This week the U.S. House voted largely in favor of exporting gas and oil. Twenty six Democrats voted in favor of this. Meanwhile there is TPP, and efforts to raise the debt ceiling.
The media is focused on "chaos in the House", which is a huge distraction from what is actually going on, and we need to realize that this kind of circus likely hides significant harm being enacted while the media is dominated with "shiney objects". Take your pick:
Benghazi (!); "emails"; chaos in the Republican world. The politics of distraction are in full operational mode. The owners of U.S. media, consolidated in the hands of oligarchy have kicked distractions into overdrive, while hiding the heist of U.S. assets to benefit wealth hoarders who are perfectly aware that they will cause death, suffering, and massive societal disruption. And they are okay with that. Consider me Ms. Average American with a fair amount of intellect and maybe a great education. I have no special insight: just calling it as I see it: more below the orange calligraphic symbol.
Susan Sakmar, who writes about gas exports reveals in her website (she has testified before Congress) that over fifty percent of U.S. gas has been okay'd by the Obama DOE for export.
Bill Powers in his work Cold, Hungry, and in the Dark discusses over- reliance on fossil fuels from fracking, the grossly overstated recoverable gas reserves, downgraded from investor hyperbole. He cites government and independent, and even the gas industry's statistics on well production, where most wells decline significantly after the first year. He writes of "the Red Queen Scenario" where more and more U.S. land will be dug up for gas exports: more land takings, more ruin of water and private property, and the abject invasion of conservation land.
He also postulates that with exports, the easily recoverable gas will be sold off first: the more difficult and expensive will be left.
Most folks are not aware of the Halliburton Loophole that exempts these companies from Clean Air, Clean Water, and Clean Drinking Water as well as Superfund legislation.
There are a proliferating number of ginormous export pipelines being proposed under ginned up "public convenience and necessity" in order to secure routes to LNG terminals and export. Just ask someone who has a received a "request for survey". Most folks have NO IDEA how little representation, how few rights, and how abusive this policy has become.
You can be forced to host an enormous pipeline, where laws supposedly protecting YOU were developed well in advance of scrap metal cheap pipelines, operating under new enormous pressure to meet shipping deadlines, even in the presence of copious amounts of live voltage in already existing easements. And you are invited to participate in a Website where your comments will be shared with an organization that is screening them as an outsource job, culling for information for the pipeline companies' forms for FERC: check a box!: said company is also involved in LNG, but also environmental cleanup from accidents. Go Figure. Public health, safety, and any sort of accountability are virtually nil.
The Pipeline Safety and Hazardous Material Organization is basically gutted: cutting their staff by 9% during this past year, losing many experienced folks, even as these pipelines proliferate. "Accidents" occur more frequently. It is now cheaper, and may even be profitable for pipeline companies to use maintenance capex to increase their shareholder offerings, and simply pay the proportionally small pittance when people die: when disasters occur: when water is destroyed ( see the Rolling Stone article on two famous oligarchs). . . and many of them own shares in cleanup companies. They have likely figured out how to profit from our deaths, even as their enterprise knows they will commit genocide in what they are doing environmentally.
FERC recently approved a pipeline that locates very alarmingly close to a Nuclear facility in New York State: located very near New York City. Picture a Fukishima style effect on millions of people due to a pipeline incident that harms a nuclear plant: this was okay'd on falsified information. You sure as hell don't hear anything about this in the mainstream corporate media. This agency appears to rubber stamp anything, and they, like the pipeline companies that support them are all about "limiting liability", so everything is outsourced: AND NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE. Big payoffs and personal rewards: no accountability and no, and I mean NO moral compass.
There are armies of lawyers prepared to debate any reasonable settlement for even the most egregious violations and debate any settlement or claim, pretty much forever. There are armies of paid lobbyists ready to defeat any public safety law proposed that may interfere with hoarded wealth in off shore accounts. Maryland, close to Washington, and also Wall Street has developed a host of legal "instruments" to obscure accountability and insure impossible legal obstacles for U.S. citizens for "equal representation under the law". Governors can save face and pretend to political views and advocacy, while appointees line their resumes with billionaire companies, and even deny representation to blocks of citizens AND THEIR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES. This is happening in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and possibly New York. If only a small block of citizens are affected: they are ignored and their rights violated.
Meanwhile, we have folks supporting and crafting TPP with corporate tribunals ready to sue even entire states if legislation enacted to protect local citizens interferes with profits.
Then there are calls to raise the "debt ceiling" . . . while more and more money is off shored among the morally and ethically corrupt wealth hoarders who have orchestrated all of this: against all the other citizens of this nation. Why the hell aren't we raising taxes on hoarders???????? Instead of gratitude for the nation that allowed them a nice life, they are bent on insuring that the vast majority suffer, live truncated lives, or even die, in the face of wealth that is essentially useless and unproductive, except for themselves. They make their careers eliminating jobs, sucking wealth only to be able to accrue more. So that others have NOTHING. Look at Greece, or Puerto Rico: that is the future they have planned, and it will become much worse.
With "debt" communities are already selling off water rights to private corporations: this is the beginning of a run on U.S. assets: now it is gas: but water is now an increasingly and possibly more valuable commodity. These entities are involved with organizations that want water control. And then there is soil. Soil is being exhausted from massive farming and chemical toxins.
We also learn that Exxon knew, studied and validated Climate Change by 1982. That means that EVERY ADMINISTRATION since that time has ALSO known about this, and has colluded in this program of stripping out U.S. wealth and assets. A significant number of political "representatives' may be grabbing the lifeboats for themselves while selling their constituencies and whole swaths of this nation out for death, disease, and poverty.
We are now at a point where Climate change, and toxic effects on our environment, along with economic policies that are put in place to strip out wealth as an ongoing policy and mobilize this to a very few individuals is occurring rapidly. The "human rights" department of the U.S. Government was eliminated this year.
I no longer believe that reported events occcur as reported. I don't believe that the so-called chaos in the Republican party is meaningful. (while obscuring the significant goings on in Congress that get NO coverage). I no longer believe that scandals occurring in government, or even opposition, are anything but staged effects to be exaggerated and played by corporate media. An example: the Clinton Scandals: was that a distraction from NAFTA and Glass Steagal? Were we duped? Is there anything meaningful or even true in this Kabuki theatre.
I am not voting for Clinton no matter what. She had Mark Penn running her campaign last time. Barack Obama looked promising: fracking, Wall Street, TPP and the increased militarization of the police gives lie to whatever he said to his supporters eight years ago.
I am tired of the folksy, meaningless activities most politicians engage in. Polling, psy-ops, and massive media manipulation have poisoned any version of public talk. It is horrifying. I won't vote for Biden either. I am sorry he lost a son. That son was involved in gas investment interests in the Soviet Union at one point. What the hell? Sorry Joe, you've put a patina on something obscene.
At least Senator Sanders has consistently raised concerns from what appears to be a centered and consistent ethical position.
He is right. We need a revolution. I am ashamed, disheartened and disgusted with my own party, and basically this is the end of our nation as a democracy. We are watching a coronation and it is bearly worth the effort of the DNC to pretend otherwise. They study us, and numbers and enact headlines . . . this is unconscionable. Any true understanding of Democracy, versus Oligarchy where we are endlessly fighting against scapegoating and abuse of social groups as our primary concern, while our lives, our futures and fundamental societal premisiis are gutted: and our children's futures are completely destroyed behind the scenes with a false media is the best we can hope for.
In case you are unaware, the threat of Climate Change is not being denied: it is being delayed and exploited by a small coterie of individuals who are perfectly okay with massive suffering and societal decay:l a select few have insured their own survival and ability to protect themselves from the suffering they themselves are creating.
We have pioneered many technologies and disciplines: sadly, many of these are now in full mobilization to "survive" gloriously as a few elect, while massive suffering ensues.
I no longer trust the so-called two party system: I believe they act as foils for one another in order to swindle our nation. We are offered false chaos, calculated public discussions and faux scandals across the board to offer distraction: while the wealth, resources, and future of our nation are abjectly destroyed. We are even encouraged to empathize with the "abused" like Obama and Clinton, yet they continually work in concert with those who supposedly target them: that is odd: a complete disconnect: and seems staged at this point. Just a big theatre to help a very few.
I will watch the debate tommorrow night. I expect a stellar performance from Clinton . . . and that is all it will be: a performance. Debbie Wasserman Schultz doesn't even bother to pretend that this isn't a coronation. And oligarchy has its tentacles in vast swaths of both parties. The Clintons are part of this, and there is no convincing me otherwise.
I fully expect verbal abuse and denigration. I am a very dispirited American, and I am guessing that most of Clinton's supporters are uninformed about many crucial policies.
This former Secretary of State has shilled for fracking all over the world: benefiting those she claims oppose and victimize her. I no longer buy this manipulation.