With some people I know in panic mode about the latest opinion polls showing Donald Trump performing well in a prospective fall campaign against Hillary Clinton, I thought it might be worth stepping back a bit and looking at the prospects for such a race in November.
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After seeing how Keke Palmer became a trending topic on Twitter due to Internet haters bashing her over a cute natural-faced Snapchat selfie, I felt compelled to write. I didn’t want to write to necessarily defend Keke because I know that it’s deeper than just her and any other celebrity being publicly slandered. It’s about the bogus beauty standards imposed upon women. It’s about celebrating real natural beauty. It’s about accepting who we are as people. Keke is definitely an inspiration to me and so many other young people in this world. She is one of the few celebrities who allows us access to her world. We love her because she is transparent about her personal journey to becoming the authentic person she is today. Why bash a person who is only being true to themselves? Keke looks like a beautiful young lady with no makeup on. I don’t see the big deal.
I know how hard it is to love yourself in this world. The world is full of people who are waiting to tear you down at every turn. It is up to you to stand tall, speak up, and be secure in who you are. But, what if you are struggling with low self-esteem and depression? As we all know, celebrities are people too. They eat, sleep, breathe, and crap just like we do. So, why are we so quick to judge them? Why do we project our negativity onto their lives? Of course, having an inside peek into the lives of our favorite celebrities can be interesting and entertaining. To go to the extent of dissecting and slamming a person’s picture is just screaming “I care too damn much about the next person’s life”. I mean, saying someone is abusing drugs is not really a kind thing to say, especially on social media where the world can see. Let’s be a little bit more responsible of what we say to and about our brothers and sisters.
Social media gives people an unsolicited voice to spread their agenda. If a troll wants to troll, they can easily do it without any repercussions. And, people are free to have their opinions. However, do people ever think before they type? Do they know that perhaps other young people who may very well look up to Keke see the hate that Internet haters are throwing her way and will think twice about uploading their own natural-faced selfies? People don’t understand that everyone is hurting. We all are just trying to overcome our own personal demons that we’re too afraid and ashamed to expose on the Gram. Seeing one person loving and being themselves gives other people the license to do so. What if she was feeling beautiful just like any other person and wanted to showcase her beauty? Who are you to tell her what and how she should look like? Which brings me back to my point: Who decides what is beautiful?
I’m tired of hearing guys say “I like natural girls” and then when you come around with your Afro and no makeup, they have the audacity to complain. I’m tired of hearing my fellow women makeup-shaming women and then getting hateful when they see women without their false eyelashes on. I’m tired of hearing women shaming women who choose not to wear makeup or wear their hair a certain way. It’s like there’s no winning in either situation. With all the conflicted messages in the world, it’s difficult to find your place as a young person. There is too much information and opinions to digest. Sometimes you lose yourself trying to find yourself. What it comes down to is learning to love yourself to the point that nothing people say will break your smile. That’s why I can applaud people like Keke. While everyone else is talking mad crap about her, she’s somewhere living her life, achieving her dreams and ignoring all the B.S. And that is a true example of someone that is internally beautiful. Beautiful is as beautiful does.
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WASHINGTON — Though every major party nominee since 1976 has released his tax returns while running for president, the practice has never been required by law. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wants to change that.
The senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which handles tax issues, introduced a bill on Wednesday that would force presidential candidates to release their most recent tax returns. The Presidential Tax Transparency Act, as the bill is called, would require candidates to make their latest three years of tax returns public no later than 15 days after becoming the nominee. If they do not comply, the treasury secretary would be directed to do so for them, provided the appropriate redaction of sensitive personal information.
“Since the days of Watergate, the American people have had an expectation that nominees to be the leader of the free world not hide their finances and personal tax returns,” Wyden said in a statement.
“Tax returns deliver honest answers to key questions from the American public,” he added. “Do you even pay taxes? Do you give to charity? Are you abusing tax loopholes at the expense of middle class families? Are you keeping your money offshore? People have a right to know.”
Only one major party presidential candidate is refusing to release any of his tax returns to the public right now, and his name is Donald Trump. The presumptive GOP nominee has said he cannot release his returns because they are currently under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS, however, has clarified there is nothing legally preventing someone from making a return public while it’s under audit.
Trump’s campaign has argued that Americans simply aren’t interested in the Manhattan real estate mogul’s tax returns. Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, on Tuesday even claimed that there is “nothing to learn” from them.
“I strongly disagree with that,” Wyden told The Huffington Post on a Wednesday call with reporters. “For literally four decades now, Democrats, Republican, candidates regardless of party have made this information available.”
Indeed, there is evidence that refusing to release any returns may hurt Trump in the general election. According to a Morning Consult survey released Tuesday, 67 percent of registered voters — including 60 percent of Republicans — said presidential candidates should release their tax returns.
Senate Democrats have stirred the pot on the issue of tax returns before. During the 2012 election, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) infamously claimed that Mitt Romney paid no taxes, upping the pressure on the Republican standard-bearer to release his tax returns. When he finally did so, they showed he paid a low 14 percent tax rate in 2011.
Asked on the call whether he had any communication with the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, Wyden said only that he had not spoken to the former secretary of state.
It is questionable how far such a bill would go in a Republican-controlled Senate that is slowly coming around to supporting their nominee. But Wyden said he would try to round up GOP co-sponsors anyway, feeling encouraged by recent comments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said that “most candidates” have released returns under a long-standing “tradition.”
Wyden also batted down a question about whether his bill, which would force nominees to release private information, conflicted with his strong stance in support of privacy. The senator from Oregon has been a vocal critic of government surveillance programs, such as those revealed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
He noted that nominees seeking confirmation before the Senate Finance Committee, for example, must also submit such personal information.
“If somehow we’re breaking a tradition here as presidential nominees by making this information available, we’re saying the commander in chief is held to a standard lower than an assistant secretary,” he said.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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People with disabilities often face disadvantages as they navigate a world and society that doesn’t always keep them in mind. However, as the world become more and more progressive, the conversation is beginning to change. The multitudes of individuals who would have been outsiders in their community only a few decades ago are gaining acceptance on a global scale and the discussion of their situations is no longer deemed taboo. Activists are breaking ground, but no one is more powerful than an empowered person from the disabled community. Alexandra Kutas, a model with disabilities who uses a wheelchair, is redefining conceptions of beauty and fashion everywhere with her work.
(Photo: Wheelchair Fashion Model Alexandra Kutas)
Born Alexandra Kutas in Ukraine, an error made by a doctor during her birth caused spinal injuries that led her to use a wheelchair in her everyday life. Far from being discouraged, however, Kutas chose to pursue a modelling career at sixteen years of age after being discovered by a photographer in a restaurant. After she fell in love with photography, she saw an opportunity to use her image as a vehicle to change people’s perceptions. The project was called ‘Break Your Chains,’ and its purpose was to spread awareness through Alexandra’s beauty about the difficulties people with disabilities face, and encourage the empowerment of individuals to push their limits and not allow themselves to be restricted by their situations. By showing that people with disabilities could be seen as conventionally beautiful, Alexandra hoped to go beyond the stereotypes, pity was to be replaced by delight, understanding and compassion.
(Photo: Alexandra Kutas with another model during a photoshoot)
After her breakthrough, Alexandra gained recognition worldwide and already featured by popular media like the Daily Mail, kickstarting her career. As Ukraine’s first face for a new world of equality, she has shown that she is a true professional at her work, not a social project. In addition to the fact that her success breaks down stereotypes regarding how disabled people live and where they belong in society, her work is also reshaping the fashion industry by demonstrating that models come in all shapes and sizes, and that beauty is more than a slender figure strutting down the runway. Her authenticity shines through her portfolio, and her courage is astounding.
After leaving Ukraine behind for New York, where the scene is more liberal and opportunities for models are multitudinous, Alexandra courted professionals at Fashion Week to showcase her talents and set an example for others following their passion. She believes that she can succeed on her own terms, and that the fashion world is finally ready for expressing the reality of the nuanced and complex world that we live in. She made her debut at Ukraine Fashion Week in 2015, and hopes that her work will inspire and contribute to the wellbeing of people like her.
(Photo: Alexandra Kutas with a co-model during the photoshoot)
Her other work primarily focuses on raising awareness of the predicaments faced by disabled individuals such as the lack of accessible infrastructure. In her home country, wheelchair ramps are rare, which hinders mobility and integration into society. Together with her American friend, Blake Wind, Alexandra is currently working on a video project to help popularize Universal/Inclusive Design across the world, and is actively seeking more collaborators for it.
In addition, she is a generous soul and volunteered to help wounded Ukrainian soldiers in hospitals who was fighting against Russian attacks in 2014. She hopes to volunteer in more capacities at home and abroad in the near future.
(Photo: Alexandra Kutas and a fellow model)
Ultimately, Alexandra Kutas is integral to reforming the fashion industry as well as the world in terms of spreading awareness about disabled people. Her bravery and perseverance will certainly revolutionize the perception of people like her and empower more disabled individuals to follow their passions. In the big picture, she is not just an individual who surmounted unimaginable obstacles; she is a symbol for a future of equality.
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Peter Thiel is helping wrestler Hulk Hogan bankroll his lawsuit against Gawker Media, according to a report in Forbes.
Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, in March won a $140 million jury verdict against Gawker in a privacy lawsuit stemming from a sex tape Gawker had published.
Gawker, a New York-based website specializing in media and celebrity news, is appealing the verdict.
Forbes reported late Tuesday that Thiel, an early backer of Facebook and a co-founder of PayPal , had played a lead role in financing the litigation. A spokesman for Thiel said Wednesday he would be in touch if Thiel decides to issue a statement on the matter.
In a statement Wednesday, Gawker acknowledged but did not confirm reports of Thiel’s involvement, and said it hoped the appeals court would decide in its favor.
Thiel, who is also a founder of a hedge fund and a venture capital firm and has been an outspoken voice on issues including education, is no stranger to Gawker. In 2007, it published an article entitled “Peter Thiel is totally gay, people.”
Thiel kept mum publicly about his sexuality at the time, but has since said he is gay.
A longtime supporter of libertarian causes, Thiel recently said he was backing real estate financier Donald Trump in his bid for president.
“In my experience, the freedom to speak, in the view of most libertarians, is not unlimited,” said Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, in an email.
“If Peter Thiel is indeed backing the lawsuit, I assume that he thinks that disclosing a sex video without the participant’s permission is a violation of the participant’s rights – here, a right to privacy.“
Gawker is also facing lawsuits from Shiva Ayyadurai, an entrepreneur who has made the controversial claim that he invented email, and journalist and writer Ashley Terrill.
Lawsuits backed by third parties are not unusual. In most cases, though, they are financial investments in which backers are motivated by the potential proceeds from a large damage award.
Secretive third-party financings of lawsuits can put media companies at a disadvantage during litigation, said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, in an interview Tuesday.
“There might be circumstances in which knowing who your real adversary is, or the real party of interest who is making a suit against you may alter one’s perception of the case and strategies for defense,” Scheer said.
(Reporting by Sarah McBride and Heather Somerville Editing by Jonathan Weber and Michael Perry)
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I never want to have the Zika virus. Clearly it would destroy everything that I hold dear. Still, it is out there and I feel obligated to understand what it’s all about. Just in case. Which brings me to Donald Trump.
I know he’s out there. They mention him a fair amount on the news. Still, honestly, there is not a single person in my social circle who admits they’ll vote for our first carrot-colored candidate. This is most likely because I live in lovely, liberal Los Angeles and hang around with people who aren’t filled with rage and hatred on a daily basis. (Unless you count my teenagers.)
Still, if for no other reason than self-preservation, I really should try to understand why a large number of voters don’t think he’s the Anti-Christ with a comb over. He could actually be in charge of our lives in a few months. So, since I have nobody to consult personally, I figured I’d just go public and see what it is I’m not getting:
Dear Trump Voter:
How’s your day? I don’t mean to upset you – from what I’ve read, you’re pretty upset already – but I have a big favor to ask. I need you to explain your Trump love to me. I realize I’m one of those smug, elitist, graduate school-educated, tree hugging, George Clooney movie-watching, socialist sympathizers your leader isn’t fond of. However, I am a middle-aged out of work white guy so we do have some common ground.
I admit that you and I didn’t get off to the greatest start. Months ago, I went to a Trump rally in New Hampshire to meet you. However, it was like being surrounded by every character who ever picked on Anthony Michael Hall in a John Hughes movie. And every time the PA announcer urged you to keep your hands off protestors, you booed lustily. So I didn’t dare speak to you that night. I’m fine with the idea that a presidential candidate doesn’t back down from a fight. It’s just manufacturing that fight and then blaming the other side for it seems somewhat dangerous.
There is plenty for us to agree on. From what I can tell, you’ve attached yourself to Donald Trump primarily because he’s not a party hack. He’s someone who speaks off the cuff, regardless of how people will perceive his words. And I am totally on board with all of that. In fact, I recently wrote an entire book devoted to the notion of non-traditional presidential candidates – The Can’t-idates: Running For President When Nobody Knows Your Name. I’d love to see a political newcomer seriously contend for the presidency.
However, even the guy in my book who goes by the name Vermin Supreme and wears a boot on his head while promising free ponies to everyone seems less volatile than Trump. Whenever your drunk uncle goes off on a political rant at the Thanksgiving dinner table, you nod politely and hope he passes out soon. And I’m not entirely clear on the difference between his views and Trump’s fact-adjacent tirades warning of all the new boogiemen out there eager to destroy us.
Your candidate has not exactly been encouraging to a non-Trump voter like me. Unless I’m reading every single one of his speeches wrong, if you’re not with him, you’re not only against him. You’re the problem. I can’t get him to be more understanding of alternate points of view. That’s why I’m hoping you’ll understand that no matter who wins the election, we’re all going to have to learn to peacefully coexist despite our difference. You know, kind of like the Brady kids had to do when Mike and Carol got married.
It would be awesome if at least you and I can focus on our mutual love for a country that lets us adore and ignore whatever we’d like. Movies. Clothing styles. Kale. You go your way and I’ll go mine. With respect. I’d also love it if you could explain to your guy that while it’s fine to fire everyone who disagrees with you when you run a company, government doesn’t work that way. He can’t fire every American who dislikes his policies. At least I hope he can’t.
Look, the benefit of being liberal is a willingness to allow multiple points of view. And I am happy to temporarily set aside such trivial Trump details as his race baiting or his allergy to truth or the creepy way he talks about his daughter. I mean, there has to be some redeeming quality in the Republican nominee that my evil leftist bias won’t allow me to see. And since The Donald probably won’t have time to explain himself to me, I am counting on you to show me what I’m missing.
I feel good about this! I think we might be able to make some progress here. We’re all in this together, after all. Like we say here in Hollywood, let’s do lunch! The taco bowls are on me!
Sincerely,
Craig
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Europeans and refugees embrace one another with four minutes of continued eye contact in a powerful new Amnesty International video that’s sure to bring a tear to your eye.
There are smiles, laughter and tears as men, women and children sit in pairs across from one another, staring quietly. The “Look Beyond Borders” experiment was based on psychologist Arthur Aron‘s study that suggests extended eye contact increases intimacy. The results are heartwarming.
“Are you alone here, or with your family?” a woman from Berlin asks the Syrian man facing her, her eyes welling with tears.
“Alone,” he answers softly, after a short pause. “It’s life. Sometimes nice, sometimes, not good.”
When the time is up, the two quickly rise to their feet and hug each other tightly.
“Today, when the world appears rife with division and conflict, it is always worthwhile to look at everything from another person’s perspective,” said Draginja Nadażdin, director of Amnesty International Poland.
More than one million refugees fled their homes and crossed into Europe last year, in addition to millions of people who have escaped from Syria since war broke out in 2011. Many have endured alienation and discrimination since they arrived.
“Too often, what gets lost in the numbers and headlines is the suffering of actual people, who, like us, have families, friends, their own stories, dreams and goals,” Nadazdin added. “Borders exist between countries, not people.”
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I grew up believing that I was a replacement child, for I was given life after another child lost his: a brother my family loved and missed, and whose absence cast an obvious shadow over my grieving mother’s heart. Nicky, her oldest son from another marriage had died suddenly at the age of ten, a year before I was conceived. As my mother explained, his unexpected death was the reason that my parents made the decision to have me, their one last child.
My parents’ marriage was a second one for both and together they formed a stepfamily made up of five spirited children. The arrangement was fraught with all the inherent challenges of blending recently divorced families and the turmoil of children whose lives had been dramatically rearranged. Partly in an effort to cement their new stepfamily, my parents soon had a baby boy of their own. With so many kids in the mix and money tight, he was to be their one and only child together.
Then tragedy struck when Nicky drowned in a pond during a family visit to the country. My mother was devastated. By her telling, it was my parents’ now one-year-old baby boy who saved her from sinking into the depths of fresh maternal grief. His smiling face and the immediacy of his needs were her main connection to the present. It was only logical that my parents chose to have one more baby to fill the hole in the family created by Nicky’s death. And so I was conceived.
My mother used to tell me this origin story as I was growing up, I suspect because she saw my role in our family as a gift and a source of joy, delivered in the aftermath of tragedy. But I was confused and guilt-ridden. Trying to make sense of this information, I figured out that because I was grateful to have been born, I must have been glad that Nicky had died.
Adding to this muddle, my mother seemed at a loss for ways to openly carry on her love for Nicky, or to honor his life. There had been no funeral or memorial service when he died. His cremains were buried on his paternal grandmother’s property, hours from where we lived, on land that was eventually sold off to strangers. There was no shared recognition of Nicky’s birthday or death date, nor did any bench, tree or scholarship fund bear his name. I could see the effort it took my mother to talk about her beloved son and I was acutely aware of the sadness in her voice when she said his name.
Trying to understand this dead boy with whom I shared an unusual connection, I looked closely at pictures of Nicky in family albums and framed on the wall above my mother’s bed. It scared me to think that a child’s life could leave so little mark upon the world aside from my mother’s quiet, piercing pain.
With few clues to help me understand who Nicky was, I yearned to learn more. In my egocentric child’s view, it was clear that I alone was left out of this part of our family’s history; me, the replacement child who owed Nicky for my life. Would he have liked me, I wondered? I think I hoped to be worthy of the life that my unknowable brother had inadvertently bestowed upon me.
I developed a preoccupation with death that gripped me with fear as I lay in bed at night. I imagined myself dead and gone, the world spinning on forever in the vast nothingness of space, no trace of my life or any meaning that it might have once held. I lay bathed in sweat and stricken with fear that when death inevitably came for me, I would be lost forever — just like Nicky.
As I grew older and developed an adult’s understanding of the difficult situation my parents faced, I slowly began to make peace with my relationship to Nicky. I surmised that my parents’ inability to include Nicky’s memory in our lives might have been partly due to an era in which death was less talked about, especially the tragic loss of a child. From what I understand and remember of life in the seventies, there were fewer avenues for family members to openly process their grief.
It does not have to be this way, as I learned firsthand in a heartbreaking turn of events that brought my story full circle. My husband, kids and I became close with a couple whose only child (at the time) had recently died under sudden and tragic circumstances. In the aftermath of their devastating loss, our new friends shared some of their grief with us. They told us about their beautiful daughter and accepted our attempts to offer comfort — which mostly just meant listening. We grew so close that we felt like family by the time they gave birth to a new baby, a couple of years later.
She is a delightful toddler now, and being close to their family has allowed me to see how the joy and innocence of new life can be a balm on the wounds of grieving parents. Of course, our friends will forever grieve their irreplaceable first daughter, which is why their ability to truly embrace their second child is so profound to witness. They do a beautiful job of parenting both their children: their deceased child’s photographs and artwork grace the walls of their home and they speak about her often, telling their daughter all about the big sister she never knew.
My own parents’ struggle to keep Nicky in our lives left me wondering where I fit in our family, and whether I ever really would. I know now that I was never a replacement for Nicky. One person cannot substitute for another and I do not believe that was ever my parents’ intent. Witnessing our friends’ ongoing love for both their daughters has helped me understand that Nicky and I each occupy distinct places in our family. Today, my connection with him feels more like a privilege than a burden. I have gratitude, admiration and compassion for my parents, and I feel blessed to have given them the opportunity to love another child. Our friends have helped me resolve my own story for they have shown me that when we summon the strength to embrace life anew with all its beautiful gifts and terrifying risks, a family’s love has no limits and no end.
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[Of course, we don’t have access to Chevron’s internal communications. But if we did, this “memo” is what we imagine we might see. It’s hard to peek into the mind of someone who is responsible for massive environmental destruction and human rights violations, but based on John Watson’s actions as Chevron CEO this should be about right.] Reposted from the Eye On The Amazon
Dear Chevron Board of Directors and Senior Management:
This Wednesday will mark my sixth Annual Shareholder Meeting as your Chair and Chief Executive Officer. I want to thank you for the complete trust and lack of oversight you have given to me and our legal team headed up by Hew Pate in handling the ongoing Ecuador matter. Regretfully, I must inform you that we will once again have to deal with representatives of the indigenous and farmer communities of the Ecuadorian Amazon and their many misguided allies at the meeting on Wednesday.
As you know, our primary strategy since Chevron merged with Texaco (thanks in great part to my work as chief architect of the merger) is to spare no expense in dragging out legal proceedings as long as possible (and given our hefty bank accounts, that could last longer than all the remaining oil reserves, am I right?). We will continue that approach in Canada and anywhere else, or as our PR team so aptly put it: “until hell freezes over.”
However, there are a number of developments since the meeting last year. I have anticipated some of your questions and will endeavor to respond to them below:
Yes, the Canadian Supreme Court sided unanimously with the Ecuadorians to allow their enforcement proceeding to begin there this Fall. Not to worry, we have hired multiple firms in Canada and we fully expect to be able to drag that trial out for many more years in hopes our opponents finally run out of funding to continue the fight.
No, we have not reported this $11 billion liability to the SEC for this case. Of course, we will stand by our claims that Chevron-Canada can never be held liable for Chevron’s actions. (Don’t worry, we still get to list all the assets of Chevron-Canada as ours in our annual report). Sure, someone at the SEC or Department of Justice might figure out that we’re trying to have it both ways. But I’m pretty sure our bylaws allow for having our cake and eating it too.
Yes, there’s risk we will have to ‘clean up’ and ‘pay up’ as the activists say. And this whole Canada thing could affect our existing operations and new upstream development plans. But, no matter what happens, I look forward to receiving a generous bonus and I promise to give you a few weeks notice before I “float away on my golden parachute.”
Yes, we are still awaiting the decision of the Second Circuit of Appeals on that RICO case that Judge Kaplan so graciously advised us to file. It is true that if we win it doesn’t prevent the communities from continuing their enforcement actions, but we’re happy to have paid Gibson Dunn so much money that the firm opened a new international litigation spin-off to help companies like us get off the hook for paying for things like environmental remediation and rights abuses.
No, even though Judge Wesley suggested it, we will not be forced to try the original case all over again in front of the Second Circuit in New York. Ted Olson has assured me that they can’t actually force us do that. Quite a relief, what with the pollution, cancers, and stuff.
No, our case is not dead just because our star witness Judge Alberto Guerra admitted to lying on the stand and forensic evidence shows that the Ecuador judgment was indeed written by the presiding judge. I mean, sure, it’s not great, but to quote my buddy Don Rumsfeld, ‘you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want’. Probably shouldn’t have given him a backpack full of cash, though. I’m going to add a note to self here that we’ve got to be more creative when bribing people.
Yes, in the “bribery” column of your report you will see that we will continue to pay the housing costs and “stipend” for Judge Guerra for at least another year. If we failed to continue this support it might look like we were only paying him to testify in our favor, so his admission of lying under oath in the RICO case actually demonstrates that the $2 million he has received from Chevron can in no way be seen as a bribe. Good news! And of course, we don’t want him to turn on us and further, so consider it well invested hush money.
Yes, it is true that our legal team verified the leaked inspection videos from 2005 released by Amazon Watch. (No bonuses for those involved!) Those videos show our technicians finding toxic waste at sites we defended as clean in the Ecuadorian trial. Fortunately, we have successfully kept them off mainstream media in the US with some well written letters from our lawyers and the protection of Judge Kaplan’s verdict. As such, they have only been viewed a few million times on the internet.
If you are confronted by any Ecuadorian “natives” at the meeting, I recommend you take my posture of simply dismissing them as naive people who have been manipulated by “greedy New York lawyers”. If they have water with them, DO NOT DRINK IT.
Once again, just as we expect this divestment movement to fade away, we estimate that eventually the Ecuadorians and their lawyers will run out of support and be forced to abandon their case. I promise you that day is coming… they can’t live forever after all, especially given that water they have to drink.
Let’s just get through this meeting on Wednesday and engage as little as possible with people from Ecuador, Richmond, Canada, Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Romania… and anywhere else our operations generate “protest”.
Remember what I said last year, “the path to prosperity is through fossil fuels.” For most of the world it may be an oil soaked path through a desert world, but just look at how good it has been to all of us!
Sincerely,
John Watson
Chief Executive Officer AND Chairman of the Board
(It’s good to be your own boss!)
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With the new methane standards announced by President Obama in the middle of May, the U.S. moves further towards regulating the largely unchecked natural gas industry. The standards will cut methane emissions from new and modified extraction sites from the oil and gas sector– in particular from hydraulic fracturing or fracking sites that extract natural gas. The standards are a part of President Obama’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, specifically reducing methane emissions from this industry by 40 – 45% from 2012 levels by 2025. The new methane standards are expected to reduce 510,000 short tons of methane in 2025, the equivalent of reducing 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.
But do why do these new standards matter? Do they even make a difference? The answer is yes. Here are five reasons why Obama’s new methane regulations matter:
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