http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/14/1357730/-Ted-Cruz-plans-Keystone-amendment-to-lift-decades-old-restrictions-on-exporting-U-S-crude?detail=email
I do enjoy Senator Ted Cruz's consistency in fouling up his own party's messaging.
[Cruz] has started a push to end a decades-old ban on crude exports that could force his fellow Republicans to take tough votes.
Cruz hopes to attach an amendment lifting the ban, which blocks most overseas shipments of U.S. oil, to legislation moving through the Senate to greenlight the Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline.
I can't imagine that's something anyone in the Republican Party aside from Sen. Ted Cruz is eager to take a vote on. The ban was put in place decades ago during the OPEC oil embargo, and has remained ever since as part of our theoretical demands for American energy independence. Oil is a strategic resource, and so on; the symbolism of the ban runs deep.
With the current steep drop in crude oil prices, however, the good people of ExxonMobil et. al aren't happy—they think they can goose prices back up if they're allowed to sell that crude overseas. So they want to start exporting that crude, hence Ted Cruz piping up now with an amendment to a bill allowing Canada to export great massive gobs of tar sands muck to our southern ports that would simultaneously also allow American companies to export great massive gobs of their own muck. We get the pipeline, the rest of the world gets the oil, and in exchange we get, um—well, not sure on that one. Freedomz, I guess.
it's not just the dirty oil thickening but the right wing plot is also, the richest corp. in the world is sad because they are not able to gouge us at the pumps that has a double edge they get to rip us and republicans while failing to give Pres. any do about low prices bet on it that they will give him credit for any rise in prices.
Well, it'll be interesting to watch. The prohibition against exporting U.S. crude oil has always been explicitly nationalistic, a symbol that plays well with the Republican base, but it does bump up squarely against the establishment need to cater to the oil companies above all other entities. (Note that Southern-state oil refineries are among the staunchest opponents of lifting the ban, because oil companies being able to export that crude instead of refining it would, obviously, be a huge blow to their own businesses. Senators from the refining states will have to decide which of the two industries they want to make lifelong enemies of, and won't that be fun?)
Obama is expected to veto the currently premised Keystone legislation, thus rendering all of this moot. Cruz is once again asking for a meaningless vote pitting the two halves of his own party against each other: It may be that he is the world's worst party tactician, or it could be that the little fellow just enjoys the ruckus.i really don't see Cruz's strategy or if it exist, if he's doing this to garner brown nose points with the tea people it's not enough of them to get him elected to dog catcher, remember their million person march on DC aside from the crickets it was about one jr. high bleacher worth of them. they are in a civil war with the rest of the party so what's his scam a promised job with a corner office or is he just dabbling in the peyote?
