Keystone Pipeline Lawsuit

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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foxnews.com/politics/2016/01 … ction.html

I am in support of the keystone pipeline, largely because I don’t see a reason to dick the Canadians over nothing. I had to (very rarely) March along the Alaskan pipeline, it’s not scary, world doesn’t end, people might pop a bullet into it once in a while, but fairly easy to patch, it’s a good provider for security and maintence jobs year round. The environmental concerns aren’t legitimate at all, mostly leftist eco-bullocks.Its a smart project, more than willing on my point of view to let them.

Its that quote above which stumps me… you would think they would of researched the US constitution prior to launching this lawsuit. No judge will never, ever ever short if a threat if a invading army, ever deny a president his rights. If Congress has interstate taxation and make federal laws, it goes to reason the federal administration gets to administer it, as well as give presidential level Veto to any bill it dislike, no matter how shitheaded the excuse it. NAFTA is the law of the land, as it us a treaty, but it’s only considered law by the courts… Presidential Powers are dictated by the constitution, and I think every US lawyer grasps this, so every judge does too.

Likewise… feel free to invalidate a permit denial. Thats a rather pointless act, I honestly don’t know if it’s ever been tried before, it’s right up there in cases of pointless case law like suing the devil. If you invalidate a permit denial, it doesn’t make your permit valid. Obama can just giggle and invalidate it again. Reason why is, he is the executive power. If something has to be validated, it must be validated through due process, and unless it’s through a judiciary clerk to get something related to court powers validated, the Canadians will have to resubmit their permit application through the same old office.

But we may very well lose the $15 billion through some NAFTA loophole. But Obama doesn’t care about that, he isn’t judging, no matter who says what. Trudeau just doesn’t have that compelling influence to move anyone, much less a fellow liberal… hell, he almost list the Canadian election to Justin Bieber.

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Environmental concerns aren’t a big deal for an oil pipeline?

Then when are they?

Did you remember deepwater horizon?

Have you ever been into a union hall and talked to the kind of people who maintain these sorts of things?

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Have you ever walked inside of a oil pipeline? Seen how many layers are in it? Seen the security hired to rude 4 wheelers along it daily? Its a fast patchup. Oil leaks all over the place to begin with (in the ground, where it comes from) and it floats on water.

I’ve seen pipelines before, and yes, they can be raised for Bison.

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I worked for an ironworkers union before, and I’ve been in the bottom of a factory where they make steel pipes and shit like that, and I’m understand that there are measures in place to assure that certain things don’t happen, but historically in the industrial world, on occasion, those things happen anyway. I mean, I’m not against piping oil to where it needs to be per se, but to say that the environmental concerns of doing so aren’t important, or a big deal forces me to ask the question, “then when are they?”.

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They are made to ultraexacting standards, with lots of redundancies in Alaska. Its not just a single sheet of tin we are talking about. Its going to be above ground, so it doesn’t corrode like Saddam’s periodically exploding ones at my old base in Iraq (sometimes we thought we we’re under attack… nope, just his underground pipelines failing).

You travel around a lot, so if your up in Anchorage, Alaska, stop by the pipeline museum. You can see all the cutaways of the various parts, and guys who got kicked out of my old unit often took security jobs patrolling it. They have similar jobs here too in west virginia, but the management is inept, sourced out of manpower. They do the patrols, but have no concept how to keep guys from getting frostbite and hypothermia. That was in the initial stage of the startup. Its more or less required to have security scanning it for faults or terrorism. Any holes, universally caused by bullets, and the leak is reported.

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I agree that advancing technology can reduce the possibility of an incident that might upset the tree huggers, but you know they’re gonna push back on principle. What do you know about Southern Company’s Kemper project? Supposed to be able to generate power by burning more than 1 kind of fuel so that it stays up and profitable regardless of which fuel prices do what. And, it’s supposed to trap some unprecedented amount of it’s own emissions, keeping them in house and making them easily disposed of. It’s costing shit loads of money, and it’s absurdly over budget and way off it’s timeline for completion, but in the end if they force legislation to make older plants employ the new emissions trapping technology then SO will have the rights to it and be able to make even more money by licensing those out or capitalizing on them in some other way. Something like 30 years of consecutive increases in dividend, trading at a low cost relative to what it’s been worth in the past. The Kemper project is driving down the price of the stock and upon it’s completion should drive it right back up. The over budget taking too long stuff is angering the capitalist gods. Long story short…I’m trailing.

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I know nothing of it.

They need to keep their principles technologically aware, and competent in assessment. You don’t stop the good projects, you stop the bad ones. California needs water reservoirs desperately, Canada needs this pipeline. These are smart projects. Crying wolf turns the country off from the movement.

Its why we have Watchdog Groups, especially NGOs. You hire out engineers from the oil industry (obviously not the same company) to come and inspect, look over photos, plans, etc.

We are right to have a vetting process with permits, and since it is a interstate project, capable of failure if not done properly, so it is Obama’s call. But I think they believe cause it’s oil, it’s evil, cause environmentalists hate oil. They are irrationally scapegoating this, and it’s hurting real environmental concerns, in projects actually deserving of attention.

Canada has zero intention of stopping its mining of its oil sands, pipeline or not, just will hurt their ability to sell to other markets profitably. I wish they would of put a tenth of the effort they put into this to stop the mining in Southeast Alaska by the Australians and Canadians, it actually is destructive, this is not. You have shut off valves on a pipeline, you can’t shut off a chemical dam from a mine once it bursts, and no mechanic can walk down a river and patch it up. The river dues for decades.

The left is very, very stupid and retarded when it comes to picking it’s fights. They fight to the death over the safest projects, but give token resistance to the worst. They make zero fucking sense.

Its like all the gorillas, rhinos, and elephants killed in Africa, and Bob Barker dumps all his money on building a stealth boat to battle Japanese whalers. He could of had thousands of cameras all over reserves in Africa for less, on motion capture, every direction for hundreds of acres, filming hunters as they move into and out of protected lands, identifying their routes, methods, likely identities and timetables. Forest rangers need that info bad.

Its because it’s flashy and attractive, and empowering they go to save a few whales, who the Japs will likewise now kill on principle. Everything else gets to die. It feels empowering, so they go with that. They just want the rush and feel of justice, not actual positive effects, that’s secondary, if it happens at all.

They pick the most random, scatter brained projects. Zero consistency, loopholes everywhere that the baddies exploit, but the companies trying get screwed, because the only wins the environmentalists are capable of are the easy no. They lack the intestinal fortitude to stand up and stop the real bad projects. They end up a bunch of jaded zealots in the end, popping in and out of support for new crazy projects. Its a escape to make up for their own individual failings, most lack any real commitment. It males me want to go strangle a dolphin, how stupid it gets at times.

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Think about it like this man. Right now, oil is going for very very low prices. Iran is back in the mix exporting oil, or will be soon, the saudis can profit off it selling it so cheap that it’s not even worth it for us to pump ours out of the ground. You’ve got lng reducing demand in a lot of applications, and so on and so on so we’re hovering around 40 bucks a barrel. Now you know as well as I do that there was a time when we had what we called a “strategic oil reserve” thing going with the idea that when the rest of the world runs out we’ll still have plenty. That’s a good idea for long term security. And yet somehow, we’ve decided that this is the time to produce more domestic oil! When the world markets are selling it for the cheapest they have in forever. Doesn’t make sense economically. Yeah, it’ll get some guys some jobs for a while to run a pipeline, but overall, we’re taking oil out of the ground when it would be damn near cheaper to just buy it from elsewhere. The debate about this shit is hot. “How is it strategic to give money to the middle east?”. I get that part. The thing is it’s like this, it costs roughly 1200 bucks an oz to mine gold, so when the gold ticker says less than 1200, you stop mining it. Otherwise you’re doing so at an actual financial loss barring speculative claims about the future price. Same applies to oil. It’s really cheap. I was buying exxon at 100 a share, and I’m still buying it in the 70s right now. Every month I draft a little and I reinvest the dividend and I just let the position grow. Now is a good time to do that because the shares are low because of depressed oil prices. The money now is in refining, mining it with the price at 40 a barrel and so many international options if we want to purchase it is a bad long term move both financially and strategically.

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Okay… I just read up on that project… I notice it was moved from one region environmentalist think will be underwater in 100 years (Florida), to this other site that likewise will be flooded in 100 years, according to the big theory.

If you believe in global warming enough to build a power plant like this, why would you build in in wetlands on a river you expect to be uninhabitable in a few decades time?

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Speaking of environmentalists fucking shit up. The county where I live filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in history because of some bond deals gone wrong which were originally intended to pay contractors to fix a sewer that was spilling over into a river. The epa got involved and forced em to clean that shit up, but instead of hiring halliburton or someone qualified to come in and build a sewer system for Birmingham, they split the job up among a bunch of half assed, uncoordinated contractors and let the kickbacks begin. The billions got spent, the sewer didn’t get fixed, failure to comply with the epa was not an option, the county sold some debt and got it done, privatized the water works, raised everyone’s water bill 800 percent give or take and the mayor went to prison. Pure madness I tell ya.

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To answer your question, I don’t know. But I’d be interested to see the data they were working with in making the decision.

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Don’t get me wrong, even though I don’t care about the carbon itself, I’m intrigued by the technology and engineering.

The old mayor in our town his multiple millions of dollars in random bank accounts all over the place, was in his 30s, steroid addict (you can tell with the flush in the cheeks).

He quit his job, moved down to Mississipi or Alabama. They figured out he was tweaking the books, so started investigating him, but every once in a while a new bank account in our name pops up nobody knew about, with a few million in it. We agreed not to prosecute him if he cooperates, but like… he’s holding out cause they keep finding more money apparently without his help.

I’m assuming he supposes if he lays low long enough, in a few decades can grab any account we didn’t touch and run with it.

What exactly did the have to do that cost billions? Did they have to build a sewage treatment plant, or just stop runoff? Fuck… stopping runoff, even a massive project of hundreds of acres, isn’t billions. You get some caterpillar trucks, dig ditches, dam it with concrete, fill with clean fill dirt, plant some trees and a Marina, people have their 4th of July there. Pipes aren’t that complicated either. You dig trenches, drop them down, put dirt over them, sprinkle grass seeds.

What exactly was your town trying to build?

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bhamwiki.com/wiki/index.php? … on_scandal

It’s a real shame because the Cahaba is a nice tame river where you can float for miles on a canoe or what have you through parts of the city and it would be great if so many people weren’t afraid to get into it. It’s not gonna kill you, but people get the impression that a little sewage goes a long way.

The best part is when they tried to pass a “non use” tax for people who aren’t on the sewer system.

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So your area managed to achieve the highest electric and sewage rate of anywhere in the US?

Sewage lines under the river, back and forth?

And was this the same river you and your buddies are always boating on?

Wait… I don’t think it’s possible to tax for not using. If I have a septic company come suck my septic tank, then I’m not using the service. You can’t discriminate and slap a tax on people for not using a service. I don’t use Obamacare, so opt out. I refuse to pay any tax for it. Its perfectly legal to do so, as I’m not using a service, and furthermore, the tax bill didn’t originate in the house of representatives like the constitution demands.

All I know is, had this occurred here, we all would flee the county. My city and county is 3 miles wide here, with a different state on both sides of the city, and a couny line running right down the middle… whenever taxes shift, everyone moves a mile or two over to wherever is cheaper. Sucks if you own land, buts it’s great for renters.

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Nah electricity is still cheap. The water itself is still cheap, but the sewer fee that’s attached to some people’s water bills is absurd.

There’s a few rivers that we’d boat on. Certain parts of the cahaba that are upstream of the bullshit, and the coosa which is south of here, and occasionally the warrior river in the parts near tuscaloosa.

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And yeah the non use tax got shot down pretty quick. People in Alabama would rather have their children grow up uneducated than pay a little more taxes.