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(Lower Keystone Pipeline Rupture; Mayflower, Arkansas) EPA

Death and money. The two things that really move politics forward.  If something will kill you, it is possible to get a law passed to rectify it.   The Environmental Protection Agency came about because people were dying… enough people dying so it became hard to elect people who said, “what the heck if people die; it costs money for billionaires to protect people from hazards.”

Instead people who stated: “this will kill us; I’ll stop it immediately” were elected as the alternative, which today, … is why we have clean air and clean water.

The only other thing besides death that can move things through legislative halls is money.  And since people won’t die from Keystone as they would from breathing in toxic air spewing across Newark out of a giant TDC smokestack, the money angle has more of a pull.

There are a lot of argument out there both for and against the Keystone Pipeline. However the principal brainstormed idea behind the Keystone pipeline, is to raise your gas prices.  For those who don’t know, the current glut in the price of oil is being caused by the emirates of the Persian Gulf dumping oil at very low prices onto the international market.  Their motive, taken straight from John Rockefeller I, is to drive out their competition which is us.  After we give up, after we throw up our hands and stop fracking, they again have the monopoly and with the price war over, their price bounces up a dollar per gallon and guess who is stuck?  They can get  a barrel out of the ground for under $25 dollars.  It averages out to $75 in the US today… So if they can get the price under $75 a barrel, then people will switch to cheaper foreign oil, and the frackers close up shop….

Except there is this giant pool of very dirty liquid tar in Alberta.  Stuff that burns with gross black smoke, but can be refined into automotive fuel and much of it is owned by the Koch Bros through various unrelated companies.

This oil will not sell well in America due to its filth and residue, but other nations do not have such scruples.   The oil can go out either of two ways.  One is across Canada to the Pacific; the other is across the US to Houston, Texas.  The Canadian route is an environmental nightmare and Canadians are environmental sticklers over their pristine wilderness.

But conservatives in control of the Congress make the US route far more attractive.  If a giant oil spill were to occur destroying the aquifers of millions of Americans as well as those of millions of cows, pigs, corn, and soy; there is a very good chance Mitch McConnell’s Senate and John Boehner’s House will pass a gigantic tax break to reimburse the Koch billionaires for any or all of their spilled oil…

Keystone II will raise your gas price at the pump.

The best way to describe how, is to imagine that your family has an oil well out back attached to a refinery…. You just back your car up and fill’er’up…. Pretty cheap…  Now imagine your spouse, decides to make some money so they sell 10% to this client, 25% to that client, 35% to that client’s neighbor and the sells three shares of 10% on the open market…

You never stop hearing how smart they were for selling those rights and making all that money…. (Did you do the math? Add the percents?)  You will find that you have no rights to your oil… You now need to buy it on the open market!…  And the price is much more than when you could back your truck right under a tank and fill’er’up!

If we have rights to 100 million barrels of oil, which we can tap later at our leisure, and suddenly with a pipeline, have zero rights unless we too buy it at the world price, we are going to pay more for gas….

Which is what everyone wants…. except those who aren’t making billions of dollars.

For those who want to argue that America will use the oil first, and not import it, answer this question:  why would any fool sell something cheap when he can get a lot more for it from somewhere else?

All the oil is intended to be imported.  We know this because when legislation was brought on the floor of Congress, requiring some of the oil in the Keystone pipeline to be designated solely for domestic consumption,  every single Republican voted against it….

They want you to pay more for gas because: you are not their boss; rich billionaires are.  Unless you can makes some people start dying, the money is going to win this one……