What pairs well with a budget that counts the same money twice?
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Counting the same jobs dozens of times.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, appearing on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, casually asserted that the Trump administration has presided over a staggering increase in coal-industry employment. “We’ve had over 50,000 jobs since last quarter — coal jobs, mining jobs — created in this country. We had almost 7,000 mining and coal jobs created in the month of May alone,” boasted Pruitt.
How false are these statistics? Extremely false.
Last month, the coal industry added 400 jobs, not 7,000. Since October, it has added just 1,700 jobs. The industry as a whole now employs 51,000 people — total. (No, there were not merely 1,000 people working in coal before the election.)
Attention laid-off coal miners, the jobs came back! Just not where you are. No, not there either. Or there. But don’t worry, you can pick up a few simoleons as a paid attendee at the next tRump MAGA rally. Try not to starve or die due to lack of medical care before he shows up.
Even if “jobs” was the maximal priority of energy policy, the solar industry employs twice as many people. But, if you’re going to live in a fantasy world in which greenhouse gas emissions do not necessarily trap heat in the atmosphere, you might as well flesh out the fantasy with some imaginary jobs.
This is what happens when an administration’s main policy – such as it is – is to reflexively lie and lie bigly about everything. It’s why I don’t expect tRump to resign. I expect him to declare that he has fixed everything, so he’ll be at one of his golf courses for the duration.
Related: I’m surprised the incompetents in the White House haven’t been brandishing this cute little graphic from AEI.
Inconvenient energy fact: It takes 79 solar workers to produce same amount of electric power as one coal worker. https://t.co/JkmA4CLmUW pic.twitter.com/w9sTmrEs8l
— AEI (@AEI) May 4, 2017
