The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.
New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.
Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.
2006-02-14
Crude politics
But, I mean, really crude. Guess that's what you get when a bunch of oilmen take over the executive branch.
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6 comments:
Tom: I might support you on this one. If that oil's on US govt property, it belongs to all of us.
I trust you agree that Bush's curruption is no worse than Clinton's, and that under Clinton, you were just as watchful over our nation's resources. Just checking! On Bush's way out of office, I promise to look hard to see if he's selling any pardons.
I think the Enron and Halliburton scandals tower over Whitewater, which turned out to be so lame that Ken Starr had to focus on, well, other things in order to dredge up outrage. Kenny Boy Lay and the other Enron fellas were jobbing California for hundreds of millions right under Bush's nose. ties to Bush there run deep. Where were the investigations? Surely, you can love the war in Iraq but hate Halliburton's no-bid bonanza. Also, I think the brazen manipulation of intelligence data leading up to Halliburton's big opportunity, the Iraq war, most recently documented here (quoted below)--http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060210/wl_afp/usiraqpolitics_060210200028--will stand in history as a scandal rivaling Watergate (complete with a Nixonian smearing of political opponents).
Don't get me wrong, I consider Clinton a scoundrel. But in terms of using the office to enrich his friends, he was a piker next to GWB. GWB won't be selling of pardons to the highest bidder. He'll be pardoning people to save his own neck.
Here's that AP piece on the latest evidence of Bush manipulating data to manipulate the public:
A former CIA official who oversaw US intelligence on the Middle East accused the US administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war.
Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, delivered the scathing criticism in a lengthy article in the latest issue of the journal Foreign Affairs.
"The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," he wrote.
Pillar alleged the administration of President George W. Bush had ignored warnings that Iraq could easily fall into violence after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein. And the White House asserted that Saddam and Al-Qaeda had forged an alliance without reliable evidence from intelligence agencies.
"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote.
Instead, he asserted, the administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq."
Pillar said US intelligence agencies' mistakes in assessing whether the Hussein government possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had not driven the administration's decision to invade.
"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.
Considered a leading counter-terrorism analyst, Pillar said the clear message from official intelligence analysis was "to avoid war" because the threat posed by Saddam had been largely contained.
Intelligence agencies had warned that occupying Iraq could trigger attacks on US forces and sectarian conflict and play into the hands of Islamic militants in the region, he wrote.
US analysts had predicted that it was likely "war and occupation would boost political Islam and increase sympathy for terrorists' objectives -- and Iraq would become a magnet for extremists from elsewhere in the Middle East."
Pillar was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.
In his article, he said he believes that the "politicization" of intelligence on Iraq had occurred "subtly" and in many forms, but almost never resulted from a policymaker directly asking an analyst to reshape his or her results.
Instead, Pillar describes a process in which the White House helped frame intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its arguments about Iraq.
The Bush administration, Pillar wrote, "repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war," including information on the "supposed connection" between Hussein and Al-Qaeda, which analysts had discounted.
"The greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD ... but the relationship between Saddam and Al-Qaeda," he wrote.
"The intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.
"Yet it was drawn into a public effort to support that notion."
This discussion gets confusing. Nobody on earth was 100% certain that Hussein lacked the banned weapons. Most people with an opinion believed that he had them. All agreed (no?) that he violated stipulations with regard to such weapons. For some people, his possessing WMD constituted the only justification for invasion. Bush played to people in collecting data.
I am not at all surprised or alarmed that Bush already decided to invade prior to completing his querry of the WMD situation. I am sure that you decided to oppose Bush's war prior to learning 85% of what you presented in your post.
If it made sense to invade Iraq and institute a democracy in 2002, it did so in 2001 and 1991. I do oppose some of Bush's tactics, and think that he should have been completely frank with the public.
But then again, Abe Lincoln played it very, very coy in building the anti-slavery alliance (and getting elected) that eventually got him killed, and 4 million slaves freed. Most free state whites in 1859 - 61 would only support Lincoln in that war if he proposed non-slavery issues as his cause. He could have been completely frank... and lost the election to a pro-slavery democrat.
I'm convinced that you are accurate in some of your accusations about Bush cherry-picking data and pressuring or ignoring experts. But I'm not convinced that Huessien didn't spirit banned WMDs away to Syria during the invasion's long buildup. And I'm not convinced that without invading Iraq, Hussein's Baathists wouldn't have partnered up with Al-Qaida as they have now in Iraq. Nor am I convinced that Bush cannot erect a democracy there, or that doing so won't lead to a domino effect of prosperity and a subsequent eventual eradication of terrorism against the US.
Paul,
It's the Shiites, not Hussein's Sunnis, currently linking up with Iraq. In fact Rumsefeld/Cheney's guy Chalabi has been accused of being an Iranian spy!
Here's today's WSJ on the Shiite/Iran question:
Bush administration officials who promoted war with Iraq envisioned Americans reshaping the country in their own image after the war. Instead, the reshaping is increasingly being carried out by Iran -- the same nation that has provoked a diplomatic furor over its nuclear ambitions.
Iran's influence is most apparent in Iraqi politics, where a Shiite-dominated coalition has just nominated a prime minister with close ties to Tehran, but it also emerges in many areas of Iraqi life that get less notice. Iranian businessmen are some of the largest investors in restoring Iraq's shattered infrastructure. Nonprofit groups from Iran are providing basic health services that crumbled in the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion. Iraq's Shiite media are getting training from experts across the border.
"America occupies Iraq, but Iran influences us," says Sheikh Kashef al-Qhatta, a prominent Shiite cleric and political analyst based in Baghdad.
While Tehran has little motive now to throw Iraq into further turmoil, its ability to do so could undermine the Bush administration's attempt to stop Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. and European nations are pushing Iran to freeze the program, which they fear is aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is peaceful.
If Iran wished to make life difficult for the U.S. and its troops in Iraq, it might draw on the support of Iraqi Shiite leaders. One who has battled U.S. forces in the past, Muqtada al Sadr, pledged on a visit to Tehran last month to back Iran in any military showdown with the U.S. Tehran also has helped finance and train Shiite militias and paramilitary units in Iraq such as the Badr Brigades.
This is getting off-topic of "crude politics", an area where I tentitively agree with you, without investigating your accusation (that Bush successfully pushed a bill that gave petro companies free oil from US parkland).
===Tom====
It's the Shiites, not Hussein's Sunnis, currently linking up with Iraq. In fact Rumsefeld/Cheney's guy Chalabi has been accused of being an Iranian spy!
==========
I understand that the religious Shia kooks in Iraq are teaming with Iran's religious Shia kooks. Why are you correcting me for something I didn't say? I assume you are refering to my point about the Qaidist tryrants in Iraq teaming with Iraq'a Baathist tyrants. This has happened, but they now do appear to be fighting each other.
And yes, I know that Chilabi has "been accused" of being a spy. And Bush has "been accused" of leading a world-wide conspiracy to conquer and control Iraq in the name of either raising oil prices to boost Exxon profits, or lowering them to boost the profits of other US companies. Bush has also "been accused" of fixing the Iraqi elections; Nadir has declared that the Iraqis voted to some great extent due to fear of retailiation from US troops for *not* voting. Then when the Iraqi elections return with results that defy what we must figure the Bushies would prefer (a secular liberal, non-sectarian slate), you and Nadir use that data as the basis of yet a different set of criticism for Bush: that he's set-up a democracy that will result in a government even worse for US interests than Hussein's govt.
Which contradictory and unendingly new "accusations" by you guys should I accept? Is Bush setting up a puppet govt (and to create low or high petro prices?), or a democracy independant of Bush's desires that creates an unfavorable alliance with Iran?
I don't accept the accusations against Chalabi. Chilabi got accused of a few things in Iraq, and went back to confront his accusers in the new legal system, placing himself in legal jeapordy. As best as I can tell, he is an authentic advocate of secular, liberal, constituational democracy.
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