Oil Donors Fete Romney Days Before Unveiling Energy Plan
By Jim Snyder and Kasia Klimasinska | Bloomberg – 6 hours agoWhile the presidential election isn’t until November, it’s already clear that Mitt Romney has won over America’s oil and gas industry.
Days removed from fundraisers attended by Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM)’s Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson and Continental Resources Inc. (CLR) Chairman Harold Hamm, Romney called for the aggressive development of fossil fuels to make the U.S. an “energy superpower” in a 21-page plan released yesterday.
Opening the Atlantic coast to oil and gas production and giving states control over energy development on the federal lands within their borders, would help achieve North American energy independence by 2020, create 3 million jobs, and add $1 trillion to federal, state and local government budgets, according to the plan.
Oil industry executives lauded the proposal. Democrats said it would weaken federal environmental safeguards.
“The Romney plan demonstrates a very clear understanding of how America’s oil and natural gas companies, like mine, work,” Virginia Lazenby, the chairman of Bretagne LLC, an oil and gas company based in Nashville, said in a statement released yesterday by the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
“The states, not bureaucrats from Washington, best know how to protect the environment while allowing for responsible American energy production,” said Lazenby, who is also chairman of the Washington-based trade group.
Achievable Plan
While every president since Richard Nixon has promoted energy independence, Romney told supporters at Watson Truck and Supply in Hobbs, New Mexico, yesterday that his plan was achievable.
“This is not some pie-in-the-sky kind of thing,” he said.
The speech capped a week of energy events as Romney, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, seeks to use the issue as a springboard for a broader discussion about the U.S. economy, where unemployment remains above 8 percent.
As governor of Massachusetts, Romney once vowed to close a coal plant because it “kills people.” As a presidential candidate he has embraced fossil fuels as an engine for economic growth.
President Barack Obama has spent too much time and money promoting clean-energy sources like wind and solar power, while neglecting fossil fuels that drive the economy, Romney has said.
Production Increased
The White House says oil and gas production has increased during Obama’s first term, driving down U.S. dependence on foreign oil to its lowest level in almost 20 years.
On Aug. 21, Romney attended an energy roundtable in Houston with Tillerson, Hamm, and Richard Kinder, the head of energy pipeline and storage company Kinder Morgan Inc. (KMI) The event was part of a series of fundraisers expected to raise as much as $7 million for his campaign.
Tyson Slocum, director of the Energy Program for Public Citizen, said Romney was benefiting from his party’s historic ties to the energy industry.
“What’s a surprise to me is how politically entrenched with the Republican Party the oil industry continues to be,” he said in a phone interview.
Before this week, oil and gas employees and their families had contributed $4 million to the Republican National Committee, its 6th largest source of donations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group.
The industry, through political action committees, is the 10th biggest giver to the Romney campaign. Employees working in the energy and natural resources sector contributed $4.2 million to Romney compared with $1.3 million to Obama.
Faster Permits
Exxon, Continental Resources and Hess Corp. (HES) would all potentially benefit from Romney energy plan. The companies hold leases in the Bakken shale formation in North Dakota.
By giving states control of energy development within their borders, Romney seeks to boost production. The U.S. takes more than 300 days to issue a permit for a project, according to the Romney campaign white paper. North Dakota issues one in as little as 10 days.
Romney said the federal permitting process was “extraordinarily slow.”
Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon, and Hess spokesman Jon Pepper said they didn’t have any immediate response to the Romney proposal.
Romney’s plan for “energy independence in North America benefits all Americans,” Kristin Miskovsky, a spokeswoman for Continental Resources, said in an e-mail.
Give Away
Environmental groups and alternative-energy advocates said the plan gives away too much to the industry.
The plan is a “sop to the oil and gas and coal guys who would rather deal with the states,” said John Leshy, a professor at the University of California’s Hastings College of law and former general counsel to the Interior Department during President Bill Clinton’s administration. “The states don’t regulate as tough.”
Environmentalists objected to the expansion of drilling in the Atlantic coastlines.
Drilling there “would have profound implications for the Southeast,” said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“We still have people that have been negatively affected by the spill in the Gulf,” Smith said.
While presidents since Nixon have promoted U.S. energy independence, the U.S. has made progress toward the goal in recent years.
Net petroleum imports reached 60 percent of U.S. supplies in 2005 fell to 45 percent of the total last year.
Adam Sieminski, the head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which tracks and analyzes energy data, said in an interview Aug. 22 that imports could fall to 42 percent of the total this year, the lowest level in two decades.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jim Snyder in Washington at jsnyder24@bloomberg.net; Kasia Klimasinska in Washington at kklimasinska@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net
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Posted on August 24, 2012 by robbyball | Edit
News] How hip-hop fell out of love with Obama: Barack Obama was once hailed as America’s first hi… via
guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/23/why-hip-hop-deserting-obama
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How hip-hop fell out of love with Obamahttp://t.co/zmxcibgK
- Erik Nielson
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 August 2012 15.00 EDT
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Supporting Obama at a rally in 2008 (from left): Kevin Liles, Mary J Blige, Russell Simmons, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z. Photograph: Larry Marano/Getty Images
Earlier this year, Killer Mike made quite a splash with his latest album,R.A.P. Music. Critics couldn’t help but marvel at the unlikely pairing of Mike, with his distinctly southern credentials (and drawl to match), and New York producer EL-P, an underground figure known for his aggressive, frenetic sound. But it was one track in particular, Reagan, that really raised eyebrows. Although Mike’s ostensible target in the song is former Republican President Ronald Reagan (Mike’s not a huge fan – his final line is “I’m glad Reagan dead”) he also takes some unexpected shots atBarack Obama, at one point characterising him as “just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters”. Elsewhere, he compares Obama’s military policies to Reagan’s.
We might be surprised to hear this kind of criticism of the man who, just a few years earlier, was declared “America’s first hip-hop president” because of his deep ties to the genre. Was Killer Mike really attacking the man once dubbed “B-Rock” by Vibe magazine? The real surprise, however, is that the track Reagan is not an isolated rebuke but merely the most recent illustration of the deteriorating relationship between Obama and hip-hop. Killer Mike is just one voice in a growing chorus of dissent from within therap world by artists who believe Obama has failed to take up the pressing issues facing black people in the US.
“Quite obviously, black America is in terrible crisis,” says Tricia Rose, professor of Africana studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “The racial and class dimensions of this crisis have simply been largely sidestepped by the Obama presidency and muted by black leadership, which seems largely frozen by the effect of not wanting to undermine the first black president.”
The waning of the Obama/hip-hop love affair appears to be a two-way street, with Obama showing far less interest in the genre than he did in 2008. In fact, the distinction between his two presidential campaigns is stark.
Rewind to the first election. In the early stages of his campaign, then-senator Obama was making tentative overtures to hip-hop, noting in particular his appreciation of, and interest in, rap music. This was remarkable, in that he was flipping the script on two decades of campaign orthodoxy – followed by Democrats and Republicans alike – that hip-hop was politically radioactive. (In fact, the term “Sister Souljah moment” – used to describe when politicians distance themselves from extreme elements within their own party – has its origins in hip-hop: in 1992, Bill Clinton publicly repudiated rapper and activist Sister Souljah for her provocative comments after the Los Angeles riots.)
By 2008, seeing the energy his hip-hop affiliations could generate, especially with young voters, Obama was all in – encouraging artists such as Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs to campaign for him, frequently referencing rap music in his interviews and speeches, and playing rap at his events. In one of the lasting images of the campaign, Obama stood in front of an audience in Raleigh, North Carolina and, invoking Jay-Z’s 2003 track Dirt Off Your Shoulder, pretended to brush dirt off his own shoulder. He received standing applause from the crowd and a huge amount of news coverage afterwards. In that one motion, he had transformed the liability of his relative youth into an asset and, in the process, swept away any doubts that hip-hop would remain front and centre for the remainder of his campaign.
Rappers were more than happy to play their part, too. As early as 2007, Obama’s name started appearing in songs by socially conscious rappers such as Common and Talib Kweli, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2008, when he emerged as the Democratic frontrunner, that Obama sparked a mini-industry of songs and mixtapes making direct reference to his candidacy. A long line of performers – including Nas, Jay-Z, Ludacris, Lil Wayne, Big Boi, Busta Rhymes, Jadakiss, will.i.am, Three 6 Mafia and Young Jeezy – drew on Obama’s rhetoric of hope and change in an effort to mobilise youth and minority voters (and maybe to sell a few albums).
It worked. In the 2008 election, youth voter turnout was the highest it had been in 35 years, and it helped propel Obama to the White House. Fittingly, Jay-Z and Diddy had highly coveted seats on the Capitol steps for the inauguration, while Young Jeezy’s My President could be heard playing from street corners across the nation’s capital. After that, it was clear that hip-hop could be a potent mobilising force. “Hip-hop brought awareness to a group of young adults who probably would not have voted otherwise,” says Jermaine Hall, editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine. “Some were educated on Obama’s political points. Others were just happy to be part of electing a black president into office. Either way the role that Jay-Z, Puff [Diddy] and other hip-hop influencers played in that election can never be denied.”
Rapper Ludacris with then Senator Obama after a meeting together in Chicago in 2006. Photograph: Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressAfter the election, however, hip-hop receded into the background. In 2009, the Obamas launched the White House Music Series, which has sponsored a variety of musical performances at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Since its inception, the series has paid tribute to a wide range of genres, including classical, jazz, Motown and country, but rap, the music so instrumental to Obama’s success, still hasn’t been formally recognised. In fairness, the president isn’t entirely to blame for this. In May of 2011, the Obamas invited Common to perform at a White House poetry event, but rightwing pundits – Sarah Palin and Karl Rove foremost among them –doused the event in controversy, using deviously selective readings of Common’s work to argue that Obama had just welcomed an anti-police “thug” into his midst. The story spread like wildfire. It didn’t matter that Common is widely regarded as one of the most positive, peace-loving figures in rap.
The Common debacle is clearly illustrative of the opposition’s strategy. “Republicans have pounced on any and all associations Obama might make with black people in a way that has the potential to turn white centrist and independent voters against him,” says Rose. Fully aware that these voters may see Obama’s rap connections as a liability, Jay-Z noted the need for caution. In a 2009 interview with the Guardian he said: “I didn’t want the association with rappers and gangsta rappers to hinder anything that [Obama] was doing. I came when I was needed; I didn’t make any comments in the press, go too far or put my picture with Obama on MySpace, Twitter, none of that.”
Deciding that potential swing voters are too important to lose in 2012, Obama appears to have capitulated, at least with respect to rap. When his campaign released its 29-song playlist in February, there was not a single rap song on it. There was a healthy dose of country, though, including two songs each by Sugarland and Darius Rucker. Several months later, the campaign expanded its list, finally adding a couple of rap songs, one of which was K’naan’s Wavin’ Flag. This addition was probably less of a tribute to rap, however, than a dig at Mitt Romney. Earlier this year, the Republican challenger used Wavin’ Flag in his own campaign, but was forced to stop after K’naan objected (and then invited Obama to use it instead).
Keeping a safe distance from rap may be a wise strategic move, but putting politics before principle runs counter to the slogan of “change” that Obama ran on, and it has opened him up to some scathing attacks. In his February 2011 song Words I Never Said, Lupe Fiasco raps: “Gaza Strip was getting bombed/ Obama didn’t say shit/ That’s why I ain’t vote for him.” A few months later, the musician intensified his criticism in a video interview with CBS: “To me, the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America.”
Lupe Fiasco has described Obama as ‘the biggest terrorist’. Photograph: Matt Sayles/APLupe wasn’t alone. In October of last year, British rapper Lowkey releasedObama Nation (Part II), on which M1 of Dead Prez calls Obama “a master of disguise, expert at telling lies”. Using less incendiary rhetoric, the Seattle-based Blue Scholars nevertheless open their song Hussein(Obama’s middle name) with “This ain’t the hope or the change you imagined”, going on to suggest that Obama has failed to address the US’s economic inequality.
Obama is hardly the first political leader to reach power and face a backlash from artists who once supported him, but in the absence of the pro-Obama anthems we heard in 2008 or the deep-throated support of legions of performers, the voices of dissent have become especially pronounced. It doesn’t help that some of Obama’s major fans have changed their tune. Speech, of Arrested Development, who supported Obama in 2008, said earlier this year he was “disillusioned” with the president and would support the Republican Ron Paul instead. Snoop Dogg, another Obama fan in 2008, also seemed to throw some of his support behind Paul when he posted a picture of the politician to his Facebook page with the caption, “Smoke weed every day”, a reference toPaul’s marijuana-friendly platform.
Even those inauguration VIPs Diddy and Jay-Z have tempered their enthusiasm. In early 2011, Diddy told hip-hop magazine the Source, “I love the president like most of us. I just want the president to do better.” Jay-Z also acknowledged problems with Obama’s first term, admitting that some of the criticism directed at the president has been fair. “Numbers don’t lie,” he said last July, during a preview of Watch the Throne, his collaboration with Kanye West. “It’s fucked up out there. Unemployment is still high.”
When asked if he feels disappointed with Obama, rapper Nas expresses his continued support for the president but also his disillusionment with the political process that put him in office. “I’ve been disappointed by politics since the day I was born,” he says. “The historic part of him being elected president was got, and everyone was happy about that, and I’m glad I lived to see it. The flipside is, after we get over that, it’s back to the politics, and it’s something which doesn’t have time for people. It’s its own animal.”
This campaign season in the US has exposed this very tension – for rappers and for Obama. For their part, many rap artists are clearly torn between their allegiance to the first black president and their desire to be straight about conditions on the ground. The Wu-Tang Clan’s track Never Feel This Pain, released last June, offers a lyrical glimpse of this ambivalence. Referring to Obama, Inspectah Deck says: “I never doubted him. I’m proud of him.” However, these lyrics of encouragement are sandwiched between those of frustration. Speaking of his desire for a better life, he says, “I ain’t waitin’ for Obama,” and continues: “Seein’ is believin’, my vision is blurred, ’cause I ain’t seein’ nothin’ I heard, really nothin’ but words.” Album reviews have either read this as criticism or endorsement, but it’s not that simple.
Nor is it for Obama. Facing a struggling economy and a crazy-eyed opposition that has dragged US political discourse to the right, he appears to be striking a centrist tone in order to reach crucial swing voters. This may indeed be the strategy he must follow if he wants a second term, but it’s one that situates him firmly within the very political establishment rappers have long held in contempt.
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#Romney Would Give Reins to States on Drilling on Federal Lands
Posted on August 24, 2012 by robbyball | Edit
News Analysis: Romney Would Give Reins to States on Drilling on Federal Lands
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nytimes The New York Times
News Analysis: Romney Would Give Reins to States on Drilling on Federal Landshttp://t.co/sKqHVzfj
Giving Reins to the States Over Drilling
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Mitt Romney campaigned on Thursday in Hobbs, N.M., discussing his energy plan at Watson Truck and Supply.
By ERIC LIPTON and CLIFFORD KRAUSS
Published: August 23, 2012 12 Comments
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By proposing to end a century of federal control over oil and gas drilling and coal mining on government lands, Mitt Romney is making a bid for anti-Washington voters in key Western states while dangling the promise of a big reward to major campaign supporters from the energy industry.
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Mr. Romney’s plan, which would turn over decision-making on drilling and mining to the states, echoes the “Drill, baby, drill” strategy that another Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, used to great effect in the 2008 campaign.
The federal government owns vast portions of states like New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Alaska. Under President Obama, officials in Washington have played a bigger role in drilling and mining decisions on federal lands in the states, and such involvement rankles many residents and energy executives, who prefer the usually lighter touch of local officials.
With gasoline prices again approaching $4 a gallon, Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, is also trying to merge energy and economic policy in a way that will make voters see increased energy production as a pocketbook issue. He said that his overall energy plan, which includes speedy approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada and new drilling off the coast of Virginia and the Carolinas, would help the country achieve energy independence and create three million drilling and manufacturing jobs.
“I’m going to change the regulatory and permitting process,” Mr. Romney said Thursday at a rally in Hobbs, N.M., in the giant Permian Basin oil fields, where companies are eager to begin drilling on millions of acres of federal lands. “Sometimes I have the impression that the whole regulatory attitude of the administration is trying to stop oil and gas and coal — that they don’t want those sources, that instead they want to get those things so expensive and so rare that wind and solar become highly cost-effective and efficient.”
Giving states control over the energy resources on millions of acres of federal lands would be a radical shift from decades of policies under both Democratic and Republican presidents, dating all the way to Theodore Roosevelt, who first set aside vast tracts of territory to preserve wildlife. Since then, the federal government has tried to balance exploitation of mineral resources with other uses like recreation and environmental protection.
“This step would be a change in national policy direction going back at least 50 years, giving control over national assets to localities,” said Michael E. Webber, associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin. “Local decision makers could inhibit production that could be against the national interest or could encourage production that could pollute waters or air in another state.”
Mr. Romney said that states like North Dakota and Colorado grant drilling permits on state-owned lands in days or weeks, compared with the nearly a year that it takes the federal government to grant approval. “They found a way to do a job in a more efficient way,” he said. “On federal lands, the permitting process to actually drill and get oil or gas is extraordinarily slow.”
The Romney campaign acknowledged that such a significant policy change would require the approval of Congress. Getting such legislation passed, even if Republicans controlled the House and the Senate, would be very difficult, given certain opposition by Democrats and perhaps even some Republicans.
But even if it never passes, the proposal is liable to generate enthusiasm among voters who favor smaller government, especially in Western swing states like Nevada, which is about 80 percent federal land.
“We love it,” said Ally Isom, a deputy chief of staff to Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a Republican. “We understand better than Washington how to better manage our lands. We actually live here.”
An individual close to the Romney campaign said that Mr. Romney’s staff drafted the proposal in consultation with industry executives, including Harold Hamm, an Oklahoma billionaire who is the chairman of the campaign’s energy advisory committee and chief executive of Continental Resources, an oil and gas driller.
Just this week, the oil and gas industry gave nearly $10 million toward the Romney election effort in two fund-raisers.
The Romney aide, who said she was not authorized to speak on the record about the plan, said that any consultation with industry officials was simply to tap their expertise and did not mean the proposal was being shaped to serve their interests.
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Ashley Parker contributed reporting.
