Sneaker of the House
There are actually politicians who do their best – Sherrod Brown, for example, or Barney Frank, Bernie Sanders, and I would include Barack Obama.
Clearly, there are others who do their worst. We all know that. But as a matter of common courtesy, shouldn’t they at least pretend they’re not lying and stealing? Then we could pretend not to know, possibly giving our nausea, rage, and hypertension an occasional day off.
A current example — House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, far from the sleaziest Republican in that accursed chamber but a serial liar nonetheless.
Fire has smoke, crimes have motives, and lying is usually the smoke of thievery.
Lately Speaker Boehner has been pushing vigorously for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to carry crude oil from northern Alberta across the U.S. to refineries in Texas, thence onward to the world. He’s touted the pipeline repeatedly on a You Tube video and on the official Speaker of the House website. And when President Obama announced this week that the pipeline would not be approved, Boehner denounced him as a job destroyer.
The Speaker didn’t happen to mention that he has investments in at least seven of the companies who stand to benefit most from the pipeline — $15,000 to $50,000 in each of them – including Exxon, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, Marathon Oil, and Devon Energy.
Nor did he mention that since 2008 he or his PAC have received at least $55,000 from Koch Industries (another beneficiary), $27,500 from Marathon, $25,000 from Chevron, $24,500 from Exxon Mobil, $10,000 from BP, and $5,000 from Devon.
That, at least, is the visible part of the iceberg.
For months, Boehner and other supporters of the pipeline have been claiming it will create 22,000 (or “tens of thousands of”) jobs. That’s been roundly refuted – now even the oil companies admit it was exaggerated – and the real number is maybe 5,000 to 6,000 temporary jobs, most of them for people shipping in from elsewhere.
By contrast, New York’s Solar Jobs Act is estimated to be worth 30,000 local jobs in that state alone.
Lying and blatant corruption have become so routine with folks like Boehner, it no longer even occurs to them that anyone would care.
They must think that a 9% public approval rating of congress is normal. The rest of us, as Gail Collins has noted in The Times, are left to wonder what if anything the people in that 9% are thinking.
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Bravo!
Comment by Mrs D — January 20, 2012 @ 12:16 am
In a representative democracy or republic, we elect who we are to represent us … and if Boehner is us, we’re: a hopeless shambles and a sorry state of affairs.
Comment by Steve Alber — January 20, 2012 @ 12:08 pm
You’re right — but we didn’t vote for Boehner. That eruption of moral disintegration arose in southern Ohio, just beyond the reach of Mrs. D.
Aside from that, Boehner is really just a sideshow. The real issues of the Keystone XL pipeline are environmental, both along its route (the currently planned path would threaten some crucial watersheds) and at its source. Even if we didn’t care about perpetuating our dependence on hydrocarbons, extracting crude oil from the Canadian tar sands is one of the most noxious processes – in terms of both pollution and global warming – in the entire energy industry
Comment by Al — January 20, 2012 @ 1:54 pm
I didn’t vote for Boehner either, but for better or worse, we’re stuck with him until the electorate of southern Ohio comes to its collective senses … which will probably never happen, As for the tar sands, we’re stuck with them, too, until somebody figures out how to run things economically on sunlight and/or hydrogen. Once that happens, both the tar sands and Boehner will be superfluous. As it stands, they’re both political footballs, and they make great copy if you’re a lazy journalist.
Comment by Steve Alber — January 21, 2012 @ 10:14 am
Amen.
Comment by Al — January 21, 2012 @ 7:57 pm
http://www.politicususa.com/en/john-boehner-resign
It is an ethics violation for elected officials to use their political office to perform official acts on behalf of special interests, and particularly when special interests are campaign donors. There is also a serious problem when a sitting congressional representative performs official acts for personal financial profit by promoting a project the representative has a financial stake in. The problem becomes egregious when the elected official lies about a project to profit himself and campaign donors and our current Speaker of the House has taken those issues a step farther. On Thursday, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received a complaint from an environmental group with accusations that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline’s owners (TransCanada) are in violation of SEC Rule 10b(5) – Employment of Manipulative and Deceptive Practices to bolster stock prices.
The complaint sent to the SEC said TransCanada is using “false or misleading statements about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline” and that they “consistently used public statements and information it knows are false in a concerted effort to secure permitting approval of Keystone XL from the U.S. government.” The complaint continues that the fallacious information misleads investors, U.S. and Canadian officials, the media, and the public “in order to bolster its balance sheets and share price,” and who is the point-man pushing the Keystone XL pipeline with lies and misinformation? Speaker of the House John Boehner.
The complaint specifically highlights that TransCanada asserts that the pipeline will create American jobs “at a rate that is 67 times higher than job creation totals given by the company to Canadian officials for the Canadian portion of the pipeline.” The inflated job creation numbers were designed to pressure President Obama to issue an approval permit to build the pipeline and without its construction, TransCanada’s future earnings and share prices will be significantly impacted. Speaker Boehner owns shares in seven different Canadian tar sand companies and it is highly likely that he knows the job numbers are inflated as an investor and stands to profit if the pipeline is built. Boehner went so far as threatening to tie 160 million working Americans’ payroll tax cut extension to approval of the pipeline. Boehner’s extortion threats were the last straw, and inspired a national petition to force him to resign or face expulsion from Congress for ethics violations. However, ethics violations are the least of Boehner’s problems once the SEC finishes their investigation which they confirmed is actively under consideration.
To be fair to TransCanada, they accurately provided Canadian regulators with realistic job numbers as well as the potential for environmental disaster which is, by the way, a near certainty according to TransCanada. Tar sands crude extraction is responsible for elevated cancer rates and involves razing ancient boreal forests, and there are 82% greater GHG emissions as compared to average crude refined in the United States. TransCanada also predicted that one of their existing pipelines would produce one spill every seven years, but it has produced 12 spills in less than one year. Even with one spill, over 1,000 rivers will be adversely impacted as well as the Ogallala Aquifer that supplies drinking water to 2 million Americans and is the primary source of groundwater for 20% of America’s agriculture production. John Boehner never cites those issues and neither did Mitch Daniels (R), Indiana governor, who stated categorically in the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address that the Keystone XL project was “a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands.” Mr. Daniels’ financial disclosure form is under investigation to determine how much stock he owns in Canadian tar sand companies or TransCanada and if he owns shares in any of the companies, he will face a national petition drive to force him from politics forever.
As an investor, Speaker Boehner was privy to the authentic job creation numbers TransCanada reported to investors and Canadian regulators. It is despicable that Boehner deliberately lies to the American people for personal financial gain, but it is illegal to lie to influence investors and potential investors to drive up share price. Boehner, the American Petroleum Institute, and many Republicans in Congress have launched an aggressive set of attacks on the President to force him into granting a Presidential Permit, and the overriding point is that like TransCanada, they are using false job creation claims to exert pressure and convince Americans that the Keystone XL pipeline will be a boon to the economy, unemployed construction workers, and create lower gas prices, all of which are lies and they know they it.
It would be unethical for any person to use fallacious numbers for personal financial gain, but it is beyond the pale that the Speaker of the House knowingly lies to the American people and the media to boost Canadian tar sand companies’ profits and TransCanada’s balance sheets and share price. Boehner’s almost daily Keystone XL propaganda is not only unfair to President Obama and the American people, it misleads potential and current investors. Manipulating share prices is a violation of SEC regulations and if their investigation finds Boehner and other GOP shareholders deliberately inflated job numbers, a House Ethics panel will be the least of Boehner’s problems.
Speaker of the House John Boehner has some options. He can address the American people and admit that he deliberately lied for personal financial gain and to enrich the oil industry that stands to gain selling Canadian oil to Europe if the Keystone XL pipeline is built, or he can save his family the embarrassment and resign immediately. Mr. Boehner can rest assured of two things; if he does not admit to lying and resign immediately, the petition calling for his expulsion or resignation remains active, and this column will be unrelenting in demanding that, for once in his career, he serves all the American people and vanishes from politics as if he never existed. Now that the Securities and Exchange Commission is alerted to TransCanada and Boehner’s lying, it would be incumbent on him to make the right decision before they make it for him.
Special thanks to Sarah Jones for her valuable assistance.
Comment by Mrs D — January 28, 2012 @ 6:05 pm
It’s good to see the SEC join the hunt. They probably can’t go after Boehner or other congressmen directly — and Congress still permits itself insider trading — but if the SEC investigation gets some traction it will at least keep the public spotlight on the politicians who were playing the same game of misleading investors. And that will provide a platform for showing their real betrayal — of their constituents and their country.
Comment by Al — January 28, 2012 @ 10:52 pm
Betrayal? Absolutely. But always with a smile and a backdrop.
Comment by Mrs D — January 29, 2012 @ 12:57 pm
Ah, yes. And smiling from behind (as only he can do) is Eric Kantor.
And today (Sunday, 1/29) Reuters is reporting that Beohner says he’ll attach the Pipeline approval to the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.” We know his game, but what is Reuters’ game? Why is there no mention whatever in their story about the corrupt money connections of the Speaker and other congressmen? Or anywhere else in the MSM, as far as I know.
Comment by Al — January 29, 2012 @ 1:55 pm
Al, That’s a question I ask myself daily. Sadly, I cannot answer it. (A bit insane? Perhaps.) Each time I open our yahoo home page I want to scream as I view headlines such as this “GOP Highway Bill Does What Stimulus Failed to Accomplish” I want to scream. Then I remember, who owns Yahoo. Who owns the NYT’s and the WSJ. Who owns MSNBC, et al. I am afraid that the takeover of America by the plutocrats has already occured. It will just take America a while to catch on. But whenever America does, attention will be quickly diverted by the antics of the Kardashian’s grandchildren or the image of Christ’s face found on Romney’s ass. (How any of them know what Christ actually looked is beyond me. I’d think he probably looked like our former neighbor, Ed Curtis, but what do I know.)
Comment by Mrs D — January 31, 2012 @ 2:33 pm
My guess is that Ed Curtis looked like Jesus’s brother Jim. That will be a controversy for others to settle 600 years from now, when the Shroud of Turn Into Kinsman is discovered in the ruins of the Jewish Community Center (formerly the Ikes). By that time the word Republican will be defined as a pharisee, a type of bloodsucking parasite that plagued the primitive people of North America before they learned how to fumigate their legislatures.
Comment by Al — January 31, 2012 @ 5:54 pm
Prophets for profit and pharisees, that about sums up the modern day GOP.
Comment by Mrs D — January 31, 2012 @ 9:06 pm