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Focus: Oregon Militia Standoff (Clinton and Trump Comments) - Jan 8, 2016
Oregon occupation leader Ammon Bundy meets sheriff, rejects bid to end standoff (VIDEO) - OregonLive.com
VIDEO: Ammon Bundy And Sheriff Dave Ward Meet Face To Face - YouTube
VIDEO: Oregon Standoff: Burns Gives The Armed Occupiers An Earful - YouTube
Ammon Bundy: Dispute is jurisdictional issue between the federal and the state governments (VIDEO) - koin.com
Oregon militants: Death threats from ranchers to federal officials reported years before standoff - OregonLive.com
Ranchers sentenced to prison have reputation for kindness - AP
Hillary Clinton: Oregon militia should be charged with trespassing, 'It's always best if we can resolve any kind of situation like this in a peaceful way but... law has to be obeyed' - lasvegassun.com
To contact Bartolo email peaceloverblog[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
Focus: Oregon Militia Standoff - Jan 6, 2016
VIDEO: Ammon Bundy meet the press at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge - KPIC
Ranch protesters form Citizens for Constitutional Freedom group - WND
In Oregon, frustration over federal land rights has been building for years - The Washington Post
The Bureau of Land Management Has a History of Bullying Ranchers – 'Nox & Friends
Key things to know about federal land ownership in the West - AP
The Bundys, the family behind the Oregon militia standoff, explained - Vox
Harry Reid Wanted Cliven Bundy Off His Ranch To Help Son Rory, China? - Investors.com
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Ammon Bundy says Feds won't oust militant occupiers, law enforcement communicating with him through back channels - OregonLive.com
Feds are taking wait-and-see approach to Oregon protesters, wary of the deadly confrontations at Waco and Ruby Ridge - dailysignal.com
VIDEO: Oregon militants post new video from refuge, plead for help to 'prevent bloodshed' - OregonLive.com
White House on Oregon standoff: this is a matter that local law enforcement is handling, we are hopeful that that situation can be resolved peacefully - OregonLive.com
Oregon ranchers begin new prison term, hope to receive rare presidential clemency from Obama - OregonLive.com
GOP candidates careful about response to Oregon standoff - UPI.com
Oregon protesters find support and scorn on social media - Reuters
To contact Bartolo email peaceloverblog[at]yahoo[dot]com (replacing [at] with @, [dot] with .)
Emails: US Government Facilitated LNG Business Deals Before Terminals Got Required Federal Permits
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Emails and documents obtained by DeSmog reveal that the U.S. Department of Trade has actively promoted and facilitated business deals for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry and export terminal owners, even before some of the terminals have the federal regulatory agency permits needed to open for business.
Obama's Oily Christmas Gift: Faster Pipeline Approvals
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Just over a week before the U.S. signed the Paris climate agreement at the conclusion of the COP21 United Nations summit, President Barack Obama signed a bill into law with a provision that expedites permitting of oil and gas pipelines in the United States.
"Miracle of American Oil": Continental Resources Courted Corporate Media to Sell Oil Exports
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
A document published by the Public Relations Society of America, discovered by DeSmog, reveals that from the onset of its public relations campaign, the oil industry courted mainstream media reporters to help it sell the idea of lifting the ban on crude oil exports to the American public and policymakers.
ExxonMobil, Peabody Coal Lobbying for Bill Preventing Climate Change Accounting in US Trade Deals
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The day before global leaders and diplomats passed a climate change deal in Paris at the United Nations climate summit, the U.S. House of Representatives — in a 256-158 vote — authorized the final text of a bill that has a provision preventing climate change to be accounted for in all U.S. trade deals going forward.
Federal Court Gives Blessing to Covertly Approved Enbridge Cross-Border Tar Sands Pipeline Expansion
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
A federal court has ruled that the Enbridge Alberta Clipper (Line 67) cross-border tar sands pipeline expansion project, permitted covertly and behind closed doors by the Obama Administration, got its greenlight in a legal manner.
Has the Time Come for Democratization of the Economy?
A study released at the beginning of December by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) reported that America’s 20 wealthiest individuals own more wealth than roughly half the American population combined—152 million people. The startling level of economic inequality in the United States is also highlighted by Forbes, which recently observed that the richest 400 Americans possess more wealth than 62 percent of the American public—192 million people. Furthermore, these studies apparently underestimate the concentration of wealth in the United States, for the use of offshore tax havens and legal trusts conceals trillions of dollars that the richest Americans have amassed for themselves and their families.
Meet the Lobbyists and Big Money Interests Pushing to End the Oil Exports Ban
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The ongoing push to lift the ban on exports of U.S.-produced crude oil appears to be coming to a close, with Congress agreeing to a budget deal with a provision to end the decades-old embargo.
US Journalists Duck the Big Climate Question: Can Capitalism and Mankind Both Survive?
By Dave Lindorff
Exposed: ExxonMobil Funding Influential Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Obama Administration Approves Pipeline Expansion Set to Feed First Ever Fracked Gas Export Terminal
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The Obama Administration has quietly approved expansion of a major pipeline carrying fracked gas destined for the global export market.
TransCanada's Next Move After Keystone XL: Flood Mexico with Fracked Gas with State Department Help
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
TransCanada, the owner of the recently-nixed northern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, has won a bid from Mexico's government to build a 155-mile pipeline carrying gas from hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") in the United States to Mexico's electricity grid.
Why Tuition-Free College Makes Sense
The issue of making college tuition-free has recently come to the fore in American politics, largely because the two leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, have each championed it. Sanders has called for free undergraduate tuition at public colleges and universities, to be financed by a tax on Wall Street speculation, while Clinton has done the same, although with some qualifications and a different funding mechanism.
Congress-backed Interstate Oil Commission Called 911 When I Came To Ask About Climate
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
On October 1, I arrived at the Oklahoma City headquarters of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) — a congressionally-chartered collective of oil and gas producing states — hoping for an interview.
Our quadrennial reality TV show: Sorting Through the Bullshit in America
By John Grant
“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. ... The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept.”
“Now I get it!”: Katie Couric’s Hit Job on Social Security
By Dave Lindorff
Judges Nixing Keystone XL South Cases Had Tar Sands-Related Oil Investments
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
On August 4, the U.S. Appeals Court for the 10th Circuit shot down the Sierra Club's petition for rehearing motion for the southern leg of TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands export pipeline. The decision effectively writes the final chapter of a years-long legal battle in federal courts.
Exclusive: Hillary Clinton State Department Emails, Mexico Energy Reform and the Revolving Door
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Emails released on July 31 by the U.S. State Department reveal more about the origins of energy reform efforts in Mexico. The State Department released them as part of the once-a-month rolling release schedule for emails generated by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now a Democratic presidential candidate.
Greenwash: Shell May Remove "Oil" From Name as it Moves to Tap Arctic, Gulf of Mexico
Shell Oil has announced it may take a page out of the BP "Beyond Petroleum" greenwashing book, rebranding itself as something other than an oil company for its United States-based unit.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Enbridge Stuffs Provision into Wisconsin Budget to Expedite Controversial Piece of "Keystone XL Clone"
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
On Thursday, July 3 on the eve of a long Fourth of July holiday weekend, Canadian pipeline company giant Enbridge landed a sweetheart deal: a provision in the 2015 Wisconsin Budget that will serve to expedite permitting for its controversial proposed Line 61 tar sands pipeline expansion project.
What Do Americans Think About Economic Inequality?
Are Americans disturbed about growing economic inequality in the United States?
Hillary Clinton State Dept Emails Contain Redacted Job Description for Top Energy Diplomat; Lobbyist Gets Job
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
The U.S. State Department released a batch of 3,000 searchable documents formerly stored on the private hard drive and in a private email account of Democratic Party presidential candidate and former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Among them: a fully redacted job description for State Department International Energy Coordinator/Diplomat-At-Large.
The Financialization of Fiction, and Vice Versa
The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber is an engaging riff on the theme of bureaucracy and the BS people think about it.
"De-regulation," of finances, Graeber points out, creates more rules, paperwork, and bureaucrats, apparently because what happens is not the equivalent of firing a bunch of factory safety inspectors, but rather the employment of enough bureaucrats to redirect control of wealth from mid-sized companies to giant conglomerates. Yet, just as people imagine criminals to be mostly black or violent, or war to be philanthropic or necessary, or estate taxes to be about family farms, or voter fraud to be impacting elections, or elections to have any value that could possibly be hurt by voter fraud, or a minimum wage to eliminate jobs, or corporate trade agreements to not eliminate jobs, or guns to make us safer, or prisons to "correct" something, or wealth to trickle down, or small-time foreign thugs to constitute a graver threat than a McDonald's diet, what matters is a fiction well told, not any facts.
Career advancement in a bureaucracy, Graeber writes, is based not so much on merit as on the loyalty exhibited by a willingness to pretend that it's based on merit. If you play along with the collective delusion, you're rewarded.
Appeals Court Rules Keystone XL South Approval Was Legal, Lifting Cloud Over TransCanada
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
In a 3-0 vote, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Tenth Circuit has ruled that the southern leg of TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline was permitted in a lawful manner by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Keystone XL South was approved via a controversial Army Corps Nationwide Permit 12 and an accompanying March 2012 Executive Order from President Barack Obama. The pipeline, open for business since January 2014, will now carry tar sands crude from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas without the cloud of the legal challenge hanging over its head since 2012.
Revealed: Energy Transfer Partners’ 'Pipeline-for-Prostitute' Landman
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
By Steve Horn and David Goodner
A DeSmog investigation has uncovered the identity of a land agent and the contract company he works with that allegedly offered to buy an Iowa farmer the services of two teenage sex workers in exchange for access to his land to build the controversial proposed Dakota Access pipeline, owned by Energy Transfer Partners.
Corporate Welfare Fails to Deliver the Jobs: The Sad Case of Start-Up NY
For several decades, state and local governments have been showering private businesses with tax breaks and direct subsidies based on the theory that this practice fosters economic development and, therefore, job growth. But does it? New York State’s experience indicates that, when it comes to producing jobs, corporate welfare programs are a bad investment.
John Feffer: Why the World is Becoming Un-Sweden
Today, TomDispatch regular John Feffer, the director of Foreign Policy In Focus, offers a cunning bow to the convergence theorists of the Cold War era, a crew of thinkers who imagined that someday the two superpowers would merge into one conglomerate creature in strangely upbeat ways. In reality, as he points out, “convergence” (even in an era that lacks the Soviet Union) has turned out to be a dismally downbe
The Ugly Myth of U.S. Exceptionalism
For inexplicable reasons, the United States citizenry clings to the idea of 'exceptionalism', that heady concept that says that the U.S. is different from and better than all the rest of the world, and therefore has a sacred obligation to spread its goodness around the globe. In 2014, President Barack Obama said this: "I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being."
