Find out how Cooch took $55,000 from the disgraced "U.S. Navy Veterans Association," in apparent exchange for his promise to get the Virginia Office of Consumer Affairs (which had "notified Thompson's group that it no longer qualified for an exemption from state registration requirements") off the group's back. Can we say "pay-to-play?" Find out more.
Richmond, VA - Virginia Democrats spoke out today against former-Senator George Allen's reckless and hypocritical rhetoric on the possibility of building more oil and natural gas pipelines in Virginia without giving them the proper environmental and public safety review.
"If there were an issue, gosh we'd put a natural gas pipeline, or should we put an oil pipeline through Virginia, it wouldn't be worrying about gosh, lets have a study, let's determine the danger of this." He continued, "if Virginia were trying to hold up a gas pipeline, or oil pipeline, it simply wouldn't happen because we have them."
House of Delegates Democratic Leader David Toscano (Charlottesville) condemned Allen's dangerous suggestion that new pipelines would not require study because "we have them:"
"Building a pipeline through Virginia without conducting a single study or review is not in the best interests of our citizens. While a decision to build may ultimately make sense, the failure to conduct a comprehensive review sets a dangerous precedent.
"George Allen's suggestion that we can build an oil pipeline through Virginians' backyards without a thorough review of the consequences demonstrates, once again, that he puts the oil industry's interests before public safety and the good of the Commonwealth."
Virginia Senator Adam Ebbin (Arlington), a member of the Argiculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee continued:
There's a ton of reaction this afternoon pouring in regarding President Obama's decision on the proposed Keystone XL Canadian tar sands project. The statement from the White House is available here (basically, it blames "the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people"). Also, keep in mind that this project would have created no jobs, and in fact might have caused a net loss in jobs, according to an independent study by Cornell University researchers. Basically, this thing is a boondoggle for Big Oil, combined with really bad news for the environment, for absolutely no good reason. Other than that, it's freakin' brilliant! LOL
Anyway, here are reactions by Virginian politicians and environmental groups, starting with Rep. Jim Moran, with whom I agree 100% on this. I'll add more as I see them, or as you let me know about them in the comments section. Thanks.
Moran Statement on Denial of the Keystone XL Pipeline Application
Washington, DC - Congressman Jim Moran, Ranking Member on the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, released the following statement on the Obama Administration's decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline:
"I applaud President Obama's decision to deny the application for the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline. Our collective national interests, whether economic, environmental, or national security, would be better served by reducing our addiction to fossil fuels. Instead, we should be investing in safer, cleaner energy sources of the future like wind and solar power. A robust investment in clean energy promotes thousands of higher-tech, higher paying jobs. Building a pipeline to tap one of the dirtiest sources of fuel and the few temporary jobs it might create are not in our nation's best long term interests."
South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, a member of House Democratic leadership, told POLITICO he rejects a host of the top Republican offsets, illustrating the tricky path Democrats must travel when negotiating with the GOP.
"I have a real problem with what I consider a penalty to the federal employees; I got a real problem with the mandated drug testing for unemployment insurance," he said Monday, citing an extended federal pay freeze and a favorite conservative change to jobless benefits. "We don't demand drug testing for people getting farm subsidies."
Will the GOP be demanding the CEO of Exxon Mobil be drug tested before Big Oil gets the billions of dollars in subsidies that the GOP supports? What about for nuclear power industry executives and the billions in subsidies House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has asked for? How about here in Virginia, where tens of millions of dollars in subsidies for mining & burning coal are handed out each year - will Gov. Bob McDonnell & Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli be forcing Dominion Virginia Power CEO Tom Farrell to fill a Dixie cup to prove he's clean?
Of course not. Republicans only want to bully the least powerful & most vulnerable among us in the 99%. The 1% can keep collecting their huge taxpayer subsidies, no questions asked.
Wait, you mean President Obama isn't killing U.S. oil production? In fact, according to US Energy Information Administration statistics, U.S. oil production actually fell by about 1 million barrels per day while George W. Bush was in office, and now has risen by nearly 1 million barrels per day since Barack Obama's been in the White House? Fascinating, huh? Oh, and U.S. oil company profits are through the roof, with the supposedly anti-oil president in the White House. Hmmmm.
Now, check out the "flip" for the story on natural gas. Hint: it's not what you'll hear from Faux, Rush, etc.
UPDATE: Also note that EIA forecasts U.S. domestic crude oil production to increase again in 2012, by about 230,000 barrels per day. D*** Obama!!! LOL
Let's say you had an overweight coworker. One who repeatedly professed to be desperate to lose lots of weight. But you walked into the break room day after day to find him chowing down on Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing. Finally, you decide you have to say something. "Hey, Sam. If you really want to lose weight, why don't you ease off on the cheese fries?"
"What, you expect me to lose 100 pounds today?" your coworker scoffs between greasy bites. "It's going to take years to lose all that - I can't possibly stop eating right now."
Now as President Obama considers whether to green light a ranch dressingtar sands pipeline, some are warning against putting America on an oil crash diet:
A recent, blockbuster article in Bloomberg detailed how the dirty energy baron Koch brothers - who, the article points out, "blazed a path to riches -- in part, by making illicit payments to win contracts, trading with a terrorist state, fixing prices, neglecting safety and ignoring environmental regulations" - flouted U.S. law by "[selling] millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism." The connection between oil, corruption, and terrorism detailed in the Bloomberg article sounds like something out of the film Syriana. But in this case, it's not fiction, it's absolutely real: the connection between oil, corruption and Middle East-based terrorism cannot be clearer.
Barely over a week after the Bloomberg story broke, the oil-corruption-terrorism nexus was made even more glaringly obvious with breaking news of an Iran-backed terror plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir.
In the Iranian plot outlined on Tuesday by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in Washington, officials in the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps are accused of scheming to kill Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States by hiring assassins from aMexican drug cartelfor $1.5 million. The main suspects were identified as Mansour J. Arbabsiar, a naturalized American citizen of Iranian descent from Corpus Christi, Tex., who has been taken into custody, and Gholam Shakuri, described by the Justice Department as a member of the Quds Force, who is at large and believed to be in Iran.
Is this energy summit, being held on October 4 in Alexandria as part of Bob McDonnell's newly-announced "Energy Month" in Virginia, supposed to be satire, a bad joke, or is McDonnell actually serious? Just a few problems here. First, check out the people on the panels, listed below. Can we get any more biased, against clean energy and the environment, than this?!?
Oil and Gas Development: The Onshore and Offshore Challenge
8:45am Keynote: Honorable Mark Warner, U.S. Senate, Virginia
8:55am Remarks: Mr. Terry McCallister, Chairman and CEO, Washington Gas
9:00am Remarks: Mr. Mike Ward, Executive Director, Virginia Petroleum Council
9:05am Discussion: Beginning with Governor Robert Bentley of Alabama (more on climate science "skeptic" Bentley here)
Nuclear Energy: Renaissance or Requiem
9:30am Keynote: Honorable Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senate, South Carolina
9:40am Remarks: Mr. Stephen Kuczynski, Chairman, President & CEO, Southern
Nuclear Operating Company
9:50am Discussion Beginning with Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi
EPA Regulations and Impact on Energy and the Economy
10:15am Keynote: Honorable Joe Manchin III, U.S. Senate, West Virginia
10:25am Remarks: Mr. Kevin Crutchfield, CEO, Alpha Natural Resources, Inc.
10:35am Discussion Beginning with Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia
A few comments. First, where are the advocates for clean energy? Where are the voices for energy development that's safe for the environment? Where are the non-corporate voices? Where are the regular Virginians who would be harmed by oil spills, global warming, mountaintop removal coal mining, etc?
With Cuba set to begin oil drilling, Anya Landau French blogs for the Christian Science Monitor that a Cuban oil spill could deliver disaster far beyond the Gulf of Mexico:
Now, after several delays, with a Chinese-built Italian oil rig, the Scarabeo 9, on its way to Cuba, drilling of the first of five exploratory wells in Cuban deep water is set to commence this December.
A spill from this first, easternmost exploratory well to be drilled by the Repsol consortium could be particularly damaging due to its location where the Gulf Stream exits the Gulf of Mexico for the Atlantic. Whereas the BP disaster was somewhat "contained" in the northern Gulf, Piñón tells me to "imagine a fan-shaped spill with the well as the axis." If something were to go wrong on Scarabeo 9, we could see and feel the effects of a major oil spill in Cuban deep water not just in Florida, but far up the Atlantic coast.
And as Fareed Zakaria writes, "the nearest and best experts on safety procedures and dealing with oil spills are all American, but we are forbidden by our laws from being involved in any way with Cuba." What could go wrong?
Nothing says I care about environmental health more than another big oil and gas rig planted serenely in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. What beauty, you might be thinking! What elegance! Look as the infrastructure corrodes and this giant's legs rust and grow barnacles with each passing week. What visual splendor!
Of course, think of the view those marine animals must have. Aren't you jealous? I'd imagine the feeling is akin to having an individual Eiffel Tower being placed over my home. Wouldn't you be thrilled? Think of the economic benefits, after all!
The first two paragraphs were satirical. But what many of us turn a blind eye to everyday is no laughing matter. Senators Webb and Warner have not assured Virginians that safety issues aboard oil and gas rigs have been appropriately addressed (when that unimportant little incident in the Gulf of Mexico is even mentioned these days), and yet the gallant efforts for more oil and gas in the Atlantic continues.
I won't purport to be an expert on rig safety just as I won't allow myself to be played for a political foul. Safety measures cost time and money, in some cases, a lot of time and money. And we all know how the game of capitalism has worked in the U.S.: make profits and then make some more, even if it means cutting necessary safety corners.
Maybe Virginians like to drill holes in the ground, period. Not only do Virginia's political "leaders" want to drill holes in the Atlantic, they want to drill holes in southern Virginia. And I'm not even mentioning the preexisting holes that have been drilled in Virginia's soil.
So what, you might gab back? In the case of the Atlantic Ocean in particular, drilling holes stands to create a complex host of effects for marine animals living in the area, effects that are still unknown to many scientists and policy "experts." What's the value of disrupting and possible eliminating any number of marine species? Of course, this outcome may or may not happen, but are we really willing to chance it for questionable amounts of oil and gas resources?
Between Senator Webb's history writing adventures and Senator Warner's grand visions of becoming president, Virginia seems to have lost its progressive leadership. Maybe it was never truly there to begin with. Or maybe our politicians have themselves been worn down by the political process. Any way you spin the bottle, the results may be the same: a grim future for Virginia's environmental integrity and ecosystem sustainability.
Who needs Sarah Palin when Virginia has its very own proponents of "Drill, baby, drill" in the form of Jim Webb and Mark Warner? Notwithstanding the fact that drilling today wouldn't start producing benefits for some time to come, the tendency to concentrate on fossil fuels distracts our political representatives from seeing the bigger picture: renewable forms of energy are the future. The argument often follows, among others, that renewable forms of energy aren't economical enough at present. If we take this claim to be true for the moment, it might well be because government subsidies have gone to environmentally devastating forms of energy like the fossil fuels instead of renewable forms of energy (as if Big Oil and Big Coal and Big Gas needed more money).
I can't think of one form of energy that's in widespread use right now that has not received some form of government subsidy to "get the ball rolling." But the tepid investments in energy sources like wind and solar are simply not enough to bring these renewables to scale in a timely fashion. It is as if there are some special interests who are opposed to the widespread use of renewable forms of energy in America!
Of course, there are such groups in America, groups who would rather poison the American people and exterminate the natural world as we know it (or used to know it) for a profit. But my concern isn't simply that of someone who loves the natural world intrinsically. It is a practical argument that takes into account the harmful economic consequences that environmental devastation has had, is having, and will have in the future for America, a form of devastation that has been fueled (sorry for the pun) by nonrenewable forms of energy.
Still we wait and hope for the best. Maybe our rational and scientific minds will find the magical solution to this dilemma. Maybe the "American spirit" will figure out an ingenious method to pour more poison into our rivers and atmosphere without the environmental and human health repercussions. That might be what Senators Warner and Webb think; otherwise their actions bear little rational justification.
Hey, maybe we just haven't been looking on the bright side of oil disasters. The ocean gains new traits ... like being able to light it on fire! And maybe new species will evolve, like birds that ... uh ... enjoy being sticky!
From IFC's The Whitest Kids U' Know (featuring Trevor Moore, who grew up in Charlottesville, and Arlington native Zach Cregger):
For someone so anxious to drill for oil just miles from Virginia Beach, Bob McDonnell is awfully terrified to say the word "drill." In his op-ed today in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Gov. McDonnell never uses the words "drill" or "drilling" - not even once.
And with good reason! You might remember the image at right, produced in the very early days of the Deepwater Horizon disaster to show what the slick - just a fraction of the size it would eventually become - would look like if it happened off the Virginia coast. And as much as Gov. McDonnell would like us to forget about those thousands of dead birds, hundreds of dead endangered sea turtles, and more than a hundred dead dolphins, he's wrong dismiss the Gulf oil disaster as an "accident." The Gulf oil disaster was no random twist of fate - the bipartisan commission that investigated the blowout said it was the result of a series of bad decisions by the people doing the oil drilling, called the disaster "avoidable," and warned that without significant reform (which we're still waiting on), it could happen again.
We can't drill our way out of our energy problems. The only way we can reduce our oil costs over the long term is to use less oil - fuel-efficient cars in the short-term, renewable energy-powered electric cars in the long term, and building more transit options & more walkable communities over the really long haul so our lives aren't tethered to the gas pump.
But hey, Bob McDonnell didn't get $33,150 from Exxon Mobil by pushing for hybrid school buses! He got it by promising to open up Virginia's coastline to drilling & leaving it to some future governor to worry about apologizing for how no one could possibly have predicted an oil disaster here.
In the face of gas prices skyrocketing past $4 a gallon, House Republicans are starting to regret their vote last month to preserve billions in annual subsidies for Big Oil. With U.S. oil production up sharply AND gas prices up sharply, clearly those subsidies aren't doing consumers any good (though Big Oil's profits are doing just fine). House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) may finally be backing off his support for oil giveaways.
It's not hard to see why Republicans are reconsidering their positions - an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 74% of voters support eliminating tax breaks to oil companies.
So why are Republicans even thinking about doubling down on billions in subsidies for oil companies? Just in the first quarter of 2011, Exxon Mobil gave Cantor $5,000. (And don't forget that, thanks to the Supreme Court's pro-corporate Citizens United decision, campaign cash is getting harder & harder to track.)
"It couldn't be clearer that these companies are the least deserving of taxpayer money and government handouts," says Navin Nayak of the League of Conservation Voters. "It's past time for Rep. Cantor whose hands are covered in oil to end his support for this obscene corporate welfare and start standing up for the people of Virginia."
Republicans squawk about incentives for renewable energy because those are new & need approval, while dirty energy sources locked in their subsidies long ago - like, say, the tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks Virginia gives to dirty coal companies every year. Why not eliminate all subsidies & put a simple price on carbon pollution? That's what dirty energy companies (and the politicians they fund) are terrified of.
'CarnivOil' Comes to Richmond, Celebrating the Greatest Addiction on Earth Big Oil: Keeping America dependent on oil for 150 years and celebrating victory over Virginia's clean energy future
Richmond, Va. - The U.S. Senate's failure to pass a clean energy and climate bill this summer, coupled with the continued push to block new clean air standards, is reason to celebrate if you profit from America's oil addiction. Highlighting Big Oil's stranglehold on Washington, we present "CarnivOil": the Greatest Addiction on Earth - a celebration of America's addiction to oil with an outdoor midway-style carnival complete with games, concessions, and some Big Oil-style celebrating. Step right up! Don't be afraid. See the world's biggest polluters - by looking behind the curtain.
Games will include the Petroleum Wheel of Doom, Oil Executive Boxing and the Big Oil version of the famous Hammer game. The event highlights Big Oil's success in pocketing Congress, while blocking progress toward a clean energy future and threatening to kill American jobs and worsen public health with the Dirty Air Act.
WHAT: CarnivOil: The Greatest Addiction on Earth: complete with games to celebrate Big Oil's success
WHEN: Tuesday, August 31, 2010
TIME: 11 am - 1 pm ET
WHERE: Monroe Park, 620 W. Main St., Richmond, Va. 23220
This is beyond stupid. This is Sarah Palin/Joe Barton stupid! In all seriousness, if Keith Fimian had his way, BP would regulate itself, government would let Big Oil do whatever it wants, and Gulf of Mexico oil disasters would be commonplace. Why would anyone vote for someone with Keith Fimian's toxic political philosophy? I suppose if they hate pelicans, dolphins, turtles, clean water, white sandy beaches, and people who live on the Gulf coast, it makes perfect sense.
Great job by Miles Grant on this. I also strongly recommend The Oil Drum for superb, albeit technical, discussion of the Deepwater oil disaster. Often, over the past couple months, I've learned about things at The Oil Drum that didn't appear in the "mainstream" press until weeks later, if ever. Check it out.
This is excellent messaging which also has the virtue of being true. The fact is, if the GOP (aka, the "Greedy Oil-company Party") take back control of the House of Representatives this November, then Rep. Joe "I Apologize" Barton would be overseeing BP. More broadly, if Republicans were in charge, Big Oil would rule the roost, as would Wall Street and other wealthy, corporate interests. In short, if you want a new "Robber Baron Era" to take hold in tighten its grip on this country, then you most definitely want to vote Republican this November. If, on the other hand, you prefer government that looks out for the "small people" (as BP calls them) once in a while, then you might want to think twice about that.
Powerful video courtesy of the Natural Resources Defense Council, where I start working on Monday. Oil disaster courtesy of BP ("Beyond Pathetic") and its CEO ("Covering Everything in Oil") Tony "I'd like my life back" Hayward.
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From the Democratic Party of Virginia, more criticism of George Allen's latest idiocy:
Cross posted from 
In the face of gas prices skyrocketing past $4 a gallon, House Republicans are starting to regret their 
Courtesy of 
