Thank you DLC/New Dems/Third Way!!!

Which Veal Pen enviros will be backing Hillary in 2016?

Ashley Judd should put this in a campaign advertisement. No need to mention HRC.

Some of this is a result of Al Gore’s initiative to shrink government: the government used to have enough experts in-house to be able to do impact assessments of all sorts. Since the USG began farming everything out, much of that expertise has been lost and contractors have to be relied upon for work that can only be done without a conflict of interest by the USG itself.

All of that being said, there is no justifiable reason that industry is always considered “expert” while (in this instance) environmental groups are always considered to be “advocates.”

Hell, environmentalists are terrorists to be harassed and surveiled.

environmental policy has carried seamlessly over from one president to the next.

Obama is in some ways worse. Think Bush/Cheney could drill in the Arctic without some kind of argument?

but Obama….. it’s A-okay.

American domestic oil production has gone up substantially under Obama, and is at it’s highest level in many years.

“President Barack Obama champions renewables as the future of energy. The latest numbers tell a different tale.

Consumption of renewable energy in the US declined by 2.5 percent in 2012, according to the US Energy Information Administration, while US crude oil production jumped by a record 800,000 barrels a day over 2011. Production averaged 6.4 million barrels daily in 2012, and the EIA expects it to increase to 7.9 million barrels a day in 2014. That number would mark the highest annual average level of production since 1988.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2013/0109/Oil-shows-record-growth.-Will-Obama-2.0-warm-to-fossil-fuels

We know that what Obama says, has nothing to do with what he does.

He went golfing with oilco and tiger woods, the day of the 350.org demonstration.

Talk about spitting in their faces.

More kelptocracy techniques from the Corporatist masters of our DC politicians.

We seem unable to have a democracy with the wealth imbalance which now exists. Note that what the people believe and want gets scant attention from the pols unless it’s something which fits their objectives as handed down to them by their Corporate masters. Oligarchy sucks.

Read the report. It looks like it was a high school class project. Shame on you Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

At every level, every aspect of anything you can think of that matters on this planet, every decision, is being made by vandals, people who are incompetent in every way, other than carrying out bribery, stealing, and destroying.

It’s way beyond simple greed.

At this point, It’s my belief, that these people take pleasure in acts of destruction.

They learned from the Niger forgery, which was clumsy and amateurish, that the most basic fig leaf will do.

Remember when that character walked out and publicly demanded a trillion dollars, all backed up and based upon a two page outline of his plan? and that provoked only mild discussion? And it worked?

why bother?

I would prefer it if they would simply say “we’re doing this, if you don’t like it, too bad”

Obama?

He’s really mailing it in now, I heard a few seconds of him on the radio this AM. He wants out.

He sounds completely bored with the whole thing.

Obama and his administration are pissing me off almost daily now. There seems to be NOBODY in government we can trust.

He sounds completely bored with the whole thing.

All kidding aside…why did he want to be president? He would have easily been a multi-millionaire just being a senator from Illinois. PUtting his wife and family through this and then lying to the whole country over and over and over again. Trampling on the constitution ion some ways worse than that dick Cheney and his puppet Bush. For what?????

Is friggin’ EVERYBODY in DC corrupt???? “We the people” are losing waaay more than we are winning. And the guy responsible for enforcing all our laws, Obama, and his “useless as a cigarette lighter in a hurricane AG “what’s his name”, just smile and snicker.

Like some industry association talking head said recently on News Hours, defending similar corrupt — unquestionably “appearance” of corruption” — role in analyzing finance data, she didn’t see it as a conflict because, you know, it was a professional role that was clearly identified, not in any way political. So what’s the problem? At least there, I think, the name and connection wasn’t hidden so deeply.

But denial, lying, deception by any other name. What’s the use in even bothering. Obviously the PTB are just fine with corruption, so long as it’s their corruption. Sort of like the Randy Newman song re “The Kingfish”: “he’s a fool. but he’s our fool.”

Yes, they’re all corrupt. Pipeline’s a done deal. Always has been. Anybody who thinks otherwise might as well sign up for a brainectomy.

Lies, theft, torture, spying, whoring…..the essense of our “leadership

In the real world, this would be a big scandal. We seem to be stuck someplace else.

Do ‘they’ have the best brains working for them, or does money still trump everything else? One wonders, in a different era, with a different distribution of information over time, whether outcomes would be the same? How have we been advantaged by the world of technology in this instance? Bunch of bodies gotten arrested. President talking out of both sides of his mouth, i.e., without firm commitment = done deal per admin.; State Dept sending up signals on admin position all the time. Public profile pretty low for putative importance. But if it all feeds into a corrupt system anyway …

Could be the backbreaking step for any hope of a real energy policy based on other than fossil fuels. Industry doesn’t want to shift technologies, without being pushed. As with prior examples, pathetic though they were (e.g., auto mpg, cigarette labeling, etc) the pushing is very hard. Same old pol’s nice words — taken back the next breath — but nothing of the commitment required.

Negative view? Have faith in the incrementalist way?

Neither TransCanada Corporation nor the U.S. Department of State have been forthcoming with this project’s GIS information. This has made it impossible to evaluate the potential environmental impacts of the Keystone XL pipeline. Thus far, only the pro-bono Keystone Mapping Project provides the public with detailed route information. http://keystone.steamingmules.com

Now there is a pill for that..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9pD_UK6vGU&feature=youtu.be

I wish O’s all of the above was real instead of the Oil Above All that is actually happening. And that is knowing the all of the above is a bad plan.

In one of my former occupations, I wrote a few Environmental Impact Reports, admittedly for projects much smaller than the Keystone XL pipeline. And no, I was not an expert on every single aspect of the issues addressed in each report. What I was though, was a tough researcher – and that is what is expected of the author(s) of a report such as this. You find someone who is respected in the field that you are looking at and ask them to address a list of issues. Yes they get paid for their expertise. But then you also expect to question their findings using other sources. You also expect more mitigation from adverse findings than “well it’s going to happen anyway so therefore any adverse effects are moot” as this XL report did.

In the case of the XL Pipeline, the issue of spills has not been addressed. A current spill in the Kalamazoo River that happened over two years ago has still not been cleaned up – because the industry still has not figured out how to do it. That fact seems to have escaped the writers of this report.

In the case of the pipeline itself and the track record of the company maintaining it – a similar, much smaller pipe has suffered failures after only one year of service when it was not running at capacity, nor under pressure, nor under heat as the XL will be. This was not addressed either.

And these are just the issues of the pipeline itself.

The issues of the ecosystems, the livelihoods of the affected landowners, the pollution, the global warming effects, the noise, the smells, the financial impacts of spills, all of that were tossed off as minor inconveniences.

Environmental impact reports are intended to address ALL of these – and not just to list them, but to talk about the actual impacts – and then to provide for plans for mitigation.

What a joke.

If I had written a report like this one I would have been fired.

The person who did write this report probably got a raise not fired.

The tell happened a couple weeks ago. Tom Friedman wrote a column directing the enviros to prepare a wish list of “other” demands in the event of an unfavorable Keystone decision.

Wouldn’t be surprised if that was “leaked” to him by “highly placed” administration officials.

He’s basically addicted to the adoration thing – all narcissists are – and becoming the U.S.’s first half-black president. The presidency gives him a platform for the masses to join him in a celebration of himself – and it doesn’t matter how vacuously based that celebration is (hell, obama is completely vacuous in his own right) – and being the first half-black president affirms just how “special” he is.

Oh, he’s special all right – he’s created a new term for somebody attaining his level of narcissism – he’s a narcissiopath.

Z

See, this is why the beltway hillbillies – dlc dem darlings bill and hillary – don’t want un-vetted (uncorrupted) folks like Ashley Judd running for office: they may change the game.

This ought to be a major scandal, but this will be usurped by a new one tomorrow – which will be forgotten by another one the next day and so on. It’s just one outrage to another at such a blistering pace that you can’t organize quick enough to resist one before they are on to the next one. It’s a blitzkrieg tactic used by our rulers that they deployed a lot during the bush administration, but it has been put into turbo-mode during the obama era being that they now have an American Idol president who is apparently beyond criticism from the groups who have traditionally been most likely to rise up and raise hell about this type of bullshit.

Our rulers are looking to gain as much ground as they can while the current head pr man for the establishment is in power – he’s the best one they’ve had so far – looking what they’ve gotten away with – almost anything they want. Unless people start waking up to this monster soon we might not have much left to defend – or many means to defend it.

Again, barak obama: not just a poor president, but a horrible human being.

Z

It’s just one outrage to another at such a blistering pace that you can’t organize quick enough to resist one before they are on to the next one

This is precisely what I see. And I agree, it started with Bush.

In the early days of Fed Mass Trans Program (late 60′s, early 70′s), I wrote environment implementing regs for NEPA. Later, I reviewed EIS on projects, some from outside DOT, and many of FHWA statements on proposed projects, most of which were boilerplate and use loopholes to find no impact, or remediable.

I was not an expert either, but what I did always included both the null hypothesis, and the need to look at the alternative to highway hypothesis. In other words, I critiqued basic assumptions, including the straight line extrapolation for highway demand based on historical assumptions which only used current technology, regulation, pricing, etc.

Question the assumptions!!! A big part of the review process worth anything must question the assumptions.

They keep their subjects on their heels that way – always in reaction mode – befuddled and overwhelmed, disjointed, and disorganized. And since our rulers don’t fear the legal system – they own the whole system – judiciary, legislative, and executive – the only potential resistance to their rule are from their subjects.

A big inflection point happened in 2002 – and not many people fully recognized that then or even now. If you remember there were a ton of wall street crimes that finally came to the forefront during that period – much of them committed during the clinton years by the way. To bush’s rare credit, at least his administration did more about them than obama has – kenny lay, skilling, bernie ebbers, rigas went down (yes, john ashcroft was a much better head of the doj than the current one) – but there was a savings and loan scandal amount of material to go after that the bush administration and the doj let go. Up to that point, wall street feared being caught, so that lent to some caution to their looting ways. However, in the 2002 mid-terms, when all this stuff was still brewing, rove – with bush’s and cheney’s approval – basically made them a deal: you fund the republicans’ mid-term victory then the troubles that those pesky democrats – ha ha ha – in congress were causing would go by the wayside and pro-business republicans would effectively sweep all this under the rug once they controlled both houses of congress.

And wall street, and other powerful corporate entities that were running roughshod on the law, ponied up. The republicans won the 2002 mid-terms, gained control of the senate and house and did just they promised they would – with the help of those “pesky” democrats. Once that happened the wall street corruption – which most of our rulers wealth emanates from – was given the green light and our rulers realized that they no longer had to fear the law because they owned the government. And ever since then it’s been full bore ahead for our rulers – they don’t fear nothing accept the riff-raff getting in the way of their looting. Now, with their newest head pr man of the establishment – who so eagerly and ably feeds the people to them and fends the subjects away from resisting our rulers’ edicts – they don’t even fear that.

Z

yes, john ashcroft was a much better head of the doj than the current one)

amazing isn’t it? Lay and Enron would have gotten a bail out and a pat on the back from Obama/Holder.

I thought at the time, and I still think that one of the purposes of the invasion of Iraq was to do what you have described.

I wasn’t aware of the deal you mention, but it makes sense. I do remember there was a lot of anger about Wall street, and the feeling that something was going to be done to curb it.

For instance at that time there was a lot of public discussion/concern about GM food.

That went away with the invasion, probably permanently.

Thanks