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The Brothers Koch quietly become largest tar-sands lease holders in Alberta (UPDATED)

The Brothers Koch quietly become largest tar-sands lease holders in Alberta (UPDATED)

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UPDATE: It looks like Steve Mufson and Juliet Eilperin, the authors of the Washington Post article upon which this post was based, are backing down on their claims — sort of. The Koch brothers have leases on a confirmed 1.1 million acres of Alberta tar sands, and the article’s authors cite unnamed “industry sources we consider highly authoritative” who estimate that amount of land to be closer to two million acres. Mufson and Eilperin claim that if the latter figure is accurate, the Koch brothers are indeed the largest lease-holders in the region. However, Jonathan Adler, a columnist for the Washington Post, indicates that it’s possible that Canadian Natural Resources holds leases on 2.5 million acres of tar-sands land, which would exceed even the Kochs’ theoretical holdings.

You can read Mufson and Eilperin’s fairly half-hearted mea culpa here, and Adler’s response to the original article here.


Charles and David Koch sure are a busy coupla pranksters! In the 2012 election, the Mark and Donnie Wahlberg of modern-day American capitalism spent more than $412 million trying (and largely failing) to get their favorite candidates elected. And they’re gearing up to drop some cash on this year’s elections too.

But fossil-fuel-loving politicians aren’t the only item in the Koch shopping cart. Turns out the wacky sibling duo has spent the past dozen years throwing substantial bills at tar-sands property in Alberta – enough to buy leases on 1.1 million acres worth, to be exact.

That makes Koch Industries the single largest tar-sands lease holder in the province, ranking ahead of energy giants Conoco Phillips and Shell. As a point of reference, Alberta has the third largest crude oil reserves in the world, second only to Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.

So what might this mean for the Keystone XL debate? As it happens, not that much. From The Washington Post:

The finding about the Koch acreage is likely to inflame the already contentious debate about the Keystone XL Pipeline and spur activists and environmentalists seeking to slow or stop planned expansions of production from the northern Alberta oil sands, or tar sands. Environmental groups have already made opposing the pipeline their leading cause this spring and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has called the Koch brothers Charles and David “un-American” and “shadowy billionaires.”

The link between Koch and Keystone XL is, however, indirect at best. Koch’s oil production in northern Alberta is “negligible,” according to industry sources and quarterly publications of the provincial government. Moreover, Koch has not reserved any space in the Keystone XL pipeline, a process that usually takes place before a pipeline is built.  The pipeline also does not run anywhere near Koch’s refining facilities. And TransCanada, owner of the Keystone routes, says Koch is not expected to be one of the pipeline’s customers.

However, as such a large stakeholder in the region, Koch Industries could stand to profit from Keystone XL because it’s expected to lower transportation costs, pushing other pipelines and rail companies to reduce their prices to stay in the oil-shipping game.

Koch Industries, the second-largest privately held company in the United States with annual revenues of $115 billion, is renowned for both its secrecy and the diversity of its holdings. Next on the company’s agenda? Sky’s the limit! They’re all over the place! By the time you get home tonight, there’s a chance that they may have acquired all of your shoes, but you probably won’t find out about it for another 12 years.


Source
The biggest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands isn’t Exxon Mobil or Chevron. It’s the Koch brothers., The Washington Post

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.

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The Brothers Koch quietly become largest tar-sands lease holders in Alberta (UPDATED)

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President Obama Takes on Overtime Rules

Mother Jones

From the New York Times:

President Obama this week will seek to force American businesses to pay more overtime to millions of workers, the latest move by his administration to confront corporations that have had soaring profits even as wages have stagnated….Mr. Obama’s decision to use his executive authority to change the nation’s overtime rules is likely to be seen as a challenge to Republicans in Congress, who have already blocked most of the president’s economic agenda and have said they intend to fight his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25.

This is obviously just the latest in Obama’s long series of Constitution-crushing moves that flout the law and turn the president into a despot-in-chief, gleefully kneecapping Congress and — wait. What’s this?

In 2004, business groups persuaded President George W. Bush’s administration to allow them greater latitude on exempting salaried white-collar workers from overtime pay, even as organized labor objected….Mr. Obama’s authority to act comes from his ability as president to revise the rules that carry out the Fair Labor Standards Act, which Congress originally passed in 1938. Mr. Bush and previous presidents used similar tactics at times to work around opponents in Congress.

Oh. So he’s just doing the same stuff that every other president has done. Sorry about that. You may go about your business.

For what it’s worth, this gets to the heart of my impatience with all the right-wing hysteria about how Obama is shredding the Constitution and turning himself into a modern-day Napoleon. I’m not unpersuadable on the general point that Obama’s executive orders sometimes go too far. But so far no one has provided any evidence that Obama has done anything more than any other modern president. They all issue executive orders, and Obama has actually issued fewer than most. They all urge the federal bureaucracy to reinterpret regulations in liberal or conservative directions. They all appoint agency heads with mandates to push the rulemaking process in agreeable directions. And they all get taken to court over this stuff and sometimes get their hats handed to them.

Is Obama opening up whole new vistas in executive overreach? I don’t see it, and I don’t even see anyone making the case seriously. You can’t just run down a laundry list of executive actions you happen to dislike. You need to take a genuinely evenhanded look at the past 30 or 40 years of this stuff and make an argument that Obama is doing something unique. Until you do that, you’re just playing dumb partisan games.

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President Obama Takes on Overtime Rules

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Senate votes to keep subsidizing flood insurance in flood-prone areas

Senate votes to keep subsidizing flood insurance in flood-prone areas

Liz Roll / FEMA

Members of Congress have been clamoring for months to undo one of the most ambitious pieces of climate-related legislation they ever passed. The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 would force coastal property owners to pay full market rates for their flood insurance. The law barely mentioned climate change, but it laid the groundwork for a more sane approach to building — and rebuilding — along increasingly disaster-prone coastlines and riverbanks.

Last Thursday, however, the Senate voted 67 to 32 to approve the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, which would delay the phaseout of federally subsidized flood insurance by as many as four years. That would postpone flood-insurance hike shocks for Americans living in coastal and shoreline properties. But it would also mean that the federal government would continue to encourage homebuilding in vulnerable areas — with taxpayers picking up the tab following inevitable inundations.

Unless, that is, the delays are blocked in the House, or vetoed by the president.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said that the House won’t take up a bill delaying the rate hikes. Budget hawks in the House, along with insurance industry reps and environmentalists, point out that the National Flood Insurance Program will soon be nearly $30 billion in debt — the result of below-market rates and a string of hurricanes that have pummeled the coasts.

But pressure is mounting to call a “time-out” on the rate hikes, so FEMA has time to more thoroughly study the economic impacts.

If the legislation does manage to pass the House, a veto might still stop it. The White House put out a statement last week expressing its concerns about the Senate bill. “Delaying implementation of these reforms would further erode the financial position of the [National Flood Insurance Program], which is already $24 billion in debt,” it said. But the statement contained no veto threat.

So it might fall to the budget hawks in the House to decide. If they do salvage Biggert-Waters, it will be in the name of fiscal conservatism, not in the name of preparing for climate change. Still, call it what you want: The two are increasingly synonymous.


Source
Senate approves delay in higher flood insurance premiums, The Washington Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Senate votes to keep subsidizing flood insurance in flood-prone areas

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