Mr. Governor, Don’t Build That Wall
Governor Lepage joined a coalition of governors in February who support offshore oil drilling. Lepage became the first Northeast governor to join the Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition. The coalition is funded by the Consumer Energy Alliance, a non-profit based in Houston. The CEA represents corporate interests including Shell and BP, and its funding is supplied by petroleum and petrochemical manufacturers associations. “A governor saying yes to drilling is rolling out the red carpet in the eyes of congress,” said Ocean Foundation fellow Richard Charter. But why would the governor of a state with “the way life should be” image and a critical fisheries and tourism economy decide to cast the taxpayers’ fate to the winds of the Deep Water Horizon industry? Instinct in this political climate is to follow the money.
A lot of taxpayers might ask, “Isn’t there a ban on drilling in the Gulf of Maine?” There was a ban. New England fishermen and environmentalists joined forces to challenge the oil industry’s Gulf of Maine drilling plans 35 years ago. In 1982 a determined Representative Silvio Conte led Congress to pass a law banning oil and gas drilling in the GOM. However, it had to be renewed by every incumbent president and it was for 27 years. G.W. Bush, whose oil industry allegiances over the public’s interests were borne out on his last day in office when he did not renew the GOM drilling ban.
If he had, the ban might be in place under Obama when the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) was voted on in 2015. The TPP is NAFTA for Asia. In 1992 presidential candidate Ross Perot famously declared NAFTA would create a “giant sucking sound” as American jobs went south to Mexico. TPP is expected to send the remaining U.S. jobs to Asia in the blink of a computer screen. Alan Grayson, a Florida congressman who is one of only two of the 585 members of Congress who have funded their congressional campaigns with donations of $200 or less, called the TPP, “A punch in the face of the American people.”
The absence of transparency around the TPP may make discussions seem like conspiracy theory. In fact the secrecy and potency of the TPP is the problem, because it is as real as the loss of U.S. jobs and the multi-trillion-dollar trade deficits dumped on us by NAFTA.
The TPP is also Asian corporate law for the U.S. Lori Wallach, an attorney at the public interest group Public Citizen said the corporate-backed TPP if “Fast Tracked” and, passed, “could make American taxpayers financially liable without limits for future foreign corporate losses they claim were the result of U.S. land, environmental” and other laws. (See links below for clarification.) Wallach said Obama has been surrounded by TPP proponents for six years and that, “He’s been marinated in NAFTA juice so long he now supports the TPP.”
Enter the multi-billion-dollar East-West Corridor, a proposed oil, gas and chemical pipeline across Maine from Calais to Coburn Gore on the western border with Canada. It would be paved over to give it a “populist” truck vehicular identity. Lepage is also a proponent of the East-West Corridor.
The project has been on the drawing boards for a couple of decades. Maine’s singe big booster is Portland-based Cianbro construction company, which has built a few similar pipelines in southern states. A billion-dollar project is why Cianbro is for the corridor and the TPP’s undermined environmental regulations could make it happen. The oil industry would support the East-West Corridor for pumping GOM oil. This concrete wall, with as much as a 2,000-foot right-of-way and few exits, would have virtually no utility for the Maine residents who would be strapped with it. The pipeline would slice across the very waterways now being restored as alewife spawning areas.
Crude sloshing ashore from oil rigs that have tumbled off Georges Bank and oil running out of the Penobscot River after a seismic event ruptures the East-West pipeline over the Penobscot at Orono should be avoidable.
There are 18 months left for Lapage to cancel Maine’s membership in the oil barons’ coalition. But why wait? While on the phone, congressional representatives and senators might need to know how Maine thinks life and democracy should be.
Readers who want to dig deeper to separate theory from on-the-ground plans for legislated economic policy, see the links below. These links are live at: fishermensvoice.com.
• For corporate lawsuit of NAFTA country see: www.clayton/bilcon case
• Link to an interview with Atty. Lori Wallach and Rep. Alan Grayson on the TPP: http://www.democracynow.org/2015/4/16/a_corporate_trojan_horse_critics_decry