President Obama, Global Warming and Shell Oil

Dear Friends,

As you undoubtedly know, President Obama recently granted Shell the right to drill in the Arctic Ocean.  You can read about it in The New York Times (here).  President Obama's decision is wrong on many levels.  The two biggest ones are that he is encouraging dangerous drillng for fossil fuels which will further accelerate global warming, and he is letting one of the companies with the worst safety records do that drilling.  What is he thinking?

While President Obama talks a lot about a balanced approach to energy and combating climate change, his actual policies are not balanced.  They support more fossil fuels.  In addition to permitting Shell to drill in the Arctic Ocean, President Obama is pushing to open up drilling on both the east and west coasts of the United States.  Under his watch, the United States has become the largest oil and gas producer in the world.  Is there really any hope that he will stop the Keystone XL Pipeline? There is no balance.  There is no attempt to fight climate change. There is only continued support and encouragement to the fossil fuel industry.  A simple Google search will confirm this fact, but if you want a quick read, here is an article published by U.S. News & World Report (here) entitled "Arctic Drilling Undercuts Obama's Global Warming Efforts, Experts Say".

There is no safe way to drill in the Arctic.  Here is ABC's summary of a widely quoted report by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency within our government (the Obama Administration) that is supposed to be the expert.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that approved Shell’s plan for drilling in the Chukchi Sea, admitted in a February report that there was a “75% chance of one or more large spills” occurring in the area over the next 77 years.

The drill site is over 1,000 miles from the nearest Coast Guard site that could work to constrain a spill.  So we essentially know that we will do permanent and incredible damage to this area, and yet we are approving the drilling.

To add insult to injury, President Obama granted the right to drill in very dangerous conditions to Shell Oil whose safety record is abysmal.  Here are a few highlights of Shell's Arctic Ocean drilling for 2012 from the Natural Resources Defense Fund (here):

July 2012 - Shell Oil's Noble Discoverer drill ship drags anchor and nearly drifts ashore in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
September 2012 - Caught off guard by sea ice, Shell is forced to halt drilling – just one day after it started.
September 2012 - In an initial test in Puget Sound, WA, Shell's Arctic oil spill containment system is "crushed like a beer can."
October 2012 - The CEO of French oil giant Total says drilling in the Arctic is too risky.
November 2012 - Noble Discoverer catches fire.
December 31, 2012 - Kulluk drilling rig breaks loose from tow lines five times in heavy storm and runs aground off Kodiak Island, Alaska.

The problem is clearly summarized in the following paragraphs from The New York Times article entitled "Shell's Record Adds to the Anger of Those Opposing Arctic Drilling" (here)

[Environmentalists] said that the company’s track record in the Arctic should rule out another chance for it. Shell tried to drill in the Arctic in 2012, and the company’s multibillion-dollar drilling rig, the Kulluk, ran aground. The operator of a drill ship hired by Shell also pleaded guilty to eight felony offenses and agreed to pay $12.2 million over shoddy record-keeping that covered up hazardous conditions and jury-rigged equipment that discharged polluted water.

“Shell has already proven itself not up to the challenge of development in the Arctic Ocean,” said Franz Matzner, the director of the Beyond Oil Initiative at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But it’s not just Shell. The fact is, there’s no safe way to pursue oil exploration in the frozen wastes of the Arctic Ocean.”

He added, “This is an inexplicable decision to do something that is dirty, dangerous and unnecessary.”

Every day I wonder more and more what happened to the candidate Obama who I so wholeheartedly supported.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

The Trouble with Chicken and the trouble with President Obama

Dear Friends,

Tonight I watched the "Frontline" on PBS story entitled "The Trouble with Chicken" (here).  This documentary clearly demonstrates several things:  the incredible power of big business over the government, the unwillingness of President Obama (and lots of other Democrats) to stand up to big business and the immortality of big business.  The documentary traces break outs of an incredibly virulent strains of salmonella caused by contaminated chicken and the lack of legal authority of the government to stop the manufacturer from continuing to make and sell contaminated chicken.  If you ever eat chicken, you should watch this documentary.

Foster Farms, the producer that is the subject of much of the documentary, continued to produce and sell chicken, which it knew and the government knew, was contaminated with salmonella Heidelberg and the government was powerless to stop them.  First, Foster Farms should have stopped the production even though the government couldn't force them to and should have made a voluntary recall.  I should note as the documentary does that Cargill had a salmonella problem also, and it initiated a voluntary recall even though it did not have to.  Foster Farms choose profits over people.

The regulators were hamstrung by the lack of legal authority and court cases.  But, the Obama administration has refused to even ask Congress for the additional authority it would need to stop companies like Foster Farms from making hundreds of people very sick and killing some people.  Why would President Obama not even ask for the authority?  These problems were clear early in his Presidency when he had a majority in both house of Congress, but he failed to act.

President Obama claims that we should trust him on the Trans-Pacific Partnership because why would he give into big business at the expense of the American people.  Yet he gives Shell the ability to drill in the Arctic Ocean (perhaps the subject of another post), is still thinking about permitting the Keystone XL pipeline and refuses to stand up to the food industry to keep us safe.  I do not know what he is thinking, but many of his policies clearly favor big business over people, and now he is resorting to bullying tactics because he cannot argue the merits.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal

President Obama Bullying on the Trans-Pacific Partnership

Dear Friends,

Last week President Obama traveled to Nike headquarters to make his case for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and to try to bully members of his own party who oppose the TPP. See here and here.

There are so many things wrong with President Obama's approach it is hard to know where to start.  Let's start with giving the speech at Nike headquarters.  Nike clearly states that it is not a manufacturing company, it is a marketing and distribution company.  About 1% of its products is made in the USA.  Nike has always and continues to search for manufacturers in countries where working conditions are deplorable and wages are unconscionably low.  It moves from country to country to keep the manufacturing of its products in countries where there are no workers' rights.  President Obama claims that TPP would bring manufacturing jobs to the United States and cites a statement by the Nike CEO that it is possible that perhaps maybe if everything lines up just right that it might be possible for Nike to consider some special manufacturing that could possibly provide up to 10,000 jobs over the next decade.  How lame is that??  Nike products are currently made by almost 1,000,000 workers around the world.

After his speech in which he gives no facts and makes no substantive arguments supporting his assertion that TPP is the most progressive trade deal ever, he restarted his campaign to bully members of his own party who object to giving him fast track authority for TPP.  He may be telling the truth that it is the most progressive trade deal ever, but that is an extremely low standard and could simply mean that it will cost us fewer high paying manufacturing jobs than prior trade agreements.  Since prior trade deals have already cost us most of our good paying manufacturing jobs, there just are not that many manufacturing jobs to lose.

His argument is basically one of trust me.  He says that he has run in his last election, so what incentive would he have to enter into a deal that was bad for the American worker.  That is his only argument.  He says those opposed to TPP are just plain wrong.  He says that Senator Warren and others opposed to TPP are just spinning out hypotheticals, which is all they are legally permitted to do since they cannot disclose what they have read.  Yet he offers no specifics either about how they are wrong or about why he is right.  Of course since he has denied the American people the right to know what is in the drafts and what he is proposing, it is makes sense that his only argument is trust me.  But how can we trust him when big money and big corporations are his only advisors on the deal?  I do not know why he is so enamored with TPP, but I know that I do not trust him.

The Huffington Post published an editorial entitled "TPP: Obama's Folly" (here).  Their conclusion about why he is pushing so hard on TPP:

We cannot read the President's mind. But this unholy alliance with Republicans and their outsourcing corporate clients smells like a desperate effort to add something, anything, to his rather thin two-term legacy. 

Robert Reich wrote a great article entitled "Nike, Obama, and the Fiasco of the Trans Pacific Partnership" (here). It is a great summary of the some of the major problems with TPP.

The Trans Pacific Trade Partnership’s investor protections will make it safer for firms to relocate abroad – the Cato Institute describes such protections as “lowering the risk premium” on offshoring – thereby reducing corporate incentives to keep jobs in America and upgrade the skills of Americans.
Those same investor protections will allow global corporations to sue the United States or any other country that raises its health, safety, environmental, or labor standards, for any lost profits due to those standards.
But there’s nothing in the deal to protect the incomes of Americans.

Write your Congressional representatives and tell them to oppose TPP.  Two of my representatives, Representative Ellison and Senator Franken are vigorously opposing TPP.  Senator Klobuchar on the other hand has been quiet on the subject.  I cannot imagine why.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal