Two Thumbs Down on John Quigley as Sec of PA DEP
Yesterday Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s pick to head the all-important Dept. of Environmental Protection (DEP), John Quigley, faced a confirmation hearing in the PA Senate. Quigley sparred with Republican Senators who challenged him over his two-year stint at the anti-drilling organization PennFuture. He also assured the Senators that if Gov. Wolf’s insidious severance tax is passed, the “industry’s not going anywhere” he said. In other words, we have them by the short hairs and they have no other options. Au contraire, Mr. Quigley. Au contraire. We’ve made no bones about our disdain for Quigley. He shouldn’t be the next Secretary of the DEP. But we’re under no illusion. He’ll likely get approved. What was interesting, however, is that at the conclusion of the hearing, the Senators on the panel voted to refer Quigley’s appointment to the full Senate–without recommendation. That’s extremely rare. It was a vote of no confidence by the senators, as in “here, we’ll let ya’ll vote on him any which way you want to, we wash our hands of it.” It will be interesting to see how many vote against his confirmation. It’s good to know we’re not a lone voice crying in the wilderness. There is someone else–a very important someone else–who also doesn’t think Quigley should be confirmed. That important someone else is John Peterson, former U.S. Congressman and Executive Director of the Allegheny Forest Alliance…
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Who knew that Martians are Democrats? Well, to be honest, we had guessed as much. A small group of Mars School parents who object to fossil fuels have formed a group to oppose Rex Energy’s plan to drill five wells on a pad about 3/4 of a mile from the Mars School in Middlesex Township (Butler County), PA. We’ve chronicled the fight over the past year or so (
Must be that new advertisement airing in Pennsylvania warning folks against Gov. Tom Wolf’s Marcellus-killing 15% severance tax is having an effect. How can we tell? Because mainstream media outlets like the ABC affiliate in Harrisburg is manufacturing a false controversy about who’s behind the ads–quoting anti-drillers like Jan Jarrett from the non-transparent partisan group called the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center–to distract people from the effectiveness of the ad. Plus, the pro-Democrat Harrisburg Patriot-News doesn’t even bother manufacturing a false controversy–they just outright criticize and ridicule the ad, not even bothering with a veneer of objectivity…
It’s not often (enough) that the odious and disgusting Park Foundation suffers a total defeat–so we do a happy dance when it happens. It happened yesterday at ExxonMobil’s annual meeting where shareholders handed the Park Foundation (of Ithaca, NY) a humiliating defeat of their resolution that Exxon compose a cockamamie report every year detailing the so-called “risks” involved with unconventional drilling. Apparently the self-loathing Park Foundation wants Exxon to become self-loathing too–to produce a report that essentially says they’re creeps destroying Mother Earth by fracking. Three-fourths of Exxon shareholders said “no thanks.” Shareholders also voted down an idiotic proposal by a group of Catholic priests from Milwaukee who have lost their first love (Jesus Christ) in favor of a new love (Global Warming) to put a global warming expert on the board of directors. Ah, excuse us Fathers, whatever happened to your vow of poverty? Seems the priests of Milwaukee now have more money than the Lord Himself and want to throw their weight around at shareholder meetings rather than save souls…
What a disappointment Maryland’s new Republican governor, Larry Hogan, has turned out to be. On his way out of office, Maryland’s previous governor, Martin O’Malley (Democrat), created strict drilling regulations that would allow fracking in Maryland THIS YEAR (see