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Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?

Mother Jones

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According to the latest New York Times poll, Gary Johnson is supported by 26 percent of young voters.1 Of these Johnson supporters, how many are liberal former supporters of Bernie Sanders who would normally be expected to switch to Hillary Clinton? No one seems to have explicitly polled about this, but various pieces of evidence suggest that it’s around half. If you make some reasonable assumptions and do a bit of arithmetic, this suggests that somewhere around a fifth of young liberal voters are casting their lot with Johnson.

In one sense, this is easy to understand. Johnson favors legalization of marijuana. He’s good on civil liberties and wants to cut way back on overseas military interventions. He’s moderate on immigration. He’s pro-choice and supports gay rights. There are plenty of things for Bernie supporters to like about him.

On the other hand, Johnson is a libertarian. Here’s a smattering of what else he believes:

He supports TPP.
He supports fracking.
He opposes any federal policies that would make college more affordable or reduce student debt. In fact, he wants to abolish student loans entirely.
He thinks Citizens United is great.
He doesn’t want to raise the minimum wage. At all.
He favors a balanced-budget amendment and has previously suggested that he would slash federal spending 43 percent in order to balance the budget. This would require massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and social welfare programs of all kinds.
He opposes net neutrality.
He wants to increase the Social Security retirement age to 75 and he’s open to privatization.
He opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare.
He opposes practically all forms of gun control.
He opposes any kind of paid maternity or medical leave.
He supported the Keystone XL pipeline.
He opposes any government action to address climate change.
He wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero.
He appears to believe that we should reduce financial regulation. All we need to do is allow big banks to fail and everything will be OK.
He wants to remove the Fed’s mandate to maximize employment and has spoken favorably of returning to the gold standard.
He wants to block-grant Medicare and turn it over to the states.
He wants to repeal the 16th Amendment and eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent FairTax that exempts the poor. This is equivalent to a 39 percent sales tax, and it would almost certainly represent a large tax cut for the rich.

Some of her weirder beliefs aside, it’s easy to see why former Bernie supporters might turn to Jill Stein. But Gary Johnson? He makes Hillary Clinton look like the second coming of FDR. Unless you’re basically a single-issue voter on civil liberties and military force, it’s hard to see why any lefty of any stripe would even think of supporting Johnson. What’s the deal here?

1Oddly enough, the story that originally reported this has been silently purged of this statistic, but let’s go with it anyway.

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Why Are There Any Liberals Supporting Gary Johnson?

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11 Things the Republican Party Just Promised to Do to the Environment

Mother Jones

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In 1952, a massive fire—fueled by oil and industrial waste—engulfed Ohio’s Cuyahoga River. Was that the inspiration for the platform Republicans just adopted in Cleveland? AP file photo

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Republican Party’s 2016 platform, released on Monday at its national convention in Cleveland, has sections called “A New Era in Energy” and “Environmental Progress.” Both titles are inaccurate. Perhaps they’re meant sarcastically?

If you want a guide to what Republicans would do with full control of the federal government, you couldn’t get a better one than this 2,400-word part of the platform. Like the EPA/Department of Interior spending bill House Republicans passed last week, it makes the GOP’s incredibly radical agenda crystal clear: deregulate pollution, halt any action to prevent climate change, and expand fossil fuel use.

Here are the 11 biggest lowlights:

Cancel the Clean Power Plan. This plan—the EPA’s program to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants—is the most important piece of President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. The GOP platform dismisses it as part of “the President’s war on coal”: “The Democratic Party does not understand that coal is an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource. Those who mine it and their families should be protected from the Democratic Party’s radical anti-coal agenda.” As Grist’s Rebecca Leber noted, this language comes almost verbatim from a pro-coal lobbying group. To call coal “clean” is just a falsehood. In addition to its massive carbon footprint, the burning of coal leads tons of conventional pollution such as smog, soot, and acid rain.

Build the Keystone XL pipeline and more like it. “We intend to finish that pipeline and others as part of our commitment to North American energy security.” Republicans have long been fixated on how awesome Keystone would be, even though current gasoline prices might make it not worth building. If gas prices spike, though, Keystone approval could have major consequences for the climate as it would help bring more super-dirty tar-sands oil to market. This plank is basically the opposite of the Democratic platform’s call for the next administration to use a “Keystone test” and reject infrastructure projects that will exacerbate climate change.

Kill federal fracking regulations. Because nothing should stand in the way of fossil fuel development.

Oppose any carbon tax.” Many conservative policy wonks support a carbon tax as the most market-friendly, efficient way to reduce carbon emissions. The Republican Party, though, is determined to quash anyone’s hopes of a bipartisan compromise on climate action.

Expedite export terminals for liquefied natural gas. To liquefy gas, ship it across the ocean, and re-gasify it uses a lot of energy and results in a huge carbon footprint. Republicans want more of this.

Abolish the EPA as we know it. The platform calls for turning the EPA into “an independent bipartisan commission” and shifting responsibility for environmental regulation to the states. This would remove the federal government’s ability to study the effects of pollution and establish safe standards. In a particularly Orwellian touch, the Republicans promise that a kneecapped EPA would adhere to “structural safeguards against politicized science.” That actually means safeguards against scientific findings they don’t like. In other words, they would politicize the science.

Stop environmental regulatory agencies from settling lawsuits out of court. Huh? Republicans have been pushing this for a while. Here’s what it’s about: When an agency doesn’t do its job of enforcing a law like the Clean Air Act—often the case, especially under Republican administrations—environmental groups sue to force it to. If the agency thinks it will lose, it may then reach a settlement and agree to do its job going forward. That’s what the platform aims to prevent. Fighting in court until every last appeal is dead can make cases drag on for years, and Republicans want to get away with not regulating polluters for as long as possible.

“Forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide.” This one pretty much speaks for itself. It would wipe out the agency’s ability to reduce emissions and slow climate change.

Turn federal lands over to states. “Congress should give authority to state regulators to manage energy resources on federally controlled public lands within their respective borders,” the platform declares. The federal government controls huge swaths of land in the West and already leases much of it for oil, gas, and coal extraction. The platform is quite open about the fact that Republicans think states will extract more rapaciously. That’s precisely the point. And ultimately they want the land entirely under state control: “Congress shall immediately pass universal legislation providing for a timely and orderly mechanism requiring the federal government to convey certain federally controlled public lands to states.” It’s unclear which lands they are talking about, but it’s a safe bet that they mean those that could generate the most money through their despoiling.

Revoke the ability of the president to designate national monuments. The platform calls for amending the Antiquities Act of 1906 to require congressional approval for new national monuments, and it also calls for state approval of new monuments or national parks. So there would be no more Democratic presidents protecting a sensitive, beautiful, or historically significant area from development if Republicans control Congress or the state where it is located.

Halt funding for the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCCC is the treaty system through which the world’s 195 nations work together to avoid catastrophic climate change. To defund it would undermine the Paris Agreement that was struck last December and throw a huge wrench into global climate progress. That’s the point. The platform explicitly states, “We reject the agendas of both the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.”

There’s also some random small-bore stuff, like opposition to listing the gray wolf or the lesser prairie chicken as endangered species. There are a ton of right-wing talking points, like declaring the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “a political mechanism, not an unbiased scientific institution.” And there are additional paeans to the virtues of increased fossil fuel extraction.

In one particularly impressive rhetorical backflip, after the platform calls for virtually eliminating all environmental protections, it then says, “The environment is too important to be left to radical environmentalists.” But most Americans support regulations for clean air, clean water, and reducing climate pollution. The real radicals are the anti-government extremists who would reverse 45 years of environmental progress.

This is a document aimed squarely at appeasing the party’s base. If nothing else, you have to credit the Republicans for their audacity. No wonder most of the GOP members of Congress who accept climate science are skipping the convention this year.

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11 Things the Republican Party Just Promised to Do to the Environment

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Keystone pipeline still a pain in nation’s butt

Keystone pipeline still a pain in nation’s butt

By on May 11, 2016Share

Will it ever end?

Six months after President Obama nixed the Keystone XL pipeline — a decision it took him seven years to reach — Keystone is back in the news.

The Hill reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — along with Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas — filed briefs this week in support of a lawsuit against the Obama administration. Pipeline company TransCanada filed the suit in federal court in January, arguing that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority when he denied a permit for Keystone. (Also in January, TransCanada filed a separate claim under NAFTA arguing that the U.S. should pay the company more than $15 billion to compensate it for “costs and damages that it has suffered” because of Obama’s decision. Boo hoo.)

In the newly filed briefs, the states argue that by rejecting the pipeline, the president dampened employment opportunities. These so-called “employment opportunities” were an oft-cited argument in favor of building the pipeline, but the State Department estimated that Keystone would have created as few as 20 permanent jobs.

Maybe the states could just open one Arby’s and call it even.

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Keystone pipeline still a pain in nation’s butt

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After Keystone failure, TransCanada comes up with another pipeline scheme in the U.S.

After Keystone failure, TransCanada comes up with another pipeline scheme in the U.S.

By on 18 Mar 2016commentsShare

After its hopes of cutting an enormous tar-sands oil pipeline across North America were dashed by anti-Keystone activists, TransCanada has moved on to something new: buying the Houston-based Columbia Pipeline Group, Inc. (CPG), a large natural gas pipeline company. The move will not improve TransCanada’s poor environmental reputation, as CPG has a troubled environmental history of its own.

On Thursday, The New York Times reported that TransCanada, Canada’s second-largest pipeline operator, said it would buy CPG for $10.2 billion. CPG owns about 15,000 miles of natural gas pipeline, mainly in the heavily fracked Marcellus and Utica shale regions. After the deal is made, TransCanada will own about 57,000 miles of gas pipelines in all. TransCanada CEO Russ Girling said during a conference call that the deal was “a rare, attractive opportunity that will create one of North America’s largest natural gas businesses,” according to the Times.

CPG and its subsidiaries have a record of pollution and of safety and environmental violations. Last year, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection cited Columbia Gas Transmission, a unit of CPG, for 125 violations in 2011 and 2012 at a site where it was constructing a pipeline. Those included multiple violations of the Clean Streams Law, including potentially polluting nearby waterways that were considered “High Quality” or “Exceptional Value Waters.” CPG was fined $150,000 for the violations, and was ordered to cover an additional $21,500 for the cost of inspections.

In 2014, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration fined Columbia Gas Transmission $28,800 for failing to provide proper fire protection at a liquefied natural gas plant in Chesapeake, Va., in 2012.

Last July, a diesel spill was discovered along the right-of-way of a buried natural gas pipeline owned by Columbia Gas of Virginia. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality concluded that the spill contaminated the main drinking water source for a community in Monroe County, W.Va. Columbia Gas of Virginia was a subsidiary of CPG when that pipeline went online in 2014, though last year it was separated off to become a unit of NiSource Inc.

It’s not clear yet when the acquisition will be completed. TransCanada did say last November that it was looking to acquire a company that could help it expand its pipeline network into the Marcellus shale region. With the wounds from its Keystone battle still raw, TransCanada is now shifting some of its attention from Canadian tar sands oil to U.S. natural gas. Climate activists and environmentalists will want to keep a close eye on this soon-to-be-even-larger pipeline giant.

CPG and TransCanada did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

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After Keystone failure, TransCanada comes up with another pipeline scheme in the U.S.

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The US Will Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—Until After the Paris Climate Talks

Officials postponed the auction of an oil and gas development lease until next spring. Anton Watman/Shutterstock It’s hard to lead the charge against the global consumption of fossil fuels while making money off the sale of them. Perhaps in recognition of this conundrum, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which manages some 245 million acres of public land, has announced it will postpone an oil and gas lease auction scheduled for December 10 until March 17, 2016. The leases for sale include nine parcels of land in Arkansas and Michigan, totaling 587 acres, eligible for fossil fuel exploration. That means the federal government won’t be selling off land for oil or gas development just as the COP21 climate talks in Paris approach their dramatic conclusion. The planned sale had been drawing heat from climate activists, who are rallying behind the “keep it in the ground” philosophy that to prevent the worst effects of climate change, the world needs to leave most of fossil fuel reserves untapped. President Barack Obama articulated that concept in his rationale for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline in November: Ultimately, if we’re gonna prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re gonna have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky. That said, the sale will go ahead a few months after the delegates return home from Paris. If Obama rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline for the stated reasons, why go ahead with federal mineral rights leases? One difference is the money from these routine drilling rights sales goes to the government, not to a Canadian energy company. Another possibility is that the goal isn’t really to stop extracting fossil fuels. Read the rest at CityLab. View this article:  The US Will Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—Until After the Paris Climate Talks ; ; ;

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The US Will Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—Until After the Paris Climate Talks

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Keystone Pipeline Finally Put Out of Its Misery

Mother Jones

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President Obama has finally killed off the Keystone XL pipeline for good—or until a Republican occupies the White House, anyway. His reasoning was so typically Obamian I almost laughed:

For years, the Keystone pipeline has occupied what I frankly consider an overinflated role in our political discourse. It became a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter.

That’s Obama for you. He just can’t stand the tiresome political preoccupation with shiny toys rather than stuff that actually matters. And he’s not afraid to scold us about this every once in a while.

Want to know more? Tim McDonnell has the whole story here.

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Keystone Pipeline Finally Put Out of Its Misery

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Republicans Are Very Mad About Obama’s Keystone XL Decision

Mother Jones

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Friday morning, after years of heated battles between environmentalists and Republicans, President Barack Obama announced that he is rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline.

In a speech, the president criticized both supporters and detractors of the pipeline from placing too much emphasis on a project that, according to the State Department’s analysis, would neither create many jobs nor ruin the climate if approved. Still, reactions to his decision from Republicans in Congress and the 2016 presidential primary were swift and terrible.

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic candidates were quick to praise the decision:

Notably absent, so far, is a reaction from Hillary Clinton. She only recently took a public position against the pipeline, after years of dodging the question.

UPDATE 3:30pm ET: A couple latecomers:

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Republicans Are Very Mad About Obama’s Keystone XL Decision

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Obama says “no” to TransCanada’s latest Keystone gambit

Obama says “no” to TransCanada’s latest Keystone gambit

By on 5 Nov 2015 4:28 amcommentsShare

On Monday, TransCanada tried a desperate move to salvage its plan to build the Keystone XL pipeline: It asked the State Department to delay its review of the project, in the hopes that the delay would put the decision in the hands of the next president, and in the hopes that the next president would be a Republican.

On Wednesday, the Obama administration said no dice. From The Washington Post:

The State Department formally rejected a request by TransCanada Corp. for a “pause” in the pipeline’s approval process, a move that would have effectively deferred a decision until after next year’s U.S. presidential elections.

State Department officials said the administration’s review of the project —now in its seventh year — would continue, barring a decision by TransCanada to withdraw its application altogether.

Climate activists and anti-Keystone protestors cheered the decision, of course, and called for Obama to just reject the whole damn pipeline already. “Now that he’s called TransCanada for delay of game, it’s time for President Obama to blow the whistle and end this pipeline once and for all,” said Jamie Henn, communications director for 350.org.

Activists are pushing the president to reject Keystone XL before the big U.N. climate talks that will begin on Nov. 30 in Paris, to show the world that he’s serious about reining in carbon pollution. There’s a good chance he’ll do it. Stay tuned.

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Obama says “no” to TransCanada’s latest Keystone gambit

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TransCanada tries desperate move to save Keystone XL pipeline

TransCanada tries desperate move to save Keystone XL pipeline

By on 3 Nov 2015 6:40 amcommentsShare

President Obama has reportedly been gearing up to reject the Keystone XL pipeline project, so pipeline company TransCanada is trying a last-ditch effort to get the decision punted to Obama’s successor.

The latest twists and turns in the long-running Keystone saga kicked off on Monday afternoon, when White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded to a question from a reporter by saying that President Obama will make a decision on the pipeline before he leaves office. It’s been rumored for months that his decision will be “no.” As The Washington Post reports, “The administration is preparing to reject a cross-border permit for the project aimed at transporting hundreds of thousands of barrels of heavy crude oil from Canada’s oil sands region to Gulf Coast refineries, according to several individuals who have been briefed but spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House’s decision has not been announced.”

A few hours after Earnest’s comments, TransCanada sent a formal letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking the State Department to “pause” its review of the Keystone proposal. His department has been tasked with determining whether the project would be in the “national interest” and then reporting its determination to the White House. TransCanada is arguing that because the pipeline’s planned route through Nebraska is in contention, the federal review should be put on hold until the route is finalized.

That’s pretty cheeky: After years of complaining that the administration has been delaying its Keystone decision, TransCanada is now asking the administration to further delay it.

Climate campaigners and anti-Keystone activists see TransCanada’s move as a desperate ploy that has exactly nothing to do with the pipeline route. “The route in Nebraska has been uncertain for years,” activist Jane Kleeb of the group Bold Nebraska told the Omaha World-Herald. “The only difference is they know they are losing now.”

Activists are loudly calling on Obama to reject TransCanada’s request for a delay and then reject the pipeline altogether. Said 350.org founder (and Grist board member) Bill McKibben, “No matter what route TransCanada comes back with, the ultimate problem all along with Keystone XL has been that it’s a climate disaster.”

If TransCanada’s request for a delay is granted, the final Keystone decision would likely fall to the next president. TransCanada is obviously hoping that president will be a Republican, as all of the Republican candidates support Keystone, while the top three Democratic candidates oppose it. Hillary Clinton had refused to take a position on the pipeline for years, but in September she finally came out against it. “This is nothing more than another desperate and cynical attempt by TransCanada to build their dirty pipeline someday if they get a climate denier in the White House in 2017,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld of the League of Conservation Voters.

If Obama sticks to his plan and denies TransCanada the permit it needs, the move could help build his legacy as a leader in the climate fight. Says McKibben, “If President Obama rejects this pipeline once and for all, he’ll go to Paris with boosted credibility — the world leader who was willing to shut down a big project on climate grounds.” A major round of U.N. climate negotiations will start in Paris on Nov. 30, and Obama has been working to get other big countries to make significant pledges of climate action ahead of that meeting.

A pipeline rejection from Obama might mean that TransCanada is screwed even if a Republican moves into the White House in 2017. “The company would either have to restart the difficult and costly application entirely from scratch — or, more likely, abandon the pipeline altogether,” writes Brad Plumer of Vox.

So where does all this leave us now? Exactly where we were two days ago: waiting to see what Obama will do.

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TransCanada tries desperate move to save Keystone XL pipeline

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TransCanada Just Asked the United States to Suspend the Keystone XL Pipeline

Mother Jones

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In an unexpected turn of events, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline proposal requested to temporarily suspend its US permit application on Monday.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, the Calgary-based TransAmerica Corporation asked that State Department, which reviews cross-border pipelines, delay its decision while the company goes through a state review process in Nebraska. Earlier in the week, the White House indicated its intention to rule on the controversy-ridden pipeline by the end of Obama’s term; some were expecting the State Department decision to reject the pipeline as soon as the end of the week.

“We are asking State (Department) to pause its review of Keystone XL based on the fact that we have applied to the Nebraska Public Service Commission for approval of its preferred route in the state,” TransCanada Chief Executive Russ Girling said in a statement.

But some are speculating that the request is a political play: A delay in the permit could mean pushing the issue beyond the 2016 election—and into the hands of a new administration.

TransAmerica has vowed over the years that it would not back down on the proposed pipeline from Alberta to Texas in the face of economic or political challenges, and until recently, it had been pushing for a speedy border permit approval.

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TransCanada Just Asked the United States to Suspend the Keystone XL Pipeline

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