Like Neville Chamberlain, who notoriously favored “appeasement” of Hitler, and let him grow before he tried to swallow all of Europe, Pickens is trying to con us that some cockamamie scheme is “Peace (or ‘energy independence’) in our time.”

Band-aid plans, and the blind acceptance that they will help us in the long run, only make the long run longer and harder. “Cover your ass,” is a poor substitute for, “Stand up and fight back.”

You’ll probably be reading more analogies to Neville Chamberlain, as there seems to be a fatalistic, “well, they’re coming anyway, might as well appease them” attitude among some who would like to frighten landowners for their own reasons.

T Boone Pickens is only trying to use us.

This is from CDOG:

A) His only agenda is his own profit – but he’s pretty damn slick at making it look otherwise, isn’t he?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70HFEHB6dag

B) The “Energy Plan” is his ticket to increasing demand for a dirty fuel that ruins lives everywhere it’s extracted, and in fact will NOT be used for energy independence.  A great deal of it is slated for export.  I’m talking about natural gas, or as we like to call it, UN-natural shale gas.   The process of hydraulic fracturing, which pollutes vast amounts of precious water across the nation and leaves dead zones and sick  people in its wake, is used to get natural gas out of tight shales.   We need clean water, clean air, healthy cropland and healthy people much more than we need a few years’ worth of a dirty hydrocarbon fuel.

Want to know more?  Visit:

• 
http://un-naturalgas.org/weblog/?cat=107


• http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/fracpage.htm


• http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/whatyouneedtoknow.htm


• http://www.journeyoftheforsaken.com/consortiumofthefraced.htm


• http://www.endocrinedisruption.com/home.php


• http://www.earthworksaction.org/oil_and_gas.cfm
  

Don’t let Pickens “aw, shucks” demeanor fool you. Remember what happened the last time someone fooled us with that?

Real dangers in natural-gas drilling

The natural gas industry is a creeping disease that is slowly infecting Otsego County. It has weaseled its way into leases to drill from unsuspecting landowners.

The representatives from the natural gas industry have made outrageous promises of “found money” and “it’s like you’ve won the lottery.” Then they low-ball people into selling out their land rights, heritage, property-value, possibly their health and that of their neighbors, as well as the well-being and way of life of their communities. That includes you.

Some well-intentioned but misguided people have been convinced that “it’s a done deal, and we might as well get the best out of it.”

It only becomes a done deal when they con enough people to band together to try to sell at a higher price, while trusting that there are enough protections against disaster in place.

There are no adequate safety measures, no matter what the apologists for the predators tell you. The state Department of Environmental Conservation is woefully understaffed and has shown no ability to regulate effectively. Gov. Paterson has even proposed a large budget reduction for the DEC. Obviously regulation is not a priority.

The gas companies are not even bound by the Federal Clean Water Act. So who has the safety of your water at heart? The gas companies (one of which is Halliburton)?

Some would have you believe that the drilling that is planned for this area is safe, and the people who care about the danger are over-reacting. That sounds like when Rumsfeld mocked people who thought the Iraq war wouldn’t be a slam-dunk, by saying, “Oh my goodness gracious, isn’t that terrible, Henny Penny, the sky is going to fall.”

That’s not the lottery, that’s Russian roulette.

I don’t know when this country turned into a bunch of people who hate the government, yet call themselves “patriotic.” 

In the good old days, when we were becoming a nation, our policies were mostly formed by the brilliant Enlightenment thinkers. They were saying things like, “The government that governs best, governs least.” That was genius! The reason for it, was that we could create a democracy and get rid of royalty. 

The reason for that was because royalty could reign (not “govern”) without any oversight, or regulation. A democracy was needed for the specific task of overseeing and regulating. Not regulating what the individual was doing, but what was being done to the individual. 

That meant that we were to be protected from things like eminent domain (except in the most dire cases, like preventing imminent catastrophes), and certainly being protected from “compulsory inclusion” in some gas-hole scheme to steal land. 

If you have even cracked open a newspaper in the last days you have seen the devastation that deregulation of corporate behavior has wrought on Wall Street. This will not trickle down to the average American, this will piss down on the average American. 

So why on earth would we even consider trusting the gas companies? Don’t trust them as far as you can spit a rat, I say. 

According to  NEOGAP Information:

YET ANOTHER exemption is being requested RIGHT NOW to the USFWS from Columbia Gas/Nisource affecting these states.

It is a 50 YEAR exemption to the ESA for a 1 mile corridor around any/all existing gas facilities as well as NEW construction in right-a-ways or adjacent areas.  Please be aware that if approved any air,water,habitat pollution/destruction that occurs will affect YOUR resources as well.   To view a Service Map of the project go to: http://www.nisource.com/commitment_hcp.asp

Currently, the ESA is one of less than a handful of laws that the industry must abide by and thus is indirectly protecting many homeowners rights today! Please start preparing your contacts to submit public feedback.  If approved, this permit would set a precedence for similar exemptions!

Links about this article:

 View the Federal Register announcement of Nisouce’s Incidental Take Permit application

US Fish and Wildlife Service Scoping Report