Friendsville, Maryland Pulls the Trigger, Commits Fracking Suicide
Boom. The trigger was pulled and the depressed mental patient–in this case the Friendsville Town Council, has committed fracking suicide. MDN told you in March that the unfriendly people of Friendsville, Maryland were contemplating fracking suicide (see Friendsville, Maryland Votes to Commit Fracking Suicide). There was still hope that in the end Friendsville could be talked out of an enormously stupid, life-altering action. No more. On Tuesday the Town Council voted 5-1 to approve a permanent ban. You may recall there currently is no fracking in the entire state (see Maryland’s Pusillanimous Gov Allows Frack Moratorium to Become Law). Recently, however, the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) held a series of three public hearings to elicit feedback on fracking rules with an eye toward releasing them soon (see Anti Circus/Freak Show in W Maryland – Complete with Animals). Perhaps that’s what pushed the unfriendly folks in Friendsville to pull the trigger…
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As MDN reported two days ago, the Maryland Dept. of the Environment (MDE) held a public hearing in Baltimore to elicit feedback on changes to the state’s proposed fracking regulations–already the tightest, harshest such regulations in the country (see 
Normally polsters, when releasing a high level summary of a poll’s results, also release the “crosstabs”–the details of the poll. But apparently not if the poll is good news for the fracking industry. Rasmussen recently conducted a poll in a series of polls they’ve been conduction (for years) to gage the nation’s attitude about fracking. The poll finds 49% of American’s support fracking, while 34% oppose it. Quick fact: Fracking of conventional or vertical-only wells has been going on for more than 40 years in this country. The high level results were reported by Rasmussen, but no crosstabs which might tell us fracking is supported by a majority of Democrats. That kind of truth-telling is lethal to the politicians running the party. Here’s the (precious little) sum total of what Rasmussen did share about the latest fracking poll…
Don’t worry, you stupid farmers in Belmont County, OH. A really really smart liberal from Yale University (who believes in the fairy tale of man-made global warming) has arrived in your midst and is willing to pay you big money–$20 (yes, twenty dollars)–to participate in a “study” with a pre-determined outcome that you’re being poisoned by fracking. The latest laughable “research study” by a small group of Yale “researchers” is underway in Belmont. The researchers are looking for 100 local yokels who are willing to tell them how they’ve been harmed by fracking, so the researchers can plaster the Yale name on yet another fraudulent study funded by Big Green organizations. We’ve seen this movie before. In 2014 Yale researchers released a similar study of 180 people in Washington County, PA, funded by Heinz Foundation and other Big Green funders (see 
Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy (DMME) wants an independent, third-party review of proposed natural gas drilling regulations in the state. The last time such regulations was reviewed was in 2004, over a decade ago. A lot has changed since then. At that time, a group called the State Review of Oil and Natural Gas Environmental Regulations (STRONGER) performed the review. It’s only natural that the same group do the new review–so the DMME hired STRONGER to do it. And that has anti-drilling nutjobs in a tizzy. Eight radical anti-drilling groups say STRONGER has industry backing and will not be fair and impartial in their review. In other words, STRONGER won’t recommend rules so strict as to ban fracking, which is what the radicals want. Here’s the thing: STRONGER has members of Big Green groups as part of the organization–including Earthworks and Trout Unlimited. STRONGER receives funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Dept. of Energy (DOE). So how do the nutters figure STRONGER isn’t objective or unduly influenced? If anything, STRONGER is influenced toward being too cozy with Big Green causes…
Big news to report with an effort to beat back President Obama’s wild and mad grab at executive power. Earlier this week a federal judge in Wyoming–appointed by Obama himself–ruled that the Dept. of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) fracking rules are an illegal power grab and has struck them down. MDN has written about this issue since the new rules were proposed in 2012 (see 
Maryland is actively looking at revising draft regulations that would allow fracking with an eye to adopting the new rules later this year, and letting fracking begin in the state in October 2017. The antis are, of course, apoplectic that fracking might happen in the liberal paradise of Maryland. However, the oil and gas industry is not all that thrilled with the proposed changes coming from the Maryland Department of Environment (MDE) either. We’ve been critical of new Gov. Larry Hogan and his lack of spine on the fracking issue (see 
Last December we asked the question: 
Last month MDN brought you some news that mainstream media in Pittsburgh intentionally ignored: a judge ruled that a new hyper-restrictive (defacto ban) ordinance passed by South Fayette Township, in Allegheny County, was “invalid, null and void” (see 
The odious and misnamed Food & Water Watch, a virulent anti-drilling organization, along with several other Big Groups, has just delivered a petition with the signatures of 90,000 wacko radicals to the Democrat National Committee to demand that the DNC add a fracking ban plank to the Party’s platform. Outlandish? Would never happen? Hey, radicals in Pennsylvania got the Dems there to adopt such a plank before the last gubernatorial election (see