Category Archives: oil
Cure Worse than Disease?
Is the cure worse than the disease? The war against the Covid-19 virus is destroying businesses and jobs. The Wall Street Journal in an editorial titled Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown thinks maybe so:
In a normal recession the U.S. loses about 5% of national output over the course of a year or so. In this case we may lose that much, or twice as much, in a month.
Our friend Ed Hyman, the Wall Street economist, on Thursday adjusted his estimate for the second quarter to an annual rate loss in GDP of minus-20%. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s assertion on Fox Business Thursday that the economy will power through all this is happy talk if this continues for much longer…
And David Katz, the founding director of the Yale- Griffin prevention research Center, wrote in the New York Times
I am deeply concerned that the social, economic and public health consequences of this near total meltdown of normal life — schools and businesses closed, gatherings banned — will be long lasting and calamitous, possibly graver than the direct toll of the virus itself.
…A pivot right now from trying to protect all people to focusing on the most vulnerable remains entirely plausible. With each passing day, however, it becomes more difficult. The path we are on may well lead to uncontained viral contagion and monumental collateral damage to our society and economy. A more surgical approach is what we need.
Feds Plan to Make Everyone Flush
Jeff Bezos iPhone Hack by Saudi Prince Mystery
The WSJ (paywall) reports that an outfit named FTI Consulting thinks Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hacked Jeff Bezos iPhone. The firm has “medium to high confidense” that the prince did the deed through a WhatsApp account.
Saudi officials call the allegation absurd.
Standing Rock Unhappy Campers Threaten Missouri River Watershed
Standing Rock Pipeline protesters became the most immediate threat of pollution to the Missouri river they sought to protect. They had braved the North Dakota winter by camping at the construction site of the North Dakota Access Pipeline.
Standing Rock
But in the end it was trash from the humans, not oil from the pipeline, that immediately threatened the river. Gov. Doug Burgum told The New York Times that melting snow could wash their “garbage and human waste” into the river. Last week authorities forced the campers to leave.
Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, which has been active here, said in a statement that the evacuation was a “violent and unnecessary infringement on the constitutional right of water protectors to peacefully protest and exercise their freedom of speech.”
Here’s the story in the Washington Times.
Awesome Beautiful Presidential Power
President Obama banned oil drilling in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. His proclamation is permanent and irreversible. The president says he derives this power from the Continental Outer Shelf Land Act.
He commanded the planet to heal and the oceans to slow their rise eight years ago. So this would seem a minor extension of his mandate.
But not everyone agrees he has the power to enforce his will on future presidents and Congresses. Here’s Kevin Williamson in National Review:
Legally speaking this is, as Professor Patrick Parenteau of Vermont Law School wryly put it, “uncharted waters.”
Awesome Beautiful Presidential Power
David Harsanyi in The Federalist agrees the president can’t have have his way with those who come after him. But he fears that future presidents may not want to overturn Obama’s will. So much the better to expand their own awesome beautiful presidential power:
So Republicans could likely overturn this diktat as they can the rest of Obama’s rickety legacy, predominately built on circumventing the law-making branch of the United States government. The problem is that Trump (and anyone else who comes along) has little reason not to adopt Obama’s unprecedented use of the executive power.
