Are we ready for King Koch?

Charles Koch is laughing at us. He thinks democracy is a crock. The free market should make all decisions about the future, he says. It's only coincidental that he funds dozens of conservative think tanks and corporate front groups that are trying to bend the nation to his will. Thanks to the Supreme Court and their Citizen's United ruling, Koch can pretend he is enthusiastic about the free market while he is actually undermining it.

Koch is trying to set himself up as the one person who makes decisions about economic policy and foreign affairs in this country. He's going to spend $100 million in 2016 to keep control of the House and Senate. There's a word for someone who make all the decisions for a country. King. All hail King Charles I!

Without mentioning global warming King Charles told a recent interviewer at Politico that he opposes all renewable energy sources, not because he makes money by burning coal and oil in the atmosphere, but because these renewable, "green", sources are not competitive. They need subsidies to be competitive with already existing sources of energies.

King Charles takes us all for fools. That's why he's laughing at us. You see, he knows that every single industry in the US today began with a federal subsidy. What about railways, without which King Charles could not ship his coal to China where it pollutes the air and promotes lung cancer and other diseases of the lungs?

The railway industry in the US was heavily subsidized by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Lincoln was looking for a way to get silver and gold back East to pay for Union arms.
So Lincoln arranged to give a subsidy to the Union Railroad of ten square miles of land and $48,000 for every mile of track they laid. The land became invaluable as soon as the railroad was built to carry produce back from the West to Eastern agricultural markets. So King Charles is currently benefitting from government subsidies to the railroads. But that's not all.

Koch also receives an oil depletion allowance to finance exploration for oil, and other benefits as well that amount to $5 billion each year delivered from US taxpayers to the oil industry.  Koch receives this check from the federal government, presumably cashes it, but claims he's against all such subsidies. Yes, he's against them, but he's happy to take the check. I'm sorry, but if you don't like living on the federal dole, why don't you try finding a business that doesn't force you to do that?

Koch has been lobbying for various things to help his business, though he's not saying what they are. This makes it difficult to argue with the man, because most of what he does is hidden from the public. One thing that's almost certain he has been lobbying for is the Keystone Pipeline XL. Koch stands to make a lot of money from his interests in tar sands oil.

Fossil fuel companies also receive a subsidy because the US does not charge them enough for leases on federal lands. The federal government could make $500 million more if it charged the same for oil leases as some of the states. http://bit.ly/1NDHbNm

King Charles can't have it both ways. He can't profit enormously from government the way it is today and also claim he wants to do away with it. No one is that stupid. But King Charles thinks we are.

Sierra Club sues US to stop new tar sands pipeline

A number of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation, have sued the State Department over its failure to protect the US from Canadian tar sands oil. At issue is a pipeline, called the Alberta Clipper, currently bringing oil across the border at a rate of 450,000 barrels a day. Enbridge Energy wants to increase the volume of oil to 800,000 barrels per day.

The State Department has ruled that the new pipeline does not need its approval, despite nearly doubling the amount of tar sands oil entering the US. The Sierra Club suit disagrees with their assessment.

The State Department is clearly at odds with President Obama's public statements on this. Obama promised he would not permit more tar sands into the country if the project would increase greenhouse gas production. The State Department study claimed it would not. But practical considerations prove that it would.

The State Department study claimed that the tar sands oil could be transported by rail if the Keystone XL Pipeline is not built. But attempts to use railroads have proven costly. Instead of earning $40 per barrel of oil shipped by rail as it predicted, Southern Pacific Resources is earning less than one dollar per barrel. The failure of its oil-by-rail strategy has driven Southern Pacific to the edge of bankruptcy.

Since the State Department's study relied on the viability of the oil-by-rail strategy to reach its conclusion that Keystone XL would have no effect on greenhouse gas production, the entire study must now be rejected as false. Instead of proving that the Keystone XL pipeline would not harm the environment, the State Department has proved that it will. And President Obama has promised he would not approve the Keystone XL under these conditions.

Democratic Senators have completely caved in to Oil Industry demands. They are proposing to approve the Keystone XL despite the State Department's fiasco. The Senators say they are acting to save Senator Mary Landrieu's seat for the Democrats. What they are really doing is the bidding of the oil industry.

The oil industry is getting desperate. The tar sands in Alberta are the third largest proven oil deposit in the world. But tar sands are expensive to refine and destructive to the environment. The oil industry needs Keystone XL to extract this poisonous wealth. Right now they are losing their battle.

Why the Keystone XL Pipeline is (still) a bad idea

The main talking points of Keystone advocates are that it's a big project, ready to go, and it will create jobs.

The main replies by Keystone opponents are that being a big project has nothing to do with being a good project; it may be ready, but we, as a country, are not ready for its consequences; it may create jobs, but they are not permanent jobs or green, sustainable jobs.

Keystone XL will produce more greenhouse gases because tar-sands gas consumes more energy than it delivers, tar-sands gas has byproducts so dirty that they must be shipped to China to burn, and much of the profit will go to Koch Industries, a company that has consistently tried to undermine our democratic institutions. We may not be able to stop the Koch brothers from spending vast sums of money to influence public opinion, but we should be able to stop allowing their egoistic schemes.

President Obama should look Keystone advocates in the eye and say, "You have opposed every single project I proposed to create jobs. You have given me nothing in return for this project. I can't stop the federal government from giving you tax breaks and subsidies, but I can sure stop you from building this pipeline."

Take a stand, President Obama. You speak for all of us.

Vladimir Putin: World's most dangerous person

"Dickhead Putin" by H. Masri

[The picture I had posted here of Vladimir Putin was taken down from the web. It may be that it happened because this post has had over 1,000 views, or more likely because Putin found the picture, which showed him with an automatic rifle, too close to the truth. Recently, many
people in Turkey and Ukraine have been reading MasriZone. I hope I have played a small part in revealing to the world what a dangerous man he is.] 

Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man in the world. North Korea has been considered the most dangerous country in the world because their autocratic rulers, the Kim family, had both great power and nuclear weapons technology. The truth is, however, that a couple of nuclear devices are hardly a danger comparable to the oil reserves of Russia. Russia is now the largest producer of oil in the world.  More on this later.

Vladimir Putin is the ruler of Russia. Russia has a long history of authoritarian rule, and Putin has moved to follow that model. He has carefully built a cult of personality, similar to those created by the North Korean dictator Kim Il-Sung and China's ruler, Mao Tse-Tung. But Putin's model is most likely Joseph Stalin.

Joseph Stalin, another Russian strong man, also built a cult of personality. Nearly all the portraits of Stalin showed him in an army uniform looking heroically into the distance. He is generally shown holding a pistol, with clenched fist, or with hands folded across his stomach. Most of the pictures show him from a low camera angle, nearly always alone. This made him appear taller than his actual height of 5 feet, four inches. Stalin had a penchant for erecting statues of himself. Hundreds of them stood in prominent locations in Russia and her empire. Many statues were colossal, standing on high pedestals.

Stalin's efforts to create a cult of personality worked. Russians believed him heroic, strong, capable of protecting them in a violent world. They also feared him, knowing he was capable of murdering his adversaries or anyone he believed was an enemy. Stalin was a violent man, and a narcissist, as revealed by the vast array of statues, photos, and posters bearing his image; he was a killer without conscience. Modern estimates place the number of his victims at more than 3 million people.  

Putin is building his own cult of personality. His photos in various poses strike Americans as odd, even amusing. Like a super model or movie star, he poses in all sorts of roles, all intended to make him appear powerful, vital, capable. He poses with symbols of power, guns, motorcycles, airplanes, even a bathyscaphe. He likes to show off his bare, clean-shaven chest. He shows no weakness in public, ever, refusing even to smile, or to pose with a woman.

Putin divorced his wife of 30 years and has been rumored to be involved with a 30-year-old rhythmic gymnast. He makes no comment about this and is careful not to be seen in compromising positions with the younger woman. There is no freedom of the press when it comes to covering Putin's private life. Putin may reinforce his masculine image by having a much younger mistress, but he obviously doesn't want to share the spotlight with a woman.

Putin has undermined democracy in Russia. After serving two terms as president, he picked Medvedev as his stand-in while Putin continued to make the decisions. Putin has now been re-elected president for a six-year term. He has bought a great deal of popularity by distributing the oil revenues of Russia to its citizens. He has further increased his popularity by passing laws that persecute dissenters and gays, actions that appeal to the conservative adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russian authorities arrested a punk rock group called Pussy Riot for disrupting a church service by singing a song mocking Putin. A court sentenced three young female members of the rock band to two-year sentences in prison for hooliganism, a crime similar to disorderly conduct, except that in America we don't put people in prison for two years for disorderly conduct, or for singing mocking songs about our politicians.

Stalin had the backing of the Communist Party, which is now defunct. In its place, Putin uses the revived Orthodox Church as his power base. He has to reinforce his appeal to this base just as Republican politicians must satisfy the Tea Party. Putin's chief ally in this endeavor is Yelena Mizulina, a middle aged female legislator who proposes laws to enforce morality. One of her laws puts a tax on divorce; this is a stroke of irony, not just because Putin recently divorced his own wife, but also because Russia has the highest divorce rate in the world. Other laws under consideration would ban abortions and morning after pills.  Mizulina, a devout Christian, believes she can redeem Russian society (and increase the declining population) by passing laws that support "traditional family values".

Mizulina, with Putin's support, proposed a bill to prohibit gays from spreading pro-gay “propaganda”. She claimed that the phrase “gay men are people too” needed to be investigated as subversive by the Russian bureau of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare. Anyone who disagrees with her views is likely to be accused of being part of a “pedophile lobby” that she claims exists in the political party opposed to hers. She defends her laws by saying they are only intended to keep information about homosexuality away from children.

The penalty for spreading gay propaganda is relatively small, about $150, but the law legitimizes anti-gay activities. The laws are so vague that they can be used to persecute almost any non-traditional speech or actions. Russian police have attacked and arrested demonstrators at gay pride events, while anti-gay groups have attacked and tortured gays and gay sympathizers. The anti-gay attackers have posted videos of their activities on YouTube, where you can see young men assaulted, placed in hammerlocks, held down, stepped on, and threatened.  

Putin signed the anti-gay legislation into law. Putin's support of this and other legislation of morality reinforces his own support of traditional masculine values. It makes him look like a tough guy. Neither he nor Mizulina have shown any sympathy for young gays who are attacked by Christian thugs. Putin asks that both sides refrain from violence, but he equates a non-violent demonstration with an assault. The Pussy Riot demonstration in a church is the closest that anti-government protestors have come to violence; they were only making music.  Yet there are many graphic photos of the violence done to anti-government demonstrators by police and Christian thugs.

Putin has shown his indifference to human suffering on a large scale by supporting the Syrian government as it massacres its own people. His support has resulted in thousands of innocent deaths. Putin seems to act only to prove his own toughness and his willingness to stand up to the Americans. This demonstration of his own bravado also seems to be his only reason for offering asylum to the American fugitive, Edward Snowden; Putin has used Snowden’s high-profile case to figuratively tweak the noses of the Americans.  

Russian Oil and Global Warming

Putin is cementing his hold on power by outlawing protests, freedom of assembly, and freedom of speech. What makes him most dangerous, though, is not how he oppresses the Russian people, but how this affects the rest of the world and its future. Putin's popularity is due to his handling of the Russian economy. Putin must continue increasing production of oil to meet the rising expectations of the Russian people.

The world's governments must work together to avert global warming, and they must do it soon. However, so long as Putin controls Russia, there will be no cooperation, since his continuation in power requires more oil production and Russia has no other profitable industries.  

Scientists have estimated that burning the 1.8 billion barrels of tar sands oil in Alberta (if fully developed) will raise global temperatures by 0.42 degrees Centigrade. By comparison, burning the 75 billion barrels of Russian tar sands oil could theoretically raise worldwide temperatures fifty times as much,  an increase of up to 21 degrees.  This estimate does not take into account the quality of the Russian deposits, which is as yet unknown.

Putin has no incentive to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases. There is no possibility of using force against Russia because it would cost too many lives and resources the world can ill afford to lose. Therefore, we must develop strategies that do not depend on Russia's cooperation. Some possibilities are: 

1. Make renewable, non-carbon polluting energy sources cheaper than oil. This is not impossible, although oil prices are determined by a cartel, not the free market.

2. Create abundant, affordable consumer devices (everything from cars and trains to barbecues) that do not use carbon-based fuel. Part of this solution would be to replace all fossil fuel electrical generators with generators that cannot use fossil fuel.

3. Put a tax on devices that generate greenhouse gases (including electricity generators) so that their energy costs more than comparable "green" sources.

     4.  Cooperate with the family of nations to convince Russia to abandon its irresponsible ways.

Whatever strategy we use, we must realize that Vladimir Putin will not help us. But more than that, unless we work together to prevent it, he has more power to destroy the future of our planet than any single man in history. That is why he is now the most dangerous person in the world.

Keystone Pipeline XL: Costs rise, questions proliferate

The Keystone Pipeline XL is not dead yet, but it's on life support. Last year, the State Department released an environmental impact statement prepared by Energy Resource Management (ERM) that was criticized by environmentalists. Mother Jones Magazine published information that the State Department had removed from the report that revealed possible conflicts of interest within ERM. But the project appears to have grave flaws that go beyond the discovered discrepancies in ERM's Environmental Report, which are only procedural mistakes (whether intentional or not) and hence do not affect the basic value of the project.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent a letter, dated April 22, 2013, to State Department. EPA agreed with the report that oil produced from tar sands is dirtier than comparable oil from the US. State thanked ERM for some of the findings published in their report, including the attempt to quantify the amount of green house gases that would be produced by the Keystone Pipeline XL project. But Neither State nor ERM explained what these figures mean.

In the letter, State quotes the report as estimating that the oil from tar sands well-to-tank contributes 81% more to global warming than oil from other sources. This means that oil from tar sands has 81% more capability of producing green-house gases when it arrives in the refinery tanks, prior to being refined into gasoline. But the letter goes on to say that the oil from well-to-wheels has only 17% more green-house gases than conventional oil. This means that when your car burns the gas, it produces only 64% less green-house gases than it had before it was refined. Neither ERM nor State explains what happened to 64% of the green-house gases between the tank and the wheels. This is a critical question because President Obama made it clear that he would not approve the project if it contributed “significantly” to global warming. While 81% is significant, 17% may not be.

The difference between the two figures is due to one of the peculiarities of oil from tar sands. The chemical process (“cracking”) of turning tar oil into usable oil results in a byproduct, called petroleum coke. This coke contains most of the 64% of green-house gases lost before the refining in complete. Oil companies argue, and State tacitly agrees, that this coke will never be used for energy production.

This argument is not believable. Oil companies are in the business of selling hydrocarbons for money. That is their business model. It is unlikely that oil companies will let such a large amount of salable merchandise go to waste. In fact the Koch brothers' company, Koch Carbon, collects this coke and sells it overseas as a lower quality, dirtier form of coal. This fact became public knowledge recently when a huge cloud of coke dust, illegally stored by Koch Carbon in Detroit, blew over the Detroit River into Windsor, Canada.

Job loss from Keystone XL

President Obama recently noted that as few as 50 permanent jobs may be produced by the pipeline. The Washington Post Fact Checker awarded him two pinocchios for lowballing the jobs figure. The Post criticized Obama was using a jobs figure from an organization that opposed the pipeline instead of his own State Department.

The State Department is ill-equipped to prepare a report about oil pipelines. They found it necessary to hire outside consultants because they have no one on staff who is qualified to do the job. State could not find a consultant with no ties to the oil industry because any outside consultant qualified to evaluate an oil pipeline must necessarily have ties to the oil industry.

The accusation that Obama is “lowballing” the number of jobs to be created by Keystone XL is false. As usual, Obama is using a moderate estimate. The Cornell report the Post refers to in its criticism of Obama makes some persuasive arguments that Keystone will actually raise unemployment, not lower it:

1. TransCanada, the oil company responsible for Keystone XL, predicted that completion of the pipeline will end the glut of oil in the Midwest and raise the price of gasoline 10-20 cents a gallon for several years.¹ This will have a ripple effect throughout the entire economy and result in the loss of thousands of jobs. The profits will go to the oil companies, which will ship the oil to China.
2. Keystone XL will likely leak, causing oil spills, although it is hard to predict how often and how severe these leaks will be. Since the publication of the Cornell report, TransCanada has rerouted the pipeline away from sensitive watersheds in eastern Nebraska, so the Cornell report is out of date. A major leak, such as the one in Kalamazoo, costs millions to clean up. This will cut into the company's profit and decrease the number of permanent jobs it creates.
3. Keystone XL will contribute to global warming, which is responsible for ecocatastrophes costing billions of dollars. One study places the global warming potential of the Keystone tar sands oil deposits at 0.42 degrees centigrade. We can't predict how many jobs this will cost. We will only know that after global warming has occurred, but we can predict that the cost will be huge.
4. Operation of Keystone XL will impede progress in creating a green-jobs economy. Green companies that are just starting up will have trouble finding sources of capital if the financial interests believe they can make more money investing in new energy extraction projects.

President Obama has proposed an “all of the above” strategy that includes both increased fossil fuel production and subsidies for green industries. Politicians who support the oil companies have adopted this phrase, saying they support an all-of-the-above strategy when in reality they only support more fossil fuel production. There is no all-of-the-above strategy. Oil interests and green interests are competing for the same market, a market in which the well-entrenched and extremely profitable oil industry has an immense advantage.

Keystone XL is looking more dubious all the time.

1Cornell university Global Labor Institute, Pipe dreams: Jobs Gained, Jobs Lost by the Construction of Keystone XL, 27, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/globallaborinstitute/research/upload/GLI_KeystoneXL_012312_FIN.pdf. Note that this prediction comes from TransCanada itself, not a source opposed to the pipeline, as claimed in the Post.