Wake Up Call

It wasn’t the Russians. It wasn’t racism. It wasn’t Wikileaks, Fox News, Corporate Media or the FBI. We did it to ourselves.

My Dad’s Democratic Party was a party of inclusion. It was the party of steelworkers, farmers, waitresses, cab drivers and carpenters. The Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is a white collar party of exurban commuters and stock traders. Many of the folks that elected Donald Trump were abandoned by the Democratic Party. Their party abandoned worker’s rights, fair wages, unions, pensions and the social safety net in favor of financial controls, closing tax loopholes and free trade. Not that those things are not important, but if you are living paycheck to paycheck and can’t afford to send your kids to college, the travails of corporate malfeasance are not an overarching priority. Working folks had nowhere to turn except to the planet of empty promises and pie-in-the-sky. It is my ardent wish that Democrats have learned from this experience, but that may well be pie-in-the-sky too. We can’t blame outside forces for Donald Trump. We need to look inward and find where we have failed.

Robert Reich got it right;

Recent economic indicators may be up, but those indicators don’t reflect the insecurity most Americans continue to feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience. Nor do the major indicators show the linkages many Americans see between wealth and power, stagnant or declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and the undermining of democracy by big money.

Glen Greenwald has been following the backlash vote;

For many years, the U.S. — like the U.K. and other Western nations — has embarked on a course that virtually guaranteed a collapse of elite authority and internal implosion. From the invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crisis to the all-consuming framework of prisons and endless wars, societal benefits have been directed almost exclusively to the very elite institutions most responsible for failure at the expense of everyone else.

Everyone recognizes the need for change. There are calls for a new party, a new politics, a new coalition. “We need a people’s party — a party capable of organizing and mobilizing Americans in opposition to Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which is about to take over all three branches of the US government. We need a New Democratic Party that will fight against intolerance and widening inequality.” says Reich. We had that party, it used to be the Democratic Party, but we have lost our way.

Here is what we need to understand:  a hell of a lot of people are in pain. Under neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatisation, austerity and corporate trade, their living standards have declined precipitously. They have lost jobs. They have lost pensions. They have lost much of the safety net that used to make these losses less frightening. They see a future for their kids even worse than their precarious present.

Today Bernie Sanders is the most important person in the Democratic Party and even he is not a Democrat. It’s time to focus people. We need to bring back the party we once had, the party that recognizes that we have forgotten the people part of the equation.

More Coggin Poppycock

Here’s the latest attack ad from the oil and gas industry attacking EPA and the Clean Water Act. The letter was published in The Hill blog yesterday and was, of course, signed by our old friend, and Rick Berman employee, Will Coggin.

Richard “Rick” Berman is a longtime Washington, D.C. public relations specialist whose lobbying and consulting firm, Berman and Company, Inc., advocates for special interests and powerful industries. Berman and Co. wages deceptive campaigns against industry foes including labor unions; public-health advocates; and consumer, safety, animal welfare, and environmental groups.

Coggin is variously identified as “director of research at the Environmental Policy Alliance“, or “director of research at the Center for Consumer Freedom”, depending on which targets his corporate overlords want attacked this week. Both groups spend their millions attacking environmental groups and consumer advocate groups such as the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and Trout Unlimited, the EPA, Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Food & Water Watch, PETA and Mothers Against Drunk Driving and even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Center for Science in the Public Interest through an extensive network of tacky websites, billboards, print ads and recently, letters to many local newspapers across the western U.S attacking the EPA and opponents of the transfer of public lands to private control.

“Berman makes his money as a corporate hired gun, setting up front groups to denigrate public interest organizations that threaten his clients’ bottom lines,” Melanie Sloan, executive director for the nonprofit watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told HuffPost. “I’m not surprised he’s attacking groups and agencies focused on the environment, given the deep pockets of those interested in paying to stop climate change legislation and regulation.”

If the campaign runs true to form, the Hill letter will soon show up in various newspapers across Montana. Their aim is not to elucidate, but to confuse and confound through a blizzard of deception.

“Our offensive strategy is to shoot the messenger,” admits [Rick] Berman. “Given the activists’ plans to alarm beyond all reason, we’ve got to attack their credibility as spokespersons.” The Center has so aggressively defended junk food, a USA Today editorial said it should rename its site called ConsumerFreedom.com to FatforProfit.com

UPDATE 05/19/2015: Reply from TRCP – “These attacks are disingenuous and blatantly hypocritical. The folks behind the Environmental Policy Alliance are lobbyists and PR spinmeisters who are paid by industry to roll back conservation, yet they presume to tell Beltway readers who the real sportsmen are and what we should support.”

Access or Profit?

Think the State of Montana is better at managing public lands than the Federal Government? Think again.

The National Wildlife Federation just released a report titled How Could Your Recreational Access Change if Federal Lands were Controlled by the States? The report details differences between state and federal management of public lands.

Spring Prairie then

During the 1890s, Spring Prairie north of Kalispell was a favored stop for wagon and mule trains traveling the Fort Steele Trail. This important trail connected the Mullan Road near Missoula with the Tobacco Plains and the prosperous mining districts in British Columbia. Spring Prairie offered a large spring of clear water as well as plentiful grazing and timber and was an important resting point before the caravans entered the arduous, heavily timbered part of the northward journey.

Spring Prairie today: At least there is plenty of public access

By the Enabling Act of 1889, Montana was to be given sections 16 and 36 of every township within it’s borders when it became a state. The lands were to be held in trust by the state for public education. Spring Prairie was part of that bequest. Montana law requires state trust lands to be administrated to “secure the largest measure of legitimate and reasonable advantage to the state.” Today, due to this mandate to maximize revenues from state lands, Spring Prairie is mostly paved over with plans afoot in the near future to fill and pave the spring itself. Phase 4 of the development will put just over $100,000 a year into state coffers.

At statehood, Montana was given 5.9 million acres of school trust land. After selling off around 800,000 acres, today the State Land Board administers about 5.1 million acres. Those lands include 4.7 million acres under 9,000 agreements for crop and range leases throughout the state, 5,301 oil and gas, metalliferous and non-metalliferous mineral, coal, and sand and gravel leases, and 39 coal leases. The state sold 61.4 million board feet of timber from 780,000 acres of state lands in 2014. Since the state owns our riverbeds, Montana also leases 19,000 acres of riverbed and island tracts for oil and gas development. In 2014, Montana sold 4,093 acres of state trust land.

Until 1991, most of the leased lands were accessible only at the whim of the lessor. Today you can buy a State Lands Permit to access most state lands. About 1.3 million acres of Montana’s public lands are “landlocked” that is, they are surrounded by private parcels and not accessible by the public. One example is the section surrounded by Ted Turner’s 22,000-acre Bar None Ranch. Turner Enterprises leases 16,600 acres of public land in Montana. The area is technically open to public access, but the reality is there is no access across the private land unless you pay Mr. Turner’s Montana Hunting Company $14,000 to hunt on the “public” land.

If Montana were to take possession of all the BLM and U.S. Forest Service land in the state, they would gain about 25 million acres on which to maximize profits for the state. In 1999, the Montana State Legislature passed a law exempting many DNRC activities from MEPA compliance for “lease renewals” and certain other activities associated with trust lands management. If these lands were managed like state trust lands, much of your current access would be lost, or restricted. Much of the new land would necessarily have to be sold to the highest bidder to maximize profit for the state. You would have to buy a permit for lands you can now access for free. Some lands you can now access would be leased for commercial activities which would impair public access and impact wildland values. Virtually every decision on management of public lands would be based on what is best for the state revenue stream and not on what is best for the physical streams, forests and recreational values.

Spring Prairie has become an asphalt wasteland under state management to provide a modest boost to state coffers. Little oversight from overworked and understaffed state agencies would result in much the same fate for many currently open public lands in Montana if the current iteration of the Sagebrush Rebellion is allowed to move forward with its profit-fueled ,corporate vision for public lands in our state.

 

The Chameleon Caucus: Who are they now?

Most of us likely remember a bit of a dustup that the State of Montana had a few years ago with a shady group called American Tradition Partnership (ATP) and their research arm the American Tradition Institute over campaign finance laws. ATP thought that using out-of-state dark money to send anonymous fliers attacking Montana candidates should not be questioned. They refused to register as a political group, or reveal their funding sources. The group was later implicated in break-ins at the office of the Montana Commissioner of Political Practices and the office of then-Attorney General Steve Bullock. ATP was instrumental in getting our century-old political disclosure law nullified in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United Case.

Following revelations in ATP documents found in a Colorado meth house, ATP became pretty much ineffective in Montana and elsewhere. American Tradition Partnership pretty much faded away. End of story, right? Well not exactly.

Go to the website of the American Tradition Institute today and you will find this forwarding page:

We’ve Changed Our Name, Refined Our Focus, and Moved Our Site

Check Us Out: Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal)

According to their website, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute pursues “FREE-MARKET ENVIRONMENTALISM THROUGH STRATEGIC LITIGATION”. We reported last month about a Bozeman-based think tank, the Property and Environment Research Center that claims to have practically invented “Free Market Environmentalism” (FME) although the term has been around for many years. The premise of Free Market Environmentalism is that nature can be preserved, and pollution reduced, by expanding private property rights. Or, in other words, the right to pollute is an absolute right of business. If you want someone to stop polluting, you pay them to not pollute, you don’t take away the God-given rights of business. So, of course, business interests, conservative foundations and think tanks have whole-heartedly endorsed the concept.

E&E Legal advocates responsible resource development, sound science, respect for property rights, and a commitment to markets as it holds accountable those who seek excessive and destructive government regulation that’s based on agenda-driven policy making, junk science, and hysteria.

Basically, E&E Legal is just an updated version of ATP, still dedicated to warping the legal system in favor of corporations by using massive amounts of dark money to influence state and national elections through “agenda-driven policy making, junk science, and hysteria”.

Funny thing is; all of these dark money organizations and foundations are funded through the same sources. ATP had deep ties to two wealthy brothers from Kansas, who shall remain nameless, although their initials are Charles and David Koch. As for E&E Legal, “The group has “connections with the Koch brothers, Art Pope and other conservative donors seeking to expand their political influence” reported the Institute for Southern Studies in October 2011.” PERC also has strong ties to various conservative foundations, including the Koch Foundation and the related Claude R. Lambe Foundation. The money goes round and round. If one group is discredited or exposed, it simply fades away and the same employees, with the same goals and the same money turn up in an entirely new entity with the same direction and objectives. Money talks, but dark money shouts.

FME is founded in part on “Public Choice Theory” as outlined by James Buchanan, and Gordon Tullock in 1962. In 1983, Terry Anderson, one of the founders of the Bozeman think tank wrote, Water Rights: Scarce Resource Allocation, Bureaucracy and the Environment, in which he outlined five aspects of Public Choice Theory, including;

It is rational for voters to remain ignorant of the electoral process because they benefit little from being informed; the members of small interest groups have more incentive to participate in the political process because the benefits are concentrated on them, compared to large groups, and thus they tend to dominate the political process; politicians have a strong incentive to win their next election and this produces a short-sighted bias when they evaluate policies; and elections are a poor measure of voter preferences on any single issue, such as the environment, because it can note be determined which issues motivated voters and to what degree.

I think that pretty much sums up the ambitions of all of the corporate dark money groups. Keep the voters uninformed, fearful, and divided while pouring millions of dollars into electing pliable, but ignorant candidates, who can be persuaded to pass corporate-friendly environmental laws. The colors change, the message stays the same.

Truth in Advertising

The First American Freedom & Liberty Institute for Traditional Faith and Values (FAFLI) is a project of the Foundation for American Resourcefulness, Courage and Exploitation (FARCE).

FAFLI is dedicated to the overuse of hyperbole in pursuit of ultimate property rights for some Americans. Through strategic research and inordinate use of buzz words FAFLI seeks to address and correct onerous federal and state governmental actions that negatively impact energy, environmental development and private wealth. We respect the legitimate marketing of property rights to those in the best position to properly make use of our common resources. We respect proper resource development for the benefit of affluent and prosperous conservative patrons in order to provide excessive remunerative compensation to deserving American property owners without disrespecting the sources of their wealth.

We welcome all donations by American corporations, conservative American foundations and prosperous Americans who share our appreciation of the dominion of the few in directing the continuity of the American revenue stream. We seek an end to excessive and destructive government regulation based on agenda-driven policy making, junk science, and hysteria. We see no part for government involvement to further policies that can better be achieved through our own junk science and hysteria.

80% of our funding is used to secure the property rights, holdings and net worth of our founding members (me). 6% goes to agenda-driven scientific and superficial research to further the obfuscation and denial of national issues that may affect our opulent lifestyle. 11% of donations will further our hidden agenda of driving poor and middle-class taxpayers deeper into fear, indebtedness and privation to further increase the valuation and assets of our contributing members. The remaining 3% of our annual budget will produce a glossy quarterly online newsletter overstating the vulnerability of our economy, introducing irrelevant and exaggerated controversies to produce extreme anxiety among possible opponents and we will also publish vibrant profiles of opulent lifestyles to which nearly anyone can aspire.

Please consider a generous donation today. You will receive an ostentatious, sleek membership certificate suitable for framing and a free subscription to our scintillating quarterly FAFLI newsletter. FAFLI is a 501 (c) (4) Social Welfare organization.  All donations are tax deductible and as always your anonymity is assured through the United States Internal Revenue Code.

Perils of Proposing Public Parcel Plunder

Todd Tanner published a great piece in High Country News on the menace of recent Congressional legislation to promote the transfer and sale of public lands.

This is about power, plunder and money.  It’s about water, which is the source of all that power here in the West. And it’s about the fact that an awful lot of folks back in Washington want to privatize our federal lands.

Montana writer Hal Herring called the vote “an attempt to re-create our country, to vanquish forever the notion that we citizens can hold anything in common. It’s a new paradigm, where the majority of Americans are landless subjects with little recourse in the courts or political process.”

It’s a great piece and needs to be distributed widely, but it’s in another Western publication. That’s fine, and we need to see more of it, but we’re pretty much preaching to the choir. Westerners, by a wide margin oppose transferring our public lands to the states. I say we hit ’em where they live.

The deluge of letters we have seen recently supporting land transfer have all come, mainly, from a single source. The Washington, D.C. PR firm of Berman & Company, funded mostly by oil and gas money. The letters are written by Berman employee Will Coggin deceptively attacking western conservation organizations and promoting the sale of public lands to the highest bidder. So, maybe we should let Washington know just how we, as westerners, feel about the corporate smear campaign. I say, we of the Western persuasion, and especially members of slandered groups like Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, should blitz the D.C. newspapers with letters supporting our public lands and condemning corporate-funded, dark money propaganda.

I chose the Washington Post for my missive, but you could choose any popular D.C. publication. For the Post, you can send a letter to letters@washpost.com  Here are the rules:

What are the guidelines for letter submissions?
We prefer letters that are fewer than 200 words and take as their starting point an article or other item appearing in The Post. They may not have been submitted to, posted to or published by any other media. They must include the writer’s full name — anonymous letters and letters written under pseudonyms will not be considered. For verification purposes, they must also include the writer’s home address, e-mail address and telephone numbers. Writers should disclose any personal or financial interest in the subject matter of their letters. If sending e-mail, please put the text of the letter in the body and do not send attachments — they will not be read.

As an example, here’s my letter to the Post.

We, out here in the square states, continue to see a smooth, corporate-funded attack on our public lands. Frequent letters in our newspapers, written by corporate-funded shills and lobbyists from Washington D.C. PR firms, advocate for the transfer and sale of our communal property. We are drowning in the drool of energy, mining and timber companies who can’t wait to get their hands on our public resources and lock out all of us bumpkins who see the true value of lands held in common with every citizen of our country.

We see unwarranted attacks on conservation organizations such a Trout Unlimited and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers who have done more to promote and protect our shared lands than all the lobbyists, lawyers and CEOs in D.C. combined. Our public lands provide clean air, clean water, hunting, fishing and recreation to all the good folks of our country. They are not simply assets on a spreadsheet to be pillaged at will.

I would like to suggest that you folks keep your corporate salivation on your side of the Potomac and quit exporting hate speech to the West. We will do whatever it takes to protect these lands for the good of all the citizens of our republic and you can rest assured that when you next decide to visit our nation’s great parks and public lands they will still be open, accessible to all, and they will be here waiting for you.

501 Don’t See Me

A rhetorical war is being quietly waged over the remaining natural resources in the American West. We have recently seen the battles play out in Congress, as they pass funding to help transfer federal lands to states and, of course, we have seen it in the legislative bodies of several western states, including Montana, where proposed bills to transfer federal lands to state control have been met with anger and vitriol by citizens groups.

The weapon of choice for both sides in this conflict for our public resources is the 501(c) section of the United States Internal Revenue Code. As originally conceived, section 501(c) allowed for the formation of not-for-profit advocacy organizations. It reduced the tax burden on cash-strapped citizens groups and allowed for non-disclosure of the names of donors to shield community-minded contributors from constant pleas for money from similar organizations.

In 2010, everything changed due to the decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case in the U.S. Supreme Court. In its decision in the Citizens United case, the Court held that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibited the government from restricting independent political expenditures by a nonprofit corporation. That decision released corporate America to enter the public discourse with a vengeance never seen before and to do so anonymously. They could now use the vast financial resources of their stockholders to influence and change public policy to protect and enhance corporate profits.

The number of nonprofit organizations soared, growing by more than 30% between 2003 and 2013 and further, spending by groups who no longer had to disclose their funding sources grew exponentially.

Center for Responsive Politics

 

 

Now, companies have been granted a way to pour unlimited money into causes that would disproportionately benefit their bottom line and they could do so using so called, “Dark Money” because they no longer have to reveal that funding for their positions came from the various business interests who would most benefit from changes in state and national policy.

501(c) groups funded by corporate profits make anonymous accusations against 501(c) environmental and groups who, likewise, don’t release their funding sources. In one of the more recent examples we see letters in local newspapers from someone named “Will Coggin”, reputed to be “director of research for the Environmental Policy Alliance.” In a letter published April 2 in the Helena Independent Record, and in other Montana papers, Mr. Coggins makes outrageous claims against some of the most popular environmental groups in Montana, accusing groups like Trout Unlimited, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership of “camouflaging their [anti-gun, anti-energy] efforts by manipulating the more politically conservative sportsmen community” and of being “Out-of-state radical environmentalists”.

One of the main attacks advocating for land transfer has been that states are more efficient in managing public lands because they make more money on their holdings. I guess I would agree that states charge more for use of public resources, but I would argue that there are many good reasons and advantages for the disparity. In the case of Montana, state law requires that state trust lands provide the maximum revenue possible. That is not true of federal holdings. In fact, in many cases federal agencies have kept lease and sale costs on their resources below market value for good reason. Federal timber has been sold below cost to keep lumber prices down during hard times. Lower prices are also used to subsidize local timber and mining companies to retain local jobs. When ranchers graze cattle on federal lands at lower prices, the cost for your hamburger remains affordable. Yes, we could charge more for the use of our resources, and in some cases we should, but in keeping prices affordable for rural folks, we keep our rural economies viable. So yes, the Feds could charge more as do most state agencies, but that means only an increase in commodity prices for us all and higher profits for producers.

Will Coggin is informed on these issues, but he has a corporate-driven agenda to promote. Camouflage would be something with which Mr. Coggin is intimately familiar. He, of course, doesn’t reveal that he is an employee of one of Washington D.C.s largest corporate lobbying firms headed by Richard Berman (dubbed “Dr. Evil” by CBS 60 Minutes). Berman has become a favorite hit man hired by corporations wanting to influence public policy without seeming to be connected to the effort. Berman has established hundreds of web sites and foundations, usually using 501(c)(3) organizational ambiguity, to anonymously flog corporate ambitions. In fact, the Environmental Policy Alliance, by which Mr. Coggin claims to be employed, is in fact a PR front group established by Berman & Co. Berman’s groups are funded by foundations created by business interests. The purposely named EPA claims to be a project of the “Center for Organizational Research & Education”, which itself morphed last year from the Berman-created “Center for Consumer Freedom” which was set up by Rick Berman to attack PETA and food safety advocates on behalf of restaurant interests.

It’s extremely easy to get lost trying to follow this bewildering web of fake advocacy groups and nonprofit foundations, but of course, that’s really the point. Let’s go just a bit further. The transfer of federal lands into state hands is being advocated primarily by oil, gas, timber and mining interests to make it easier for them to get their hands on our natural resources. And, of course, these same interests are large contributors to nonprofit “foundations” set up by Mr. Berman. In attacking environmental groups for attempting to block the transfer, Mr. Coggin cites “research” done by the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, MT, a 501(c)(3) center funded primarily by Koch Industries and ExxonMobil and advocating “free-market environmentalism”. PERC has ties to the American Lands Council (501(c)), which is one of the primary movers behind the push to transfer federal lands to the states as well as the Koch/Exxon/BP-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (501(c)) which writes model laws, including land transfer bills, and “trains” state legislators in corporate objectives. The Coggin/PERC/Berman/Koch/ conglomerate has spent billions of your tax, investment and pension funds to promote an idea that has no chance of moving forward.

This is not about control by the state, it is about control of the state and easier access by corporations. It’s not about your property rights, but the rights of TransCanada to take your land for their profit, the rights of ExxonMobil to drill on your land, or the right of mining companies to pollute your streams.

In Montana, we have a hard-learned history with corporate control of our state. At the turn of the 20^th century the Anaconda Copper Company controlled ¾ of the jobs in our state and most of our natural resources. Anaconda regularly bought and sold state legislators and pillaged our communal resources at will. The people of Montana learned that lesson once and we won’t go back.

Yellowstone Pipeline Breach, Redux

We don’t yet know the full extent of the latest pipeline breach that spilled thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Yellowstone River. The Bridger Pipeline Company is reporting that up to 50,000 gallons of oil spilled into the river. That sounds vaguely like the initial reports of the Exxon spill of 2011. Initial estimates in 2011 stated that 42,000 gallons had spilled. The actual final numbers came in at near 65,000 gallons, or half again the original estimate. Again, as in 2011, officials are saying“We think it was caught pretty quick, and it was shut down,”. Bridger spokesman Bill Salvin says that “Oil has been seen in the river in spots 15 and 25 miles downstream from Glendive. Some of the oil is trapped under ice.”

We don’t yet know the cause of the pipeline breach, although ice conditions on the Yellowstone River are a likely culprit. Federal rules require hazardous pipelines to be buried only four feet below the streambed, much less than likely ice, or high flow scour depths for the Yellowstone. The Silvertip pipeline, from the 2011 spill, was buried only five feet below the river and river scour uncovered and breached that line. Bridger Pipeline Co. said the pipeline was last inspected in 2012 and was “at least” eight feet below the river bed much like reports from the Silvertip pipeline in 2011.

This leads to my concern about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Both the lines breached on the Yellowstone River were older 12-inch pipelines. The Keystone XL will be a 36-inch line. Any breach in the Keystone will make these recent spills seem like a drop in the bucket. The Keystone line will cross both the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers on a route very similar to the route of the Poplar pipeline. Keystone would make 1,904 stream crossings in the U.S. and 389 in Montana. The Keystone XL pipe would carry toxic tar sands oil from Northern Canada. Tar sands oil is much harder to clean up in an aquatic environment than the light crude from the Bakken. Tar sands oil does not float on the surface, but will sink to the bottom of the river making it much harder to even find, let alone clean up.

The Keystone XL will, presumably, be bound by the same federal rules for stream crossings and will be required to only be buried to a depth of four feet at most stream crossings. The Federal Department of Transportation has said that it has no plans to change the four-foot rule.TransCanada has said that it will bury the Keystone line ” 25 feet or more below the riverbed at major river crossings,“  What does that mean for the 300+ Montana crossings that are not considered (by TransCanada) to be “major river crossings”? How will we know what the plans are? TransCanada has said it will not release its plan for spill response.  “This is a $5.5 billion piece of pipeline infrastructure. If we detail the exact location of our pipeline route and what we are doing to protect it along with our pump stations, it is not something we want to make available for the public because as you can appreciate not everyone is a supporter of our project.”

So, once again we wait. At the mercy of what the oil company chooses to tell the public. Exxon claims to have spent $135 million on cleanup of the 2011 spill, along with another couple of million in fines and yet the cleanup remains unfinished. The cost to Exxon of these failures and environmental disasters barely makes a dent in their tens of billions in profits. Our pipeline rules were not designed to deal with large pipes full of tar sands crude oil and yet, there are those who think we should proceed full speed ahead because the Keystone XL will create 35 permanent jobs (according to EPA) and the oil companies claim they can move the toxic oil safely. They haven’t done such a good job so far. “Of the 2.4 million gallons of oil, gasoline, propane and other hazardous liquids released [since 1993], less than 300,000 gallons was recovered.” A bit more delay and a little more information will likely prove to be beneficial to us all.

“Promises of responsible oil sands development ring hollow”

Billion litres of coal-mine muck leaks into Athabasca River

A BILLION LITERS! That’s like 300 million gallons of “muck” released into the Athabasca River from the Obed Mountain coal mine in Alberta. This is , of course, one of hundreds of tailings ponds used by the giant tar sands mines all through the boreal north. Oil companies have long guaranteed that the ponds are safe and can never fail.

“I haven’t seen this happen. Coal mine incidents and pit leak incidents are really rare,” [a spokesman for the Alberta Energy Regulator] said. “I was surprised this could happen.”

Not true of course, but it sounds good. This is just one more example of the horrible cost of tar sands oil. The tar sands are an environmental nightmare that we will be living with for centuries and the Athabasca River is taking the current brunt of the damage. “A study conducted by University of Alberta biologists and ecologists released Monday concluded that 13 toxic pollutants found in Alberta’s Athabasca River came from the oil sands.”

Last year: “On Monday, the leak from a water pipe at the Suncor oil-sands site saw an estimated 350,000 litres of industrial waste water pour into the Athabasca over a 10-hour period, causing “a short-term, negligible impact on the river,” according to the company.” This followed another huge leak in 2011. You could spend hours on Google reading about the leaky tar sands mining operations. Here are just a few of the facts about tar sands mining.

• Oil sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year. The water requirements for oil sands projects range from 2.5 to 4.0 barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced.
• Oil sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year. The water requirements for oil sands projects range from 2.5 to 4.0 barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced.
• At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in tailing lakes so toxic thatpropane cannons and floating scarecrows are used to keep ducks from landing in them.
• The toxic tailing lakes are considered one of the largest human-made structures in the world. The toxic lakes in Northern Alberta span 50 square kilometers and can be seen from space.
• A 2003 report concluded that “an accident related to the failure of one of the oil sands tailings ponds could have catastrophic impact in the aquatic ecosystem of the Mackenzie River Basin due to the size of these lakes and their proximity to the Athabasca River.”

The size and scale of these leaking ponds are striking. About a dozen “ponds” rise 300 feet above the ground and cover 80 square miles of boreal forest and wetlands. Until recently, the U.S. Department of the Interior rated Syncrude’s Tailing Dam as the world’s largest dam in terms of volume of construction material (706,320,000 cubic yards). Now China’s Three Gorges Dam holds the title.

Almost all the dikes in the tar sands are leaking, but the Alberta government does not report the volume of seepage. For more than 40 years, Suncor’s Tar Island dike directly spewed or leaked bitumen and chemicals into the Athabasca River.

Environmental Defense recently calculated that one billion gallons of tailings waste now leaches into groundwater or surface water every year. In a recent mining blog, Jack Caldwell, a crusty U.S. geotechnical engineer, didn’t think the U.S. EPA would tolerate such a situation. “But then Canada is a small country of rugged individuals living in a harsh climate.”

The current leak took place, fittingly, on Halloween.

Republican Anti-Science Committee

Good Grief! Do you still wonder why Republicans have no credibility with voters? The House Republican Steering Committee just named Wyoming representative Cynthia Lummis as the new chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Yes, THAT Cynthia Lummis. The one who said, “she believes the jury is still out on climate change.” “This subcommittee’s focus on the science of energy development and use is a perfect fit,” she said in a statement.” Where, exactly, in “Science, Space and Technology” does energy development and use fit in?

Lummis takes over the helm from former chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas). “In 2009, [Smith] criticized the media for not airing enough “dissenting opinions” about climate change.” Smith, in turn, replaced Texas Republican Ralph Hall.

“I don’t think we can control what God controls.” [Hall] also said he agrees with Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) that climate scientists are involved in a conspiracy to receive research funding.

This is the very same “Science” committee who gave us Paul Broun (R-Georgia) who used the term “Lies from the pit of Hell” to describe his scientific knowledge about the science behind evolution. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” he said at an appearance at Liberty University. “Bill Nye [The Science Guy] slammed Broun, for his comments about evolution, saying that Broun “is, by any measure, unqualified to make decisions about science, space, and technology.”  And, Nye went on to make the astonishing claim, in response to Broun, that the earth is simply not 9,000 years old.

And, let’s not forget committee member Todd “Legitimate rape” Akin. Oh, and, good ole boy Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.),

Rohrabacher has made a number of scientifically questionable statements, including the idea that an earlier period of global warming may have been caused by “dinosaur flatulence.” Last year, after coming under fire for seeming to suggest that if global warming is real it could be addressed by cutting down trees (when in fact forests reduce global warming by absorbing atmospheric carbon), he issued a statement saying, “I do not believe that CO2 is a cause of global warming.”

And so, the anti-“science” committee marches on under the same old, new leadership, embarrassing our country with a chairman and members who wouldn’t know science even if they weren’t sniffing dinosaur farts.