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Obama Vetoes Keystone XL Pipeline Bill
An anonymous reader writes: As expected, President Obama has vetoed a bill that would have given the green light for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. "By saying no to the legislation, Mr. Obama retains the authority to make a final judgment on the pipeline on his own timeline. The White House has said the president would decide whether to allow the pipeline when all of the environmental and regulatory reviews are complete. ... Since 2011, the proposed Keystone pipeline, which would deliver up to 800,000 barrels daily of heavy petroleum from the oil sands of Alberta to ports and refineries on the Gulf Coast, has emerged as a broader symbol of the partisan political clash over energy, climate change and the economy."
I guess Tom Steyer got what he paid for.
Hint: "environmentalist" billionaire Steyer made his billions off coal, now owns a huge stake in a Canadian pipeline that would compete with the Keystone, and spent a LOT of money playing an "environmentally concerned" person trying to stop the Keystone pipeline.
And the /tards rant about Fox News and the Kochs...
My biggest complaint about this is that they were using eminent domain to take people's land for a project that is not primarily for the public good.
X
The XL portion was never meant to reduce oil prices in the US, it was meant to increase profit margins by reducing costs to transport the oil and oil products to higher priced markets.
Can we take down the environmentalism straw man yet?
Nope - because oil is a world market. It will certainly reduce prices in the US by increasing the global oil supply.
The US is a net exporter of everything energy-related except oil. Becoming a net exporter of oil would be terriffic - both for environmental reasons (using less), and because we'd no longer have a strategic interest in the Middle-East (of course, oil supply form there also affects world markets, but we'd be self-sufficient if it came to a real war, and so would maybe engage in fewer small wars over there!).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Harry Reid served as backstop to make sure unpopular vetoes (and Senate votes) wouldn't take place 2009-2014. Republican majority in the Senate means more bills *might* make it to the President's desk, but only if Dems don't use that evil 'filibuster' thingee that Republicans used.
"Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
Few bills - His first two years was a Democrat controlled congress so anything that reached his desk was something he wanted.
Ever since, until this year, the Republicans controlled the house and the Democrats the Senate and Reid basically played bad cop to Obama's good cop. Reid would block and deflect any legislation that wasn't in the Democrats interest so all legislation was slowed down considerably as most bills originate in the house. (which is why there's been no budget bill for years just continuing resolutions on the one passed years ago, Reid would never act on them). Now the Republicans have control of the congress so legislation Obama doesn't want has reached his desk.
Even though this legislation could be reasonably stated to be a bipartisan bill. There's not enough votes currently to override but it's not an insurmountable number, either.
or why the fuck is' this on slashdot (beside every fucking news-channel/-site/-blog in the us)...?
"Nope - because oil is a world market"
Correct, except that it costs money to move. Having a continuous pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast makes it dramatically cheaper to get the crude to the world market. Having the line terminate in Chicago makes it cheaper to refine and distribute regionally. This offsets shipping costs of bringing imported fuels in to the middle of the country. While oil as a whole is a fungible commodity in the concept of investment and pricing, the realistic implementation of it is still dependent on infrastructure and transportation.
"It will certainly reduce prices in the US by increasing the global oil supply."
The XL pipeline doesn't alter the world's supply. The same oil is already being pumped and refined, it just makes it cheaper to get to higher priced markets. It would reduce prices in the US if it were more profitable to sell in the US, which is largely what we currently see with the Keystone pipeline terminating in Chicago. With the termination point in the Gulf, the reduced cost of international distribution allows a greater profit to be earned by shipping it to other countries.
"Becoming a net exporter of oil would be terriffic"
And the XL pipeline would have no meaningful impact here. This is Canadian oil.
"and because we'd no longer have a strategic interest in the Middle-East "
The US doesn't currently have any strategic oil interests of our own in the Middle-East, and the XL pipeline would not impact that. The US only imports ~1/4 of our total oil consumption, the vast majority of that comes from Canada and Central America because it's closer and cheaper than floating barges over from Saudi Arabia.
Europe on the other hand, has extremely limited oil supplies, they are quite dependent on Russia, the eastern block states, and the Middle East for their fuel. And the XL pipeline, even with direct access to the coast, isn't going to push enough oil to offset any sort of major disruption from Saudi Arabia or Russia.
So in closing, no, the XL pipeline would not change us into a net exporter, it would not reduce gas prices in the US, and it would not have a meaningful impact on the global oil supply.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
You'd think the conservatives would protest that, but the wingnut media chose to make Keystone XL a conservative fetish-object, and most conservatives go along with whatever talking points are released by the far-right-wing propagandists.
The freedom of not being able to breathe due to pollution, not having clean water available, getting enslaved by the local warlord, etc... Libertarians are not clear thinkers. At best they're teenagers who will grow out of their selfish phase, at worst arrested-development cases who will never grow up.
Because of wingnut propaganda from hate radio, far-right-wing blogs, and Fox "News."
Some really rotten people realized that conservatives couldn't cope with a cooperative civilization, so set up fake news outlets to exploit the fears of these limited-thinkers. They feed them lies every single day, which keeps the rubes afraid, angry, and unthinking. This psychological terrorism to delay the end of the archaic Republican party was intentional, and should be criminal.
>"I hate America", said the lame duck President. "I hope you all lose your jobs. Less energy means less economy
Some of the nuttiest of the Republican propaganda victims actually believe this nonsense. We should all feel sorry for them, even though they've been taught to hate modern people. They can't help the fact that they were brainwashed, often from birth.
Just because Buffet is richer than God doesn't mean he thinks he has enough.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Even better, taking peoples' land for the sole benefit of a foreign corporation.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The media bias is evident when you look at who and why they attack certain individuals. Biden has gotten away with a lot of stuff. He basically groped a woman in public, in front of cameras, and the reaction was "Oh, Biden....", but when Dan Quayle only accepted a different spelling of potato at a spelling bee, he was vilified. Another example of bias is look at DHS funding: some media outlets are blaming Republicans of denying funding, yet it's Dems that are blocking the vote through parliamentary measures because they don't have the votes to outright block it.
As I've seen it, the Koch brothers are not for gay marriage, one has said he's basically fine with it and doesn't get why everyone's in a big fuss about it.
I, for one, tend to be fiscally conservative, yet socially liberal or, rather, laissez faire. I don't care to subsidize others lifestyles, but I won't comment on or condemn others' lifestyle choices. However, I'm willing to state that marriage is not a constitutional right, and as such, should be left as an issue of states' rights. I'm also willing to state that the primary reason this is an issue is because the federal government grants certain privileges (nominally in the form of tax breaks) to such qualifying "couples". The argument to extend such protections is under the 14th Amendment "equal protection" clause, yet neither sexual orientation nor marital status is listed, under that amendment, as protected classes. Thus, if you extend that qualification to same-sex couples, you're still alienating another class: single individuals and still violating the spirit of the 14th Amendment. What it boils down to, if you treated all people equally, as individuals, regardless of marital status, gay or otherwise marriage would be a non-existent issue.
Sounds like he researched this bill and came to a conclusion that it would be better to veto it. I doubt any partisan behavior had anything to do with as he never striked me as a partisan President. I bet even some republicans secretly wanted this bill vetoed.
FYI - oil is currently flowing through the Keystone pipeline from Alberta all the way to the Gulf Coast, and it's been flowing that far for over a year. It's been flowing to Illinois refineries for almost 5 years. But don't let facts like that stop your hatred for Obama.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The only reason people don't think Buffet is flashy is that they don't understand flashy. In these days of celebrity bling people think with his money Buffet should be driving a platinum plated bespoke Bentley driven by a staff of nude Swedish supermodels. What people don't understand is that the deal he made with Goldman Sachs for the preferred stock and warrants to bail them out in 2008 is the most ostentatious display of wealth in the history of mankind. He forced the so called Masters of the Universe to accept a deal that must have made the corpses of Marcus Goldman and Samuel Sachs puke in their graves. $5 BILLION in preferred stock with a 10% dividend and warrants to buy another $5B in GS stock at $115 a share. To put this in perspective, there are 12 countries in the world whose GDP is less than the amount GS had to pay Buffet in annual dividends on that preferred stock. The profit on the warrants rank Buffet as the 154th out of 194 biggest economy in the world. He used his wealth to perform the equivalent of anal rape with a spiked baseball bat in front of a live tv audience to the most powerful financial firm in history. It doesn't get flashier than that to those that understand what he did.
Right now, gas prices are relatively low, but they are rising, and oil will be back in the triple digits soon enough, almost definitely by Memorial Day.
Then you can make a ton of money right now by buying WTI futures or options. The consensus Memorial day price is under $60 - you can clean up to the tune of 1000%s of profit if you put money on your "almost definite" knowledge.
Er, hello? Oil is cheap right now because there's a price war going on... The Saudis voted to keep OPEC overproducing for the time being, probably at the prodding of the US Sec of State to hurt Russia in retaliation for the Ukraine thing. Russia's economy is very dependent on oil right now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01...
Yes, this hurts US oil production too, which is probably why the Saudis agreed to do this. The US has been producing more of its own shale oil through fracking, which is relatively expensive. This will probably make some of the smaller players go bankrupt, so their assets can be seized and utilized by the larger oil companies at fire sale rates.
US demand for oil has also dropped (by about as much as US domestic production increased), we like to think due to more efficient use of renewables and electric vehicles, but probably mostly due to the recession. The US appears to be recovering from the recession, and certainly these cheap oil prices has gas guzzler sales bouncing back. So it's likely gas prices will bounce back in a big way once OPEC goes back to "normal" market-adjusted production capacity in a few months.
In any case, there are several good reasons for OPEC to delay competition by temporarily cutting prices, but the prices are certainly artificially low now and can easily be bumped back artificially high once we're a bit more distracted from developing our energy independency.
but when Dan Quayle only accepted a different spelling of potato at a spelling bee, he was vilified
That's not what happened. The kid actually spelled potato correctly and Dan Quayle 'corrected' him into spelling it wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And Quayle wasn't vilified. He was the butt of many jokes, but he deserved to be the butt of all those jokes for being so damned stupid. Recognizing someone's stupidity isn't the same as vilifying them.
So, what's worse?
Making a simple spelling mistake or a self-proclaimed Constitutional law professor saying the US has 57 states?
One is being talked about thirty years later, the other has been pretty much swept under the rug.
Thanks for helping to make the GP's point.