In Pennsylvania, cash-strapped Westmoreland County is leasing out their watershed - to a fracking operation:

Fracking began at Beaver Run in 2008 — one year, incidentally, after the municipal authority upheld a fishing ban in the reservoir due to public health concerns.

CNX says it has plans for up to 30 shale gas wells at the reservoir from five different drilling sites. Both CNX and the water authority have groundwater monitoring wells around the reservoir. As an extra precaution, CNX is drilling five well casings instead of the state-mandated two.

So far, the company has a good record at the site, without any violations from state regulators.

Still, many residents like Walter wonder how drilling was permitted in a reservoir watershed where virtually all other activities are banned. Others are angry they weren't informed about the gas development and feel excluded from a public decision.

When Joe Evans, a medical engineer and member of Citizens for the Preservation of Rural Murrysville, saw aerial maps of the reservoir in 2009, he was stunned.

"I was shocked that a process that I was finding to be dangerous was allowed to take place on a reservoir property, where even hiking and fishing from the banks is prohibited for fear of pollution," he said.

Brien Palmer, a business technology consultant and fellow member of the citizens group, said he's not opposed to gas drilling but questions the judgment of the water utility. "The fact that they would drill near a drinking water source first, and not as a last resort, is astonishing," he said. "I'm just not sure what I can say to someone who can't see the absurdity of fracking in a drinking well basin."

Daniel Jonczak, an electrical engineer who lives two miles from the Beaver Run Reservoir, says that he, too, is a far cry from an anti-drilling activist. He grew up in the 1970s, when Westmoreland County's streams flowed orange from acid mine drainage. So extreme was the damage, Jonczak laments, that local creeks were given names like coal tar run. Gas was always seen as less polluting.

Yet the decision to lease Beaver Run Reservoir has him extremely worried.

"Are we really sure what's going on with MAWC [Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County] and the water supplied to half of Westmoreland County?" asked Jonczak. "The chance of a spill is just too huge. I don't think they were aware of the risks."

An education expert says Gov. Tom Corbett's use of scare tactics to justify the Pennsylvania public schools budget is a textbook example of applying Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" to education policy:

The citizenry is repeatedly told that the only way out of this budget crisis is to cut spending and that individual citizens (taxpayers) should not take on any of the burden. In fact, the propaganda leveled at the taxpayers also paints them as helpless victims that have been milked by greedy public-sector unions. In turn, the general public becomes very supportive of any promise to lift their burden and somewhat celebratory in watching their neighbors (public sector employees) lose, at a minimum, basic benefits.

However, what if the "financial crisis" was not real?

Now, I'm not saying that states and local governments aren't actually in debt; however, what if the proposed solutions (that are being accepted without any critical analysis because of the Shock Doctrine effect) end up (as stated above) costing more money than the proposed cuts? For example, in my home state of Pennsylvania, newly elected governor Tom Corbett has proposed cutting 586 million dollars from K-12 public schools to help cover a projected $4 billion deficit. And of course, with a hefty dose of "greedy teacher" rhetoric from right wing radio, he has been able to convince a large population in Pennsylvania to actively support these cuts in the name of helping the "financial crisis."

But one only need look at Corbett's proposed plans for public education to actually find out that Corbett is indeed using the Shock Doctrine to dupe the citizenry into supporting deep cuts to public schools. For example, State Department of Education spokesman Steve Weitzman was quoted as saying, "The presumption of steady, unbroken revenue increases year after year no longer is feasible. The day of reckoning has come." Sounds shocking, right? What exactly does he mean by the day of reckoning?

Well, it has nothing to do with actually spending less on education. Yes, the Corbett administration plans on cutting $589 million from public school appropriations. And these cuts are devastating local school budgets and turning neighbor against neighbor in local communities. However, between maintaining the worthless PSSA system (NCLB) and implementing a set of new initiatives, the Corbett administration may end up actually spending close to one billion dollars.

The Corbett administration supports funding a voucher system that has been demonstrated not to raise achievement test scores and ends up costing taxpayers more money. Voucher programs are not funded by some magical pot of money. Taxpayers pay for them!

Corbett also wants to develop a grading system for public schools that has the ability to wreak chaos on property values. The governor plans to implement the Keystone exams (exit exams) that national research has shown add nothing to a child's education, and in the state of California is estimated to cost over $500 million dollars a year to administer.

Additionally, Corbett wants to create a merit pay system for teachers that will narrow the curriculum, end teacher collaboration and cost taxpayers even more money.

As Diane Ravitch recently pointed out, "when the Vanderbilt study of merit pay was published, the U.S. Department of Education immediately released nearly $500 million for -- what else -- more merit-pay programs, and promised that another $500 million would be forthcoming. Data mean nothing when your mind is made up."

Therefore, Corbett's plans for public schools will end up costing taxpayers more than the initial $589 million cut.

Communities need to speak up and recognize the "shock." Local schools are making significant cuts to programs that benefit children and the communities they serve. But why should they if the Corbett administration plans on actually spending more for its own politically-driven initiatives that are specifically designed to dismantle the public school system? I guess the "day of reckoning" is really facing the fact that the Corbett administration is using the "financial crisis" as a way to push a market-driven reform strategy that will destroy local community-schools (Shock Doctrine).

enlarge

Just for the heck of it, I decided to look at the top news in six key states: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Florida, Wisconsin and Arizona. Here are some samples of the headlines:

• Michigan - Emergency manager bill headed to Michigan governor

  LANSING, Mich. Emergency financial managers appointed by the state to run struggling cities and schools would have broad new powers under legislation approved by the Michigan House.

  The main bill in the package was approved Tuesday by a 62-48 vote in the Republican-led chamber. The Senate has passed the bill, which now goes to Gov. Rick Snyder for signature.

  Managers who are appointed would have the power to terminate union contracts held by school teachers and local government employees. Local elected officials would lose some of their powers.

• Ohio - Gov. Kasich Proposed Budget Cuts

  From the sidebar:

  • Libraries will see a 5 percent cut.
  • A 25 percent cut per year in the Local Government Fund for two years.
  • An 11.5 percent cut in K-12 education for fiscal year 2012 and a 4.9 percent cut for fiscal year 2013. That includes elimination of one-time federal stimulus money.
  • Closing seven regional Taxpayer Service Centers, including one in Youngstown, and eliminating 99 jobs. That’s a savings of $1 million over the two years, not including the staff reductions.
  • A 6 percent cut in fiscal year 2012 for the state’s seven business incubators, including the one in Youngstown, and the elimination of all funding for the incubators in 2013 to save a total of $15.9 million over two years. The state is expected to fund the incubators through the new JobsOhio program in 2013, however.

• Pennsylvania - Corbett, Legislature sued over adultBasic expiration
  

  Gov. Tom Corbett and other state officials have been named as defendants in a lawsuit for allowing the expiration of adultBasic, a state health insurance program for the working poor.

  [...]

  The complaint alleges that the state government is violating the law ­-- specifically, the Pennsylvania Tobacco Settlement Act and the state constitution -- by allowing adultBasic funding to drop to zero. That's because the state law, according to the complaint, requires that a portion of the annual tobacco settlement money go to adultBasic.

  The governor on Monday reiterated that the state was trying to save money.

  "I would remind everybody, including those people who have filed the lawsuit against whoever they have filed the lawsuit, that this was a program that was not sufficiently funded," Mr. Corbett.

• Kansas - Kan. governor details budget cuts
  

  Gov. Sam Brownback is cutting $56.5 million from the current Kansas budget, taking the biggest chunk from aid to the state's 289 public school districts.

• Florida - Florida governor's budget will hurt schools: Moody's
  

Continue reading »

"GasLand" is the most important and politically incendiary documentary we've seen since "Sicko". Kudos to HBO for showing this Sundance award winning film; do whatever you can to make sure you (and everyone you know) see it. (You'll never quite get over the shots of officials insisting there's nothing harmful in the drinking water, juxtaposed with a scene of fire coming out of someone's tap water. And of course, officials consistently decline to sample the water they keep insisting is "safe".)

The film focuses on damage to water supplies done by the high-powered natural gas mining process known as "fracking," and the shameless efforts by industry and politicians to cover it up. It's all too resonant with what just happened in the Gulf. (The energy industry has already issued a point by point rebuttal. Fox says he's putting together his own response.)

This story is of special interest to people like me who live in the NY-NJ-PA watershed that supplies clean drinking water to nine million people, because industry is now drilling in the Marcellus Shale in northern PA, thought to be the site of massive gas deposits.

Near the end of the film, Josh Fox interviews John Hanger, PA's secretary of environmental protection, who says look, you're on the other side of a camera, you're not the person who has to sit here and make these hard decisions. And he's right -- we as a nation have some hard choices to make about how we get our energy, and why. What price are we willing to pay?

(In a jarring epilogue, Fox notes that shortly after they spoke, the state's Department of Environmental Protection announced massive layoffs.)

Here's one review:

Narrating a first-person account, Fox relates how a natural gas company made him a lease offer for $100,000 from a natural gas company to explore on his land, which includes the house his parents built in Pennsylvania's Delaware River Basin abutting upstate New York.Fox begins to do his own research on drilling, and leaves countless unreturned messages with natural gas drillers like Halliburton.

Congress' 2005 Energy Policy Act, crafted by former vice president (and ex-Halliburton exec) Dick Cheney, exempts the hydraulic fracturing drilling process used by natural gas companies (known as "fracking") from long-held environmental regulations such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Freed from customary laws, natural gas companies have drilled like wildcatters in 34 states where huge shale fields contain gas deposits.

Once Fox learns that his beloved Delaware River watershed is being targeted by drillers as part of the massive Marcellus Shale field, he goes on the road to track down residents living near drilling sites. This is seat-of-pants investigating that yields astonishing and disturbing findings, not least of which is how the residents can customarily light a flame near their tap water outlet and set the polluted water on fire. As Fox ventures west, to Colorado, Wyoming and Texas, states riddled with natural gas drill sites, he documents horror story after horror story.

The primary cause is the cornucopia of toxic chemicals, blended with water, which must be used in fracking. Infrared-camera footage records venting of polluting gases coming off drill rigs, crushing the myth that natural gas is "clean" and a greenhouse solution. In vivid animation and graphics, Fox illustrates how the continent-wide explosion of fracking projects threatens watersheds and river basins, the source of drinking water.

For all of its engaging information, the film itself is a piece of beautiful cinema, rough-hewn and poetic, often musical in its rhythms and about as far from the "professional" doc that's the stock-and-trade of Sundance, where "GasLand" is vying in the U.S. competish. The marriage of sound and image (Fox joins Matthew Sanchez on lensing, and Brian Scibinico on sound) veers between nightmarish moods and lyrical reveries, even while the camera peers into the faces of government and corporate officials.

A combo of fest and grassroots exhibition, with viral networking, is part of the pic's goal to push for new federal controls on fracking (now being considered in Congress). But if a film can ever enact social change, which is rare, the potency of "GasLand" suggests that this may be that film.

Adama Bah - Outrage in New York

via All Spin Zone

...It began with two 16-year-old immigrant girls arrested at dawn, detained far from home, and, in a chilling government assertion, called would-be suicide bombers who posed “an imminent threat to the security of the United States.”

But now, after holding the girls for six weeks in a Pennsylvania detention center, the government has quietly released one of the girls and is allowing the other to leave the country with her family...

My daughter turns 18 on Monday. As a parent, I inherently know how it would have affected her (and me) for life to have something similar happen to her at 16. Six weeks in detention, five minutes each week speaking with her mother on the phone, the rest in the hands of the government that brought you Abu Ghraib.

Yes, this is outrageous beyond words - but it begs the question - how many more 16 year old girls are being currently held on U.S. soil under similar circumstances?

From Talk Left

Republicans to Push Faith-Based Legislation

Nutty, Nutty from The Poorman

There are two sides to every coins. There is yin; there is yang. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you kill Obi Wan, he becomes more powerful than you could possibly imagine. Such is the way of the universe, and, if you are feeling a little disheartened by Bush's re-election, try to take a more holistic view: for every gloomy you, there's a happy Bob Jones. The cosmic balance is restored.

November 3, 2004

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

The media tells us that you have received the largest number of popular votes of any president in America's history. Congratulations!

In your re-election, God has graciously granted America—though she doesn't deserve it—a reprieve from the agenda of of paganism. You have been given a mandate. We the people expect your voice to be like the clear and certain sound of a trumpet. Because you seek the Lord daily, we who know the Lord will follow that kind of voice eagerly.

Don't equivocate. Put your agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ. Honor the Lord, and He will honor you.

Had your opponent won, I would have still given thanks, because the Bible says I must (I Thessalonians 5:18). It would have been hard, but because the Lord lifts up whom He will and pulls down whom He will, I would have done it. It is easy to rejoice today, because Christ has allowed you to be His servant in this nation for another presidential term. Undoubtedly, you will have opportunity to appoint many conservative judges and exercise forceful leadership with the Congress in passing legislation that is defined by biblical norm regarding the family, sexuality, sanctity of life, religious freedom, freedom of speech, and limited government. You have four years—a brief time only—to leave an imprint for righteousness up upon this nation that brings with it the blessings of Almighty God.

Christ said, If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my father honour (John 12:26).

The student body, faculty, and staff at Bob Jones University commit ourselves to pray for you—that you would do right and honoor the Savior. Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them. Conservative Americans would love to see one president who doesn't care whether he is liked, but cares infinitely that he does right.

Best wishes.

Sincerely your friend,

Bob Jones III
President

PS: A few moments ago I read this letter to the students in Chapel. They applauded loudly their approval.

When I told them that Tom Daschle was no longer the minority leader of the Senate, they cheered again.

On occasion, Christians have not agreed with things you said during your first term. Nonetheless, we could not be more thankful that God has given you four more years to serve Him in the White House, never taking off your Christian faith and laying it aside as a man takes off a jacket, but living, speaking, and making decisions as one who knows the Bible to be eternally true.

Bob Jones: not opposing interracial dating as a tool of the anti-Christ since August of 2000! (The Pope is still Satan, though. On some things, there can be no compromise.)

TPMDC: Bunning Blockade leads to 21 percent fee cut for doctors seeing Medicare patients.

Tina Dupuy: 'Freedom' and faux populism

AfterDowningStreet: Pennsylvania likely to get Healthcare before the rest of the country

AMERICAblog News: In just the past three years, the Republicans have been responsible for nearly one fifth of all filibusters recorded in the past 90 years.

Alas, a blog: A Challenger Appears!

Pensito Review: Must have fridge magnet

DOWNLOADS: (1735)

PLAYS: (2193)

Embed

Many of us celebrated when the Justice Department announced it had indicted three police officers for obstructing justice in the case of the bias-crime murder of a Latino named Luis Ramirez in the rural town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

But as Maegan La Mamita Mala at Vivir Latino observes (be sure to read the whole post):

Civil rights and the more expansive human rights matter little when you’re dead. So longer sentences make us feel better, like all the marching, chanting, petition signing, mouse clicking and text messaging meant something. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, no one will go to jail for taking Luis Ramirez from his children and this world. So while we need to support this case, it has to be done in a larger context. Whatever the outcome of the Federal case, it still will be dangerous to be a Latino in the United States.

This reality is underscored by the details as they emerge in the Ramirez case. Indeed, the conditions that gave rise to the attempt to cover up the bias crime by local officers are present in nearly every small rural town in America.

Consider, for instance, what the local prosecutor saw going on with the case as he handled it:

The Pennsylvania prosecutor who failed to secure felony convictions against two teens in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant says he thought his case was "compromised" from the start.

Like many residents in the small, tight-knit eastern Pennsylvanian community of Shenandoah, Schuylkill County District Attorney James Goodman knew that an officer investigating the death of Luis Ramirez was in a relationship with the mother of one the teens involved.

Goodman also believed the investigation and evidence hadn't been handled as it should have been.

"They didn't interview the perpetrators, the boys. In fact, not only did they not interview them, they picked them up, gave them rides, helped them concoct stories, brought them back and told the boys what to say," Goodman told CNN.

The son of Shenandoah Police Lt. William Moyer also played on the same football team as the teens who were involved in the July 2008 street brawl, according to court documents.

"It's clear they were trying to help these boys out, for whatever reason -- they were football players, these police officers were trying to help these boys out and limit their involvement in the death of Luis Ramirez."

Likewise with the local eyewitnesses to the crime:

Continue reading »

C&L is honored to have proud progressives Congressman Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, and 2006 Democratic nominee for US Senate from Connecticut Ned Lamont, joining us for a live chat at 3 pm Pacific / 6 pm Eastern. The conversation will be wide-ranging, from health care and the economy to the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections. Ned Lamont endorsed Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate race earlier today.

Everyone is invited; if you haven't registered as a commenter here you will need to do that at this link in order to participate.