Lisa Ann Wright: Blog, Etc.

The Land Man

(This piece was written/performed by a local radio host.)


He came to town and called everyone around here, all the neighbors. He had great offers
and was very polite. Hundreds of dollars per acre. Some people got even more. The ones who got
the most were the farmers, the people who had been struggling for years, trying everything to
make a profit. One year, all the farm talk was all about dairy, and people added cows to their
herds, and then found the price of milk dropping like a...well dropping like the price of milk.
Then there was the rage for growing oats. Oats were going to be the new heart-healthy food, and
we saw the lovely fields of oats proliferate, the heads turning from pale green to blond at the end
of July. But, of course, there were too many oats, the price dropped. Fooled again!
Lately there has been the big craze for more corn. They were going to build ethanol plants
all over the place, and would fuel our cars with ethanol. Corn was what was needed. So all the
farms planted corn, every field, hedgerow to hedgerow. Corn prices were quoted at the highest
ever heard of around here, higher even than when they were going to sell tons of corn to Russia
to bail out the communist dictatorship, which couldn't even feed its own people. Back then, the
corn was sold to Russia at a spectacular price per ton, but all the money was made by the big
corporations that dealt in corn as middlemen. The farmers got screwed.
This time, they planted the corn and the prices were through the roof. But when harvest
time came, there was too much corn. Prices dropped like the price of milk. Plans for ethanol were
scrapped. It was a loser. Turns out it takes almost more energy to grow corn and make ethanol
than to just use the energy in cars and tractors. So the farmers ducked their heads, looked at the
sky, and wondered how they could save the land.
Finally, this guy came to town. Well, it was a bunch of guys. Called themselves land men.
They had good news for the people, especially the farmers. Studies had shown there was lots of
energy on the land. Actually, under the land, way under. There are layers of shale beneath the
ancient Appalachians. They are the layers of an ancient sea, far older than people, older than
hairy mammoths, far older, even, than the dinosaurs. But when the wide and calm sea lay west of
the lofty predecessors of our mountains, time and the passing years laid down layer upon layer of
mud. Prehistoric sea animals were trapped and died in the mud layers. Ancient plants also
dropped to the sea bottom and got trapped in the layering mud. The sea dried up and became
liquid again, layer after layer. More layers, more rock piled on what was there. The trapped
animals and plants were crushed far beneath the new earth's surface, and their decay turned into
simpler organic compounds, stuck in layer after layer, several thousand feet below what we now
know as "our" world.
Somewhere, north of here, the layers, which are tilted beneath the surface, come to the
surface in the vicinity of Marcellus, just west of Syracuse. At least that was where the shale was
identified. But far down, it held the trapped animal and plant material, decayed into simpler
organic compounds, stuff like methane gas. But the gas is truly trapped. Even if you drilled into
it, it wouldn't do more than bubble a little. Unlike the gas and oil wells you've seen in the movies,
there wasn't a whole big bubble of gas or oil to come to the surface when a drill went into it.
Nope. But these new guys had a new idea. A few scientists had looked at the layers and thought
that they trapped a huge amount of gas, if you could get it out. And they said you could get it out.
All you had to do was pump down fluids under pressure, dissolve some of the gunk holding the layers together, and then use the liquid pressure to force the freed gas up to the surface. Even
better, now they knew how to drill down, down, down, and then turn the drilling bit sideways
and drill further and further horizontally letting out even more gas when the put in the pressure.
It would be a bonanza. Lots of energy, practically free. Well, not really free. You couldn't drill just
anywhere, because people owned the land. They would have to be paid. You needed expensive
drill rigs, needed special drilling muds, needed millions of gallons of water to pressurize the wells,
needed special chemicals (secret chemicals) to help free the trapped gas, needed hundreds of
trucks to carry the water and the chemicals and the compressors and the generators to run the
compressors and the motors and everything else. But that would all come later.
Meanwhile, this guy, this land man, came to all the people who owned the land and
offered money. Good money. Better than dairying. Better than oats, way better than corn. Money
for nothing, but to sign a simple contract. It wouldn't hurt the land. Just put in a well, or two. (Or
ten, or twenty, or a thousand?) Here, he said. Sign here and we give you good cash money.
Farmers had signed before. Landowners had signed before. Governments had signed
before. It was good money, up front. Quickly, people noticed a lot of farmers had finally bought a
new tractor, or seeder or rock picker or even a weed sprayer. Some farmers could finally afford to
have their house painted, or put up that new pole building they had needed. And nothing else
happened. Well, maybe there was a whiff of sulfur from the nice man. And why did he always
wear that hat? What was he covering up?
But he said it was a great bonanza for the whole region. Hadn't it been that way in
Wyoming — until the wild, fresh creeks where the deer and the antelope and the cattle drank
turned to salt. And wasn't it that way in West Virginia, when the grading machines, as big as a
house, began pushing the tops of the mountains into the creeks, until they ran rank and muddy.
And hadn't it been quiet in Ohio until the great shovels the size of apartment houses came along
and began stripping off the "overburden". Overburden means the fields green in spring and
summer, ripening to gold in fall, snow-covered in winter, fields that were home to meadowlarks
and bobolinks, deer and groundhogs and possums and raccoons, not to mention worms and
crickets and snakes and a thousand other things. Overburden was the world we all live in and
depend on. Instead, they shoved it off and took out the coal by the thousand thousand tons.
They did the same thing in northeast Wyoming, and also in New Mexico and Arizona.
Took off the overburden, and stripped out the coal to power the power plants. They sent trains of
the coal to generate electricity in Georgia and Alabama, in Massachusetts and New York, even on
Cayuga Lake, where the white plume of the power plant was like some great boat, eternally
sailing up the long finger of water.
In some places, nobody really seemed to own the land that was used. The peoples who
had been there before anyone ever dreamed of a power plant or a railroad or a truck the size of a
house didn't think any one really owned land anyway. In northern Alberta, they scooped out
huge pits all over the vast northern lands, and used steam and energy and vast power to get the
heavy oil out of the ancient sands, the tar sands. And left a landscape like the moon, only it was
here on earth. And on the north coast of Alaska, they drilled down into the shallow northern sea,
and pulled out more oil and gas. And ran a pipe for a thousand miles to the sea, and loaded their treasure into tankers and sent it south to feed the cars and the trucks and the SUVs and the lawn
mowers and weed whackers and leaf blowers.
Meanwhile, we don't have to see all this. We don't have to live next to the power plant
(well, most of us don't), and we don't have to have the muddy creeks running through our back
yard (well, most of us don't). We don't have to have nasty chemicals seeping up onto our
manicured lawns, at least not if we live in Greenwich or Mamaroneck or Short Hills.
But time went on and the drilling began. And like the nice man said, they were careful,
but there wasn't just one well. There were lots of wells. And the drilling went on day and night,
for a long time. And they needed water, which came from our rivers and aquifers. Some peoples'
wells went dry. Others found strange liquids bubbling up in their side yard. Some of even began
having small earthquakes. And sometimes the air smelled a lot like sulfur. And like diesel truck
exhaust. And the noise kept on. And we wished for the corn to come again, but there were mud
roads and drilling pads and mud and cracking pavement on our country roads. And some said
that the strange secret chemicals were getting into our Finger Lakes, or even the mountain
reservoirs that feed the big cities. We never expected to get rich but we did expect to have a
beautiful, green and healthy place where we could live in peace and tranquility.
But lots of us signed with that nice man. And some things went wrong. And some things
went exactly as others had predicted, but nobody was paying attention. And the money was
pretty good, but it wasn't free. There's always a charge. No free lunch, as they say. But can you put
a price on the whole of the place where you live? Ask the people who live around the decaying
steel mills, or the auto manufacturing plants, or the oil wells in Texas and California, or the
chemical plants in New Jersey or Louisiana. No, somebody has to pay, but it's not really the folks
who are making money off the products of ancient oceans. Somebody has to pay for the way we
keep living. We made a deal and signed the paper. But who did we sign with?

Driving past the funeral home today I saw a man, about 65, standing alone on the sidewalk. He was wearing a dark suit, and was wiping a tear from underneath his glasses.

It's been a long time since I posted here. My writing has found other places to be. But tonight I just needed to tell the story of that tearful man-- and his simple expression of grief. That is all.

TERRORIST.
RADICAL.
FRIEND OF OBAMA.

So reads the cover of a mailing I just got while in Virginia today. I emailed the Republican Party of Virginia immediately to tell them what I thought of their little piece of propaganda. (I was nice. I didn't say 'You bunch of desperate lying sacks of bullshit artists..." I just said they should be ashamed of themselves for spreading lies.)

Times like this, I think of the Wizard of Oz, and of what Dorothy's sweet auntie Em said to Miss Gulch, "Almira Gulch. Just because you own half the county doesn't mean that you have the power to run the rest of us. For twenty-three years I've been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now... well, being a Christian woman, I can't say it!

And I also like this quote by blogger Art Brodsky..."there's no guarantee Obama will win in a couple of weeks. Appealing to the darker nature of people is always a powerful gambit. What McCain, Palin and the Republicans don't yet realize, or don't want to realize, or don't care to realize, is that the cost to the country of such a victory built on hate will be devastatingly high."

Too bad normal Christians like Auntie Em don't seem to exist anymore--they've all morphed into mouth-breathing, fascist weirdos. But in the spirit of Halloween, I do hope the Wizard McNasty has fun messing with the levers of power and the Wicked Witch of the North West enjoys her flight before something big comes crashing down upon them both. There's a housing market joke in there somewhere, but I mean to say that the "something big" maybe well be a landslide Obama win.

Last, back to Bill Ayers and Obama-- I, too must confess that I actually walked past the hotel in DC where Reagan was shot. I stood at the site where the Twin Towers fell. I've lived in New York City and DC where murders have been committed! I've also flown on United-- so I guess I've actually... BEEN IN PLACES WHERE TERRORISTS WERE. OMG!!! I guess that makes me suspect.

Got that RPV? And me and Bill Ayers, we go WAY back...I mean, when I was five I might have heard his name on the six o'clock news. I don't remember it, but I might have heard it...it's AMAZING how we Un-Americans are all connected!

...than spend the day in the airless, windowless Roosevelt hearing room in Albany. The methane and CO2 emissions should have triggered alarms, but somehow did not. I suppose the Legislative Building's detectors are set pretty high.

Yesterday's State Assembly Committee on Environmental Conservation's gas drilling hearing, in my view, was heavily biased toward gas company's interests in the selection of speakers and the timing of their testimonies. I know, "surprise, surprise...", but I did think there would have been a better attempt to appear somewhat neutral. (I guess the tip-off should have been that the only informational materials available as you came into the hearing was a stack of booklets provided by the "Independent Oil and Gas Association".)

The first half of the proceedings were heavily pro-drilling in nature. DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis and Bradley Field still seem to have a lot of "we don't know that yets" and "we are pretty confident thats", and not a lot of hard, solid, easily obtained FACTS. Good Lord, they have had months to review all aspects of the oil drilling issue and are still using the kind of opaque on-the-record language used so as to not require them to be held to any kind of standard of specificity.

The oil company executives were given an inordinate amount of commentary time, and I, for one, was not impressed that this public hearing was, at least for the first half, a rather glowing commercial for Fortuna and Chesapeake. The crowd, including reporters and photographers, dwindled significantly as the day dragged on, so those with good statements and questions about drilling largely spoke to a largely empty room.

Those few of us able to stick around til the bitter end were treated to the last statement/final word by Attorney/Geologist Michael P. Joy, whose self-proclaimed "unbiased" pro-drilling infomercial rambled on relatively unchallenged (except for a well-placed barb by Barbara Lifton, one of the very few assembly members remaining.) I'm still processing the event, but here are some thoughts I was left with:

#1 The oil companies are being badly mistreated by an over-regulatory DEC in NY State. They wish to rape and pillage without impediment and gosh darmit why won't we let 'em? Pennsylvania's more fun.

#2 If you highly dilute unknown but maybe toxic chemicals at unknown and as-yet unbuilt water treatment plants, you might be able to...uh, i don't know, what was that question again?

#3 It takes 30 truckloads of water (milk-truck sized) to facilitate a frac. No, I mean, it's probably more -- oh, I think may be it's about a thousand trucks. Gee, math is hard.

Well, I sure learned a lot.

Seriously, though, after four o-clock, when the suits went home, the actual hearing began. The intellectual highlight of the day, in my view, was when the panelists including Wes Gillingham, Kate Sinding, Katherine Nadeau and Deborah Goldberg were allowed to speak. There may have been ten people left in the hearing room, but they were well worth the wait. I was told the transcript of the hearing will be publicly available in a few weeks.

Economist/columnist Paul Krugman just won the Nobel prize for economics.

Krugman calls the Republican Party "the party of stupid."

There IS hope for the planet. Not a lot, but a little.

“We are such spendthrifts with our lives...The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.” Paul Newman

Linsday Wickham and representatives from the Attorney General’s Office at last night’s Landowner’s Rights Forum advised landowners to hold out for good gas drilling leases using the adages, “Patience is a virtue” and “Don’t be pennywise and pound foolish.”

Well, judging by their comments and questions, this audience seemed to be saying “Don’t put the cart before the horse”, and “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." The crowd of about four hundred people that gathered at Broome Community College seemed far more interested in pro-actively dealing with potential problems like contaminated wells than interest rates. One gentleman in the crowd questioned “Why are we talking about “how” to do drilling, and not “if”? I don’t remember a statewide referendum on whether there should be drilling or not.”

I think Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo had assumed the group of panelists would be handed softball legal questions by a grateful, breathless crowd of soon-to-be-millionaires. But Lupardo had to remind the audience to keep focused on the agenda for this particular night, which was Landowner’s Rights. Citizens’ concerns kept seeping through. Concerns about what chemicals would be used in hydraulic fracturing fluids, water testing, tankers on personal property and local roads, and numbers of DEC monitors dominated the Q & A. Many of these challenging questions were applauded by the audience, surprising, to me, considering the pro-drilling nature of the forum.

The AG’s office and The Farm Bureau’s Lindsay Wickham continue to promote the idea a good lease will solve most of the potential ills. But underneath all the happy talk, it was clear that everyone, including the panelists, has recognized that a tiger is loose in upstate New York. In my view, that tiger should not have been let loose in the first place, that New York State regulators and public officials have recklessly allowed landmen and gas drilling companies to take advantage of landowners. These folks were in a position to see the gas rush coming and waited too long to alert the public of the dangers. For many landowners, this meeting is too little, too late. They are stuck with bad leases, and, as the AG’s Office says, they have no recourse.

Columnist Judith Warner really hit the nail on the head with her comment about Sarah Palin:

"Why does this woman – who to some of us seems as fake as they can come, with her delicate infant son hauled out night after night under the klieg lights and her pregnant teenage daughter shamelessly instrumentalized for political purposes — deserve, to a unique extent among political women, to rank as so "real"? Because the Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots."

Sadly, the last eight years has shown that many real people ARE idiots. Thankfully, there exist a few good people on this earth who won't capitalize on that fact. Good people who don't enjoy the all-out 1984-ish lying, cheating, stealing, smarmy game that American politics has become. Social discourse is –well, in my eyes—at a lifetime low. I'd much rather hear reports of John Mitchell screaming that "Katie Graham's gonna get her tit caught in a big fat wringer!" than some of the creepy crap coming out of Caribou Barbie's vapid yap.

We've had eight years of "The Vulcans", Condi and George's self-proclaimed little cabal of bone-headed world-domination freaks. We're in an endless, illegal war, served up to us as God's will—well, this may be Vulcan's will (Vulcan is the destructive Roman god of fire). But doncha think they shoulda let us in on what god they were talking about?

Anyway, more of the same Republican effluent keeps coming down the pike. Not- So- "Maverick" McCain's veep pick Palin screeched " in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more nuclear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources." (Guess she mentioned solar and wind and alternate sources to placate the lefty intellectual types.) So where's all this "maverick" spirit? Big oil, endless war, religious hypocrisy, rich-get-richer trickle-down economics, contempt for intelligence and science...Looks like the same old moose poop to me.

But she threw the red meat to the idiots. And they're eating it.

I'm your friendly neighborhood natural gas drilling company and I want to poison your water and ruin your land. For that privilege I will give your neighbor a whole lotta cash cuz his farm's been in the family for three generations and he's old and, well, he deserves to die debt free. And your other neighbor who owns land here but retired in California really needs the cash cuz she needs to finance a really grand retirement--(besides, she won't be drinking the water after I've poisoned it cuz she lives in California!) So maybe you and anyone under eighty years old will be out of luck but that's not my problem, now is it? I'll be sure to help build a whole new leukemia ward for little Emma or Jake when the need arises.

Look, you little Creechie, I'm the dealer here, so don't frack with me, okay? I'm as hooked as you are on this drug, and if you do ANYTHING to get in my way, well, I got every powerful agency including the Democratic Party on MY side. Nancy Pelosi just gave me her personal Good Housekeeping seal of approval to get all the natural gas and oil I want so don't even THINK of slowing me down.

I got your land and your water. I will continue to make your kids fight my wars for our habit. But you'll be okay with that, cuz it's your habit, too...like American Idol, McDonald's and Fox News. I gotcha over a barrel, little lady!. We're all living downstream, aren't we? So get used to drinking my elixir, which means the " liquid that would supposedly make people able to go on living for ever, or a substance that would turn the cheaper metals into gold." Jesus McHalliburton will save your soul, and you will live forever in our culture of death. But, praise the Lord, the same substances that poison you will turn your gas into gold.

Rejoice that your cup overfloweth and stop whining. Drink up, America.

As National Forests go, it’s a teeny-tiny one. And the Finger Lakes Forest Fest event in Hector, New York, celebrating the forest’s twenty-fifth anniversary, felt exclusive and lovely. A little stage was nestled in the woods, and it seemed as if we were Ursula LeGuin’s Athshean community before the human invasion. We were Pete Seeger tree-hugging singers and proud of it. It was a magical day, but an old cynic like me can never really groove too much on magic. As we left a solo artist played a Native Amercian flute, which hauntingly echoed through the forest. I could hear it all the way out to my car, and couldn’t help but think of how my Revolutionary War ancestor David Wright came to this lovely part of New York. George Washington ordered the Indians evacuated and gave the land to war veterans. I’ve stepped on Indian paths all my life.

well somebody has to start squawkin' and it might as well be me.


Landman went to see old Farmer Dan
Landman went to see old Farmer Dan
Said "Let's sign a lease on all your land
Get all the natural gas we can!"
Landman went to see old Farmer Dan.



Now Farmer Dan is smarter than a fox
Knows he's got what the landman hasn't got
Said "I'll sign your lease if it's fair and square
And you leave me with plenty a'clean water to spare"
Farmer Dan's got the landman in a box


Don't go frackin' round in my backyard
Don't go frackin' round in my backyard
If you ain't gonna keep my water clean
Or ya try to pull a fast one on me, then
Don't go frackin' round in my backyard.


Landman said "Now, come on, Farmer Dan!"
Trust me cause I am an honest man
Trust the EPA, trust the DEC, and trust my Big Gas Company
I tell you true that I'm an honest man!


Farmer Dan said, "Wait a minute, son
I ain't keen on trustin' anyone
You gotta clean up any mess you make
And put back any water you take
I ain't keen on trustin' anyone."


Don't go frackin' round in my backyard
Don't go frackin' round in my backyard
If you ain't gonna keep my water clean
And you try to pull a fast one on me, then
Don't go frackin' round in my backyard.


The Landman had enough of this charade
Gulped down the last of Dan's good lemonade
Said "You don't have a choice and this is why
Compared with us you're just a small fry!"
As he left he cried "We'll take it anyway!!'

Farmer Dan jumped up and off his chair
Made a vow to himself then and there
"I'm gonna fight for what is right
Get some honest to goodness oversight
And force them little snakes to start dealing fair!"


"They won't go frackin' round in my backyard
They won't go frackin' round in my backyard
If they ain't gonna keep my water clean
And if they try to pull a fast one on me, then
They won't go frackin' round in my backyard!"

In 2004, writer Ron Suskind reported these chilling words from a Bush aide:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Well, study is what Suskind did then and is doing now-- and in his new book "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism" he writes that he has evidence the White House ordered the CIA to forge a document linking Al-Quaida with Saddam.

When we were kids, one of my brothers (who will remain nameless) used to make up new rules for games (Monopoly, Kick the Can) when he was afraid of losing by playing by the rules. He was a bit of a bully then, but he's a sweetie now, unlike the Bushie "adults" who took over our country and have no problem with making things up, and then believing their own lies.

In a relatively short-lived sci-fi TV series called “Firefly”, the fun-loving, plucky crew would become sober and frightened in the presence of “Reevers.” The Reevers weren’t monsters or aliens— they were simply humans who committed monstrous acts, raping and peeling people like grapes before eating them alive.

Here in upstate New York, the bucolic beauty and pristine nature of our region is being threatened by the “Reever”-like interests of oil and gas companies who, in effect, want the freedom to rape and poison our land and water if that’s what it takes to get their gas. I’m not an alarmist type person, I just try to say what I feel is true, and I have done quite a bit of homework, here; I’m not just spouting off some liberal or conservative agenda to make myself feel important.


The fact is, I’m scared. I’m very worried that the natural gas rush in upstate New York will pit communities and landowners against one another, and I’m not bringing up another old tree-huggers against Bushies argument. I’m talking Joe Farmer against Joe Lunchbox. I attended a community meeting in Spencer, New York and heard locals talk about the wide disparity of offers they have received from gas companies, and the unscrupulous scare tactics used on folks who want to take it slow, “You will never a better offer! Sign now or we walk!” It is highly alarming and greatly disheartening to see how far along the drilling plans have already come. I learned that The Farm Bureau is WAY ahead of the general public on this one, very gung-ho about the whole drilling deal, with an obvious focus on improving landowner's negotiations for better leases and no significant public debate about environmental concerns.


I’ve tried to learn more about leasing and environmental issues and I have read numerous news articles and website information on the subject of hydraulic fracturing— from the New York Times to the Cooperative Extension. I’ve written several letters to my local and state representatives, the DEC, and The Sierra Club, among others, only to discover that there is a whole lot that they don’t know. For example, nobody knows what chemicals and toxins that will be going in or coming out of the ground. The oil and gas companies are not required to divulge the components of the chemicals being injected through drill-holes deep into our soil and water. Huge volumes of sand are required—nobody knows where the sand will come from and how those heavy trucks of sand will impact area roadways. Huge volumes of water must be obtained from somewhere, so farmers should be alarmed that in this age of global warming they will soon be facing other claims on their precious water. Nobody knows where all this water will be coming from, and nobody knows exactly where the used, possibly radioactive and highly toxic water will go for treatment. Nobody knows how much energy in fuel and gas it will take to OBTAIN this finite amount of gas. Is this alarming, or is it just me?

Governor Paterson and Commissioner Pete Grannis of the DEC are saying all the right things as they want to balance the easy money the state will get from allowing enhanced drilling in New York against environmental concerns. Environmental and agricultural concerns are secondary when the dollar signs are big enough, and, besides, if the oil and gas folks want the gas enough, they will use legal pressure (eminent domain, for example) to put pressure on our state governments and get it anyway. I appeal to New York State farmers, landowners, communities, ordinary citizens and politicians to get the dollar signs out of their eyes for just one minute and take a long, sober look at the damage we may see to our precious region of upstate New York. And if the dollar signs are all you CAN see, ask yourselves how much it costs to clean up toxic sites when the federal government and other oil companies are not found liable for these damages because their lawyers are smarter and higher paid than ours.

Unsafe hydraulic fracturing IS going to happen and our region's soil and water will be compromised and there's nothing a bunch of yokels like myself can do about it. At least folks approached by gas companies for leasing have a little say in negotiating their land-use rights--they can demand certain protections specific to their contracts. But folks who don't own land, or landowners without leases will have a difficult time proving that their neighbor's drilling is adversely affecting their streams or well water.

Wrong-headed, wasteful energy policies, ($25,000 tax breaks for Hummers, anyone?) will prevail as long as oil-men run this country. But at the very least we can be cautious and mindful of the experiences of folks in other communities like Hickory, PA and Glenwood Springs, CO, who are living with the environmental effects of loosely regulated hydraulic fracturing, and do what we can to mitigate the inevitable damage.

Today I will just pass on some words to the wise from Ms. Molly:

Truly crazy: the Cheney energy policy

March 29, 2005
Molly Ivins



AUSTIN, Texas -- As a general rule about Bush & Co., the more closely a policy is associated with Dick Cheney, the worse it is. Which brings us to energy policy -- remember his secret task force? In the long history of monumentally bad ideas, the Cheney policy is a standout for reasons of both omission and commission. Dumb, dumber and dumbest.

Ponder this: Next year, the administration will phase out the $2,000 tax credit for buying a hybrid vehicle, which gets over 50 miles per gallon, but will leave in place the $25,000 tax write-off for a Hummer, which gets 10-12 mpg. That's truly crazy, and that's truly what the whole Cheney energy policy is.

According to the Energy Information Administration in the Department of Energy, last year's energy bill (same as this one) would cost taxpayers at least $31 billion, do nothing about the projected over-80 percent increase in America's imports of foreign oil by 2025 and increase gasoline prices. (Since every bureaucrat who tells the truth in this administration -- about the cost of the drug bill or the safety of Vioxx -- seems to get the ax, I'm probably getting those folks in trouble.)

The bill is loaded with corporate giveaways and tax breaks for big oil. Meanwhile, Bush's budget cuts funding for renewable energy research and programs, and anyone who tells you different is lying.

Now, here's the Catch-22 we get with this administration: It is using the exact language of the bill's critics -- stealing it wholesale and using it to promote its bill. It's our friend Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster who specializes in "framing" issues (framing means the same thing as spinning, and in the non-political world it is known as lying), at work again. Luntz put out a memo in January: "Eight Energy Communication Guidelines for 2005" telling R's how to talk about energy using language people like.

The Natural Resources Defense Council found a Bush speech on energy on March 9 in Ohio that parrots Luntz's suggestions to a laughable point -- threat to national security, diversity of supply, innovation, conservation and (my fave) Point 4, "The key principle is 'responsible energy exploration.' And remember, it's NOT drilling for oil. It's responsible energy exploration."

So there was Bush, as per Luntz's memo, talking about "environmentally responsible exploration" and announcing one of his top energy objectives is "to diversify our energy supply by developing alternative sources of energy." Polling shows 70 percent of Americans support a drastic increase in government spending on renewable energy sources.

I'm tired of arguing about whether Bush is so ignorant he doesn't know that he is cutting alternative energy programs and subsidizing oil companies or so fiendishly clever that he knows and doesn't care what he says. In the end, it doesn't make any difference. You get wretched policy either way.

The Apollo Project, a sensible outfit dedicated to reducing America's dependence on foreign oil, says 90 percent of Americans support its goal of energy independence. Bracken Hendricks, the executive director, points out that there is "remarkable agreement among many so-called strange bedfellows -- labor and business, environmentalists and evangelicals, governors and generals, urbanites and farmers."

Meanwhile, what we are sticking with is soaring oil prices (ExxonMobil just reported the highest quarterly profit ever, $8.42 billion, by an American company) and declining discoveries. Several oil companies are reporting disappearing reserves, and Royal Dutch/Shell admitted it had overstated its reserves by 20 percent last year.

Nor are the major oil companies spending their mammoth profits on exploration or field development -- they're doing mega-mergers and stock buybacks. ExxonMobil spent $9.95 billion to buy back its own stock in 2004. The Chinese and the Indians are now buying cars like mad, and the result is going to be an enormous supply crunch, sooner rather than later.

It is possible with existing technology to build a car that gets 500 miles per gallon, but the Bushies won't even raise the CAFÉ (fuel efficiency) standards for cars coming out now. The trouble with the Bush plan to develop hydrogen cars is that while you can get hydrogen out of water, you have put energy in to get it out, so there's a net energy loss.

Conservation is simply the cheapest and most effective way of addressing this problem. If you put a tax on carbon, it would move industry to wind or solar power. Wind power here in Texas is at the tipping point now -- comparably priced. Our health, our environment, our economy and the globe itself would all benefit from a transition to renewable energy sources.

And as Tom Friedman recently pointed out, it would do a lot for world peace, too: "By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax dollars and we are financing the jihadists -- and the Saudi, Sudanese and Iranian mosques and charities that support them -- through our gasoline purchases."

Gosh, I miss her!!

From Earthworks Action Website

"The History of Federal Regulation
In 1997, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (Atlanta) ordered the EPA to regulate hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act. This decision followed a 1989 CBM fracturing operation in Alabama that landowners say contaminated a residential water well.

In 2000, in response to the 1997 court decision, the EPA initiated a study of the threats to water supplies associated with the fracturing of coal seams for methane production. The primary goal of the study was to assess the potential for fracturing to contaminate underground drinking water supplies.

Meanwhile, in 2001, a special task force on energy policy convened by Vice President Dick Cheney recommended that Congress exempt hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The EPA completed its study in 2004, finding that fracturing "poses little or no threat" to drinking water. The EPA also concluded that no further study of hydraulic fracturing was necessary. The 2004 EPA study has been called "scientifically unsound" by EPA whistleblower Weston Wilson. In an October 2004 letter to Colorado's congressional delegation, Wilson recommended that EPA continue investigating hydraulic fracturing and form a new peer review panel that would be less heavily weighted with members of the regulated industry. In March of 2005, EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley found enough evidence of potential mishandling of the EPA hydraulic fracturing study to justify a review of Wilson's complaints.


The Oil and Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) has conducted a review of the EPA study. As reported in Our Drinking Water at Risk, we found that EPA removed information from earlier drafts that suggested unregulated fracturing poses a threat to human health, and that the Agency did not include information that suggests fracturing fluids may pose a threat to drinking water long after drilling operations are completed.

OGAP's review of relevant data on hydraulic fracturing suggests that there is insufficient information for EPA to have concluded that hydraulic fracturing does not pose a threat to drinking water.

In 2005, a national energy bill included the exemption of hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act. This bill passed, with the exemption, although it left the door open for the EPA to regulate the use of diesel in hydraulic fracturing operations."

So clink yer glasses, old farmers, and enjoy the blood of your grandkids.

I guess my teens had a pretty big civics lesson last night. A small town meeting in Spencer, New York, where big natural gas companies have come knocking to get leases for the right to drill. I came away thinking the folks from Spencer are seeking redemption for future sins, but it don't work that way. The shit's gonna hit the fan in a couple years and none of them want to get dirty. But the gas companies know that, and have torn a page from the Karl Rove dirty tricks book to armtwist anyone with any scruples. "Your neighbors are all doing it..."

The people here are no different from anybody anywhere. When the devil comes to your door with a smile and a promise, you probably know deep down inside he's the devil, but....well, Junior has to go to college and granddad's nursing home bills are high and IF YOU WERE IN MY PLACE YOU'D DO THE SAME.

Would I?

Nope. Sure as heck NO. Because it's a deal with the devil, and those deals never work out. Ask the folks in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and New Mexico who have learned the hard way. I'm gonna puke if I hear one more "poor farmer" story. Poor farmer my foot. Is poisoning that poor farmer's land a fair trade for the big bucks? Well, I guess big bucks will pay for poor farmer's grandkids' cancer treatments and funerals.

Well, just when I thought it would be organics and CSAs I would become OCD about, this whole sneaky, stinkin' natural gas drilling thing comes up and hits me where I live. Literally.

I'd naively thought that fleeing DC and it's Texas-sized stupidity to the progressive's land of Chautauqua would be a kind of water cure for my poisoned Beltway soul. Instead, the Halliburton Horror Show never ends, and is looking to cast its new "man named Jed" from central New York. Like some ooze from a sci-fi thriller, BIG OIL politics just follows you around, no matter how far away you go, no matter what galaxy you may fly to. The bastards will find you, cut your trees down, piss in your water, kill your kids and move on to the next mark.

Where the hell is Molly Ivins when you need her! That's exactly what upstate NY wusses like us need, a Molly Ivins to corral all the landmen up and get them the FRACK outta here.

But no, upstate NY is gonna fiddle faddle around on this natural gas drilling thing. The Governor will hem, Hillary will haw, and Big Business is gonna talk the same old crap big business talk and walk the same piss in our pool and walk away walk.

Blogger Matthew Kahn speculates about the probable outcome of natural gas drilling craze for natural gas in upstate NY:

"A frenzied land rush that is already making some landowners rich and infuriating others who leased their land too early for too little. Thousands of gas wells drilled upstate, many using more than a million gallons of water laced with dozens of toxic chemicals like hydrochloric acid, benzene, toluene and xylene, to fracture shale thousands of feet underground to release the gas trapped within it. Enormous questions about industrial noise, truck traffic and new roads gouged into hills; about holding ponds created to trap the polluted and spent water used in drilling; about land reclamation; about the effects on the New York watershed."

And a NYT article quotes an upstate NY resident:

"What I'm hearing is that some people have already given up," said one woman near the front of the century-old Walton Theater here. "And if anybody wants me to make nice to someone who's going to come and rape my land, that's not going to happen. I don't want to live in an industrial zone. I don't want them here. And that's what I want to talk about, how to keep them out. Not how to make nice with them."

Three cheers for the Walton woman. Boos and hisses to the greedy folks who trade short term gain in cash for decades of pollution. Good neighbors don't pee in their neigbors' pools.

People of good character can't be bought.

For ANY price.

An acquaintance of mine once reminded me, after I had just done a gig for an appalling crowd of suits, that they, too, were "just people." I disagreed, of course, since bucking against ANYbody's prevailing thought has always been my default MO...which is unfortunate sometimes, I suppose. But my friend's lofty "just people" thing rankled, and still does, for, to me, "some people" (i.e. conservative rightwingnut hawks, kneejerk anythings, religious freaks) seem to be fairly lesser "people" than others. That's what I really do think in my currently unevolved state, despite my pretentions of tolerance and general humor in most situations--so help me Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Good-News Jesus and the Dalai Lama.

My friends Mike and Diana's band Honky Tonk Confidential with Bob Schieffer battled Tony Snow's band Beats Workin' last year in a fundraiser at The National Press Club. Tony was, in my view, the most human face of the Bushies, (not so much the opportunist, turncoat or robot as his fellow press secs), and I'll concede that meeting people, even rightwing wingnut spokespeople-- sometimes makes them a little more "just people." He made a point of saying hey to us (I was one of Bob's backup singers) , and sick as he was, he played the flute admittedly quite well. And he, like Bob, performed with humor and grace.

I am against just almost everything that this current administration has stood for, and I have mixed feelings about fawning eulogies for a man whose integrity was compromised (like Colin Powell's) by consorting with Bush's criminal cronies. But I feel what I feel, and I'm not ashamed to admit I did shed a tear for a guy who liked music and took a few hours out of the very few he had left to play his flute and to be -- not Bush's press secretary or a Fox News anchor-- but just a person.

So I do have ONE gripe about I-Fest. But only one. A lot of Ithaca folks worked their yoga-toned butts off to make a whole lot happen in those four days--and had to roll with rain and lightning and managing the traffic for a human peace sign. I've thanked and thanked and still can't thank the volunteer powers- that- be for their amazing organizing skills. NO COMPLAINTS from me...but...there is this ONE thing...

OK, so what is THE DEAL with these little sawed-off ferrit/chipmunk/flying squirrel wannabees from Australia that guys in shorts (looking like multiple reincarnations of Steve Irwin) were hawking at the festival?? Now come ON, you entice hundreds of Ithaca kids to your booth and send them off with a five HUNDRED dollar Sugar Glider pet and cage set?? WTF?? Um, shouldn't we be reminding parents that there's a recession going on, and that expensive pets are a VERY POOR impulse buy for families on budgets...and that hundreds of existing cats and dogs need homes already? Or that these cute little buggers live so long it is YOU PARENTS who will be responsible for them while Junior is in college puking in the dorm?? I predict a huge Freecycle glut of sugar gliders in 2018.

The Sugar Glider booths seemed, to me, in very poor taste for a festival promoting Ithaca's ethics. I wonder what the PETA folks are thinking about all this. Yes, yes, these little pets are adorable, there's no denying that. (Much more attractive than those house weasels--ferrits. I think ferrits are the only animals I see frequently on Freecycle. That tells you something.) And I'm kind of against the whole idea of exotic pets. I guess that comes from mildly traumatic childhood experiences. My cousin Pearl's spider monkey ran wildly around the house and my little brother had two chameleons show up dead in the mail. DOA.

There is an exploitative, (not to mention highly commercial ) element in having persuasive young men tell moms and dads that for half a thousand dollars little Kaitlyn can have the pet of her dreams. Two cute little yellow kittens named Wayne and Wilson are at the Tompkins County SPCA, waiting for someone to take them home for free. http://www.spcaonline.com/

Marsupials, (like Rhonda Byrne and her idiotic"Secret"), should stay in Australia where they belong.