Sunday, January 24th, 2016
Jenny Rowland, Research and Advocacy Associate for the Public Lands Project at Center for American Progress - Climate Progress
Stephan: More good environmental news from the Obama Administration.
Drilling rigs
Credit: Shutterstock
In an effort to curb emissions and prevent waste of taxpayer dollars, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) on Friday announced its long-awaited draft rule regarding methane pollution on public lands.
The draft rule will slash the venting, flaring, and leaking of methane — the main component in natural gas — from new and existing oil and gas operations on public lands. It will do so by requiring the oil and gas industry to take measures to reduce the instances of venting and flaring and to plug leaks through equipment upgrades. The rule is expected to reduce both venting and flaring by at least 41 percent and could prevent up to 169,000 tons of methane emissions per year.
The rule is considered a key component of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
“I think most people would agree that we should be using our nation’s natural gas to power our economy — not wasting it by venting and flaring it into the atmosphere,” said Interior Secretary Sally Jewell in […]
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Sunday, January 24th, 2016
Megan McCloskey, - Pro Publica/truthout
Stephan: Remember the $43 million gas station the U.S. attempted to build in Afgahanistan, or the failed $500 million attempt to build a coal industry there? Well to that you can add the unfinished rusting $300 million Kajaki Dam.
Afghanistan would have been a better place if we had just passed out bags of money to people, or just burnt it in a bonfire in the streets of Kabul.
Meanwhile our bridges are falling down, our highways are filled with potholes, and our airports look like they belong to a second world culture -- and maybe that's the truth. Hundreds and hundreds of millions pissed away by incompetence, hubris, and ignorance. Quite a track-record.
The Kajaki dam in Helmand Province, Afghanistan
Credit: Musadeq Sadeq/U.S. State Department
The five-day mission was dangerous and grueling. Thousands of troops hauled a 220-ton turbine piecemeal on trucks the entire length of a Taliban-infested province in southern Afghanistan. The feat was hailed by the British military as on par with the logistics of World War II and cost about $1 million.
The herculean effort was for USAID’s marquee reconstruction project, the Kajaki Dam, the lynchpin of an ambitious and expensive plan to bring electricity to southern Afghanistan.
That was 2008. The turbine has sat, unassembled, in rusting containers at Kajaki ever since.
As the US attempts to withdraw from Afghanistan, there is perhaps no better example of its botched efforts to rebuild and stabilize the country than the Kajaki Dam. For the past year, ProPublica has been scrutinizing the tens of billions spent on reconstruction in Afghanistan by the military, the State Department and the US Agency for International Development. Project after project […]
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Sunday, January 24th, 2016
Josh Gerstein, Senior Reporter - Politico
Stephan: Obama like all the Presidents before him has had virtually no impact on the Great Washington Gravy Train. Having once been part of that world I can tell you that once you are in it, entering either from the business door going into government, or the government door going into business, it's a sweet ride if integrity is not of much concern to you. Watergate drove me away.
Here is a good assessment of the Washington reality.
Credit: Politico
“When I’m president of the United States, if you want to work for my administration, you can’t leave my administration and then go lobby.” — Barack Obama, campaigning in Iowa in August 2007
“The revolving door — the pattern of people going from industry to agency, back to industry — that will be closed in the Obama White House.” — Obama, in Iowa in December 2007
The vow of a novice Chicago senator to freeze out lobbyists and nail shut the revolving door was no throwaway line in Barack Obama’s stump speech. It was central to the narrative animating his 2008 campaign: a promise of wholesale change to business as usual in Washington. His presidency would be different.
Eight years later, here’s how different it looks: The top lobbyist for the private health insurance industry that continues to battle aspects of Obamacare is a former Health and Human Services official who played a powerful role in implementing the legislation. The head of the software industry’s lobbying group is a former Obama White […]
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Saturday, January 23rd, 2016
Interview Conducted by David Böcking and Stefan Kaiser, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: Reduced to scholarship Germany is a social laboratory running a large population study on assimilation. The choices they make will teach the world, and this important interview lays out the issues.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble gestures during the session ‘The Future of Europe’ at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland January 21, 2016.
Credit: Reuters/Ruben Sprich
DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — Thus far, Europe has failed to agree on a joint approach to the refugee crisis. In an interview in Davos, Germany’s finance minister warns that time is running out. If Schengen collapses, he warns, the European Union is in trouble.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Schäuble, the Austrian government recently announced plans to introduce upper limits to the number of refugees it will accept. Do you sympathize with their decision?
Schäuble: I had to gasp for breath a bit when I heard that we were not closely consulted on the decision. In recent months, the German chancellor has always made an effort to consult closely with Austria. But we know […]
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Saturday, January 23rd, 2016
Stephan: On the occasion of the 6th anniversary of Citizens' United, probably the worse decision ever made by the Supreme Court in U.S. History, I think it is important to remember who created the destruction of American democracy.
Supreme Court Associate Justices Anthony Kennedy testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, March 23, 2015, before a House Committee on Appropriations subcommittee on Financial Services hearing to review the Supreme Court’s fiscal 2016 budget request.
Credit: AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
This week marked the anniversary of the Citizens United decision, which exposed American democracy to increasing domination by the country’s very richest and most reactionary figures—modern heirs to those “malefactors of great wealth” condemned by the great Republican Theodore Roosevelt—so it is worth recalling the false promise made by the justice who wrote the majority opinion in that case.
Justice Anthony Kennedy masterminded the Supreme Court’s Jan. 21, 2010 decision to undo a century of public-interest regulation of campaign expenditures in the name of “free speech.” He had every reason to know how […]
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