“ I love it when a plan comes together.”
That was the catchphrase of Col. John “Hannibal” Smith as played by actor George Peppard in the popular 1980s TV series, The A-Team.
Today it would be easy to imagine the same quip coming out of the mouth of Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner in response to the announcement of President Obama’s veto of the Keystone XL Pipeline project.
Putting aside my personal politics for a few moments, I have to hand it to those crafty GOP legislators. They really know how to put the opponent’s cojones in a vise. By pressuring the White House to approve the Transcanada proposal to build the 1,700 mile oil conduit between Alberta, Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, they created a no-win situation for President Obama.
As part of the deal last December extending the payroll tax cut for two months, Congress imposed a Feb. 21 decision deadline on the President to issue or reject the pipeline permit. Congress knew the deadline would not give the administration adequate time to conduct the environmental impact studies needed to respond to the objections of Obama’s base.
Despite claims by John “Hannibal” Boehner that the pipeline would generate 100,000 desperately needed jobs for Americans, the President opted to appease his environmental base and veto the permit to build the pipeline. And the screaming began. Newt Gingrich called the decision “stupid,” and raged that the President has allowed politics to displace his oft-stated commitment to create jobs.
But hold on. The A-Team had another member of the team named B. A. Baracus, played by the inimitable Mr. T, the gold-chain laden muscle man with the African Mandika warrior hairdo. The B. A. in the character’s name allegedly stood for “Bad Attitude.” B. A. also had a catchphrase: “I Pity the fool…”
Well, I pity the fool who believes what they are hearing about the number of stifled jobs the veto has caused. In all the confusion Republicans are creating by having musical front-runners, semi-weekly debates, and Obfuscator in Chief Gingrich revving up racial discord, reality, if there is one, is being driven further and further into the background.
In today’s article by Alain Sherter on CBSNews.com Moneyline it is reported that TransCanada itself last fall projected no more than 20,000 jobs created in the U.S. from the $7 billion project. But subsequent analysis by the U. S. State Department reduced that projection to 5,000 or 6,000 U.S. jobs.
Sherter wrote:
“Another reason for the discrepancy appears to stem from what that 20,000 figure really means. As TransCanada has conceded, its estimate counted up "job years" spent on the project, not jobs. In other words, the company was counting a single construction worker who worked for two years on Keystone as two jobs, lending fuel to critics who said advocates of the pipeline were overstating its benefits.”
Unfortunately, the people who have been hooting and hollering in the Republican Presidential debate audiences in support of the misleading rhetoric offered by every one of those candidates will not be likely to read Sherter’s article, this post or anything else that would take the wind out of the sails of the GOP campaign machinery. We will hear ad nauseum about the 100,000 jobs that were never on the horizon to begin with, and the President will be powerless to refute it.
And the beat goes on.
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Comments
HUGGGGGGG
we can't have alaskan drilling. we can't have offshore drilling. we can't "frack" for natural gas. we can't import liquified natural gas (terminals for offloading might become terrorist targets); we put a tariff on imported ethanol; we can't build more nuclear plants.
and now we should forbid a pipeline for canadian oil - and send it in my tanker truck or railway car, which is hugely more expensive and problematic from a logistics and carbon footprint standpont.
is it any wonder why legitimate scientistists and the average american voter think the anti-energy fringe are raving lunatics?
Linda: I missed that post and I can't find the link in my email. Please send me the link.
baltimore: Yeah, I'm pretty sure at least one of those ideas could be workable, as long as legitimate scientists are given the opportunity to make input to the processes with an eye on safety and minimization of pollution. The fringes of all issues make solving problems nearly impossible.
Thoth: You're welcome!
Scanner: Hahahahaha!
It's really very simple:
If we burn it, it's in the act of biting us in the ass because it's changing weather patterns.
That means we have to put what subsidies we have into stuff we don't burn or, in some cases, in strategems to use less energy. We're not at the point where we can go completely away from burned fuels, particularly when it comes to vehicles (as opposed to, say, buildings), but we have to change the ratios of our use. Sinking a fortune into a pipeline is not how you do that.
Part of the problem with fracking is that it takes too much water, part of the problem is that there's a high risk of polluting the water table underground, which is currently just about impossible to clean up.
Understand another thing about petroleum: The world supply is sold to the highest bidder, no matter where it comes out of the ground and no matter where a pipeline terminates. This oil isn't "ours" in that the public doesn't own it, even the massive amounts of oil shale in North Dakota, where you can basically move to and get a job on the spot at the moment. American production from this source is ramping up rapidly. This just benefits oil companies. The only way it brings the price down is insofar as it affects world supplies, not local supplies; in other words, it has to be a significant proportion of the World supply to really affect the price.
I'm not back yet. I wasn't here.
Another lie the Republicans will be spinning is that because of Obama's decision, the oil will go to China. The irony, which nobody seems to know about, is that with the pipeline in place the refined product was scheduled to be exported to Europe and Latin America.
Whenever Republicans want to make something scary to their courage-challenged party, they start talking about China.
greenheron: I’m not back in love yet, but it’s a start. :D
Muse: Thanks.
Chicken: I hope you are right. My sense is people only hear whatever agrees with what they believe.
Jeff: Yes, the word China is on their list of code words. It is so disgustingly transparent, and yet it seems to work.
Even 5 or 6000 jobs would be kind of nice, although I'm sure there is mucho rapage of environment involved. Sucks to be Obama... sucks even worse to be US.. damn
The tar sands oil will not go to China as there is just as much opposition to the Enbridge pipeline route to the coast of Canada as there is to the Keystone route. Indigenous and environmental groups are fighting against that just as hard.
The fact is, we are killing the planet and ourselves by continuing our fossil fuel addiction. 97% of climatologists agree man made global warming is a huge problem. The ice caps are melting, the coastline is eroding, the oceans are becoming more acidic, and weather patterns are becoming more severe. Continuing our fossil fuel addiction is poisoning our water, polluting our air, damaging our health, and getting us involved in more wars for other peoples oil and gas. The time to end our addiction is NOW!
If the idea is turning northern Alberta into a vast polluted moonscape sits so well with Canadians, then why do they want to export this unrefined crude??
Has anyone looked at the true costs involved?? Natural gas to heat it to melt out the bituminous and remove the sand?? The huge amounts of water used to extract this and make it flow through a pipeline??
This is not a source of cheap oil by any stretch of imagination. It is in fact, a very expensive source that costs so much in so many ways.
There is no well pumping it out of the ground and hooking this pipeline to send it down to the American refineries.
If Americans think only that somehow the current price paid to fill their cars can continue to stay if only...
Then they are sadly mislead.
Spewing propaganda about job creation and secure sources is little more than a smoke screen to confuse. Don't be fooled by it.
The only thing to do is cut off the addiction to cheap gasoline.
And there is a price to pay for that. And we will have to pay that piper one day. Whether we want to or not.
And, hey Mission, you're giving him a run for his, haha, money today!
As a native (tho not Native) of Alberta, I am appalled by the tar-sands thing. I can't understand why that is happening as long as there is oil underneath sand, even if said sand is inhabited by a bunch of cranky Arabs...
Human beings are insane.