That’s your move? Just knocking over your king? Ok, fair enough.
So have you asked Obama for a raise yet?
It is, but you can’t make both your #1 priority. They don’t always come into conflict, but sometimes they do, and when they do, a choice has to be made. Current administration policy seems to lean more towards environmental concerns than job growth. Which again is defensible policy, but apparently not something the administration wants to admit to in this political environment.
If that was the only example, I could concede your point. But what about Keystone? I know there are legitimate reasons holding it up relating to eminent domain issues, but the administration didn’t have to kill it. The courts can do that if property owners are getting screwed.
I was just about to post pretty much this, and to ask adaher if he could specify exactly how environmental regs had impacted that business. The story certainly did not come close to doing so.
Dare I ask for some evidence to back this up?
Unless courts rule in its favor, Luminant energy announced plans Monday to cut some 500 jobs by closing two coal-fired generating units in Titus.
“This would be devastating to the Northeast Texas economy - not just Titus County,” Titus County Chamber of Commerce Director Faustine Curry said of the losses from the regional employer and taxpayer. “In Titus County, we have the power plant, the mines.”
The company said the job losses and plant shutdowns represent its best shot at meeting a January deadline to comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Cross-State Air Pollution Rule.
http://www.calwatchdog.com/2011/11/07/obama-epa-commits-political-frackicide-in-ca/
Over the past three years, the approval rate of new permits for oil and gas “fracking” wells in California has fallen by 90 percent — from 71 to 7 out of every 100 permit applications. “Fracking” involves the high-power injection of water, sand and proprietary chemicals into wells. According to a fracking documentary Web site, “The pressure fractures the shale and props open fissures that enable natural gas to flow more freely out of the well.”
The California permit falloff is mainly due to tighter rules requested by the U.S. Congress when Democrats ran both houses under House Speaker (now Democrat Leader) Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The rules have enforced by the Obama Environmental Protection Agency since spring 2010. The rule enforcement was not altered after Republicans took over the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2011, while Democrats kept control of the U.S. Senate, maintaining Reid as majority leader.
The Oct. 19 issue of Bloomberg business news online reported that the State Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources approved 37 of 52 permit applications in 2009 (71 percent). It then approved 27 out of 100 applications in 2010 (27 percent). But it approved only 14 out of 199 applications thus far in 2011 (7 percent).
Michael Fox can literally see where his job ends.
The 14-year veteran of the West Virginia coal mining industry is about a year and a half out from finishing his current project, and he can see the boundaries of the site. He doesn’t know whether there will be any work left for him after that, since a wave of environmental regulation has put his firm’s other permits on hold.
“Unless we can get a permit, we can’t extend the job no farther,” he said. “Right now, I don’t know if I can make it or not.”
Fox, who is married and has three kids, was among the hundreds of Appalachian miners who rallied in Washington, D.C., Wednesday in a bid to pressure the Obama administration to loosen restrictions on coal mining in their states. They say the rules amount to a de facto freeze on a chunk of the industry, jeopardizing jobs in one of the most economically depressed parts of the country.
Read more: Appalachian Coal Miners Say EPA Rules Are Killing Their Jobs | Fox News
And I’m sure I don’t need to link to the administration’s slow walking of offshore drilling permits.
and it’s not just in the energy sector:
At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts manufacturing executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government “throws sand into the gears of progress.”
Daley said he did not have many good answers, appearing to throw up his hands in frustration at what he called “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”
“Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible,” he said.
I’m not sure that “kill it” is accurate, but I do agree that a Democratic administration is much more likely to support environmental agencies concerns when dealing with energy production. When this is in tension with job creation they will almost certainly give more weight to the environmental aspects than a GOP administration will.
As you rightly said, each case should be considered in it’s own right. But I don’t think that support for environmental regulation somehow invalidates efforts to encourage job creation. Clearly if a company was going to create jobs hunting endangered animals we would expect the government to stop them. Pointing to this as “actively obstructing job creation” is, at a minimum, misleading.
But yeah, I readily concede that Obama is far more likely to support strong environmental regulation in the face of industry pressure than Romney is, even if that causes a reduction in employment.
On preview: yeah, coal miners and coal-fired power plant operators are in a bad spot right now. For the first time in a long time (maybe ever?) the marginal cost of a unit of electricity is tied to the cost of NG, not coal. So coal plants are being shut down left and right. This doesn’t really have that much to do with the EPA, although particulate and smog regulations haven’t helped (and of course potential CO2 regulations - but that hurts NG too).
The fracking rules are a great example of what I outlined above - in cases where there are environmental concerns about energy production Democrats are far more likely to slow things down to consider the concerns than Republicans are. Point conceded there. Whether that is good or bad obviously depends on your environmental politics.
Thanks for the links, and I will say that I have no doubt certain environmental policies might result in job losses. But as we all know, Obama pushed for and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for the express purpose of saving and creating jobs. This might have been a wonderful idea, or the possibly the worst legislation of that past 100 years. But it is more than enough evidence to show that job creation is a top Obama priority.
ETA: reply to adaher in post #107.
I actually think it can be justified, I’m a libertarian but also very open to sensible environmental regulation. I just think the administration should be more open about its priorities. And take responsibility for at least a small part of the unemployment problem. This is something the President has control over. And really, it might have been a good idea to wait on these regulations. The greatest recession since the Great Depression was probably not the best time.
A top priority, but THE top? Especially given how much of the stimulus went to green projects, many of dubious quality?
Actually, I suspect he hasn’t set priorities, I think his administration functions on a pretty ad hoc basis with the EPA and other agencies pretty much acting on their own. The President is not personally aware of most of the rules passed, and I doubt even his cabinet secretaries know about most of this stuff. here’s a good example:
At Wednesday’s town hall in Atkinson, Ill., a local farmer who said he grows corn and soybeans expressed his concerns to President Barack Obama about “more rules and regulations” — including those concerning dust, noise and water runoff — that he heard would negatively affect his business.
The president, on day three of his Midwest bus tour, replied: “If you hear something is happening, but it hasn’t happened, don’t always believe what you hear.”
When the room broke into soft laughter, the president added, “No — and I’m serious about that.”
Saying that “folks in Washington” like to get “all ginned up” about things that aren’t necessarily happening (“Look what’s comin’ down the pipe!”), Obama’s advice was simple: “Contact USDA.”
“Talk to them directly. Find out what it is that you’re concerned about,” Obama told the man. “My suspicion is, a lot of times, they’re going to be able to answer your questions and it will turn out that some of your fears are unfounded.”
Call Uncle Sam. Sensible advice, but perhaps the president has forgotten just how difficult it can be for ordinary citizens to get answers from the government.
When this POLITICO reporter decided to take the president’s advice and call the USDA for an answer to the Atkinson town hall attendee’s question, I found myself in a bureaucratic equivalent of hot potato — getting bounced from the feds to Illinois state agriculture officials to the state farm bureau.
Here’s a rundown of what happened when I started by calling the USDA’s general hotline to inquire about information related to the effects of noise and dust pollution rules on Illinois farmers:
I won’t paste the rather long process of finding out exactly what was going on, but the controversy did get the EPA to “debunk” the rumor by not imposing new dust regulations. And yes, the EPA was actually in charge of that, the President didn’t know that. he thought it was the USDA.
Now if I was the President, I’d make regulatory reform a top priority ASAP. The President should be able to understand what’s going on in his administration.
I’d say that in the thick of a presidential race, and the unemployment rate what it is right now, if job creation isn’t his #1 priority right now he’s a fool! But in all seriousness, I don’t know if it’s his top priority, or third, or what, but would certainly think it’s up there.
Back to the question by the OP: Obama’s economic record - positive or negative?
I think the answer to this question is provided by the President’s own campaign. I spend about half my time in a small battleground state (the President won the state last time and it currently leans towards the President, but it’s possible for Governor Romney to take the state). Every television ad the President’s campaign runs is an attack ad. There’s no enumeration of accomplishments, no roadmap to the future, no “see, look what I did.” Every ad focuses on something the Governor’s done that’s really, really bad.
If the President’s campaign believed there was a positive record, you sure wouldn’t know it by his campaign here - in a blue-leaning state.
Couple of side notes:
The Governor’s ads, until recently, we uniformly positive - outlining his accomplishments and talking about what he will do when he’s President, not evening mentioning the President. I’ve noticed that an ad responding to the attack ads has shown up. It’s all very factual and dispassionate, but it does seem to provide more evidence that negative campaigning works.
The other thing I’m a little surprised by is that I don’t see any PAC ads. These are all run by the campaigns (or at least I’ve decided that if the candidate says he approves of the ad, it’s bought by the campaign itself).
Disclaimer: I’m normally on a DVR, so I could be running right past hours and hours of positive messages from the President’s campaign and hours and hours of attack ads from the Governor.
Clearly it’s positive, since the economy is in much better shape today than when he took over from Bush. That’s a no-brainer, IMHO, and you need to be in some serious denial to attempt to, er, deny that. That said, the economy kind of sucks, and it’s definitely going to be one of the key issues in this election. How much (or how little) any president actually has over the economy is debatable, except for the public’s perception that they SHOULD have such control, and that their decisions directly impact how it’s doing during their term. Undeniably (:p) the public THINKS they are responsible, and since they actually were stupid enough to run for that office, I suppose they have to take the blame along with the credit…
You mean… until recently, when he became the presumptive nominee, and was no longer campaigning against people who weren’t the POTUS?
I don’t recall any ads from either campaign this winter or early spring; they may have run some, but they certainly didn’t register on me. This is a caucus state and that may have something to do with it. Even though it was one of the earlier states, it was kind of a foregone conclusion. The President’s and Governor’s ads have been running since late spring.
It’s jarring to me for a couple of reasons.
Until recently, the Senate race in this battleground state was fairly tight. Even though the Democrat nominee had some challenges (self-inflicted), the campaign was running only positive ads (given the ads only, it would be impossible to determine who the opponent is or if the election is even contested). For a bit they did run ads that called out the problem and tried to assert it was all much ado about nothing - but no mention of the opposition. Now they’re running tear jerker ads - they remind me of the humane society ones - where a constituent recalls the nominee’s public service to point of literally tearing up, but nothing about the other candidate. Nothing’s working though. I can’t recall a single ad from the Republican nominee.
I spend the other half of my time in a state that’s so blue the President could be caught with any number of live boys and dead girls and still walk away with the state. So no ads at all. I head out west and it never stops - and we still have months to go. I guess the handful of electors we have out here matter.
This is the cite that could have provided evidence that would serve to demonstrate such a claim. However, adaher did not define the middle class (within a standard deviation of median income?) and demonstrate that their contributions to state revenue were disproportionate to their population. Not to mention this cite does not address the upper centile, which it seems would have a greater share of the income than Poland or Italy and probably a lower tax burden.
They can’t be divorced from PPP per capita, really.
He is the head of the army.
This is SOP in the coal industry right now. A friend of mine got laid off from the mines earlier this year, and when they rounded them all up to tell them they were being let go they told them to think about this when they went to vote this fall.
There’s no doubt that you can trace some of those job losses to Obama’s actions, but only in the sense that he has a functioning EPA. During the Bush years you could get even the most obviously environmentally destructive permits rubber-stamped, and now you can’t. And that’s not something you can put off while you’re in a recession–the mountains and streams and wildlife that the coal companies are more than happy to destroy aren’t just going to come back when the economy picks up.
Coal jobs are going, it’s been obvious for a decade that they’d eventually be going, and they’re not coming back. If my region were smart we’d have been planning for that and diversifying our economy, but we’ve been too busy giving the coal industry everything it could possibly want.
Of course, there’s also the impact of gas drilling and the fact that we had a ridiculously warm winter. But no, it’s all Chairman Barry’s fault.
But is the coal industry going away due to market forces, or because the government has simply decided they don’t like coal?
Market forces