Scranton Newspaper: PA/OH/WV Should Cooperate on High NatGas Tax
We wonder, do the liberal editors of the Democrat propaganda machine known as the Scranton Times-Tribune consider it “fair” to close down legitimate businesses that provide jobs and tax revenue to the state by targeting them with even higher taxes, forcing them out of business because they no longer turn a profit? Is “profit” a bad word around the news room of the Times-Tribune? Is the word “capitalism” banned from so-called reporters’ lips at the Times-Tribune? Those are the kinds of thoughts that roll around our brain box when we read yet another sycophantic “we need to tax the Marcellus industry more than we do already” editorial from the brainiacs at the Times-Tribune…
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If landowners along the route of the PennEast Pipeline don’t sign a lease with the company, PennEast says they will be forced to (and will) use eminent domain to gain lease rights. The PennEast, as a reminder, is a proposed pipeline costing $1 billion that will run from Luzerne County, PA (near Wilkes-Barre) all the way to Mercer County, NJ (just outside of Trenton), flowing 1 billion cubic feet of clean-burning Marcellus Shale gas each and every day. Landowners along the pipeline’s route will still own the land, but there will be restrictions–you can’t erect a building over top of a pipeline, for example. PennEast looks at eminent domain as an absolute last resort. However, according to the radicals at the PA Sierra Club who are opposing the pipeline, around two-thirds of the landowners along the pipeline’s route have not yet signed a lease to allow the pipeline across their land. PennEast recently filed their official application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (see 
Two days ago MDN told you that the U.S. Coast Guard has approved of a project off the coast of New York and New Jersey that would import natural gas from Trinidad (see 
Last month MDN told you that a county judge in Butler County, PA dismissed a lawsuit brought by a business and group of Middlesex Township landowners against two Big Green groups and four anti-fossil fuel parents from the Mars School District–whom we refer to as the Martians (see 
Even the election of judges for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is political, sadly. Extreme leftist environmental groups in PA, including Clean Water Action, the Pennsylvania Sierra Club, PennEnvironment, and Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania are engaging in political activities (in violation of their non-profit, tax-exempt status) by endorsing a slate of candidates and pushing their members to vote for those candidates. We know this will be a complete shock for you, but the three candidates running for three open seats on the Supreme Court being pushed by the enviro extremist groups are all (gasp) liberal Democrats who are likely to vote against the Marcellus Shale industry on cases that come before the high court…
More evidence of the insanity of well-funded Big Green groups like Food & Water Watch, THE (arrogant) Delaware Riverkeeper, Clean Air Council and others. Not getting enough traction on their own, 20 Big Green groups have decided to collude in violation of their non-profit status. The 20 groups held a “massive” joint rally yesterday in Philadelphia (pictures look like there’s maybe three dozen people present) to announce the formation of a new coalition called Green Justice Philly. The object of the coalition is to push back against the plan to make Philadelphia an energy hub in the northeast–like Houston is in the southwest. The gang of 20 have pledged to coordinate their lies and attacks on the fossil fuel industry, hoping to stop forward progress against fossil fuel companies, which they call “lawbreakers.” The gang of 20 is pressuring Philadelphia City Council to decline new permits for companies like Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES)–which operates the East Coast’s largest refinery on the banks of the Delaware River–hoping to prevent PES from building anything new or expanding their existing operation any further in Philadelphia. The gang of 20 wants to choke off new jobs and new investment if those jobs and investment comes from the evil, vile fossil fuel industry. Boggles the mind…
Last month MDN told you about the a group of politicians in Stokes County, North Caroline (Board of Commissioners) who voted to pass a three-year moratorium on shale drilling in the county (see 
A Bloomberg article published yesterday perfectly captures what MDN has been saying now for at least five years: the real opposition to fracking and pipelines is not because of health concerns or environmental damage or any of a dozen or more surface arguments. Those issues are all weapons used in a public relations war–used to confuse casual news consumers who don’t bother to read or listen to more than headlines. The real reason–the core reason–why people oppose fracking and pipelines and all the rest is because the disease of global warming belief has metastasized in their liberal brains, and they irrationally want to end the use of all fossil fuels. It’s in black and white, stated plainly, in the Bloomberg article. The article mentions the Marcellus and the Constitution pipeline. It also highlights the activities of serial protester and founder of FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas), Nick Katkevich, someone we’ve reported on previously (see 
Peters Township, the most populous township in Washington County, PA, is one of the seven selfish towns that sued the state over the zoning provisions in the Act 13 law, eventually winning at the PA Supreme Court level (see 
Early last week MDN told you about NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s disastrous new pick to run the Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the agency that oversees oil and gas drilling in the Empire State (see 
In January 2014, anti-drilling “researchers” jumped the gun at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in Philadelphia by announcing “preliminary” results of research in which they claim they can show a connection between shale drilling and low birth weights in newborn babies in Pennsylvania (see 
We’ve written plenty over the years about the silly nutters who make up the Sierra Club. It’s a joke of an organization, and that was evident for the world to see earlier this week when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz questioned the president of the Sierra Club, Aaron Mair, at a Congressional hearing. Using simple, direct and non-bullying questions, Cruz exposed Mair as an empty-headed fraud only capable of regurgitating a few canned responses to Cruz’s questions about man-made global warming. The standard line was to repeat over and over that “97 percent of scientists agree” on man-made global warming. That particular statistic comes from a small, flawed study of hand-picked scientists back in 2013. Mair and others hope by repeating the lie over and over enough times, everyone will believe it. Cruz didn’t fall for it. There is a video (below) that you MUST watch. It exposes Mair as a fool–not able to defend his own statements about global warming. Nearly every question Cruz asked Mair would have to lean back to have his advisers feed him the answers. Mair is an empty suit–nobody home upstairs. Empty-headed. It’s a beautiful example of the entire organization, showing it as nothing more than a political advocacy group, ignorant of real science. Yes, we do revisit the important topic of global warming from time to time because the issue is at the heart of the movement to ban fracking and end the use of all fossil fuels–a dangerously naive and stupid movement supported by organizations like the Sierra Club…
On Tuesday a Medina County, OH judge ruled that the NEXUS pipeline does have a right to enter private land to survey it for possible routes for the pipeline. The judge said Ohio laws allow private companies to survey land for eventual appropriation (including eminent domain) as long as the company can prove it is an energy or utility company. The judge said the law is quite clear on that point–plain and simple to understand. The judge’s decision didn’t sit too well with the CORNballs of CORN (Coalition to Reroute Nexus pipeline). We’ve written plenty about CORN and their effort to “reroute” the NEXUS (
As a general rule, professional actors are some of the most clueless people on the planet. Mark Ruffalo, one of the most clueless of the clueless, was honored at a Pennsylvania college because of it. Ruffalo was honored by Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA (near Harrisburg) with the Sam Rose ’58 and Julie Walters Prize for his environmental cluelessism, er, a, activism. Hey, Ruffalo does a decent job with acting (we enjoy the Avengers movies)–we’ll grant him that. But have you ever noticed the lights are all on with Ruffalo–but nobody’s actually home? Anywho, the awarded Ruffalo, who calls himself “an accidental environmentalist,” will make a trip to Harrisburg today to deliver a letter from “100 organizations” and “25,000 concerned citizens” to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. The letter will ask Wolf to immediately enact a fracking moratorium in the state. What…radical? No way that will ever happen? Pipe dream? You may have forgetten (but we didn’t) that the Pennsylvania State Democrat Party, before they nominated Wolf to be their leader, adopted an official plank in the party platform calling for the same identical thing (see 
A story we first brought you back in March continues to play out. Liberty Natural Gas filed a plan back in 2010, prior to the Marcellus Shale revolution, to construct an off-shore LNG import (not export) facility off the coast of New York and New Jersey–in the ocean. A floating LNG facility called the Port Ambrose project. A pipeline would run from the off-shore terminal to Jones Beach, NY and from there would connect to a Transco pipeline lateral. Anti-fossil fuelers who hate and oppose all fracking (indeed all fossil fuel use) are also opposed to this project. So what did Liberty Natural Gas do? They tried to convince the antis that importing gas from Trinidad is better than using nasty, evil, vile “fracked” gas (see