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The C Word

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June 8, 2009

I always find it amusing when politicians adopt the catch phrases and other expressions, obviously created by their lobbyist/puppeteers.  One of my favorites is “foreign oil”, as in:  “We need to end our dependence on foreign oil”.  Do they expect people to believe that Jesus made our oil different from that “Muslim oil”, which causes air pollution?  The expression:  “foreign oil” is obviously being used to vilify Arab countries for last year’s inflated gasoline prices, caused by oil speculators and American oil companies.  (Let’s not forget the price gouging by gasoline retailers.)  Most Americans realize that we have a serious problem with our dependence on petroleum products and, more generally fossil fuels, including coal, as sources of energy.  According to a March, 2009 Gallup poll, 60 percent of Americans are “worried a great deal or fair amount” by global warming.  Although this is down from last year’s 66 percent, 76 percent of Americans are “worried a great deal or fair amount” by air pollution itself, independent of the global warming consequences (according to the same poll).

Attention is increasingly focused on the concept of “clean coal” as an energy source.  In his February 24 address to the Joint Session of Congress, President Obama made it clear that he supported Congressional financing of the development of “clean coal” as a viable energy source.  The timing seemed intended to coincide with the aggressive advertising campaign against “clean coal”.  In case you’re wondering just what “clean coal” is  .  .  .  Ben Elgin wrote an article for Business Week last year, entitled:  “The Dirty Truth About Clean Coal”.  Here’s some of what he had to say:

The catch is that for now — and for years to come — “clean coal” will remain more a catchphrase than a reality.  Despite the eagerness of the coal and power industries to sanitize their image and the desire of U.S. politicians to push a healthy-sounding alternative to expensive foreign oil and natural gas, clean coal is still a misnomer.

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Corporations and the federal government have tried for years to accomplish “carbon capture and sequestration.”  So far they haven’t had much luck.  The method is widely viewed as being decades away from commercial viability.  Even then, the cost could be prohibitive:  by a conservative estimate, several trillion dollars to switch to clean coal in the U.S. alone.

Then there are the safety questions.  One large, coal-fired plant generates the equivalent of 3 billion barrels of CO2 over a 60-year lifetime.  That would require a space the size of a major oil field to contain.  The pressure could cause leaks or earthquakes, says Curt M. White, who ran the U.S. Energy Dept.’s carbon sequestration group until 2005 and served as an adviser until earlier this year.  “Red flags should be going up everywhere when you talk about this amount of liquid being put underground.”

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Companies seeking to build dozens of coal-fueled power plants across the country use the term “clean coal” liberally in trying to persuade regulators and voters.

Needless to say, President Obama’s advocacy on behalf of the “clean coal” lobby has outraged more than a few people.  Will Harlan wrote an article for the March 20 edition of Blue Ridge Outdoors magazine, entitled:  “The Dirty Truth Behind Obama’s ‘Clean Coal’ Stimulus”.  In addition to addressing the problems yet to be overcome with carbon capture, as well as the problems associated with mountaintop removal mining, sludge spills, dam breaches, poisoned wells, skyrocketing cancer rates, childhood asthma, premature deaths, slurry ponds, coal ash waste and mercury emissions, Harlan pointed out that:

Obama has also committed to reviving a boondoggle coal facility that even the Bush Administration decided to kill:  the FutureGen Carbon Capture and Storage Plant, which just happens to be located in Obama’s home state of Illinois.  Even though the facility costs have soared well beyond budget, and it is nowhere close to developing cost-effective technologies to safely capture and store carbon, Obama continues to support it.

Why are we letting Obama get away with greenwashing coal by perpetuating the “clean coal” myth?  The Democrats received close to $1 million in “contributions” in 2008 from the coal mining industry.  And southern Illinois is part of the country’s coal belt.

Eugene Robinson deserves a hat tip for his June 5 Washington Post column, criticizing Obama’s stance on this issue.  The strongest point made by Robinson was the cost/benefit analysis:

The Obama administration is spending $2.4 billion from the stimulus package on carbon capture and storage projects — a mere down payment.  Imagine what that money could do if it were spent on solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.  Imagine if we actually tried to solve the problem rather than bury it.

It should come as no surprise that the Greenpeace website would feature an essay, critical of “clean coal” with the following conclusion:

“Clean coal” is an attempt by the coal industry to try and make itself relevant in the age of renewables.  Existing CCTs do nothing to mitigate the environmental effects of coal mining or the devastating effects of global warming.  Coal is the dirtiest fuel there is and belongs in the past.  Much higher emission cuts can be made using currently available natural gas, wind and modern biomass that are already in widespread use.  Clean, inexpensive.  This is where investment should be directed, rather than squandering valuable resources on a dirty dinosaur.

Nevertheless, what does come as a surprise is that the very same article quoted above appears on Barack Obama’s Campaign for America website.  In case you’re wondering how to reconcile that point of view with Obama’s enthusiasm for “clean coal”, you have to read the disclaimer appearing at the end of the article on the Campaign for America site:

Content on blogs in My.BarackObama represents the opinions of community members and in no way should be interpreted as endorsed or approved by the campaign.

In other words:  “Don’t be dumb enough to believe that President Obama is really going to support anything you read here”.

In his June 4 opinion piece for The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne observed how the media are:

… largely ignoring critiques of Obama that come from elected officials on the left.

This was brought home at this week’s annual conference of the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive group that supports Obama but worries about how close his economic advisers are to Wall Street, how long our troops will have to stay in Afghanistan and how much he will be willing to compromise to secure health-care reform.

To the objective observer, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Barack Obama is as much of a hypocrite as any other politician who found his way to the White House.

Jessie Jealous

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July 10, 2008

As we approach Election Day, the longtime dream of Rev. Jessie Jealous, to become America’s first African-American President, fades away.  Jessie Jealous never got the Democratic nomination he fought for in 1984 and 1988.  Barack Obama is about to be nominated as the Democratic Party’s first African-American candidate for President of the United States.  This is obviously driving Jessie …  uhh  …  nuts.

Jessie Jealous always had problems with the allegations of Rev. Ralph Abernathy, former head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, that Rev. Jealous had gone to a butcher shop, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to smear himself in cow’s blood and proclaim to the world that Dr. King had died in his (Jessie’s) arms.  Despite the claims of Jessie Jealous and Rev. Abernathy, Dr. King actually died with the Rev. Samuel (“Billy”) Kyles at his side, according to Wiley Henry of the New Pittsburgh Courier.

In January of 2001, Jessie Jealous was reported by Anthony York in Salon.com, to have fathered a child out of wedlock with an aide, Karin Stanford, and used money from his nonprofit Rainbow/PUSH Coalition to pay the woman $40,000 in “moving expenses”.  The fact that Rainbow/PUSH had to pay for this was particularly stinky.

In 2002, Kenneth Timmerman’s book, Shakedown: Exposing The Real Jessie Jackson was released.  A stop at Amazon.com provides us with this portion of a review of Timmerman’s book by Jamal Michaels of Baltimore:

As A Black man, I’ve always been disgusted by the hypocritical, racist antics of Jesse Jackson Sr. Unmistakably, this vicious scam artist has done more to set back race relations in the United States than the KKK ever dreamed of. Kenneth Timmerman finally shines the light of truth and clarity on this scheming, conniving con man, and meticulously details his numerous, unbelievable crimes and outrages.

With the paternity storm and Jessie’s promise to drop out of the public eye for a while, (as quoted in Anthony York’s article) it appeared as though Rev. Jessie’s hopes of occupying The White House were finally dashed.

While appearing on the Sunday, July 6, 2008 edition of “Fox & Friends”, Jackson vented his spleen about Barack Obama’s Father’s Day speech, which criticized absentee fathers (such as the father of Karin Stanford’s child – i.e. Jessie Jealous).  Did he really care whether the mike was open?  I don’t believe he did.  In fact, I believe that in his cold heart, Reverend Jealous had hoped that his words would eventually find the ears of candidate Obama.  Jessie said:

See, Barack been, um … talking down to black people on this faith based … I wanna cut his nuts off. Barack, he’s talking down to black people.

(The guest to whom Jessie’s comments were addressed, has yet to be identified by the mainstream or internet-based media.)

Who is the one who has been talking down to black people?  The one who felt compelled to talk in rhymes about righteousness to his charity’s contributors, while he used their donations to pay off his own “baby momma”?

Jessie Jealous knows that as a political figure: he’s toast.   His own son, Congressman Jessie Jackson, Jr. of Illinois, found it necessary to distance himself from the remarks of Jessie Jealous with the statement: “I thoroughly reject and repudiate his ugly rhetoric.”  Whether or not Barack Obama becomes this nation’s first African-American President, one thing is for certain:  It will never be you, Jessie Jealous.  It will never be you!