In the vary state synonymous with oil, property owners are fighting back against TransCanada and its Keystone XL Pipeline.
The Associated Press is reporting nearly half of the steel used in the construction of the pipeline is not American-made, the company is not promising to hire local employees and there is no guarantee being offered that that oil being transported to the Gulf will stay in the US. And TransCanada has engaged in land-grabbing in Texas. John Wayne wouldn’t like this and most Texans won’t like this news and most Americans across the map shouldn’t like it.
And certainly everyone with at least an ounce of concern or more for wildlife and the environment don’t want to risk this sort of toxic oil flowing down the length of our country. Texas isn’t and shouldn’t be the only state where this concern is rising to the surface.
So why is it happening at all? – Because GREED is so often backed by some powerful folks. And the local landowners and concerned citizens – who care about the environment, wildlife and property rights – are supposed to shut up and stand aside and bow down to Big Oil.
Even a majority of the US Supreme Court is telling us that our voices – because we don’t hold the power – should carry less weight than the voice of Corporate America. If you’ve got the millions to flood national TV ad time, you can do that too? – Right? … Like the propaganda-filled advertizing we see every half-hour from the likes of BP and Exxon.
These companies certainly have the right to buy ad time. But they don’t have the right to have more power over the political process or over the governmental process than each one of us. In fact, people should have more power than corporations. But what we’re seeing with the Keystone Pipeline and what we saw in the days leading up to and following the BP Gulf Oil Gusher, is part of the process.
Certainly, there are many cases where our best interests take the same path of the best interests of corporations. But WE should come first, especially when corporations are stepping over the line to stomp on our rights to a clean environment and healthy wildlife populations.
We have this from the AP story – “” A 78-year-old great-grandmother, Eleanor Fairchild, whose late husband worked in the oil industry, spent a night in jail after trespassing – along with actress Daryl Hannah of “Splash” fame – on land condemned on her 425-acre farm. “” – So they stole her land and then charged her with trespassing? How can this be?
This should be an illegal warping of the process of eminent domain. But this is another case where members of the US Supreme court have burned a section of the US Constitution.
Sadly, the propaganda has too many people and putting blinders on. That constant parade of look-how-great-we-are oil company ads is giving too many viewers a warm-fuzzy for Big Oil. BP is the hero of the Gulf region and Exxon really, really cares. In the cases of people who fall for this propaganda, I hope no one shows up at their homes promising to resurface their driveways if they give them $10,000 in cash upfront.
The risk of spills from the tar sands oil is great. Ask the people who live around the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010. The cleanup is still ongoing.
I remember hearing that the Keystone Pipeline would only be bwneficial if oil prices remained over $100/barrel. The argument that it would reduce prices is therefore misleading. Any benefit it would produce is negated by the need for artificially inflated prices. And BP, saviors of the Gulf, wouldn’t have needed to spend so much saving the Gulf if they hadn’t come so close to killing it! You don’t reward the assassin for performing CPR on his victim.