How to Counter the Secretary of Sabotage

Secretary of State Pompeo is setting political traps in his final days, but an emboldened Biden can avoid them.


BY JONATHAN GUYER

JANUARY 17, 2021




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HANI MOHAMMED/AP PHOTO


The deadliest emergency will be in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been waging a brutal war.

The craziest thing Mike Pompeo did this past week wasn’t even touting links between Al-Qaeda and Iran.

As President Donald Trump rages his way out the door, his sabotage-minded secretary of state has worked hard to ensure that Biden’s foreign-policy options will be limited long after Trump is gone. Among the fires Pompeo set during a hectic week: enraging China, choking diplomacy with Cuba, and enacting policies that will escalate the already dire famine in war-torn Yemen.

For Biden, the immediate priority of piloting the nation through a COVID-19 recovery was always going to take precedence over his foreign-policy pledges. During the presidential debates, he laid out a formidable list of action items globally, promising to repair the partnerships that Trump savaged, re-prioritize the climate crisis, and replace Trump’s militaristic policies with a much-needed battery of diplomacy. But before Biden’s diplomats can swing into action, they’ll now have to diffuse, as best they can, the ticking time bombs that Pompeo is setting on his way out. “The first 100 days are going to be pretty wild,” Rachel Rizzo of the Truman National Security Project told me. “There’s just going to be a lot of clean up.”

Pompeo began by throwing away decades of established diplomatic protocol, hastily upgrading relations with Taiwan. The U.S. had avoided officially recognizing the country in order to maintain a complex equilibrium with China. The only reason Pompeo abruptly ended America’s “One China” policy was to force Biden to have to walk it back upon assuming office. Now, no matter what the next administration says or does, it will appear weak, either by kowtowing to China or caving to Trump policy. Then Pompeo aggravated China even further by hitting it with new sanctions aimed at state-run companies and officials operating in the South China Sea.

Even tough-on-China Republicans found the moves to be foolish. “Why are we doing this in the last five days?” a former senior Trump White House official told me. “We could inadvertently get into a conflict.”

These escalations are just the latest in the smoldering pile of crises that form Pompeo’s legacy.

Even worse for Biden, Pompeo has sabotaged any hope of repairing our relationship with Cuba. On Monday, the State Department designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, the fourth country on a list that only includes Iran, North Korea and Syria. It’s the final blow of Pompeo’s array of attacks on the tenuous diplomatic progress that Barack Obama achieved in Latin America. Obama had to appeal to Congress to remove Cuba from the terror list in 2015, and now if Biden wants to do the same, he’ll have to take the political hit again, just to get back to where things stood six years ago. The optics will be bad either way. Biden will have to provoke Cuban-Americans early in his term to return to a policy that most Americans want, or give up a decade of progress to appease the right wing.

The deadliest emergency, however, will be in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been waging a brutal war against a rebel group known as the Houthis. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has doubled down on his much-criticized friendship with these autocratic powers. They’ve rushed $23 billion of advanced fighter jets and drones to the Emirates and $290 million of Boeing-made bombs to Saudi Arabia. (Pompeo was already under investigation for weaseling through an $8 billion weapons sale to the Saudis, in defiance of Congress.)

While Pompeo is fast-tracking another sweetheart arms deal, he’s also deepening the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. On Monday, the State Department designated Yemen’s Houthis as a foreign-terror group as a favor to the Saudis. Given that the Houthis effectively run the country, humanitarian groups will now find it impossible to get civilians the aid they so desperately need; more than half of Yemenis will go hungry this year.

Rob Malley, the head of the International Crisis Group, is appalled by all of Pompeo’s recent mischief, Yemen most of all. “The most pressing, critical issue is the Yemen decision because of its immediate, catastrophic humanitarian implications and its costly diplomatic repercussions,” he told me.

Finally, there was Pompeo’s speech on Tuesday, where he peddled “The Iran–Al-Qaeda Axis.” Former intelligence officials might have dismissed this as a joke, except that Pompeo’s language suggested that the Trump administration was eager to order a lame-duck strike on Iran.

These escalations are just the latest in the smoldering pile of crises that form Pompeo’s legacy. He proudly trashed multilateral diplomacy by exiting the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran nuclear deal. He helped Trump strangle and demean NATO. He emboldened Arab autocrats through pacts with Israel that were more arms deals than peace deals. In November, he officially redefined human-rights groups critical of Israel as anti-Semitic, another policy that will be nearly impossible politically for Biden to roll back. Little wonder that Israeli settlers have named a wine after Pompeo.

Malley, a former senior Obama official, foresees the Biden team running into what he calls an “inbox problem.” There are simply too many crises that require a response. And while undoing these knots may be technically feasible, each one is more politically thorny than the last, by design.

The Democrats’ toughest challenge won’t be reversing Pompeo’s vandalism, but avoiding all of the political traps he’s laid. Democrats too often talk about Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East on their opponents’ terms. They so frequently dilute their own agenda trying to act more hawkish than Republicans. But Biden can’t risk seeming defensive. Facing so many emergencies, the new president must conjure the almost mythical Biden from campaign ads who transcends party to rescue the country.

Biden’s team must find ways to address the climate crisis, get arms and nukes under control, and do everything possible to end the Yemen war. A source familiar with the transition’s internal dynamics told me that Pompeo’s actions, culminating a term of destruction, are motivated by nothing more than domestic politics. Biden is preparing to undo them from Day One.

Biden’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken will also have to repair a tattered State Department. During the first set of impeachment hearings last winter, Blinken said, “President Trump has weaponized the State Department in service of his reelection … by putting his foreign policy at the service of his own politics and personal ambition.”

Pompeo has carried this on in his waning days. He used tax dollars to politick with fancy donors in the vaunted secretary’s ballroom, including a maskless, indoor Christmas party. His wife treated aides as hired help, forcing them to fetch holiday gifts and do airport pick-ups. When an inspector general began investigating these improper acts, Pompeo fired him. He would rather kibitz with far-right talk show hosts like Ben Shapiro than engage journalists, as we saw recently when he had a Voice of America correspondent fired for trying to pose a question to him. He uses his official government Twitter feed to share Bible quotes (#SundayScripture).

Pompeo followed his boss’s lead in refusing to recognize Biden as the winner in November, and instead teased a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” On January 6, Pompeo tweeted a bland denunciation of the rioters who attacked the Capitol and no more. “Secretary Pompeo has put out stronger statements against journalists,” a State Department official who resigned last week in protest told me.

Pompeo’s last-minute maneuverings had no purpose but to cause chaos for the incoming administration, a fact that Biden’s team will have to remind the media of as they set about undoing the damage. Biden can’t do much about the traps that have been set except defuse them as best he can, but he should use this moment as the impetus to take a strong stand against the havoc he’s inheriting. At a minimum, he should reinvigorate Congressional and State Department investigations into various improprieties, which Pompeo tried to shut down. But everything should be on the table when it comes to holding Trump and his appointees accountable for corrupting and degrading America’s most vital institutions. Deterrence is the only way to deal with Pompeo’s treachery and to ensure that future saboteurs never again gain a foothold in the executive branch.

Turns Out That the Oil Industry Wasn’t Interested in the Arctic Refuge After All

The Trump administration’s Arctic Refuge oil lease auction was a total bust.

by

Adam Federman

Saturday, January 16, 2021

by

Sierra Club Blog

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (Photo by Shelley Wales/iStock)

On the afternoon of Wednesday, January 6—as many Americans were transfixed by the violent insurrectionists laying siege to the US Capitol—the Department of the Interior was undertaking what some conservationists have likened to another kind of plunder: the first ever oil and gas lease sale in one of North America’s most iconic wilderness landscapes.

For more than 40 years, environmentalists and Republicans in Congress have battled over the fate of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain, a 1.6 million-acre stretch of fragile tundra at the edge of the Arctic sea. In 2017, with a two-page provision tucked into the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Donald Trump achieved what no other Republican president had been able to: opening up the refuge to oil and gas exploration and development. The lease sale was, in a way, the culmination of one of the defining environmental struggles of the last half-century.

Not surprisingly, the Trump administration considered Arctic Refuge drilling among its biggest accomplishments, as Interior Secretary David Bernhardt told the Conservative Political Action Conference last year. The Alaska Congressional delegation viewed it as a major triumph. Industry boosters and the Congressional Budget Office claimed that the lease sales—the Tax Act requires two over the course of the next decade—would be a windfall for the US Treasury and the state of Alaska and that it would help to replenish the dwindling life-blood of the Trans Alaska Pipeline.

But, ultimately, the first lease sale was a flop. Only half of the parcels attracted a bid, many of them at bare minimum prices. The Alaska Wilderness League called the lease auction an "epic failure."

Even before last Wednesday’s sale, there were signs that this idea was largely a fantasy. In 2019 British Petroleum sold off all of its assets on the North Slope, including the closely guarded results of the single test well drilled on refuge lands, in what many viewed as a sign of the inevitable long-term decline of Alaska’s oil and gas industry. Meanwhile, more than a dozen banks in the US, Canada, and Europe pledged not to finance development projects in the Arctic. The rush to lease in the refuge was unfolding without a very clear understanding of the coastal plain’s resource potential, making any investment that much more risky. To top it all off, Joe Biden’s presidential election victory ensured that the incoming administration would do everything in its power to protect the region. 

That’s where things stood when DOI’s Deputy Secretary Kate MacGregor, who had traveled to Anchorage for the lease sale, approached the lectern and began opening bids. “It is my honor to preside over this momentous occasion,” she said before thanking those who had worked for decades to promote domestic energy production and job creation in Alaska.

But in less than ten minutes the sale was over. There were only 13 bids on 11 of 22 tracts. Most bids were at or just above the minimum of $25/acre and the sale netted only $14.4 million, a far cry from what the CBO had estimated. Even the pro-industry website Petroleum News described the results as “somewhat disappointing.”

Perhaps most surprising and controversial was that nearly all of the bids—9 of the 11 awarded—were submitted by a state-owned investment corporation, not the oil and gas industry. The Alaska Investment Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) was created by the state legislature in 1967 to help foster economic growth largely by partnering with banks to provide low cost loans to businesses. Board members are appointed by the governor and profits are pumped back into the corporation or shared with the state. In recent years, however, AIDEA has come under fire for its lack of transparency and what many view as ill-advised investments in energy development projects.

The decision to bid on refuge leases was no exception. AIDEA made a cryptic announcement on Friday, December 18 that it would be meeting in executive session two days before Christmas to discuss “confidential matters” and vote on a resolution related to the Arctic Infrastructure Development Fund. The following Monday, under pressure from activists and journalists, AIDEA finally released the resolution on whether to spend up to $20 million on the lease sale. Despite an outpouring of criticism from the public, it passed unanimously.   

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has always been a larger than life symbol, both to the environmentalists and Indigenous Gwich’in who have sought to protect it and the politicians who have tried for decades to open it to development.

Rick Steiner, a conservation biologist in Anchorage who tracks AIDEA closely, believes that the authority not only violated Alaska’s public meeting law by not providing proper notice but also may not qualify as an eligible bidder. Because the state of Alaska receives half of the lease sale revenue, AIDEA has a competitive advantage, Steiner says. In addition the authority has presented no clear investment plan for the leases, which Steiner says is required by the corporation’s own by-laws. Finally, the authority’s board members have not been confirmed by the Alaska legislature adding another layer of legal uncertainty. 

“AIDEA is clearly out of control,” Steiner told me. “And they know it.” Steiner filed a complaint with the Department of the Interior’s inspector general in December alleging that the corporation is an ineligible bidder under federal law and that all of its bids should be rejected. According to Steiner, the inspector general’s office has told him that they are hoping to issue a decision or referral before the end of this week. 

A spokesperson with the Inspector General’s office said the complaint is going through the standard intake process. AIDEA did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management is moving quickly to finalize the leases before Trump leaves office, which would make it more difficult for the incoming administration to delay or possibly invalidate them. An antitrust review coordinated with DOJ, and which usually takes up to two months, has been completed in just days according to an email obtained by Steiner and bid acceptance letters were sent out last week. AIDEA has 15 days to respond.

Larry Persily, who served on the AIDEA board from 1999 to 2002 and now owns a weekly print newspaper in Wrangell, said that bidding on refuge leases is not the first bad investment AIDEA has made. He points to the authority’s decision in the late 1990s to finance a “value added” seafood processing plant in Anchorage that went bust. AIDEA ended up losing about half of the $50 million it had invested in the project. “That was their biggest boondoggle I can remember,” Persily said. “It definitely gave them a black eye.”

More recently, the authority put $70 million into financing a North Slope oil and gas operation, since purchased by a Singapore-based petroleum company, which has struggled to make its quarterly loan payments. They agency has also been criticized (and sued) for backing the Ambler Road project, a more than 200-mile mining access road through pristine wilderness lands including part of Gates of the Arctic National Park. Two days after the lease sale, AIDEA and DOI signed a 50-year right-of-way permit for the project.

“The [Arctic Refuge] thing was sort of their sticking their toe back into the waters of dumb ideas,” Persily said.

Even if AIDEA is deemed to be an eligible bidder and the leases are signed before Biden takes office, the path forward for the state of Alaska is not a promising one. The leasing program will be tied up in courts for months if not years and a judge could send DOI back to square one, forcing the agency to redo the environmental impact statement. In theory a Democratic controlled Congress could vote to permanently protect the coastal plain, though the party’s slim majority in the Senate will make this difficult. (See: Manchin, Joe; Senator from West Virginia.) Either way, AIDEA will be stuck with the leases and ultimately the legal fees required if they challenge whatever decisions the Biden administration makes.

It would be foolish to read too much into a single lease sale, held during a pandemic and at a time of historically low oil and gas prices. After all there’s plenty of new oil and gas development on Alaska’s North Slope, much of it on state land and to the west of the refuge in the National Petroleum Reserve.

But the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has always been a larger than life symbol, both to the environmentalists and Indigenous Gwich’in who have sought to protect it and the politicians who have tried for decades to open it to development. How badly industry wanted it, however, was always a bit of a mystery. Now, it seems, we have our answer: industry didn’t want it very much.

During the livestreaming of the lease sale, DOI’s MacGregor said that developing the refuge would “reinvigorate” the Trans Alaska Pipeline, which Alaska’s politicians have long promised. But the outcome of the sale presages a different future, one that by necessity doesn’t rely so heavily on oil and gas extraction. And this is something the state may have no control over. 

“If they had held the sale 20 years ago it would have turned out much differently,” Persily said. “Regardless of whether it was a good idea then, its time has passed.”

Adam Federman, a former Russia Fulbright Fellow, has written for the Nation, Columbia Journalism Review, Earth Island Journal, Gastronomica, and Adirondack Life, and other publications. You can find more of his work at adamfederman.com.

© 2019 Sierra Club

'Morally and ethically wrong:' Court to hear challenge to Alberta coal policy removal


First Nations, ranchers, municipal officials and environmentalists hope to persuade a judge this week to force Alberta to revisit its decision to open one of the province's most important and best-loved landscapes to open-pit coal mining.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

At least nine interveners will seek to join a southern Alberta rancher's request for a judicial review of the province's decision to rescind a coal-mining policy that had protected the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains — and the headwaters that flow from them — for almost 45 years.

THE FOOTHILLS ARE ON THE ALBERTA PROVINCIAL CREST SINCE 1905
"You talk about the Alberta identity," said Ian Urquhart of the Alberta Wilderness Association, one of the parties looking for standing.

"The eastern slopes, the Rocky Mountains and the foothills, are at the heart of what the Alberta identity is. This policy change threatens that."

The eastern slopes are the source of three major rivers — the Red Deer, the Oldman and the South Saskatchewan. Everyone in southern Alberta and many in Saskatchewan depend on those rivers for drinking water, irrigation and industry. The water is heavily allocated.

Endangered species, including cutthroat trout and grizzly bears, live there. The region's beauty is universally acknowledged.

A 1976 policy brought in by Peter Lougheed's government laid out how and where coal development could go ahead, forbade open-pit mines over a large area and banned any mining at all in the most sensitive spots. It came after years of work and dozens of public consultations, said David Luff, a retired civil servant and consultant who worked on the policy.

"Albertans overwhelmingly said the eastern slopes should be devoted to watershed protection, recreation and tourism. Lougheed had a very compelling vision based on input he received from extensive public consultation."

Over the years, the policy informed the Alberta Land Stewardship Act and was written into legally binding land-use plans.

Last spring, the policy was quietly revoked by Energy Minister Sonya Savage with no consultation. It was done on the Friday of the May long weekend, during the height of COVID-19's first wave, through an information letter on the department's website.

"It's morally and ethically wrong," said Luff.

But legally wrong? The province doesn't think so.

The hearing in Calgary Court of Queen's Bench is to begin Tuesday with Alberta arguing that there was no duty to consult because the coal policy was just that — a policy.

"The 1976 coal policy was not enacted using a legislative tool, so it can be rescinded unilaterally by Alberta Energy at any time," says a provincial briefing note entered in the court record.

The province plans to ask the court to rule that the change is a political decision, not a legal matter, and the review request should be dismissed.

Nigel Bankes, chair of natural resources law at the University of Calgary, notes land-use plans and the land stewardship act both promise consultation before major change.

"This is effectively an amendment to the plan and therefore triggers the consultation obligations," he said.

"There's certainly case law to suggest that high-level policy changes may trigger the duty to consult."

As well, Bankes said, First Nations are owed a duty to consult. Three of them — the Bearspaw, Ermineskin and Whitefish — are asking to intervene.

He suggests there's a good chance the court will turn down the provincial request for dismissal.

Other hopeful interveners include the Municipal District of Ranchland, which is concerned about the impact that coal development could have on municipal services and infrastructure.

Environmental groups seeking to intervene want to ensure water quality and ecological degradation are taken into account.

One coal company — Cabin Ridge Coal — has asked for standing as well. It says it's already invested substantial money in exploration leases.

"Restoration of the coal policy will create uncertainty in circumstances where the (Alberta Energy Regulator) presently has clear standards and processes for considering proposed exploration and development activities in Alberta," it says in a court filing.

Alberta officials have said mining will create hundreds of jobs and generate millions of tax dollars at a time when the province really needs them. They say any proposed mines would still be reviewed by the provincial regulator.

Prominent and popular Alberta country musicians Corb Lund and Paul Brandt have publicly opposed the mines.

A petition to the federal government opposing one development already in the review stage had more than 25,000 signatures as of Friday morning.

The government has sold leases on about 1.4 million hectares of land for coal exploration since the policy was revoked. At least one provincial recreation area is partly covered by a coal lease and four others are surrounded by them.

The province has also reopened water allocation agreements.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 17, 2021.

— Follow @row1960 on Twitter

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Biden indicates plans to cancel Keystone XL pipeline permit on 1st day in office, sources confirm

KENNEY WASTES TAXPAYERS MONEY ON THIS

WHILE DECLARING AUSTERITY IN A TIME FOR PUMP PRIMING ALA KEYNES

© Kyle Bakx/CBC 

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News.

U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News on Sunday.

A purported briefing note from the Biden transition team mentioning the plan was widely circulated over the weekend after being shared by the incoming president's team with U.S. stakeholders.

The words "Rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit" appear on a list of executive actions supposedly scheduled for Day 1 of Biden's presidency.


The document suggests that Canada has not been able to persuade the incoming Biden administration of the benefits of the pipeline expansion project.

The list shown to stakeholders is a lengthier version of a list already reported in the media based on a memo released publicly over the weekend by Biden's chief of staff Ronald Klain. That publicly reported memo from Klain did not mention Keystone XL, but cautioned that the memo was not a complete list of planned actions.

The Biden team has announced plans to sign dozens of executive orders in the incoming president's first few days in office.
Climate actions planned for first day

They include a raft of environmental policies to be enacted on the first day of his presidency, including re-joining the Paris climate accord. The note shown to stakeholders has led some to expect that the first-day climate actions will include the move to cancel the project to carry Canadian bitumen.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in his first conversation with Biden as president-elect in November, indicated that he wanted to speak further about some potential irritants — including Keystone XL and Biden's proposed Buy American policies.

Biden foreshadowed such a cancellation months ago, announcing in a U.S. TV interview and through statements from his campaign team that he intended to cancel the $8-billion, cross-border pipeline.

However, proponents of the project have been hoping that he might reconsider once in office.

Federal Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole called on Trudeau to reach out to the incoming U.S. administration to ensure Keystone moves forward. "Keystone XL is a project of national significance that supports countless workers on both sides of the border," he said in an emailed statement.

However, Green Party Leader Annamie Paul welcomed the news, calling Biden's potential actions a "contrast in leadership" to new offshore drilling projects greenlit by Canada's environment minister earlier this week.

Former TC Energy executive Dennis McConaghy is not surprised the project is among the first decisions by the new administration.

"I have consistently said Biden would indulge in this rescinding of the permit immediately because it's something he has to do largely to follow through for expectations of his political base and many of his donors," McConaghy told CBC's Kyle Bakx on Sunday.

© CBC News

The decision would likely lead to disappointment in the Canadian oilpatch, even after so many other setbacks for the project over the last decade.

"Ideally the project should have been completed and put into operation during the Trump administration," McConaghy said. "It's a very audacious thing that is being done here by the Biden administration."
Ambassador says Canada continues to support project

Kirsten Hillman, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., said in a statement sent to The Canadian Press that the pipeline expansion fits with Canada's climate plan.

"The Government of Canada continues to support the Keystone XL project and the benefits that it will bring to both Canada and the United States," she said.

"Not only has the project itself changed significantly since it was first proposed, but Canada's oilsands production has also changed significantly. Per-barrel oilsands GHG emissions have dropped 31 per cent since 2000, and innovation will continue to drive progress."

Keith Stewart, senior energy strategist with Greenpeace Canada, suggested Canada's continued support of the pipeline was akin to "beating [a] dead horse."

"The Biden administration offers us a fresh start on addressing the climate crisis with a willing partner, so let's not blow it by pushing pipelines," Stewart said U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders called the pipeline expansion a disaster in a tweet.

"With all of the major crises facing America, we must never lose sight of the most existential threat facing our planet: climate change," he wrote.

TC Energy said in a release late Sunday that the company plans to spend $1.7 billion US on a solar, wind and battery-powered operating system for the pipeline, hire a union-only workforce, sign Indigenous equity partners and establish zero-emissions operations by 2030, all with an eye toward securing Biden's approval.

Canadian leg of pipeline under construction for months

UCP GIVES BIG OIL TAXPAYER MONEY WHILE CLAIMING AUSTERITY

The Alberta government agreed last year to invest about $1.5 billion as equity in the project, plus billions more in loan guarantees. As a result, the Canadian leg of the project has been under construction for several months with around 1,000 workers in southeast Alberta.

If completed, the 1,897-kilometre pipeline, first announced in 2005, would carry 830,000 barrels of crude a day from the oilsands in Hardisty, Alta., to Nebraska. It would then connect with the original Keystone that runs to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has said previously he thinks Alberta could have legal options to recoup taxpayer money should the permit be cancelled.

On Sunday, Kenney said in a statement posted to social media that he's deeply concerned that Biden may repeal the pipeline's presidential permit.

"Doing so would kill jobs on both sides of the border, weaken the critically important Canada-U.S. relationship and undermine U.S. national security by making the United States more dependent on OPEC oil imports in the future," Kenney said.

Kenney said should the U.S. repeal the permit, "Alberta will work with TC Energy to use all legal avenues available to protect its interest in the project."

In 2016, TC Energy launched a lawsuit and a multi-billion dollar North American Free Trade Agreement claim against the U.S. government. The company changed course after the election of President Donald Trump.

TC Energy could now take similar action in order to prevent walking away from Keystone XL empty-handed after a dozen years of setbacks, billions of dollars spent and thousands of pages of filings.

"There are plausible legal claims. I think you have to say all of those are less than 50 per cent shots to get your money back. Whether it is the end of the road depends on whether the investors want to stick by it," said James Coleman, an associate professor of energy law at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told CBC.

TC Energy has yet to respond to a request for comment

 

UCP has essentially seized control of all public-sector pension plans in the province

JANUARY 14, 2021

And they’re coming for the retirement nest eggs saved by Albertans through the Canada Pension Plan, too

EDMONTON - The presidents of the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) and Alberta’s largest public-sector unions held a news conference today to condemn the latest actions taken by the Kenney government to effectively seize control of pension savings belonging to hundreds of thousands of Albertans.

“It’s not just the teachers’ pension plan that’s subject to the new terms imposed by the Finance Minister. They’re also going after the pensions of hundreds of thousands of Albertans working for Alberta Health Services, school boards, municipalities, the provincial government and universities and colleges,” said AFL president, Gil McGowan. “What’s happening is unprecedented, outrageous and brazen.”

The leaders at the news conference included McGowan, Guy Smith, president of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE); Heather Smith, president of the United Nurses of Alberta (UNA); Mike Parker, president of the Health Sciences Association of Alberta (HSAA); and Rory Gill, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Alberta Division (CUPE).

The leaders say that Ministerial Orders issued on January 4th by Alberta’s Finance Minister are essentially designed to finish the work that the government started in the fall of 2019 with the passage of Bill 22.

Bill 22 stripped all of Alberta’s public-sector pension boards of the power to choose who would manage their investments, decreeing that AIMCo – an agency that is wholly owned and controlled by the government – will be the sole monopoly provider of investment services.

What’s significant about the new Ministerial Orders is that they build on the power and control already granted by the government to AIMCo at the expense of the pension boards.

“Now, as a result of these orders, not only will AIMCo be the monopoly provider of investment management services, they will also be able to ignore the wishes of the pension plans when it comes to decisions about how the retirement savings of workers and retirees should be invested,” said McGowan.

“In other words, AIMCo and the Finance Minister will be the deciders – and the hundreds of employers and hundreds of thousands of workers who actually pay into the plans will simply have to shut up, take what they’re given and trust that the government and AIMCo will do what’s best. This paternalistic approach is entirely at odds with industry norms and with the way pensions are managed in other provinces.”

The union presidents say this is “perverse” because the money in question – more than $100 billion – doesn’t belong to the government or to AIMCo. It belongs to the more than 400,000 Albertans who have been using Alberta’s public plans, as vehicles, to save for their retirements.

“With Bill 22 and these Ministerial Orders, the Kenney government has essentially seized control of vast sums of money that is not theirs. The Finance Minister and the Premier might call this administrative reform. We call it theft,” said McGowan.

The big question is: why is the Kenney government doing this? The union leaders think they have an answer.

“We think Jason Kenney’s end game is to use the retirement savings of hundreds of thousands of Albertan to prop up oil and gas ventures in the province that are having an increasingly difficult time raising money from global investors and international markets,” said McGowan. “To be clear: we are not opposed to all oil and gas investments. What we ARE opposed to is a system in which the government gives itself the power to invest other people’s money in risky ventures without their permission.”

The union leaders said they will respond to the UCP’s “pension theft” with a legal challenge and an aggressive member campaign to pressure MLAs. They will also campaign against government efforts to pull Alberta out of the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).

“We think what we’re witnessing with these ministerial orders is just part of Jason Kenney’s grand vision. We think the UCP is also set on seizing the retirement money that all Albertans save through CPP and handing it over to AIMCo under similar terms that have now been imposed on public-sector pension plans.”

A full copy of McGowan’s remarks can be found here.

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An AFL Blog Series: Public Education During a Crisis - AFL

Sotomayor Says 13 People Executed During Trump Killing Spree 'Deserved More From This Court'

"This is not justice," said the liberal Justice after the state murder of Dustin John Higgs as she excoriated the court's conservative majority for essentially rubber-stamping the administration's rushed death penalties.

by

Jon Queally, staff writer COMMON DREAMS

Police officers gather to remove activists during an anti-death penalty protest in front of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

In a fiery dissent issued just prior to Friday night's federal execution of convicted murderer Dustin John Higgins—the 13th and likely final person put to death under the direction of the Trump administration's Department of Justice—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denounced the court's abdication of responsibility in recent months and said that those killed by the state under the arbitrary end-of-office deadline of Trump's  deserved better protections and due process than what they received.

"Sotomayor's dissent... will be remembered long into the future as one of the most thorough, resounding indictments of this administration's reckless, immoral, illegal effort to execute as many people as possible, as quickly as possible." —Sister Helen Prejean

"This is not justice," Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting objection (pdf), backed only by Justice Stephen Breyer, which stated that the nation's highest court "repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes, often at the Government's request, allowing it to push forward with an unprecedented, breakneck timetable of executions."

As CNN noted, Sotomayor in her statement argued the government should have proceeded with "some measure of restraint" instead of moving with an "unprecedented rush" amid questions concerning the Justice Department's drug protocol, the Federal Death Penalty Act and other disputes.

According to Business Insider:

Sotomayor also condemned the federal government for fast-tracking the executions of two men who tested positive for COVID-19 — Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs — by arguing that a sooner execution would put the inmates out of their potential misery. Sotomayor dissented against the federal execution of Johnson a day earlier on January 14 because he was intellectually disabled and not afforded judicial review. 

Six of the 13 inmates killed since July have been Black, and a Death Penalty Information Center report from September 2020 showed that Black Americans are almost 30 times more likely to face the death penalty for the murder of a white victim than the other way around.

Putting the 13 people killed by the federal government since Trump's DOJ lifted a self-imposed ban on executions last July in "historical context," Sotomayor lamented that the U.S. has killed more people in just half a year that it had in the previous six decades combined under Trump.

"[T]he Court has allowed the United States to execute thirteen people in six months under a statutory scheme and regulatory protocol that have received inadequate scrutiny," she wrote, "without resolving the serious claims the condemned individuals raised. Those whom the Government executed during this endeavor deserved more from this Court. I respectfully dissent."

"The Court made these weighty decisions in response to emergency applications," reads the objection, "with little opportunity for proper briefing and consideration, often in just a few short days or even hours. Very few of these decisions offered any public explanation for their rationale."

Longtime anti-death penalty opponent and activist Sister Helen Prejean said the dissent will go down in history:

As Common Dreams has reported, Trump's killing spree of recent months has resulted in new and elevated calls for Congress to finally step in and abolish the death penalty once and for all.

"State-sanctioned murder is not justice, and the death penalty, which kills Black and brown people disproportionately, has absolutely no place in our society," said Rep. Ayana Pressley (D-Mass.) last week as she, along with incoming Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), re-introduced legislation to ban federal use of the death penalty.

"Ending the federal death penalty—which is as cruel as it is ineffective in deterring crime—is a racial justice issue and must come to an end," Pressley said. "We must finally abolish this inhumane form of punishment and put an end to Donald Trump's unprecedented killing spree. I am grateful for the partnership of incoming Chairman Durbin and my colleagues in this effort."

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ASK JARED WHO HE SOLD THE VACCINES TO

Trump 'Answer Immediately for This Deception'States "thought they were getting more doses and they planned for more doses and opened up to 65 and up, thinking they were getting more."

by

Kenny Stancil, staff writer

Seniors and first responders wait in line to receive a Covid-19 vaccine at the Lakes Regional Library on December 30, 2020 in Fort Myers, Florida. (Photo: Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

Earlier this week, the White House said the federal government would soon release coronavirus vaccine doses stored for second shots, but governors expecting increased shipments discovered Friday that no national stockpile exists, and now they are demanding that President Donald Trump's administration be held accountable for deceiving the American public.

"Governors were told repeatedly by [the Department of Health and Human Services] there was a strategic reserve of vaccines, and this week, the American people were told it'd be released to increase supply of vaccine," tweeted Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) on Friday. "It appears now that no reserve exists. The Trump admin. must answer immediately for this deception."

State officials nationwide—who on Tuesday had been instructed by HHS Secretary Alex Azar to broaden inoculation eligibility criteria—learned roughly 72 hours later that the so-called vaccine reserve had already been exhausted by the time they were told to plan for a surge in supply.

"The Trump administration had already begun shipping out what was available beginning at the end of December, taking second doses directly off the manufacturing line," The Washington Post reported Friday. 

"Health officials across the country who had anticipated their extremely limited vaccine supply as much as doubling beginning next week are confronting the reality that their allocations will remain largely flat, dashing hopes of dramatically expanding access for millions of elderly people and those with high-risk medical conditions," the Post reported.

"Health officials in some cities and states were informed in recent days about the reality of the situation," the newspaper noted, "while others are still in the dark."

Like Inslee, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) tweeted Friday that she received "disturbing news" on Thursday about the absence of a federal stockpile. She said the news was confirmed by Gen. Gustave Perna of Operation Warp Speed, which is overseeing vaccine distribution efforts.

"I am demanding answers from the Trump administration," said Brown. "I am shocked and appalled that they have set an expectation on which they could not deliver, with such grave consequences."

"This is deception on a national scale," she added. "Oregon's seniors, teachers, all of us, were depending on the promise of Oregon's share of the federal reserve of vaccines being released to us."

While the White House's "initial policy was to hold back second doses to protect against the possibility of manufacturing disruptions," unnamed state and local health officials told the Post that the "approach shifted in recent weeks."

Health officials knowledgeable about the matter were told that Operation Warp Speed "stopped stockpiling second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at the end of last year," the Post noted. "The last shots held in reserve of Moderna's supply, meanwhile, began shipping out over the weekend." As the newspaper reported:

The shift, in both cases, had to do with increased confidence in the supply chain, so that Operation Warp Speed leaders felt they could reliably anticipate the availability of doses for booster shots—required three weeks later in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech product and four weeks later under Moderna's protocol.

But it also meant there was no stockpile of second doses waiting to be shipped, as Trump administration officials suggested this week. 

State and local officials are "angry and bewildered by the shifting directions and changing explanations of supply," the Post reported. As one unnamed official put it, states "thought they were getting more doses and they planned for more doses and opened up to 65 and up, thinking they were getting more."

Robert Cruickshank, campaign director at Demand Progress, called the Trump administration's bait-and-switch on stockpiled vaccines "horrific."

Critics say that news of the nonexistent reserve of doses underscores the extent to which the federal government has bungled the vaccine rollout, along with the broader response to the Covid-19 pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 390,000 people—and counting—in the U.S. alone.

The Associated Press reported Friday that less than 2% of the population in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina had received the first dose of the vaccine at the start of this week, according to data from those states and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In late December, Common Dreams reported that if the U.S. failed to accelerate the rate at which vaccines were allocated, it would take nearly a decade for the country to inoculate an adequate number of Americans to get the pandemic under control.

"We should have had major warehouses located around the country so that as soon as the FDA greenlighted a vaccine, it could quickly be delivered to hospitals and clinics in every corner of the country," Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argued at the time. "We should have been prepared to start inoculating millions of people the day a vaccine was approved. This is a massive policy failure."

To make up for the slow start, Cruickshank said that President-elect Joe Biden "needs to immediately use the Defense Production Act to massively speed up vaccinations."

Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Friday wrote a letter to the heads of Operation Warp Speed in which the congresswomen explain how to "fully embrace using the Defense Production Act to bolster our vaccine supply."

"Thousands are dying from Covid-19 each day," Porter said. "We can't waste anymore time."

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Earthquake Swarming at Mt. Hood Volcano! 1/17/2021

USGS REPORT

WORKERS OF THE WORLD DEMAND THE BOSS PAY YOUR TAXES

Employers fear they will have to pay staff tax bills

'Sources said there was growing concern among employers that the unpaid tax will fall to them.' 


Fearghal O'Connor, INDEPENDENT.IE

January 17 2021 

Concern is growing among employers that they will come under pressure to help staff with the tax bills they have been landed with in recent days, according to taxation experts.

Thousands of workers who were placed on the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme by their employers - or who availed of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment - now face tax bills, potentially of thousands of euro.

Employers seeking to pay tax back on behalf of workers who they had placed on a Government Covid subsidy during the summer have been told by Revenue that benefit-in-kind rules will not apply to the extra payment.

Sources said there was growing concern among employers that the unpaid tax will fall to them.

Marian Ryan, consumer tax manager with Taxback.com said that while some larger employers had agreed to pay the bill on behalf of employees others were now under pressure to do so.

"The weight of the issue is likely to weigh even heavier on their shoulders as the preliminary statements are made available by Revenue and their employees receive notification of the tax owing," she said.

Employers want to " help their employees in any way they can, but the vast majority are not in the financial position to be able to cover the liability for the employee".