Archive for the ‘Transportation’ Category

July27

U.S. Chamber’s Pro-Fracking Tour Proves Its Limited Knowledge of Energy Realities

By: Tyson Slocum

"Tyson Slocum" "Public Citizen"

Come one, come all. Gather ’round for a pair of misguided tours touting the benefits of fracking, one organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the other by the American Petroleum Institute.

The Big Business mouthpieces are hosting a series of rallies and spending millions in political advertising in – what a shock – key election swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, urging the Obama administration to do more to promote hydraulic fracturing. But the Chamber must have been too busy flapping its jowls to read today’s Wall Street Journal story (and others) describing how major natural gas producers are posting disappointing returns and even losses because – get this – there’s too much natural gas production already. Case in point: The U.S. recently surpassed Russia as the leading natural gas producer on the planet.

Not only is the surplus more than our market can consume, it is more than our atmosphere can handle. Advances in extraction technologies are allowing big polluters to get to resources that once seemed out of reach. That may mean short-term profits for the gas and oil industry but, for the rest of us, it means adjusting to the painful realities of climate change. Pushing the fracking agenda is bad business any way you look at it.

This proves that the Chamber is pushing a political, rather than a business, agenda. This is particularly the case as the Chamber dismisses genuine environmental and public health concerns associated with fracking as pandering to Obama’s “environmental voter base.” How cynical can you get: a corporate trade association dismissing genuine grassroots concerns about water contamination, and increased emissions from wells and trucks? Shame on the Chamber: There is no such thing as benign fossil fuel extraction. There are real impacts on real people living across America, many of whom are organizing this weekend in the first national rally against fracking. The Chamber’s dismissal of their concerns as political pandering is offensive.

A sound energy plan is one that would empower Main Street communities to take the lead on sustainable energy independence through the promotion of rooftop solar, energy efficiency incentives, mass transit and other job-creating clean energy investments.

Maybe it’s best for the Chamber to give its advertising expenditures to charity and leave energy policy to those who actually know what they’re talking about.

For information on this weekend’s events, visit: http://www.energyvox.org/2012/07/25/stop-the-frack-attack/.

Posted in: Activism, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Regulation, Transportation0 comments

May24

With Gas Prices, It’s ‘Heads I Win, Tails You Lose’

By: Tyson Slocum

You might think that the declining price of gasoline means that we don’t have to pay attention to all that talk about oil speculation driving up the price of oil. Right?

Wrong.

Even though the price of gas has fallen, you’re still lining the pockets of Wall Street every time you gas up. As Memorial Day approaches and summer driving season kicks off, remember that speculators will clean up even as the price of oil drops.

It’s a rigged game, with rules that make you give your hard-earned money to financiers no matter what. It’s like the bully on the playground who established the ground rules for a coin toss game as “heads I win, tails you lose.” Under those rules, the bully always wins.

In this case, the bully is Wall Street. With oil markets, loose rules allow speculators – not end users – to dominate the volume of trading, increasing price volatility and making more money the more the price changes – whether that price is going up or down.

Goldman Sachs has admitted that speculation adds as much as $23.39 per barrel to the price of crude. That translates to 56 cents per gallon. (See here if you want confirmation.)

So, we pay more. They get richer. And it has little to do with actual supply and demand.

Illegal manipulation

You would think that since speculators can legally game the system, they wouldn’t need to resort to fraud or illegal manipulation. But last year, federal regulators charged five oil speculators with manipulating the price of oil in the early months of 2008 and making a $50 million profit from the scheme.

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Posted in: Activism, Congress, Consumer Protection, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Financial Reform, Regulation, Transportation, Uncategorized0 comments

March8

Keystone obstructionism, like the pipeline itself, defies consumer interests

By: Rachel Lewis

"Tyson Slocum" gasAs Reuters reports: “The U.S. Senate could vote as early as Thursday on a plan to fast-track the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, a bid that is unlikely to attract enough Democratic support to pass but will give its Republican supporters an opening to criticize President Barack Obama’s energy policies.”

The Keystone pipeline has been added on as an amendment to the House version of the much-debated transportation bill.

Public Citizen Energy Program Director Tyson Slocum, an oil and gas expert, had this to say of the House’s transportation rider:

It’s obstructionism at its worst to add the Keystone pipeline project as an amendment to the transportation bill.  The Keystone pipeline is irrelevant both in terms of domestic energy security and gas prices. The pipeline is designed to import Canadian crude, refine it, then export the U.S.-refined gasoline and diesel for sale to other countries, a pass-through that would do nothing for American consumers.

Slocum, who blogged about the American Petroleum Institute’s PR war framing on this issue for Citizen Vox a month ago,  continued: “In fact, Keystone’s export function will lead to higher gasoline prices for Americans.”

The idea that Keystone would help solve energy needs is a convenient ploy for Republicans to ignore real factors affecting gas prices, like rampant financial speculation on the energy commodity markets, where traders engage in short and long selling splicing and dicing that ought to give anyone who remembers sub-prime mortgage crash the shivers. Obama has not stooped so low himself, but his “reconstitution” of a task-force to look into financial speculation’s effect on gas prices is telling of the widespread cognitive dissonance in Washington, where the deep-pockets of Big Energy companies regularly command elected officials to turn a blind eye.

 

Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Climate Change, Congress, Consumer Protection, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Open Government, Regulation, Social Justice, Trade, Transportation, Uncategorized0 comments

November1

Bill Moyers remarks for Public Citizen’s 40th Anniversary Gala

By: Editor

Peabody Award-winning journalist Bill Moyers’ keynote remarks for Public Citizen’s 40th Anniversary Gala are found below.

"Bill Moyers" "Public Citizen"

I am honored to share this occasion with you.   No one beyond your collegial inner appreciates more than I do what you have stood for over these 40 years, or is more aware of the battles you have fought, the victories you have won, and the passion for democracy that still courses through your veins.  The great progressive of a century ago, Robert LaFollette of Wisconsin – a Republican, by the way – believed that “Democracy is a life; and involves constant struggle.”  Democracy has been your life for four decades now, and would have been even more imperiled today if you had not stayed the course.

I began my public journalism the same year you began your public advocacy, in 1971. Our paths often paralleled and sometimes crossed. Over these 40 years  journalism for me has been a continuing course in adult education, and I came early on to consider the work you do as part of the curriculum – an open seminar on how government works – and for whom.   Your muckraking investigations – into money and politics, corporate behavior, lobbying, regulatory oversight, public health and safety, openness in government, and consumer protection, among others – are models of accuracy and integrity. They drive home to journalists that while it is important to cover the news, it is more important to uncover the news.  As one of my mentors said, “News is what people want to keep hidden; everything else is publicity.”  And when a student asked the journalist and historian Richard Reeves for his definition of “real news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.”  You keep reminding us how crucial that news is to democracy.  And when the watchdogs of the press have fallen silent, your vigilant growls have told us something’s up.

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Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Climate Change, Commercialism, Congress, Consumer Protection, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Financial Reform, Health, Internet Free Speech, Litigation, Nuclear Power, Open Government, Pharmaceuticals, Product Safety, Regulation, Social Justice, Texas, Trade, Transportation, Uncategorized, Workplace Health & Safety5 comments

October21

Public Citizen celebrates 40 years of progress!

By: Rachel Lewis

Last night was a night to remember. From the performance of Capitol Movement, to the rousing speech by Public Citizen’s keynote Bill Moyers, energy filled the ballroom at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, D.C., where  public interest luminaries mingled with the next generation of Naders Raiders to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Public Citizen.

Cocktails were served beginning at 6 p.m. . Following this, attendees went to the main ballroom where dinner was served. Public Citizen board member Steve Skrovan, whose documentary about Public Citizen founder Ralph Nader is currently showing on Showtime, MCed the event and offered the following quote to start the evening off:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
-George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman (1903) “Maxims for Revolutionists”

Skrovan went on to say that he believed the ballroom of nearly 600 supporters was probably full of “unreasonable people.” One of those unreasonables: Joan Claybrook. Claybrook, who helped found the organization and served as president of Public Citizen for nearly three decades, spoke about her pride in the organization and all its accomplishments. Her remarks preceded a short video created to explain the origins of Public Citizen and highlight its accomplishments over the last four decades. It’s a must see! CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO WATCH THE VIDEO . . .


U.S. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), who worked at Public Citizen in our Congress Watch division a number of years ago, recounted the many lessons she had learned working at Public Citizen. Public Citizen board member and commentator Jim Hightower then spoke, telling the audience that he serves on only one nonprofit board. The reason he chose Public Citizen’s board: because Public Citizen knows you can’t sweet talk a pig out of a creek– you need to “get right up behind it and push it!” (He was explaining how hard we push to get things done and how we don’t back down.) Maybe you had to be there.

Hightower’s Texas humor was given a run for its money though when Public Citizen founder Ralph Nader took to the podium. While his remarks were earnest and provided often somber reflections on the history of the consumer movement he fathered and the challenges before our nation, his wit was clear. Nader, who once said the point of leadership “is to create more leaders,” said, “You can always tell a Public Citizen project director but you can’t tell them much.”

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Posted in: Activism, Campaign Finance, Climate Change, Commercialism, Congress, Consumer Protection, Energy, Environment, Ethics, Financial Reform, Health, Internet Free Speech, Litigation, Nuclear Power, Open Government, Pharmaceuticals, Product Safety, Regulation, Social Justice, Texas, Trade, Transportation, Uncategorized, Workplace Health & Safety4 comments

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