By Rowan Wolf,  Editor, Cyrano’s Journal Today

Ronald Reagan, one of the biggest phonies and international bullies in American history. Mean-spirited, too. Remains the great saintly icon of the right, whom all ambitious reactionary politicians must invoke to polish their own credentials.

There are headlines that I just hate to see because what follows is just formulaic. “Investigations” into public employee benefits, pay, or retirement funds are a sure fire bet that big pressure to cut all of the above are coming. Instead, they should be asking, “How to we improve all worker’s wages and benefits?” Likewise, I cringed when I saw the headline “Ballooning food stamps likely to face deep cuts” – part of a larger article Big jump in food-stamp enrollment drives farm bill debate (Oregonian, 7/22/2012).

I remember, as likely do many of you, when the Gingrich Congress “Contract on (sorry, with) America”, decided that we needed a war on the poor. Bill Clinton negotiated in and we ended up with Welfare “Reform.” Or back to the (supposedly) great Ronald Reagan, who came up with the distinction between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.

Reagan changed the way the Consumer Price Index was calculated (mainly through adjusting both housing and fuel costs if I recall correctly). (He also started the “Drug War,” but that’s another (though related) story). The aim of both Reagan’s, and then Gingrich’s efforts were to reduce the number of people receiving “Welfare.” However, they did nothing to reduce poverty nor the need for the programs.

What did happen was that those receiving aid today are in much worse straits than those receiving assistance before the changes in policy and program.

Now we are still struggling in the mire of the great bank escapade, where the big investment houses bet all our houses (and everything in them) on long odds that ultimately had to collapse. The depression/recession is not over for most of the population (here or in Europe). This has left many depending on Food Stamps and Food Banks to get them and their families through the week.

Of course, one might have guessed that we were heading in a stingier direction when Food Stamps were renamed “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” (SNAP) in the 2008 Farm Bill (wikipedia). In other words, food stamps were not supposed to feed you anymore. They were just there to “supplement” ….what,  water? The names of things are so very important. So now we have an ongoing (and I think likely permanent) high unemployment and lack of living wages.  More people are qualifying for even the highly restrictive poverty level guidelines.

So once again, instead of asking “How do we support our population and get them opportunity for a better quality of life?”, the issue becomes decreasing the amount of funds available for assistance. That means either cutting the amount of assistance being received across the board; or changing eligibility guidelines to require people to be in even more dire situations before they are eligible.

As stated by Akiba Solomon (The Indypendent, July 27,2012):

The Senate version of this year’s Farm Bill cuts about $4.5 billion from SNAP. In real life, this means 500,000 households would lose $90 a month in benefits, according to the Food and Research Action Center. Meanwhile, the House Agriculture Committee’s version, passed early this month, includes a staggering $16.5 billion in SNAP cuts. Per Feeding America, this would result in 3 million people losing all of their benefits, 300,000 children going without school lunch, and 500,000 households losing $90 in monthly grocery money.

More “compassionate conservatism” – which I believe is a fancy way of saying “F**k you,” or “Go away and quietly die”. In other words, “compassionate conservatism” is about as 1984 double-speak as you can get.

The reality is that we (and the rest of the world) are in an economic muck that is not going to just clear up. This boondoggle has left millions of people struggling. Instead of addressing the issue and strengthening the safety net, our corporate sponsors say “get rid of the damn safety net – and all those social programs ( like schools) as well. The whole thing is not just wrong headed, it is cruel. Of course they may rename food stamps again to ease their consciences.

Perhaps they can call it SNAK (Small Nosh And Kibble), or NAP (No Assistance Program). It would then be clear to everyone how little people actually need food stamps, or more specifically, our need makes no difference.

Thanks to Kelly Mitchell for acronym ideas

Rowan Wolf is Cyrano’s Journal Today‘s editor in chief.  Cyrano’s Journal is part of the Cyrano’s Journal/Greanville Post group of publications.

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As tersely reported in the Canadian business press—
A long anticipated development

By Michael McCullough  | CanadianBusiness.com
(Originally: March 19, 2012)

U.S. President Barack Obama has made clear that when it comes to “fracking,” he is siding with the oil and gas industry. (Photo by Owen Sweeney / Rex Features)

Environmentalists heartened by Barack Obama’s refusal to issue a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline didn’t have long to bask in their victory. Just days later, the U.S. president made clear in his State of the Union address that when it came to the other big eco-controversy in America—hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to access natural gas reserves—he was siding with the oil and gas industry.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama proclaimed. His remarks were a clear indication that, while environmental groups, celebrity protesters and a handful of jurisdictions including Quebec and New York state continue to resist, the mainstream is prepared to ramp up gas production—and abide with the environmental risks involved.

Obama later spelled out that his administration’s support of the natural gas economy would entail a requirement that gas producers disclose the chemicals they pump under public lands to crack gas-bearing rock. But he also revealed plans to promote consumption by converting federal fleets to natural gas, offering tax incentives to transport companies for converting their vehicles, and creating five highway corridors, each with a string of natural gas fuel stations.

For Canada, America’s commitment to gas is a mixed bag. On the plus side, it promises to boost demand for gas producers hit by the lowest prices in 14 years. Right now, prices are so low leading producers such as ConocoPhillips and Chesapeake Energy are not only slashing budgets for new drilling but shutting inactive wells. As EnCana Corp. CEO Randy Eresman noted in the Calgary-based company’s 2011 year-end results: “For the industry as a whole, near-term natural gas prices are at levels below what it costs to add most new production, and in some places, may even be below what it costs to produce from existing wells.” In many cases, it’s only use-it-or-lose-it land leases, pipeline contracts and forward hedging that keeps the gas flowing.

Obama’s gas stimulus will likely make the U.S. more self-sufficient, which could accelerate the slide in Canada’s market share. The value of Canadian gas exports last year fell to $13.1 billion, from a peak of $35.6 billion in 2005, and analysts project the U.S. will become a net gas exporter within a decade.

Hope for exporting Canada’s surplus production, especially from the mammoth shale fields in northeastern B.C., now rests on the construction of terminals on the B.C. coast to liquefy the gas and ship it to Asia, where prices are currently six times higher than they are here. But though the N a t i o n a l Energy Board has granted permits for two such terminals, neither project has yet broken ground, and the window for taking advantage of high prices in Asia could soon close a North American production techniques spread to shale-rich China.

U.S. presidents since Richard Nixon have talked about weaning America off imported oil, but Obama is the only one who can claim to have succeeded in any great measure. Much of that is due to the drop in demand during the recession, combined with the growth in domestic oil production from states such as North Dakota. Natural gas is poised to further displace oil imports, especially in the commercial transportation sector.

That is no comfort to fracking opponents such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, who fear for everything from surface and groundwater contamination to the unintentional release of greenhouse gases.

“We don’t know anything about this. There’s been no credible study,” actor Mark Ruffalo says in a video on the NRDC’s website. Such complaints gained credence last December when a preliminary Environmental Protection Agency study found fracking by EnCana had sullied groundwater in Wyoming.

But when weighed against the need for energy security, all that now looks like a tolerable risk to Democrats and Republicans alike. America, desperate for a break on fuel, may well settle for a fracture.

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By Black Agenda Report  managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Fracking is about as ethical and responsible as the brain deciding to mine the liver and sell its contents…But the US is run by capitalists, and for them fracking makes good sense. Capitalism after all, is based upon externalizing, offloading your cost onto someone less powerful, or onto nature itself.

Fracking is the energy industry’s answer to peak oil, catastrophically offloading the increased cost of oil and gas extraction onto farmers, ranchers, humans who drink water, and the environment itself. It’s about as ethical and responsible as the brain deciding to mine the liver and sell the contents. And it’s national energy policy under the Obama administration.

Any time someone mentions corporate American technological innovation, you should think of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Fracking is how enormous amounts of oil and gas that used to be beyond the reach of energy companies is now being extracted across much of the United States. Barack Obama is the Fracking President. In his 2012 State of the Union he repeated the oil industry’s absurd and irresponsible claim that fracking would create 600,000 jobs.

“…the U.S. president made clear in his State of the Union address that when it came to the other big eco-controversy in America—hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” to access natural gas reserves—he was siding with the oil and gas industry.

“’We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,’ Obama proclaimed. His remarks were a clear indication that, while environmental groups, celebrity protesters and a handful of jurisdictions including Quebec and New York state continue to resist, the mainstream is prepared to ramp up gas production—and abide with the environmental risks involved.”

But the risks are beyond rational calculation.

Fracking is the explosive injection of huge volumes of water combined with secret mixes of toxic chemicals, heated hundreds of degrees past the boiling point of water and at hundreds of atmospheric pressures into deep underground rock formations where the amounts of gas or oil used to be too small to be worth going after. Some of that poisoned water seeps off to pollute finite underground water reserves. The rest is pulled back to the surface mixed with the oil, gas or whatever is being sought. When those things are removed, vast amounts of what used to be water, now irretrievably poisoned, are pumped deep into the earth.

That “water” eventually returns to us. It comes back in springs which are the sources of streams and rivers, and in wells used for irrigation and drinking water. People in areas where fracking has gone on for some time can often set afire whatever issues from their household plumbing. Fracking and disposal of large quantities of waste water may even be implicated in some seismic activity; earthquakes.

Fracking is the energy industry’s answer to peak oil. It keeps oil companies profitable by catastrophically offloading the cost of oil and gas extraction onto farmers, ranchers, humans who drink water, and the environment itself. And it’s national energy policy [3] under the Obama administration.

Let’s be clear. Fracking is about as ethical and responsible as the brain deciding to mine the liver and sell its contents.

But the US is run by capitalists, and for them fracking makes good sense. Capitalism after all, is based upon externalizing, offloading your cost onto someone less powerful, or onto nature itself. Thus capitalists make workers pay their costs by keeping wages and safety standards low. They make the public at large pay their costs by getting public subsidies and tax breaks, also by keeping safety standards lax or nonexistent, or sometimes through privatization, the handing over of public assets to private operators.

Nobody offloads costs onto the public and the environment like energy companies. Think about the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, which everybody is paying for except BP. Fracking allows energy companies to use million-year old underground water reserves (that’s why they are called “fossil waters”) their private toxic sewers.

In 2008 Obama supporters projected their environmentalist beliefs on him, pretending that he stood for “green jobs” and conservation. Since Obama announced himself, at the 2008 Democratic convention as the candidate of “clean coal and safe nuclear power” this was quite a stretch. They will have to stretch even further in 2012. The Obama administration is bullish on fracking [4].

There’s an enormous amount of local organizing across the country, from Ohio and New York to Colorado and California, opposing hydraulic fracking. But such efforts get little news coverage locally, and are invisible in national corporate media news. Thus environmentalists who want to support Obama can, if they try really hard, console themselves with administration fairy tales of “safe fracking,” or be content with regulations that might require companies to tell us what toxic chemicals are used in the process.

Fracking is reckless, irresponsible and downright evil. But the unwillingness of environmentalists to oppose energy policies from the Obama White House that they would never have tolerated from Republicans makes Barack Obama, as Glen Ford frequently puts it, “the more effective” not the “lesser” evil. Of course Mitt Romney is evil as well, and one of them will be president until the end of 2016.

What with choices limited to greater and lesser evils, or more and less effective evils, it might be time to ask ourselves, how is this politics of choosing evil working out for us? Can we, and why should we hold our tongues and noses to re-elect this fracking president?

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. Contact him through this site’s contact page, or at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.

Source URL: http://blackagendareport.com/content/should-we-really-re-elect-fracking-president

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