Discussion: Major Oil Leak Will Not Factor Into Decision To Expand Keystone Pipeline

[bboerner]

@miker

It is Nebraska, we don’t allow reality to interfere with the right of corporations to make huge profits at the expense of the little people.

You’d feel quite at home in Texas then. Grrr.

[thepsyker]

@miker

It is Nebraska, we don’t allow reality to interfere with the right of corporations to make huge profits at the expense of the little people.

But all them rural Republicans will bitch like champs about what a huge betrayal it is for the Republicans they elect with 50+ margins to go through with Republican party platforms like the pipeline… and then when voting time comes they’ll give them a 70+ margin. They fucking deserve whatever happens, about time they be the ones screwed by the people they elect instead of the minority and LGBT communities here in Omaha and Lincoln.

[paulw]

FWIW, if the Feds do in fact have jurisdiction over safety, that would pre-empt state law and be grounds for endless appeals. In Vermont, where the public service commission (more or less) was deciding the future of the Vermont Yankee power plant, they couldn’t legally say they were denying the license renewal because leaking contaminated water, structural failures of pipe supports etc made the plant unsafe; they had to say it was about negative environmental impact. (And then the owners sued, arguing that “environmental impact” was just a way of regulating safety through the back door. Years of hijinx and millions of spending on lawyers ensued.)