Pipeline? What Pipeline?

UPDATE 02/27: I don’t want to be the one to say I told ya so…

WASHINGTON — The White House is throwing its support behind a decision by TransCanada to build a portion of the Keystone XL pipeline, even though the project will result in more oil going overseas and potentially higher gas prices.

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Remember that little pipeline that the President refused to permit last month? Guess who is building that very same pipeline on U.S. soil? It seems that somebody forgot to tell TransCanada that they need our permission.

But though the project exists in a state of suspended animation, TransCanada — the company that wants to connect the tar sands in Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico — is preparing to build anyhow.

They continue to move ahead just as if there never was a decision. Their action shows the utter disregard of business for the majority opinion of the American people. We have a foreign corporation building an illegal pipeline on American soil, and even threatening U.S. property owners with legal action under U.S. eminent domain laws if we don’t comply with the company’s demands.

TransCanada has sought to dissolve a restraining order granted a week ago, saying it is legally entitled to pursue eminent domain proceedings along the proposed pipeline route under existing state and federal laws—though it says it has no plans to begin any construction.

No plans? Then just why is the Canadian oil giant bullying landowners and threatening U.S. citizens with confiscation of their private property? Of course what this really shows is the complete and utter disregard that corporations have for people. When Obama rejected the permit, it was big news everywhere. Since then, nobody cares. We are back to worrying about what Brangilina wore to the Oscars. Meanwhile, TransCanada has unleashed a hoard of lobbyists into the halls of Washington to convince lawmakers that the entire American economy will crash if we don’t build the XL pipeline and mine every last drop of horrible tar sands oil.

The really, really depressing point to all this is that their lobbying will work. We will allow the pipeline to be built. We will acquiesce to the destruction of millions of acres of boreal forest, polluting of millions of cubic feet of water, Exxon, TransCanada and Keystone profits will skyrocket, Wall Street will love it and  you and I and Zamboanga will breath the result for the next 100 years. Business has a longer attention span than you and I. They can, and are, very focused on what they need to do to increase profits and they are more than willing to spend the necessary money. They think long term, we only pay attention from day to day and they know it.

Sagebrush Doomsday

Our friends in Wyoming are taking a lot of well-deserved heat over HB85 introduced by State Representative David Miller, R-Riverton, in the Wyoming Legislature. The so-called “Doomsday Bill” bill passed the House on first reading by a voice vote.

AN ACT relating to governmental studies; providing for a task force to study governmental continuity in case of a disruption in federal government operations; providing for a report; providing appropriations; and providing for an effective date.

Now, I lived in Wyoming for eight years so I know they are crazy. Some would even say as crazy as Montana, but this bill is a bit over the top even for Wyoming. It sets up a task force to study what Wyoming should do in the event of the apocalypse. The legislation would appropriate $32,000 dollars to fund the task force to decide how Wyoming should react to the “Potential effects of a situation in which the federal government has no effective power or authority over the people of the United States;”Part of the feasibility study would involve,

Conditions under which the state of Wyoming should implement a draft, raise a standing army, marine corps, navy and air force and acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier.

I know, I know, that sounded pretty crazy to me to, even for Wyoming, so I went directly to the bill on the Wyoming Legislature website. Yep, it’s in there, “acquire strike aircraft and an aircraft carrier“. No mention of plans to increase the size of Boysen Reservoir. Thankfully, the crack team of mathematicians over at Under The Mountain Bunker has crunched the complicated numbers to find that Wyoming would have,

182,000 men between the ages of 18-65 for the draft and ‘standing army.’ And that would be to defend, WHAT, exactly? All the valuable sagebrush and asphalt and dirt? The endlessly blowing wind? The antelope? WITH AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER?

It’s certainly comforting to know that our neighbors to the south are doing all the heavy lifting in order to provide, at least those of us in southern Montana, a place of refuge from the almost certain, coming zombie apocalypse. Maybe they will even give us a ride on the aircraft carrier. It’s also nice to know that the Montana Legislature isn’t the only last, best place for crackpot conventions. I can’t wait to read the committee task force report.

Thanks to Michael Shay down at Hummingbirdminds for keeping us apprised of the fun stuff going on in this Wyoming legislative session.

Become The Jackass

“Ninety per cent of these jackasses that are complaining about the Keystone pipeline in Washington, D.C., one year ago wouldn’t have even known where the Keystone was. While we were doing the heavy lifting here in Montana and in South Dakota and in Kansas and Oklahoma … in Washington, D.C. … all these great defenders had never heard of Keystone before,”

Brian Schweitzer, Montana Governor – 02/23/2012

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The Truth:

Oil sands mining is licensed to use twice the amount of fresh water that the entire city of Calgary uses in a year.-At least 90% of the fresh water used in the oil sands ends up in ends up in tailing ponds so toxic that propane cannons are used to keep ducks from landing.-Processing the oil sands uses enough natural gas in a day to heat 3 million homes. -The toxic tailing ponds are considered one of the largest human-made structures in the world. -The ponds span 50 square kilometers and can be seen from space.-Producing a barrel of oil from the oil sands produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than a barrel of conventional oil.

Clouds ain’t free

The average American now consumes on average, 34 gigabytes of data every day, equal to about 50,000 pages of single-spaced text. The average iphone user consumes an additional 273 megabytes. The data comes from that warm and fuzzy place we like to call “The Cloud”. Clouds are friendly, white and fluffy and float around free in the sky. But, of course, your gigabytes don’t come from clouds. They come through millions of miles of internet pipelines, served to you from colossal conglomerations of computer servers sitting in warehouses all over the world and all those millions of servers use electrical power to store and deliver your data.

Microsoft data center

Apple announced today it’s new facility in California will be “one of the most technologically advanced offices in the world, being totally self -sufficient for power…” Not that that’s not a good thing, but that is a single office for 13,000 of its staff. Most of the power usage for Apple and the other computer and internet giants now comes from massive data centers located around the country.

Apple’s new data center in North Carolina will be as big as 2-3 super-Walmarts. The facility will use 100 megawatts of power, or enough to power 80,000 homes. Cloud computing has these data centers popping up nearly anywhere they can get hefty tax breaks and subsidies for their electricity use. One of the more popular venues for data centers is along the Columbia River corridor in Oregon and Washington. The companies building there include giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Dell, Yahoo, Google, and others.

Google data centers now use about 258 megawatts annually, or enough to power 188,000 homes so, the cost to power these massive facilities is of primary concern to the computer giants. Why the Columbia River? Because of the massive amount of power produced by the dams along the Columbia River. The Facebook facility in Prineville, OR uses 28,000 megawatts and all the other homes and businesses in Crook County use but 30,000 megawatts. But, why are these, mostly desert communities, courting these giants? That’s the 100 megawatt questions. They bring jobs, but not all that many. The typical data center only employs about 40-50 people. I suppose there are the initial construction jobs for the gargantuan facilities as well and that can be important in small communities like The Dalles in Oregon or Quincy, Washington, but that’s not the entire story.

The real reason that the cloud is moving to the Columbia River is because it’s cheap. It’s cheap because of impressive tax breaks and power subsidies lavished on the companies. In the Dalles, Google gets its power for about 4 cents per kilowatt hour, 29 percent less than what other customers pay and 40 percent cheaper than comparable customers pay in the Portland area. Some of the early-adopter companies get their power for as little as 2-cents per kilowatt. Google also gets;

“A tax exemption on $1.3 billion in equipment and buildings. Wasco County values that tax break at about $24.2 million annually, or $71.1 million through fiscal 2010-2011.”

“The local Bend Bulletin estimated that Facebook would have to pay $2.8 million annually in city and county taxes on the property, versus the $110,000 annual fee it worked out with the county.”

The internet titans like to claim that all this cheap power is “Green Power” it’s produced by renewable hydropower. Of course that’s not entirely true. Much of the power for the gigantic server farms comes from coal since most Columbia hydropower is already allocated. The estimates are that “the cloud” currently consumes about 2% of the country’s energy consumption per year and it’s growing rapidly. The global data center market is projected to grow by 50% by 2020 and clearly, they aren’t building more dams on the Columbia River. Most of that growth will be powered by good, old dirty coal, gas and oil. Also, many server farms use huge amounts of water to cool those racks of millions of servers.

I truly believe that these computer behemoths are interested in producing their data products as efficiently and with as little planetary impact as possible, but I also believe that the bottom line is still profit. So, the next time you see your search engine bragging about how “green” they are, or pull up your daughter’s baby photos from Flickr, remember that the shadowy, shapeless, puffy white “cloud” continues to float to you at a high cost to the planet.

More Corporate Welfare

Stories this morning reveal that the Obama Administration, like every other political arm, wants to lower the amount that corporations pay in taxes. Everyone decries our 35% statutory corporate tax rate as being one of the highest in the world. I could understand that argument, if it was true and that was really the tax rate that corporations actually paid, but…

Here’s the headline from WSJ a few days ago;

With Tax Break, Corporate Rate Is Lowest in Decades “Total corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1% of profits earned from activities within the U.S. in fiscal 2011, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s the lowest level since at least 1972. And well below the 25.6% companies paid on average from 1987 to 2008.”

Taxes as a percentage of GDP (click for bigger)

So, for the last three decades or so actual corporate taxes ran about 10% below the statutory rate (not the highest in the world) and last year, they fell to a 40-year low. Does this sound like they need more, rather than fewer, tax breaks? This is still one of my favorite graphs although it’s getting a bit dated. It shows how corporate taxes have been falling for the last 50 years, all the while the shortfall is being made up by you and I paying higher taxes for Social Security and payroll taxes. Income taxes are actually fairly stable, running both sides of about an 8% average of GDP, but corporations continue to pay less and less with each passing year due to their extensive lobbying campaign. Corporate profits and corporate pay are at all time highs and they continue to push for lower taxes at the expense of you and I.

With corporate taxes currently at an all-time low and the economy in the toilet, would you be happy paying 12% tax on your income? Or, 25% for that matter? Do corporations really need another 7% chopped off of their already puny taxes at our expense? The sad thing is that they will probably get their cut because this is an election year and corporate money finances our political process. Can you say “Public campaign financing”?

Baldwin Chucks It

After nearly three grueling months on the campaign trail and four more to go, Chuck Baldwin has withdrawn from the race for lieutenant governor.  After quickly finding that there was no money to be made in Montana state politics, DVD salesman and self-promoter Baldwin decided to move on to more lucrative ventures, once again proving that his campaign was never about ideology, but only about finding new ways to separate sycophants  from their wallets.

“Bob Fanning and I are going to be the team that will bring excitement and energy to this gubernatorial race! In this race, we are the champions of constitutional government, State sovereignty, and personal liberty.” But only if there is some filthy lucre in it for Chuck I guess. Even though Chuck truly believed that they were the only candidates that espoused the one true religion and could save Montana from the evils of Agenda 21, “a globalist ploy to destroy our national sovereignty and prepare America for assimilation into the one-world government headed up by the United Nations.” Chuck jumped ship because he couldn’t make enough money from his paranoid supporters.

In making his announcement to run, Baldwin praised Fanning and declared; “Needless to say, I am very honored to have had Bob invite me to join his campaign. In fact, he is the only candidate for governor that I believe in enough to run with.” Now, not so much;

I believe that my departure from the Governor/Lieutenant Governor race will allow me to continue to pursue whatever opportunities the people of Montana would believe were best suited for those abilities and attributes that I may have in our mutual pursuance of liberty and constitutional government. And, no, I will not endorse a gubernatorial candidate at this time.

Bye, bye Chuck. You won’t be missed.

Resolve to Evolve

Once again ’tis the season for celebration. Centered on the birthday of Charles Darwin on Feb. 12th, events around the world will celebrate science and reason.

Darwin Day expresses gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.

Born the same day as Abraham Lincoln, February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin has become the symbol of science and humanity around the globe. As the world becomes a smaller place, science becomes our common language and Darwin’s theory of evolution is the common bond joining together these various threads of what it means to be human. As the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr so ably put it,

“Almost every component in modern man’s belief system is somehow affected by Darwinian principles.”

So, get out there and celebrate reason and humanity this weekend.

In Kalispell, the Flathead Area Secular Humanist Association will be showing two films on Saturday Feb. 11 at the Flathead County Library conference room at 2pm. ““Are You a Secular Humanist?” and “Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life”, with a question and answer period to follow. Enjoy and learn.

In Billings, the Billings Area Humanists will once again sponsor “Evolve, Fish, Fly” at 12pm at Amend Park on King Avenue East. A school of 4′ wide kites that were constructed and painted at a Humanist event last year and will be hovering around a giant 10′ wide Evolve kite. Sounds like a hoot.

If I missed your event, sorry, but you still have no excuse to not get out this weekend and celebrate Darwin Day.

Bonner County, on the forefront of liberty

Thank Gawd we have allies like the Kootenai Environmental Alliance to keep us informed about the dastardly plans of the U.N. to control our very lives. They reported on Tuesday about a “Major New Weapon in the Fight Against the UN” . Yes, that Major Weapon is the Bonner County Property Rights Council.

“Obviously, if Agenda 21 and its mindset of government control is to be reigned in, clearly, something needs to be done to provide a strong voice for protection and defense of the property owners. Such a plan of action has now been developed by County Commissioner Cornel Rasor of Bonner County, Idaho. He calls it a Property Rights Council.”

The last bastion of American Liberty now falls to the Bonner County commissioners. “The mission of the PRC is to review county government activities and inter-governmental activities to determine whether the activities may cause adverse impact to private property rights.”  Who would have thought that the safety and security of our Great Nation would rest on the sturdy shoulders of these able Idaho patriots? You may well wonder just how these nefarious “inter-governmental activities” affect our daily lives. Well, it’s obvious you haven’t been paying attention.

In some communities, to meet arbitrary energy restrictions, local government is forcing homeowners to install new energy efficient appliances and windows,and even new roofs, on occasion. There are reports of inspectors actually entering homes and systematically removing incandescent light bulbs and replacing them with the new green models, without the knowledge and against the will of the property owner. Repairmen are instructed to lower temperatures on water heaters as they repair them, and so forth.

Sure, you may not be a member of such a community. You may not even know of such a community, and so forth, but that don’t mean it ain’t true. If we wait until we are invaded by appliance repairmen bent on world domination it will be too late. The U.N. will have won and you could have new light bulbs and possibly a roof. So, just bend your knee and thank your Lord and Savior that we have paranoid concerned citizens over in Bonner County, Idaho willing to sacrifice their time, reputations and sanity to protect us against the coming of the commie-bastard Evil Empire.

Nuff Said

Mitt Romney: “I’m not concerned about the very poor…”

Franking my dear, you should give a damn

Want to donate to Dennis Rehberg campaign for the Senate? Oh sorry, you already did. He just forgot to tell you. The Montana Democratic Party is once again complaining about Rehberg sending out campaign literature on your dime. The mailer portrays Denny as that great Montana sportsman who is tirelessly working for you in Congress. This latest propaganda is about how Denny and the County Sheriff want to protect you from Canadian terrorists.

See that cute little message at the bottom left? It reads “Public Document . Official Business, This document was prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense“. That means you paid the cost and it’s officially called “franking”, a privilege that allows Congress to communicate about what they have been doing for constituents. It’s not meant to convey what they are trying to do “to” constituents. Even though he has to sign a certification that ” to the best of my knowledge, the attached material submitted for review does not contain any logo, masthead design, slogans, photographs or facsimiles thereof contained in the campaign literature of a Member, or any specific campaign promises or pledges of a Member or political party“, Denny has a hard time figuring out just what campaign literature really is.

In 2006 Denny sent out 147,000 glossy mailers costing about $60,000 that opponents called “blatant campaign literature”. Of course that’s only for the mailing cost and  doesn’t include stuff like producing all the fancy graphics and pretty pictures of the Congressman as well as publishing costs that go into the propaganda that goes on your tab. In 2008 and 2010 Denny once again sent out pretty picture-filled brochures about how he is fighting to end costly earmarks;

2006

2008

Getting the picture? These pretty, and expensive, brochures that you paid for always seem to show up in your mailbox only during election years.

During Rehberg’s all-out fight against congressional earmarks, he was named the #1 earmarker in Congress. Yes, this is the same Dennis Rehberg that is reported to vote with his party 91% of the time so, you don’t really need to know what his positions are.

According to OpenCongress, Mr. Rehberg has sponsored 15 bills in the House, 0 of which made it into law. He has co-sponsored 138 bills, of which 5 became law. You are not only paying for all this pretty mail that you immediately toss or recycle. You are paying this ineffective guy an actual salary to do this to you.