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Washington D.C. is Swarming With Unaccountable Parasites

November 2, 2017

Washington D.C. is Swarming With Unaccountable Parasites

In theory, Americans should be proud of their national capital and all the important work that gets done there. In theory.

In reality, our nation’s capital is an utter cesspool of self-serving, unethical and unaccountable parasites. We all know it and, even worse, it’s probably a hundred times more grotesque than we can imagine. A distressingly high number of people attracted to this swamp don’t go there to do good public work or help the American people. They go in order to enrich themselves at our expense.

A particularly degenerate strain of D.C. cretin is the lobbyist. These people swarm into Washington to influence the purse-strings of the U.S. government and funnel as much American treasure as possible in the direction of their clients, including Wall Street oligarchs, defense contractors and barbaric foreign monarchies like Saudi Arabia. We’re told that Washington D.C. exists specifically to protect and benefit the American public, yet the average citizen is the one constituency which has virtually no actual representation there. Helping the vulnerable doesn’t pay very well.

Over the past couple of days, I’ve be reading political stories describing the “beltway buzz” in the aftermath of the Paul Manafort and Rick Gates indictments. I’ve found these articles quite instructive. The common theme is that hordes of the shady crooks who operate in D.C., and add absolutely zero value to society, are panicking that their gravy train of legalized corruption may be coming to an end.

To see what I mean, let’s examine two recently published articles. First from Politico:

Washington lobbyists who represent foreign powers have taken comfort for decades in the fact that the Justice Department rarely goes after them for potentially breaking the law. That all changed on Monday.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Downright Sinister Rearrangement of Riches

October 27, 2017

The Downright Sinister Rearrangement of Riches 

Simple Classifications

Let’s begin with facts.  Cold hard unadorned facts. Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit at standard atmospheric pressure.  Squaring the circle using a compass and straightedge is impossible.  The sun is a star.

The sun is not just a star, it is a benevolent star. Look, it is smiling…  sort of. [PT]

Facts, of course, must not be confused with opinions, which are based upon observations.  Barack Obama throws like a girl.  The Federal Register is for idiots.  Two slices of chocolate cake are one too many.  Are these opinions right or wrong?

The answer depends on who you ask.  What’s certain about opinions, however, is that like bellybuttons, everybody has one.  Moreover, unlike free drugs from the government, everyone is in fact entitled to their own opinion.

Moving on from facts and opinions, the next classification we encounter is the wholly asinine.  This broadly contains the absurd and ridiculous.  Take most university teachers, barring natural science professors, for instance.  They’re wholly asinine.  The wholly asinine also extends to editors at the New York Times, Washington Post, circus hunchbacks, and the like.

Lastly, we want to mention the downright sinister.  This includes sociopaths like Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, nearly all of Congress, the Federal Reserve, fractional reserve banking, Washington lobbyists, a good part of Wall Street, and much, much more.  Clearly, such people and professions don’t represent honest work.  Rather, they epitomize less than honest work that’s performed by less than honest people.
Sinister mafia boss from Arkansas, possibly checking classified material on private phone… [PT]     Photo credit: AP

Nixon Casts the Die

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wall Street Bankers and Lobbyists Move to Ensure Industry Continues to Regulate Itself

March 17, 2016

Wall Street Bankers and Lobbyists Move to Ensure Industry Continues to Regulate Itself

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Not content with continued prosecutorial immunity and trillions in taxpayer bailouts and backstops, Wall Street banksters are making moves to ensure they regulate themselves.

In case you’re still wondering who the real owners of this country are…

The Wall Street Journal reports:

ORLANDO, Fla.—Wall Street’s top lobbying group wants a closer relationship with the policy makers that oversee its member firms.

John Rogers, chairman of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and a top official at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., on Tuesday called for a standing body made up of bankers and regulators to discuss developments in policy, examination and enforcement. A key responsibility for the panel would also involve regularly providing guidance on postcrisis rules and other issues to financial firms.

Mr. Rogers said such a standing body isn’t novel, noting the Treasury Department operates such a group aimed at tackling money-laundering issues. That panel, he said, “can be extremely effective, providing regulators with valuable insight into the commercial viability and impact of their initiatives, and the industry with a greater sense of control over their destiny.”

Thanks for playin’ suckers.

Screen Shot 2016-03-16 at 2.00.55 PM

Wall Street’s definitely getting “ready for Hillary.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Oil Industry Lobbyists Played the Long Game to Access a Fuel-Rich Corner of Alaskan Wilderness

December 22, 2015

How Oil Industry Lobbyists Played the Long Game to Access a Fuel-Rich Corner of Alaskan Wilderness 

Joseph Sohm / Shutterstock

This story was co-published by ProPublica and Politico Magazine.

From his seat in the small plane flying over the largest remaining swath of American wilderness, Bruce Babbitt thought he could envision the legacy of one of his proudest achievements as Interior Secretary in the Clinton administration.

Babbitt was returning in the summer of 2013 from four sunlit nights in Alaska’s western Arctic, where at one point his camp was nearly overrun by a herd of caribou that split around the tents at the last minute. Now, below him, Babbitt saw an oil field —  one carefully built and operated to avoid permanent roads and other scars on the vast expanse of tundra and lakes.

Under the deal he’d negotiated just before leaving Interior in 2000, that would be the only kind of drilling he thought would be allowed in the 23 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, which, despite its name, is a pristine region home to one of the world’s largest caribou herds and giant flocks of migratory birds. The compromise was fair and, he hoped, enduring —  clear-eyed about the need for more domestic oil but resolute in defense of the wilderness.

The deal lasted barely 15 years.

In February, the Obama administration granted the ConocoPhillips oil company the right to drill in the reserve. The Greater Mooses Tooth project, as it is known, upended the protections that Babbitt had engineered, saving the oil company tens of millions and setting what conservationists see as a foreboding precedent.

How ConocoPhillips overcame years of resistance from courts, native Alaskans, environmental groups and several federal agencies is the story of how Washington really works. It is a story that surprised even a veteran of the political machine like Babbitt.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Cheating, No Problem: Automakers Win Again in Europe

November 1, 2015

Cheating, No Problem: Automakers Win Again in Europe

They run the show.

Brussels, Europe: A more wretched hive of corporate lobbyists, law firms, and money-grubbing apparatchiks you will struggle to find. The latest example of lobbying influence is one of the most egregious yet, since it will affect the quality (or lack thereof) of the air breathed by millions of Europeans for the foreseeable future.

Tough Talking

From September 1, 2017, new car models will have to pass a new emissions test before they can be put on the market. According to many headlines, the new tests are much tougher than the previous ones. “EU Car Emissions: Tough New Tests Backed,” proclaims the BBC. “EU Parliament Takes ToughStance on Emissions Tests,” thunders the trade journal Automotive News Europe.

The word “tough” normally evokes the idea of strength or resolution, something that is not easily broken or made weaker or defeated. Not so in this case. In the EU’s “tough” new tests, car models sold after September 2017 will not be allowed to “exceed nitrogen oxide emission levels by more than twice the technical limit,” reports the BBC.

Put another way, cars will be allowed to spew out twice the legal limit of nitrogen oxides (NOx) – or as a matter of fact, more than that (110%) – until 2020, and by up to 50% more from then on. The EU has just dramatically raised the emission limit instead of lowering it. So much for toughness.

The really funny thing (in the classic “if you don’t laugh, you have to cry” sort of way) is that the main purpose of the new rules is to regain public trust and confidence in Europe’s car industry.

“Public trust and consumer protection are at stake,” the European Union’s industrial policy chief, Elzbieta Bienkowska, told a business audience in Brussels on Oct. 22. “The only way in which we will restore public confidence is by acting quickly, collectively, coherently, and effectively. National authorities must play their role and work as active partners.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Canada’s Biggest Political Scandal You Never Heard Of

October 5, 2015

Canada’s Biggest Political Scandal You Never Heard Of

Big oil, taxpayers’ millions, call girls and a ‘mechanic’ named Bruce Carson.

It’s probably the biggest political scandal you’ve never heard of.

The tale involves Big Oil, millions of taxpayer dollars, call girls and someone the RCMP describes as “one of the prime minister’s longest serving advisors”: Bruce Carson.

And it largely took place at Stephen Harper’s alma mater: the University of Calgary between 2009 and 2011 with a cast of industry CEOs as well as several Harper ministers and aides, including Nigel Wright.

CANADA’S NO-TEETH LOBBYING ACT

The 1989 Lobbying Act bans public office holders from lobbying for five years after they have left office.

The act requires anyone paid to communicate or set up meetings with federal public office holders on a variety of subjects set out in the statute to register their activities in the Registry of Lobbyists, a federal list with more than 5,000 names.

The act, however, is weakly enforced and full of loopholes. Between 2005 and 2010, the nation’s lobbying commissioner referred only 11 cases to the RCMP. No charges were laid.

Since then the Office of the Lobbying Commissioner, the RCMP and Crown prosecutors have decided not to penalize 67 lobbyists caught violating the act and Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct.

Their identities have been kept secret.

To date, only one person has been found guilty of violating the act, and only two other people have been charged with violating it, including Bruce Carson.

Democracy Watch calculates that nearly 1,600 people have violated the Lobbying Act and Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct since 2004, but that 95 per cent of them were not caught and that 81 per cent were left off the hook.

“Lobbying Commissioner Karen Shepherd has clearly failed to enforce the federal lobbying law and code effectively as she has failed to even name and shame 81 per cent of the lobbyists caught violating the law,” saidDuff Conacher, co-founder of Democracy Watch and visiting professor at the University of Ottawa in a 2015 press release.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are US Regulators Trying to Cover Up Influence Of Lobbyists On New Oil-By-Rail Regulations?

August 9, 2015

Are US Regulators Trying to Cover Up Influence Of Lobbyists On New Oil-By-Rail Regulations?

It’s no secret that the oil and rail industries lobbied the Obama Administration heavily during the creation of new oil-by-rail regulations released this past May, with lobbyists reportedly not even taking a break the day after a major oil train accident.

But just how much influence did lobbyists actually have in the drafting of the regulations?

Environmentalists who criticize the new rules as far too weak to stop business-as-usual — which has already resulted in five oil train explosions so far this year — are endeavoring to find out by submitting Freedom of Information Act requests for correspondence between lobbyists and five federal agencies within the US Department of Transportation that worked on the oil train safety rules.

So far, they say, they’ve been stonewalled by the Obama Administration.

The FOIA requests were originally filed in January by La Crosse, WI’s Citizens Acting for Rail Safety, Communities for a Better Environment, Albany, NY’s Ezra Prentice Homes Tenants Association and ForestEthics. The rules came out on May 1.

The groups were seeking all records of communications exchanged between lobbyists and staff at the Federal Railroad Administration, the Surface Transportation Board, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Office of the Secretary of Transportation since January 1, 2012.

Some 97 individual lobbyists were named in the requests, among them representatives from trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the Association of American Railroads as well as oil and rail companies including Chevron, Tesoro, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF).

Six former members of the US Congress, including Trent Lott, Vin Weber, John Breaux, Steve LaTourette, Max Sandlin and Bill Lipinski, are also among the lobbyists named in the requests.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Clintons and Their Banker Friends

May 23, 2015

The Clintons and Their Banker Friends

The past, especially the political past, doesn’t just provide clues to the present. In the realm of the presidency and Wall Street, it provides an ongoing pathway for political-financial relationships and policies that remain a threat to the American economy going forward.

When Hillary Clinton video-announced her bid for the Oval Office, she claimed she wanted to be a “champion” for the American people. Since then, she has attempted to recast herself as a populist and distance herself from some of the policies of her husband. But Bill Clinton did not become president without sharing the friendships, associations, and ideologies of the elite banking sect, nor will Hillary Clinton. Such relationships run too deep and are too longstanding.

To grasp the dangers that the Big Six Banks (JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley) presently pose to the financial stability of our nation and the world, you need to understand their history in Washington, starting with the Clinton years of the 1990s. Alliances established then (not exclusively with Democrats, since bankers are bipartisan by nature) enabled these firms to become as politically powerful as they are today and to exert that power over an unprecedented amount of capital. Rest assured of one thing: their past and present CEOs will prove as critical in backing a Hillary Clinton presidency as they were in enabling her husband’s years in office.

In return, today’s titans of finance and their hordes of lobbyists, more than half of whom held prior positions in the government, exact certain requirements from Washington. They need to know that a safety net or bailout will always be available in times of emergency and that the regulatory road will be open to whatever practices they deem most profitable.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Lobbying: The National Petroleum Council

May 4, 2015

I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT LOBBYING: THE NATIONAL PETROLEUM COUNCIL

The National Petroleum Council includes top executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America. It has an annual budget of $4.5 million collected from members, and pays its executive director $750,000 in salary and benefits. And it regularly “makes recommendations” to the U.S. Secretary of Energy — as in its recent report “Arctic Potential: Realizing the Promise of U.S. Arctic Oil and Gas Resources,” which advocates changes to regulations that “are limiting Arctic exploration activity.”

So the NPC looks, walks and quacks like lobbyists. But legally it’s a “federal advisory committee,” a little-known type of organization that in appearance and often in reality provides yet another way for corporations to get what they want out of the government.

There are more than 1,000 federal advisory committees, including one about organ transplantation. The Department of Energy alone has 21 others in addition to the NPC. In theory all these federal advisory committees could provide a useful way for a range of experts and regular people to provide feedback on complex issues like the fossil fuel industry. In practice, the NPC is dominated by the industry itself. Of the NPC’s 210 members (all selected by Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and his predecessor), 173, or 82 percent, are from oil and gas companies, corporations that provide them support services, and large utility consumers.

You don’t even have to be a U.S. citizen or represent a U.S. corporation so long as you’re a big enough player in the oil industry — other members include Russell Girling, Canadian CEO and president of Transcanada (the company behind the Keystone XL); Canadian president and CEO of Enbridge, Al Monaco; and Michel Bénézit of the French multinational Total S.A. Members of the financial industry, such as the managing director of JPMorgan Securities, have a seat at the table as well.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the Fracking Lobby Setting the EU Energy Agenda?

April 15, 2015

Is the Fracking Lobby Setting the EU Energy Agenda?

A European expert panel on unconventional hydrocarbons has been almost entirely taken over by the fracking industry reveals a new investigationby Friends of the Earth (FoE) Europe and theCorporate Europe Observatory (CEO).

The advisory group, set up by the European Commission, is tasked with assessing ongoing fracking projects in Europe along with the safety and appropriateness of other unconventional technologies. Of those not employed by the Commission, over 70 percent of the panel have financial ties to the fracking industry.

The panel’s five leading chairmen include two executives from shale firms Cuadrilla and ConocoPhillips, two officials from pro-shale ministries in the UK and Poland, and a director of IFP Energies nouvelles, who is also an advisor to the Shale Gas Europe lobby group.

Less than 10 percent of those on the panel represent civil society and environmentalists. And two thirds of the academics and research organisations involved have links to the shale industry.

In-House Lobby

Shell, Total, ExxonMobil and GDF Suez are also represented on what has been dubbed “an in-house shale gas lobby” on EU energy strategy.


Graphic provided by Corporate Europe Observatory

Panel members openly recognise that the group’s intent is to prime future EU policy-making on shale gas.

 

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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