We know the Republicans are condemning President
Obama’s energy proposals, mainly his stance on the Keystone Pipeline from
Canada. The Canadians are going ahead with its southern portion. Of course,
this is all the more volatile with fast rising gas prices. [I believe I heard
last Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, that if we developed all our available oil supplies it
would have little effect on the market.]
Now for the interesting part, the Tea party is on board with the
environmentalists on against the pipeline. This from Bill Moyers blog:
Environmentalists,
including Bill McKibben, who have organized several
protest against the pipeline, expressed dismay: “Even though this doesn’t bring
new oil in from the tar sands,” Mr. McKibben said, “we stand with our allies
across the region who are fighting to keep giant multinational corporations
from condemning their lands. This fight is uniting people, from
environmentalists to Tea Partiers, in all kinds of ways.”
Wait a minute, environmentalists and Tea
Partiers? It’s true. Talking Points Memo reports:
“on the portion of the
pipeline that would link Nebraska to Texas, TransCanada has threatened to use
disputed eminent domain powers to condemn privately held land, over the owners’
objections. And that’s creating unusual allies — Occupiers, Tea Partiers,
environmentalists, individualists — united to stop TransCanada from threatening
water supplies, ancient artifacts, and people’s basic property rights.”
It reflects an overlap in ideology, the common fear shared by occupiers and tea partiers alike: the fear of massive institutional power (i.e. corporations or governments) stomping all over the rights, privileges, and well-being of individuals.
ReplyDeleteQuite interesting. Perhaps the Tea Party types are coming at it from a slipper-slope argument. They seem to have a strong overlap with those who objected to the Supreme Court "New London" decision and related issues in which middle class/poor people have their land stolen and are kicked out of their houses in order to build shopping malls or houses for rich people.
DeleteI see a big difference between that, and a narrow power-line-width "track" across distant uninhabited land. But to those who oppose all eminent domain, I guess it is all the same.