Thoughtful Patriotic Americans Do Not Support Crony Corporate Fracking

Thoughtful Patriotic Americans Do Not Support Crony Corporate Fracking

We are well into summer 2013, and in the West temperatures are high, wildfires are raging, and droughts are in effect in many states. Mora County, NM bans fracking, June 2013.

One state that has been hit particularly hard is New Mexico.  Nearly 90 percent of the state is experiencing extreme to exceptional drought conditions, and the Rio Grande is now often referred to as the “Rio Sand.”  This is why a recent headline in the Albuquerque Journal titled “NM Farmers Selling Water to Oil and Gas Developers” makes absolutely no sense.  In fact, it reflects the sheer folly and arrogance of humankind.

The paper reported that some farmers in New Mexico, who have been impacted by the drought, have been selling water to the oil and gas industry for fracking (hydraulic fracturing refers to the process by which fluid is injected into wells under high pressure to create cracks and fissures in rock formations that improve the production of these wells).  Some are even pumping precious water from aquifers to sell to frackers.

A New Mexican water official said “The oil and gas industry is requiring a lot of water and our concern is the effect it’s having on our aquifer,” he added. “We are concerned about losing water that can’t be recovered. Hopefully, we will get through this drought and everyone will be intact.”

On top of the insanity of desperate farmers selling water for fracking is the number of people still moving to arid places, and the impact on the environment.  A recent article in the Los Angeles Times – “New Mexico is the Driest of the Dry” – noted that “As Western cities continue their march into wildlands, the growing desert and the sprawling suburbs are on a collision course.”  At least in New Mexico the population is barely growing, but there is the ever constant push for more and more unsustainable development.

Facts on Fracking and Water

The Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research and policy organization, reported in its 2012 study Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Resources: Separating the Frack from the Fiction that “The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) reports that fracturing shale gas wells requires between 2.3 million and 3.8 million gallons of water per well.  An additional 40,000 – 1,000,000 gallons is required to drill the well.”  The authors also found that “New data, however, suggest that the water requirements for fracking shale gas wells might be both much larger and more variable than is reported by the U.S. EPA.”

Lastly, the Pacific Institute study also noted that “Water for hydraulic fracturing is typically withdrawn from one location or watershed over several days. Additionally, in some cases, the water is taken from “remote, often environmentally sensitive headwater areas”, where even small withdrawals can have a significant impact on the flow regime.”

Business as Usual or a Move to Clean Energy?

The farmers mustn’t be faulted for trying to survive in a tough business and climate conditions.  Those who can and should be faulted are those pushing business as usual.  The evidence that society must get off fossil fuels is too great to be ignored.   The oil and gas industry are certainly guilty, as are their lobbyists and political supporters, and of course, climate change deniers.

But consumers who continue to ignore the call to invest in clean energy play a huge role too.  When enough people demand sustainable energy options and are willing to pay the price for dirty fuel (such as a carbon or gas tax), more decision-makers will listen.

The fracking companies will take what they want and leave.  Business as usual is too high of a price to pay.  We won’t get off natural gas and other fossil fuels until we prioritize and invest in clean energy.  Additionally, arid regions will need to stabilize population growth and end sprawl. 

Joe Romm of Climate Progress stated it well when he wrote “You’d think state officials would see the value for farmers and residents in sustainable consumption given where the climate is headed.”  This applies to communities not just in New Mexico, but everywhere.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License


Suzanne York is Senior Writer with the Institute for Population Studies, where she writes the blog 6degreesofpopulation.org. She is a contributing author to Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Globalization (Sierra Club Books).

Fracking is all about a hand full of already very wealthy people getting even wealthier. As usual they warp their message in free enterprise, dire warnings of higher fuel prices ( like they're not going to rise them anyway), the flag and even God. These greedy plutocrats are as shameless as they are greedy.

Conservatism Marches On, Closing Schools, But Finding Money To Build More Prisons

Conservatism Marches On, Closing Schools, But Finding Money To Build More Prisons

Philadelphia is so broke the city is closing 23 public schools, never mind that it has the [3] cash to build a $400 million prison.

Construction on the penitentiary said to be "the second-most expensive state project ever" began just days after the Pennsylvania School Reform Commission voted down a plan to close only four of the 27 schools scheduled to die. Facing a $304 million debt, the Commission instead approved a measly $2.4 billion budget that would shut down 23 public schools, wiping out roughly 10% of the city's total.

But it's not like Pennsylvania does not have the money to fill the debt. Rather,  PA's GOP-controlled Houseof  Representatives recently passed a tax break for corporations that will cost the state an estimated $600 million to $800 million annually.

Plus, $400 million is being shoveled into this [3]:

    The penitentiary, which is technically two facilities, will supplement at least two existing jails, the Western Penitentiary at Pittsburgh and Fayette County Jail. Pittsburgh’s Western Penitentiary was built in 2003 with the original intention of replacing Fayette County Jail, but the prison has struggled with lawsuits claiming widespread physical and sexual abuse of prisoners.

    Scheduled to be completed in 2015, the new prison’s cell blocks and classroom will be capable of housing almost 5,000 inmates. Officials said there will be buildings for female inmates, the mentally ill and a death row population.

Conservatives like to whine about crime, but it seems obvious they really like crime. They go about creating public policy that steals from education ( education and literacy have been shown to be very effective ways to reduce crime) and thus creates more criminal behavior.

Welcome To Conservative Planet Where The World's Richest 8% Earn Half of All Income

Welcome To Conservative Planet Where The World's Richest 8% Earn Half of All Income

The lead research economist at the World Bank, Branko Milanovic, will be reporting soon, in the journal Global Policy, the first calculation of global income-inequality, and he has found that the top 8% of global earners are drawing 50% of all of this planet's income. He notes: "Global inequality is much greater than inequality within any individual country," because the stark inequality between countries adds to the inequality within any one of them, and because most people live in extremely poor countries, largely the nations within three thousand miles of the Equator, where it's already too hot, even without the global warming that scientists say will heat the world much more from now on.

[  ]...Wealth-inequality is always far higher than income-inequality, and therefore a reasonable estimate of personal wealth throughout the world would probably be somewhere on the order of the wealthiest 1% of people owning roughly half of all personal assets. These individuals might be considered the current aristocracy, insofar as their economic clout is about equal to that of all of the remaining 99% of the world's population.

Milanovich says: "Among the global top 1 per cent, we find the richest 12 per cent of Americans, ... and between 3 and 6 per cent of the richest Britons, Japanese, Germans and French. It is a 'club' that is still overwhelmingly composed of the 'old rich'," who pass on to their children (tax-free in the many countries that have no estate-taxes) the fortunes that they have accumulated, and who help set them up in businesses of their own - often after having sent them first to the most prestigious universities (many in the United States), where those children meet and make friends of others who are similarly situated as themselves.

For example, on 22 April 2004, The New York Times headlined "As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, Concerns Grow Over Fairness," and reported that 55% of freshman students at the nation's 250 most selective colleges and universities came from parents in the top 25% of this nation's income. Only 12% of students had parents in the bottom 25% of income. Even at an elite public, state, college, the University of Michigan, "more members of this year's freshman class ... have parents making at least $200,000 a year [then America's top 2%] than have parents making less than the national median of about $53,000 [America's bottom 50%].'"

Most of the redistribution that favors more than just the top 1% has occurred in the "developing" countries, such as China. However, a larger proportion of the world's population live in nations of Central and South America, Africa, etc., where today's leading families tend overwhelmingly to be the same as in the previous generation. They, too, near the Equator, are members of the "club," but there are fewer of them.

Milanovic finds that globally, "The top 1 per cent has seen its real income rise by more than 60 per cent over those two decades [1988-2008]," while "the poorest 5 per cent" have received incomes which "have remained the same" - the desperately poor are simply remaining desperately poor. Maybe there's too much heat where they live.

This study, in Global Policy, to be titled "Global Income Inequality in Numbers: In History and Now," reports that economic developments of the past twenty years have caused "the top 1 per cent to pull ahead of the other rich and to reaffirm in fact - and even more so in public perception - its preponderant role as a winner of globalization."

Conservatism preaches that those are the top are there because they earned it, while those at the bottom are lazy moochers. This report verifies what most rational people se as obvious. Conservative economics in action are a form of thief from workers. Conservatism is not about merit and working hard, it is about redistributing wealth upwards to the 1%.

Freaky Pretend Patriot Rick Perry's $487 Million Corporate Slush Fund Doesn't Need Your Stinkin' Audit

Freaky Pretend Patriot Rick Perry's $487 Million Corporate Slush Fund Doesn't Need Your Stinkin' Audit

Watchdog groups have long argued that the Texas Enterprise Fund, a taxpayer-funded program that has awarded more than $487 million to big businesses that set up shop in the Lone Star State since 2004, is a slush fund that allows Gov. Rick Perry to reward allies and political donors. Despite the criticisms, the Texas State Auditor's Office hasn't examined the fund's finances in at least a decade. Now a bipartisan group of state senators is pushing a bill that would subject the Enterprise Fund to an independent state audit. But Perry's office won't explain whether the governor backs the idea. Besides, it says, the state's top three Republicans have everything under control.

"Every project must receive unanimous approval from the governor, lieutenant governor, and House speaker," says Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Perry. "The Legislature reviews the state's incentive funds every two years, and has continued to see the value in reauthorizing them every biennium since their inception." Actually, lawmakers are not planning to give any more money to the fund in the 2014-15 fiscal year, according to the San Antonio Express-News. (There is still about $140 million left in the kitty.) And although Nashed says that Perry "will review any bill that makes it through the process and onto his desk," she wouldn't say whether he supports or opposes the bill that has been introduced.

Auditing experts say having three GOP officials sign off on the Enterprise Fund's projects is not comparable to an audit. "I'm not familiar with the fund, but that doesn't seem to qualify as internal auditing at all," says Roger Martin, vice president of the American Accounting Association. D. Scott Showalter, an accounting professor at North Carolina State University, adds that "public funds [require] a higher level of accountability. An independent audit appears reasonable."

Given the Texas Enterprise Fund's record, Perry and his allies may have reason to fear a higher level of accountability. In 2010, the Texas Observer found that since the fund's inception in 2003, 20 of the 55 Texas Enterprise Fund grant recipients had given money directly to Perry's campaign or the Republican Governor's Association. A look at awards since 2010 shows the practice of handing money to Perry donors continues, albeit on a smaller scale: About 15 percent of companies that have received money from the fund since 2010 donated to Perry's campaign, according to records maintained by the National Institute on Money in State Politics and the Center for Responsive Politics.

Perry maintains that the fund gives Texas a competitive edge and has brought more than 56,000 new jobs to the state and generated more than $14.7 billion in capital investment. But the watchdog group Texans for Public Justice found that by the end of 2010, companies getting cash from the fund were only creating about 37 percent of the number of jobs promised. The administration has lowered standards in the past so that companies could create fewer jobs than they had promised, and it has canceled contracts after criticism over companies such as Bank of America's Countrywide, which continued to be an Enterprise grantee as it collapsed and laid off thousands of workers nationwide.
"It doesn't have enough transparency, it doesn't have enough oversight, and it's essentially a slush fund run out of the back of the governor's office."

The Texas Enterprise Fund "doesn't have enough transparency, it doesn't have enough oversight, and it's essentially a slush fund run out of the back of the governor's office," argues Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a state watchdog group.

The Texas state auditor's office would not comment to Mother Jones on whether or not the fund has enough oversight. However, when it audited Perry's other pet corporate grant program, the $200 million Texas Emerging Technology Fund (which at the time, required the same unanimous approval by Perry and Co. as the Enterprise fund) in 2011, the state auditor found that this fund had no consistent process for awarding grants, did not stop advisory board members (who were appointed by Perry) from accepting compensation from grant recipients, didn't record its meetings, and did not submit the majority of its required annual reports between 2007 and 2009. Another fund, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which was spearheaded by Perry and Lance Armstrong, saw eight cancer scientists (two of them Nobel laureates) resign in protest because it was putting political and commercial interests over scientific ones.

You'd be smiling like an insane jackass too if you could get away with Rick perry style corruption. people wonder why government doesn't work as well as it should. Just look at conservative Republicans like Perry who hide their politics as a scam leadership behind the flag, the Bible and lots of cash from his sleazbag cronies.

Fox News Continues Pushing Conspiracy Theory That Iraq Hid WMD In Other Countries. Should Fox News and their America hating agenda continue to have a broadcast license. If they hate America so much, why don't Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly , Sean Hannity and the rest move to Iran where they have "family" values enforced by the government.