Read All About It in the Sunday Papers-August 16

LEAD STORY-The Financial Times: How the Oil Industry Plans to Do to Climate Change What the Insurance Companies Are Doing to Health Care…AND Who Its Delaware Connection Is!

I. E., kill it:

The American Petroleum Institute, which represents the US oil industry, has written to member companies asking them to “move aggressively” to stage up to 22 gatherings.

It has strong support from key members such as Exxon, which has warned that the legislation could put businesses employing millions of workers “at a disadvantage” with global competitors.

This despite the fact that there are quite a few members of API with a different perspective on climate change:

But the plan threatens to expose splits in the API as some members belong to another group, the US Climate Action Partnership, which supports many of Barack Obama’s environmental policies.

Shell, which has been a key member of the UCAP, has argued that tackling climate change is “the pro-growth strategy.” Other companies which belong to UCAP include General Electric, Siemens, BP America and ConocoPhillips.

But since Exxon/Mobil is among the ($) 800 billion pound gorillas in the API, that won’t stop them:

The action, which has support from 60 other industry groups – ranging from the American Trucking Associations to the National Association of Manufacturers – may invoke comparisons with recent protests against the Obama administration over healthcare.

Asked whether the employees of API member companies attending the rally would identify themselves as part of an industry effort, he (spokesman Bill Bush) said: ”I don’t think anyone’s going to be carrying signs saying they’re from this organisation and that organisation.”

And, just so everyone knows who is the American Petroleum Institute’s go-to guy (and registered lobbyist) in Dover, it’s Ruth Ann Minner’s BFF and mouthpiece:

Gary Patterson  P.O. Box 1429  Dover , DE 199031429

AMERICAN PETROLEUM INSTITUTE  1220 L Street, NW  Washington , DC 20005

Any questions now on why that bleeping refinery in Delaware City has been allowed to skate for so many years?

The (UK) Independent: Tory Leader David Cameron Flies Corporate…for Free

Further proof that ‘Tory’ by any other name is ‘Rethuglican’. 60 corporate luxury plane and helicopter flights paid for by Britain’s top plutocrats:

The Conservative leader has accepted more than 60 flights by luxury plane and helicopter from 10 industrialists and plutocrats with a combined fortune of £3bn, figures obtained by The Independent on Sunday reveal.

Many of the flights were for short trips in the UK that could have been easily made by road or rail, although together the air mileage would have taken Mr Cameron to Sydney and back – casting his much-vaunted commitment to the environment in a poor light.

They also undermined Mr Cameron’s attempts to rebrand the Tories and shake off the perception that it is heavily dependent on a small band of the super-rich. One of the millionaire businessmen, the steel industrialist Andrew Cook, told the IoS yesterday how he helped to shape Mr Cameron’s energy policy.

The revelations capped a difficult week for Mr Cameron in which Tory frontbencher Alan Duncan complained that MPs were forced to live on “rations” and Tory MEP Daniel Hannan attacked the NHS as a “failure”. Mr Cameron slapped down both men but did not formally discipline them.

And all this time, ‘bulo thought that Charles Irenee Eleuthere Lammott Bouvier de Flanders Copeland was of French descent. Proof that the greed and gall of the obscenely rich knows no boundaries…

Al Jazeera: Why China Indeed May Be the World’s Last Best Hope

The way China has handled its financial crisis only raises more questions about why the US didn’t follow a similar strategy:

China is the one leading economy where the divide – the disconnect between its financial sector and the world normal Chinese people and their businesses inhabit – doesn’t exist.

Both worlds are booming again and this is due to the way the government handled its banks.

China hasn’t allowed its banking sector to become so powerful, so influential, and so big that it can call the shots or highjack the bailout.

In simple terms, the government preferred to answer to its people and put their interests first before that of any vested interest or group. 

And that is why Chinese banks are lending to the people and their businesses in record numbers. Why don’t we hear more about that in the media?

Extra bonus points for asking El Somnambulo’s all-purpose question.  But it is summertime, and there’s always room for a little escapism:

Miami Herald: Murder, Kinky Sex, Voodoo, Obscene Wealth…at an AMWAY Convention

Now, this is the kind of murder mystery that the Beast Who Trafficks In Gratuitous Perversion just LOVES! All he could’ve asked was for Carl Hiaasen to write the story:

RYE BROOK, N.Y. — This needle-shaped suburb on the outskirts of New York City has had just a handful of homicides since becoming a village in 1982.

 But now they have a doozy — a steamy saga of wealth, privilege, kinky sex games, marital disharmony, family dysfunction and vodou, shipped straight from the Sunshine State. Not to mention the latest plot twist: The murdered man was having an extramarital affair, multiple law enforcement sources confirm, although no one can say if it had any bearing on his fate.

 The victim is Ben Novack Jr., son of the founder of the Fontainebleau and a successful Fort Lauderdale businessman in his own right.

 He was found duct-taped and bludgeoned on the morning of July 12 in Suite 452 of the Hilton Rye Brook, where he was overseeing an Amway convention (There’s your motive right there. Have you ever been tricked into sitting through one of those presentations?). His wife discovered the body.

 As police try to unravel who did what and why, Novack’s widow and her daughter have feuded over control of the estate, thought to be worth as much as $10 million, and allegedly engaged in a crowbar-swinging brawl that brought out the Fort Lauderdale police. (Memo to self: Rename band the Swingin’ Crowbars.)

Frankly, El Somnambulo disbelieves this story b/c this is not how the Upper Crust behaves. Next thing you know, somebody will pen some drivel about an inbred heir to a billionaire’s fortune killing an Olympic wrestler b/c Bruno Sammartino told him to do it. What, you say that actually did occur (except it wasn’t Bruno, it was Baron Mikel Scicluna)? Who? Mon dieu!

LATimes: Why Rethugs’ Anti-Health Care Rhetoric May Be Backfiring

No, sadly not b/c people are coming to their senses. But b/c the effort has mobilized people that not even Jerry Springer would want in his audience, people who ‘think’ that the Dan Burtons and John Cornyns of the Lunatic Fringe are too lib’rul. Some of them are even facing primaries:

In many places, tensions between conservative activists and the party establishment has gone beyond catcalls to frontal political assaults. In Florida, conservatives have backed a primary challenge to Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who is running for the U.S. Senate. He is viewed with suspicion because of his support of global warming legislation and Obama’s stimulus plan.

In Indiana, even a Republican as conservative as Rep. Dan Burton — a leader of the effort to impeach President Clinton — is being opposed by several Republicans who say he has lost touch with the cause.

(S. C. Rep. Bob) Inglis, who first came to Congress as part of the 1994 conservative class, now faces a primary challenge because of recent departures from party dogma on the Iraq war and some environmental issues.

Nothin’ like a little Schadenfraude, served cold with a delicious Twin Lakes Wheat Beer, on a sweltering August day.

Speaking of which:

Philadelphia Inquirer: Great Days for REAL Beer Lovers

The Beast Who Imbibes honestly can’t remember the last generic brew that he’s had. Nobody has to drink corporate swill with so many options available locally:

The reasons for the craft boom go on, some as mundane as the timely retreat in punishing hops prices, even as high energy costs still handicap competing imports.

Some are more intangible: the inching tide of locavorism, for instance, that has stoked a hunger for lost flavor and place – for heirloom tomatoes and juicy heritage-breed pork, estate-growth chocolate and aged, cloth-bound Vermont cheddar.

Craft fits neatly in, says Herz, offering quirky, “full-flavored, bigger, get-to-know-me beers,” not just the Big Three’s “refreshing, lighter-on-the-tongue” profile.

Some converts are rejecting Big Beer’s crassness – its wet-T-shirt contests and beer-slob image. Craft brewers, in contrast, sponsor cycling (and recyling) rambles and brewer-farmer dinners.

Finally,  (Dogfish Head’s Sam) Calagione argues, there’s the mad-as-hell factor: People are fed up with the hubris and greed of corporate fat cats – “the Enrons, Madoffs, and Detroits” that helped dig the financial hole.

Instead of handing over their beer money to a “foreign-owned, faceless conglomerate,” he says, they’d rather support local independents.

Vote with their wallets.

Here’s another reason: Local craft microbreweries make both fantastic one-of-a-kind brews and they give back to their communities. Yesterday’s fantastic event,  jointly-sponsored by Delaware Liberal, Miles for Melanoma (and what a wonderful group of volunteers and people THEY are!), and Twin Lakes Brewery, was an example of what it means to work together for the common good. The people at Twin Lakes could not have been more hospitable, their product (‘bulo loved the Wheat Beer and Pale Ale, which were both distinctive and just perfect for the weather) was first-rate, and the setting was absolutely gorgeous. ‘Bulo and the missus will be headed back there early and often.  Can’t wait to see those yellow labs again!

Cheers!