OK, The GOP Wants To Rape And Plunder The Environment-- What About The Democrats?

The wonders of tar sands oil comes to beautiful Michigan

I was uneasy about Obama right from the start. I did vote for him in 2008, despite my fears that he was a corporate shill masquerading as a progressive. When his first term proved me right, I had no problem at all voting for a third party candidate in 2012. But I must say, there was one policy area where I actually did trust Obama and believed everything he said: the environment, especially in regard to global warming. His administration hasn't lived up. They're obviously not a bunch of rapacious plunderers like any garden variety GOP administration but they haven't done half as well as what was desperately needed. What surprised me this week is that a Gallup survey indicates that a plurality of Americans agree that a lot more needs to be done to protect the environment.

Americans tilt toward the view that the government is doing too little to protect the environment-- at 47%-- while 16% say it is doing too much. Another 35% say the government's efforts on the environment are about right. These views have not changed much since 2010, although Americans in most years between 1992 and 2006 were more likely than they are today to say the government was doing too little to protect the environment.

...Significantly more Democrats (59%) than Republicans (33%) say the government is doing too little to protect the environment-- reflecting general philosophical differences in approach to the role of government across party lines. And, concomitantly, more than one in four Republicans vs. 2% of Democrats say the government is doing too much to protect the environment.

Of course it isn't only Republicans who sell out to the corporate special interests and criminally participate in wrecking the environment. The highest lifetime score for any Republican, a dismal 38.41, is held by New Jersey mainstream conservative Frank LoBiondo. There are 21 House Democrats with worse scores! With the exception of 4 astonishingly corrupt Blue Dogs-- John Barrow (GA), Henry Cuellar (TX), Collin Peterson (MN) and Jim Costa (CA)-- all the Democrats with the low scores are freshmen. In fact the only freshmen with 100% pro-environmental scores are

• Joyce Beatty (D-OH)
• Tony Cardenas (D-CA)
• Matt Cartwright (D-PA)
• Jared Huffman (D-CA)
• Alan Lowenthal (D-CA)
• Rick Nolan (D-MN)
• Donald Payne (D-NJ)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)
• Mark Takano (D-CA)
• Mark Veasey (D-TX)

The only other freshman with a stellar progressive voting record is Carol Shea Porter (D-NH). No one else cuts the mustard, although only one has a zero rating similar to a few dozen Republicans: ConservaDem Gloria Negrete McLeod (CA). The House hasn't voted on the Keystone XL pipeline yet. The Senate kind of did. Last week, North Dakota Big Oil and Gas shill John Hoeven introduced an amendment promoting it and it cleared the Democratically-controlled Senate 62-37, every single Republican and 17 Democrats voted YES, these Democrats:

• Max Baucus (MT), who was actually a cosponsor with Hoeven (and has taken $375,315 from Big Oil and Gas)
• Mark Begich (AK- $185,205)
• Michael Bennet (CO- $149,920)
• Tom Carper (DE- $88,060)
• Bob Casey (PA- $131,350)
• Chris Coons (DE)
• Joe Donnelly (IN)
• Kay Hagan (NC)
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND- $58,250)
• Tim Johnson (SD- $130,006)
• Mary Landrieu (LA- $967,474)
• Joe Manchin (WV- $253,400)
• Claire McCaskill (MO- $84,208)
• Bill Nelson (FL- $93,617)
• Mark Pryor (AR- $197,800)
• John Tester (MT-$58,366)
• Mark Warner (VA- $82,700)

The video above is a campaign ad from Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin. He now represents Mayflower, Arkansas, the town drowning in tar sands oil. So... speaking of the Keystone Pipeline that the Republicans and other conservative whores are so eager to see approved, Brad Plummer wrote about a trip down the pipeline from Alberta to Texas in yesterday's Washington Post a kind of a synopsis of a book by his colleague Steven Mufson. Key points:

1) Extracting oil from tar sands is carbon-intensive, but Shell thinks it can be viable even with a carbon tax

2) In Alberta, the process of mining tar sands for oil has produced huge “tailings” ponds that can be a menace to birds.

3) TransCanada has been buying up rights-of-way across the Great Plains in anticipation that the pipeline will be approved-- and, when necessary, asking the courts to exercise eminent domain

4) The oil industry in North Dakota is now growing so fast that companies are struggling to find workers.

5) TransCanada is promising that it now has the technology to guard against pipeline leaks…

6) …But many environmentalists say that tar-sands pipelines are overly leak prone

7) The oil in the Keystone Pipeline is destined for Port Arthur, Tex., which has seen a boom in refinery capacity-- but without much benefit to the actual city

Serious tar sands oil spills in Arkansas and Minnesota last week serve as another warning to greedy politicians eager to please their corporate masters.

An ExxonMobil pipeline transporting heavy crude from Canada ruptured Friday dumping thousands of barrels of oil and water in an Arkansas subdivision, forcing the evacuation of almost two dozen homes according to Reuters. Exxon's Pegasus pipeline-- which has a capacity of more than 90,000 barrels per day-- was shut down shortly after the leak was discovered. Company officials had no estimate on when the pipeline might reopen as of Sunday. The incident in Arkansas came just days after a train carrying Canadian oil derailed in Western Minnesota spilling an estimated 30,000 gallons of crude.

Chris Hayes had more on the Arkansas catastrophe-- and what it says out our oil-soaked future-- on his new MSNBC show.