Lisa Jackson isn’t the only one happy about how the Environmental Protection Agency is destroying jobs.  You may recall some remarks Jackson made previously about the EPA in the face of evidence that proposed regulations would cripple some industry and deeply harm the national economy:

In fact, Jackson believes that there is no reason to be concerned about the economics whatsoever.  After all, what do the industry leaders know about their own industry when compared to a former chemical engineer?

WSJ:

This cost-benefit bias may explain why Ms. Jackson could claim at a “green jobs” conference in February that under the Clean Air Act, “For every $1 we have spent, we have gotten $40 of benefits in return. So you can say what you want about EPA’s business sense. We know how to get a return on our investment.”

Essentially what Jackson is saying is that the return on investment for the EPA, in the form of regulatory fees, is more important than the very industries that they are tasked with regulating.

And it’s not as though Jackson is oblivious to these economic certainties, she just doesn’t seem to care.  This conversation between Jackson and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) caused the Congresswoman to refer to the EPA’s stance as being ‘hellbent on destroying jobs‘:

“We’ve had a back-and-forth [with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson] on whether they actually do look at job creation and job losses and the economic impacts of the regulations that they’re creating,” Caputo said. “It’s obvious they do not. [Jackson] told me that, and her folks have said that too — not just to me, but to numerous other people.”

Well, Jackson is not alone in her enthusiasm for the destruction of industry and jobs.  It turns out that there is another smitten individual, and she used to be Romney’s favorite go-to on environmental issues.

Actual standards have not yet been sent to the White House, but EPA is getting closer, air chief Gina McCarthy said yesterday.

‘We’re kind of excited about nearing the finish line on this,’ McCarthy said at an air quality conference in Arlington, Va. (Gabriel Nelson, “White House Starts Review of EPA’s Utility Toxics Rule,” E & E News, October 25, 2011) (emphasis mine)

So what is she so excited about?  None other than the very regulations I’ve written about that are going to cost the nation a total of 1.44 million jobs and cause an 11.5% increase in electricity bills according to an independent study performed at the request of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

The report is of course related to the Clean Air Transport Rule (CATR) & the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) Requirements.

This is all coming from the same EPA that has created such an enormously burdensome system which they fully acknowledge would be ‘absurd‘ to comply with, even while they are requesting billions more dollars to add over 200k more bureaucrats to the rolls.

The same EPA which is dead set on destroying the coal industry, which is precisely what our Commander in Chief said he would do at the outset of his presidential bid.

They are systematically destroying an industry which will cost us jobs, the ability to reliably produce power, billions of dollars to the economy…and Gina McCarthy is excited that they’re almost ready to start.

The pushback from the environmentalists is always the same.  They claim that job losses will be offset by job gains in the ‘green’ sector.  Between electric cars with questionable business models shipping jobs to Finland and solar panel manufacturers like Solyndra spending almost an entire $500 million loan on a factory that no one was buying product from, my faith in these magical green jobs is rapidly dwindling and I already started from a position of total cynicism.

Don’t ever forget, this is all precisely what Barack Obama promised he would do.  What candidates do and say matters.  Who they work with, what their objectives are, what their previous statements have been.  These things have a direct correlation to how they will make decisions and how they will govern.

Did I mention that Gina McCarthy used to work for Mitt Romney as a top level environmental advisor?

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