Quickie Jump-Start To Keystone Pipeline Plan Is Flat-Out Stupid

So the Keystone XL pipeline dreamers, having been served by Nebraska, and delayed over multiple and multiplying routing questions by the Obama administration, have come up with a tactic about as crazy as proposing to run tarry crude oil over the Ogallala aquifer in the first place:

Suggesting they'd spend heavily now to start construction on one segment closest to the terminus in Texas before the US review is finished - - thinking they could box in American reviewers and Obama who'd capitulate in the face of the company having spent all that money.

TransCanada Corp. could begin construction of a vital segment of its Keystone XL oil pipeline before U.S. regulators have signed off on the project as a whole.

Executives at the company told an investor conference in Toronto Wednesday that the section of pipeline between the energy hub of Cushing, Okla. and the U.S. Gulf Coast could be prioritized, to alleviate a supply glut.

Let me put it this way, having worked in state and local governments in Wisconsin for 14 years and covered politicians and governments as a newspaper reporter, columnist, and writer for more than another 20 years, too:

You could not come up with a dumber plan, because no one likes to be dissed and taken for granted like that - - especially the people in authority.

Say you were you an Olympic sprinter lining up for the gold medal heat in the 100 yard dash.

Is your race strategy to lean over to the judge with the starting gun and whisper: "I'm gonna false start - - but don't hold it against me."

The surest way to get decision-makers' backs up, to guarantee that they will send you a deserved "***k you" by dragging their feet before they turn you down is to think manipulate them into a corner and force their hand - - without any consequence.

Try starting to build a garage, or a house, or a high-rise tower before the permitting process has begun - - then throw in that the project is a controversial precedent-setter opposed by many neighbors and interest groups.

Which is why the permitting review is underway.

What kind of pipe have the pipeline planners being smoking?