Anti-Drilling/Fossil Fuel

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    Blockbuster: Obama/Govs/EPA/Tom Steyer Collude on Climate Rules

    big newsA blockbuster report from the Energy & Environment Legal Institute blows the doors off the potentially illegal collusion between the Obama White House, several state governors, and climate scare-monger groups backed by billionaire Tom Steyer. The report, titled Private Interests & Public Office: Coordination Between Governors, the Obama White House and the Tom Steyer-“Founded and Funded” Network of Advocacy Groups to Advance the “Climate” Agenda (full copy below) connects the dots of a disgusting, coordinated attack on fossil fuels (specifically coal, but also other fossil fuels). Using open records laws E&E Legal has produced a must-read exposé that lays bare how environmental extremists have put their own self-interests ahead of the nation, profiting from it as they do so. “This is the 5th transparency report in a series that E&E Legal has published on the ‘green movement’ and its network of public, private, and business interests, and what is clear is that 1%-ers are using ‘climate’ policies to destroy politically disfavored industries in order to transfer wealth to the politically preferred,” said Craig Richardson, E&E Legal Executive Director. We encourage you to read the report, and get as angry as we are about the ongoing deception that begins at the very top–with Barack Hussein Obama…
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    Antis Trot Out 60s Hippie Icon for NH Stop the Pipeline Concert

    Tom RushWe have to chuckle. Anti-drillers are so predictable. As we’ve said going back as far as an event we attended in Binghamton when the former mayor of DISH, Texas, Calvin Tilman (in 2010), we observed that many in the audience are 60s hippies with a new cause in life–to oppose drilling/pipelines/fossil fuels in general (see DISH, Texas Mayor Calvin Tillman Visits Binghamton – Marcellus Drilling News was There). That impression–seeing old men with graying long hair in pony tails (bald on top)–has been repeatedly reinforced at other events we’ve attended over the years where antis organized or attended. Yes that’s probably painting with too broad a brush–but it’s funny, because there’s a lot of truth to it. Witness the latest: Anti-fossil fuelers in New England have are dragging out a 60s hippie, singer/songwriter Tom Rush, to headline an anti-natural gas pipeline concert in New Hampshire…
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    PA AG Kathleen Kane’s Dirty Deeds Against Minuteman Environmental

    guest postPennsylvania’s Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, will appear in court today to answer charges that she is, herself, a criminal. She will appear in Montgomery County court to face nine criminal charges, including perjury (i.e. lying under oath). As we have reported, Kane is attempting to divert attention away from her own criminal actions by resurrecting an old porn case, claiming angry white men are out to get her (see AG Kathleen Kane’s Defense: Dirty Old Men are Out to Get Me!). Kane has lost the confidence of everyone, including PA Gov. Tom Wolf–the most liberal governor in America, who is calling on her to resign. Kane lost our confidence from her first day in office in 2012 when she started out by targeting the drilling industry (see Will New PA AG Go After the Marcellus Drilling Industry?). One of the many companies in the Marcellus industry targeted by Kane for extinction over the past three years was Minuteman Environmental Services, a PA company that serves the shale industry with several different businesses (see PA’s Anti-Drilling AG Charges Minuteman with Enviro Crimes). Kane orchestrated what can only be called a terror attack on Minuteman and its owner Brian Bolus and his family (see Minuteman Enviro Says PA AG Office “Terrorized” Family Members, Filing Lawsuit). Amazingly, Minuteman is still in operation–even though Kane and M&T Bank, working with Kane, froze Minuteman’s assets and tried to bankrupt them. An employee of Minuteman has written a guest editorial for MDN to point out that although Kane is going to court for reasons unrelated to the travesty she’s inflicted on Minuteman, folks should not forget the damage she’s done to the industry, in particular the damage she’s done to Minuteman and its workers…
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    Coal Magnate Says Obama Waging War on All Fossil Fuels

    Obamas War On Fossil FuelsWhile MDN has long commented that while natural gas burns cleaner than coal and oil, we are by no means against other forms of fossil fuels. We have not fallen pray to the temptation to “pile on” coal and oil as inferior forms of energy in a vain attempt to prop up natural gas. Why? Because we know how liberals like Obama and the Democrats think. Once they are through destroying coal, they’ll come for natural gas and attempt to destroy it as well. That is now happening. As Robert Murray, chairman and CEO of Murray Energy Corp (big coal company) says, all forms of fossil fuels are under attack by the Obama administration. Murray also points out those who support natural gas and have supported Obama’s rhetoric against coal should not be surprised they have been betrayed by Obama and now are, themselves, a target for elimination. As Murray rightly says, affordable, reliable electricity in America is being destroyed by Big Green groups like the odious Sierra Clubbers…
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    PBS/Riverkeeper Pressure Philly re Oil Trains During Papal Visit

    Anti-fossil fuelers, including anti-fossil fuel reporters, will go to any lengths to try and impugn fossil fuels and implant the concept in the public consciousness that hauling crude oil on a train is the equivalent of an atom bomb rumbling down the tracks–just waiting to go off. The creative “reporters” in Philadelphia, including PBS StateImpact reporters, yesterday did their best to take another swipe at Bakken crude oil trains that pass through Philadelphia on their way to a Philly refinery. Here’s their latest attempt at smearing fossil fuels: There is an upcoming visit from Pope Francis to Philadelphia in late September. A huge “festival of families” will be held on Saturday night in Philly with hundreds of thousands of people, and on Sunday, the Pope will hold a public mass expected to attract more than a million people. So the “reporters” want to know–will the oil trains stop running while the Pope is in town because, you know, if an Arab terrorist blows one up (wink wink nod nod, pay attention you terrorist nutjobs) it would forever stain Philly’s reputation, and oh, it might kill some people too…
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    OH Anti Groups File Lawsuit in Supreme Court re Home Rule Ballots

    Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Example: Ohio anti-fossil fuelers repeatedly suing to achieve the right to ban drilling and pipelines in local municipalities. Earlier this year the Ohio Supreme Court struck down so-called home rule laws in the state (see OH Supreme Court Strikes Down Home Rule in Gas Drilling Case). Anti-drillers, being manipulated by the out-of-state Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) attempted to get the very same measures on the November ballot in three counties, but those efforts were correctly struck down last week by Ohio’s Secretary of State John Husted as a waste of taxpayer time and money, because if they passed, they would be illegal (see OH Anti-Drilling November Ballot Measures Tossed in 3 Counties). What do the anti-drillers do? They file a lawsuit against Husted’s decision–in Ohio Supreme Court. The very same court that previously struck down “home rule” in February of this year. Yes, they ARE insane!…
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    Star Trek Actor with Upstate NY Home Speaks Against Power Plant

    James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane
    James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane

    Oh darnit…Don’t tell us Zefram Cochrane is against a new clean-burning natural gas electric plant too! Who’s Zefram Cochrane? He’s the fictional creator of the warp drive that powers star ships like the Enterprise in the Star Trek pantheon of television and movie series. Actor James Cromwell played Cochrane in the 1996 movie Star Trek: First Contact. (Yes, we’re big-time Trekkies!) Cromwell, also known for his role as Farmer Arthur Hoggett in the 1995 movie Babe (he was nominated for an Academy Award), was born and raised in Manhattan and maintains a summer home in upstate New York in Orange County, near Middletown. Cromwell is a big-time liberal–someone who thinks upstate should be the personal playground for rich, New York City libs, kept pristine from any kind of development. In other words–keep the poor folk poor in upstate so the rich folk from the city can enjoy their weekends unmolested by the noise of trucks and bulldozers. And therein lies our distress. We like Cromwell’s acting, but not his acting when he attended a court hearing in Orange County last week to lend his voice and his fame to an effort to stop a proposed Marcellus gas-fired electric plant planned for the Town of Wawayanda, near Cromwell’s summer home…
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    The Useful Idiots, and Evil Puppet Masters, Behind Radical FANG

    Last week MDN told you about a couple of protesters who chained themselves to a fence at a compressor station in Rhode Island, requiring authorities (who arrested them) to cut the fence and haul the entire mess to the local ER to get it all untangled (see FANG Protesters Chain Themselves to RI Compressor Station Gate). The two protesters belong to a radical “environmental” group called FANG–Fighting Against Natural Gas. FANG has now set their sites on a natural gas-fired electric generating plant in Jessup (northeastern PA, see Invenergy Buys Land in NEPA for Natgas Electric Generating Plant). MDN friend Tom Shepstone, who writes and edits the marvelous Natural Gas Now blog site, has done an investigation into just who the radicals are behind the group FANG. Tom finds there are puppets (i.e. dupes or “useful idiots”) and puppet masters pulling the strings at FANG. Which is which? Tom’s report spells it out. We’re happy to bring you a full copy it here on MDN…
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    Tiny Protest (in PA) Claims to be Part of “Hands Across Our Land”

    Yesterday we told you about the “nationwide” protest that was a bust–held in three locations in Virginia and one in West Virginia by less than a cumulative 100 people (see Anti-Pipeline “Hands Across Our Land” Protest in VA & WV a Bust). The protest was supposedly against two natural gas pipelines planned to run from West Virginia through Virginia and for one of the pipelines, into North Carolina. We spotted one more protest that claims to have been part of the Hands Across Our Land “movement”–a protest at a well pad site in Pennsylvania. Of course the PA gathering had nothing to do with being against pipelines, the supposed reason for the protest in the first place. This particular group of protesters slipped across the border from Ohio (an anti-drilling group called Frackfree Mahoning Valley) to show their “solidarity” with a family who didn’t want a drill pad operating near their property. Once again it illustrates that whether they claim to be “against” fracking/drilling, or “against” a pipeline–it’s really neither. These protesters are “against” fossil fuels, period. That’s what motivates them–an irrational hatred of fossil fuels…
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    Anti-Drilling Groups Weigh in on Lawless EPA Methane Rule

    black hatIf you wonder whether or not a new regulation is good or bad, you can always tell by who supports it and who doesn’t. In the case of the EPA and their lawless new methane reduction rule, otherwise known as 40 CFR Part 60, national radical environmental groups like Earthjustice and the Sierra Club, along with regional and local radical groups like the Ohio Environmental Council and the Philadelphia-based Clean Air Council, are applauding the action taken by the Obama EPA…
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    Anti-Pipeline “Hands Across Our Land” Protest in VA & WV a Bust

    Hands Across Our Land, a minuscule gathering in three locations in Virginia and one location in West Virginia organized by the far left Sierra Club and the extremists of 350.org, held “protests” so small yesterday that if it weren’t for local media looking for any story to report during the summer doldrums, nobody would have noticed there even was a protest. Casual observers would have thought, “Oh, there’s a small group, perhaps a (nutty looking) family out for a stroll.” The “protesters” were there to object to two necessary, innocuous, safe natural gas pipelines from being buried in the ground–Dominion’s 550-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline which is due to run from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina; and EQT/NextEra US Gas Assets’ 330-mile Mountain Valley Pipeline from West Virginia into southern Virginia. As is typically the case, most of the protesters were in their 50s and 60s, former hippies who have found a new cause (anti-fossil fuels) to rejuvinate their otherwise meaningless lives…
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    Carole King: VA Pipeline Makes Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman

    Another famous white, rich, aging, hippie woman has lined up against pipelines. At least this famous white, rich, aging hippie, Carole King, has talent–unlike Yoko Ono who is talentless, someone who still rides the coattails of her famous husband, God rest his soul. Carole King doesn’t need fame or to increase her personal fortune, unlike Ono. So why is she speaking out against the Dominion’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline and where it will run in Virginia? Because the pipeline will come close to land owned by Yogaville, an “ecumenical spiritual retreat” in Buckingham County, VA that King has $upported for decades. Most folks think of yoga as funky pretzel-like stretches people do at the gym or at a special class at your local community college. What they may not know is that yoga is as much a spiritual practice (i.e. religion) as it is an exercise routine. Apparently King is one of its practitioners. Makes her Feel Like A Natural Woman. Good for her. Whatever gets you through the day, right? King wrote directly to Dominion CEO Thomas F. Farrell II to request he ax the pipeline plan and instead stick up solar panels and windmills. Here’s why King is wrong about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline affecting Yogaville…
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    Medical Doctor Exposes Anti-Pipeline Lies about PennEast

    Dr. Gilbert Ross, M.D., is the senior director of medicine and public health at the American Council on Science and Health in New York. Dr. Ross penned an eloquent article that exposes the lies being peddled by the “leaders” of Hopewell Township, New Jersey in their vote to prevent construction of the PennEast Pipeline in the township. Dr. Ross makes the point that we have repeatedly made (although far less eloquently) for years here on MDN: The real philosophy that underpins the actions of people opposing fracking, pipelines, anything to do with shale–is an irrational hatred of fossil fuels. But opposers can’t cast their opposition in those terms or they would be laughed out of office and out of public meetings. So they use FUD–fear, uncertainty and doubt–to make the hoi polloi believe oil and gas drilling and pipelines are somehow a threat, a danger to everyone and everything. That is, they lie about the risks associated with oil and gas in order to advance their own twisted anti-fossil fuel agenda. Here to make the point better than we do is Dr. Ross, writing in a major New Jersey newspaper…
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    FANG Protesters Chain Themselves to RI Compressor Station Gate

    FANG logoLet’s talk about optics and the strategies employed by fossil fuel haters. We’ll leave aside our standard argument that people who hate fossil fuels, like natural gas, are wildly hypocritical as their very existence is a direct result of the benefits of fossil fuels. Today we focus on two men who hit life’s lottery–one (younger) became a pediatrician, the other (older) a physics professor. Last week the two chained themselves to the entrance of Spectra Energy’s Burrillville, Rhode Island compressor station to call attention to Spectra’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) project to beef up the compressor station and add pipelines to bring more cheap, abundant, clean-burning Marcellus Shale natural gas to gas-starved Rhode Island and other New England states. The two protesters belong to a fossil fuel hate group called FANG–Fighting Against Natural Gas. Using PVC pipe, chicken wire and (yes) tar, they intertwined their arms to make it extremely difficult to un-knot them. The police had to cut away a section of the fence and cart the fence and the two protesters to the hospital where doctors and nurses had to waste time untangling the mess. The optics, of course, is that FANG wants you to hear about a doctor and a physics professor (supposedly smart people) who put themselves in harm’s way to protest something–so the something must be evil and rotten since these two virtuous “high value” (and smarter than the rest of us) members of society are sounding the alarm. We think you should focus on different optics–the logo/mascot FANG uses on their website (pictured here, taken from their website). A wolf bearing its fangs indicates extreme danger–and a willingness to go to extremes to cause property, and perhaps even bodily, damage. Homeland Security should take note…
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    OH Anti-Drilling November Ballot Measures Tossed in 3 Counties

    Anti-drillers in Ohio are persistent–we’ll grant them that. Local anti-drillers in three Ohio counties–Athens, Fulton and Medina–have been hoodwinked (are being used by) Big Green groups like the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), attempting to get so-called Community Bill of Rights measures on the ballot in those counties. Problem is, the Ohio Supreme Court has already ruled such measures unconstitutional (see OH Supreme Court Strikes Down Home Rule in Gas Drilling Case). And yet, certain counties with high concentrations of wackos keep trying again and again and again–even though the very same type of measure has already been ruled illegal. What was that definition of insanity promulgated by Albert Einstein? “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” That about sums up the latest efforts by Athens, Fulton and Median county anti-drillers. They’ve filed petitions with enough signatures to once again put so-called “home rule” measures on the ballot. But this time officials in those three counties appealed to the Ohio Secretary of State who has ruled, striking down the ballot measures. A small victory for sanity in Ohio…
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    It Speaks! An “Ecosystem” has Filed to Join a Lawsuit in PA

    Better be careful, the water table running under your property may decide to sue you for sinking a water well into it and withdrawing water for drinking, showers, etc. What…Absurd? Funny? Foolish? We’re not kidding. It seems that water tables and rock and dirt are now considered “ecosystems” and, if a lawsuit is allowed to stand in a Pennsylvania court, such an “ecosystem” has the right, under law, to sue. A motion has been filed by the radical leftist PA-based group Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) on behalf of an ecosystem to intervene in a federal lawsuit to defend its own “right” to exist and flourish. Background: In 2013 the CELDF convinced enough ignoramuses in Highland Township in Elk County, PA to pass a so-called Community Bill of Rights. Essentially it’s a way to prevent wastewater injection wells from being drilled in the township. Seneca Resources filed a lawsuit to overturn the illegal law. Highland Twp taxpayers are now defending their illegal action with $upport from the deep pockets of Big Green groups (i.e. the CELDF). In an attempt to bully Seneca into backing down from the lawsuit, the CELDF claims to speak for the ecosystem and has filed a lawsuit on behalf of the ecosystem. It’s utter bull crap of the highest order–but a dangerous precedent if allowed. We can see your dog suing you, the trees that ring your property suing you, wrongful death lawsuits for killing a snake…you get the idea. An ecosystem filing a lawsuit would be funny, if it weren’t such a tragically vicious attack against the fabric of this country and the HUMANS that live in it (the only living things with “rights” under our Constitutional form of law)…
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