{"id":35117,"date":"2013-04-19T11:09:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T18:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=35117"},"modified":"2013-04-19T11:09:05","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T18:09:05","slug":"what-the-corporate-media-wont-tell-you-about-exxon-mobils-spill-in-arkansas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2013\/04\/19\/what-the-corporate-media-wont-tell-you-about-exxon-mobils-spill-in-arkansas\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Corporate Media Won&#8217;t Tell You About Exxon Mobil&#8217;s Spill in Arkansas"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/download\/20130419Hartmann\/2013_04_19_hartmann.mp3\">Listen to this segment <\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=right width=50% src=\"\/home\/graphics\/AKspill.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:<\/p>\n<p><strong>HARTMANN<\/strong>: My favorite quote for the day is from John Kenneth Galbraith, \u201cThe modern conservative is engaged in one of man&#8217;s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.\u201d So how is that being played out in our world today? <\/p>\n<p>Exxon Mobil, one of the most profitable companies in the world that regularly pays no US income tax, had a pretty horrible tar sands oil spill in Arkansas last month. Most people have heard bits and pieces of the story, but here\u2019s what you probably have not heard from the corporate media.<br \/>\nFirst off, you got a glimpse of the pipeline rupture and spill because of citizen bloggers and journalists like Drew Barnes, who posted this on YouTube. But you haven\u2019t seen much coverage from the air of this, have you? That\u2019s because, just like with the BP\/Halliburton blowout in the Gulf, the FAA imposed a \u201cno fly zone\u201d over the oil spill. You\u2019re not allowed to see what\u2019s going on. Exxon Mobil has even hired local police for \u201csecurity\u201d and they\u2019re doing a pretty good job of keeping reporters away, according to Mother Jones reporting that documented numerous instances of people being threatened with arrest for just trying to ask questions or take pictures on site.<\/p>\n<p>Second, with all the money and profits from that oil pipeline, Exxon Mobil doesn\u2019t have to pay into the federal fund to clean up oil disasters. Including this one. Why? Because this isn\u2019t \u201coil,\u201d it\u2019s that stuff that the press refers to as \u201ctar sands oil from Canada\u201d but is know legally as \u201cdiluted bitumen.\u201d And, according to a 1980 law pushed through and passed by our bought-off Congress, that stuff that comes from Canada, the \u201cdiluted bitumen,\u201d not being \u201coil,\u201d isn\u2019t subject to the tiny taxes that are imposed on regular oil to pay into a fund to help cover the costs of spills.<\/p>\n<p>Another reason by the \u201cdiluted bitumen,\u201d aka \u201ctar sands oil\u201d that\u2019ll be coming down the Keystone XL pipeline, will be even more profitable for the big oil companies who plan to refine it on the Texas coast and then ship the refined diesel they extract from it to England, Mexico, Brazil, and China. We, by the way, will get to keep all the poisons left over from the refining process. And we get to pay for all the cancers from them \u2013 expect \u201cCancer Alley\u201d down South to grow substantially.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, to add insult to injury, we get one of the more heavily-oil-industry-funded members of Congress, Oklahoma Republican Congressman Mark Wayne Mullin tells us that, \u201cExxon should be patted on the back for the way they handled this.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And this clueless congressional newbie repeats the lie that if the Keystone pipeline, carrying more of this tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast, is finished, it\u2019ll reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Trying to tie the wonders of Exxon Mobil to the bombing in Boston, he said, \u201cI mean, would we rather buy oil from the Middle East that sponsors the acts that we see like at the Marathon that we just saw yesterday?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I guess the Congressman got out ahead of John King and CNN in knowing who blew up the pressure cookers in Boston. But aside from that stupidity, the pipeline won\u2019t reduce our dependence on foreign oil a bit, because all that slurry from Canada is going to very, very profitable refineries on the Gulf Coast where they can export the refined gas and diesel overseas. Last year, our nation\u2019s number one export wasn\u2019t TVs or jeans or computers \u2013 we don\u2019t even make those things here anymore. It was gasoline and diesel fuel.<br \/>\nYep, the big oil companies are exporting gas and diesel from the US like crazy, keeping the prices here high for us \u2013 and the profits for them \u2013 very, very high. And they want to export even more. And let us keep the cancers and the oil-spill risks.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ve been scammed. From the 1980 law exempting the oil companies from paying into cleanup funds for Canadian tar sands oil, to blocking our press from covering their spills, to our members of Congress being bought and sold.<br \/>\nAnd all of this to keep alive a 19th century fuel that\u2019s destroying our planet.  <\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time to leave behind fossil fuels altogether. Portugal just produced 70 percent of all their power needs from renewables. We can, too. We\u2019re still the nation that put a man on the moon, that invented the transistor and integrated circuit, that has led the world for centuries.<br \/>\nIf we can just get the bought and paid for politicians out of the way, and get our press to actually cover the horrors of tar sands oil and the reality of climate change, we just may be able to once again have that JFK vision of the \u201ccity on the hill.\u201d We should even take a lesson from the dozens of nation\u2019s that have nationalized their oil and, like Norway, used the money to send their kids to college. It\u2019s time to step up and speak out.<\/p>\n<p>Take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thomhartmann.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Thom Hartmann&#8217;s website.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>SONALI KOLHATKAR IS ON MATERNITY LEAVE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ROUGH TRANSCRIPT: HARTMANN: My favorite quote for the day is from John Kenneth Galbraith, \u201cThe modern conservative is engaged in one of man&#8217;s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.\u201d So how is that being played out in our world today? Exxon Mobil, one of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}