Saturday, December 01, 2012

Susan Rice and Keystone XL

I have defended Amb. Rice against the scurrilous personal attacks leveled against her by John McCain, Lindsay Graham, et.al., but that's all over now.

The shoulders on which the Keystone XL pipeline decision may fall happens to have a half-million dollar stake in the game. Secretary of State hopeful and current U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan E. Rice reportedly owns between $300,000 and $600,000 of TransCanada stock.

It gets worse: she is a massive investor in several of the various Canadian tar sands players.

(Rice) holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline.
[...]

(A)ccording to financial disclosure reports, about a third of Rice’s personal net worth is tied up in oil producers, pipeline operators, and related energy industries north of the 49th parallel -- including companies with poor environmental and safety records on both U.S. and Canadian soil. Rice and her husband own at least $1.25 million worth of stock in four of Canada’s eight leading oil producers, as ranked by Forbes magazine. That includes Enbridge, which spilled more than a million gallons of toxic bitumen into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in 2010 -- the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history.

Rice also has smaller stakes in several other big Canadian energy firms, as well as the country’s transportation companies and coal-fired utilities. Another 20 percent or so of her personal wealth is derived from investments in five Canadian banks. These are some of the institutions that provide loans and financial backing to TransCanada and its competitors for tar sands extraction and major infrastructure projects, such as Keystone XL and Enbridge’s proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would stretch 700 miles from Alberta to the Canadian coast.

This is the sort of thing that the SEC usually refers to as 'insider trading', which is illegal. Usually.

Not only does Rice not deserve a promotion, she probably ought to go ahead and resign from her post as UN ambassador and "retire" from politics. My guess is she still has a bright and lucrative future as an oil industry lobbyist.

5 comments:

Gadfly said...

Yeah, I saw that yesterday. That said, are you surprised?

PDiddie said...

Am I surprised that Democrats are crony capitalists just like Republicans? Yea-no.

Greg said...

You're criticizing Susan Rice? You racist b*st*rd! Why don't you be a man and go after Obama like he dared you to!

PDiddie said...

I'm taking you out of your timeout in order to spank your fat ass again.

When Democrats practice crony capitalism the way that Republicans do, they get the same treatment here. And you've read enough of what I have written to clearly understand my opinion of Obama.

Back to the corner now, and put that pointed hat back on.

Greg said...

Yep, you are a racist piece of sh!t -- you refused to genuflect to our Lord and Savior Barack Obama and his anointed Ambassador Susan Rice.