An Actual Reason To Worry About Susan Rice
At the end of the day, the whole Benghazi episode is going to come to nothing, and the president will nominate Susan Rice to be secretary of state, or not. But, if he does, there’s something more to talk to her about than the phony crisis that John McCain has turned into political Cialis over the past month or so.
Susan Rice, the candidate believed to be favored by President Obama to become the next Secretary of State, holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline. If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice’s first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project. Rice’s financial holdings could raise questions about her status as a neutral decision maker. The current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rice owns stock valued between $300,000 and $600,000 in TransCanada, the company seeking a federal permit to transport tar sands crude 1,700 miles to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, crossing fragile Midwest ecosystems and the largest freshwater aquifer in North America.
The Keystone XL pipeline — old friend of the blog and Republican political fetish object — rather has slipped out of the national dialogue for the moment, but the decision on whether we should allow an untrustworthy Canadian company to take people’s land from them in order to run a pipe full of the dirtiest fossil fuel in human history down the spine of the continent and perilously close to the Oglalla aquifer is still (remarkably) an open question. And, as it happens, its ultimate resolution may come with the participation of a Secretary Rice.