As most readers of MadOgre.com know, I am not a fan of Ken Salazar.  Ken serves under President Obama as the Secretary of the Interior.  This fact alone marks him as one that should not be trusted.  But now he has taken things a step further and has thumbed his nose at the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

Michelle Malkin has the story about it.

The story that really isnt getting out however is even more infuriating.  Out here in the Uintah Basin, the Department of the Interior held an auction for 77 oil drilling leases.  The bids were won.  The payments were made.  But Ken Salazar hasn’t released the permits for drilling.  This is a game that the Department of the Interior has been playing for decades and decades, and Ken Salazar has basically crushed it, kept the money, and refuses to release those permits.   Some companies were not overly effected.  But others were crushed.  The results were some company failures and a lot of companies moving drilling operations to North Dakota.  The direct economic impact to my little corner of the planet was that we saw a Job Loss of 3,000 workers.

That’s not 3,000 jobs in the country… or in the state… That was 3,000 jobs here in this local area.   Think about that.   We had homes that went vacant all around town.  Foreclosures.  Repossessions.   Trickle down job losses, deep cuts across the board… financial stresses on families.  It ruined lives here.  It kicked my own personal economy below the belt, because all the sudden my best customers were unemployed or had moved away.   All because of Salazar.

This was devastating to the areas economy.  One could see this as an Administration’s punishment on Utah.  One could also see this as the work of a bitter, spiteful, and completely unlikable man from Colorado who has a grudge.

Not only is Ken Salazar immensely unlikeable, the man wears a Cowboy Hat and a String Tie.  No one wears that anymore.  That look went out with the TV show “Dallas”.    Get Rid of Salazar!