PUBLIC COMMENT

5/10/12

Stylish German activists sporting satirical Exxon-Mobil sashes serve fracking
chemical cocktails containing benzene, toluene and other deadly "enes"
and "biozides." Meanwhile Germany says fracking will soon
be banned (at least temporarily).

Why single payer failed on third try in California

Despite passing the CA legislature twice before being vetoed by corrupt Gov Schwarzenegger in 2006 and 2008, single payer legislation in 2012 failed to pass the legislature and was not supported by historically liberal Gov Brown. Some say Dem legislators and Governor pulled back for fear of upsetting the Obama apple cart in his re-election, because it might appear CA in passing single payer would undermine Pres Obama's signature domestic achievement, the corporate/profit based Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile consider how Obama's ACA promise to control insurance premium price rises is useless. All they can do is plead with corporate insurers that premium increases are "unreasonable" but can't do a thing about that to lower premiums or bring back to "reasonable." All the more reason if you live in a state considering single payer health insurance you should do everything in your power to support getting a single payer bill through legislature (in PA SB 400 sponsored by PA Sen Ferlo is pending in the Banking and Insurance Committee, read the bill here and write Sen Ferlo at ferlo@pasenate.com). Unfortunately PA's Single Payer Facebook page is not well organized). Vermont has passed a single payer bill. Both bills require waivers from HHS.

Read the CA story, Feb 2012

Get big money out of politics!
A Constitutional amendment has been introduced in Congress to overturn SC decision, Citizens United, which allows corporations to directly finance election campaigns. Citizens United means corporations can virtually run their own candidates and -- since they have more money than almost anyone else and can run many more political TV, radio and print ads -- usually can get their candidates elected, meaning our democracy is lost and we have a plutocracy (run by money, not citizens) or a corporatocracy (run by corporations, not citizens).

ACTION: To sign resolution calling for passage of the People's Rights Amendment to overturn Citizens United and to get involved in this vital movement, go to FreeSpeechForPeople.org.

Moyers: Who pays for political ads?

Go to local stations and ask to see their “public file” and look up who pays for political ads; send the info to Pro Publica (This info is given at the end of Moyers video above).

Broadcasters resist online public disclosure of political TV ad buys

by Justin Elliott, Pro Publica, 4-13-12

The FCC will vote April 27, 2012 on a rule governing disclosure of who pays for political ads and how much, information up to now kept in station office files in print form and not available to the public unless citizens went into station offices personally and asked to see the public file. The information would be made public on an FCC website. Industry lobbyists are swarming around the FCC, looking to shape the final FCC rule, hoping to block it and if that cannot be done then watering it down as much as they can.

With the help of readers around the country, ProPublica is collecting stations’ public paper files containing data on political ads and posting them online because the information is generally unavailable elsewhere. See “Free the Files.”

The rule would apply initially to affiliates of the four major networks — ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX — in the top 50 markets. All other stations would have another two years before they'd have to begin filing electronically.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the largest industry lobbying group, has raised the specter of “the market-distorting effects of creating anonymous accessibility to the commercially sensitive information included in the political file.” In meetings with FCC members this week, Smith emphasized “that the potential harm to TV broadcasters of placing specific rate information, including the lowest unit rate information that stations must, by law, afford to political candidates, in an anonymously accessible database was real and could place broadcasters at a significant competitive disadvantage versus other video providers that would not have a similar requirement.” The law states that broadcasters must give political candidates the lowest rates for the same class and length of ad that they offer other buyers. (This does not apply to outside groups like super PACs.) (more)

Editor's Note: Something not much discussed is how much money is made by the corporate media themselves from political advertising and how dependence on this cash flow might steer newsmedia toward maintaining the practice and resisting campaign finance reform that might require media to provide free air time for political ads. In other words, media have a conflict of interest with any campaign finance reform.

ACTION: Write to your Senator and House rep to insist they write to FCC supporting the rule requiring disclosure of sources and amounts paid for political ads as described in the Pro Publica article. Also mention need for require media companies to provide free air time for candidates. Also call for FCC to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine -- all in one email.

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The Koch Brothers suck (really)

A report appeared last year in Think Progress (3-1-11) that the father of the Koch Bros, Fred Koch, the founder of Koch Industries who made the fortune that is now having such a ruinous ripple effect on repressing our democracy across the nation, helped construct fifteen oil refineries for Joseph Stalin before expanding the business in the United States.

It’s hard to say whether this means the Koch fortune was established by a communist or a fascist. We know that Stalin was not at all a communist but a two-bit bully dictator with a large army and lots of weapons to repress the Soviet Union under his fist. The latter style, I think, rules the present Koch regime. It’s obvious that Fred Koch was comfortable in the tradition that carries on today in his sons' bully/fascist Tea Party politics if we take Koch Brother acolytes Gov Walker of Wisconsin, Gov Snyder of Michigan, Gov Scott of Fla as evidence of what American Stalinists look and act like.

Indeed, while bullies on the outside, the Koch Bros are parasitic on the inside: blood-sucking rather than building in the tradition of great American 19th century capitalist railroad barons. The Koch Bros prefer to exploit government resources to get roads built in forests so Koch companies can haul away their lumber for sale; or win hundreds of lucrative massive government contracts with help of political pals like the Bush family; or gain property tax exemptions for the Keystone XL pipeline costing Kansas property owners $50 million. Who needs to earn money when they can just suck it out of the public’s pocket?

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BRADFORD COUNTY USA: HERE COMES . . . . OUR FUTURE

SANDRA STEINGRABER & JANNETTE BARTH BLOW AWAY PRO-GASSERS IN TV DEBATE

SHALE GAS: CLIMATE MENACE?

In a Pittsburgh news conference 1-18-12, a Cornell research team warned -- again -- that increased reliance on shale gas will help cause catastrophic climate change within 15 to 35 years due to the drilling industry's leaks and venting of methane, one of the most potent agents to worsen the greenhouse effect.

Far from being a "clean" fuel, even called "green" by some industry lobbyists, gas drilling is filthy -- even dirtier than coal -- when it comes to climate, creating about 16% of the country's greenhouse gases, and that figure could increase to nearly 25% at the rate shale gas development is growing in Pennsylvania, nationwide and worldwide, says Robert Howarth, ecology and environmental biology professor at Cornell. His team has faced questions about its short-term focus of 20 years, but they point to a growing body of research emphasizing the short-term effects of methane release. Another Cornell scientist Anthony Cathles thinks shale gas is less dirty than coal overall. Still the Howarth team's essential finding holds when he says: "Shale gas is a really poor bridge fuel to the future because of the potency of methane and the urgent need to get methane under control," said Howarth. (Read more)

Think of shale gas as a rope bridge in the jungle -- shaky, temporary and dangerous.

See Report on shale gas greenhouse footprint, an independent peer-reviewed study by Cornell's Robert Howarth & his team.

Below is video clip of Prof Howarth at 2010 EPA conference in Binghamton, previewing the above report:

Video by Dissenta (Jane Prettyman)

THE NIGHTMARE: HERE'S WHAT FRACKING LOOKS LIKE AND SOUNDS LIKE

We see (and hear) the giant Halliburton pressurizing machines that inject the water, sand and toxic chemical mixture into the well to shatter the shale and release the gas. We see the bright lights illuminating the scene. We see the water and sand trucks lining up to deliver the ingredients for fracking (millions of gallons of water per day, thousands of tons of sand and hundreds of tons of chemicals whose identity Halliburton won't tell us). We see the home directly across the road. We hear the voice of Vera Duerga, the intrepid reporter who has captured so many video documentations of this travesty called shale gas drilling (fracking), until now abstract but now we see and hear the nightmare for what it really is. This is the process former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney used his office as Vice-President to get exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act and other federal regs because he knew fracking would violate them.

Here's another video of a frack site from two months earlier:

NY Times says "not a single well should be drilled . . ."

"Sewage treatment plants are not equipped to handle toxic [fracking flowback] waste from shale gas drilling; open pits are out of the question; and surface storage — even in airtight steel tanks — may be no more than a temporary solution. NY state officials concede that they don’t have an answer, but until they do, not a single well should be drilled." NY Times 12-12-11

The analogy with nuclear waste is clear: there's no place to put it that is safe. Just as many have argued that therefore nuclear energy should be banned, for similar reasons shale gas drilling should be banned until its flowback waste can be managed safely.

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INCREASED RADON IN OUR KITCHENS?

Increased amounts of radon, known to cause lung cancer under prolonged exposure, is brought by shale gas into close proximity of consumers in their homes. Read this gripping report published 1-10-12 by Marvin Resnikoff, Ph.D. Small amounts have always been found in natural gas but apparently much higher concentrations are being found in shale gas, especially from the Marcellus Shale.

Last year Prof. James W. Ring, Professor Emeritus of nuclear physics at Hamilton College, confirmed, in his testimony to the NYS DEC, the dangers of inhaled radon and the likelihood that shale gas extracted from the Marcellus will deliver radon into residences at point of use in family homes (two articles here and here) 10-8-11.

WHAT COMPRESSOR STATIONS ARE LIKE

Compressor stations leak toxic vapors contaminating the air in local communities documented by infrared cameras. Compressor stations introduce high noise levels into the area. Studies have shown that low-frequency noise vibrations on a constant basis day and night can cause vibro-acoustic disease that can bring increased irritability, aggressiveness, a tendency for isolation, and decreased cognitive skills. Explosions sometimes occur at compressor stations.

In Dallas Twp, PA, Chesapeake wanted to locate a compressor station only 1600 feet from a local school. Citizens banded together to fight it and the station was moved to a far more remote location away from houses, schools or other habitations.

Near top of this column, the video "Bradford County USA" features a compressor station taken in March 2011. Listen to the constant whirring sound.

In our hometown of Honesdale, the zoning ordinance should include ample setbacks of compressor stations, connection pipelines, drilling rigs, storage tanks, open-air waste water pits and other drilling-related structures, machinery and equipment far enough back from schools, homes, churches, hospitals, stores and residences not to be heard or smelled and not close enough to expose leaking gas and toxic vapors to animals or humans. (See article about a compressor station close to a school that was successfully relocated). 500 feet mentioned in current "model template" zoning ordinance for Honesdale will not be far enough to protect Honesdale citizens from noisy, smelly and air-polluting compressor stations, nor from drilling pads.

PA CONSTITUTION: ENVIRONMENTAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Natural Resources and the Public Estate:
"Article I, Section 27: The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people."

Yet nearly one-third of Penn's public forests have already been leased to private gas drillers (by Rendell admin) to help close the state's budget gap. While the shale gas industry (and politicians who support the industry) argue the sell-off of mineral rights of public forest lands is "for the benefit of all the people" because of promised jobs and other economic benefits, that assertion is rebuttable as the industrial intensity of drilling activities spoils the "clean air, pure water, and the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values" of public forest lands, rendering the main benefits of the Amendment useless.

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5/10/12

The Koch Brothers suck (really)