The CRA & The Creeping American Corpratocracy

Jett Rink (James Dean) celebrates striking oil
in the classic 1956 film Giant

With growing uncertainty over the future of relations between the U.S. and Iran (both among the world's largest oil producers) under the chaotic and reactionary foreign policy of the Trump administration, oil prices dropped to just over $50 a barrel on Monday.

The high-flying days of 2012 to 2014 when record oil prices averaging around $100 a barrel collectively netted the members of the 12 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) a record $920 billion from oil exports are in the past.

But you'd hardly know that from the alarming speed with which the Republican-majority Congress and the executive-order-happy Trump administration are moving to boost American fossil fuel production by gutting environmental protection laws.



It's almost as if oil is like some kind of highly addictive narcotic for Republicans, they literally can't get enough of it, will do anything to make their supplier happy and will drive themselves mad being a slave to it like the character Jett Rink (played by actor James Dean) did in the classic 1956 film Giant directed by George Stevens.

On Sunday when I went to put some gas in the tank of my Honda CRV before heading off to a Super Bowl Sunday party, the price was $2.23 per gallon (credit).

That's down significantly for the central New Jersey area ever since the state Assembly and Senate agreed to increase the gas tax back in October  by 23-cents a gallon for the first time in 29 years in order to shore up funds for badly-needed transportation projects around the state.

The November 30th announcement by OPEC that 10 of it's 12 member nations would cut oil production starting in January (it's first production cut in 8 years) sent oil futures, crude prices and the stock prices of American energy companies soaring in December.

But as Reuters reported earlier today, a worldwide glut of oil from overproduction, high levels of U.S. oil reserves and reports showing that America currently has the highest number of oil rigs since 2015 sent oil prices and gasoline futures sliding.

Despite those facts the U.S. Congress, at the behest of American petroleum countries who've spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobying our elected representitives, have moved to strike down or sharply curb an array of environmental laws intended to protect the air, land and water from the harmful effects of the extraction and overproduction of oil and natural gas that has taken place over the past few years.

2008: 525 million gallons of coal slurry broke
through levees into the Tennessee River

Last week Republicans took aim at a host of laws signed by President Obama intended to protect the environment - including the Stream Protection Rule designed to protect American waterways from toxic runoff from coal mine production.

Did they forget when a retaining wall at a Harriman, Tennessee power plant collapsed, sending 525 millions gallons of toxic coal slurry into the Tennessee River destroying 12 homes 2 days before Christmas in 2008?

What kind of Congress votes to undue rules intended to keep toxic substances from leaking into rivers and streams?

The same Congress that voted on Friday to undue the Bureau of Land Management's methane waste prevention rule that regulates the venting and burning off of excess natural gas which helps limit the amount of methane released into the atmosphere.

As Jenny Rowland reported in a ThinkProgress.org article last week, "As a greenhouse gas, methane traps over 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period."

As she notes, a January 2017 report by Public Citizen's Rick Claypool reveals that groups including the coal mining industry, energy utility companies and railroads collectively spent over $222 million over a 12 month period lobbying members of Congress to deregulate the rules governing mining companies protecting and restoring rivers and streams.

Rick Claypool of Public Citizen

Congress is using a controversial legislative measure known as the Congressional Review Act to undue scores of environmental regulations.

According to Claypool's Public Citizen report:

"Under the CRA Congress has 60 legislative working days to rescind any regulation finalized after June 13, 2016, a timeline that places at risk more than 50 major public protections as well as hundreds more. Additionally, once a rule is rescinded by a CRA vote, the issuing agency is blocked from creating a "substantially similar" rule without Congressional approval."




If there's a more blatant example of the subversion of the will of the individual American voter (aside from Trump winning the election) I'm not sure what it is.

That kind of deceptive overreaching use of legislative power to bend environmental regulations to the will of the corporate interests that pour hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying members of Congress to put private profits ahead of the interests of American citizens and the environment is dangerous.

It's an affront to the basic principles of Democracy.

And it stands in total contrast to Trump's lofty windbag inauguration rhetoric about "transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you the people."

With tools like the Congressional Review Act, power is now being pipelined directly to the entrenched corporate interests who work with the institutional Washington insiders that Trump spent months railing against.

All those working class voters who cheered at his rallies may like the cheaper gas prices in the short run.

But the righteous indignation that drove the "Drill baby, drill !" chants has given way to a disturbing complacency in the face of the creeping American corpratocracy now enveloping the very rights and freedoms they believed Herr Trump would restore.

Perhaps the anti-Muslim bigotry and religious hatred will serve as some kind of salve to numb them to the endless string of lies coming from the White House.

For now anyway.

Panama Papers - Where Are the Americans?

Former Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson

The fallout from Sunday's release of information contained in a staggering 11.5 million documents obtained from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca by a large group of journalists pooling their resources (known as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) has landed hard in Iceland.

The news that Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson has submitted his resignation heralds the hidden wealth of some pretty high-profile figures (on both sides of the law) around the globe about to be dragged into the uncomfortable light of public scrutiny.

Gunnlaugsson resigned in the wake of a disastrous interview in which members of the press confronted him over revelations that an offshore company controlled by his wealthy wife was never properly disclosed to the Icelandic government as part of assets the couple owns.

The documents contain detailed information on 40 years of offshore banking records for some of the wealthiest and most prominent figures on the planet and at least 12 current and former prime ministers,  and a mix of kings, emirs, athletes and actors and according to news reports, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Officials in Pakistan and Australia have already called for investigations into individuals and companies from those nations being named in the leak as well. The fallout also landed in Russia - and rather close to President Vladimir Putin too.

Putin pal, wealthy Russian cellist Sergei Roldugan

Given the small circle of Russian billionaire oligarchs that control the country who've all enriched themselves through their close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, it's been laughable listening to a spokesman for Putin from Moscow dismissing links to the offshore banking activity to Putin himself.

Especially considering documents from the Panama Papers show that Putin's influence helped enrich his lifelong friend Sergei Roldugan, a cellist who introduced Putin to his wife Lyudmila.

As chance would have it, Roldugan is also the godfather of Putin's oldest daughter Maria, and according to an article in The Guardian, the documents link a complex trail of suspicious loans made by Russian state bank Rossiya (controlled by Putin and his oligarch homies) to an array of large financial stakes in companies that are in Roldugan's name - to the tune of $100 million.

He must be one Hell of a cello player. Putin's spokesman dismissed any suggestions by the media that Putin's ironclad grip on Russia had anything to do with a relatively obscure cellist from St. Petersburg amassing enormous wealth from highly-complex offshore holdings as an example of the media's "Putin-phobia."

A fear that members of the Russian press and political opponents are well acquainted with by now; including Russia Today (RT) founder Mikhail Lesin.

Eton-educated UK Prime Minister David Cameron

There are volumes of information yet to be released, so I'm not going to get too deep on this yet as new revelations are coming out moment by moment.

Including news that British Prime Minister David Cameron's father Ian and a number of conservative members of the British parliament and wealthy conservative political backers have been linked to offshore accounts to avoid the UK taxman.

Now the obvious question is where are all the Americans on the list?


Earlier today on the NPR program On Point, one of the ICIJ journalists responsible for the cooperative  analysis of the Panama Papers reports that the journalists wanted there to be some kind of context to the released information rather than just dumping it all out at once.

He claims that the initial release was centered on world leaders, and that soon information on figures in entertainment and athletics with ties to offshore accounts handled by the Mossack Fonseca law firm will be released publicly.

It is interesting to note that the journalists have already leaked the names of Chinese actor Jackie Chan and Argentine soccer star Lionel Messi who's already been in the spotlight for tax evasion; but no American, French or British actors, entertainers or sports stars?

The journalist said that there are a number of well-known Hollywood producers on the list - no mention of their names? Hmmm.

David and Charles Koch

Given the actions and hundreds of millions of dollars poured into the political system by the consortium of activist, anti-tax crusading Republican and Libertarian billionaires like Charles and David Koch, we know there are U.S. businessmen and controllers of the American corporatocracy whose names are in the Panama Papers.

With the release of the Panama Papers regarding Mossack Fonesca's role in creating hundreds of offshore "paper companies" for the express purpose of helping the wealthiest individuals evade paying their fair of taxes and to conceal their wealth with the aid of shell companies, lawyers and sketchy accounting schemes, a huge hole has been poked in the Republican's political rhetoric on the massive wealth inequality in this nation.

Over the past few years as the growing gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else has become more of a mainstream issue and topic of discussion, Republicans have tended to try and dismiss any kind of rational debate on the topic of wealth inequality as "divisive" or "pitting Americans against each other" - some conservatives even accused Democrats of engaging in a "war on success".

As if trying to talk about why wages for the middle-class and working class have remained stagnant for over 30 years is in itself anti-American.

Obviously the discussion on this topic is just getting started, but if the release of the Panama Papers reveals anything, it's the inner workings of a quiet war.

A war against the poor, working class and middle class of the world that's been going on for decades with the help of a complicit global banking system, lax regulations, a shadow financial system, clever accounting trickery - and here in America, a false Republican-Libertarian political narrative that's brainwashed millions of angry working class supporters of the GOP to buy into the idea that wealthy people and bloated corporations paying their fair share of the tax burden in this nation is a violation of "freedom."

As the Panama Papers have shown us, the wealthiest individuals and companies across the globe have been enriching themselves with a financial freedom unbound by laws, ethics or regulation that most people aren't permitted access to - and up until now, many didn't even realize existed.