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Fracking Democracy: Why Pennsylvania's Act 13 May Be the Nation's Worst Corporate Giveaway
http://www.alternet.org/story/154459/fracking_democracy%3A_why_pennsylvania%27s_act_13_may_be_the_nation%27s_worst_corporate_giveaway_/Pennsylvania's Republican leaders have given the natural gas industry unprecedented power to overrule local government and drill anywhere.
Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed and where the U.S. coal, oil and nuclear industries began, has adopted what may be the most anti-democratic, anti-environmental law in the country, giving gas companies the right to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning laws, seize private property and muzzle physicians from disclosing specific health impacts from drilling fluids on patients.
The draconian new law, known as Act 13, revises the states oil and gas statutes, to allow oil companies to drill for natural gas using the controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, where large volumes of water and toxic chemicals are pumped into vertical wells with lateral bores to shatter the rock and release the hydrocarbons. The law strips rights from communities and individuals while imposing new statewide drilling rules.
Its absolutely crushing of local self-government, said Ben Price, project director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has helped a handful of local communitiesincluding the city of Pittsburghadopt community rights ordinances that elevate the rights of nature and people to block the drilling. The state has surrendered over 2,000 municipalities to the industry. Its a complete capitulation of the rights of the people and their right to self-government. They are handing it over to the industry to let them govern us. It is the corporate state. That is how we look at it.
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Fracking Democracy: Why Pennsylvania's Act 13 May Be the Nation's Worst Corporate Giveaway (Original Post)
Bill USA
Mar 2012
OP
russspeakeasy
(6,539 posts)1. "the rights of the people" ???????????????
Remember when ??
Walk away
(9,494 posts)2. I think that's always been an American illusion. nt
GopperStopper2680
(397 posts)3. This Fracking Sucks!
It's definitely hard to accept though unfortunately not at all hard to believe that such a thing could happen today. Fifty years ago there is no way such a thing could have gotten off the ground. We had all better vote our asses off to make sure this gets put to a stop before we all end up drinking hydrolic fluid! Already in some places you light a match under the tap and the water burns! And what does Big Petroleum care? Nothing. They don't even care about their own children's wellbeing. As long as they can still fly to Rome for dinner why would they? And if they don't care about the wellbeing of their own descendants they certainly do not care about ours!
russspeakeasy
(6,539 posts)4. Follow the money....