In a column published in Red State, Seton Motley characterizes the troubling comments President Obama made on the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline as part of a larger pall of uncertainty often cast by this administration on private sector investments.
For that reason, he contends, America’s economy has yet to fully recover from the massive recession which occurred nearly 8 years ago at the onset of the Obama presidency.
The critical component of his argument, as it relates to Dakota Access, is that despite the fact that the government is set up for orderly process and legal review throughout the regulatory process, the Obama Administration has bypassed all of this. Instead the past 8 years have been “governed by a massive flood of regulatory fiats – issued by unelected bureaucrats. Whom we can’t lobby. Of whom we can’t rid ourselves in the next election. (In fact, we can’t get rid of them just about ever.)”
What that leads to is uncertainty on important future investments like Dakota Access. Without certainty in the marketplace, investors will be hard pressed to expend massive amounts of capital necessary to update America’s critical energy infrastructure. Coupled with the administration’s refusal to back law enforcement, the climate of uncertainty for the future in North Dakota becomes all the more troubling.