President Says No To Pipeline

After months upon months of pressure from various groups and lobbyists, after ad campaigns and long, long guilt trips, the Obama administration has decided against issuing a permit before February 21 for the extremely controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, according to the LA Times. An official announcement about the decision is expected as early as Wednesday, and it will come in response to a deadline set by congress at the tail end of last year. The ad campaign in favor of the pipeline has been relentless, with some stating that this would be the President's last chance to do some good. It would seem that Obama is smarter than that though, and he has refused to bite down on that worm. "It's a fallacy to suggest that the president should sign into law something when there isn't even an alternate route identified in Nebraska and when the review process is" not yet done, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. "There was an attempt to short-circuit the review process in a way that does not allow the kind of careful consideration of all the competing criteria here that needs to be done." In other words, the President and his administration is quite correctly saying that they will not be held to ransom. It would be illegal anyway, as current law dictates that it cannot accelerate the permitting process, especially in light of the need for additional environmental reviews of a new path for the pipeline through Nebraska. Brendan Buck, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, has not managed to catch on to that fact, saying that, “President Obama is about to destroy tens of thousands of American jobs and sell American energy security to the Chinese. The president won't stand up to his political base even to create American jobs. This is not the end of this fight.” The pipeline would be expected to create 20,000 new jobs if permitted, something that is not to be sniffed at in these lean time. The President would have looked at this long and hard before refusing the permit. After all, nothing looks better in an election year than a hefty influx of employment. But, as the officials keep saying, the law just will not allow it right now.