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DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

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You are here: Home / Down Goes Keystone

Down Goes Keystone

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The Senate voted today on the Keystone pipeline, the environmental disaster that would ship Canadian oil overseas, create only a handful of jobs in the United States, and probably won’t be built right now because gas prices are so low. The vote failed 41-59. I don’t have the deets on who actually voted, but the following Democrats are on the list of the usual suspects:

In addition to the chamber’s 45 Republicans, all of whom were expected to support the bill, Landrieu was joined by 10 more Democratic co-sponsors: Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor, Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, Montana Sen. Jon Tester, Montana Sen. John Walsh, North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.

Three more Democrats had pledged last week to support the measure: Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, Delaware Sen. Tom Carper and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey.

One more time for morons who continue to push the notion that it was Obama who killed the public option- the vote for something so obviously bad was THAT close with a Democratic majority AFTER an election cycle.

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I said it in the thread below, but this is a better site.

    I usd to get paid good money, as the Political Advocacy Officer of the Canadian Consulate General in Atlanta, for saying good things about the Keystone Pipeline. It wasn’t long before I started feeling very wobbly about that, and as I approached retirement, and the Consulate General hired a new advocacy officer, I was thrilled beyond measure that I no longer had to whore myself out on behalf of something I hated (also too, TPP, clubbing baby seals, etc.)

    Retirement is great all on its own, but you don’t know the half of it.

  4. 4.

    Baud

    I know many of those Demo will be out next session, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the GOP would be able to override Obama’s veto.

  5. 5.

    seabe

    Someone really, really needs to primary Tom Carper and Bob Casey…although both aren’t up until 2018.

    Also, funny how conservative opposition to eminent domain disappears when it comes to transporting oil in an environmentally disastrous pipeline.

  6. 6.

    PsiFighter37

    I don’t know if there’s a sporting analogy that really gets to what I want, but this was idiotic. There is (well, was) ZERO chance of this passing, and ZERO chance that it would help Mary Landrieu get elected at all.

    Also, fuck all the Democrats who just lost and voted for this piece of shit anyways. Apparently Mark Udall is the only guy with any convictions, but he ran a shitty, horrible campaign.

    And of course Mark Warner thinks the proper reaction to barely clinging on to victory is to keep being a ‘radical’ douchebag. Tim Kaine is far smarter, if only because he knows how to get to 50%+1 easily in the current Virginia, whereas Warner still thinks it’s the early 2000s. Fuckhead.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    Well, according to the climatological experts of NewsMax, global warming is just a hoax, so what’s the big deal, really?

  8. 8.

    KG

    ok, honest question, because I haven’t paid much attention to the Keystone Pipeline issue… what is the actual environmental impact? what little reading i’ve done suggests that the original route was changed due to environmental concerns. and is currently hung up in appeal in Nebraska anyway.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    @KG:

    Yeah, I’ve read some stuff that makes me question why our side this was the key fight we needed to have. Regardless, I’m always glad to stick the GOP in the eye.

  11. 11.

    Tree With Water

    This may well be the reef that shatters the concept of there being a democratic party. I’d venture to guess 90% of the democratic rank and file opposes the Keystone pipeline, or would if presented the facts. If that doesn’t matter to the party’s representatives, the question becomes what good are they for? If the president doesn’t veto it, what was the use of having voted him into the office?

  12. 12.

    raven

    @Baud: Yea but this is just another case of people like what’s her face in Kentucky with all this “distance from the president”. Landrieu and Manchin can piss up a slack rope.

  14. 14.

    Hal

    What a coincidence. I was just reading this primer from KQED on the pipeline. Very good information.

    http://www.kqed.org/news/story/2014/11/17/149763/what_you_need_to_know_about_the_keystone_xl_oil_pipeline?source=npr&category=economy

    EDIT: For all the Republicans screaming jobs, jobs, jobs:

    How many jobs would the pipeline create, and where?

    The State Department estimates the construction phase would create about 42,000 direct and indirect jobs and generate about $2 billion in earnings in the U.S. Opponents dispute some of those numbers. One thing is clear: Once construction is finished in about two years, the pipeline would create only about 50 new permanent jobs.

  15. 15.

    Baud

    @raven:

    I don’t think we’ll have to worry about Landrieu much longer. And I don’t say that with any glee, regardless of how ham-handed this spectacle was.

  16. 16.

    Keith G

    @Baud: Well, at least we can all sleep better at night knowing that that oil will be transported across America to Gulf Coast refineries on rail cars.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @Tree With Water:

    I’d venture to guess 90% of the democratic rank and file opposes the Keystone pipeline

    I’d venture to guess 90% of the democratic rank and file don’t vote in midterm elections.

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’ll take this as the best political news in a while. I was getting ready to be disappointed. The weirdest thing of all is that Landrieu apparently believes/d that this vote would have helped her. She was I gather lobbying hard. I’m a little surprised at Hagan, not so much with Pryor or Begich, as far as lame ducks go.

  24. 24.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Tree With Water: You’re wrong, there are some very stupid pipefitters who aren’t all Republicans who not only support this but got the usually national labor players to sign onto this atrocious crap.

    Of course labor has mostly gone silent because guess what, not everyone in the house of labor supports this stupidity.

    I support the Lakota, for the record. And when the big oil co’s are getting the FAA to enforce no fly zones over spills so the news media can’t report on them you know what? fuck your bullshit about how spills shouldn’t happen. these are oil barons we’re talking about, profit uber alles. like they’re going to maintain their infrastructure har har

  25. 25.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    More to the point, she’s a finger-to-the-wind politician. We’re no worse off with another Republican in that seat. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  26. 26.

    KG

    @Another Holocene Human: ok, but the oil is going to be pumped and transported no matter what, correct? if that’s the case, then my next question is: would building the pipeline increase or decrease the potential for spills?

  28. 28.

    Another Holocene Human

    @Keith G: I’m sure you’ve called your entire Congressional delegation to let them know your views on rail signal upgrades (industry is fighting the gov’t regulations tooth and nail) and higher standards for buff strength etc for oil cars (crickets out of Congress on that) — right?

  29. 29.

    Laertes

    @Hal:

    I want to start by shouting that I think building this death funnel would be a terrible idea. Been reading Charlie Pierce on this since forever, and I’m thrilled that the bill died today.

    With that said: The fact that the pipeline creates mostly-temporary jobs isn’t all that interesting. Construction jobs are, by their nature, temporary. You build a new house and you’re only employing that crew for a few months. You won’t see a lot of home builders turning work away because it’s only temporary.

    So if the state department is reporting that the construction phase will employ 42,000 people for two years…well, hell. That’s 84,000 person-years of work. That sounds like a lot. If I worked in construction, or served customers who did, a project like that would do me a lot of good.

    Seems to me a much stronger criticism of the State Department study is that they stacked the deck by employing an analyst with a financial interest in the project going ahead.

  30. 30.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @SiubhanDuinne: a re-elected Landrieu was more likely to keep her head down as a mostly reliable non-filibuster vote. Claire McCaskill the gossip says wants to be governor and there’s not much I’d put past her, and I don’t trust Manchin, Heidkamp or Tester, who I think voted with the GOP to filibuster a version of the Dream Act (?). I could see any of them, especially the last three voting against an Obama nominated SC justice, for instance.

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: Agreed, Landrieu came through on a number of close votes, some of which probably weakened her in LA. In addition, she was a vote for Harry Reid rather than the Turtle as Majority Leader (something that I think matters a lot on procedural issues).

  36. 36.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    You have a different take on her than I do. I have no use for her. Would rather have an out and proud Republican than a mimminy-pimminy pseudoDem like Landrieu. I agree with Raven. Fuck her.

  37. 37.

    Another Holocene Human

    @KG: Do you want a new source of spills in your reservoir? Seriously.

    Environmentalists in Canada are fighting this shit to the extent they can on their side. But I can’t think of a single damn reason to run this gunk though the areas they want to run it through that has a single upside for anybody but oil barons who will save a fuckton of money and therefore make more profits. Fuck them.

    There’s a risk running any sort of hazmats over rail and Canada has lax as fuck regulations but why are we going to run a sure risk of spillzezes (apparently you’ve missed the ugly–but completely memory holed by the oil companies–overland spills in the lower 48 in the last three years) too reduce potential risks on their end?

    We already run a lot of oil over rail ourselves from Bakken to Seattle, where they’re throwing down over the terminal. It’s helped make America’s railroads more profitable and they’re investing in infrastructure. I definitely support forcing everybody to upgrade their oil cars and sensible signalling requirements for the big RRs. Keep the regulatory regime we have in the US, make it better. Lac Megantic was a US company on Canadian soil where they let railroads run wild and do whatever stupid shit they want to do. We tried that, people died. Just from a practical standpoint the US gov’t has more control over RRs than oil barons right now so why take something highly regulated and toss it over to somewhere where the billionaires run the show? Where’s the utility for that? Where’s the greater good in that?

    Beefed up rr infrastructure = good American jobs and better transportation alternatives especially for the disabled, environmentally, for those without cars, also. Too.

    Another oil pipeline = pipefitters laid off and bellyaching in 2 years. woo woo USA USA

  41. 41.

    srv

    Why can’t we transport people by pipeline?

    We could send Cruz to China and Chinese to Canada.

    Sound like win-win to me.

  42. 42.

    elmo

    @Omnes Omnibus: Thank you for pointing that out. I get tired of screaming this from every rooftop I can reach, but politics is a team sport, in which one team – the one with the majority – gets to set the rules of the game to suit themselves.

    I’m a Charger fan. I want the Chargers to win. So I don’t vote for Denver Broncos, ever, even if I really like that nice fellow Peyton Manning and I think he’s a great quarterback, because if the Denver Broncos are in charge, they get to set the rules so that the Chargers offense never even gets on the field.

  44. 44.

    Hal

    @Laertes: Apparently the job numbers are in dispute.

    http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/aswift/putting_keystone_xl_tar_sands.html

    Whether the construction of Keystone XL will generate 3,950 person years of work for one year or 1,975 person years of work for each of two years, the reality is that the President is right – Keystone XL is not the national jobs creator its proponents are making it out to be. The Fortuna Galleria Mall project on Long Island generated about 3,000 construction jobs. The University of Oregon’s campus renovations are expected to generate about 2,700 construction jobs, and yet have gone largely unobserved by Congress. The Gulf Coast Galleria in D’Iberville, Mississippi is expected to create fifty times more permanent jobs than Keystone XL. These projects show what the President and other serious national policy makers know to be true – the Keystone XL pipeline is simply not the national jobs plan its boosters make it out to be.

  46. 46.

    rikyrah

    How’s this for being against it.

    Eminent Domain.
    Don’t trust the oil companies to keep the pipeline safe and secured.
    I’ve heard more about oil spills on trains and other modes of transportation in the past couple of years than I have previously. Maybe I’m paying more attention to it, or maybe, we’re having a lot of spills.
    The land it would go across is some of the most beautiful land we have in this country.
    Did I state that I don’t trust the oil companies to keep the pipeline safe and secured

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    On this particular issue?

    The “particular issue” you raised was:

    Would rather have an out and proud Republican than a mimminy-pimminy pseudoDem like Landrieu.

    That’s something I would never want. So it may well be that our world views are completely different.

  51. 51.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    @rikyrah: I saw a thing on the twitters this afternoon that said that a member of the house said that there would be no carbon impact of the pipeline due to the fact that the oil would be confined inside the pipeline. People who are that stupid do not deserve to live, let alone serve in congress.

  52. 52.

    E.

    @SiubhanDuinne: What particular emotion are we supposed to feel for you, now that you are retired and no longer knowingly lie for the government for money, about a project that literally threatens life on earth?

  54. 54.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SiubhanDuinne:Simple question(s): Her or Ted Cruz? Paul Ryan? Rand Paul? James Inhoffe? Lindsey Graham?

    Mind you, I have no love lost on her, and my man crush on Claire McCaskill is long gone, but I see a whole lot of Republicans worse than either of them.

  55. 55.

    AA+ Bonds

    I agree with John Cole. Not only is the President useless, but so are the rest of the Democrats in Congress.

  57. 57.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    This goes along with the NC administration talking about fracking in NC right now. The entire east coast depends on an aquifer for their water right now. Fracking would basically fuck up the aquifer, injecting poison into the aquifer, on a daily basis, and the republican legislature is figuring that it would be fine. We be fucked. Because McCrory and his cronies bought the State, lock stock and barrel.

  59. 59.

    MomSense

    @Baud:

    There is a lot of of power in the role of majority leader and in chairing committees. Even if I don’t like a particular Democratic Senator–I want to have a Democratic majority leader. I want Democrats to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee. I always prefer a shitty Democrat to a Republican.

  60. 60.

    mai naem mobile

    I don’t like Landrieu but that’s about as good as you are going to get from Louisiana for a D for majority. I can’t stand Mccaskill. Opportunist POS. Ugh.

  63. 63.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I guess I should have been a purity Dem and quit my job in a huff on principle. Sorry, but after an earlier career built on (literally) poverty wages, I was not willing to do that. If you would prefer to support me rather than allow me to collect my pension, well, okay then.

  64. 64.

    Comrade Luke

    From The Hill:

    But Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who backed Landrieu’s effort, questioned the strategy.

    “I think the question you ask is would Republicans leave somebody hanging like that on their side?” Manchin said when asked if Democrats did enough to help Landrieu get to 60.

    Machin said he believed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was “genuine” in the decision to allow Landrieu the vote.

    “I just thought it would have been easy for a couple of them to give her a vote,” he said.

    Fourteen Democrats sided with Landrieu, including several who were defeated in this month’s election: Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Kay Hagan (N.C.) and Mark Pryor (Ark.).

    Her other supporters were mostly Democratic centrists, such as Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), who will head the Senate Democrats campaign arm in the next cycle.

    Nearly all of the 41 Democrats who voted no came from the liberal wing of the party, including Reid, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who heads the party’s messaging effort.

    There are so many, many things wrong with that excerpt, but it really encapsulates everything, doesn’t it? Love how her supporters were centrists, and the dissenters are automatically liberals btw.

  67. 67.

    Comrade Luke

    @PsiFighter37: I was going to make that a much shorter excerpt, until I read the Machin quote. What an execrable POS.

    Screw policy, what would be good or bad for the country, etc. You don’t want to leave a friend hanging!

  68. 68.

    Lee

    The keystone pipeline is not about getting more oil to the US. It is about getting it to the US tax free. The area they want to end the pipeline in Texas at is a ‘international trade zone’ that does not pay taxes.

    Yeah I don’t know how that got created either but that is one of the many benefits of living in Texas.

  69. 69.

    skerry

    ‏@charles_gaba
    More Senators voted for the #KXL than the number of jobs it would have created. #JustSaying

  70. 70.

    Mike in NC

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    McCrory and his cronies bought the State, lock stock and barrel.

    What amazed me was that all the years that McCrory was mayor of Charlotte, he still kept his old job with Duke Energy. Maybe that’s technically legal somehow, but it sure as hell sounds unethical and a conflict of interest. This clown also refused to release his tax returns, which apparently bothered nobody.

  71. 71.

    Citizen_X

    @Lee: Yes. The oil’s not going to us, it’s going to Asia. So it wouldn’t be replaced by rail-transported oil.

    But we would get the environmental risks for the pipeline, with none of the benefits.

  72. 72.

    cthulhu

    @humanoid.panda: Umm, that poll is from April 2013. And the sample also supported fracking. Suspect, with gas prices far lower and more recent awareness of climate change, the numbers are different these days.

  74. 74.

    JPL

    I’m not against the pipeline as long as it doesn’t cross aquifers and doesn’t endanger our food supply. Of course, the oil would have to be ours and ours alone. If Canada wants to ship oil to China, then just do it with out depending on us.

  75. 75.

    Mike Dixon

    Color me dumb, but what’s the point of a pipeline if the shit is going to China anyway? Shouldn’t they just build a refinery or whatever and process and ship it from up there and not risk losing it when the pipe inevitably springs a leak? Or is that part of the grift? Get the Americans to pay for everything – cleanup, recoup for spilled product – if we let them pipe it down to Louisiana so they can get the “jobs” (har, har).

  76. 76.

    cthulhu

    @Lee: Not only that, TransCanada specifically will not sign off on any agreements whereby some percentage must be sold to US markets. So, yeah, the midwest will take on the risk of the pipeline with little long term benefit. Certainly one reason a Dem won in Nebraska during the GOP “wave.”

    Of course, we all take on the risk of climate change to the extent we make shipping dirty fuel to China et al. easier.

  77. 77.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    Too late, but I would have said “fuck all y’all” if I had come back in time.

    Thanks.

    Edit/Add: Have a great fishing trip. Please post lots of photos!

  78. 78.

    Mike J

    @cthulhu:

    TransCanada specifically will not sign off on any agreements whereby some percentage must be sold to US markets.

    The US already exports oil. Why would we need to import more from Canada?

  79. 79.

    Mike J

    @Lee:

    The area they want to end the pipeline in Texas at is a ‘international trade zone’ that does not pay taxes.

    Perhaps the way to kill it is to start yelling about Ameros.

  83. 83.

    cthulhu

    @Mike J: T

    he US already exports oil. Why would we need to import more from Canada?

    Thus, how will it help US gas prices as is often claimed by the GOP?

  84. 84.

    SatanicPanic

    @Baud: I don’t think it’s perfectly fungible- there’s different levels of refinement needed and different levels of difficulty in drilling. The point is just to limit how much can easily be produced so that users are forced to think of less damaging alternatives.

  85. 85.

    Laertes

    @efgoldman:

    If you think you have to convince me that building this thing is a dumb idea you’re as wrong as a Fox anchor.

    You aren’t moving the goalposts, but you’re looking at different ones than the guy I was talking to. If the question is “is building this sure-to-be-leaky death funnel through some of the most important agricultural land in the western hemisphere the best way to put thousands of construction workers to work” then I expect you and I are in agreement.

    But that’s not the question I was engaging. The question I was engaging was “Is a job that only lasts for two years really a job at all?”

    It’s just silly to argue that these construction jobs aren’t real jobs because they aren’t “permanent.” That’s the nature of construction work.

    I don’t like dumbass arguments, even when they’re put forward to support a position I favor. That gets me cross-wise with true believers sometimes.

  86. 86.

    Nunca El Jefe

    @KG: runs right through the ogalalla aquifer, which is a little important to millions of people, and couldn’t be cleaned up after a spill. Charlie Pierce has done a great deal of reporting on this, if you want to look it up.

  87. 87.

    JPL

    @SiubhanDuinne: You also did more than work with the pipeline and you should be proud of your work.
    You’ll have to come by again sometime soon. Do you have Thanksgiving plans?

  88. 88.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Comrade Luke: “I think the question you ask is would Republicans leave somebody hanging like that on their side?” Manchin said
    This is one of the reasons Manchin is so popular with pundits. Fuck the substance of the issue, it should be all about “personal relationships”, like Baucus leaving health care in limbo so as not to cause an awkward moment at his regular canasta game with Chuck Grassley.

    and just for fun I’m trying to imagine a remotely comparable issue where a Republican would stick her/his neck out against the national party and John and Lindsey and Lisa and Sue would stuck with their colleague! (leaving aside also all question of whether Landrieu would have a slightly better-than-a-snowball’s-chance-in-hell if this vote had gone to Obama’s desk, or pocket)/

  90. 90.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @humanoid.panda: Truth is that people like pipes- they create associations with hard hats and hard work and real America and jobs…

    and even more than that: cheaper gas. How many people know where this shit is going?

  91. 91.

    different-church-lady

    [sigh] Reading those links to LG&M about the ACA really drives home how cynical I’ve gotten about Left-Blogistan.

    @Baud: 2/3rds majorities in both chambers? That’s a tall mountain, even under current circumstances.

  92. 92.

    Hal

    @Mike Dixon: Canada has refineries, but from what little I have read, they are in limited number and apparently there are less now than in previous decades.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/05/23/canada-oil-refineries_n_1539701.html

    According to most analysts, the financials have been — and continue to be — the most significant barrier to significantly expanding Canada’s refining capacity. Though the precise cost of a new facility is difficult to pinpoint, some put the initial capital outlay at more than $10 billion.

    The refining business is also considered to be more risky than upstream oil production, because profitability is directly impacted by swings in global oil prices and demand for refined products such as gasoline. In recent years, toughening environmental standards and the increasing availability of oil sands bitumen (as opposed to sweet crude, which is no longer as easy to come by), has presented an added challenge, as processing heavier oil is more expensive.

    But that hasn’t stopped companies south of the border, where facilities in several dedicated refining areas have undergone major infrastructure upgrades, a process that is still underway, with multi-billion-dollar projects currently in the works in Michigan and Illinois.

  93. 93.

    different-church-lady

    @different-church-lady: To clarify my own comment: it’s not LG&M making me cyncial, it’s how LG&M takes to task a “truth” about the ACA that many other parts of Left-Blogistan claim and tears the claim apart.

    It’s gotten to the point where I feel the left is going to lie and spin and misinform and skate along underinformed or willfully deluded just as much as the right is.

  94. 94.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @different-church-lady: Yeah, Nancy Pelosi still seems to have a pretty tight reign on her caucus, I can’t imagine a huge groundswell for this; and in the Senate, 12 Dems with Landrieu, Hagan, Begich and Pryor gone… doubtful, I think.

  95. 95.

    skerry

    @Nunca El Jefe: To add another layer, it is important to know that the great plains region over the ogalalla aquifer gets the vast majority (90%+) of their water from that aquifer (vice groundwater or other methods). So the corruption of that major fresh water source would be disastrous. There are, in fact, oil and gas pipelines all-over the country, but different regions source water differently. Also, oil from different sources has varying additives prior to entering the pipelines. The tar sands oil is particularly viscous and requires lots of additional chemicals in order to be piped.

    I recommending the 2014 National Climate Assessment to anyone seeking to better understand this and other issues.

    For a frightening look at a pipeline rupture/spill and the subsequent actions by the company, check out the 2010 Embridge Pipeline spill in Michigan. Oil spilled into the Kalamazoo River for hours before the company reacted. It still isn’t cleaned up.

  96. 96.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL:

    Yes, thank you. The pipeline was a fraction of a percent of what I did.

    I have local relatives with whom I spend Thanksgiving, but now that Iggy is out of jail, and the election is over, maybe we can finally do the long-planned luncheon get together with KarenInGA and celebrate your months-ago birthday!

  97. 97.

    Mike E

    T Boone Pickens thought the Alberta tar sands too “dirty” to be feasibly refined…but, of course, he’s turned around on that notion now. He’s never been adverse to fracking though.

    Peak Oil has come and gone. They are wringing that shit outa the ground since all the low hanging fruit has long been picked clean. It’s Big Oil’s end game, folks.

  100. 100.

    cthulhu

    @humanoid.panda:

    Truth is that people like pipes- they create associations with hard hats and hard work and real America and jobs…

    Perhaps, but if so popular, why doesn’t the GOP offer up some infrastructure “hard hat” bills that benefit a wider range of citizens (e.g., roads, bridges, airports, rail, electrical and data grid).

    And it is a bit telling that in one of those links, tea party Republications support the XL at 94%! That’s not just about hard hats.

  101. 101.

    Ella in New Mexico

    I really have not heard a single reason why the Keystone Pipeline is a good thing for the United States. It has almost zero jobs effect, it will only enable foreign oil interests to sell their product on the market (this why it won’t help OUR energy independence) and overall, it’s a fucking ticking environmental time bomb. Visit some of these “Oil Boom” areas of the country and see how the Feds and the States are failing to handle their spills, and you can pretty quickly surmise what will happen the entire length of this death tube.

    What I really want to know are the specific things that these politicians get for voting for it. And I want that information splashed across the pages of every news outlet in America like it was the frigging Snowden revelation.

    Please, God, please do this. And also let me win this Saturday’s lottery. Thanks.

  103. 103.

    catclub

    @Keith G:

    Well, at least we can all sleep better at night knowing that that oil will be transported across America to Gulf Coast refineries on rail cars.

    I’m not sure that is true. I think it is being shipped out from Vancouver.

    If there _has_ to be transport, a pipeline is much better for the environment than railcars. But the Tar sands oil really should not be coming out of the ground at all. It is far worse than most other oil. It is also uneconomical at today’s prices.

  104. 104.

    Keith G

    @Another Holocene Human: What a stupid come back there, Ace. Whether or not I have contacted my Congressional delegation about this topic is not as important as just what the conditions at play are.

    Here is James West of Mother Jones with a few thoughts on that topic

    The report finds that “railroad accidents involving crude oil have a potential for disastrous consequences and environmental contamination equal to that of the worst on-shore pipeline accidents.” Despite the urgency, the report says not enough has been done to properly equip US railways to face the increasing demands: “Although railroad accidents involving large numbers of crude oil tank cars can have similar outcomes [to pipeline spills], oil spill response planning requirements for rail transportation of oil/petroleum products are practically nonexistent compared with other modes of transportation.

  105. 105.

    catclub

    @cthulhu: Somebody mentioned that the pipeline is the ONLY GOP jobs bill, and if it passed they would be left with nothing. They are better off with it failing, so they can continue to say they want more jobs, when they don’t really.

  107. 107.

    Keith G

    @catclub: I would recommend you also visit James West at Mother Jones. The article ran in February. I am on the go using my phone and I don’t have the time to sit still long enough to provide links. Sorry about that.

    According to him, ExxonMobil is already using trains to haul oil out of that area and the company plans to move up to a hundred thousand barrels of oil per day from a new terminal in 2015. I somehow doubt that the new rail terminal is in Vancover

  108. 108.

    skerry

    @Keith G: There are plans for a huge new oil by rail export terminal in Vancouver, WA. People often confuse this with the other, larger Vancouver in BC.

  109. 109.

    Mart

    Google Enbridge Flanagan South. They are completing a tar sand work-around pipeline to Keystone on an already permitted natural gas right of way. Bastards have it covered. Route from their Flanagan, IL tar sand terminal to the Cushing, OK terminal Keystone will hook up to.

  111. 111.

    JohnK

    From Greg Sargent’s Happy Hour Roundup: Does the pipeline still matter? “The first thing to know about the Keystone pipeline? It already exists. Here’s a breakdown of the pipeline’s various parts…”

    The 485 mile segment, the Gulf Coast segment, has already been completed and is sending oil from Cushing Oklahoma to Nederland Texas.

    What still hangs in the balance is the northern segment, which would run 1,170 miles from Hardisty, east of Edmonton, through Montana and South Dakota and end up at Steele City, Neb., where it would connect to an existing section completed as part of an earlier pipeline project, the first Keystone line. TransCanada’s spokesman Howard said that the cost for that remaining segment has ballooned from $5.4 billion to about $8 billion, though part of that has been spent already to stockpile pipe and other equipment. Other parts of that total will be spent buying goods in other countries.

    Sounds to me like Alberta tar sands oil is already making it to the Gulf Coast. The new XL Northern section would reach refineries in Montana. So how big of a deal is it really?

  112. 112.

    Elie

    @Baud:

    You are probably right,but there is no way to split the difference. The blue dogs just don’t survive and they act as republicans while they are in there. Maybe we get their support on a couple a things — and for Landrieu, that was healthcare. But for others like Manchin, we get gruel so thin as to not be worth it. Why do we avoid building a constituency for progressives? In WVA, we have poor white miners lost in the confusion of their tribal affiliations with the white tribe with their economic self interest. Somehow, we have to build their awareness and we might lose for a while until that happens.It can happen. So many think that MLK was assasinated for advocating for poor blacks. My belief is that it was because his message was starting to be heard amongst poor and working class white people. THAT was what was stopped (IMHO)

  113. 113.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Elie: There is a way to split the difference. Vote for the left most candidate that you think has a chance in hell of winning in every primary and then vote the Dem line in the general. You’ll inch things to the left where possible and have Mary Landrieus where necessary.

  114. 114.

    Elie

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Ok — but we have to start building that constituency in what should be fertile ground. If you keep giving in to the blue dogs to meet our numbers, its like payday loans with high interest…. you just can’t ever get square and you get deeper and deeper with trying to make an unwinable affiliation work. We need to build what we say is essential (if we believe it to be true — and I do). I am scared of just going balls to the wall to try to build this — but Lordy, we can’t build shit from the blue dogs. Its like wanting your married lover to divorce his wife and marry you. Jes aint right and aint gonna happen. Meanwhile, your life is wasted on something you know is just wrong and you don’t get what you need.

  115. 115.

    billb

    I have oil trains rolling within 200 feet of my house and also at my office. I am in the blast zone, as are my family and co-workers. People I care about could be vaporized by a drunk train engineer falling asleep at the wheel DAILY. So as much as I am concerned about the global impacts of this nasty oil moving thru a pipe and on to china, I gotta tell you, building the pipe is the safest solution. That oil is gonna move and you and I can’t stop it. We have to select the cleanest and safest way for it to move. Ideally it would not be in old sub-standard rail cars that blow up while my family, and thousands of other families, sleep, and levels hundreds of homes. So in a very imperfect world, I say build a safe pipeline.

  116. 116.

    John Weiss

    @KG: Well the essence of the situation is that the stuff in the proposed pipeline is REALLY bad shit. The second piece is that it is planned to go right over the Ogallala Aquifer, a shallow aquifer that supplies most of the water for agriculture in the Mid West. A leak (and they seem to be common in enterprises of piped petroleum) would be a disaster worse than the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

  117. 117.

    burnspbesq

    @KG:

    but the oil is going to be pumped and transported no matter what, correct?

    It’s Canadian oil. Let it be transported across Canada and shipped from a Canadian port. Or let it be refined and consumed in Canada.

  118. 118.

    jonas

    I imagine if this were a multibillion-dollar project to build, say, a massive solar power array somewhere, that every single Republican would have voted against it, even if supporters claimed it would create eleventy million jobs or whatever. What is it about oil that gives politicians such stiffies? I mean, aside from the more or less blatant bribes from the petroleum industry?

  119. 119.

    burnspbesq

    @Baud:

    Is oil not fungible

    No, it is not. Crude oil from different places yields different proportions of different end products, and presents different challenges in the refining process. I may be misremembering what i read a while back, but i recall that the heavy, dirty shit coming from Alberta is a refiner’s nightmare.

  120. 120.

    zoot

    One more time for morons who continue to push the notion that it was Obama who killed the public option- the vote for something so obviously bad was THAT close with a Democratic majority AFTER an election cycle.

    what a bizarre moron you are cole. obama wants keystone – your statement is pure idiocy, making no cognitive sense at all. And yes, obama killed the public option. Sleep well with your head firmly lodged up your arse jackhole.

  125. 125.

    AxelFoley

    @AA+ Bonds:

    I agree with John Cole. Not only is the President useless, but so are the rest of the Democrats in Congress.

    Of course your stupid ass would lump the President in with the rest of the Dems.

  126. 126.

    Sherparick

    @infinitefreetime: It got 59 votes, but under the McConnell rules as they have evolved in the Senate the last six years, it needed 60. (How long that rule would last if a Republican is elected President?) Most of the the Democrats come from fossil fuel states, except for Carper (and someone should point out to Carper that Delaware is likely to disappear over the next 100 years – http://www.delmarvanow.com/story/news/local/delaware/2014/09/14/sea-level-rise-awareness-week/15624799/). Again, we are not going to get anyone more liberal than Tester or Heitkamp from their states right now and as far as I can see the environmental movement has no clout in the Red States at the moment. Bemoaning a Democratic politician voting his home state’s interests is kind of silly. What is heartening that 39 of the 41 who voted against Keystone will be there in the next Congress. Right now with all 54 Republicans (Hey League of Conservation Voters, how did that endorsement of Susan Collins work out?) I see Keystone being supported by 59 Senators in January (Manchin, Tester, Heitkamp, McCaskill, and Donnelly) for sure. Some of those other Senators (Warner, Carper, Bennett, and Casey) might be persuadable if enough constituents get on the phones to their offices make their views about this crony capitalistic project for the benefit of a foreign companies and the Koch brothers known now that they are no longer doing a favor for their old bud, Mary.

    By the way, about the only thing between repealing a 100 years of Environmental and Conservation laws, as well as the New Deal (Obamacare and Medicare probably will be long gone), is a Democratic, probably liberal interventionist, corporate sponsored, and somewhat neo-liberal in economics President in 2016. I know, the lesser of two weevils is so uninspiring.

    However, my own view, is that we are faced a true mass movement within white portion of the U.S. population, and for the “heighten the contradictions” crowd, all I can tell you is that as times get hard and life more burdensome, people get more tribal and tend to kick down on the social hierarchy. Reactionaries love hard times. And Movement Conservatives give people two great targets to vent their rage and resentment: racial minorities and hippies and it is a real electoral winner as Scott Walker has shown in Wisconsin. Just look how every white politician in Missouri, Republican and Democrat, is going out their way to show that they are about to give to their Black fellow citizens good and hard this week. The police violence that is about to be unleashed will be applauded my the white majority in Missouri. Meanwhile, Mike Pence in Indiana has probably having his best month by announcing that he has stricken 65,000 from eligibility for food stamps (and by the way, since SNAP is pure Federal program, this is actually costing Indiana money in lost retail sales and sales tax). The Keystone vote is symbolic for punching those tree hugging hippies. Punching hippies and kicking the poor gives frisson to that lizard part of our brain that enjoys the pain of others. It a visceral release of anger and frustration the source of which is that declining standard of living and wealth that the 90% have endured the last 15 years. (Pence wraps his meanness in religious self-righteousness, as does Walker, with their “resistance strategy” in defying the Federal courts on Gay marriage and both of course are all-anti-abortion and contraception, so the Roman Catholic Church overlooks the poor bashing. Boy are there going be a lot of awkward events when Pope Francis arrives next year and he starts going on about social justice and the poor.)

  127. 127.

    Sherparick

    @Sherparick: And yes, the Firebaggers (and for that matter Ryan Cooper) who think “single payer” and the “public option’ were possible in 2009-10 simply can’t count or understand how America outside their liberal bubble (I work and ride van pools surrounded by right wingers – they don’t have any problems with elites ripping them off, but every scholarship that a minority got that their kid did not, they remember.)

    Finally, as some of the comments in this blog revealed, lots of people still don’t realize that to enact a law under the U.S. Constitution and the current rules of the Senate, it must pass the House of Representative, then it must now get 60 votes in the Senate to be exempt from the filibuster rules, and then the President signs it, or vetoes it. If vetoed, then both houses must vote to override with 2/3 votes (in the Senate that is 67 (or a lesser amount if quorum of under a 100 is present.) It shows how terrible the reporting on this subject is in the media that even people paying attention, as I assume most people who read this blog do, that individuals still don’t understand how the Senate has evolved into a body that requires a super-majority of 60 votes to pass laws under President Obama.

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