Jeb Bush embraces Big Oil, Trump

This video from the USA says about itself:

Jeb Bush: Failure Pile In A Sadness Bowl

22 February 2016

Jayar Jackson made a great montage of Jeb Bush epic fails. Observe. Ben Mankiewicz (Turner Classic Movies) and Elliot Hill (The Lip TV), hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

In 2000, Jeb Bush helped to steal the United States presidential election for his big brother George W. He himself became a candidate for president in 2015, but lost to Donald Trump.

On 7 October 2016, just one month before the presidential election:

Jeb Bush: ‘No apology can excuse away Donald Trump’s reprehensible comments‘

By Yousef Saba

10/07/16 07:37 PM EDT

Former Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush condemned vulgar comments made in 2005 by GOP nominee Donald Trump, whose crude remarks were captured on video and first published by the Washington Post.

“As the grandfather of two precious girls, I find that no apology can excuse away Donald Trump’s reprehensible comments degrading women,” Bush wrote on Twitter.

Now that Trump is president-elect, however, Jeb Bush has made his peace with Trump, ‘reprehensible’ or no longer.

By Natasha Geiling in the USA:

Jeb Bush partners with oil and gas lobbying firm, then defends Trump’s EPA pick

The former Florida governor is now working with the “go-to” law and lobbying firm for the energy industry

22 December 2016

On Tuesday, former Florida governor and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush penned an op-ed at CNN.com. Its purpose was to defend President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to tap Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma Attorney General and vocal critic of the EPA, to head that agency. Pruitt wants to roll back key EPA regulations, like the Clean Power Plan and the Waters of the United States Rule, and has argued that the EPA, in its current form, exerts too much power over environmental regulations.

“I cannot think of a person more suited to lead the Environmental Protection Agency than Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, someone who understands how to rein in an out-of-control bureaucracy and ensure that Washington focuses solely on its core functions,” Bush wrote.

Bush has been largely absent from the public stage since ending his bid for the presidency early this year. But it was recently announced that he would be joining the law firm of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney in a “strategic affiliation” through his own law firm, acting as a consultant to the firm and its clients.

So what does Bush’s career move have to do with his defense of Scott Pruitt? Turns out that Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney bills itself as the “go-to” energy law firm for companies looking to expand their production.

“For more than five generations, Buchanan has practiced energy law… playing a pivotal role in shattering barriers to energy industry growth,” the company’s website reads. “Through landmark litigation, legislative prowess, and legal and business street smarts, our high-profile, industry-defining wins have paved the way for national energy companies to operate successfully in the Marcellus and Utica shale plays, and beyond.”

The company’s clients include fossil fuel heavyweights like Chevron and Consol Energy, which received grades of “poor” and “egregious,” from the Union of Concerned Scientists with respect to each company’s role in fueling climate change and sowing doubt about its causes. In 2008, Chevron’s vice chairman spoke before Congress to ask for help opening up the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling.

Consol Energy does not even mention climate change on its website, nor does it have a company-wide plan for transitioning to carbon-free sources of fuel. In 2016, the firm lobbied for the American Petroleum Institute, Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConcoPhillips, among other fossil fuel interests and companies.

In October, John Povilaitis and Alan Seltzer, two shareholders in Buchanan’s Energy section, wrote an op-ed for Temple University’s business law magazine arguing that the regulatory processes for approving oil pipelines needs to be streamlined, so that more pipeline projects can move forward with construction. But the company focuses most on oil production from shale — it has, according to its website, “represented clients in oil and gas related transactions with an aggregate value of $28 billion in the last few years.” The firm represents oil and gas companies in a variety of ways, but one primary way is by helping them comply with Department of Transportation and EPA regulations.

As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt fought regulations related to fracking. Meanwhile, Oklahoma — which is one of the top producers of natural gas in the country, thanks in part to the state’s embrace of fracking since 2009 — has become the most seismically active state in the lower 48. Pruitt also has extremely close ties to the fossil fuel industry — a 2014 New York Times investigation found that Pruitt had sent the EPA a letter, in his capacity as attorney general, which had been drafted by Devon Energy, one of Oklahoma’s biggest oil and gas companies. (Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney also lobbied on behalf of Devon Energy in 2016.)

Cutting regulations that restrict fracking and aim to limit the industry’s pollution would likely be a business boon for Bush’s new partner firm. If that’s what he’s interested in, his public support for Pruitt makes good political — and financial — sense.

BUSH PAC TOOK FOREIGN CONTRIBUTION The super PAC that backed Jeb Bush’s campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination has been hit with a $390,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission for accepting a $1.3 million illegal foreign contribution from a Chinese company. [HuffPost]

Nutrient-rich ash from an enormous flare-up of volcanic eruptions toward the end of the dinosaurs’ reign kicked off a chain of events that led to the formation of shale gas and oil fields from Texas to Montana: here.