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Spill at Marcellus Shale drilling site in Bradford County prompts evacuation

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Spill at Marcellus Shale drilling site in Bradford County prompts evacuation

Published: Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 1:00 PM     Updated: Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 3:08 PM
DONALD GILLILAND, The Patriot-News By DONALD GILLILAND, The Patriot-News The Patriot-News
 

Seven families in Bradford County have been asked to evacuate following a large spill during fracking operations in the Marcellus Shale at a Chesapeake Energy well west of Towanda, Pa. Earlier reports that there was a blow-out were inaccurate, according to company officials.

A local Emergency Management official said he didn’t believe the families had gone anywhere.

“It’s literally on top of a mountain,” said Francis “Skip” Roupp, deputy director of the Bradford County Emergency Management Agency.

According to Chesapeake spokesman Brian Grove, “At approximately 11:45 p.m. on April 19, an equipment failure occurred during well-completion activities, allowing the release of completion fluids from a well at a location in Leroy Township, Bradford County, Pa.”

Continue reading Spill at Marcellus Shale drilling site in Bradford County prompts evacuation →

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Petition Gov. Corbett to Stop Assault on Healthcare

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Tell Corbett: Don’t give away my health to business!

Governor Corbett allowed the adultBasic health insurance program 41,000 Pennsylvanians relied on to die, claiming that the state was just ‘too broke.’ He ignored the record-breaking profits of the non-profit Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies that had been required to contribute due to their tax-exempt status.  Highmark, for example, announced they’ll be shelling out bonuses thanks to the record-breaking year.

And it probably doesn’t hurt that these companies are acquiring even more clients now that adultBasic ended.  The Governor’s ‘solution’ was to give the Blues a lot of business by having those who had been on adultBasic enroll in a Blues plan known as Special Care.  Special Care costs about 300% more than adultBasic and only covers 4 doctor visits a year!  This was only a ‘solution’ for the Big Blues, not real Pennsylvanians.  If it were, then we wouldn’t be looking at only 21% of people who had been on adultBasic actually enrolling in Special Care.

Even more shocking: Corbett now wants to take over 220 million dollars from the Tobacco Settlement fund-a fund that had been going  to adult health programs, like adultBasic- and put it towards a program called Liberty Loans.  He is taking money away from adult health in Pennsylvania and giving it to businesses.

We know where Corbett’s interests lie.  Join us and stand up to these tactics.

Protect Pennsylvania’s Health!  Sign the petition.

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Medicare is the Solution – Not the Problem – Hands Off!

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Medicare is the Solution – Not the Problem

Republicans want to privatize Medicare and slash Medicaid to reduce the nation’s deficit. President Obama says he wants to preserve Medicare and Medicaid, but his budget proposal looks to those programs to find savings.

We agree that healthcare costs are a serious problem, but cutting Medicare and Medicaid won’t help.

Instead, we need to take the corporate greed and waste out of our healthcare system, and make healthcare a human right by extending Medicare to everyone.

Join us in sending this message to President Obama and your Congresspeople: Medicare is the solution – not the problem. We need improved Medicare for all NOW!

Send your message by clicking here.

Environment, Marcellus Shale

For Those in Denial: ‘Fraccidents’ Map with Details

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Location of Hydraulic Fracturing of Shale Drilling Accidents, along with details, across the U.S.

Why we need a stronger EPA and DEP, and a hefty extraction tax to pay for them and the consequences. Beaver County Blue via earthjustice.org

Click here to zoom in on details

Environment, Marcellus Shale

Lease Tricksters: ‘Don’t Let Them Talk About Fracking’

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Revealed: Confidential Document Shows Oil Company’s

Strategy to Con Landowners into Giving up Drilling Rights

By Tara Lohan
Beaver County Blue via AlterNet.org

April 14, 2011 – AlterNet recently received a document through a tip that appears to be right out of the playbook of an oil company. The document lays out the strategy for their field agents to convince landowners to give up drilling rights — despite how risky this may be for the landowners. We’re working on verifying its authenticity, but wanted to give our readers a chance to take a look and make your own assessment. (You can read the whole document here.) We’re not sure yet if this did indeed come from a gas company, nor which one, but if so, the information sure is damning.

Called, "Talking Points for Selling Oil and Gas Lease Rights," the document begins by saying it is designed for Field Agents to outline what to say to commonly asked questions, and more importantly, how to avoid answering the hard ones. And it cautions, "Remember, if at all possible try not to deliberately mislead the landowner, that only makes our position harder to defend at a later date." Right — that gets a little less believable as you read on.

Here’s more — everything in quotes is straight out of the document.

Don’t give them time to think: "It is critical to obtain a lease signature in the first meeting, or at least the agreement to sign and take the lease to a notary. Drive them to the notary if you have to."

Continue reading Lease Tricksters: ‘Don’t Let Them Talk About Fracking’ →

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FDA Testing Food Radioactivity – Republicans Propose Cuts

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FDA Testing Food Radioactivity – Republicans Propose Cuts

April 13, 2011

by Randy Shannon

While the Government of Japan and Tokyo Electric Power continue to struggle to control the ongoing crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the World’s people grow more and more concerned about the possible impact of radioactive contamination of air, water, and food supplies.

In the USA, our tax dollars pay for an agency, the Food and Drug Administration, that is tasked with monitoring both domestic food supplies and imported food products. After a series of fatalities in the US from domestic food contaminated with salmonella or e-coli bacteria, the public demanded more active monitoring by the FDA.

Now that radioactivity is falling on the US with the rain to be taken up by vegetation and ingested by livestock, and now that food imports may be contaminated, the public needs the FDA to become more vigilant.

Nevertheless, the Republican budget, supported by our Blue Dog Congressman Jason Altmire, proposes to cut funding for the FDA. This will help reduce the deficit. This deficit was caused, not by the FDA, but by handouts to wealthy individuals and banks.

Reproduced below are two articles. The first discusses the FDA budget. The second is an FDA announcement about its efforts to protect the food supply from radioactive contamination.

Do you want the FDA’s ability to protect you and your family from radioactivity and bacteria in your food cut? PA 4th CD Cong. Jason Altmire wants your food safety cut to help out the banks that own him. Will you stand by while your children’s safety is compromised for the greed of a few?

Continue reading FDA Testing Food Radioactivity – Republicans Propose Cuts →

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Nurses to Obama: No Cuts, Tax Corporations, End Wars

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Nurses to President Obama: Don’t Cut Healthcare, Retirement; Raise Corporate Taxes, End Wars

For Immediate Release                                                                              
April 12, 2011
 
RNs Won’t Endorse Politicians who Vote to Cut Social Security
 
In advance of President Obama’s speech Wednesday on the budget deficit, the nation’s largest union and professional association of nurses today called on the President to oppose any cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – and strengthen the nation’s economy by restoring fair taxes on corporations and the super-rich, ending the wars, and creating good paying jobs.
 
“America is not broke, it’s just deficient in political courage and leadership,” said Jean Ross, RN, co-president of the 160,000-member National Nurses United. “It’s time to tell Wall Street and the politicians they finance in Washington and state governments that the American people have sacrificed enough. There can be no more cuts in healthcare programs for seniors, the disabled, and the disadvantaged, and no reductions in retirement security.”
 

Continue reading Nurses to Obama: No Cuts, Tax Corporations, End Wars →

elections

America’s Class Problem

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…Instead of taxing the super rich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks…

America’s Class Problem

A “working class hero,” John Lennon told us in his song of that title, “is something to be/ Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV/ And you think you’re so clever and classless and free/ But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see.”
The delusion of a classless America in which opportunity is equally distributed is the most effective deception perpetrated by the moneyed elite that controls all the key levers of power in what passes for our democracy. It is a myth blown away by Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair. In an article titled “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%” Stiglitz states that the top thin layer of the superwealthy controls 40 percent of all wealth in what is now the most sharply class-divided of all developed nations: “Americans have been watching protests against repressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet, in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.”

 

That is the harsh reality obscured by the media’s focus on celebrity gossip, sports rivalries and lotteries, situations in which the average person can pretend that he or she is plugged into the winning side. The illusion of personal power substitutes consumer sovereignty—which smartphone to purchase—for real power over the decisions that affect our lives. Even though most Americans accept that the political game is rigged, we have long assumed that the choices we make in the economic sphere as to career and home are matters that respond to our wisdom and will. But the banking tsunami that wiped out so many jobs and so much homeownership has demonstrated that most Americans have no real control over any of that, and while they suffer, the corporate rich reward themselves in direct proportion to the amount of suffering they have caused.

Instead of taxing the superrich on the bonuses dispensed by top corporations such as Exxon, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron and Boeing, all of which managed to avoid paying any federal corporate taxes last year, the politicians of both parties in Congress are about to accede to the Republican demand that programs that help ordinary folks be cut to pay for the programs that bailed out the banks.

Continue reading America’s Class Problem →