Phonegate: Oil and gas connection

Rachel Maddow just went on the Colbert show (Late Night) to plug her new book Blow Out.[1] The point of the book is abuses in the oil  and gas industry but in discussing the impeachment topic with Colbert she actually said enough to connect the dots and link the impeachment crimes to a brewing scandal in the oil and gas industry. Here is Publisher's Weekly's review of the book:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-57547-4

[Rachel] Maddow (Drift), host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, surveys Big Oil’s recent misdeeds, including Western oil companies’ support for Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang dictatorship, the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, and blocking rules to regulate fracking practices that cause earthquake swarms and pollution in Oklahoma (while the same companies demand tax breaks). Anchoring the book is Russian president Vladimir Putin’s cutthroat petropolitics. Maddow contends he turned Russia’s oil and gas sectors into cesspools of corruption and inefficiency, seized well-managed private oil companies and arrested their CEOs, and made energy a foreign policy weapon while getting investments and technology from ExxonMobil. Maddow tells these stories in colorful, sardonic prose—she pillories Putin’s campaign “to piss in the punch bowl of free elections all over the civilized world”...[2]

That review is ultimately not kind as he thinks she does not connect enough dots. Perhaps that is the case I don't know. But the picture taking shape from those she clearly connects gives us a good idea that much more lies behind the phone call. Not that it was directly  about  the oil  and gas industry but it raises questions that the phone giving out of the transcript  might be a diversion from the brewing oil and gas problems. Even if that is too hair brained it is clearly the case that here lies more to investigate, the impeachment proceedings open the door to do so. Mind you the hair brain idea of connection between the book and telephone call is my  idea not her's. She is not that zany.

Another reviewer summarizes the book:

https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/14526/blowout

With her trademark black humor, Maddow takes us on a switchback journey around the globe, revealing the greed and incompetence of Big Oil and Gas along the way, and drawing a surprising conclusion about why the Russian government hacked the 2016 U.S. election. She deftly shows how Russia's rich reserves of crude have, paradoxically, stunted its growth, forcing Putin to maintain his power by spreading Russia's rot into its rivals, its neighbors, the West's most important alliances, and the United States. Chevron, BP, and a host of other industry players get their star turn, most notably ExxonMobil and the deceptively well-behaved Rex Tillerson. The oil and gas industry has weakened democracies in developed and developing countries, fouled oceans and rivers, and propped up authoritarian thieves and killers. But being outraged at it is, according to Maddow, "like being indignant when a lion takes down and eats a gazelle. You can't really blame the lion. It's in her nature."[3]

The oil and gas industry destroys enirinmentandcomunities, it doesnot bring review to thepeople of nationas crsedwith oil but rather dictatorship asiti hasto theRussiamns,
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/behind-trumps-energy-dominance/

President Donald Trump has pledged allegiance to what he calls America’s “energy dominance.” This is good news for the oil and gas industry. We examine what this means for villagers in Alaska coping with climate change, Native American artifacts in Utah and birds flying over the U.S.  To find out, we talk with a former Interior Department official who became a whistleblower after helping relocate Alaska Native villages threatened by rising temperatures. We also examine the energy industry’s influence on the Trump administration and visit public lands in southeastern Utah, where parcels leased for oil and gas exploration contain sensitive Native American archeological sites.[4]

We know the phone call is, like wiretapping the Wategrate headquarters just the tip of the iceberg.


[1]"Late Night with Steven Colbert Interview Rachel Maddow," Wedesday,  CBS 11. Dallas Texas,Oct 2, 2019.

[2]"Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth" PW Publisher's Weekley, 8/12/2019 https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-57547-4
[accessed oct 2,2019]

[3]"Blowout," Bool Browse, Oct 2019
https://www.bookbrowse.com/bb_briefs/detail/index.cfm/ezine_preview_number/14526/blowout
[accessed oct 2,2019]

[4] "Behind Trump's Energy Dominance," Reveal the center  for Investigative reporting, Amy Walters. Editors: Deborah George, Taki Telonidis and Marla Cone. Reporters: Zack Colman, Elizabeth Shogren and Jennifer Oldham.
https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/behind-trumps-energy-dominance/
[accessed oct 2,2019]