Thursday, August 30, 2018
What a Perfect Day
For grifters, it's something of a perfect day.
First, Kinder Morgan (bastard offspring of Enron) hooks Canadian taxpayers into shelling out a 700 per cent windfall to KM shareholders for an old, decrepit, end-of-life pipeline. All so our federal government can do what Kinder Morgan executives knew was a certain financial disaster, build a high-cost, high-risk expanded pipeline to try to flog the world's highest-cost, lowest-value, highest-carbon ersatz petroleum on the planet - bitumen.
Kids, $4.5 billion, the TransMountain price tag, is just for starters. We could be in for eleven, possibly twelve billion for this damned pipeline, all of which could become worthless overnight when, not if but when, the carbon bubble bursts. When that happens, the oil giants will collapse and there'll be no one but the taxpayers to foot the massive costs of remediation of Athabasca.
But wait, there's more.
On this very day, Enron's former CEO, Jeff Skillings, has been released from prison in Alabama to a halfway house in his old stomping grounds, Houston, Texas.
I think when it comes to the Trudeau Memorial TransMountain Pipeline, Skillings will be justifiably proud of the deal cut by his successors.
I heard these things come in threes. What would be the third? Oh maybe Canada claiming victory for a trade deal dictated by the US that further hobbles our chances of restoring progressive democracy to Canada. No, no, sorry you're wrong. What we have now isn't especially progressive.
Presumption:
ReplyDeleteThe interesting thing is (even in the court ruling) is the presumption that ... after a 'meaningful' consultation that can be done quickly (chop, chop)
... the pipeline construction can/will proceed.
That's the very same attitude that got us to this awkward spot.
What an unbelievably incompetent and foolish government this has turned out to be. Even more so than the Harperites and that is something I thought impossible. What a crying shame Jack Layton destroyed the NDP - we could certainly use a social democratic party now because as it is Scheer's Conservative insane clown bus is nearly certain to be our next trip down holier than thou surreality lane. I had such hopes for Justin Trudeau and this iteration of the Liberals - I had hoped the arrogant old party hacks had been jettisoned and this new generation of Canadian Liberals would be more responsible, less arrogant, more honest, less entitled, and more trustworthy. So much for those hopes. I surrender. We have fools, liars, incompetents, crooks and naifs as electoral choices. I'm not going to encourage them by voting for any of them and I'm not going to participate in a system that perpetuates them. I'll go to the polls solely for the purpose of refusing the ballot. A pox on all their houses.
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