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Pennsylvania to Become 'Gasland'?
Pennsylvanians set to take on gov't, industry, and Karl Rove over one of world's largest gas deposits
On the day after the midterm elections, the outline of Pennsylvania's next battleground was clearly drawn. Pittsburgh hosted the largest conference of companies interested in the massive Marcellus Shale gas deposit, thought to hold enough gas to power the entire US for anywhere from two to 30 years. Drilling communities around the country report serious environmental and public health concerns. Pittsburgh itself already has gas development surrounding it, and hundreds marched to the conference to show their objection. We spoke to Josh Fox, maker of the documentary 'Gasland' and opponent of drilling in his rural Pennsylvania community. We also spoke to Leslie Haines, editor-in-chief of Oil & Gas Investor magazine.
Produced by Jesse Freeston and Malak Behrouznami.
Transcript
JESSE FREESTON, PRODUCER, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jesse Freeston at the Pennsylvania State Capitol building in Harrisburg. This building is going to have a new occupant, after Republican Tom Corbett won the governor race by 10 percentage points.
TOM CORBETT, GOVERNOR-ELECT FOR PENNSYLVANIA: It's now time to come together, to tell the rest of the world—to tell the rest of the world Pennsylvania is open for business.
FREESTON: And that business is natural gas. Pennsylvania's race was unique in that it was fought primarily over the question of what to do with the massive Marcellus Shale natural gas deposit. Corbett ran on the platform that the industry needs to be opened immediately and without taxation.CORBETT: We are the Saudi Arabia of natural gas if we develop it and develop it now.
FREESTON: If current estimates are correct, then the Saudi Arabia example may not be far off. Predictions are putting the amount of shale gas in the Marcellus in the trillions of cubic feet. Said another way, these estimates suggest that the entire energy needs of the United States could be met from anywhere from 2 to 30 years by the Marcellus Shale gas alone, with potential revenues reaching into the trillions of dollars, and all of this right in the middle of some of the world's most energy-hungry cities. On the day after the midterm elections, Pittsburgh played host to the year's largest conference of companies looking to develop the Marcellus Shale. It was organized by Hart Energy Publishing. The Real News to spoke to Leslie Haines, editor-in-chief of their flagship publication, Oil and Gas Investor.
LESLIE HAINES, EDITOR IN CHIEF, OIL AND GAS INVESTOR: The USGS geological survey is now saying this could be the second largest natural gas field in the world. Only larger ones are in the Middle East or in Russia. So it's extremely exciting for the US oil and gas industry, but it's going to be important for the consumer, too, because natural gas burns way cleaner than coal or oil. We have 100 years' supply.
FREESTON: The conference featured hundreds of the world's leading extraction companies, like Halliburton and Shell. The keynote speaker was Karl Rove, former senior adviser to President George W. Bush.
UNIDENTIFIED: This is the official Karl Rove welcoming committee.
FREESTON: Hundreds of people marched to the conference center to show their opposition to the drilling, based on its effects on the environment and human health. The process for getting the gas is known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking for short. It involves drilling anywhere from 3 to 11,000 feet below the earth's surface, setting off explosives, then pumping millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals until the pressure fractures the shale rock below, releasing the gas into the well.
JOSH FOX, FILMMAKER: We're going to leave a message for the next governor. I have his phone number. Do you want to leave him a message?
FREESTON: Firing up the crowd was filmmaker Josh Fox, a Pennsylvanian native who turned down a lucrative deal to lease his mineral rights for drilling. He then went on to make the documentary Gasland, which won the 2010 Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Fox's film documents the effects of fracking on families across the United States, where the process is already taking place.
UNIDENTIFIED: Rhonda got really sick with extreme neuropathy and is in a lot of pain [snip] through spinal taps and everything to try to find a cause.
UNIDENTIFIED: It just seems like in the last year and a half I'm never healthy. And I've always been healthy.
UNIDENTIFIED: I won't drink it. When Cabot [Oil & Gas Corp.] and them came in to get the water and they were telling me it was okay to drink, I said, well, here, go ahead and drink it, and they wouldn't drink it.
~~~UNIDENTIFIED: His hair's falling out.
UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah. And he's losing weight.
~~~
UNIDENTIFIED: Hello?
UNIDENTIFIED: Hi. How are you? This is Josh Fox, and I'm with citizens from the city of Pittsburgh. We'd like to leave a message for Tom Corbett. We'd like to say, we are going to ban hydraulic fracturing in the city of Pittsburgh and we are going to ban it in Pennsylvania.
~~~
FREESTON: On the other side of the state, in Harrisburg, organizers with No Fracking PA set up a lemonade stand offering passersby free lemonade made with tap water from the town of Dimock, where fracking has already begun.
BEN KETCHUM, ORGANIZER, NO FRACKING WAY PA: There was the Bush-Cheney energy task force that gathered the industry together to decide what America's energy policy was going to be over the next decade or so, and in that policy was written in an exemption now known as the Halliburton loophole, which exempts frack drilling operations from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Superfund law. And that's really given the industry the go-ahead to be able to decimate these areas.
FREESTON: Exempt from these regulations, fracking companies aren't required to reveal to regulators the chemicals they're using. But tap water in communities like Dimock have been found to contain chemicals like benzene and toluene, which are believed to cause cancer, brain damage, and other ailments. Haines says that no connection has been proven between drilling and contamination.
HAINES: The fracturing of the wells to create the flow of gas up to the surface, we've been doing that as an industry for 60 years. Over 1 million wells in the US have been fracked with no incidents, no proven contamination of drinking water.
FOX: The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection just ordered a $12 million pipeline to replace water for citizens of Dimock whose water had been contaminated by gas drills. They proved that. They have proven that that gas is from Cabot Oil & Gas. And so the industry will continue to come out and say there's not a single proven case and we didn't do anything wrong, but this is in contradiction to the science.
RON GULLA, PENNSYLVANIA FARMER OPPOSED TO FRACKING: I see the kids that have rashes, the kids that are having diarrhea, the kids that are throwing up. I've seen the cattle that have died. I've seen all this. It's heartbreaking. And they want to deny it. You cannot be exempt from clean air, clean water, safe drinking water, the right to know, and the Superfund act and be a benign process. No one knew that when we signed leases. We signed them in '02. Everything got passed in '05. They were preparing themselves.
FOX: Without the exemptions, they would be out of business. They cannot do this without passing along the costs to you, to the taxpayers—your health-care bills, in water bills, in cleanup bills.
FREESTON: In his keynote address to the drilling conference, Karl Rove stressed that Republican electoral victories would assure that regulation won't get in the way of the industry's development. Water regulations like the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act came into being in the early 1970s during a period of high environmental activism and outrage around the 1969 Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland. Today in some natural gas communities exempt from this regulation, the water is on fire once again.
~~~
UNIDENTIFIED: Whoa! Jesus Christ.
FOX: Don't drink this water.
~~~
FOX: There's one clip that's famous, but we have several instances of that going on in the film. It's something that I heard about all across the nation. People were watching the film and then looking around and saying, oh, we've got gas wells in our neighborhood. Lo and behold, they can light their water on fire. And they're living with those emissions coming out of their sinks.
FREESTON: Fox's film has been the central education tool for opponents of drilling in Pennsylvania, with public screenings taking place around the state, screenings that drew the attention of Pennsylvania Homeland Security.
FOX: Let me just ask, first of all, is anybody here from Homeland Security?
FREESTON: According to an internal document leaked to the press, the Pennsylvania government was monitoring drilling opponents, antiwar groups, people opposing deportation of migrant workers, and other activist organizations. The document included a report on when and where Gasland was being screened. Outgoing Democratic governor and fracking supporter Ed Rendell said he had been unaware of the program and would not renew the $125,000 intelligence contract. Since then, further documents have shown that Homeland Security was actively recruiting a network of spies and sharing all reports of the list of 731 contacts, including numerous private corporations. Pennsylvania Homeland Security chief James Powers emailed the report to private gas drilling companies themselves, writing, quote, "We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies." Powers has since resigned.
FOX: Even though the story has kind of left the media, don't forget that it's people like you who came out to see Gasland, who came to protest, who were labeled terrorists, environmental extremists prone to criminal activity.FREESTON: A key theme of Fox's film is the abandonment that victims of gas drilling experience when they have no government institution to turn to for help.
~~~
UNIDENTIFIED: —weeks, they contacted Mike by phone and said, we've tested your water; there's nothing wrong with your water.
UNIDENTIFIED: With this?
UNIDENTIFIED: With this.
~~~
UNIDENTIFIED: No one should ever have to go through what I went through, and call them crying, begging for help, and be told no. And that's where the system is broken.
FREESTON: Proponents say natural gas is a clean path to energy independence. The most visible voice has been billionaire T. Boone Pickens. The former oil company executive has been gathering powerful allies, from Avatar director James Cameron to CNN founder Ted Turner, the largest private landowner in the United States.
T. BOONE PICKENS, FOUNDER, PICKENSPLAN.COM: You've got to go all-American and get off the oil you're buying from the enemy.
FOX: This is not what T. Boone Pickens says, America's energy independence; this is more dependence on T. Boone Pickens.
FREESTON: Fox says that it's a question of priorities.
FOX: We want to spend $700 billion on the transition to natural gas, which over the last 50 years, $350 billion for power plants, $350 billion for pipelines that they're going to [inaudible] main through everybody's front yard. Do you want that? Or should we start working on clean, renewable energy right now that will last forever?
FREESTON: Pro-drilling Republicans have the governorship and control of both the federal and Pennsylvania houses. A few Democrats have sponsored a law to bring fracking under existing regulations, but during his post-election press conference, President Obama twice highlighted natural gas drilling as a point of unity with the Republicans.
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: So let's find those areas where we can agree. We've got, I think, broad agreement that we've got terrific natural gas resources in this country. Are we doing everything we can to develop those?
FREESTON: With little political representation, opponents of drilling in Pennsylvania are facing slim chances of stopping the gas rush through the legislative process.
FOX: Because this is going to be very, very difficult. You need to get ready to do this quite a bit. You need to also probably get ready to do civil disobedience.
FREESTON: The amount of drilling permits and leases in Pennsylvania are exploding as we speak, and it appears that the boom is just around the corner. Join us for part two on The Real News Network as we explore the economics of the Marcellus Shale boom.
End of Transcript
DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.
- Posted in
24 Comments so far
Show AllHere in the Rocky Mountain west, the business of extracting dispersed gas from deep formations began in the late 1960s before the current fracking technologies had been developed. So the energy corporations worked with the Atomic Energy Commission, then controller/supplier of US nuclear bombs on what was called "natural gas development with nuclear stimulation". And under the flying banners of Project Plowshare they set off experimental blasts in Colorado and New Mexico. Ahh, radioactive natural gas.
Today they use the toxic chemical/high pressure fluid mix to do the fracking with the predictable results of poisoned air, land and water----and mucho bucks for the corporate/Wall Street nexus. But in the anything for some bucks/profits ethos of the holy market system, there's little doubt they would return to "nuclear stimulation" to get the bottom line results the market demands. From Bhopal disasters to the devastations of land, air and communities of mountain top removal, capitalist corporations can be counted on to let nothing get in the way of $$$$--for themselves, having bribed and paid off their lapdog politicians.
I worked on some of the plowshare projects in the late 1960s. Specifically, the one in New Mexico, called Gasbuggy. The "fracking" worked just as predicted. The gas in the very "tight" shale flowed through the cracks produced by the nuclear device (euphemism for bomb) and was collected by El Paso Natural Gas Co. As you mentioned, it was radioactive (the tritium, H3 produced by the device took the place of H1 in the gas molecules). So the gas had to be diluted with so much non-radioactive gas that the project was not economical.
Knowing all that, the next year they did it again in Colorado, with the same results, though I thought the one in Colorado (I was back in grad school then) was intended to produce oil, not gas. Whatever, the stuff they got was radioactive.
Eventually sanity prevailed, and the plowshare project was shelved.
Why so few comments?
I was waiting for you...this is your home turf, yes?
I grew up in Greene County, 60miles south of Pittsburgh. It has the largest bitumionous coal mining in the world. For decades citizens worked these mines with little labor laws. Now Greene County has become GASLAND, and farmers homes are being taken. If you don't sell your land to these corporations they goad and intimidate you. In Waynesburg, there is a school next to a plant which could blow at any time. The Commissioners are all bought off by the mining companies. Dumber than a doornail the commissioners line their pockets, while the people have an IQ equal to a 9th grader. Mumia Abujamal is housed at the States biggest prison in PA, put there by legislators looking for jobs other than coal/gas mining. For years the gas and coal was owned by dupont, who sold it to Germany. NONE of the gas/coal benefits America, it ALL goes to Germany and Europe. The citizens however have high cancer rates, there are many children born with disabilities and NO real human services, or community programs for them. Greene County was called by native americans, the "happy hunting grounds", as the mountains are simply beautiful. Strip mining and other horrific eyesores are left when the robber barrons are finished taking the resources, leaving the people in the poorest county in Pa. Rich with resources and the people live like true Appalachians! Halliburton has taken over the county, their trucks fill the backroads tearing them up and the people have NO resources to do the repairs. Halliburton gives NOTHING back to the community. The mines have major safety regulations and miners put their lives in danger every day. With the Greene County commissioners and legislators lining their pockets with the fruits of corporates the people have no clue who their enemy is. There are two newspapers in two major counties both controlled by the corporations. Ed Rendell could have done something about this when he was governor....he did nothing.
Some additional info:
PennEnvironment has been asking PA citizens to push for regulation and/or banning fracking. It has colleced numerous examples of chemicals and gas in tap water. It had endorsed candidates in last week's election, most of whom were democrats, and most of them lost. PA voters have spoken.
This gas is promising as a substitute for coal. Natural gas creates roughly half the CO2 per unit of energy that coal does. Instant Kyoto goals!
NYC has protected the Hudson and Delaware watersheds feeding its reservoirs for probably a century and has the cleanest water in the world. It would be a tragedy to mess that up, and would cost a fortune to start treating all that water.
The EPA should develop uniform rules and ensure they are enforced. PA's rules are relatively weak, many enforcers have beek laid off, and the state is even too timid to charge an extraction tax. Even Sarah Palin's Alaska does that.
There are quite a few Pennsylvania towns that have written self governance ordinances and those cases are just hitting the court system.They will have a voice on this issue.
It is not national energy policy that should decide about gas extraction in Pennsylvania nor any fictitious rights of corporations but the people of Pennsylvania.
Although I now live in NYC, I grew up in Pennsylvania in the Bald Eagle Valley, which separates the Allegheny Highlands from the ridge and valley region of the state: in other words, ground zero for the proposed gas drilling. The area, with its lush mountains and fertile farmlands, is breathtakingly beautiful. When I was a kid, my parents owned a cabin up in the mountains, and I spent many a long weekend day hiking for miles through them. There were mountain springs and streams so pure we thought nothing of scooping some up in our hands and drinking it -- untreated -- and it never made us ill.
On the flip side, there was the creek that ran through our town (for which the town was named), known as Beech Creek. Beech Creek's headwaters begin in the Allegheny highlands. The creek runs through strip mining areas in the plateau. It continues in a southeasterly direction, along the border of Centre and Clinton counties, eventually emptying into Bald Eagle Creek, which in turn empties into the Susquehanna River, which eventually flows into the Chesapeake Bay.
At first glance, Beech Creek was an idyllic looking stream one expects to find in the countryside, about 20-50 yards across and generally no more than 2-3 feet deep. It was idyllic, that is, until you took a closer look, and noticed that the rocks all had a reddish-orange color and there was not a speck of life to be found in it -- no fish, no crayfish, no tadpoles, not even a speck of algae or moss. Fortunately, there were other very healthy streams in the area that continued to support fresh water marine life. People in town certainly would have preferred that the creek were not polluted, but the prevailing attitude seemed to be to shrug the shoulders and accept it as an unfortunate, but necessary, fact of life. After all, the coal was needed, right?
Today, most of those strip mines have been shut down. There has been, in the intervening years since the '70s, some effort to perform remedial work on the creek by lining large sections of it with limestone, and I have heard that a few species of fish that are less environmentally sensitive than, say, trout, have begun to appear; but it's still not water you'd want your kid playing in.
But for that part of Pennsylvania, which, while once quite prosperous from all the manufacturing companies in the area, mostly missed out on the recent boom years, experiencing instead industry after industry leaving to relocate operations in other countries, a lot of people are so desperate to see some measure of prosperity again that they aren't even willing to look at the environmental costs entailed in the proposed gas drilling. So my fear is that, having long lived in difficult -- in some cases dire -- economic circumstances, they will simply shrug about the potential environmental damage in the way they used to shrug about the pollution in Beech Creek. IT doesn't bode well for the future.
A little Maryland crab, anyone?
Ban hydraulic fracturing in PA and ban it nationwide! Wisconsin will be taking down its largest bluffs of sandstone to do the "sand" part of the recipe! It means strip mining, the development of deep quarries, the pollution of air as this stuff is dried and the pollution of water as it is processed. And what does it do to the strong agricultural assests we possess? None of the reclamation projects will produce land that can be agriculturally productive!!! It is a huge loss for people in Northwest WI. Hundreds of rail cars will be sent to the oil and gas industry and unless the sand is "sold" , there will be no county sales tax, no state sales tax, and no severance tax.
Future and current citizens are being raped in WI of their rights to say anything, to do anything, or to even be compensated for their losses.
Ban hydraulic fracturing!
Theoildrum.com recently ran an excellent article on Shale Gas, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7075
Not only are there the noted environmental problems, "Operators have maintained the illusion of success through production and reserve growth subsidized by debt with a corresponding destruction of shareholder equity. Many believe that the high initial rates and cumulative production of shale plays prove their success. What they miss is that production decline rates are so high that, without continuous drilling, overall production would plummet. There is no doubt that the shale gas resource is very large. The concern is that much of it is non-commercial even at price levels that are considerably higher than they are today."
In other words, there's no money in it, but they're drilling anyway!! Hello, is anyone home!!??
OH my god!!!!!!!!!!! karl rove?????????? how insane can humans be?????
OMG! i lived in northen PA for a year, very glad i will not be there for what is coming up and deeply feel for friends still there. LEAVE!!!
using less... is the ONLY short / long term solution... but even the most stout advocates against this (newest in terms of "nouveau") destruction of the planet... will find it hard to stay off planes... walk more... unplug in general...
but even... a battleship uses more in hour than a town uses in a year... ironic... how much oil we're using... protectin' "our" oil.... just a matter of years before the various sovereigns drop the political correctness and the the resource wars begin... really for real... notwithstanding iraq and afghanistan... they're just previews before the main event...
1 gallon of liquid gasoline will move 4000 pounds of steel 30 miles in 30 minutes... how many humans and how long will it take those humans to move the same 4000 pounds of steel 30 miles...?
4000 pounds being an average vehicle weight... and assuming 60 miles an hour...
the niger delta comes to pennsylvania... i grew up 5 minutes from valley forge... now in south florida... where it's just a matter of time before the offshore drilling moves east...
i mean... the gulf coast sort fell off the media cliff too... and the food... water... along the entire southeast coast is.... well... they're denying all that too...
only advantage the niger delta has... is they don't have homeland security to chase down the terr'ists...
now all we need is a new "saint ronnie" to delcare "end of energy crisis"...
i pity the folks inhabiting the planet 30-50 years out...
This is so sickening, it's beyond words.
In the summer of 1962 I was one of a group of geology majors from Boston College who went on a field trip through central PA and then back up through NJ. The part of PA we went through (I remember spending one night at a one-horse town called Weigh Station) looked like the surface of the moon, thanks to the strip mines. Even though we were excited about seeing the kinds of geologic structures uncovered by the mining, it was a very depressing experience.
Now the enlightened folks who run the state today are going to let the natural gas industry destroy its groundwater aquifers. We can be sure that the new governor, who says the state is open to business, will not be drinking water from the affected areas. The whole idea of letting industry do whatever it wants is still depressing.
Badgersouth
Marie Antoinette will forever be remembered for, “Let them eat cake.”
Dick Cheney will forever be remembered for, “Let them drink chemicals.”
Corporate greed knows no bounds.
Visit marcellusprotest.org for more info, photos and video of the November 3rd protest.
Also, today Pittsburgh City Council made a preliminary vote to ban fracking in the city.
http://marcellusprotest.org/pgh-city-council-11-9-2010
So, PA goes from being "coal land" to being "gas land" wonder where in all of that the FBI spying on the Quakers ties in. Ha ha! Sorry, I do have to laugh at the notion of the FBI spying on the Quakers. Just when you think this country can't get any more insane and/or stupid-er, along goes the FBI spying on the Quakers. Lord help us all!
We have to turn away from fossil fuels --
Capitalism is suicidal -- always has been -- based on
EXPLOITATION of nature, natural resources, animal-life
and humans! Let's move on!!
.
"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"
I read some stories about fracking in Wyoming from MOTHER JONES a year or so ago. The ranchers have no drinkable water. No wonder Cheney never goes there; someone should waterboard him with that stuff.
"Millions of gallons of water" to be used...and water is the new oil. How insane can corporates get?
Rhetorical question, I think.
The" gas supply could last from 2 to 30 years." What do you want to bet that it's 2 years, and then we're 2 years farther behind a GREEN America then we should be.
Civil disobedience...well, here's a plan...dress up in water delivery company suits and replace all water coolers with FRACKED water; maybe then, government parasites would get it. If this water is so safe, then that's no crime to serve it to them, is it.
Imagine that Pennsylvania.... "Brotherly love" has now been replaced with, BROTHER, YOU'RE FUCKED.
Right not, the big oil corporations are buying up the little guys. Chevron just announced that it's buying out Atlas; Exxon Mobil, Shell, and Consol have all bought into Marcellus drilling. Meanwhile, our new governor, Republican Tom Corbett, who won thanks to campaign $$$ from gas, coal, and oil, will facilitate this free-for-all and at the same time cut social services and education in Pennsylvania. In his sights is Medicaid, which apparently is being "overpaid" by the state, according to AG Jack Wagner (a democrat).
See this link for recent purchases of gas leases/companies by big oil & coal corporations:
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/chevron-to-buy-atlas-in-race-for-natural-gas/
Empathy goes out to all my relations who have been damaged and hurt by the actions of humans. These unfortunate times affect us all, even though to some it does not appear so; time will tell the truth.
We are organisms like any other on earth. Though we like to think of ourselves as "more evolved", this is not so, this is a myth. We are all active participants in the making of our own environment, some less, some more, but all participants. Our own expectations, as US citizens, of an elevated standard of living (as contrasted with the rest of the world) have consequences, not to mention the expectations of now developing countries that model themselves after us.
We need to first take a look at ourselves and our non-sustainable patterns of living. Also, remember that those organisms benefiting the most (energy companies) from this degradation will not stop of their own will until the return on their investment nears zero.
Can you stop or significantly reduce using natural gas to heat your home or cook your dinner? Of course you can, but at what price? Can you make do with less or no plastics, fertilizers, anti-freeze, and fabrics? Think about it for a minute. This is the current human industrial capitalist economic system that WE have developed; WE created it. WE can also change it.
"Fracking" and all of its ugly realities are coming to light because of the many people who are directly affected it. Thanks go to the many who are doing this and are trying to stop it. What we need to do is many-fold and a lot of work.
We need to fight to try and stop this even though there is no certain outcome. This to me defines the American Spirit, something in the land well before 1492. Fight like a brave.
We need to organize and change our mind set; the strenght of single stalks bound together can equal that of the mightiest oak. Together first, individuals second. Group over ego. We need new leadership skills. Acceptance and inclusivity.
We need to educate our children that a different way of living is possible. Teach them composting, gardening and care for their neighbor and community. That new car will never truly make them happy; being known and accepted by your community will.
We need to significantly reduce our levels of consumption. Share, conserve, re-use, recycle. Ask your neighbor if you are out of some basic food staple; you will build community.
These are but a few of the many things that need to happen. I have hope that it can be done because we have to. Our lives, those of who oppose us and countless life forms depend on it.
May peace be with all my relations.
Would there be more of you, subaqua.
May the sense and sensibilities of the Ancestors be with us as we struggle to save ourselves and the Mother.
/cm
As a PA resident, I am appalled that the Repukes were elected and will now move ahead with their plans to continue to rape/rob the citizens, not just of their money, but of their health and well-being.
Starting about 2 months ago, I began hearing/seeing ads on radio and TV about a company called Range Resources. The ads use supposed 'PA residents' (likely actors) telling little stories about how great it is that Range Resources is going to be fracking for gas in large portions of the state because it will bring Thousands of Jobs to PA.
These ads run constantly here in an effort to convince people that PA citizens should welcome Range with open arms - to destroy the environment, or water supply and actual lives (in some cases) so a few people can have jobs. Talk about propaganda!
Corbett and Toomey will be among the first to welcome Range and other companies - as long as they stop by the state house or senate first with a few small envelopes.