Threat To North Texas Water Supply From Tar Sands Oil Pipeline

From Nation of Change by Christine Leclerc

Just when it seemed that the Keystone XL pipeline was on hold, TransCanada Corp. segmented the project and the U.S. government fast-tracked the environmental review process. This allows TransCanada to begin construction on the southern part of the Keystone XL this summer.

With a nonviolent direct action camp that started July 27, 2012 in East Texas, grassroots opponents are working on a construction project of their own: Tar Sands Blockade, a coalition of landowners, community members, students, and others dedicated to stopping the pipeline through direct action.

Building in Segments to Get around Opposition

The Keystone XL pipeline was originally proposed as a single line that went from Alberta to Texas. However, in February, TransCanada announced that the southern part of the Keystone XL had been reconceived as a separate Gulf Coast Project Seaway pipeline.

The Seaway pipeline is an aging 36-year old low pressure crude pipeline that passes through Collin, Grayson, Rockwall, and Kaufman counties, and crosses tributaries to Lake Lavon and other water sources supplying the DFW area.

In this plan, tar sands crude will travel 500-miles between Cushing, Oklahoma and refineries on the Gulf Coast. Tar sands is far more toxic, acidic, and corrosive than conventional crude since it has to be liquified with natural gas condensate and other chemicals to dilute it enough to push it through a highly pressurized pipeline.

The Seaway pipeline will be developed by Enbridge Inc., the operator responsible for the largest and most expensive tar sand spill in U.S. history, in a 50/50 partnership with Enterprise Partners. The toxic Enbridge spill on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan was due to a rupture in an aging, 43-year old repurposed pipeline, not unlike Seaway. Now, two years and $720 million later, people along the Kalamazoo are sick and their property is ruined.

DFW's already scarce water supply will be at risk with the transport of tar sands crude through this aging, repurposed pipeline.

Rita Beving, North Texas organizer for Public Citizen, talks about the Seaway Pipeline project - June 23, 2012

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Rachel Maddow reports on the NTSB review of the 2010 Enbridge oil spill that dumped tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River, requiring two years of futile clean-up efforts and ultimately becoming the single most expensive onshore oil spill in U.S. history. July 10, 2012

TransCanada spokesperson David Dodson characterizes the Gulf Coast pipeline as important for the energy security of the United States.

According to Dodson, domestic producers “do not have access to enough pipeline capacity to move the production to the large refining market along the U.S. Gulf Coast.”

In March, U.S. President Barack Obama expedited the review process for pipelines going from Oklahoma to Texas. “In part due to rising domestic production, more oil is flowing in than can flow out, creating a bottleneck that is dampening incentives for new production while restricting oil from reaching state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast,” reads the president's March 22 memo.

In a whopping 86-word sentence, the president goes on to explain that all agencies are to “coordinate and expedite their reviews, consultations, and other processes as necessary to expedite decisions related to domestic pipeline infrastructure projects.”

Following the President's order to expedite the review process, the Sierra Club, Oklahoma and Texas landowners, and the Texas communities of Reklaw, Gallatin, and Alto filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which issues water permits.

Restrictions On Deputy Voter Registrars At Issue

Last Thursday, U.S. Southern District Court Judge Gregg Costa issued an injunction to suspended five provisions of Texas law that place restrictions on groups and individuals who work to register new voters. These provisions place restrictions on groups like the League of Women Voters, making it significantly more difficult for them to register voters. The provisions are suspended until a trial in the Voting for America v. Hope Andrade case on whether the entire law violates the 1993 National Voter Registration Act can be held. The Houston Chronicle has more:

Under Judge Gregg Costa injunction, Texas may not require that deputy voter registrars live in Texas, a law Voting for America said prevented it from organizing voter registration drives.

It also may not prevent deputy registrars from registering voters who live outside their county; prevent organizations from firing or promoting employees based on the number of voters registered; prevent organizations from making photocopies of completed voter registration forms for their records; or prevent deputy registrars from mailing completed applications.

One day later, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a motion to stay Judge Costa's order to suspended those provisions, arguing an injunction would lead to confusion and possibly disenfranchise more voters if third party volunteers improperly handled registration. Judge Costa will rule on A.G. Abbott's motion on Wednesday to determine whether to allow those five provisions of Texas law to remain in effect pending a full trial.

KVUE News

KVUE News

There are more than 13 million registered voters in Texas, roughly 71 percent of the voting age population, however, there’s a fight brewing over exactly who can register the rest.

At issue are a five provisions of current Texas law, from a pair of items passed during the last session to legislation dating to the mid-1980s. One provision keeps third-party voter registration groups from working in more than one county.

Another specifies only Texas residents who are themselves registered to vote in a county can can become a deputy registrar to register new voters who reside only in that same county. Other elements include legislation to keep registrars from being paid in relation to the number they sign up, from photocopying registration certificates and from mailing completed forms.

Last week, a federal judge put those laws on hold with an injunction against the State of Texas. In his 94-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa of Galveston called the rules “more burdensome… than the vast majority, if not all, other states.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott replied Friday with a motion to stay, arguing an injunction would lead to confusion and possibly disenfranchise more voters if third party volunteers improperly handled registration. ”I just think it’s another straw man,” said Dicky Grigg, an Austin attorney representing Voting for America, an organization that includes non-partisan voter registration organization Project Vote and a plaintiff in the original lawsuit against Texas.

Grigg characterizes the legislation as a whole as “sort of like a thousand small cuts,” designed to disenfranchise minority voters under the guise of preventing statistically rare voter fraud. ”What they’re trying to do is to prevent the registration of minority voters. That’s basically the bottom line of what the legislature has done,” said Grigg. “Talking to the media they talk about voter fraud, but there wasn’t one piece of evidence of voter fraud put on before this judge because it doesn’t exist,” said Grigg. “It’s not a problem.”

Read the full story @ KVUE News.

GOP's Serious Vulnerability To A Democratic Wave Election

Democracy Corps

Less than 100 days until the election, the latest battleground survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps shows Democrats with an advantage in the most vulnerable tier of Republican districts. The first Democracy Corps survey of the reapportioned battleground shows Republican incumbents in serious and worsening trouble. The 2012 campaign has just turned the corner on 100 days and the message of this survey could not be clearer: these 54 battleground Republicans are very vulnerable and many will lose their seats.

These members, on average, are barely ahead of their challengers and are as vulnerable as the incumbents in 2006, 2008 and 2010. Those elections we now know crystallized earlier—in 2010, incumbent vulnerability translated into anti-Democratic voting by March as health care came to a close in 2010. These incumbents are equally vulnerable but have not yet paid the price for the Ryan budget and their priorities, but it is clear that their support is now falling.

These Republican incumbents now hold a marginal edge against their unnamed challengers—47 to 45 percent.

In the most competitive half of the battleground – the 27 most vulnerable Republican-held seats, where Democrats lead the named incumbent by 6 points, 50 to 44 percent—two-thirds could lose their seats.

While Democrats start behind in the vote in the second-tier districts, a balanced battle on the Ryan budget and tax cuts erodes the Republican advantage by two-thirds, getting Democrats to within 3 points in these districts.

A number of things have come together to make these incumbents vulnerable. Obama has made significant gains in these districts—he edges Romney on the ballot by a 2-point margin—just two points short of his margin in these districts in 2008. The Republican brand is also in trouble in these Republican seats, and the party image is growing increasingly negative. Finally, these incumbents themselves are very weak on the traditional measures of incumbency, like fighting for people in their own district.

Read the full story @ Democracy Corps.

Sadler Could Win U.S. Senate In November On Turnout

When it comes to the reality of winning election to the U.S. Senate in the one of the nation's most consistently far right red states, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate Paul Sadler argues it isn't impossible. Sadler believes a high turnout of his supporters, Democrats, Independents and old guard Republicans, for the November general election could give him the win over Tea Party nominee Ted Cruz .

Tea party-backed attorney Ted Cruz trounced old guard Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst to win the primary runoff Tuesday and seize the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate.

Cruz received support from national Tea Party super PACs such as Club for Growth and FreedomWorks, national conservative radio hosts including Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Tea Party celebrities Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum.

According to a Public Policy Polling (PPP) report,Cruz's victory was driven by 4 things:

The Tea Party, the enthusiasm of his supporters, a generational divide within the Texas Republican ranks, and the lack of regard the party base currently holds for Rick Perry.

Cruz led Dewhurst by a whooping 75-22 margin with Tea Party voters, more than making up for a 56-39 deficit Dewhurst had with voters who don't consider themselves members of that movement. There has been too much of a tendency to ascribe any Republican primary upset over the last few years to Tea Party voters, but this is one case where it's well justified.

Sadler said in a KVUE interview that he doesn't buy is Cruz's claim that his win marked a Tea Party "revolution" in Texas.

KVUE News interview with
Paul Sadler, Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate

Pointing to the relatively small group of 1.1 million voters who cast Republican primary runoff ballots, Sadler believes a high turnout general election in November could paint a different picture.

Cruz captured only 631,316 (56.8%) statewide votes in the runoff, out of 13,065,425 registered voters and a total Voting Age Population of 18,279,737 Texans. Only 1.4 million people voted in the May 29 Republican primary where Cruz received only 480,558 votes.

(2012 Primary Turnout by VAP)

Sadler told KVUE News that he believes Cruz's Tea Party insurgency is already causing some more moderate Republicans to consider crossing over in the general election.

"We're raising money. Our money has started coming in very rapidly," Sadler said. "In fact, I started getting calls Tuesday afternoon -- a lot from Republicans wanting to donate to the campaign, get involved in the campaign."

When it comes to the reality of pulling off an upset in the one of the nation's most consistently red states, Sadler argues it isn't impossible. The East Texas native believes the numbers to pull off a Democratic win are achievable.

"I'm going to win the Hispanic vote because my policies are right. I'm going to win the African-American vote because my policies are right, and they've always supported me," said Sadler. "I won 14 out of 16 counties in East Texas, which is where I need to win. Even if I just do 45 percent, I win the United States Senate seat."

Sadler points to several issues when it comes to his opponent, including the fact the Ted Cruz was born in Canada and not a "native son" of Texas. He also takes issue with the amount of support Cruz received from out of state super PACs such as Club for Growth, national conservative radio hosts including Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Tea Party celebrities Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum.

"I don't want to owe anybody outside the State of Texas our Senate seat. I don't want to owe some group outside the State of Texas our Senate seat," said Sadler. "We'll all own this seat, and we won't owe it to Club for Growth or some other big super PAC; we'll answer to each other for it."

"I'm from here. I've seen the hurricanes on the coast. I've seen the wind storms and the dust storms in West Texas; I've lived through them. I've lived through the drought in Central Texas. I've seen the hot, humid days in the summer in East Texas," said Sadler. "I know this state, and that's what we need in the United States Senate. We don't need some Washington hand-picked lobbyist."

Read the full story @ KVUE News.

Paul Sadler for U.S. Senate campaign video