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The appeal argues the Public Service Commission did not adequately consider the pipeline's environmental impacts, or sufficiently explore alternative routes for the 30-inch line. Its route skirts Lake Ashtabula, in east-central North Dakota, which supplies drinking water to the city of Fargo....
One of the landowner plaintiffs in the appeal, Janie Capp, of Lankin, called the line "a risky experiment" with "higher pressure and heat than normal, and pipe that is weaker than the normal minimum federal standard."
"It's a huge leak waiting to happen, and it's our water that's at stake," Capp said [Dale Wetzel, AP, "Keystone Oil Pipeline Opponents Appeal ND Construction Decision," Grand Forks Herald, 2008.03.25].
Keystone pipeline project spokesman Jeff Rauh tells the Herald that he doesn't expect the appeal to delay the beginning of construction in June. Evidently he doesn't expect any of the eminent domain hearings to slow things down, either. I guess if I were Big Oil, I'd be pretty confident too that the judiciary will follow the legislative and executive branches in rolling over for corporate greed and America's addiction to oil.
At what point did following the law equate to rolling over?
ReplyDeleteThat point was 1886, when activist judges unilaterally decided that "following the law" meant granting corporations personhood. And to hearken back to my Senator Pettigrew sympathies, "following the law" is awfully convenient for the corporations when they pay for the lawyers who run for office and write and enforce the law to favor the plutocrats.
ReplyDeleteWhich is the lesser of evils:
ReplyDeleteOn one hand we have the environmental impact of the pipeline and land being reallocated against some land owners wishes.
On the other hand our primary source of oil comes from countries that are extremely violent and hate the US.
I would classify Canada as tolerating the US and definitely (other than hockey) not violent.
We must reduce our dependency, that is also a given. However our dependency on oil is not going to go away any time soon. There is no miracle solution.
Given the choice of having a pipeline run through the Dakotas and a refinery in SD versus begging for more oil from terrorists, the pipeline does not seem that bad to me.
Why settle for the lesser of two evils when there's a better third option: protect individual property rights and the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign oil of any flavor by using less oil?
ReplyDeleteSo your disdain for the governmental oversight relates back to a US Supreme Court decision, I believe, from 1886 defining corporations as persons? Are you kidding? The SD statute allowing pipelines to be considered common carriers wasn't enacted until 1980 and that doesn't have any need for a definition of corporation.
ReplyDeleteLet me submit Corey that you are having considerable trouble seeing the forrest through the trees. You can talk "activist judges", or even try to argue strict construction, but don't try and sound smart by pointing to a court ruling that originated before the automobile was even invented.
Um... I suppose I'm guilty of trying to sound smart if I point to any element of government created before the automobile, like, oh, say, the Constitution (1789)?
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not kidding. I suggest that part of the reason landowners are being railroaded by TransCanada, DM&E, and their own government is that corporations have been granted personhood and thus have even more power to manipulate the system to suit their profit goals. Am I wrong on that point?
Anonymous 11:32. Court rulings, like the Constitution, are always referred to in rulings concerning items that were later invented. Show us one case where the court said, geez, this is new territory so the Constitution and past rulings don't apply here so we'll just make it up as we go along. Madville's arguing the court looked at precident and got it woefully wrong. Next time create a believable strawman.
ReplyDeleteYou missed the point that pipeline detractors aren't arguing for less government oversight - but for more intelligent, long term thinking oversight that balances individual and society's needs. Detractors earlier argued for the pipeline spill trust fund, for routing it on established infrastructure corridors, and for profit sharing in lieu of near worthless rents in an inflationary economy.
Yes, you are absolutely wrong and you sound silly making the point. You are advocating unfairness and near socialism. Your point is that a person or corporation, which entirely inside the rules, shouldn't be able to exercise their statutory, not even constitutional, rights to profit. Your argument violates so many different areas of constitutional rights, it is hard to find a place to start. Your argument, taken to the next step, essentially negates the right of a person, or corporation, to make profit by either hard work or dumb luck.
ReplyDeleteYou argument is one of scale. You just don't like large corporations, especially large, profitable corporations. If this was a small corporation, or even a start up with a big idea, I have a hunch this wouldn't be near as big an issue for you. Professors, masking as intellectuals, are free to have this opinion, because their theories only apply in a controlled, imaginative setting. Those of us in the real world, those of us who buy burgers at McDonalds and gas at Shell, aren't allowed the luxury of such fantasies.
You are certainly allowed your opinion. This crazy constitution you speak of allows you this right and the right to spread your beliefs, but it remains illogical for me to believe that life can be as utopian as you expound.
anonymous 1:28. Wrongo. What we oppose is privatizing profits while socializing costs. We don't begrudge the profit and the hard work behind it; we loathe the taxpayer bail out of the socialized costs when the venture springs a leak, refuses profit sharing with affected landowners, or goes bankrupt. We've had enough of crony capitalism masquerading as the free market. If, if corporations are persons - then we demand they show personal responsibility for their acts and ommissions.
ReplyDelete