RSN: Sellouts: The Senate & the Keystone XL Pipeline

Hundreds risk arrest at the White House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. (photo: Al-Jazeera America)

Sellouts: The Senate & the Keystone XL Pipeline

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

30 January 15

ell, the Senate is now set to double-dog dare the president to veto a bill mandating the construction of our old friend the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel designed to bring the world's dirtiest fossil-fuel down from the environmental hellspout of northern Alberta, through this country's most valuable farmland, and down to the refineries on the coast, and thence to the world.

Instead of discussing (again) what a dreadful idea the pipeline is, let's mention the nine (!) Democratic senators who voted to submarine the White House in favor of this catastrophe waiting to happen.

Nine Democrats joined a unanimous Republican caucus to support the bill: Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Tom Carper of Delaware, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia.

OK, Heidi Heitkamp is about one head-scarf short of being an oil sheikh at this point, and Joe Manchin is hopeless on any issue involving the extraction industries because coal. But what the hell is up with Tom Carper? What's Delaware's dog in this fight? Shipping, I guess, and the same thing could be said for Bob Casey, Jr., who is following the family tradition of bailing on his party when it suits him. (The residents of Pennsylvania, with their land fracked half to death and their water capable of being used as lighter fluid, should be alerted to the fact that their junior senator voted with the industries that have done the damage.) Donnelly of Indiana voted for it so nobody would call him a tree-hugger on the radio, and I suspect Mark Warner wanted to burnish his "centrist" credentials as well. These are all very lame excuses, but Claire McCaskill has none. Of the nine poltroons, her state is closest to the proposed route of the death funnel, and it will be most affected by whatever happens when the pipeline breaks, because it will, because it is a pipeline and they break. That doesn't mean she hasn't tried to cobble one together.

"It's going to be either moved by train, or it's going to be moved by barge, or it's going to be moved by pipeline. The safest way for it to be moved is by pipeline. It also has the benefit of more jobs," said McCaskill when asked about her vote for a pipeline bill offered by Senate Democrats within weeks of losing their majority in last November's mid-term elections.

Let it be moved in all those ways, but let Canadian oil be moved through Canada, which is a harder sell, because they take their environmental regulations -- and their treaties with their indigenous peoples -- a lot more serious than we do. So we serve as North America's Louisiana, with our own Cancer Corridor. Which reminds me:

The vote is a big win for Louisiana lawmakers. Before December's Senate runoff in that state, the two candidates, incumbent Democratic senator Mary Landrieu and her challenger, GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy, both pushed bills to approve the pipeline. The House approved Cassidy's bill, but the Senate defeated Landrieu's and he went on to take her Senate seat in the election.