MDN Editor Jim Willis Appears on Scranton Talk Radio
From MDN editor Jim Willis: I don’t do it often, but every now and again I’m contacted to appear on a radio talk show to discuss Marcellus Shale drilling and related issues. Last week I was contacted by David Madeira who hosts a daily morning talk show in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area on 94.3 FM “The Talker”. Dave is a great guy and a great host. He truly makes it easy! Dave wanted the low down on the story that was started way back in June by a liberal PBS reporter who is quoting two former PA State Health Department employees who claim they were muzzled from talking to residents claiming to have suffered health impacts from nearby shale drilling. I wrote up the story of how the media has conducted a smear campaign against the health department (see PA’s Sec of Health Fires Back at Reckless Accusations Against Dept). On the call, I walk David through how a story like this is manufactured and recycled through “mainstream” liberal media. Give it a listen!
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Three weeks ago MDN highlighted news from NGI’s Shale Daily that Magnum Hunter Resources had purchased the mineral rights for two former Ormet properties in Ohio and West Virginia (see 
Washington & Jefferson College, located in Washington, PA (Pittsburgh suburb) has a Center for Energy Policy & Management–which makes sense since Washington County, PA sits in the middle of the wet gas Marcellus drilling zone. W&J recently teamed up with the Washington, DC-based Environmental Law Institute (ELI) to study the “boom and bust” cycle that communities face with resource extraction like the Marcellus Shale. The thought was to produce a document–in this case a series of documents–that can guide local and state politicians as they plan for the future. How can, and even *can* a community avoid a “bust” after a huge boom? That’s what the documents aim to answer. The only problem is, the ELI seems to tilt anti-drilling, and the entire study was funded by Mamma Teresa Heinz-Kerry and her Heinz Endowments–a strongly anti-drilling organization. So you know where this is headed…
Sure looks to MDN like the so-called unbiased, independent pollsters at Siena College have pulled a fast one. They’ve either unintentionally, or perhaps intentionally, cherry-picked polling results in order to report in their latest poll that “51 percent of voters int the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes oppose hydrofracking, compared to 39 percent in support.” Here’s why the poll, and therefore it’s results, are fatally flawed and meaningless…