Wake up the Neighbors! Bring the Doubters to Get the True Story on Fracking
Arrogance of Power: Frackers Gagging Susquehanna Citizen From Speaking Out
An Injunction Against the First Amendment
By Walter Brasch
Beaver County Blue via Moderate Voice
March 20, 2014 – Vera Scroggins of Susquehanna County, Pa., will be in court, Monday morning.
This time, she will have lawyers and hundreds of thousands of supporters throughout the country. Representing Scroggins to vacate an injunction limiting her travel will be lawyers from the ACLU and Public Citizen, and a private attorney.
The last time Scroggins appeared in the Common Pleas Court in October, she didn’t have lawyers. That’s because Judge Kenneth W. Seamans refused to grant her a continuance.
When she was served papers to appear in court, it was a Friday. On Monday, she faced four lawyers representing Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., one of the nation’s largest drillers. Seamans told the 63-year-old grandmother and retired nurse’s aide that to grant a continuance would inconvenience three of Cabot’s lawyers who came from Pittsburgh, more than 250 miles away. He also told her she might have to pay travel and other costs for the lawyers if she was successful in getting a continuance.
And so, Cabot presented its case against Scroggins.
The lawyers claimed she blocked access roads to Cabot drilling operations. They claimed she continually trespassed on their property. They claimed she was a danger to the workers.
Scroggins agreed that she used public roads to get to Cabot properties. For five years, Scroggins has led tours of private citizens and government officials to show them what fracking is, and to explain what it is doing to the health and environment.
Continue reading Arrogance of Power: Frackers Gagging Susquehanna Citizen From Speaking Out
Environmentalists Call for Ban on Fracking in Ohio After Earthquakes
Photo: Environmental groups are calling for a ban on fracking in Ohio after a series of small earthquakes erupted near an active fracking site last week.
By Mike Ludwig
Beaver County Blue via Truthout
March 18, 2014 – Ohio regulators ordered the Texas-based firm Hilcorp Energy to shut down its fracking operations in rural northeastern Ohio after five temblors ranging from 2.1 to 3.0 in magnitude were recorded March 10 and March 11 in the area. The US Geological Survey reported that the epicenter of the first and largest quake was directly below a landfill where Hilcorp was fracking. Local residents felt the quakes but did not report any serious damage.
Officials with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which regulates oil and gas production in the state, said initial data indicated that the earthquakes were not related to drilling wastewater injection wells, which have been linked to small earthquakes in Ohio, Oklahoma and other states. If investigators link the quakes to Hilcorp’s production operations, it would be the first time that the fracking process has directly caused documented earthquakes in Ohio, if not the entire United States.
Fracking involves forcing millions of gallons of water and chemicals into underground wells to break up rock and release oil and natural gas. Wastewater that returns to the surface during the operation often is disposed of in underground injection wells. Ohio has become a popular destination for the waste, and more than 180 injection wells store waste across the state.
Continue reading Environmentalists Call for Ban on Fracking in Ohio After Earthquakes
‘New Economy’ Events in Pittsburgh, March 21-22
We Need a New Economy
East End Food Coop is one small piece of the ‘new economy’
By Molly Rush
Post-Gazette Op-Ed
March 17, 2014 – More and more people have come to distrust our economic system. Low wages, job insecurity, underemployment and loss of pensions stress the social fabric. Compounding the effects on our communities is a growing distrust of a political system driven by the power of major financial donors to candidates and officeholders.
The billionaire Koch brothers, for instance, not only have a war chest of $400 million for targeted campaign contributions, but they also manipulate public discourse by underwriting so-called think tanks that justify legislation benefiting Koch investments in extractive industries, petrochemicals and poisonous pesticides.
The Koch brothers are just one powerful vested interest bent on confusing the public about complex political and social challenges. Add the power of banks and mega-corporations to stack the deck against small businesses and families, and you have a collision between the public good and an unsustainable economy. It is no wonder that so many people feel overwhelmed and discouraged.
“What Is to Be Done?”
That is the title of a book by political economist Gar Alperovitz. He is behind what is being called the New Economy, which is taking root around the United States and right here in Western Pennsylvania.
The idea is to develop an economy that gives people a decent livelihood in a thriving community. We already have the makings of a new economy here in Western Pennsylvania due to some creative initiatives now underway.
Continue reading ‘New Economy’ Events in Pittsburgh, March 21-22
A Few Green Jobs Coming Our Way? Push The Budget Through…
Obama proposal sets aside more funds for Mon River, Olmsted lock projects
Overlooking the landside lock, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and barge industry executives walk atop the Charleroi Lock and Dam during a tour of the Locks and Dams 2, 3, and 4 of the lower Monongahela River in June 2012.
By Len Bolselovic
Beaver County Blue via the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
March 4, 2014 – President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal 2015 budget includes $9 million for continuing long-delayed work on a vital lock and dam project on the Monongahela River, more than four times the funding it received in the current fiscal year.
The White House budget proposal also includes $160 million for continuing construction at an Ohio River infrastructure project plagued by massive cost overruns. Paying for that project, located about 600 miles down the Ohio from Pittsburgh at Olmsted, Ill., has prevented the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from providing additional funding for the Mon River work and other projects.
The barge industry and the federal government evenly split the cost of major lock and dam construction projects overseen by the Corps. The industry’s share is generated by a tax barge operators pay on the diesel fuel they use.
But river industry officials have complained about covering cost overruns at Olmsted, where the price tag has ballooned from $775 million when Congress authorized the project in 1988 to $3.1 billion.
More than half of the 200-plus locks and associated dams overseen by the Corps were built more than 50 years ago, which is how long they were expected to last.
Continue reading A Few Green Jobs Coming Our Way? Push The Budget Through…
March 3rd: Solidarity with UMPC Workers!
Moral March on Raleigh Draws 100,000
Thousands March in Downtown Raleigh
Thomasi McDonald
News Observer
February 8, 2014
RALEIGH — State NAACP President William J. Barber II laid out goals for a diverse coalition of groups Saturday afternoon at a rally attended by thousands of people from all over the state and the nation who marched, sang, chanted, cheered and even danced through downtown Raleigh.
Organizers said the “Mass Moral March” was intended to push back against last year’s Republican-led legislation in North Carolina.
Barber called for well-funded public education, anti-poverty policies, affordable health care for all that includes the expansion of Medicaid, an end to disparities in the criminal justice system on the basis of class and race, the expansion of voting rights and “the fundamental principle of equality under the law for all people.”
“We will become the ‘trumpet of conscience’ that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called upon us to be, echoing the God of our mothers and fathers in the faith,” he said. “Now is the time. Here is the place. We are the people. And we will be heard.”
The mammoth crowd that gathered in downtown Raleigh represented a variety of causes that joined last year’s Moral Monday protests, but the event also brought in groups and individuals usually on the fringes of state politics.
Susan Fariss of Mocksville drove three and a half hours to hold up a sign supporting the legalization of medical marijuana.
“I have several health problems that cause me pain,” Fariss said. “I have tried Vicodin and different muscle relaxers, but no matter what I’ve tried, I’m in pain. My doctor told me he could not prescribe it, but he recommended medical marijuana.”
Holiday Clinkscale, 60, of Raleigh climbed atop a big potted plant on Fayetteville Street and twirled an American flag above his head. He wore a leather jacket decorated with red, white and blue stars and stripes. Clinkscale wore the regalia on behalf of “depressed” African-American men.
“Black men in Raleigh couldn’t wear red, white and blue after the Civil War when we were freed, or they would have been executed,” he said. “You see a lot of black men here today looking depressed.”
Wake County attorney Daryl Atkinson was at the march, but the look on his face was one of purpose.
Atkinson, who volunteered to represent some of the people arrested at last year’s Moral Monday protests, said he had a long list of reasons for attending the rally.
“Everything from trampling on our voting rights, to the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, not extending unemployment benefits and not expanding Medicaid. The list goes on,” he said.
Hannah Osborne, a student at N.C. State University, said she came to the rally Saturday morning to “promote women’s rights and a woman’s right to choose.” She and her father, Dale Osborne, a pastor at Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, held purple signs that read “Stop the war on women.”
The march, known as the Historic Thousands on Jones Street, or HKonJ, was organized by the state NAACP and Barber. He and his group drew national attention last year for organizing the Moral Monday demonstrations to protest what they called “immoral” legislation enacted by Republican leaders including Gov. Pat McCrory and House Speaker Thom Tillis. Those policies included new abortion restrictions, an election-law overhaul that will require voter ID and cuts to unemployment benefits.
The McCrory administration tried to block previous Moral Monday events. In late December, a Wake County District Court judge overturned a decision by the administration to keep demonstrators off state Capitol grounds and confine the events to Halifax Mall, a big grassy area enclosed by the state office and legislative buildings.
Beaver County MLK Coalition to Join Moral March in Raleigh
Moral March On Raleigh Expected To Be One Of The Largest Southern Marches Since Selma In 1965
Posted: February 4, 2014 by laborradio
By Doug Cunningham
One of the biggest southern marches against state policies since Selma in 1965. That’s how North Carolina NAACP President Rev. Dr. William J. Barber the Third describes the Moral March On Raleigh this coming Saturday.
[Rev. Dr. William J. Barber III]: “The Moral March on Raleigh is part of the anti-racism, anti-poverty, pro-labor deeply moral Forward Together movement. And with diversity and solidarity, thousands will stand against what we believe are morally indefensible, constitutionally inconsistent and economically insane policies being passed by our North Carolina General Assembly and signed by the governor of this state.”
Saturday’s march is part of the Moral Mondays Forward Together Movement, which last year resulted on a thousand civil disobedience arrests at its Moral Mondays protests a the North Carolina capitol.
Beaver County MLK Coalition to Join Moral March in Raleigh
A coalition of activists from the Beaver-Lawrence Central Labor Council, the NAACP, and the 12th CD Chapter of Progressive Democrats of America will travel to Raleigh, NC this Friday for a march and rally. They will march in solidarity with the people of NC who are pushing back against the anti-democratic and austere laws passed by the right-wing NC legislature.
The Moral March on Raleigh will mark a new high point in the Moral Monday’s movement that has seen thousands of civil disobedience arrests in protest of extremist legislation passed by the Tea Party controlled legislature.
The Beaver County MLK 50th Anniversary Coalition organized buses to the Washington DC march and rally this past August.
For more information on the Moral March in Raleigh go HERE.
Harrisburg Rally Protests anti-Union Bill
Thousands jam Pennsylvania’s capital to protest union-killing bill
january 28 2014
HARRISBURG, Pa.– Thousands jammed the streets around the State Capitol building here today to protest the latest in a sting of attempts by state Republicans to kill union rights for public workers and eventually all workers in Pennsylvania.
Busload after busload of workers arrived from around the state, filled the streets and marched into the Capitol building itself where, reminiscent of the historic Wisconsin protests, they packed the rotunda in the center of the building.
They protested House Bill 1507, what the right wing American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and theKoch brothers call a “Paycheck Protection” bill. They have already been targeting direct mail into the state to spread lies in support of this bill, claiming that taxpayers are paying for union dues collection for public employees, and that teachers and state workers are forced to contribute to political and legislative activism.
The facts are clear, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO says, even though you won’t hear them in the commercials that the Koch brothers are financing. Automatic payroll deduction of dues is not mandated by any law, rather it is bargained for during contract negotiations. This deduction does not cost taxpayers money. Unions already agreed to reimburse the state for costs associated with deductions of PAC funds, but according to the State of Pennsylvania, there is no measurable cost to be reimbursed.
The Republican goal is obvious, unions say. The legislation would force unions to spend resources to collect union dues, and make it nearly impossible to collect the fair share fees that non-members must pay to cover their union representation. At the end of the day that means unions will be weakened, and have less ability to advocate for employees in the workplace and in the legislature. This would open the floodgates for a wide range of anti-worker legislation that would be sure to follow.
“There is no doubt that the passage of HB 1507 would mean that Pennsylvania would become the next right to work state” the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO said in a statement it issued. ” Don’t be silent on this issue. We expect this bill to move very quickly, with significant resources flooding into Pennsylvania to back this latest attack on the middle class.”
Photo: Frank Snyder, Pennsylvania AFL-CIO
Beaver County Blue: Voice of the 17th CD of Progressive Democrats of America 