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To Infinity and Beyond: Keystone XL Champions Wildly Inflate Jobs Numbers

Domestic oil and gas production on federal lands is at an all-time high, creating roughly 75,000 jobs in the sector under the Obama Administration since 2009. That’s about 69,000 jobs more than would be created by Keystone XL, according to estimates from the State Department, Cornell University and the company building the pipeline, TransCanada.

That is a very inconvenient fact Keystone XL champions ignore when claiming Obama is trying to stop drilling for oil and gas. So what’s the best way to shift attention away from that ugly truth? Posture up, make up some fake jobs numbers, and then continually inflate those lies over time.

Media Matters just released a new compilation of “reporting” showing this predictable pattern of behavior in the television media. The claims from pundits get so absurd, even TransCanada has to weigh in to temper expectations:

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