From his Facebook page:
Don’t insult us by invoking the First Amendment. These people are your constituents, and what you did (sockpuppeting, failing to take credit for your own website) is dishonest and unethical.
If you have evidence that it has been done to you, present it or shut up.
It’s one thing to be an internet troll. It’s another to do it badly. But if you’re an elected official confronted with evidence that you’ve been trolling a constituent, a white-haired grandmother no less, don’t lie about it. On camera. (Video link) Continue reading
According to The New York Times, “some economists say” oil companies aren’t taxed highly enough, despite being subject to the highest effective tax rates among all industry categories.
“Some (economists/scientists/experts) say” is one of the oldest tricks in the Old Grey Lady’s handbag. With precisely the same amount of research and data collection that went into the Times’ assertion, I can say without fear of contradiction that “some economists” are idiots. Journalists too. Continue reading
It’s one of the cheesiest anti-oil PR campaigns I’ve seen: a “promoted” twitter account called @TheOilyBird, a snarky oil company h8r. Enviros and greenies retweet @TheOilyBird’s oil industry bashing, without bothering to look at its source.
As it turns out, TheOilyBird has his own website:
I’m fighting for a cleaner future. I’ve had it with the oil companies: They cost Americans money, pollute the environment, and are directly responsible for my slick condition. The worst part is, they’ll stop at nothing to block alternatives, like renewable fuel.
And there we find that the site and the twitter account are sponsored by Fuels America:
OK, so Fuels America is a coalition of large industrial companies and Ag lobbies to promote ethanol and the Renewable Fuels Standard, Congress’s ethanol mandate. Cool. If you don’t have a product that sells itself, attack its competitors.
I do find it amusing that DuPont owned Conoco until 1999, a year when oil traded as low as $10 per barrel. Conoco is now ConocoPhillips, the nation’s third largest oil and gas company. Seller’s remorse, maybe?
Ag giant Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM) has long cast a covetous eye on the motor fuel market, but can’t cut it without government help.
And as for the rest of the members of Fuels America, do the appreciate the irony that their product is primarily used as a gasoline additive? In other words, they complain about “dirty oil” but dirty oil is what makes their crappy* product marketable.
Let’s put aside the question of whether it’s wise to use food crops for fuel, given the calamitous impact of that policy on the Third World. Let’s also ignore the rather significant issue of whether there’s a net gain of energy in grain ethanol (which is why the industry clings so tightly to its tax credits and mandates — few people would freely choose ethanol as a fuel on its own merits).
Aside from all that, it is an undeniable fact that grain ethanol is an ecological disaster. Fertilizer runoff causes massive algae blooms which choke the northern Gulf of Mexico every summer. As documented in a recent New York Times article, corn is the most resource-intensive crop a farmer can plant. Driven by the economic pressure of corn prices which have tripled in recent memory, farmers in the semi-arid western plains often choose the short term benefit of corn over conservation of water in the rapidly-depleting Ogallala Aquifer:
At an average 14 inches per acre in a growing season, a corn crop soaks up groundwater like a sponge — in 2010, the State Agriculture Department said, enough to fill a space a mile square and nearly 2,100 feet high. …
But as long as there is enough water, most farmers will favor corn. “The issue that often drives this is economics,” said David W. Hyndman, who heads Michigan State University’s geological sciences department. “And as long as you’ve got corn that’s $7, then a lot of choices get made on that.”
The NYT article and its accompanying graphic are worth your time. Groundwater resources are truly irreplaceable. In some parts of western Kansas and the Texas Panhandle, the level of water in the aquifer has dropped 100 feet or more. Wells which once gave up water at the Macondo-like rate of 1600 gallons a minute (equivalent to 55,000 oilfield barrels per day) have dried up.
Subsidies for corn ethanol, and mandates for its use, are corporate welfare pure and simple. You’ll not find an honest environmentalist who supports its use as a motor fuel. But every four years we are subjected to an ugly spectacle called the Iowa Presidential Caucuses that unfailingly pump new life into these worthless programs.
* To be specific, by “crappy” I mean ecologically harmful, dirty, inefficient and corrosive.
P.S. Fuels America lies in its video when it says the oil industry receives government subsidies.
Cross-posted at RedState.com.
Under normal circumstances, we might not notice when a small-state Democratic elected official resigns from office in disgrace. But in Martha Shoffner’s case, we’ll make an exception. Not out of schadenfreude, mind you, but an inquisitive exploration of the mind of the corruptocrat, and their deep-seated yearning for pie. They’re not satisfied with a mere slice. They want the whole enchi…. well, you know.
Continue reading
From deep within the bowels of America’s most beloved bureaucracy:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/us/louisiana-inspires-reality-tv-shows.html
In the past few years, there have been shows about Louisiana alligator trappers, exterminators, sheriffs, prisoners, brides, shrimpers, nutria hunters, mixed martial arts fighters, garbage collectors, “bad girls,” overnight millionaires, run-of-the-mill rednecks and pawnshop owners (about whom there are multiple shows). There are more shows on the way, prompting the question of whether there actually are any interesting people left in Louisiana. …
The tax credits are certainly a big part of why the state seems to attract so many shows, people in the industry said, and there is quite a bit of simply following what has already worked. But there is also general agreement that Louisiana is just more interesting than other places, with an ideal mix of Deep South exotica and regular folk accessibility. And Louisianans like to talk.
“It’s like a two-dog race between Louisiana and Alaska,” said Brent Montgomery, the owner of Leftfield Pictures, which produces “Cajun Pawn Stars,” “Swamp’d!” and many other shows. “When you’re in Louisiana,” he said, “it’s like every single person there is employed by the state to tell you how great the state is.”
If you shut your eyes for just a moment while reading this latest HuffPo post by Robert Kennedy, Jr., you can almost hear the gobs of spittle smacking his monitor as he wrote. There’s really nothing like the pungent aroma of blue blood at full boil.
As you may recall, Kennedy is an attorney, activist and Senior Staff Luddite with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He also serves as president of RiverKeeper, an anti-fracking activist group that has benevolently saved New York State from the ravages of shale gas jobs and prosperity.
In his stream-of-semi-consciousness screed, Kennedy blames Republicans, conservatives, Climate skeptics and religious fundamentalists for a lack of progress on the Left’s environmental agenda. But he reserves a special place in hell for “Big Oil” (although it doesn’t really know who Big Oil is). It’s all a conspiracy, you see: Big Oil are the puppetmasters standing between us and the Green Future Kennedy envisions.
Filled with quasi-religious zeal, Kennedy apparently dispensed with the laborious process of fact-checking, editing and proofreading before clicking “Publish”. The results are nothing short of comical.
UFO expert, Dr. John Malley, of the U.N. Panel on Extraterrestrials:
Dr. Malley has been touring the globe, speaking to governments about the ongoing alien invasion (which he believes will last until December 2015) and how to best confront the aliens. “We have to behave in a proper way when dealing with the Gootans. If not, we are doomed,” Malley said. Continue reading
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