs. I’m not lawyer, but I believe that there should be protection of contractors who point out when the government is acting wrongly, and it appears that in this case laws might have been broken.
Third, this administration seems to have as a re-occurring theme that of suppression of information, manipulation of data, and the deliberate and purposeful spreading of lies. Bush’s administration was accused of these many times, but rarely was there any real evidence of it- but here we have yet another piece of evidence that people higher up in agencies are being instructed to actively conduct themselves in a corrupt and unethical manner.
Last, it is clear why the Obama administration was attempting to suppress this information- while our economy was in trouble and we needed all options on the table to fight off a recession and ward off an economic collapse, the Obama administration was busy pushing for regulations that they knew for a fact would kill thousands of good jobs, and attempted to suppress that information. Rather than creating jobs and improving the economy, stories like this demonstrate clearly that the Obama administration is killing jobs and strangling the economic recovery in our nation.
Neither Joe Pizarchik (head of OSM) and Ken Salazar (head of Department of Interior) have backgrounds that suggest that they’d on their own push for regulations that they know are going to kill thousands of jobs and then attempt to cover it up- no, this effort smells strongly like it came direct from President Obama himself.
Asylum Watch 
There sure seems to be a pattern of… well… lying through their eff’in’ teeth in this administration and by this president. Lies. Obfuscation. Misrepresentation.
They seem to not only be relying on a press that won’t call them on it, but also on the absolute ignorance of (or willingness to go along with lies knowing they are lies) of their supporters, and they’re hoping that the people in the middle (the independents and the undecideds) will be ignorant too. How else do you explain the claims Obama and his campaign make, or something like that complete bullshit chart claiming Obama is a frugal spender?
That they’d manipulate data (look at what they do with unemployment numbers, completely ignoring the vast swaths of humanity leaving the workforce entirely), and hide transcripts is just not a big surprise. It’s outrageous, but not a surprise.
A valid argument can be made that President Obama is out to kill any fossil fuel development of any kind… even through the EIA projects that fossil fuels will supply over 80% of all energy is the United States through 2035 and that fracking can free the U.S. completely of foreign oil dependence.
It is quite possible that the future of the U.S. might depend on the future of fracking!
It is also of interest to note that the EIA reported last week that increases of fracking-based natural gas production on private lands has contributed to an overall reduction of U.S. CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.
The reason for that is cheap Natural gas is replacing coal-fired power plants in this country.
I read about this the other day, the bastardry of this administration seems to know no bounds. There this fellow is prattling on about how he cares for everyone and how he’s creating jobs, moving forward and what not, but in reality he’s putting people out of work.
If it had been Bush the useless media would be shouting it from the rooftops.
Obama and his team have to be among the best con-artists to ever walk this earth.