Newsweek Hits 'Pipeline to Nowhere'; Suggests Palin Too 'Optimistic' About Legal Hurdles

Newsweek Hits 'Pipeline to Nowhere'; Suggests Palin Too 'Optimistic' About Legal Hurdles

By Ken Shepherd (Bio | Archive)
September 22, 2008 - 16:44 ET

Borrowing from the nickname for a federal earmark that would have built a multi-million dollar bridge for an Alaska town of 50 people, Newsweek's Mark Hosenball offers readers of the September 29 print magazine a look at "[Gov. Sarah] Palin's Pipeline to Nowhere."

Hosenball suggests that Palin's $500-million "principal achievement" as governor "might never be built after all." But while the headline evokes images of the "Bridge to Nowhere," this isn't a case of government waste as much as it is of the endless red tape of lawsuits.:

Approximately half of the proposed pipeline would run through Canada; native tribes who live along its route complain they haven't been consulted about it and are threatening to sue unless they are compensated. Representatives of the canadian tribes, known as First Nations, say Palin and other pipeline proponents are treating them with disrespect. The tribes' lawyers warn that the courts are on their side and say the Indians have the power to delay the pipeline for years-or even kill it entirely by filing endless lawsuits.

Yet rather than find critics of the potential job-killing litigation that may well crop up in Canadian courts, Hosenball cobbled together quotes from people suggesting the Palin administration was too "optimistic" about clearing legal hurdles to the gas pipeline.

Liz Logan, chief of a First Nations umbrella group in British Columbia, told NEWSWEEK that TransCanada, the company Palin's administration selected to pursue the project, has "very much downplayed the extent of the legal difficulties they face in Canada." One of Canada's top pipeline experts, Professor Andre Plourde of the University of Alberta, agrees that the seven-year timetable proposed by Palin's lawyers for sorting out First Nations claims is "optimistic indeed."

—Ken Shepherd is Managing Editor of NewsBusters

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stop it, msm! we already

September 22, 2008 - 16:49 ET by TruthMonger

stop it, msm! we already know Palin's the best choice for vp...

Journalism is the opium of the liberals

Real complete torte reform

September 22, 2008 - 16:58 ET by bigtimer

Real complete torte reform isn't going to happen anytime soon...

these wackos have destroyed more economically in this country than I feel like talking about again today...just destroyed small/large thriving communities...when I say wackos, we all know they have an agenda, world wide for complete Marxism/socialism whatever you want to call it...but to make sure and diminish our power, just love these lobbying groups which are hand in hand with the Endangered species.global warming groups/ ect

Never are they made to pay when the lose in court for all the damage they do when they lose and all the years of delays...

Oil independence is of the utmost for national security and this keeps up...

I say we line them up against the wall if we lose this war within and terrorist still control our oil or hit us inside this country again... frog march them behind the prison walls.

Good gawd over thirty years of control the greenies have had, when are people going to rebel, we have more oil here than all of Saudi Arabia...

Oil spiked over 25 bucks a barrel today folks...think about it.

We need a major revolution/revolt in this country to tell govt. to keep their noses/greedy paws out of this now...they have just about killed us all with their regulations/rules/lobbysists...they are slowly destroying a great nation.

"America isn't the problem...America is the solution." ~ Rush Limbaugh

Just offer them Casino

September 22, 2008 - 17:06 ET by ThisnThat

Just offer them Casino rights all along the pipeline path, and get on with it already!

___________________________________

If you can read this, thank a teacher. If it is in English, thank a Soldier. - My barber

I was waiting for this

September 22, 2008 - 17:08 ET by Chris Norman

I was waiting for this attack on the pipeline to come and now it has. I wonder what took them so long...

McNotObama '08

Why shouldn't she be

September 22, 2008 - 17:31 ET by dmntd1

Why shouldn't she be optimistic? She got the bill passed to study it within 20 months as governor,even though it had been on the drawing board for the ~20 years prior!

Of course the First Nations people haven't been consulted yet, that would be like me asking someone in Kansas, anywhere in Kansas, if they would have a problem with me building a highway through Kansas. First question from them would, or should, be "Where did you want to build that highway?"

And I'd have no idea. It's merely a concept at this point!!!!!

"Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." - Winston Churchill

more lawsuit lottery nonsense

September 22, 2008 - 17:56 ET by wizardjr

Just more ambulance chasers promising the Indians a big payday. Well yeah.... for the lawyers that is.

So, Palin is "overly

September 22, 2008 - 18:03 ET by zf

So, Palin is "overly optomistic?" So the doomsayers think native peoples are stubborn and unwilling to compromise then. Bunch of bigots.

The native = MSM -- NOT

September 23, 2008 - 12:25 ET by needle

The media types are projecting as usual and reading into the native people the MSM’s elitist attitudes and predilections. My guess is that the native people are quite different from MSM, and that MSM is misreading this situation and mis-reporting it as usual and incorporating into it their usual bias.

Impunitas semper ad deteriora invitat.