Ohio is said to be an election bellwether state. This means that how the people in Ohio vote is an indication of how the majority of the rest of the nation will vote. Ohio, like other bellwether states, is a microcosm of the nation. Ohio, with only two misses in 1944 and 1960 is said to be 93.1% slightly “too Republican.” With the pro-union vote (61% to 39%) in the state’s last special election and the proposal to prohibit people from being required to buy health insurance also passing, I’m not sure which way the state is leaning. But there may be one thing to tip the scales: oil and jobs.

President Obama’s United States Department of Agriculture has delayed shale gas drilling in Ohio for up to six months by cancelling a mineral lease auction for Wayne National Forest (WNF). The move was taken in deference to environmentalists, on the pretext of studying the effects of hydraulic fracturing.

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The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP) recently estimated that drilling in the Utica shale, which is affected by the suspension of the mineral lease auctions, would produce up 204,500 jobs by 2015.

“The President’s plan is to simply say ‘no’ to new energy production,” House Natural Resources Committee chairman Doc Hastings, R-Wash, said to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar during a hearing pertaining to hydraulic fracturing. “It’s a plan that is sending American jobs overseas, forfeiting new revenue, and denying access to American energy that would lessen our dependence on hostile Middle Eastern oil.”

The state of Ohio belongs to the people of Ohio. It doesn’t belong to the federal government or even the people of the United States. If the people of Ohio want to get in the oil and natural gas business, then more power to them. Because the state will want to make money, we’ll all benefit by what they do.

The Obama administration has already delayed the development of an oil pipeline from Canada that is estimated to create 20,000 jobs. When will people wake up? Barack Obama is either incompetent or in the economic sabotage business for some grander goal that will ultimately fail and bring all of us down with him.