"Every dollar we spend in Afghanistan, every life we waste there, is a waste," said Nadler. "An intelligent policy is not to try to remake a country that nobody since Genghis Khan has managed to conquer. What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Moguls, the British, the Soviets, failed....It will take tens of years, hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of American lives, and we don't need to do it. We don't need to do it. We, frankly, have no right to do it. It's a fool's errand, and I just hope and pray that we get wise enough to stop sending our young men and women to waste their lives there, and our money that could be used to prop up our own people."

"I think that this war [Afghanistan], if it goes on and if it escalates, has the potential to destroy this presidency and to destroy the Democratic majorities in Congress," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) told Raw Story in an interview.

The New York congressman, who has called the Afghanistan war a "fool's errand," said he has no qualms opposing Obama and Democratic leaders on this sensitive issue ahead of the midterm elections, despite the harsh climate for his party.

"When you're dealing with war and peace you can't think of it in those terms," he said. "People are dying. The security of our country, the honor of our country, the lives of our men and women, the lives of foreign men and women - are at stake. And that's a lot more important, frankly, than partisan advantage."

In an interview with Raw Story, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) invoked a "supremacy of laws" when critiquing President Barack Obama's decision to "look forward and not backwards" on his predecessor's abuses of power.

"Those who misuse government power to break the law and subject people to improper pressure or torture ought to be prosecuted," said Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. "That's why we have laws."

Today, we received word that an American flag was hung upside down from a jack pine on Eagle Rock in observance of the Fourth of July and in response to the United States Environmental Protection Agency's recent decision to let Rio Tinto-Kennecott, a foreign corporation, decide for itself that it doesn't need required permits to take over public land.

We received two anonymous quotes explaining that, "Our government is giving land away, everything is going to hell and we're in distress"

"The flag represents three things, the people, the land, and the constitution, which is simply a statement of the people who live on the land.  Currently, I feel all three are in great distress.  This is what the upside down flag hanging at Eagle Rock means to me."

--we have uncovered thousands of pages of documents showing BP was willing to cut corners on safety in order to save time and money -- this despite the fact that BP's own engineers described the well as a "nightmare well."

June 15, 2010
Categories:  Energy

ExxonMobil's thick media strategy playbook

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) has dinged ExxonMobil, revealing documents that show they devoted 40 pages to a media strategy in their overall disaster plans and a fraction of that to a cleanup strategy

A 40-page appendix outlining how to deal with the media is part of the company's oil spill handbook. It addresses more than 60 topics with prepared talking points.

Here's the problem: the handbook contains just five pages for resources protection and nine pages for oil removal strategy.

This mine was vetted and recommended for approval by the Michigan Office of Geological Survey, part of the DNRE and the state equivalent of the now-infamous U.S. Minerals Management Service.

[T]he head of the Survey's mining team called the mining project "my baby" and identified Kennecott as his "customer."

During the application process, he admitted that he concealed an expert memorandum that reported on the risk of mine collapse, after which he was suspended .... and then reinstated as head of the mining team after an internal state investigation said he was motivated by ignorance, not malfeasance. (Well, that's a relief, right?) Another member of the state's mining team formed a business partnership with Kennecott employees to offer mining services to the private sector (the partnership was dissolved after it became public).  Finally, the Governor's UP representative who helped her formulate her position on the mine has also left government service to work for..... you guessed it:  Kennecott. The mining team recommended approval to the Michigan DEQ before it merged with the DNR to form the DNRE. And just days before that merger - perhaps to avoid tarring the new DNRE with this terrible decision - a mid-level DEQ staff member gave final approval to the operation of the mine.

And we thought MMS was corrupt.

The 1842 treaty was negotiated at LaPointe on Madeline Island in Wisconsin, and the Chippewa ceded parts of northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to the United States government for 25 years of cash payments, food, tobacco, and a final treaty stipulation that they would reserve their right to hunt, fish and gather on the lands they ceded until they left the area.

Article 6 of the same treaty states if the ceded territory is in a mineral district, only an act by the president can move them.

In 1983, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago affirmed that Chippewa Indian Tribes retained off reservation fishing, hunting and gathering rights in the 1837 and 1842 treaties. The court ruling is called the Voigt decision.

                 

Corporate Welfare. Corporations routinely pollute the air, ground, and drinking water while being subsidized by tax breaks from the state. Many states have a "look-the-other-way environmental policy" that subsidizes threats to human health and the natural environment. For example, Louisiana is a leader in doling out corporate welfare to polluters. In the 1990s, the state wiped off the books $3.1 billion in property taxes to polluting companies. The state's top five worse polluters received $111 million dollars over the past decade. (my bold)

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