“Priority one for me has always been ensuring American jobs and employers see the full benefits of the natural gas renaissance.” -Oregon Senator Ron Wyden
Energy is often produced in rural areas for the benefit of urban dwellers, who sometimes live and work hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the source. Meanwhile, citizens of rural communities do not begrudge the arrangement—they are hungry for work and the prosperity that comes in the form of high-paying jobs, energy leases, corporate taxes and so on.
Today, in southern Oregon this drama is playing out, as it is in communities across the nation. The proposed Pacific Connector Pipeline, would transport liquefied natural gas, or LNG, 232 miles from Malin, Oregon—where an existing pipeline terminates—to Coos Bay, where an export facility would be built.
The export facility is a $7.7 billion proposal in its own right. Jordan Cove, which is owned by Calgary-based Veresen Inc., and its associated infrastructure will be the single largest private investment in Oregon’s history. According to The Washington Examiner, Jordan Cove is the seventh and latest natural gas export terminal approved by the Energy Department. The Obama administration supports exporting more natural gas.
If it gets built, Jordan Cove would be the first U.S. export terminal on the West Coast, giving it prime real estate to tap into Asian markets thirsty for natural gas.
Naturally, there are forces opposed. “Jordan Cove still needs a slew of federal and state permits to begin construction,” said Zack Malitz of San Francisco-based environmental group Credo, which is opposed to exports because it could lead to more drilling. The Oregon Sierra Club is also squarely against.
The Jordan Cove export terminal at Coos Bay would require the largest port dredging project in Oregon’s history in habitat important for marine species and the fishermen that depend on them. A 230-mile-long pipeline would be built to deliver gas to the terminal, crossing nearly 400 streams in the Klamath, Rogue, Umpqua, Coquille, and Coos watersheds.
In related news, there are greener energy developments brewing along the Oregon coast. The state of Oregon has invested more than $10 million in the Oregon Wave Energy Trust, to fund research and other projects to accelerate the development of wave power in Oregon.
In 2012, Ocean Power Technologies, a Pennington, N.J.-based wave energy company, appeared set to build America’s first grid-connected wave energy project, a 1.5-megawatt power station composed of 10 “PowerBuoys” in waters near Reedsport, Ore. Sadly, they abandoned the project earlier this spring.
In yet another development, Principle Power Inc. is a Seattle company with a permit from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management for a wind project off the Oregon coast, near Coos Bay.
“We like what Coos Bay has to offer,” said Kevin Banister, vice president of business development and government affairs for Principle Power. “It’s in the middle of a really rich band of offshore wind.”
Principle said it could have five massive turbines spinning by the summer of 2017.
Rich Saperstein is conversant in Italian and is an avid salt and freshwater fisherman. He’s also Chief Investment Officer at Treasury Partners in New York City and one of the nation’s top financial advisors, according to Baron’s.
Here he is speaking in optimistic terms today about the growting strength of the American economy.
To repeat, “We have no inflation, we have a budget deficit that’s shrinking. There’s tremendous demand (for stocks), and lack of supply.”
Saperstein didn’t say a word about President Obama’s hand in the economic recovery. Maybe there is no need to say anything. We all know who the President is and increasingly Americans know which party is pro-business and pro-labor at the same time.
I think every American can agree that wasteful spending by the federal government needs to be corrected. The problem is we can’t seem to agree on the “wasteful” part.
As we have seen, people with radical views on the right want to slash and burn any shred of a safety net for our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Are they doing this because the most vulnerable among us have little or no voice, and thus can’t fight back? Or are Tea Party anti-populists actually heartless and delusional?
If it is the former, at least I understand the strategy. If it’s the latter, we have a sickness in our land that needs a strong remedy.
Let’s take a closer look at the human side of this problem. According to Fortune, the median wage for fast-food workers nationally is $8.69 per hour, and only 13% of these jobs offer health benefits, compared to 59% of jobs overall in the U.S. Thus, it comes as no surprise that 52% of cooks, servers and other fast-food workers receive public aid — nearly twice the percentage of the overall workforce.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), said that “anyone concerned about the federal deficit only needs to look at the numbers to understand a major source of the problem: multi-billion dollar companies that pay poverty wages and then rely on taxpayers to pick up the slack, to the tune of a quarter of a trillion dollars every year in the form of public assistance to working families.”
McDonald’s alone accounts for $1.2 billion of the cost to taxpayers. The massive burger chain and others use a low-wage, no benefits model that forces workers to turn to the public safety net.
Any student of American history knows that labor-management disputes are commonplace, particularly since industrialization. And fast food workers have been busy protesting and asking for fair wages. I hope they keep the pressure on their employers, and I hope consumers will refrain from supporting companies with questionable labor practices. But resisting a cheap burger isn’t easy, especially when you consider the advertising budgets fast feeders have at their disposal. Hell, Carl’s Jr. even makes salad look good.
Jonathan Heller, president of KEJ Financial Advisors, believes it is the wrong time for fast food workers to ask for $15/hour, as protestors have done recently. “If the economy was booming, and labor markets were tighter, wages would rise naturally as there would be greater competition for labor. But not in this tepid economy.”
Wages would rise naturally? Get the hell out of here. Wages do not rise naturally, no matter how strong the overall economy. Owners and operators want to keep costs down, so they can earn more. It’s the name of the game, and we all play it to some degree. But at what cost?
By paying shit wages a company engenders no loyalty from its staff, and this lack of concern then gets passed on to the consumer in the form of poor customer service and a host of other problems. Therefore, paying low wages is un-American — it hurts American consumers directly, and it hurts American taxpayers directly.
Asking American corporations and employers to help fuel the economy via investment in its people is not asking too much. We have all the money in the world in this nation, we simply do a very poor job of distributing it. Partly due to greed, but it’s not greed alone that holds us in this trap of our own making. It’s also the idea that the owner and investor class is a better class of people.
Class, race, income, education, location and political leanings can all be used to stratify and separate us. It happens all the time, and no group is free of this pack-making tendency. We feel more secure when we belong to a pack. In Portland, for instance, one might belong to the rich white liberal Prius-driving pack. Once upon a time, we saw ourselves as Americans. That was the pack we all belonged to, but no more. Now we belong to a subset. Now we’re Christian conservatives or secular humanists or a hundred other labeled things.
The crisis in Washington, DC is merely a mirror onto the larger national identity crisis. We don’t know who we are as Americans any more, and it shows in ugly ways: tragic gun deaths every day, pointless foreign wars, media illiteracy and so on. It can be terribly depressing to look at and consider, but we need to look at it and consider it, if we intend to fix it.
A growing number of San Franciscans are fed up, not just with startups, but with techies in general. With their apps and buses, their gourmet coffee and skinny jeans, their venture capital wishes and IPO dreams. They’re tired of watching rents soar, friends forced to relocate and beloved neighborhoods drained of diversity.
I understand the frustration, but wonder: Are we embracing a soft xenophobia applied to a sector rather than a race, to some cohesive elite tech class that doesn’t exist outside of our own minds?
Temple understands the frustration because every resident of San Francisco (minus the super rich) knows how tough it can be to make this month’s outrageous rent or mortgage payment, and next month’s and so on. San Francisco is a real jewel, and the city’s cost of living is a reflection of this fact.
The truth is that a lot of this debate isn’t actually about rent, gentrification or economics, or anything rooted in a real class struggle. Some of it is just hipster-on-hipster hatred. Middle-class humanities majors grumbling about middle-class computer science majors.
“It’s amusing at some level,” Waldman said. “People are complaining that their nice cafe views are being ruined by Google Buses.”
Personally, I like to say, “Make digital disruption your friend.” It’s an acknowledgement of what is, and a call to action.
Change comes quick today. I started writing and sending email as a daily routine in 1997. I was 32. Sixteen years on, things have changed more than I could have ever imagined. Today, we are hooked on our devices, reliant on them, as if they are actual appendages.
I lived in the Bay Area before email. In 1990, I moved from a shared rental in Noe Valley to my own one-bedroom apartment in the Berkeley Hills. I had a view of the Bay and Mt. Tam from one side, and a balcony and view of the hills out the other. Concerts at The Greek Theater and The Warfield cost $25. If I remember correctly, I was making $26K and it was enough. I can only imagine what it would take to live in the same apartment today. Whatever the price, it’s not technology’s fault for the radical increase, just like it’s not tech’s fault that concerts cost $60 to $100 today, or that a college education costs $200 Large.
Arguably, it is technology’s fault that a modest ranch home in Silicon Valley goes for more than a mil. So, to the the graffiti artist’s point, “Fuck your startup.” On many other points though, I have to give it to the inventors and dreamers.
Temple argues that, “San Francisco changes because the world changes. It was formed in a gold rush and reshaped by every one that followed.” Yes! And when any one sector (entertainment in L.A. or media in NYC) makes a massive impact on their city and region, it’s a rising tide floats many, but not all, boats situation.
I do believe we might challenge tech startups on non-economic grounds and get them to ask tougher questions of themselves. Like, is this new widget or App actually needed? It might be interesting for a moment, but will it endure? Digital matter is awfully fleeting. For instance, you can see the web as an archive, and use it that way, but whatever’s on top when you open the chest, that’s what’s current and what gets noticed, shared and remembered. There may be a great volume of material under that top layer, but it’s invisible to some degree, buried by the weight of what’s current.
Many tech advances are real advances, but many more are not. Understanding the difference is more than the difference between success and failure, it’s a compass that developers and entrepreneurs can use to guide their decision making. It all boils down to serving humanity, in tech, in communications and in business. When we build tools to help people do bigger and better things, with greater ease and lowered costs, we’re on to something. So yes, “Fuck your startup” if it’s not adding value. That’s a message I can get behind.
I’m interested in media literacy and brand authenticity and corporate accountability; therefore, I enjoy seeing media critics take a running stab at Advertising and PR’s heart.
To read the trade literature of the PR and online advertising industries is to be hit by a tidal wave of guff about authenticity, engagement and two-way conversations. In the “era of participatory public relations”, the story goes, “the people have defeated the corporation”. The objective now is to “make your customers a partner in the selling process”. This is pseudo-egalitarian code for the voluntary circulation of Facebook ads. The notion that propaganda is always a state-run, top-down affair provides a cloak for our complicity. Social media’s veneer of openness and people-power exemplifies western propaganda’s habit of masquerading as its opposite.
I think Glaser is right to question the veracity of marketers’ claims, but wrong to call what marketers are producing on behalf of brands is propaganda.
“Propaganda is obvious, crude and naive, but it’s also subliminal, underhand and insidious,” she writes. I agree, which is why I know the work I do for clients, and have done in the past, is not propaganda. Not one of her six descriptors fit what I or my colleagues do for a living. Regardless, I do want to listen to this group of well educated Brits discuss the topic at length.
Honestly, Glaser’s thinking encourages me. She’s concerned about big companies with deep pockets getting away with lies. She’s also concerned about economic injustice. We share these concerns.
I know many people and media critics think Advertising and PR is a crock. I don’t. I think companies, big and small, need help connecting with their propects and customers. Thus, the real opportunity in marketing communications is not in telling brand fictions. The real opportunity is to find and then intelligently amplify brand truths.
