To the damn protesters in Quebec that are throwing rocks at the cops

The BBQ Pit
41

Must be a sticky Y key, huh, Avumedey?

Anyway, as to the MTBE additives, good question. Let us review the facts:

  1. The matter hasn’t yet been resolved - an action has been filed but it hasn’t been ruled on - so, so far there has been no finding of a violation of NAFTA. I suppose I could file a suit, too. Doesn’t mean I’ll win.

  2. Methanex in not suing, contrary to popular belief, because an environmental law will prevent them from making MTBE. They don’t make MTBE; they provide the majority of the methanol that goes into it. The rationale behind their action is that they are suing on the basis of the MTBE ban being a discriminatory expropriation of their investment. Methanex’s claim is that California is discriminating against them in favour of a U.S. corporation, Archer Daniels Midland, which produces a competing product - ethanol - for purely political reasons rather than scientific rationale. Why ban MTBE and not ethanol? Methanex claims that it’s because California was favouring Archer Daniels Midland, an American company, over them - not for environmental reasons. ADM produces almost 3/4 of all the ethanol in the U.S. and ALL of it is subsidized by… you. It’s all given massive tax breaks.

So was there a sellout? I don’t know - it’s certainly true that Archer Daniels Midland did a LOT of lobbying and pressuring to get MTBE banned, and my guess is they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts. It is certainly a fact that Gov. Davis has accepted very large campaign contributions from Archer Daniels Midland; it is a fact that Davis flew to ADM’s headquarters in Illinois in 1998, which was immediately followed by campaign contributions in excess of $100,000, and some months later when Davis announced the executive order MTBE ban, Archer Daniels Midland gave him another $50,000. ADM has been marketing against MTBE and other like additives for years and years. Coincidence, ya think? I sure don’t think so; I think it stinks.

Now, ADM giving Gray Davis a gigantic bag full of money doesn’t disprove the notion MTBE is bad for you, so Methanex goes on to make three basic claims:

1. It’s not proven.

I don’t really know. This is a matter for experts to decide; I’m not a chemist.

2. MTBE cuts down on air pollution, so why not give it some credit? If it makes the air cleaner, why wasn’t that considered?

This sounds a little weak to me; it seems to me pollution is not made better by transferring it from the air to the ground. But it ties in with 1; if you can show the benefit to air pollution is way more significant than the risks, it may go to proving bias towards ADM.

3. There are better ways of preventing gasoline contamination, such as, you know, not letting it leak onto the ground, but CA chose this way to screw Methanex and get campaign money from ADM.

This is the basic argument, really; that Davis and the California Republic, God bless it, were bending over for ADM by screwing Methanex. If that’s the case it’s deplorable, but then, it sorts of depends on the answers to 1 and 2, doesn’t it? If California is legitimately fearful of the environmental impact of MTBE, it doesn’t really matter what ADM stuffed into the coffers.

4. Ethanol is a direct competitor and is heavily subsidized by the U.S.

This claim is 90% true; it ignores the fact that they do have a number of different uses from one another, but to a large extent they ARE competing products, and it’s true that the U.S. subsidizes ethanol production to an extent that would make tobacco farmers blush. In a free market, ethanol is dead meat against MTBE. It’s simply not profitable to make - unless you get massive aid from the government, as Archer Daniels Midland does. (We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of millions.)

This lends credence to the notion of discrimination, if in fact the environmental claims CA is making are weak. The U.S. IS in bed with the ethanol industry and ADM, giving it jillions of dollars in direct aid and tax credits. So the question remains; did they act against MTBE for environmental reasons? Or where they whoring to the ethanol industry?

Methanex’s suit rides on the notion that MTBE isn’t as bad as they’re saying, and ethanol’s damned bad itself (mixed with gasoline, it does have its environmental concerns. California lists it as a carcinogen!) So why ban MTBE but not ethanol? Did Gray Davis sell out to ADM? I don’t know - I wasn’t there - but I’d say Methanex has a strong enough case to at least get it heard. If they’re talking out their ass with respect to the environmental concerns, they’ll lose their case. If they’re not, maybe they deserve to win at least a reprieve.

None of these facts make it into the news much, though, do they? You never heard there’s a competing product that might be just as bad for you. You never hear that the main producer of the competing product is a giant conglomerate that takes zillions in aid from the feds. You never hear that they were lining Gray Davis’s pockets. But they’ll get their day before an arbitrator, like the deal says. I can’t see that a fair hearing is a bad thing, can you?

42

Thanks RickJay for the excellent reply.

So, Methanex couldn’t sue just because MTBE got dumped in favor of a US company, right? Wouldn’t they have to show conclusively that it was merely because they were Canadian that MTBE was phased out? Or is the case that “well US companies can give campaign contributions, but not Canadian companies, so being Canadian gives us an unfair disadvantage.”

Actually, I don’t know if it’s true that Canadian companies can’t give campaign contributions. If they could, I don’t see how they would have a case. And even if they couldn’t, is everything related to MTBE from Canada? If not, those companies from the US could have given campaign contributions. Again, i don’t see a good case.

Or is it because Ethanol is subsidized? If so, that’s rather scary - are we supposed to drop all subsidization now?

You mention all of the above, but is their claim so nebulous? I’m just wondering if they singled out one of the above as a specific reason they were discrimated against by being Canadian.

43

Ok, I gotta weigh in here.

More and more in recent years, police have been called in to break up what were peaceful protests, and by initiating violence have turned it around.

Hello? Seattle? The protests were peaceful and LEGAL!! CONSTITUTIONAL!! until the police came in to stop it. They formed barricades and gassed the crowd. They not only fired plastic bullets into the crowd (which they claimed not to be using) but also used shotgun-like devices which sprayed the bullets randomly into the crowd. This tends to piss people off and they get violent.

The people were going to come protest this meeting, and that’s why they brought so much police and military in. When they did that the city became a battlefield, and guess what, they have the toys and they always win. That makes it, if anything, more valiant to go and be there to support your views.

Are you reading Matt_mcl’s accounts of what’s going on up there? When people get dropped by the cops, uniformed protestor medics are coming in to help and gas is being fired into their clusters. This is not cool.

MarxBoy

44

Directly from my man in Quebec, matt_mcl.

"Not only were the police firing tear gas at people who were NOT attacking them at all, but they were firing canisters directly into crowds at protesters, which it says right on the canister (I saw some spent ones) you are not supposed to do because you can kill someone.

Later in the evening my father witnessed police on the top of the mountain firing canisters into the air, indiscriminately down into the lower city where there were peaceful protesters and uninvolved civilians about.

I’m not impressed."

There you have it.

45

For the record, that seems to be exactly what happened. The British Columbia provincial government banned bulk water removal from water basins in 1996, which affected both an American company and its Canadian partner who had planned to export water. The American company did try to claim a violation of Chapter 11, but the case was considered weak. I don’t what decision was eventually made, however.

Now hopefully I can stop hijacking this thread…

46

Yes, they would. Part of their case (which is sixty pages long or so) is that there’s a long history of the U.S. discriminating against methanol producers because they’re “foreign” in favour of Archer Daniels Midland, which is more or less the entire ethanol industry, and they’ve assembled a remarkable list of quotes from politicians saying how methanol is them damn Arabs takin’ over again, hoo-wee. I’m not sure what that proves, but taking it all into consideration, ol’ Gray sure had reasons other than making Greenpeace happy.

Now, I have to admit that I think it’s a weak case. If what they’re saying is true, it’s pretty obviously stinky behaviour, but it’s not exactly what NAFTA bans. NAFTA says you can’t expropriate an investment on a discriminatory basis or without compensation, and you can’t legally treat Canadian (or Mexican) companies differently from American ones. California isn’t directly expropriating anything, and they’re not passing a law that specifically punishes Canadian companies; presumably an American methanol producer’s just as screwed.

Methanex does have an argument that California’s behaviour is clearly discriminatory in intent, and they have evidence to that effect. A good comparison would be if I were a racist and decided to open a store, but I didn’t want to hire minorities, so I made it a policy to hire only blue-eyed employees. There is no law in Canada against hiring only blue-eyed employees, but the intent and effect of that rule is obviously discriminatory. I could lose a judgement before the Human Rights Commission based solely on that; even if my intent wasn’t discriminatory they might gently tell me to change my policy lest the effect be discriminatory. Basically, that’s what Methanex is saying: California isn’t coming out and saying they don’t want the Canadians taking all this business from ADM, but they’re using weaselly laws to do it anyway.

I don’t know if Canadian companies can contribute to American campaigns (obviously they can up here) but after the whole Chinese contribution fiasco I’d guess “no.” As to methanol being from Canada, I believe it comes from other places, too; Middle Eastern countries, IIRC, are major producers of methanol. But they are not protected under NAFTA. So they’re screwed, I guess.

You may read Methanex’s filed case here. You need Adobe to read the file.

It sure looks strong when they say it, but of course it’s only their side of the story.