Congress Has No Say On This Matter

Pipelines Are The Same As Roads

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “This is one of these instances where the utility of the American Union is in serious and grave doubt.  I’ve written about this.  People have been jumping up and down, screaming and squawking for over a decade now over this thing called the Keystone XL pipeline, which I don’t have any opposition to.  The major stumbling block has been that the imperial congress and the imperial president, those who run our empire, have seized control of the entire endeavor and have manufactured this supreme power over what amounts to a road that crosses in between Montana and Nebraska, then Nebraska and Colorado, then Colorado and Oklahoma.”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Keith in North Dakota, you’re next.  How you doing?

Caller Keith:  I’m fantastic, Mike.  I’ve talked to you a couple times.  I was the guy that told you about the leaky pipelines up here.  I kind of wanted to give you an update.  The guy was talking about refineries.  The problem is that we don’t have the transition lines to even send this oil out.

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Today I’m actually going to decommission a well because it has what’s called H2S.  It’s a certain kind of chemical that’s real corrosive.  It’s against the law to ship it on rail cars.  We can’t even ship it on rail cars.  It will sit and wait until we build an infrastructure.  It drives me crazy.  We are the only country in the world that would do this.  Any other country in the world that had what we have would just be focusing everything they had on building the infrastructure to use our resource to help our people.

Mike:  This is one of these instances where the utility of the American Union is in serious and grave doubt.  I’ve written about this.  People have been jumping up and down, screaming and squawking for over a decade now over this thing called the Keystone XL pipeline, which I don’t have any opposition to.  The major stumbling block has been that the imperial congress and the imperial president, those who run our empire, have seized control of the entire endeavor and have manufactured this supreme power over what amounts to a road that crosses in between Montana and Nebraska, then Nebraska and Colorado, then Colorado and Oklahoma.

Caller Keith:  There’s already —

Mike:  This did not exist before.  Hang on just a second.  I just looked this up.  Let’s talk about this particular instance here for just a moment.  You’re talking about pipelines that have to grow in between, let’s say between North Dakota and South Dakota there, then a little further south there.  Then we might go a little east and keep the expansion out there.  You’re basically talking about, the way I look at it, and the way I think people should look at it, is we have Montana.  Montana would then connect to Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota or Minnesota.  South Dakota would connect to Nebraska, Nebraska to Kansas, Kansas to Oklahoma, Oklahoma to Texas, then into the Gulf of Mexico.  Or Oklahoma to Texas to Louisiana, whatever the case may be.

Think of it like this.  I actually wrote a commentary on this and I had to look this up.  Prior to the 1940s, at the end of World War II, and then during the Eisenhower administration when the idea was cooked up for the interstate highway system, there were organizations that basically got together and representatives from states would meet together.  They would get a map out basically and propose routes for roads.  Someone from Louisiana may be there and they may then have a representative from Texas.  They may say: US 61 is going to terminate here at this point between Louisiana and Texas.  Then the representative from Texas may say: Well, we can build one over to you.  We’re going to call it Texas 77.  It will meet you right there.  No one will know the difference, other than there will be a sign that says “Welcome to Texas” on one side and on the other, “Welcome to Louisiana.”  The road will continue.  No act of Congress was necessary, not a nickel of federal money.  Boatloads of federal money did not have to be appropriated.  Commerce between Texas and Louisiana via that road was then assured.  This is not a hard concept to grasp.  What are some of the things that can travel on a road like that, Keith?

Caller Keith:  Absolutely anything.  Goods, services, anything can go down that road.

Mike:  If anything can go down that road, what is the difference between a pipeline and a road?

Caller Keith:  Some dancing hippies.  I don’t know.

Mike:  There’s no difference.  If I can put oil in a tanker and transport it where US 61 terminates and turns into Texas 77 — please do not call me and tell me I got my roads all screwed up.  I’m making these up to make the argument.  What is the difference?  The tanker car that is hauling said petroleum, provided you can put it on one of those barrel-looking tankers that get pulled behind a Mack truck, whatever it is you guys call it, when it goes from Louisiana from Texas, what is the material difference if it’s on a tanker car or if it’s coming through a pipe?

Caller Keith:  The biggest thing is going to be safety.  Honestly, that’s what I fear, Mike, that there’s not going to be a big transition to pipelines out of these railcars.  Recently —

Mike:  Why not?  Because the railcar people don’t want that to happen, do they?

Caller Keith:  One flipped over in Canada and it was Bakken Oil.  It drowned hundreds of people.  Until one of those things flip over — and God forbid, I hate to see it burn an elementary school down — no one is ever going to say: What the hell were we thinking sending petroleum on railcars and trucks on the road?

Mike:  I’m not advocating that, but we’re talking about pipelines here.  When I researched this three weeks ago — and I spent an entire morning looking this up – I discovered that there was an outfit, and it’s still out there, but this outfit used to manage the highways as they connected between the states.  It is called the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.  There’s a website. You can go to their website.  Whatever road you’re looking for that connects to a road in another state, this organization probably planned it.  Why do I bring this up?

Back in 1917, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials got together and they plotted out the course of US 1.  It’s called US 1.  Congress did not approve it.  The Department of the Interior did not approve it.  There was no legislation from Congress necessary to do it.  All that was required was that the states the highway was going to pass in between, that they met and agreed: We’ll keep the name US 1 from all the way from Maine to Florida, 2,527 miles of highway connected in between 15 states.  They had to cross 15 state lines.  It required no act of Congress, no legislative authority from Congress.  It did not require a permission slip.

As a matter of fact, the only thing that ever happened to it that had Congress involved is that Congress once upon a time, after US 1 was already there, said: You guys ought to build some rest stops.  There ought to be some rest areas.  Then, of course, when the ICC started rearing its ugly head, then the weigh stations came along.  The point is that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials — this is one of my Church Doctrine commentaries.  You can go look this up and read it for yourself.  The AASHO is still in existence.

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You can go to their website and look at any road that is a state road in your state and find out how many miles it is, where it starts and terminates.  You could probably find out the date it was built.  You can

find out if, when it crosses in between one state and another, does it change names?  This is all done by an agreement in between state governments.  This is the way business was done.

My point to you was, Keith, there’s no material difference between a road that crosses a state line — especially if eminent domain is not used and a state does it the proper way and buys the property from the rightful owners — and a pipeline.  It’s the exact same thing.  There’s no difference between a railroad track that crosses a state line, is there?  When you’re on a train, is there a sign that says, “Welcome to Texas” where the great B&O Railroad crosses the line?  Why then are we hamstrung by the pipelines?  Because someone has a vested interest in seeing to it that they’re not built.

End Mike Church Show Transcript