A couple of weeks ago, in my "Hey, Barack! You Don't Know Frack" post, I wrote about how the Business Roundtable mega-lobby weaseled its way into the corporation-friendly Oval Office and suggested the fracking industry could frackin' regulate itself. And how the White House started a fracking task force to oversee fracking. And how it was probably just another smokescreen to make us rubes believe the government is operating in the public interest.
Well, it turns out to be even worse than I thought. According to a report today in Bloomberg, the Obama Administration is considering allowing Big Frack to wait to disclose the cancer-causing chemicals it uses to propel gazillions of gallons of water to blast open the ground until AFTER it has already drilled the wells. And to disclose them on its own self-serving website, called FracFocus. If this is true, we are talking about political malpractice rising to the level of criminal negligence or worse.
You may recall what I wrote about FracFocus last time. When you visit the site to get information about gas drilling in your area, you will see a tiny disclaimer that the information on the individual wells may not be up to date. By as much as a year. Which means it's probably way more than a year. And that you should trust Big Frack telling you their chemicals are safe about as much as you trust BP telling you the oil magically disappeared and their chemical dispersants made deformed Gulf marine life taste better.
In related news, EPA inspector Al Armandirez was fired by the Obama Administration this week after Koch Brothers shill Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) dug up an old video showing him making a speech about "crucifying" fracking polluters to set an example for other polluters. Armandirez, who once said that fracking one Texas gas well caused more pollution than all the regional cars and trucks combined, had used somewhat intemperate language which the sensitive frackers decided was anti-religion. And the White House naturally agreed, and canned him. It's Shirley Sherrod all over again. Andrew Breitbart may be dead, but he apparently cloned himself well in advance of the blessed event.
Yeah. We are so, so fracked.
5 comments:
So we're fracked, and according to Krugman we're doomed--perhaps for different reasons. At this point the abysmal TV show, Supernatural, is looking good.
Anonymous Z
What is it about May Day? Competing interests since I-don’t-know-when are compelled to calendar the day to advance special agendas. This May Day, whether you stay home and refuse to buy, or hit the streets and occupy, either way, they say you're “all in” the May Day falderal.
The May pole circling thing was probably a repeat of Mardi Gras by hedonists and a preliminary to the Lusty May stuff Karen alluded to. From my days in parochial school I am aware a certain church group stepped up to recast May Day back then as a day of child processions leading back to heaven. The Europeans have long made a big thing of May Day. Marxists, socialists and just about any organized labor group said the day belonged to them; so they occupy the streets and the squares. Politicians salute them from balconies. Labor’s general strike has become acceptable as a national holiday – just so long as they head back to work on May 2.
The world needed a counterweight to all the rabble-rousing chaos, so cigar-chomping capitalists from the cartoons were predictably on hand to label May Day an international proletarian conspiracy. I suspect the White House celebration of OBL’s assassination one year ago is another attempt to move in on Big Labor’s gig.
Do you realize fracking is another international conspiracy? And not just because it’s done in Canada as well as the USA. Years after Switzerland called a halt to fracking after some of its towns caved, this curious form of mining is gearing up big time in other parts of Europe. It’s the new oil boom in Everyman’s back yard. Big Oil, not Big Labor, is behind the new conspiracy and their geologists go to the best places in the world to get that gas.
Fracking industry reps, bought university professors and double-dealing bureaucrats are today hosting panels of soothing propaganda across – where is God or the UN or the International Criminal Court when you need them? – across glorious Provence, the same countryside French painters tramped in search of scenery and where the well-to-do still stream to spend their golden years. Because of years of low rainfall, people who live in Provence must be very careful about their use of water. Imagine what fracking will do to its sunken water table. What would Cézanne say? Landowners in Provence are rising up in protest. Bonne chance!
Down the road in Catalonia thousands of drivers are refusing to pay highway tolls. So their plate numbers were duly being taken down by the authorities, but that led to serious traffic back ups, didn’t it. What to do? I love it when thousands of little people devise ways to tie up the giants. (No need to read Spanish in the link below; just watch the video of the tollbooth scene.)
http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2012/05/01/catalunya/1335869575_408708.html
While you’re lounging around the house today in pajamas buying absolutely nothing, you might enjoy Stephen King’s rant against rich people who refuse to pay their share of taxes.
Miss Manners Alert: Stevie can be coarse. His essay has evoked several OMG’s and the expected blowback from the 1% and their adoring collaborators.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-king-tax-me-for-f-s-sake.html
Jay,
Thanks for the Stephen King link. Just read it with mucho enjoyment.
And thanks for conjuring up one of my repressed memories of May Day. I was "Purity" in the May Day procession at my Catholic School, second runner up to the May Queen, who got to place the flowers on the head of Mary's statue. You had to be the tallest girl in class to be May Queen. Anyway, I got to dress up in a white gown with flowers on my hair. I cringe to think of it.
Dear Ms. Sardonicky,
On behalf of all us Big Frack Freaks--who are NOT your BFF's--we are bigtime mad at your fractious tract and its attempt to initiate a fracas about our "infractions". We demand an immediate retraction!
EXXON FRAXXON
I just can't get over the fact that people in First World countries are so lackadaisical about fracking. It is basically pouring poisons into the ground that have the very real chance of eventually seeping onto water tables even if they don't damage water tables immediately through fractured pipes. Are people so in love with their big cars and air conditioning that they are willing to risk something as vital to our food supply and very existence as water? Can't we drive less and in smaller cars and heat and air condition our buildings with solar energy? As much as I hate our dependence on oil and coal, it seems better to me than a dependence on natural gas obtained through fracking.
It is like dieters giving up sugar which they know is bad for them and using aspartame instead. The latter is worse than the original poison.
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