A new priority of the US Department of Transportation is an age-old idea: transport freight by ship for as long as possible. The DOT is proposing designated shipping channels known as Marine Highways, and one may be leading to a port near you.
If you’ve purchased any household goods in the US recently, they probably took a familiar path from the factory to the store where you bought them: to North America on a massive cargo ship, from the ship to a railway, and finally from the rail yard to your local retailer by truck. In many cases, freight is carried solely by truck along interstate highways.
Unfortunately, such a system is far from efficient. It clogs our highways with multiple trucks headed in the same direction and brings pollution into our cities near freight terminals.
That’s why the Maritime Administration (MARAD) has proposed a system of Marine Highways where ships would transit goods within the United States. Along designated corridors, ships could provide safe, environmentally friendly and reasonably quick freight transit among a network of well-situated ports.
NASA satellite imagery shows long ribbons of oil have entered the Mississippi Sound.As significant amounts of oil from the BP disaster moved past Mississippi’s barrier islands this week, Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS) partied in Washington DC to raise money for Republicans. On Wednesday, boats were skimming oil near the Petit Bois Island at the Mississippi-Alabama border. Barbour decided to attend to his duties as a political fundraiser …
“The most important thing right now is the 2010 elections,” Barbour told reporters.
Continuing his record of dismissing the magnitude of the BP disaster, Barbour said on Friday after he returned to Mississippi that major slicks miles long within the Mississippi Sound “shouldn’t be a cause for alarm.” By Saturday, there were “long, wide ribbons of orange-colored oil for as far as the eye could see and acres of both heavy and light sheen moving into the Sound between the barrier islands.”
The system for responding to a major oil spill depends on coordination between the federal government, the responsible oil company, and the state government. Out of the 6,000 National Guard troops President Obama has authorized for response in Mississippi, Haley Barbour has mobilized only 58.
Almost half of Americans say the risks associated with offshore drilling are too great to justify oil exploration, while even more favor the temporary ban on deepwater offshore drilling.
Forty-nine percent of respondents in a New York Times/CBS News poll released Tuesday said the costs and risks associated with drilling for oil and natural gas in U.S. waters were too great, while 42 percent favored increased exploration.
By a larger margin, Americans as a whole backed President Barack Obama’s six-month ban on new oil drilling starts in deep waters.
Sixty-five percent of those surveyed said it was a good idea to halt new drilling until an investigation into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could be completed, compared to 30 percent who said it was a bad idea.
Yes! And George Bush MIHOP 9/11, also, too! Gawd almighty, with candidates like this, is it any wonder public approval of the Tea Party is dropping like a rock?
Randall is facing Raleigh magazine publisher Bernie Reeves for the Republican nomination in the June 22 primary runoff. The race has been a nasty one, full of attacks on both sides. The man who wins will face Rep. Brad Miller (D), whom most prognosticators say is a lock for reelection. …
He told reporters that the political pickle the White House has found itself in over the BP spill isn’t due to the administration’s poorly-timed (in hindsight, anyway) advocacy for increased off-shore drilling three weeks before the well blew up. It’s because their scheme with BP to pour oil into the Gulf of Mexico for whatever reason worked a little too well.
I’ve never agreed with President Obama’s position on offshore drilling, so I am glad to see this change in public opinion. He will have to adjust his thinking if the trend in this CBS poll continues.
With oil continuing to stream into the Gulf, a majority of Americans – 51 percent — say the costs and risks of increased offshore drilling are too great, according to a new CBS News poll.
That’s ten points higher than one month ago and an increase of 23 points from a poll taken in August 2008, when Republican rallies regularly broke out in chants of “drill, baby, drill.”
In the new poll, 40 percent said they favor increased offshore drilling. That’s a drop of five points from last week and 22 points from August 2008.
In the wake of the growing environmental disaster brought about by the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, Americans have turned far less supportive of increased drilling for oil and natural gas off the U.S. coastline, according to a new CBS News survey.
Forty-six percent of Americans now say the support offshore drilling – a 16 point drop from the 64 percent who backed such drilling back in July of 2008, when “drill, baby, drill” was an oft-chanted Republican campaign slogan.
Forty-one percent, meanwhile, say the costs and risks of offshore drilling are too great – up from 28 percent in the summer of 2008.
The Obama administration ended the moratorium on new offshore drilling off some coastal areas prior to the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig site, though no new drilling had yet been authorized. It has vowed not to authorize new drilling until the cause of the Gulf leak is clear.
Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the Ranking Minority Member of the committee, chose Monckton as the Republican’s sole witness at the hearing. Of all the people in the world the GOP could call to testify, they chose Christopher (not-really-a-Lord) Monckton, a non-scientist with a diploma in journalism studies and a knack for trampling Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies.
Monckton called American college students advocating for clean energy the “Hitler Youth” and “Nazis” during his crazed rampage at the Americans For Prosperity event at the Copenhagen climate summit. Monckton repeated the “Hitler Youth” comments directly to me in an interview the following day, and then took it way too far when he told Jewish student Ben Wessel, whose grandparents escaped the Holocaust, “I am not going to shake the hand of Hitler youth.” Despite extensive video evidence, Monckton went on to lie to the Associated Press, claiming that he never uttered those words.
At the Tax Day Tea Party in D.C. last month, Monckton opened his speech with a ‘joke’ suggesting that President Obama was born in Kenya. Monckton previously called President Obama a “monster” during his speech at a GOP fundraiser in Wisconsin, which followed another of his paid appearances for Americans for Prosperity.
There is something exquisite about the moment when a conservative decides he needs more government in his life. …
It may have taken an ecological disaster, but the gulf-state conservatives’ newfound respect for the powers and purse of the federal government is a timely reminder for them. As conservatives in Washington complain about excessive federal spending, the ones who would suffer the most from spending cuts are their own constituents.
An analysis of data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation by Washington Post database specialist Dan Keating found that people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending. In states that voted strongly Republican, people received an average of $1.50 back from the federal government for every dollar they paid in federal taxes. In moderately Republican states, the amount was $1.19. In moderately Democratic states, people received on average of 99 cents in federal funds for each dollar they paid in taxes. In strongly Democratic states, people got back just 86 cents on the tax dollar.
If Sessions and Shelby succeed in shrinking government, their constituents in Alabama will be some of the biggest losers: They get $1.66 in federal benefits for every $1 they pay in taxes. If Louisiana’s Vitter succeeds in shrinking government, his constituents will lose some of the $1.78 in federal benefits they receive for every dollar in taxes they pay. In Mississippi, it’s $2.02.
That may explain why, as the oil slick hits the Gulf Coast, lawmakers from the region are willing to swallow their limited-government principles as they dangle federal aid before their constituents. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he would “make sure the federal government is poised to assist in every way necessary.” His colleague Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said he is making sure “the federal government is doing all it can” — even as he added his hope that “industry” would pay.
President Obama tried to remind the government-is-the-enemy crowd of this situation in a speech on Saturday. “Government is the police officers who are protecting our communities, and the servicemen and -women who are defending us abroad,” he said. “Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe. Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them.”
