I believe the state GOP understands that this November's mid term elections are not guaranteed in their favor so they are pushing through as much crap legislation as they can.The GOP controlled state house, senate and governor's mansion have been busy, busy, busy!
They handily pushed through bills to obstruct and constrict women's rights, voter rights and curtail local governance and now we have the dastardly, bastardly fracking bill, signed into law by our very own Governor Rat Boy, shill to Duke Energy and any other industry willing to pay for the privilege.
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In 2012 a moratorium was put in to place on fracking in this state until a state created agency could be formed to oversee fracking and develop safety and operational rules. Once the GOP took over, screw all that! They just pushed through a bill WITHOUT DEBATE OR PUBLIC INPUT.
The state can start issuing permits 61 days after drilling rules are approved although they promised to keep the moratorium in place until the agency had been created. One of the worst pieces of this abhorrent piece of crap is that "treated" waste water will be allowed to be discharged into rivers and streams. And what will be in this "treated" water? We won't know because while any energy company seeking a permit will have to provide a list of chemicals and other ingredients to be used, this new law makes it a misdemeanor (the original bill called for it to be a felony) TO DISCLOSE THE LIST OF CHEMICALS BEING USED UNDER OUR HOMES! The list will instead be given to a state geologist who will keep it locked up in case of emergency....
Wait, it gets better. There is also a provision barring local and county governments from enacting any additional restrictions or rules on gas/oil operations.
As one concerned citizen pointed out, "If they can do this on fracking, they can do this with any issues, overriding local government.
Welcome to the new Banana Republic - North Carolina!
Is true what one could read In German media? There is a gag order planned for (emergency) doctors and firemen "as the fracking chemicals are trade secret"?!
ReplyDeleteIt's true Sean there is a provision in the law that would make it a crime for anyone to disclose the chemicals because they are proprietary. What a crock!
DeleteEsse Quam Videre is the NC state motto. "To be rather than to appear to be." Seems to me they look like crooks and are crooks. No 'rather' involved.
ReplyDeleteNot a lot of educated folks there though and maybe Frack You! would be a good replacement.
If they have their way in state legislature we will be the Frack Capital. This GOP dominated government has managed in just two short years turn back the clock 50 years and NOT in a good way. I hope there are enough pissed off voters left in this state to turn back THEIR clock in November.
ReplyDeleteI sympathize deeply. It's easy to forget that fracking is going on right here in California. There is no coverage from the press or media and very little that is publicized through the activist community. We're talking about ten counties and off-shore wells in the Santa Barbara Channel. Where the biggest oil leak in the history of our state caused ten years or more of tar sludge to appear on sandy beaches. Most Californians believe that off-shore drilling was made illegal a long time ago. Apparently just about any oil well can be fracked. So older wells that have stopped producing by conventional drilling, (odd that we saw the rigs slowly pumping off of Interstate 5 near Bakersfield,) can now be tapped for further reserves. New wells are simply constructed to be fracked.
ReplyDeleteMore germaine to the discussion at hand is what chemicals are being used in the high-pressure toxic brew that is the core of fracking? More than twenty-five percent of these chemicals are known to be carcinogenic. Beyond that, the deep earth chemicals that are released and absorbed into the water include lead and arsenic, (a common toxin associated with mining) or may be radioactive. It is not a mystery what chemicals are being used. Chemicals used directly in fracking include methanol, benzene, naphthalene and trimethylbenzene. There is absolutely no easy or safe way to clean these toxins from waste water. Read this sub-heading from the above link:
Q: How does fracking contaminate our water?
Fracking routinely employs numerous toxic chemicals, including methanol, benzene, naphthalene and trimethylbenzene. About 25 percent of fracking chemicals could cause cancer, according to scientists with the Endocrine Disruption Exchange. Evidence is mounting throughout the country that these chemicals are making their way into aquifers and drinking water.
Water quality can also be threatened by methane contamination tied to drilling and the fracturing of rock formations. This problem has been highlighted by footage of people in fracked areas setting fire to methane-laced water from kitchen faucets.
Fracking can also expose people to harm from lead, arsenic and radioactivity that are brought back to the surface with fracking flowback fluid. Fracking requires an enormous amount of water, and because fracking waste water contains dangerous toxins it generally cannot be cleaned and reused for other purposes. Especially during a historic drought, we cannot afford to permanently remove massive quantities of this precious resource from our state’s water supply.
Obama's Department of the Interior and California's governor have both fallen down in protecting our environment from this scourge. You are not alone.
Junior it is crazy scary what is happening across our country. I believe we need a national movement for people to gravitate to with the goal of reversing Citizens United and demanding federal oversight and regulations for all operations that affect our food, our land and our water.
DeleteNot just fracking, there has been a growing trend in recent years to conceal from the public various nefarious activities of Corporate America:
ReplyDelete-- Bills in state legislatures that make it illegal to photograph and document cruel and illegal animal husbandry practices on corporate-owned farms;
-- Attempts by Governor Duke Energy of North Chinalina to suppress evidence of massive pollution in public rivers and streams;
-- The chemical leak in West Virginia that polluted public drinking water – affecting over 300,000 citizens (plus the immediate declaration of bankruptcy by the polluter to avoid further liability), notwithstanding the refusal of other companies to properly disclose the location and contents of chemical storage facilities;
-- Attempts by factory farms to conceal from the public their excessive use of antibiotics and hormones;
-- Attempts by Monsanto to suppress labeling of genetically modified foodstuffs;
-- Attempts by the NRA to suppress research on gun violence and ban doctors from asking questions that may identify a risk factors to their patients;
-- A pervasive attitude in Corporate America that proprietary trade secrets trump public health concerns.
UNDER THREAT: The right of the public to know of corporate activities that effect their health, safety and welfare, and the right to make informed choices in the products we buy.
Speaking for myself, I am damn angry over these encroachments of corporate power and stand ready to fight back. Besides letters and phone calls to congressional representatives, I now carry a camera with me all times – ready to record anything I see and make a DAMN BIG STINK!
May this community blog serve as a platform to vent our rage!
All these violations of our rights is a direct result of GOP legislation. We need to be very vocal and proactive and putting this out to as many venues as we can and demanding federal oversight since it is painfully obvious we will not be getting any cooperation from state government.
DeleteTrue and I'm cynical enough to suspect that when they ruin the economy and put people out of work with their trickle down voodoo, it's a gambit, because when one protests about things like fracking, the instant refrain is "jobs, jobs, jobs" Low employment is a way to hold us hostage. An attempt to phase out or clean up filthy coal burning power plants is an illustration. "Obama wants to destroy 800,000 jobs!" Somehow it's an effective way to counter the argument that Republicans want to destroy 7 billion lives.
DeleteAs to venting our rage - it has it's limitations as an effective way to get things done. Democrats with their ten thousand causes often seem unable to act in unison or to prioritize the long list of things we want to accomplish. It's too hard to be angry at so many things and of course some of those things are hardly supported by all the various factions. We're not goal oriented the way they are. All they need to do is to convert as many resources to cash as is possible and keep it in as few hands as possible, and they win.
There is a big difference in scale, but I often see attempts to stifle research and reason in order to maintain a party line and it worries me. Who was it that said: being against evil doesn't make you good?" It doesn't make one effective either.
It is so frustrating to get group focus when therr are so many issues it is overwhelming. I completely agree with you Capt.
DeleteJobs my foot. How about people? Barrio Logan in San Diego is located near the maritime and shipping industries associated with the Port of San Diego. The City Council, (bi-partisan,) worked for three years to hammer out a neighborhood zoning regulation that would create a buffer zone between the residential areas and the heavy industry associated with the shipping industry. The maritime and shipping interests gathered enough signatures by paying people to sit outside of grocery stores to force the issue to a vote. Republicans voted in lock-step. Three years of negotiations to protect neighborhoods and health fell to the chopping block of financial interest. The refrain was that eventually maritime industries would not be able to expand to meet demand, and business would flee to other ports costing jobs. JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!
DeleteFormer Mayor Pro Tempore Todd Gloria's tweet, "Money and lies used to undermine planning and democratic processes. The City Council will not forget Barrio Logan."
New mayor Kevin Faulconer sides comfortably with the shipyards.
We've been taught to worship Capitalism for so long that something has to hit us over the head becore we notice that Capitalism is not about people and their well-being. It's not about opportunity,l it's about monopoly and control and it's about using up all possible resources as quickly as possible.
DeleteI've often compared it to fire - useful, necessary and life-sustaining if controlled, but not only will it burn you, it will burn out if not regulated, tended and contained. We realized that a hundred years ago but we are going to have to learn it once again. But of course all our sources of learning are owned by the priests of corporatism and we only learn what they want us to learn and they've become nearly perfect in molding our thoughts and desires and passions, we hardly have a chance. They hold us hostages for JOBS. They keep us fighting with each other about relatively irrelevant things and we go along with it: arguing round the clock about whether this guy or that is a racist, whether he supports the troops, hates Christmas, is gay or an atheist or a Muslim or was born in Kenya and stole the missing airplane. And we don't notice that this is not our country any more, that property rights trump our right to breathe free, to have access to what we need to thrive as free people.
People are alienated, feel their future fading away, but Capitalism has a straw man to divert their anger. Instead of noticing that we're being robbed and exploited we rail at "the government" instead of the people who are eating their future and turning it to shit. We turn to guns and hokey religions and reject our only chance of survival.
Capitalism needs the purchasing power of a large number of people to function, but Capitalism has no brains, no way of reducing it's appetite to the point where it doesn't eat more than it can produce and starve itself to death which it will do if history doesn't repeat it's revolutions and cataclysms and wars of aggression -- and it will. Capitalism has no brains, only an appetite, and like a zombie it will eat anything that looks like a brain -- even its own.
We are never going to do a damned thing about global warming simply because Capitalism wants to use up all the fossil fuels NOW, clear all the land NOW.
Have you noticed how many movies are about end times? How many TV shows are about living "off the grid" and off the land? There is a terrible malaise about how things appear to be going and a terrible danger to how things are going would be for us all to realize we're in this together and have common interests in being able to control our own lives. But they keep us afraid about crime and disease and heresy; weapons of War on the streets, drugs and socialism, Liberal Tyrants and the Gay Agenda and FEMA concentration camps and gun confiscation and the loss of our ephemeral but precious FREEDOM to the point where we will defend those who steal it.
ReplyDeleteThey scream about the VA and we don't notice that we're all suffering from lack of access to medical care. We fight wars for profit and power and we don't notice or protest because we're swooning with admiration for our heroic troops (unless there's an opportunity to smear a hero as an attack on Liberals)
But we keep trying to get our opportunity back, our wealth distributed to people who spend and support rational capitalism by going along with our enemies, fighting over nonsense, believing their lies and our own lies while the few, the arrogant and the powerful eat our lunch.
An accurate analysis Capt.
ReplyDelete