Obama 'officials' pressured contractors to change job loss figures, recordings reveal.

Obama 'officials' pressured contractors to change job loss figures, recordings reveal.(FB).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.
“If we’re to assume [the 2008 rule] is enforced in the coal-producing states, this is a very small [impact],” the contractor replies. “But that, as you said, is not the real world, that’s pretending … I thought we were looking at what’s going to change in Kentucky, what’s going to change in Pennsylvania, what’s going to change in Ohio, what’s going to change in Wyoming.”
When a second OSM official makes light of the “theoretical discussion,” the contractor shoots back that “his [the OSM official’s proposed criteria] was theoretical, mine was practical.”
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.
Rep. Bill Johnson (R., Ohio) blasted the administration’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation.The rule, known originally as the Stream Buffer Zone Rule, was never codified and has been loosely enforced. George W. Bush signed an official Stream Buffer Zone rule in 2008 that maintained the 100-foot restriction, but also included more exemptions for mining companies to conduct operations within the barrier.
When Obama came into office, he ordered OSM to rewrite the rule to please his environmentalist base. OSM has spent more than $5 million studying the impacts of sediment run off and water protection and hopes to release an official rule proposal later this year.The committee released the tapes on Friday. OSM officials have until May 24 to respond to a second subpoena from the committee. Johnson pledged to continue pushing for transparency at the agency.
“We’re going to keep marching down this path,” he said. “We’re not going to stop until we get a full accounting of why the administration has chosen to rewrite this rule and why they are going about it in a speedy, haphazard way.”Hmmmmm...........Obama : ‘If someone wants to build a new coal-fired power plant they can, but it will bankrupt them because they will be charged a huge sum for all the greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.’ "Read the full story here.