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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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 Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:35 am Post subject: |
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Perhaps it is more important to focus on ethics than on whether the Obama girls rolled their eyes? Here's the latest bit of "ethical" behavior from the oil companies:
| Quote: | Energy Firms in Secretive Alliance With Attorneys General
By ERIC LIPTONDEC. 6, 2014
The letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Attorney General Scott Pruitt of Oklahoma carried a blunt accusation: Federal regulators were grossly overestimating the amount of air pollution caused by energy companies drilling new natural gas wells in his state.
But Mr. Pruitt left out one critical point. The three-page letter was written by lawyers for Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies, and was delivered to him by Devon’s chief of lobbying.
“Outstanding!” William F. Whitsitt, who at the time directed government relations at the company, said in a note to Mr. Pruitt’s office. The attorney general’s staff had taken Devon’s draft, copied it onto state government stationery with only a few word changes, and sent it to Washington with the attorney general’s signature. “The timing of the letter is great, given our meeting this Friday with both E.P.A. and the White House.”
Lori Kalani, a lobbyist, was invited by Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida to recuperate at her home after surgery. The invitation followed a free plane ride for Ms. Bondi.
Emails detail interactions between the office of Attorney General Pam Bondi of Florida and a law firm trying to sway her.Courting Favor: 'The People's Lawyers': Lobbyists, Bearing Gifts, Pursue Attorneys GeneralOCT. 28, 2014
Mr. Whitsitt then added, “Please pass along Devon’s thanks to Attorney General Pruitt.”
Articles in this series examine the explosion in lobbying of state attorneys general by corporate interests and the millions in campaign donations they now provide.
The email exchange from October 2011, obtained through an open-records request, offers a hint of the unprecedented, secretive alliance that Mr. Pruitt and other Republican attorneys general have formed with some of the nation’s top energy producers to push back against the Obama regulatory agenda, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year.
They share a common philosophy about the reach of the federal government, but the companies also have billions of dollars at stake. And the collaboration is likely to grow: For the first time in modern American history, Republicans in January will control a majority — 27 — of attorneys general’s offices.
The Times reported previously how individual attorneys general have shut down investigations, changed policies or agreed to more corporate-friendly settlement terms after intervention by lobbyists and lawyers, many of whom are also campaign benefactors.
But the attorneys general are also working collectively. Democrats for more than a decade have teamed up with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club to use the court system to impose stricter regulation. But never before have attorneys general joined on this scale with corporate interests to challenge Washington and file lawsuits in federal court.
Out of public view, corporate representatives and attorneys general are coordinating legal strategy and other efforts to fight federal regulations, according to a review of thousands of emails and court documents and dozens of interviews.
“When you use a public office, pretty shamelessly, to vouch for a private party with substantial financial interest without the disclosure of the true authorship, that is a dangerous practice,” said David B. Frohnmayer, a Republican who served a decade as attorney general in Oregon. “The puppeteer behind the stage is pulling strings, and you can’t see. I don’t like that. And when it is exposed, it makes you feel used.”
Continue reading the main story
For Mr. Pruitt, the benefits have been clear. Lobbyists and company officials have been notably solicitous, helping him raise his profile as president for two years of the Republican Attorneys General Association, a post he used to help start what he and allies called the Rule of Law campaign, which was intended to push back against Washington.
That campaign, in which attorneys general band together to operate like a large national law firm, has been used to back lawsuits and other challenges against the Obama administration on environmental issues, the Affordable Care Act and securities regulation. The most recent target is the president’s executive action on immigration.
“We are living in the midst of a constitutional crisis,” Mr. Pruitt told energy industry lobbyists and conservative state legislators at a conference in Dallas in July, after being welcomed with a standing ovation. “The trajectory of our nation is at risk and at stake as we respond to what is going on.” |
The only thing they are not blaming Obama for is lower gasoline prices. |
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isobars
Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935
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| Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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| nw30 wrote: | Well that's good, but how do you know which ones the "righties" are, w/o talking politics with them?
Please don't tell me that you can tell by the way they are dressed. |
Their behavior and attitudes often give them away.
For example, the Columbia Gorge Windsurfing Association was discussing ways to discourage or prevent illegal parking at The Hatchery. (The windsurfing park was part of a working federal facility and its road must be clear for forest fire trucks 24/7 by federal law. The feds have closed the park to WSers after scofflaws blocked the clearly marked road.) We were discussing ticketing and towing when a CGWA officer objected because "it might embarrass or offend someone". I laughed at his joke.
Silly, ignorant, naive me. Only when he and the rest of the CGWA officers looked at me in pity, or disgust, or "WTF's so funny you ignorant tyrant", or just DUH! did I even IMAGINE he was serious. (This was pre-rec.windsurfing, back when the terms "liberal" and "conservative" had no political context to me.)
Let me guess: he and rest of them were flaming, on-fire, red-hot LIBERALS with a capital L who actually believed it's rational, maybe even FAIR, to close down the hottest windsurfing spot in North America to avoid offending some F-ing scofflaw who demonstrates so clearly his TOTAL lack of concern for the entire rest of the world by parking right in front of the
F-ING DO NOT PARK HERE by order of the FEDERAL GD GOVERNMENT YOU MOFO SCOFFLAW (words clearly exaggerated, meaning NOT exaggerated) signs and cable.
I walked out of that meeting and declared the CGWA dead to me for at least the next decade.
That's just one of many Liberal tells. Ann Coulter and several other authors have books on the identification of Liberals, what the hell their problem is, and how to deal with them.
You can often spot them on TV even with the sound muted. It's not by how they're dressed; it's that GD supercilious Robert Kennedy Jr/Jehmu Greene smirk across their face even when they're discussing Ebola symptoms or ISIS beheadings.
Or one can just look in any big illustrated dictionary, under liberal extremists. There's a picture of two guys with that damned F-U grin from ear to ear, both shooting the double bird at the "stupid" world. If you look closely, the caption explains everything: Liberal extremist poster boys "Dane "keycocker" Dingerson and Jim "mac" McGrath". |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 7:25 pm Post subject: |
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| Iso--get help. |
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boggsman1
Joined: 24 Jun 2002
Posts: 9120
Location: at a computer
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| Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Good stuff ISO.. You represent the right with flawless perfection. All your comrades here applaud your assessment of us liberal minded citizens...congratulations. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 3:47 pm Post subject: |
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The archbishop's buddies no doubt:
| Quote: | BAKERSFIELD, CALIF. — Inspections by water officials have found numerous oil-industry wastewater pits operating without permits across Central California.
Oil producers have been dumping chemical-laden wastewater into as many as 300 unlined, shallow troughs in Kern County, according to the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board.
More than one-third of the region's active disposal pits are operating without permission, officials said.
The pits are a common sight on the west side of Bakersfield's oil patch. In some cases, waste facilities contain 40 or more pits, arranged in neat rows.
Kern County, which is heavily agricultural, accounts for at least 80 percent of California's oil production.
The water forced out of the ground during oil operations is heavily saline and often contains benzene and other naturally occurring but toxic compounds.
Doug Patteson, an official with the water board in Fresno, said that officials have not yet determined how many of the unauthorized pits held waste from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, an intensive form of production that now accounts for half of the new wells drilled in California.
Even the unauthorized pits holding ordinary oil-industry wastewater "still are a threat to water quality," Patteson said Friday. "It is a priority and something we are working on diligently."
Tupper Hull, a spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry group based in Sacramento, said none of the waste in the disposal pits at issue came from fracking. No tests have yet found any groundwater contamination from the disposal of oil-industry wastewater, Hull said.
"Time and time again, when we look at these practices carefully, none of this has threatened or imperiled drinking water supplies," he said.Kern County farmer Tom Frantz has tracked the open-air, unlined disposal pits for years. That includes a series of pits he found this winter where oil-slicked wastewater regularly spilled out of the pits into a gulley, and from there to a Kern County river, Frantz said Friday.
The biggest pits have long been visible from the air and on Google Earth, and Frantz was skeptical the state would compel oil companies to take any substantive action now.
"If there's a danger to groundwater, which I believe there is, and they're not permitted, they should be shut down instantly," Frantz said. "But I don't see that happening."
Officials said the water board expects to issue as many as 200 enforcement orders, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday (http://lat.ms/1E4ilSh ).
This winter, an Associated Press investigation detailed state records showing 2,500 times in which the state had authorized oil companies to operate in protected water aquifers. That included more than 500 times the state had authorized oil companies to dump wastewater into federally protected underground water sources. State regulators last summer shut down nine of those wastewater-injection wells.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2015/02/27/4400470/hundreds-of-illicit-oil-wastewater.html#storylink=cpy |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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More evidence that if corporations are persons, they are assholes:
| Quote: | By Lisa P. White lwhite@bayareanewsgroup.com
POSTED: 02/27/2015 05:19:32 PM PST0 COMMENTS| UPDATED: 4 DAYS AGO
CONCORD -- Hundreds of displaced youth baseball players won't get to play ball on their home fields until striking Tesoro steelworkers return to work, the refinery says.
The 49 baseball and softball teams in the Junior Optimist Baseball League have been locked out of the 15 North Concord ball fields they rent from Tesoro Golden Eagle refinery since Feb. 2, when the United Steelworkers walked off the job at Tesoro and eight other refineries across the country to protest safety conditions, health care costs and the use of outside contractors for maintenance.
Initially, Tesoro said it closed the league's fields -- plus two soccer fields and another baseball field used by other youth sports groups -- as a safety precaution because workers are picketing outside the refinery's front gates at the intersection of Arnold Industrial and Solano ways. Tesoro allows the groups to use the fields on its property for a $1 annual fee.
About 600 girls and boys ages 4 to 14 are playing in the baseball league this year, generally practicing three times a week. Without access to the refinery's sports complex, the teams have been practicing on three rented fields gearing up for the March 21 opening day, said Pattie Behmlander, president of the Junior Optimist Baseball League. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:32 am Post subject: |
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Grand Old Party. Always on the side of death by air pollution:
| Quote: | By Lisa Garcia, Los Angeles Times (TNS)
One in five premature deaths is attributable to air pollution. Can EPA rules help?
On Wednesday the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a crucial case about regulating mercury and other toxic air pollution coming from coal-fired power plants. At stake is a very dangerous precedent that industry profits are more important than thousands of lives.
In late 2011, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its first-ever Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, or MATS, to reduce the pollution emitted by power plants. Simply by requiring the worst-polluting plants to match the performance and technology of their more responsible competitors, these standards will prevent between 4,200 and 11,000 premature deaths per year.
These public health protections already were years overdue because the coal industry and its allies tried to derail them from the beginning. In the current court case, the petitioners — two industry trade groups and 21 states — claim that the EPA can’t set limits on toxic air pollution without first considering the financial impact that will have on the industry. Last year, the D.C. Circuit Court rejected this argument. Industry — in a last-ditch attempt to overturn these protections — appealed, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear this case.
Air pollution is lethal. The EPA calculated that one in 20 deaths in the U.S. each year is related to air pollution, mostly excess instances of heart attack, stroke, lung cancer, and cardiopulmonary disease.
Coal-fired power plants are by far the largest industrial source of toxic air pollution, responsible for 50 percent of all U.S. emissions of mercury, a potent neurotoxin particularly dangerous to children. Scientific studies have found that nearly 7 percent of all U.S. women of childbearing age are exposed to mercury at levels that can be harmful for fetal brain development.
Many of those whose health is at risk are low-income and people of color. “Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People,” a report by the NAACP, found that the 6 million people living near power plants in America have a per capita income 15 percent lower than the U.S. average income, and 39 percent are people of color.
The EPA’s emissions standard for power plants represented a huge step forward in protecting all of us from this assault on public health.
With this lawsuit, the coal industry is trying to revive an old, dysfunctional approach to environmental protection that Congress scrapped more than 20 years ago. Before the Clean Air Act was amended in 1990, the EPA was paralyzed for decades by wrangling over which toxins should be regulated and whether controlling them was worth the expense. That system worked well for industry, but failed the American public.
In 1990, Congress decided that the EPA could consider the costs when determining how stringent its standards should be. But such estimates should not prevent the agency from controlling hazardous air pollutants at all. Nonetheless, coal industry lawyers are now claiming that before the EPA can require power plants to cut their toxic pollution, the agency must weigh the costs of compliance against the benefits.
To support this claim, the coal industry dishonestly asserts that the benefits of this particular standard are only $4 million to $6 million. But the technology needed to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollution will dramatically improve air quality, preventing thousands of non-fatal heart attacks, asthma attacks and hospitalizations and prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths a year. The EPA valued these health benefits at $37 billion to $90 billion annually.
This doesn’t even include facets that are too difficult to monetize. How do you put a price tag on reduced cancer risk? Or on a child born healthy, without mercury poisoning?
This case has divided the utility industry and states. On one side sit those that refuse to invest in modern pollution-controlling technology, putting a higher value on their own short-term profits than on public health. On the other side sit industry and political leaders in clean energy who believe that allowing laggards to operate without up-to-date technology puts those who made the investments at a serious competitive disadvantage.
Other businesses in America, from dry cleaners to oil refineries, have taken steps to reduce their hazardous emissions. But the coal industry thinks its should be treated differently.
A decision for the coal industry would mean thousands of people across our country will continue to fall ill, suffer, or even die prematurely — all to protect the profits of the worst corporate polluters.
Lisa Garcia is the vice president of litigation for Healthy Communities at Earthjustice. She was senior advisor to the administrator for environmental justice at the EPA when MATS was issued. She wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Mon Apr 06, 2015 10:43 am Post subject: |
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Despite ALEC offering, in 2013
| Quote: | | “model legislation,” still available on its Web site, to state legislators saying that the science was uncertain about the role of human activity in changing the atmosphere. The model resolution noted that “such activity may lead to deleterious, neutral or possibly beneficial climatic changes. |
and paying Willie Soon tons of money to fudge the science, ALEC is now threatening to sue environmental groups who say that they http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/04/05/this-conservative-group-is-tired-of-being-accused-of-climate-denial-and-is-fighting-back/are climate deniers.
Is the real issue that transparency has cost them financial support, including BP and Google, who pulled out? Follow the money. |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2015 1:44 pm Post subject: |
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I agree:
| Quote: | Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed what she sees as the hypocrisy of major oil companies that, she says, enjoy huge profits all the while taking taxpayer subsidies to keep themselves afloat, the National Journal reported.
Warren, in a speech delivered to the Good Jobs, Green Jobs conference in Washington, D.C., went after "corporate polluters" as she discussed issues related to climate change, the Journal said.
Special: IRS Loophole That Could Protect You From Economic Instability
Citing ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and BP, Warren said that the companies had combined profits of $90 billion last year while they "sucked down $5 billion in subsidies from the American people."
Speaking to labor and environmental activists, Warren championed regulation as a fair solution, the Journal said. "A lot of people think that regulations bring higher costs," she said. "But regulation is also about making sure that someone doesn't get to beat out the competition because they're dumping filth in the river or spewing poisons in the air." |
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/US/elizabeth-warren-oil-companies-subsidies/2015/04/14/id/638375/#ixzz3XJJnoo63 |
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mac
Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17747
Location: Berkeley, California
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| Posted: Thu May 07, 2015 8:36 pm Post subject: |
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Wait, can you believe there is more? Maybe this is what makes mrgybe such an expert on ethics?
| Quote: | By Katherine Sayre, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
BP shoulders most of the blame for the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill by acting with "profit-driven decisions" that amounted to "gross negligence," a federal judge ruled Thursday in a decision that could quadruple the billions of dollars in penalties the oil giant faces.
BP immediately announced it disagreed with the decision and plans to appeal.
In a highly anticipated ruling, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier portioned out responsibility for the nation's worst oil spill, which began in April 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers and busting the Macondo well. Millions of gallons of oil gushed into the Gulf and washed ashore.
BP could face as much as $18 billion in civil penalties in addition to the $4 billion settlement with the federal government over criminal charges last year and the massive settlement with oil spill victims reached in 2012.
Swiss-based Transocean Ltd. owned the Deepwater Horizon rig; Houston-based Halliburton Energy Services was the cement contractor on the well.
The judge found that BP acted with "gross negligence" and "willful misconduct" under the Clean Water Act. Barbier ruled that BP committed a series of negligent acts leading up to the spill including drilling the final 100 feet using unsafe practices. |
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