Arkansas Reporter
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The Washington Free Beacon, an online source of news and comment written from a right-wing perspective, this week published a lengthy article on Hillary Clinton based on papers of the late Diane Blair, a University of Arkansas political scientist and Clinton’s long-time friend. Links to reproductions of many of the documents cited were included, too. The article focuses on statements Clinton made privately, according to Blair’s recollection in her journal, at variance with things she has said publicly. It is, of course, not particularly unusual for positions to evolve over time. These instances include intervention in Bosnia and the failed health care initiative of Bill Clinton’s early presidency in which Hillary Clinton was said to have privately expressed skepticism about managed competition versus single-payer. Publicly, she advocated the managed care approach. The article and its supporting documents include a great deal of Blair’s account of Clinton’s reaction to reports about her husband’s infidelity and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. It was a nuanced sort of reaction, wholly disapproving of her husband’s actions, but defensive in some respects. She didn’t see her husband as a predator, for one thing. Notably for Arkansas readers, the article recounts Clinton’s private resistance to the appointment of federal Judge Richard Arnold of Little Rock to the U.S. Supreme Court. The article indicates at least part of the reason was the potential that his confirmation process could delve into personal issues in the divorce that ended his first marriage. She saw this potential as a byproduct of the focus on personal scandals that were besetting her husband. She did write that both Clintons also had concerns about Arnold’s health because of his treatment for cancer. This was ultimately cited as the reason the nomination wasn’t made, an assertion a full reading of the papers supports. Arnold died 10 years after his nomination was under consideration in 1994. But the papers also reflect other concerns: Clinton argued that rejecting Arnold would send a “message” to the judge’s ally, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman Jr., whose paper often printed unflattering stories about the Clintons. “Goddamn Hussman needs to know that it’s his own goddamn fault; that he CONTINUED ON PAGE 11 10
FEBRUARY 13, 2014
ARKANSAS TIMES
SÛRETÉ DU QUÉBEC
Blair on Clinton
QUEBEC EXPLOSION: A runaway train carrying crude oil exploded last July in Canada, killing 47 people.
Crude question Oil transport by rail carrires risks. BY LESLIE NEWELL PEACOCK
A
rkansas is sensitive when it comes to crude oil, thanks to the estimated 210,000 gallons of it that spread through a Mayflower neighborhood when a crack in ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline sent a gusher up through two feet of soil. Arkansans even know how to pronounce PHMSA, the agency that regulates the transport of oil and other hazardous materials. Crude is also shipped by train, and just since last July, there have been these accidents: A runaway train explosion in July in Quebec that killed 47 people. The derailment and explosion of 11 oil cars in Alabama in November, an accident that witnesses said sent flames 300 feet into the sky. A train collision in Casselton, N.D., in December that required the evacuation of the entire town. The derailment in January of a train carrying oil through New Brunswick, Canada, causing the evacuation of 45 homes. These incidents, the fact that oil transport by train has increased exponentially in the past few years and concern that the tanker cars the oil is carried in are unsafe, has put a national
spotlight on safety issues. As it happens, crude oil is transported through Arkansas on Union Pacific lines that crisscross the state, running through Conway, Little Rock and Pine Bluff; on Burlington Northern Santa Fe in Northeast Arkansas, and likely on Kansas City Southern in Southwest Arkansas, though that could not be confirmed by press time. Almost certainly the cars carried by those trains — which, as common carriers, are required to transport the oil — are DOT-111 tank cars, which railroads and safety advocates say are inadequate to transport oil safely. The National Transportation Safety Board and the American Association of Railroads have recommended to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) that it enact stricter tank car construction regulations, such as requiring thicker, more puncture-resistant steel shells and head shields, valve changes and additional protection on the top of the cars. Finding out how much oil passes through Arkansas is problematic. The
names of the companies that ship it are proprietary, according to Raquel Espinoza, a spokesman for UP. However, Gonzalez was able to provide these statistics: In 2013 nationwide, UP shipped 163,000 car loads of crude, which happened to be an increase of 35 percent from the year before, thanks to the boom in oil production in the Bakken Shale of North Dakota and Montana. Union Pacific picks up tank cars from other carriers — Canadian Pacific and BNSF — in Missouri for transport to El Dorado and St. James, La. El Dorado, the home of a Lion Oil refinery, received nearly 8,500 carloads in 2013. Each tank car carries about 30,000 gallons of crude oil, Espinoza said. Espinoza said Union Pacific works with first responders along rail lines and coordinators at the Arkansas Emergency Management Department on what to do if there is an accident involving hazardous materials. One of those emergency managers is Shelia McGhee, who is coordinator for Faulkner County. “It’s a concern especially now since we dealt with the crude oil pipeline rupture in Mayflower; we have hands-on experience now,” McGhee said. “Rail has always been a big concern to me because it runs through the heart of our community, Conway, the home of three colleges.” McGhee has attended two rail car emergency sessions, one sponsored by UP and another by TTCI, a hazardous materials training facility in Pueblo, Colo. She said that the Faulkner County emergency planning commission will discuss the handling of hazardous materials when it meets in March and that a quarterly meeting she has with Fire Department chiefs in April will do a “table top” train derailment exercise with a hazardous materials coordinator from UP. Because Conway and Mayflower’s first responders — their fire departments — worked on the Pegasus leak, “I think we would be a step ahead of people that have never dealt with crude oil. ... We have an understanding of how to deal with it,” McGhee said. “I feel comfortable we could handle” an oil car emergency, she said. The Department of Transportation put out a warning in January that CONTINUED ON PAGE 22