Posted on 02/19/2014 2:16:51 PM PST by Brad from Tennessee
A Nebraska judge ruled Wednesday that the state violated its constitution when it allowed the governor to approve the route of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, a decision that could significantly delay the $5.3 billion project.
District Court judge Stephanie F. Stacy blocked Gov. Dave Heineman (R) and other defendants “from taking any action on the governor’s January 22, 2013 approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline route,” such as allowing land to be acquired by eminent domain for the project.
Stacy concluded that the state legislature’s decision to take the siting power away from its Public Service Commission and give it Heineman violated the state’s constitution. More than 200 miles of the TransCanada pipeline, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada to refineries along the Gulf of Mexico, runs through Nebraska.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Don’t use eminent domain. Buy land on the side of a railroad or highway, donate existing government land, pay market rates for the land, etc. I am certain that a variety of computer programs can run a series of routes and land can be bought in the blind.
Is this a Nebraska state judge? He’s likely correct if the Nebraska State Constitution limits the jurisdiction for this.
So let me get this straight.
You don’t believe in private property rights.
Yes or no.
And there are plenty of alternatives to oil. I worked on many. Oil from the ground is just so cheap right now it doesn’t make sense to use some of the others. The oil is being shipped and used today, and opening up the pipeline (or not) will have little effect on the over all supply and price of oil.
Again, are you for private property rights? Yes or no.
Is she bucking for a USSC appointment or something?
Don’t know ... Could happen anytime though with some of the ages of the supremes. Maybe is thinking ahead but don’t know.
As I understand, the pipeline will be elevated.
Put it high enough for farming & ranching to continue under it.
LEASE the land from the property owners.
Someone has probably already answered this question but: When I lived there, Nebraska elected their judges and they could be voted out or recalled. I saw it happen to a crooked district judge, back in the 1970’s.
I would say she is looking for a way to get fired. See my response in post 108. The folks I know in Nebraska don’t like judicial activism.
As to oil alternatives, there are many. I have worked on some nutty ones (Bio-fuels, great fun) to the more sane. The best, IMHO, is using coal to make synthetic fuel. It is a proven technology, and from an abundant resource in the USA. There is also catalytic conversion of waste products, which can't replaced everything used in oil but does help in turning things like say, waste meat from a packing plant, to some lighter hydrocarbons.
Of course the oil companies don't want coal gas, and have been actively lobbying against it since at least the 1950’s. Old Ike also made a strategic decision to use Saudi oil (Saudi being a recent British creation) in order to drive them into our sphere of influence.
The other partial problem with coal is that it takes a lot of water. You can recover some of it, but the process itself consumes H2O. It has been a while since I played with it, and since I compared it to a traditional oil refinery, but if I remember right it was at least 25% more water intensive. Though I suspect that oil sands use more water in total that either sweet crude or coal conversion.
Again, I will ask you a simple question.
Do you as a person have any right to private property, or does the State's perceived need (or a corporation's lobbying) trump all property rights? For this is what it is really about. The land owners don't want to sell. A foreign owned and managed company, with a majority of non US citizen employees, wants that land (and to not be held accountable for spills).
Does the private citizen have any real property rights?
However, she actually ruled according to the law in this case. The Governor did not act according to the letter of the law, and bypassed the commission who has direct responsibility for projects like this.
There is a lot of politics on both sides. No one is really clean here.
Your second paragraph mute also. Sorry but you know there is no manufacturing of enough of these products to replace oil ... thus mute.
Your third paragraph is not mute but instead again not enough can be manufactured to replace oil.
On to your question:
Does the private citizen have any real property rights?
yes, but as Samuel Clemons said, *Neither life, liberty, or private property rights are safe while the legislature is in session* or similar. In this case the legislature made a decision. The People's legislature made a decision. The legislature was well within their rights to make law. I'll have to live with that because I do not go shooting up legislative bodies nor judges either. The judge made a grave error. This judge knows that the decision made by the judge was a grave error. Don't know the judge's motivation but it is what it is and since the judge is human; Most humans require Motivation but from the judge's motivation came I do not know.
I pray you do not think I've been harsh. Have been up and busy for going on thirty hours plus. At my age doing that is a killer for my brain activity. If you think I owe you an apology ... okay, you have your opinion and mine.
I am for Jobs for all Americans. This judge took jobs away from Americans. Do you not wonder why this judge took jobs away from Americans? I do.
A number of refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast are equipped to handle this kind of oil -- it's similar to what's being imported from Venezuela, e.g.
Wouldn't you rather be paying for and refining Canadian oil than Venezuelan oil?
I never said that I didn’t want to take on Canadian $$$.
The only thing I’ve expressed concern over was having people’s private property taken against their will. It’s a matter of private property rights and having control over what is done on the land you own.
I also didn’t think it was a conservative view to allow a foreign corporation to dictate/force a US citizen to cede their land and/or property rights.
I gather from many comments that I’m an illogical, immature child who doesn’t ‘understand’ the ways of the world. Since I don’t agree that people should just roll over for Canada, I should just tuck my tail and hide.
Mmmm, yeah. That’s just what we need in America. More people afraid to voice concern over having their rights abridged. Yep. Great idea.
I’ll go back to hiding now. / s
I tried to find info on this judge last night for some time and came up empty. Anyone here have anything on him?
I think the judge is a he. A weird name for a guy.
Joke? The entire point of using ramps is to provide links to the pipeline.
A common carrier allows for the use of additional products to be shipped. Keystone in texas does not provide those ramps, as far as I know.
S. Dakota and others provided such ramps. That is part of the reason we are/will receiving products from the Bakken producers via the pipeline.
I also didn’t think it was a conservative view to allow a foreign corporation to dictate/force a US citizen to cede their land and/or property rights.
I'll repeat my post #93...
No. It's totally within the law. And has been since the founding of the nation.Pipelines are "common carriers" -- committed to shipping product for all comers, based on a published rate.
As with public roads, such "common carriers" -- basically including railroads and pipelines -- have the right of "eminent domain". They can force the sale of right-of-way in the courts, if necessary.
However, because they are less subject to terrain, pipelines are a little more flexible in these matters -- and will re-route around a stubborn property owner...if it's feasible.
On the other hand, there's no good reason to be a "stubborn property owner". With pipelines, property-owners are compensated appropriately and don't suffer any loss of use of the property -- save a brief period during construction.
In other words, this isn't a Kelo situation. If necessary, eminent domain would not be applied whimsically, but fully within the law and it's original meaning. Whether it's a foreign company or not, the project contributes to the public good -- energy independence, reliable supply and stable prices, which will benefit the entire economy.
Nor is the property owner being asked to take any injury that he isn't fully compensated for -- with no long-term damage whatsoever.
That would be Montana. The Keystone XL line will have a terminal at Baker, MT, from whence Bakken product will be shipped to the Texas Gulf Coast.
If you've got sufficient product flowing from, say, Paris, TX to Houston or Port Arthur, an existing terminal or enough to justify a terminal, I'm sure Trans-Canada would talk business with you.
Since 1990, more than 110 million gallons of mostly crude and petroleum products have spilled from the nation’s mainland pipeline network. More than half of it occurred in three states — Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana — where more pipelines exist.
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But the Exxon Mobil pipeline spill, initially estimated to have released at least 157,000 gallons of crude oil and driven more than 20 families from their homes, represents only a fraction of the regular oil losses from the huge network of pipelines stretching across the United States.
Between 2008 and 2012, U.S. pipelines spilled an average of more than 3.1 million gallons of hazardous liquids per year, according to data from the Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, the nation’s pipeline regulator. Those spills — most commonly caused by corrosion and equipment failure — caused at least $1.5 billion in property damage altogether.
In 2010, a historic inland spill of 819,000 gallons of diluted bitumen — a kind of oil from the tar sands in Alberta — shut down the Kalamazoo River for miles after a pipeline break in Marshall, Mich. Enbridge Inc., a Canadian pipeline company, ended up buying 150 homes from locals too unsettled by the disaster to return.
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So yeah...no damage at all.
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