The most transparent administration in history has been transparent only in their unprecedented deceit. As Investors Business Daily puts it, there is a ban not only on oil exploration – which is a direct attack on the very Gulf residents who are already being hurt the most – but a ban on truth itself:
A Ban On Truth
Posted 06/10/2010 07:00 PM ETEnergy Policy: The advisory board on offshore drilling says it never endorsed a moratorium, which was added later by the interior secretary. The only thing transparent about this administration is its lies.
Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did.
According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar’s May 27 report to the president said the seven experts “peer reviewed” his recommendations, including a six-month ban on drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet. The experts say the report they reviewed suggested stopping only new drilling in waters deeper than 1,000 feet.
The reviewers for Salazar’s report were provided by the National Academy of Engineering. Their joint letter says that while they agreed with the report’s various safety recommendations, “we do not agree with the six-month blanket moratorium on floating drilling. A moratorium was added after the final review and was never agreed to by the contributors.”
One panelist, Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, said in an e-mail: “Moratorium was not a part of the … report we consulted-advised-reviewed.” The academy’s Ken Arnold was less subtle, saying: “The secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions.”
The panelists simply oppose the announced moratorium. “A blanket moratorium is not the answer,” the letter says. “It will not measurably reduce risk further, and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy, which may be greater than that of the oil spill. We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do.”
Neither do we, and frankly we’re tired of the deliberate manipulation of facts and truth in the name of protecting the environment, whether it’s the U.N. con artists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the charlatans at Britain’s Climate Research Unit who tried to “hide the decline” in global temperatures or our own political hacks at Interior.
We’re as concerned as anybody about oil-soaked pelicans, just as we’re concerned about the birds, including endangered species, who are daily hacked to oblivion by twirling wind turbines. And while tourism is a concern, so too are the tens of thousands of jobs in the oil and supporting industries that will be lost due to this ill-conceived moratorium. Homo sapiens is a species too.
“The last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has told Obama. The moratorium will shut down 33 deep-water rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, including 22 near Louisiana, costing as many as 6,000 jobs in the next three weeks and 20,000 by the end of next year.
America can’t afford not to drill, adds Texas Gov. Rick Perry, noting the oil industry accounts for 7.2% of GDP and 9.2 million American jobs and that if we don’t drill in the Gulf of Mexico, others will.
“U.S. investor-owned oil companies hold only 6% of the world’s petroleum reserves, while state-owned national oil companies in Venezuela, Iran, China, Nigeria, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia and other countries control 80% of the reserves,” Perry says. “Coincidentally, even some of these countries are drilling for oil in Cuban waters just 50 miles from Florida.”
We need the oil, the energy and the jobs. We also need the truth. Apparently Secretary Salazar and this administration can’t handle the truth, so they make it up as they go along.
Companies are already laying off workers who live in the disaster-stricken Gulf. Outfits that have nothing to do with BP’s disaster have no idea when they will be allowed to begin operations again. It is the biggest industry in the region, and the provider of a lot of good paying jobs. What are all of these families supposed to do now?
Obama’s inexcusable deceit-laden moratorium is going to cost tens of thousands of jobs in a region that has already lost hundreds of thousands of jobs due to their shattered tourism industry and their shattered fishing industry vanishing for the unforeseeable future.
It amounts to a moratorium on jobs.
And Obama is doing it based on lies piled on top of lies.
Tags: A blanket moratorium is not the answer, advisory board on offshore drilling, Bob Bea, Bobby Jindal, deceit, deep water rigs, did not endorse, Interior Secretary, it will have a lasting impact on the nation's economy, Ken Arnold, moratorium, never agreed to by the contributors, never endorsed, Obama, Salazar, should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions, six month, transparency, which may be greater than that of the oil spill, will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs
Start Thinking Right 
June 12, 2010 at 8:25 am
http://peterreynolds.wordpress.com/2010/06/12/the-oil-spill-the-bottom-line-what-obamas-forgetting/
America and Americans need to remember who their friends are. Obama and the whining American press are trying to pass the buck..
June 12, 2010 at 9:34 am
Every day now it seems there is another item somewhere in the blogosphere/media that reflects the hypocrisy/lies reflected in something Obama has said about something, versus the facts of the situation, be it the oil spill, health care, the stimulus, jobs/economy, etc., and Obama is operating from a house of cards that appears to be straining from the weight of those facts, as evidenced by his exponential increase in whining and fingerpointing to cover up his lack of ability to effectively execute anything other than reading a teleprompter.
As a structure, a house of cards can be maintained only so long as ALL those who interact with it/are affected by it agree to participate in ways that reinforce the house of cards. Ergo, it would appear that Obama’s house of cards will eventuallly tumble. Unfortunately, (a) not soon enough, and (b) there is going to be quite a mess to clean up, and not just in the Gulf.
June 12, 2010 at 9:38 am
Peter,
I have used the phrase “British Petroleum” myself. For the record, I have NEVER used it to “blame the British.” I merely thought I was further elaborating on “BP.”
I completely agree with you about Obama “knowing who his friends are.” The two greatest allies of the USA have been the UK and Israel. Obama has turned on both, while sucking up to despots and tyrants in the Middle East and Central America.
As an American, I thank the English for standing with America for what has been right, in spite of an increasingly apathetic world’s opinion. American needs England, and England needs America.
June 12, 2010 at 9:45 am
Taffy,
Great observations.
Obama has been a demagogue from the outset. It is a tragedy that he was elected principally on the basis that he was able to seize upon and demagogue the 2008 economic downturn.
As for his teleprompter addiction, it is because he is a liar, and he knows he is lying to the American people. If he were to get off his teleprompter, eventually he would reveal who he really is, and what he really stands for. And he can’t take that chance. So he uses the teleprompter fifty times more than any president who ever came before him in order to maintain the facade that he somehow represents the American people.
As for the house of cards analogy, again, spot on. It is only a matter of time before the house comes crashing down.
Tragically, the longer the house of cards remains upright, the more damage will be caused when it ultimately DOES come crashing down.
People who are interested in this concept might turn to this article I wrote to see how Democrats are planning to take advantage of the collapse that they themselves will have created.