I’m with Skinner…bring the crackpots to Whitefish for all in the Flathead to see.
Dave Skinner has another must-read column in The Flathead Beacon this week as he marveled at the engineering feat behind the shipment of new equipment headed to Great Falls for a refinery expansion project.
He takes note of the lone radical environmentalists attempting to block the so-called megaloads…asking, “Is there any common sense left around here, or has a rising tide already drowned it all?”
From Skinner’s piece:
Then, on Sept. 2, I learned the Whitefish City Council, at the request of Glacier Climate Action, was considering sending the Surface Transportation Board a letter, asking for a public hearing about the Tongue River Railroad be held in Whitefish. I first thought, bad idea. But then I read the news: Rising Tide Seattle oil-train protestors were blocking the tracks in Everett, and did so for eight hours. One woman sat atop a 25-foot steel tripod stabilized by chaining the tripod legs to other protesters.
Now, did these people mine the ore and smelt the steel for the tripod, and, most important, did they recycle the steel afterwards? What about the toxic chemicals used to make the cell phones they used to talk to the media? How did they fuel their cars to haul all that junk from home to the tracks? With cruelty-free gut gas from free-range hamsters? Oh, you used a Prius? Fine, but Seattle gets at least 20 percent of its electricity straight from dirty old Colstrip.
So yeah, I dragged myself up to Whitefish and let the council know I think we should have a hearing on the Tongue River Railroad. Too often, I wonder if my America, where proud people think things through and make awesome things happen, is gone.
Rising Tide? – Flathead Beacon http://t.co/CeYpT9eYjQ share this @MTPetroleum @GDBlackmon @saeverley #mtpol #mtsen #missoula
— DGalt (@DGalt) September 10, 2014
Meanwhile, a former top economic adviser to President Obama and President Clinton says it is time to lift the oil export ban, and also gave some pretty strong hints that it is time to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.
From Politico’s Morning Energy:
SUMMERS SAYS TO LIFT OIL EXPORT BAN: Larry Summers said yesterday that ending the decades-old U.S. ban on exporting crude oil is a no-brainer. Lifting the prohibition on oil exports would reduce the price of gasoline, stimulate economic growth, boost domestic oil drilling, reduce the trade deficit and strengthen the dollar, said Summers, who served as director of the White House National Economic Council during President Barack Obama’s first two years in office and as Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration. “The merits are as clear as the merits with respect to any significant public policy issue that I have ever encountered,” Summers said at the Brookings Institution. Darren Goode has more: http://politico.pro/1tIEoZP
Summers talks Keystone XL: Larry Summers, President Obama’s former senior economic adviser, was careful yesterday when talking about whether the Obama administration ought to approve Keystone XL and how quickly. “If you think about it, we’re in the 21st century and shipping oil on trains is an early 20th century technology,” Summers said, after a long pause. “And so I would hope that we would be able to work through the various environmental issues more expeditiously than we have and I am very much aware of the toll that the Keystone issue has taken on relations with a crucial U.S. ally.” He added: “But it’s a complicated issue.”