Over the last five years, Facebook employees have met with members of Congress and walked them through ways to best to use the Web site.
"Defying expectations, Congress has reached the homestretch on a major overhaul of federal transportation programs that is critical if the nation is to avoid steep cutbacks in highway and transit aid.
The bill is driven partly by election-year politics. Both Congress and President Barack Obama have made transportation infrastructure investment the centerpiece of their jobs agendas. But the political imperative for passing a bill has been complicated by House Republicans' insistence on including a mandate for federal approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. The White House has threatened to veto the measure if it retains the Keystone provision." "Critics of U.S. domestic energy policy are trying to maneuver the Keystone XL oil pipeline past the Oval Office, trumpeting the project as the 21st century version of the New Deal. The project has come to represent growing divisions in domestic energy policy during the presidential campaign cycle in the United States. In the long shadow of the project, however, are a series of domestic oil pipelines that could make Keystone XL redundant by the time it goes into service in 2015.
Republican lawmakers may try to force the administrations hands once again on the Keystone XL pipeline, a project meant to transfer crude oil from tar sand deposits in Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the southern U.S. coast. Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney mourned, before an audience of supporters in Nevada, that the U.S. government was able to put its manufacturing muscle on display by building the interstate highway system and the Hoover Dam. Now, the U.S. government "can't even build a pipeline," he said in a reference to Keystone XL.
Since the fight over Keystone XL began, however, several projects have developed that could make the pipeline redundant. TransCanada, the company behind Keystone, said the $13 billion extension will play a key role in linking a "secure and growing supply" of Canadian crude oil to refining markets in the United States. But another pipeline, the Bakken Crude Express, planned from extensive oil deposits in the Northern Plains, will service similar U.S. refining markets for about 10 percent of the cost of Keystone XL. And Canadian pipeline company Enbridge may beat TransCanada to the punch with its plans to reverse the flow on the Seaway pipeline, which would ease the glut of Canadian and North Dakota crude. Enbridge also wants to build its Flanagan South project to trading hubs in Cushing, Okla., and expects an in-service date of 2014. That's a full year ahead of Keystone XL, assuming TransCanada gets the federal approval it needs to build the entire pipeline."
TransCanada's Preferred Alternative Keystone XL Pipeline Nebraska Corridor
via http://boldnebraska.org/keystone-xl-reroute and http://boldnebraska.org/uploaded/pdf/transcanada_prefered_route.pdf
via TransCanada's Initial Report Identifying Alternative and Preferred Corridors for Nebraska Reroute: http://boldnebraska.org/uploaded/pdf/KXL_Nebraska_Initial_Report.pdf
"Opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are preparing for a new series of public meetings in May sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality."
"Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality Director Mike Linder said the meetings are designed to give landowners and others a chance to discuss the pipeline review process. The meetings will have an open-house format, offering personal access to department staff and to TransCanada officials.
"For the first time since President Obama issued a controversial order halting its progress, the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline is once again on track for bureaucratic review after TransCanada submitted a new route through Nebraska designed to avoid environmentally sensitive areas.
The new plan, which TransCanada submitted to the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality on Wednesday, takes the Keystone project out of the deep freeze that began in January when Obama agreed with the recommendation of the State Department to reject the initial pipeline application. This new development, first reported by Fox News, allows Nebraska officials to review the impact of the pipeline's adjusted route. It also opens the door for the pipeline's builder, TransCanada, to submit a new complete proposal covering the entire length of the pipeline to the State Department for its review." 
"The US has regained top spot from China as the biggest investor in clean energy in 2011, according to global rankings.
The table, published in a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, showed that US invested more than $48bn (£30bn) in the sector, up from $34bn in 2010. China slipped to second place, the authors reported, with investment only increasing by $0.5bn to $45.5bn. Globally, overall financial backing in clean energy technologies hit a record $263bn, up 6.5% from 2010 levels. The report, Who is Winning the Clean Energy Race, showed that G20 nations accounted for 95% of the investment in the sector (which does not include nuclear power). 
"The on-again, off-again Keystone XL pipeline gained new traction in Nebraska on Wednesday. State legislators authorized the state Department of Environmental Quality to begin evaluating options for a new route outside the sensitive Nebraska Sandhills, the marshy hills and grasslands that lie atop the nation’s most important agricultural aquifer.
Critics of the pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, say the legislation amounts to a rubber stamp for TransCanada. The Canadian company is maneuvering to build the $7-billion pipeline, and the project's political travails have become a poster child for the nation's energy woes.
The bill, passed on a 44-5 vote, sidesteps an earlier law adopted in a special session of the Legislature only last fall. That measure requires most new oil pipelines to undergo a rigorous review process through the publicly elected Public Service Commission.
The new measure instead allows the Department of Environmental Quality to study the route. It also allows the governor — who has already said he wants the pipeline to go forward, as long as it avoids the Sandhills — to decide whether to approve or deny it.
Gov. Dave Heineman is expected to sign the bill into law, though opponents already are considering the possibility of constitutional challenges."
"NEW statistics show an ever-more-startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else — and the desperate need to address this wrenching problem. Even in a country that sometimes seems inured to income inequality, these takeaways are truly stunning.
In 2010, as the nation continued to recover from the recession, a dizzying 93 percent of the additional income created in the country that year, compared to 2009 — $288 billion — went to the top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with at least $352,000 in income. That delivered an average single-year pay increase of 11.6 percent to each of these households. Still more astonishing was the extent to which the super rich got rich faster than the merely rich. In 2010, 37 percent of these additional earnings went to just the top 0.01 percent, a teaspoon-size collection of about 15,000 households with average incomes of $23.8 million. These fortunate few saw their incomes rise by 21.5 percent. The bottom 99 percent received a microscopic $80 increase in pay per person in 2010, after adjusting for inflation. The top 1 percent, whose average income is $1,019,089, had an 11.6 percent increase in income."
"A solid majority of Americans think the U.S. government should approve of building the Keystone XL pipeline, while 29% think it should not. Republicans are almost twice as likely as Democrats to want the government to approve the oil pipeline. About half of independents also approve."
"President Obama will issue a memo Thursday telling federal agencies to expedite permitting for an Oklahoma-to-Texas oil pipeline that makes up the southern portion of the Keystone XL project, the White House said.
He'll also issue a broader executive order demanding faster permitting and review decisions for energy- and transportation-related infrastructure. The upcoming memos, to be announced formally during a visit to Oklahoma, are among a series of steps the White House is taking to parry GOP attacks on Obama’s energy record amid rising gasoline prices. Obama, as part of a four-state energy-themed tour that began Wednesday, will be in Cushing, Okla., tomorrow to emphasize support for a planned pipeline from that area to Gulf Coast refineries." 
For a moment last year, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan 's star shone brightly as he unveiled his party's bold deficit-whacking budget proposal — that is, until seniors rebelled over his plan to dramatically change Medicare ."
'People are ready to be talked to like adults, not like children. They know that something is wrong. They know this government's off its rails,' Ryan, 42, said between fast bites of cafeteria takeout lunch in his budget committee office. 'lAnd I really think the politics, if we help push it, will turn to rewarding the people who are bold in taking on the problems — and penalizing the people who don't.'" Democrats are thrilled with the political opportunity. Ryan's original proposal would eventually have replaced Medicare's guarantee of medical coverage with a plan that would have provided future seniors a fixed amount with which to buy their own insurance. Democrats see that as a prime example of the GOP's rightward overreach since taking the House majority. Ryan's new budget is expected to include a revised provision backed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that addresses some of the criticisms. It would still give future seniors a fixed amount, but it would allow them to use the money to stay in the traditional Medicare program. They would have to pay out of pocket if the costs of the program were higher than the government subsidy — or buy an alternative plan. Wyden is likely to oppose the Ryan budget's other provisions, limiting the patina of bipartisanship the GOP hoped for.
"Unions may be united in working to re-elect President Barack Obama, but their leaders also are trying to repair bitter divisions over his rejection of an oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.
Trade unions representing workers who stand to benefit from thousands of new construction jobs from the Keystone XL pipeline are furious at other unions that joined environmentalists in opposing the project. AFL-CIO leaders hope to smooth tensions at their executive council's annual winter meeting that starts Monday in Orlando, Fla. The issue reflects a decades-old conflict between union leaders who believe creating jobs is paramount and others who are more strongly aligned with progressive groups on environmental and social causes. After the White House blocked the pipeline in January, Laborers union president Terry O'Sullivan said he was "repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women." His harsh words were directed at groups such as the Transport Workers Union and the Amalgamated Transit Union, which said the risk of possible oils spills and environmental contamination outweighed the benefit of new jobs. Several larger unions, including the Communications Workers and Auto Workers, also jumped in with praise for Obama, agreeing with his administration's arguments that a quick deadline forced by Republicans didn't provide enough time for a fair review." |
Mobile optimized, offering syndicated columnists, blogs and news stories with moderated comments...
"A former partner of Mitt Romney’s at Bain Capital argues that more income inequality is good for the economy."
"Ever since the financial crisis started, we’ve heard plenty from the 1 percent. We’ve heard them giving defensive testimony in Congressional hearings or issuing anodyne statements flanked by lawyers and image consultants. They typically repeat platitudes about investment, risk-taking and job creation with the veiled contempt that the nation doesn’t understand their contribution. You get the sense that they’re afraid to say what they really believe. What do the superrich say when the cameras aren’t there? With that in mind, I recently met Edward Conard on 57th Street and Madison Avenue, just outside his office at Bain Capital, the private-equity firm he helped build into a multibillion-dollar business by buying, fixing up and selling off companies at a profit. Conard, who retired a few years ago at 51, is not merely a member of the 1 percent. He’s a member of the 0.1 percent. His wealth is most likely in the hundreds of millions; he lives in an Upper East Side town house just off Fifth Avenue; and he is one of the largest donors to his old boss and friend, Mitt Romney. Unlike his former colleagues, Conard wants to have an open conversation about wealth. He has spent the last four years writing a book that he hopes will forever change the way we view the superrich’s role in our society. “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” to be published in hardcover next month by Portfolio, aggressively argues that the enormous and growing income inequality in the United States is not a sign that the system is rigged. On the contrary, Conard writes, it is a sign that our economy is working. And if we had a little more of it, then everyone, particularly the 99 percent, would be better off. This could be the most hated book of the year." "Freedom PAC, the pro-Connie Mack political committee, has announced it'll start running ads hitting Sen. Bill Nelson for backing President Obama over the administration's decision to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline." 
"Routes unveiled...all of the routes still cross the Sandhills and still cross the Ogallala Aquifer. TransCanada's pipeline still carries toxic tarsands and still carries too much risk to our families and communities."
All of the routes are unacceptable and show once again we can not trust TransCanada." 
"Nebraska officials on Thursday unveiled TransCanada's newly proposed route for its controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would jog eastward to avoid the key aquifer underlying the Sand Hills region of the state.
TransCanada, a Canadian pipeline company, hopes to build the 1,400-plus mile Keystone XL down to Cushing, Okla., connecting it there with a second, southern leg. That 480-mile leg would take the diluted heavy bitumen oil from Alberta's tar sands region to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas. President Obama in January rejected the pipeline, saying legislation passed by Congress didn't allow enough time to evaluate the pipeline's environmental impact or whether it is in the national interest. Congress had given the White House 60 days. The potential new route is being unveiled just as a Republicans in Congress are considering an attempt to wrest authority for its review from the Obama administration. Currently, the State Department must approve the permit. But the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has inserted language into a key transportation bill that would essentially mandate federal approval of any route that Nebraska approves. The Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely to back the House's language, and Mr. Obama has said he would veto such a bill with such a stipulation. But the moves create a new wrinkle in the election-year political maneuvering by both parties to blame the other for delays in the pipeline's construction. "
"Defying a White House veto threat, the House on Wednesday passed legislation that extends transportation program funding through September and mandates construction of a controversial oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast.
All but 14 Republicans, with support from 69 Democrats, voted 293-127 for legislation that falls far short of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) earlier plan to move a sweeping five-year, $260 billion package." 
"Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline proposal say a Nebraska bill on the verge of final lawmaker approval would effectively rubber-stamp the project.
Lawmakers are scheduled for a final vote Wednesday on a bill that would allow the state Department of Environmental Quality to resume its review of the proposed crude-oil pipeline. A federal permit was denied in January.
Opponents say they're concerned because the department is part of Gov. Dave Heineman's administration. Heineman supports the project."
"The White House has consistently said tapping the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a 696-million-barrel oil stockpile along the Gulf Coast, is one option to deal with soaring oil prices and potential supply losses.
'We are coordinating with our partners around the globe to confront the global phenomenon that is the volatility in the energy markets right now. But I don't have any specific guidance for you on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, other than to tell you something that we've said many times, which is that it's an option on the table,' White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday. 'But anybody who tries to convince you, in this government or any other government, frankly, that specific decisions have been made or actions had been proposed is not speaking accurately.'" 
"If we cannot agree to say no to projects that will entrench the use of fossil fuel energy -- even if they offer some short-term benefits -- we cannot hope to prevent global warming."
"The Keystone XL Pipeline shows little sign of going away. Despite the Obama administration's decision to reject the first proposal, it is widely expected that TransCanada will submit a revised plan in the coming months. And in the meantime, the pipeline continues to attract powerful backers and opponents. Former President Bush has called it a "no-brainer" and Joe Nocera has written two columns defending the pipeline in the New York Times (column 1; column 2). Many have argued as vociferously against the pipeline, including environmentalist Bill McKibben (founder of 350.org) and a group of Nobel Peace Prize winners including the Dalai Lama. I have already written that I agree with the pipeline's opponents. Given that pipelines are like marriages, I do not believe this is a good soul mate for America when the long-term implications are considered. But since we can expect these issues to be discussed repeatedly in coming months, it is worth taking the time to separate fact from fiction." 
"The fight against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is starting to feel more like a bad horror movie everyday. Just when you think our heroes have struck a fateful blow, out comes a hand from the soil. "The zombie lives!"
This Thursday, President Obama will travel to Cushing, Oklahoma to give a press conference in a pipe yard owned by TransCanada, the company that has been trying (and failing) to build the Keystone XL pipeline for the last few years. The president is expected to trumpet his commitment to fast-track the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline and may even go so far as to endorse the entire project itself. I'm not sure what campaign advisor convinced the Obama team that this press conference was a good idea, but they're way off the mark. Let's be realistic here: no matter what President Obama does, Big Oil and Republicans are going to continue to accuse him of being anti-oil development. Case in point, Obama's speech in Oklahoma is being protested by oil workers who, no doubt, will be chanting "Drill, Baby, Drill" even though the president has opened up more drilling than any of his predecessors. Try as he might, Obama just isn't going to get Big Oil to call off their dogs."
"Top executives with Oklahoma-based oil-and-gas companies are greeting President Obama’s upcoming visit with a push for approval of the entire Keystone XL pipeline, not just the Oklahoma-to-Texas portion that the White House is pledging to expedite.
That message is part of a broader open letter to Obama from the heads of four prominent independent oil-and-gas companies: Continental Resources (whose CEO is heading Mitt Romney’s energy advisory team), Chesapeake Energy, Devon Energy and Sandridge Energy. It comes ahead of Obama’s Thursday visit to Cushing, Okla., where he’s expected to tout plans to expedite federal permits for the southern part of TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone project."
"Republican claims about the benefits of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are greatly overblown, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Sunday.
'It won't lower the price of oil. Construction won't be complete for a long, long time,' Reid said during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the proposed Alberta, Canada, to Texas pipeline. "And under the way it's constructed now, all the oil would be sold elsewhere. We can't have that. When I say elsewhere, I mean to some other country.' Reid also pointed to what he said were 'many exaggerations about tens of thousands of jobs.' The majority leader’s comments come just days after the Senate narrowly defeated a GOP-backed measure to green-light the pipeline. Republicans have vowed to continue pushing the project. Republicans have made approving the pipeline a top policy priority in recent months, bashing President Obama for rejecting a key permit for the project in January. Obama said his decision was not based on the pipeline’s merits." |
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