The Republican Party is facing a serious crisis of identity. On the one hand, they stand up for property rights in their Platform, which would be music to the ears of rural voters and urban folks on the front line of pipeline fights if the GOP were not also Keystone XL’s biggest cheerleader. Not only do they praise the foreign pipeline in their Platform, but also using it as a proxy for their energy policy: drill anywhere and everywhere, no matter the risk.
The Republicans’ stance on ending eminent domain abuse while supporting the Keystone XL pipeline is the perfect case study of how the GOP can’t seem to find its identity.
The Republican Platform says, “The Framers of our government knew, from history and experience, that when private property is not secure, freedom is at risk.” Then, later in the Platform document, they go on to say that they support the Keystone XL pipeline and the only reason the pipeline was rejected was President Obama caving to “environmental extremists” clearly ignoring the threat the pipeline posed to landowners’ property rights along its route.
There is no question environmentalists helped stop the pipeline, but it was the unlikely alliance of climate advocates, farmers, ranchers, and Native communities who were on the front lines of the fight. Landowners went to court battling eminent domain, which ultimately was a huge factor in stopping the risky pipeline. This contradiction makes it clear that Republicans are choosing Big Oil over farmers and turning their backs on their anti-eminent domain stance when it becomes inconvenient for their friends in the oil industry. It’s a bad choice and one that will lose them votes.
You simply cannot build Keystone XL without eminent domain. It’s the one of the few things Donald Trump says that is true. The massive tarsands pipeline not only puts freedom at risk, it puts farmers and ranchers’ livelihoods and all of our water at risk, all so foreign oil corporation can get their product to the export market.
Landowners in the path of the rejected Keystone XL are still battling with TransCanada, the foreign company who proposed the pipeline and is now using the NAFTA trade deal to sue Americans for $15 billion in “lost revenue.” Few people realize TransCanada still owns the land they took through eminent domain even though the Keystone XL pipeline was rejected. Tomorrow TransCanada could sell that land easement to anyone they want ― including China or any other country Trump says is the enemy ― and landowners would have no legal say in that deal. None. How is that for property rights in America?
The eminent domain laws in our country are abusive, outdated, and need reform immediately. The problem is Big Oil loves the way our state and federal governments handle eminent domain, and their stranglehold on our body politic continues day after day.
The conservative Heritage Foundation writes extensively on the abuse of eminent domain and the Private Property Rights Protection Act, a bill Republicans offer up year after year. However, there is no political muscle behind the rhetoric or the proposed bill. The reality is, the battle of ending eminent domain for private gain pipelines has traditionally conservative landowners forming unlikely alliances with progressive climate advocates, or those “extreme environmentalists” as the GOP Platform calls us, to save the land and protect the water.
As the incoming chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party, I note that the Democratic Platform does not oppose the use of eminent domain. That’s a huge disappointment and something I am actively working on within the party. But at least the Democratic Platform does not exhibit the hypocrisy contained in the Republican platform, which supports a project that could only move forward based on its reliance on eminent domain while ostensibly opposing the use of eminent domain for private gain.
Right now, in rural communities across our country, corporations are using eminent domain to take land away from farmers and ranchers to build unnecessary pipelines. Eminent domain is being abused for private gain. The “public good” that was once the benchmark to use eminent domain is now being abused by Big Oil and Big Gas pipelines. The “public good”—our water, our air, our health, our livelihoods tied to the land―is threatened by the tarsands, oil, and fracked gas pipelines carrying products that contribute to climate change and are mostly being built for the export market.
Landowners are being thrown under the bus by the Republican Party as it undergoes its crisis of identity. I’ve yet to meet a farmer or a rancher who just sits on the sidelines and lets their land be taken away or their water put at risk. The unlikely alliance that stopped Keystone XL is still here. We stand today to say, in no uncertain terms, that the same spirit and determination we stopped the pipeline is the same spirit and determination we will use to end eminent domain for private gain. Donald Trump proclaimed from stage on the last night of the convention, “I am your voice.” The only problem is that voice is a megaphone for Big Oil and abusing property rights, all in the name of corporate profits over land and water security. Hypocrisy has become the Republican identity.
