Landowners Coalitions
"Trust us - we're the experts."
Letter to Editor Daily Star July 2009:
It was refreshing to see Dick Downey finally coming clean in his latest letter to the editor. Apparently he thinks it’s not your right to ask questions – just trust him and the Natural Gas Industry. He’d like you to believe that you should accept any risk that would potentially make him some money.
Downey insists that the risks are minimal. This is an actual quote from Downey’s letter, “Ninety percent of the time the problem is corrected once the source is identified.”
WTF? Oh, I see, as long as that ten percent of screw-ups isn’t on his land, I guess he thinks that’s OK. And what about the sources that aren’t identified? Is someone who doesn’t mind sacrificing public safety for his own agenda someone you ought to put your trust in?
He’d have you believe that the dangers are ”… a circumstance that has little chance of happening…”
The only thing that has little chance of happening is landowners getting “free money” (as the industry’s representatives like to promise) or flunkeys for the gas companies telling you the truth. A more likely outcome will be the destruction of roads, aquifers, public services and some people’s health, simply in order to have a few people (mostly from out of state) make a killing off our gullibility. It’s happened elsewhere. But hey, trust them.
It’s not true that those who question the gas industry expect no risks at all. We just expect reasonable accountability and safeguards. Any sane person would. But lobbyists have gotten Big Gas exempt from the Clean Water Act, and they know that the state Department of Environmental Conservation is way out of its league when engaging this industry.
When someone tells you, “Just trust us – don’t ask questions,” does that make you feel that your interests are being looked out for? Really?
- Brian Foley
“A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.”
-Finley Peter Dunne
It’s worth mentioning that once again, an apologist for the gas industry is trying to misdirect you from the truth. When Downey says:
Last year, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection reported less than a dozen cases of aquifer contamination…
He is not telling you that most of the wells he is talking about are vertical wells, not the horizontal fracturing that is at issue. This is most disingenuous, and is a rhetorical tactic people use when trying to hide the truth.
"It's OK - we'll all be dead before the world recognizes what a bunch of lying sacks we were."
There are no real, meaningful statistics about horizontal fracturing in New York State because it’s almost never been done. And statistics for other areas have been obfuscated by the industry, because they have no intention of letting the public know the truth. It’s not a conspiracy. They don’t need one. It’s just business as usual, like when the tobacco companies claimed that smoking is good for your health. Different product, same bullshit.
It’s like when other industry flunky’s tell you that this procedure has been done in New York State for decades. Of course it hasn’t. See “They Don’t Even Lie Well.”
Doubt is Their Product
This video is entirely relevant to how industry boosters and even scientists will sell their souls in order to sell you something they know is bad.
