Barack Obama in 2012

Introducing Grima Wormtongue

If I was basing my opinions on his rhetoric Obama would be one of America’s great presidents. Instead, if we look at his actions he’s possibly the worst – that is, until the next president comes along.

Here’s a reminder of what Obomber was saying to the public back in 2012.

OBAMA: Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia, in the 1980s, they're now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War's been over for 20 years.

But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.

On Mitt Romney

I'm not sure about Webster Tarpley but I'm sure that Romney is pretty scary.

Worse Than Bush: Romney’s Baggage Includes Mormon Oath of Vengeance Against USA and Joseph Smith’s Apocalyptic White Horse Prophecy for War with Russia

For audio GO HERE

Wall Street Won Before The Election

Obamney - who will win?

When I turn on the radio here in NZ it is wall-to-wall coverage of the US elections. I wonder if I live in a parallel universe because none of what is being said corresponds to the true situation.

This is all that really needs to be said until the Empire chooses its emperor

Election 2012: How The Winner Will Destroy America

Brandon Smith

ZeroHedge,

6 November, 2012

Of all the hollow and uninspired elections that this country has suffered through over the past several decades, one might think that at some point long ago the American public would have finally struck a plateau of disenfranchisement; that we could sink no further into despondency, that there is a saturation limit to the corruption of our voting process.  Unfortunately, there has been no such luck.  I have to say that in all honesty I have never seen more people gut jumbled and disgusted with our electoral system than I have in 2012.  Sure, there is still a hyper-gullible segment of the populous that continues to play the game, but even those idiots are beginning to admit that the choices offered are dismal at best, catastrophic at worst.  The fog of the false Left/Right paradigm is starting to lift, and all that lay in its wake is a hoard of lost wide-eyed flabbergasted followers without a coattail or a talking point to cling to.  Sudanese refugees have a better chance of survival than these people do…

Even in the more obvious of fraudulent past elections there was at least an attempt by the establishment to present a pageant of conflicting ideologies (George W. Bush vs. John Kerry comes to mind).  There has always been the Democrat who pretends to be anti-war, or the Republican who pretends to be small government, or the Democrat who pretends to defend our right to privacy, and the Republican who pretends to be pro-2nd Amendment.  But in 2012, even the theater of rhetoric has disappeared.  Both primary party candidates seem to be sharing the same intestinal tract and the same teleprompter, and now, the average American is asking a new set of questions.  They do not wonder how these men will change things for the better.  Not at all.  Instead, they wonder which one will do LESS DAMAGE while in office.  This is the terrible reality we have come to understand in our society today.  It is a sad awakening, but a necessary one. 

As you read this now, the new President of the United States is being “chosen” or has been chosen.  Whoever the “winner” happens to be is ultimately irrelevant.  They do not count.  They are mascots.  Middle management cronies running through the motions to distract the masses while enacting the policies of their superiors.  They are fry cooks serving greasy overpriced democracy with no real sustenance.  What does matter, though, is what comes next.  I’m sorry to say that the idea that one man will do less damage than the other is a naïve sentiment.  Democrat?  Republican?  Obama?  Romney?  The crimes and calamities wrought will be exactly the same.  Take a look into my crystal ball and see the future.  Here is how the winner will destroy America…

1)  He Will Continue The Policy Of Dollar Devaluation

Neither candidate has expressed any interest through the election or even before it to protect the value of our currency, and both candidates have supported steps towards quantitative easing and fiat printing in order to delay an inevitable national debt crisis.  Both Romney and Obama have sung the praises of Ben Bernanke (Romney changed his tune just in time for his campaign, but who's buying that?) and the private Federal Reserve despite the consistent failures of that despotic institution to produce any tangible economic results with their Keynesian methods.

The dollar will see a vast devaluation during the term of this candidate and a loss of world reserve status, leading to stagflation (a combination of the worst elements of deflationary and inflationary crises in the same event).  Skyrocketing prices and crumbling unemployment will be the highlights of his presidency, because he will never take measures to reign in or dismantle the primary root cause of the problem; the Federal Reserve itself.

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2)  He Will Continue Extreme Government Debt Spending

Neither candidate has offered a practical or operable solution to the $16 trillion official national debt problem we now face, let alone the tens of trillions of dollars in entitlement obligations that the Treasury Department never talks about.  A nation can only live off food stamps and credit for so long before it implodes like a wet paper sack. And this is exactly what we have become; an entire culture of debt addicts and money hounds searching for our next fix of foreign or central bank cash.  The fact is, both Obama and Romney would INCREASE spending while using fiat injections to buttress an ever weakening economy in the name of “stability”.  The new president will claim that if spending cuts are initiated, it will send the U.S. financial system into a tailspin and a “return” to recession conditions.  This will of course be a lie.  We have not left recession/depression conditions since 2008.

3)  He Will Support And Expand On Wars In The Middle East

There is no such thing as a mainstream “anti-war candidate” in 2012.  Not even a fake one.  Obama’s measures of state violence and complete lack of respect for the sovereign internal matters of foreign nations surpass the madness of George Bush Jr.  He has even gone so far as to assert that his office has the right to assassinate American citizens without trial, evidence, or due process of the law.  Not only has he asserted the right to this power, he has used it!  Romney’s position, hilariously, is that Obama has not gone far enough!  Either way, the winner in 2012 is going to leap like a vile locust into new countries and unleash a plague of laser guided death.  The next president WILL be a war hungry president.

4)  He Will Lock Down The Web And Limit Internet Speech

Both Romney and Obama have expressed a desire to establish cybersecurity measures which include vast new governmental authority over the functions and operations of the internet.  The ultimate goal?  To gain legal precedence for the right to dictate web content, up to and including the ability to label any website a subversive threat to national security or a recruitment tool for “extremists”.

With the establishment spreading completely baseless accusation of cyberthreats coming from every corner of the globe (but mostly from Iran) it would seem that they are conditioning the public for a future encounter with a cyber event, and telling them who to blame when it occurs.  The problem is, the most prominent cyber security threats to the internet in the past few years have come not from the Middle East, or Russia, or China, but the U.S. and Israel (Stuxnet anyone?).  Keep this in mind when our new president blames the next cyber attack on a convenient political target and then uses the event as an excuse to regulate the web.  

5)  He Will Erase American Civil Liberties

This president will find a reason, or he will create a reason to diminish Constitutional protections including our right to trial and due process.  Both candidates have offered unflinching support for the National Defense Authorization Act and its provisions for indefinite detainment.  Neither man has ventured any sincere concerns over the broad nature of the language involved in the labeling of “terrorists” and “extremists”.  Literally anyone can now be categorized as an enemy combatant and a threat to national security for almost any reason, and this appears to be the way Obama and Romney like it.  That is to say, they both want totalitarian powers, or at the very least, they have made no effort to turn them down.

It is important to note that there has never been a government in history that sought out such powers and did not actually use them.  Only a fool would assume his favorite elitist candidate in 2012 will not utilize the extreme authorities now amassed for the executive branch over the past decade.

6)  He Will Embrace A Globalist Dynamic And Abandon American Sovereignty

Both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are surrounded by “advisers” who are also members of the Council On Foreign Relations, an institution which openly calls for the dissolution of American sovereignty on a regular basis and the creation of a centralized global system dominating the financial, social, and political life of every nation in the world.  With the economic stability of the U.S. on the verge of oblivion, it is very likely that a historic crisis will ensue during the first term of the next president, and that he will in response suggest a new global system as the solution.

This system has already been created, in part, by the IMF and World Bank in concert with member governments and revolves around the issuance of a new world reserve currency (Special Drawing Rights) as the centerpiece.  I can guarantee with absolute certainty that the next president, regardless of who he happens to be, will promote an IMF rescue package coupling the dollar to the SDR and turning over full economic control of America to an international body.  He will make it sound rational, reasonable, and even advantageous, but in the end, he will be selling the globalist snakeoil he was conscripted to sell before his election campaign ever started.

In 2012, it will not be about voting.  It will not be about “winning”.  It will not even be about getting to the next election.  It will be about survival.  As big a joke as the 2012 elections have become even to the generally unaware, I am not laughing.  I do not need to look at the promises of either candidate.  I do not need to weigh their half-assed quick fix policies.  All I have to do is look at the current downward trend and understand that the president, whoever he may be, will continue it.  If anything is to truly change, it will be because we as Americans finally walk away from the game, enacting our own solutions and our own opposition instead of handing over our power to sniveling errand boys wrapped in flags and expensive suits and self-rightousness every four years.  2012 is going to be the beginning of upheaval and renewal, for better or for worse, and it is certain that the guy in the White House into 2013, Republican or Democrat, is going to be a part of the problem, nothing more…

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'Obama a disaster, Romney no different'

With ballots now open across mainland America, voters are flocking to decide their President - though voting is already hitting obstacles. From the superstorm wrecked North-East experiencing trouble with polling stations, to allegations of partisan voter suppression and even ballot tampering elsewhere.

To discuss the prospects for America's foreign policy - RT's joined by London-based author and journalist Afshin Rattansi.

Focus on Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney's Bain Capital Dodged $102 Million In Taxes By Using Dutch Tax Loophole, Newspaper Writes

Bain Capital evaded about €80 million (or $102 million) in taxes by using a financial loophole in the Netherlands, according to a HuffPost translation of an article in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant Monday.

Huffington Post,

5 November, 2012

De Volkskrant and the website Follow the Money claim that by routing its 2004 investments in the Irish pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott through the Netherlands, Bain was able to dodge dividends and capital gains taxes. Financial adviser Jos Peters estimates that the loophole allowed Bain to save about $102 million.

In 2009, 4 years after investing in Warner Chilcott, Bain moved the company's seat from Bermuda to the Netherlands to evade possible stricter tax laws on the island, De Volkskrant explains.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide summarized what happened next:

Then two years ago, Bain registered its interest in Warner Chilcott with the private Dutch company Alter Domus, which provides administrative services for multinational corporations and investment funds. If a Dutch company owns more than five percent of the shares in another company, then that other company is exempt from paying taxes on all capital gains.

Through exemptions like that and a host of other complicated tax treaties, the Netherlands offers huge tax breaks to companies like Bain, which is reported to have evaded 80 million euros in dividend taxes by running through the Netherlands.

"We are world champion in participants exemptions," Dutch financial adviser Jos Peters told De Volkskrant.

Follow The Money explained that Mitt Romney had left Bain in 1999 to run the Olympics in Salt Lake City, but his retirement package allowed him to participate in Bain deals and thus share in the profits. (It's also not clear that he did, in fact, leave in 1999.)

Jesse Frederik, who wrote the article in De Volkskrant, clarified in a comment to the The Political Wire:

Just to be clear: Romney didn't avoid $80 million in Irish dividend withholding taxes, but a Bain fund he invests in. The Bain fund also avoided an unknown amount (probably tens of millions) of Irish capital gains tax. Romney received $2,1 million in dividends from the fund in 2010/2011 and $5,5 million in capital gains.

Bain's tax move is widely enough used in the corporate world, noted one Reddit user, that it's been given a name: "Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich." The Redditer flagged a New York Times infographic that explains how the tax avoidance strategy is implemented.

The trouble with Romney recipe for growth is his friends get biggest slice 

Outlook: The US is close to fulfilling its energy requirements, further boosting growth

the Independent,

5 November, 2012

Today's presidential election will principally be decided on the United States economy, and which of the two candidates the all-important independent voters who will decide the result feel will be the best steward of it.

Of course, when it comes to the economy the USA is doing rather well, certainly if you look at its GDP numbers and compare them with what we've been seeing in this country, not to mention the eurozone. Annual growth of between 1.5 and 2 per cent is pretty good, all things considered.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research today hands much of the credit to the monetary stimulus provided by the US Federal Reserve which, it argues, is working rather better than the Bank of England's equivalent.

This can be seen in the way bank lending, stalled on this side of the pond, is growing for business and households over there. Even mortgages have started to pick up.

The US is also benefiting from getting close to being able to fulfil its own energy requirements. As a result energy is relatively cheap, further boosting growth.

The fly in the ointment is the country's enormous budget deficit, which will have to be addressed after the election. A second-term President Barack Obama may rely on a mix of tax rises and spending cuts, if a deal can be reached with an extreme and resentful Republican House of Representatives.

Mitt Romney, by contrast, has at least said he will try something altogether more radical: savage cuts in Government spending together with tax cuts that will likely be of most benefit to the wealthiest. Oh, and he'll ask the Fed's chairman Ben Bernanke to quit, which could mean an end to the monetary stimulus many on the US right dislike.

Other than a short-term boost to the Dow (on account of Wall Street having one of its own in the White House) Douglas McWilliams, the CEBR's chief executive, argues that it will take time for these sort of measures to have an impact on America's economic performance.

But, he says "the option of low spending and low taxation applied in a major Western economy" would be "an exciting experiment".

That is the sort of thing you might expect an economist who won't be on the receiving end of the downside of such an experiment to say. The bonfire of America's already very limited social safety net will have a brutal impact on the country's oft-forgotten poor. As for the extra growth that may — may — be generated, who will benefit from it?

Those independent voters might very well find that it won't be them unless they are, along with Mr Romney, part of the 1 per cent at the top of American society. After all, during the Republican-dominated Noughties US GDP grew every year but one until 2008, sometimes by as much as 4 per cent. But median household incomes did not. By 2008, middle-income households were making less, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999. The same cannot be said for those at the top.

Even now the US economy is growing, ordinary Americans aren't really feeling it, which partly explains the battle President Obama has faced.

This is something that ought to be borne in mind on this side of the Atlantic, where there is much debate on how to boost GDP growth. Growth is only really worth having if it percolates throughout society and benefits everyone.

Just look at South Africa: what growth the country has enjoyed has not been widely shared. The consequences have been bloody, as the families of dead miners, striking as a result of being left out of it, can testify.

Governance rules no use if directors are weak

Britain's corporate governance code today celebrates its 20th anniversary and the Financial Reporting Council, which polices it, has published a series of essays to mark the occasion.

Not much of a pressie, you might think, but the consensus (as you might expect) is that the code's core principle of "comply or explain" has held up well and is a better way for things to be conducted than an inflexible rules-based approach.

In the code's favour, it has generally improved governance, and pointed the way for many similar arrangements overseas.

However, it is facing challenges like never before. For a start there are the natural resources companies that have come to London and thumbed their noses at the code while pouring investors' money down a deeper pit than many of their mines.

Some of that money has come from tracker funds, favoured by big pension schemes and small investors alike because they are cheap and easy to understand.

They have been forced to invest in these mining companies by dint of their inclusion in Britain's stock-market indices. This could be said to be a failing of the funds. But it could just as easily be a failing of London's regulatory set-up, the code included. Would these companies have come if the code demanded their compliance?

On the other hand, even had the code's provisions been made statutory it wouldn't have done anything to prevent some of the really nasty failures we have seen in recent years. Royal Bank of Scotland had an independent chairman and a majority of independent directors. They didn't do their jobs and allowed an over-mighty chief executive to drive the business off a cliff.

It's not much good complying with the letter of corporate governance best practice when the independent directors you appoint either can't or won't exercise their responsibilities. Time and again non-executive directors have failed when asked to step up to the plate, most recently in some of the absurd pay packages they have waved through in the teeth of resistance from their shareholders.

Perhaps they need a code to govern their conduct?

The US elections

As an outsider I have little to say about American politics.

From the internal US point-of-view there seems to be little distinction between the two – both are equally likely to support the <1% and take America down the road to collapse.

Speaking as an outsider it seems that from the point of view of adventurism and taking the world into a suicidal war with Iran Romney is more of a wildcard.

The consensus is that electoral fraud usually favours the Republicans – maybe this says something?

Has the Election already been Stolen for Romney/Ryan?

Global Research,

30 October, 2012

For at least the past four decades, the American election process has been controlled by corporations and agents connected to the Republican Party. This year’s “contest” is no different.

Voter suppression campaigns have been underway across America, by Republican operatives. (See Black Box Voting and Brad Blog). Nothing is being done to stop it.

Mitt Romney has direct ties to voting machines (also see the report by Brad Friedman). His son, Tagg Romney (who wanted to punch Barack Obama in the face) and a cadre of former Bain Capital business partners are owners of Hart Intercivic, whose voting machines are used in all fifty states. And this is just one of the many companies with ties to the right-wing, which include Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia. In 2004, Diebold’s Walden O’Dell promised to “deliver votes” to George W. Bush. His machines did, stealing what should have been a John Kerry win.
To this day, American democracy remains privatized and hackable. Nothing has been done about it. Theft continues unabated.
 
Backlash and cover-up

The few investigators who keep bringing exhaustive factual evidence of vote fraud to light have been attacked as “conspiracy theorists” by corporate media gatekeepers, and ignored by officials. These same accusers have refused to lift a finger to verify any of the facts. The “progressive” establishment Left has joined in this cover-up. The Democratic Party-affiliated Center for American Progress, and its site ThinkProgress, recently attacked reporter Brad Friedman.
for raising questions about Romney’s ties to voting machines.


Why is the establishment Left dissuading their own constituents from waking up?  Going back to the days of COINTELPRO and Operation Mockingbird, the Left gate keeping apparatus has long operated as a system of controlled dissent, offering channels to express certain ideas, but smashing down factual truths that are deemed truly threatening to their agenda.  The notion that American democracy—the vote—is thoroughly corrupted is such a threat. Unfortunately, it is the fact.


Nevertheless, we find the liberal consensus still pushing illusions and naïve ideas. Obama is still portrayed as a populist hero, despite his Bush/Cheney-esque record. The Democrats continue to urge their followers to believe that turnout and early voting solve everything.


But what if those votes are not counted? If the machines counting the votes are controlled by Republicans and Romney/Ryan, the game may already be over.
With a few clicks of a keyboard of a Hart Intercivic machine (Tagg Romney could even do it himself), the White House is seized, just as it was in 2000 and 2004.


Romney/Ryan: As Teflon as Bush/Cheney

Simultaneous with a vote-rigging apparatus in place for the Republicans, the corporate media—dominated by the corporate right-wing— has gone out of its way to give Romney and Ryan a free pass in news coverage.


Corporate media is ignoring their unsavory backgrounds, and ignoring the clear dangers of their policy agenda, and also ignoring the neocon fanatics advising the campaign. Tax returns that contain the history of his dirty schemes at Bain Capital are not the focus of critical investigation.


Countless Romney/Ryan campaign blunders, embarrassing debate losses and pathological lying have not slowed down their momentum.


Many polls continue to put Romney in the lead. Some polls even put Romney ahead of Obama among women, despite his outrageous misogyny. It is impossible to believe that these numbers correlate with realities on the ground.
Clearly the illusion of a close election is being created, in order to provide political cover for vote theft on November 6th. As demonstrated in 2000, close elections are easier to steal.


Bush/Cheney on steroids

The parallels with the stolen election of 2000 that installed Bush/Cheney in the White House are clear, and palpable. The larger political situation is also eerily similar.


Coming off of a period of neoliberal place-holding under Clinton, it was time to hand the controls over to Washington’s most hawkish right-wing enforcers, in order to start the war for oil (9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq) in earnest.


A Romney/Ryan administration will deliver a return to neoconservative rule—this time for the wars in Iran and Syria, and to impose austerity programs domestically—with militant messianic fervor.


The arrogant and malleable Mitt Romney, a suit as empty as George W. Bush, is the perfect man for the job. Ryan, a peevish and sadistic ideologue is also an ideal “enforcer”.


If Romney/Ryan wind up winning the election, the world would be subjected to Bush/Cheney on steroids, with an extra element of fanaticism from the messianic Romney, and Ryan, the right-wing Christian extremist.


Its team of foreign policy advisers is a wall to wall cast of Bush/Cheney henchmen:

Dan Senor- former leader of the Iraq provisional authority

Cofer Black-former CIA official, vice chairman of Blackwater USA

John Bolton- former Bush/Cheney US ambassador

Eliot Cohen- Project for New American Century (PNAC), Dick Cheney aide

Walid Phares- “scholar” on “anti-terrorism”; Lebanese Christian with ties to violent Lebanese militia

Michael Hayden- Bush/Cheney CIA and NSA director

Max Boot- senior CFR fellow, PNAC

Eric Edelman- former Dick Cheney aide

 The ticket’s economic advisers are led by the Paul Ryan himself, along with the following leftovers from Bush/Cheney:

 Glenn Hubbard- Bush/Cheney council of economic advisors

Gregory Mankiw- Bush/Cheney council of economic advisors

Vin Weber- lobbyist, former Republican member of Congress

Jim Talent- lobbyist connected to Jack Abramoff

Kevin Hassett- former aide to Bush/Cheney

 Finally, the list of neocon extremists being considered for a Romney/Ryan cabinet promises unmitigated war and destruction.


Attempted right-wing coup

It must also be noted that in 2008, the right-wing corporate elements—spearheaded by Bush/Cheney—triggered the financial collapse, at least in part to saddle the incoming Obama administration with problems that virtually ensured the present-day no-win political situation for Obama.


Taking cues from the likes of the malodorous Mitch McConnell, the American right-wing has sabotaged the Obama administration from the minute Obama took the oath. Anything to get the “Kenyan communist black” out of the White House.


The behavior of Republicans and the Romney/Ryan camp in the wake of the 9/11/12 attack on the American embassy in Libya remains highly suspicious. Salon reported high-level Republicans gloating and “chortling” by high ranking Republicans that the attacks have turned Obama “into Jimmy Carter”. See: GOP’s October Surprise.


Regardless of how devotedly the Obama administration has faithfully and seamlessly continued and expanded the Bush/Cheney corporate and war agenda, the American neocons have done everything possible to keep Obama’s “leash” very short to begin with. Now they are yanking on it.


Romney: anointed by the elites?


The other sign suggesting a possible Romney victory is Romney’s attendance at the June 2012 Bilderberg conference. All previous US presidents who attended Bilderberg meetings were eventually anointed president shortly thereafter. 


According to some Bilderberg watchers, Obama may have worn out his welcome.
It is also no coincidence that in his foreign policy speeches on the campaign trail, Romney proclaimed Russia to be the number one threat to the West. Like a good boot licker, Romney has merely parroted the top concern of the Bilderbergers, as reported by investigator Daniel Estulin. To the Bilderberg cabal, Russia is the key adversary and central obstacle to the US/NATO agenda in all of the world’s hot spots. Romney’s inflammatory China-baiting is another nod to a top Bilderberg priority.


The Bilderberg elites know, of course, that the “war on terrorism” is a lie, that the wars in Central Asia, the Middle East are manufactured conflicts, and intermediate steps in the sequential “Great Game”. The long-term war for dominance of the planet, as seen by the elites, is between NATO and West, versus Russia and China, over oil and gas, a collapsing world economic system that is dependent on oil.


The Obama camp may be ridiculing Romney for his seemingly off base rhetoric, but by currying favor with the Bilderberger cabal, the obsequious Romney may have the last laugh.


Romney, a vicious sociopath who has reaped mega-profits from bankrupting and destroying companies and inflicting suffering, may indeed be “presidential” for what the elites have in mind. Bush and Cheney were not hired to rationally run a government, but to oversee a criminal organization.  Romney, Ryan and their neocons are ideal for sadistic gangster rule.


Hurricane Sandy benefits Romney/Ryan

Hurricane Sandy is blasting the eastern quarter of the United States, shutting down entire regions.

If power is not fully restored to the affected states by November 6^th, the election will be thrown into doubt. Any election result could be challenged.
 
In this nightmare scenario, the election could be decided, as it was in 2000, by the Supreme Court, which criminally installed Bush/Cheney to power.

A Romney/Ryan victory would be assured.


A new era of terror

It remains to be seen whether the worst-case scenario suggested by this piece will take place. However, every human being must nevertheless prepare for the trouble that will come after November 6, 2012, whether the White House occupant will be Obama or Romney/Ryan. As previously written, humanity loses, no matter who “wins”.


But if a spectacular Romney/Ryan criminal event manages to steal the election, a special alarm must be sounded. It would signal the start of a new phase of unprecedented imperial criminality and violence.

Romney's predatory energy vision

Just when you think things can't get any worse you realise they can!

 

Romney's Extremist Energy Plan and the Systematic Plundering of America

by Michael T. Klare

Common Dreams,

29 October, 2012

As he seeks the support of undecided voters in key swing states, Mitt Romney is portraying himself as a centrist at heart—not as the “severely conservative Republican” he said he was during the hard-fought GOP primaries. This kinder, gentler Romney was very much on display in his televised debates with President Obama. But a close examination of his energy plan, released on August 23, reveals no such moderation; rather, it is a blueprint for the systematic plunder of America’s farm and wilderness areas, coupled with a neocolonial invasion of Canada and Mexico.

The true content of the Romney plan, titled “Energy Independence,” is not easily deciphered, as it is buried in lofty rhetoric about North American energy independence and the creation of millions of high-paying jobs. “I have a vision for an America that is an energy superpower, rapidly increasing our own production and partnering with our allies Canada and Mexico to achieve energy independence on this continent,” Romney declared.

Read between the lines, however, and the predatory nature of his vision becomes evident. Essentially, the plan is intended to remove most impediments to the exploitation by US energy firms of untapped oil, gas and coal fields in the United States, Canada and Mexico, regardless of the consequences for national health, safety or the environment. In particular, the plan has five key objectives: eliminating federal oversight of oil and gas drilling on federal lands; eviscerating all environmental restraints on domestic oil, gas and coal operations; eliminating curbs on drilling in waters off Florida and the east and west coasts of the United States; removing all obstacles to the importation of Canadian tar sands; and creating an energy consortium with Canada and Mexico allowing for increased US corporate involvement in—and control over—their oil and gas production.

In presenting these proposals, Romney tends to portray them as necessary reforms of current practice rather than as the radical departures they truly represent. For example, in pressing his number one objective—eliminating federal control over extracting fossil fuels on federal lands—he implies that his primary motivation is to speed up the permitting process and eliminate unnecessary paperwork. “States have crafted highly efficient and effective permitting and regulatory programs that address state-specific needs,” he declared. Under his plan, these state-level regulatory processes “will be deemed to satisfy all requirements of federal law” within the boundaries of a given state, thereby eliminating the need for federal regulatory bodies.

For those who seek to minimize the role of the federal government—or bureaucratic overkill in general—this proposal may appear attractive. What is not mentioned is that (a) state legislators are generally far more receptive to arm-twisting by the energy lobby than are members of Congress, and (b) state-level regulatory bodies are often far less equipped to monitor complex processes like hydrofracking, which can pose multiple risks to community health and safety. In Pennsylvania, for example, opponents of fracking have pointed out that the state legislature is beholden to drilling companies and that state regulatory bodies are inadequately staffed and ill-equipped to monitor the thousands of fracking operations there. When some Pennsylvania municipalities adopted zoning rules to restrict fracking within their town limits, the legislature voted to deprive lower jurisdictions of this right, handing the drillers a major victory. “We have been sold out to the gas industry, plain and simple,” declared Todd Miller, a commissioner in South Fayette Township who opposed the legislation, as reported by The New York Times. (A Pennsylvania court ruled in July that the state cannot restrict local governments from using zoning laws to ban oil and gas drilling, but Republican Governor Tom Corbett, an advocate of fracking, has appealed the decision.)

Clearly, any move to eliminate the federal government’s role in overseeing oil and gas drilling on federal lands is bound to result in a greater risk of environmental catastrophe, as it will become impossible to adopt uniform standards for air and water protection, health and safety measures, wildlife protection and so on. Some states may insist on tough standards—New York, for example, has yet to approve fracking out of concern for the safety of its water supplies—but others are likely to prove far more lenient, allowing poorly regulated drilling operations with a high risk of environmental disaster. If approved, the Romney plan would prove a bonanza for lobbyists, who would no doubt descend on state capitals promising mammoth campaign contributions (mammoth, at least, by state election standards) to those legislators willing to do their bidding.

A very similar picture arises in Romney’s proposal for regulatory reform. At first it appears he’s merely calling for the elimination of unnecessary paperwork: “Overregulation, permitting delays, endless reviews, and senseless litigation interfere with all forms of energy production”; hence, “modernizing” these regulations and processes “is crucial to ensuring that the nation can develop its resources safely and efficiently.” But simplifying paperwork is not Romney’s principal concern; as the plan intimates, his overriding goal is to obliterate all the environmental regulations that have been embedded in American law since the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969—a major coastal disaster that helped solidify public support for the National Environmental Policy Act and other landmark statutes.

Romney doesn’t deny the need for some environmental protections—at least in his public utterances—but he insists that energy extraction must take precedence over the environment (and everything else) in his drive to make the United States an “energy superpower.” As Romney puts it: “Regulations should be carefully crafted to support rather than impede development.” This means, he indicates, adopting regulatory reforms aimed at loosening environmental restrictions that are hobbling domestic coal production and offshore oil and natural gas drilling.

Mountaintop removal—the controversial method of obtaining coal by blasting away the tops of mountains, strip-mining the resulting craters, and dumping the debris into the valleys and streams below—isn’t mentioned by name, but it would be a likely target for such “reform.” Those who favor the process must undoubtedly take cheer from Romney’s pledge to remove the measures imposed by the Obama administration aimed at “barring the use of resources like coal.”

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Offshore oil drilling has its own chapter in the Romney energy plan, as it is seen as one of the few ways of significantly boosting US production and thereby promoting the long-sought goal of “energy independence.” At present, drilling in the US Outer Continental Shelf is limited to the central and western Gulf of Mexico and to the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off Alaska. As a result of the Santa Barbara spill, Congress and most of the coastal states have opposed drilling in other sections of the OCS, although some in Virginia favor drilling off their state’s coast. Now Romney seeks to initiate a process leading to the elimination of all curbs on offshore drilling.

Under Romney’s plan, waters off Virginia and the Carolinas would be opened to drilling during an initial five-year OCS development program, while other areas would be thoroughly explored and a process begun that would lead to drilling in the years that follow. All this would take place in an environment of what Romney calls “regulatory reform,” in which the auctioning of drilling permits would be speeded up and federal oversight diminished. The net result would be to turn the clock back to 1969, before the Santa Barbara spill and the adoption of this nation’s bedrock environmental laws, and to vastly increase the danger of environmental disasters like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico—an event attributed, among other things, to a lack of government oversight.

Finally, we have the strange Romney proposal for a “North American energy partnership” aimed at promoting industry collaboration and eliminating this country’s reliance on extra-hemispheric oil. The stated goals of the partnership are to “establish a regional agreement to facilitate cross-border energy investment” and “promote and expand regulatory cooperation between governments”; a subordinate goal is to fast-track approval of cross-border pipelines like the Keystone XL tar sands project and similar endeavors. But while speaking of a hemispheric “partnership,” Romney makes no secret of his predatory intent: to ensure that an ever increasing share of our neighbors’ oil and gas is shipped to the United States and that US corporations play an ever larger role in the energy industries of those countries. As he puts it, “by collaborating with these countries on energy development, America can guarantee itself a reliable and affordable supply of energy while also opening up new opportunities for American businesses and workers in the region.”

For Canada, Romney’s plan for increased US participation in the energy field is unlikely to spark much official resistance so long as Stephen Harper, a Conservative, retains his position as prime minister. Harper is an ardent supporter of tar sands development and thus would be happy to see increased US investment in the Athabasca tar fields (so long as it generates jobs and income for his fellow Albertans). But Mexico is another matter altogether. The expropriation of Mexico’s oil industry by President Lázaro Cárdenas on March 18, 1938, was one of the defining events in modern Mexican history; it is still recognized as an important civic holiday. State ownership of the nation’s petroleum patrimony is embedded in the Constitution, and control over its production is entrusted exclusively to the state oil company, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex). Although it is true that some Mexican politicians favor legislation allowing a greater role for foreign firms to serve as technical service providers to Pemex in developing the country’s offshore oil fields, any attempt to implement Romney’s plan promoting US involvement in shaping Mexico’s regulatory practices—as well as a significant US corporate role in the country’s oil and gas industry—would be viewed by many Mexicans as a form of neocolonialism, and so would trigger a powerful backlash.

Romney says his plan is intended to benefit the American middle class by boosting domestic energy supplies and generating new jobs. No doubt an increase in domestic oil and gas production would benefit some poor farmers who lease their land to the drillers, and it would also generate some additional jobs for oil workers and those who cater to their needs, but it is unlikely to generate the “millions” of new jobs that Romney has promised. For each new job created, moreover, an equal (or greater) number of people will suffer from the destruction of the natural habitat on which they rely, one way or another, for their lives or their livelihoods. The only real beneficiaries of Romney’s plan, of course, will be the giant energy firms and their principal shareholders—many of whom, like Charles and David Koch, rank among Romney’s top campaign contributors. If Romney wins the election and pushes through his energy plan, they’ll be given free rein to plunder the hemisphere’s resources without regard for the consequences.

Michael T. Klare is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His newest book, The Race for What's Left: The Global Scramble for the World's Last Resources, has just recently been published.  His other books include: Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy and Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum. A documentary version of that book is available from the Media Education Foundation.