California Fracking
The California Senate has rejected a fracking bill that seems like common sense:
Under Pavley’s bill, oil companies would be required to give 30 days notice to land owners whose property line or residence is within 300 feet of a fracking operation. The firms would also have to notify local governments and water boards. The state’s oil and gas agency would then post the information on its website.
Does anything about this seem onerous to you, even if you support lightly regulated production of energy in a manner that has unknown consequences? All the companies would have to do is tell property owners and local governments what they are going to do.
Oh hell no.
Republicans characterized the bill as a job-killing regulation for an industry that employs many Californians. “This bill is nothing more than to slow down oil and gas production in California,” said state Sen. Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield).
I suspect the issue of public knowledge is the real heart of the opposition. If people know where fracking is taking place, they can monitor it. And the gas industry certainly doesn’t want that.
whose property line or residence is within 300 feet of a fracking operation
300 feet? Am I somehow drunk, or are they actually objecting to notifying someone that heavy extraction is about to commence on the same block??? And they are saying that water boards should have no knowledge of this either?
My neighbor wanted to put a deck on the back of their house, and they had to give me notice and a chance to appeal the permit. And fracking will get less scrutiny that a back yard deck did?
This is not even cartoonish supervilliany any more. You just can’t parody this shit.
This is just the latest example of a very long trend, whereby people doing their damage sub-surface, especially seeking minerals, get a much freer hand than those engaging in much less threatening actions above ground.
Have you ever read the facts of the Penn Coal case? Energy extraction industries have been getting away with cartoonishly villainous misbehavior against nearby residents for a long time.
That extends to companies that extract energy from the wind as well as the ground.
Wind turbine development has been a contentious issue in virtually every rural area in the US where it’s occurred, frequently pitting neighbor against neighbor. Energy corporations (in the case of my township in Michigan, DTE) contract with local leaseholders (usually farmers) so they may construct the 300-400 foot tall turbines on their property (these aren’t windmills in the pastoral sense of Don Quixote, they’re industrial factories).
Voters in my township rejected a very permissive wind zoning ordinance by a margin of 62%-38% in a special referendum in February (a draft of a more restrictive ordinance by a previous planning commission was thrown out when a new township supervisor friendly with DTE and it’s leaseholders replaced several members of that old planning commission).
Instead of honoring the vote and sending the planning commission back to work on a new ordinance, DTE and 20 leaseholders (only 7 of whom live in our township) has orchestrated an end around play using Michigan Public Act 425, which would allow those 20 (non-contiguous) landowners to ‘move’ their property to a neighboring township with more lax zoning regulations, effectively subjecting those of us ‘left behind’ to the zoning we rejected in February.
Our wingtards have been insane for a long time. Ever since Prop 13, they haven’t needed but 1/3 + 1 in both houses to stop or blackmail anything with money attached. They don’t even have to pretend to want to govern. So the CA Republican Party is pretty much 100% distilled Teatards and has been for a couple decades.
And this is BradP’s ideal world.
I think in his ideal world there isn’t any natural gas or industry of any scale. You really don’t have to deal with anyone more industrial than Ted Sandyman.
And that is why Mordor can’t have nice cell phone coverage.
Palantir Telecom did not have an adequate Business Continuity Plan.
How can you even say that? We had a better system for developing new executive talent than any competitor, by a Numenorian league.
Palantir Telecom did not have an adequate Business Continuity Plan.
I am still amazed that there is a real network security company called Palantir Technologies (www.palantir.com) – that someone decided to name their security company after a network whose most prominent feature was that it was able to be accessed and subverted by the embodiment of ultimate evil, who then used it to try to destroy the world. It’s like calling your new travel company Hindenburg Airways.
Tin cans and string were good enough for our pioneer ancestors and they’re good enough for us.
Tin cans? You socialist! We are talking smoke signals and the pony express, like Cthulhu intended.
Thats why you need to switch to VeRohan Wireless. Our strategic partnership with the eagles allows us to rule the air.
VeRohan Wireless
. . . I am not worthy.
Not true. I would like to see industries that haven’t grown huge and fat off of legal and financial privileges. I just don’t believe these titans would exist without those legal and financial privileges.
To me, a lack of big industry is a consequence of just means, not an end.
A giant industry petitioning a huge, bloated government for special privileges to abuse local property owners?
This is one more special financial, legal, or property privilege in a society that sees itself as entirely dependent upon big government, big industry, and corporations for jobs and economic goods.
But you keep thinking that government is an effective check on our corporate and industrial elites, because you can just turn around and lay it on me when it proves that its merely the elite’s enabler.
No, Brad, what we know (because we actually read history) is that your preferred policies would make this situation far worse. We know that because that is what happens any time you deregulate industry. As poor and mixed as it is, government is the only counterbalance to the private power of wealth. You live in a fantasy world that does not, never has, and cannot exist.
Other sources of private power and wealth are a check on private power and wealth.
Government, as is plainly shown in this situation, enables massive power disparities that eliminate the ability of certain private actors to exercise ligitimate moral claims.
I mean, this couldn’t be a more plain example of government working to heighten the problems associated with power disparities, yet I am supposed to take it to be a counterbalance.
For all the talk about empiricism and libertarian avoidance of it, this “government as counterbalance” theory requires some incredible disdain for reality.
Other sources of private power and wealth are a check on private power and wealth.
And that is why neither NAM nor the Chamber of Commerce can possibly exist.
Make your point please, because I actually do doubt those would exist without the tremendous government privilege they and their members enjoy.
I would even bet that DrDick, you, and most other socialists on here would be inclined to agree with me on that if I called myself anything other than a libertarian.
You believe that, absent anti-trust enforcement, that capitalists would not collude to set prices or working conditions?
Paging Adam Smith to the white courtesy phone. Adam Smith to the white courtesy phone.
I believe they would try, I believe they would collude to set prices, and I believe that they would fail, and then I believe they would petition government to handle what they couldn’t manage on their own.
The progressive era at the turn of the century was only a progressive success to the extent that the grand mergers and amalgamations that preceeded failed to rationalize the markets.
The history of the steel industry and their many, many failed attempts to collude on prices and labor practices. Their mechanisms were never powerful enough to stop smaller companies from competing on price, and they were never flexible enough to effectively combat the wide variety of labor strikes in the mid 1930s.
That is until government stepped in, streamlined and sterilized the process, and basically removed a bunch of the diseconomies of scale that come along with being a industrial titan trying to keep its thumb on labor and small competitors.
Dear delusional libertarian,
No, I would never agree with most of what you say, regardless of what you call yourself, though you do occasionally say something intelligent and on point.
If you believe that capitalists cannot successfully collude, you need to read Adam Smith (or anything other than the Austrian lunatics). It is also the case that capitalism inevitably trends toward monopoly and oligopoly (in biological evolutionary theory, this is called the principle of competitive exclusion), where collusion becomes ubiquitous.
As I have said many times before, crony capitalism is the only kind that has ever existed or ever could exist, since the first thing a successful capitalist buys is the politicians. Your libertarian fantasy world would make this infinitely easier and more pervasive. At present there are at least minimal legal restrictions on their ability to do this, as well as their ability to lie, cheat, and steal (which is what they always do in the absence of regulation).
Government in a democracy is the only counterbalance to private power because politicians are at least partially answerable to the greater public, private power is answerable to no one except themselves.
I agree that there are some useful models and analogies that run between economics and evolutionary biology. This isn’t a particularly strong one, as people anticipate, imitate, and have a basic understanding of “opportunity”.
Where the inflexible gene eventually undermines the selective forces that lead it to ever more efficient use of the resources around them, that is not the necessary conclusion for the human in a market.
Do you wish to eliminate wealth and well-being, or do you wish to eliminate the politician’s greed?
I haven’t heard the political system yet that didn’t have severe intrinsic agency problems.
As I said before private power is a check on private power as all private entities seek out their own preferences. I will admit that there are inefficiencies that occur and that this isn’t always the case.
But, when you compare that to legislative retention rates, I think accountability isn’t a particular strong point amongst our elected representatives.
This isn’t a particularly strong one, as people anticipate, imitate, and have a basic understanding of “opportunity”.
Microsoft called. They would like to put this sentence up in the company cafeteria so that people can point and laugh.
And once again libertarians show their selective commitment to property rights. Shrieks of protest over any restrictions placed on powerful interests. Clear externalities impacting property held by everyone else…. not so much.
Even worse…f*cking Bako Representative?!
I laugh when people thing CA is so Blue. Horsepucky! The entire center is full of the RWer/TPers. The Orange Curtain and SD is full of RWers.
We are devolving in my state and in my country. Sad times.
And we’re not even talking about damaging “everyone else” collectively by polluting the commons or something. These are actual, individual property owners with identifiable, libertarian-approved property ownership rights to individual pieces of land.
The libertarian reply, since this is a proposed regulation, will be “then the other property owners should go to court to enforce their rights.” As opposed to when people go to court to enforce their rights, at which point the libertarians start complaining about frivolous lawsuits, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Waitaminute – are you saying that libertarianism is somehow not ideologically consistent??????
The hell you say!
Silly rabbit! Only the wealthy and powerful have property rights. The rest of us simply exist on sufferance.
Republicans aren’t by definition libertarian. Ron Paul isn’t one on many issues.
LIke what?
Abortion rights
Wrong.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/abortion/
Wait, never mind. I read this whole subthread wrong and thought I was making a different argument.
My mistake. I’m chalking it up to a combination of insomnia and crippling depression.
That really applies to most libertarians. See Furious Jorge above.
The unstated (by both sides) point here is that notice = lawsuits.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
Yes, definitely.
I wonder whether DOGGR would have preferred that this bill passed. The notices and mailing would have been funded by the applicant gas companies. Now, DOGGR will need to spend their own (already highly constrained) staff time responding to the near-certain wave of PRA requests.
Considering that there’s mounting evidence that fracking was responsible for several small earthquakes in Ohio, I’m wondering if CA is a great place for these types of activities.
Also, earthquakes in Arkansas.
You forget – California sliding into the ocean will be a precursor to Jesus’ return. Or something.
That’s when Jesus returns to Annandale.
You bet it’s a great place for this — fuck the current residents in the land of fruits and nuts. The real patriots of Arizona will be the big and deserving winners when California breaks off and they’ve all got beachfront property on Arizona Bay.
depending on the sea level rise, it might happen without an earthquake, I suppose
The “evidence” that fracking leads to contaminated groundwater is evaporating as fast as it gets a close look.
As for the earthquakes, that had nothing specific to do with fracking — it had to do with disposal of wastewater, which was being done in violation of existing regulations already. Net damage: a chimney and some plaster cracks.
Net gain (if you still want to blame the fracking): millions of cubic feet of inexpensive and clean fuel to heat homes, cook food, etc.
Yes, the chimney owner should ask the groundwater disposal company to pay for their chimney; likely that’s all it would take, given that a chimney is quite a bit cheaper than an hour of litigation.
The “evidence” that fracking leads to contaminated groundwater is evaporating as fast as it gets a close look.
Someday Jennie will make a factually accurate assertion. Today is not that day.
“Uh, Lisa, the whole reason we have elected officials is so we don’t have to think all the time. Just like that rainforest scare a few years back: our officials saw there was a problem and they fixed it, didn’t they?” Homer Simpson
(USA Today? Really?)
“EPA now acknowledges [...] gas wells did not contaminate groundwater.”
Neither did the EPA have the science to back up their claims that hydraulic fracturing and drilling had caused groundwater contamination in Dimock, Penn., and in Pavilion, Wyo.
Right, just like the evidence for evolution, anthropogenic global warming, comprehensive sex education, and the link between smoking and cancer.
BOOKMARK IT LIBS!
Um, what?
The evidence for evolution is quite solid. Sex education is a good thing, and the evidence supports that it reduces all kinds of problems. (It’s no more the government’s business than any other aspect of education, but that’s a different discussion.) The correlation between smoking and numerous health problems, hardly limited to cancer, is overwhelming.
The evidence for anthropogenic global warming is marginal at best, and the benefits of the activities commonly blamed for AGW overwhelmingly outweigh the externalities even if every claim of the global warming industry was supported. Your argument would have been better if you’d omitted AGW.
No. AGW is easily as well established as any of those other fields. The only opposition to it is ideological, not scientific.
JenNoir, if the evidence was so apparent, you would have bothered with a link. So we wouldn’t necessarily think you are full of crap.
[...] H/T Erik Loomis at LGM. [...]
The measure failed, 17 to 18, with several Democrats joining their Republican colleagues in opposition. It was granted “reconsideration,” meaning it could receive another hearing before Friday’s bill deadline.
Also, earthquakes in Arkansas.
—Eric Loomis
This is the dumbest thing stated in this blog. There is absolutely no evidence to support this statement.
You’d expect better from someone that’s supposed to be a smart-guy-professor-know-it-all.
We’re all disappointed.
Poor Jennie. Wrong again.
At least (s)he is consistent. I do really wish (s)he would just embrace his/her true identity and let go of the fear and self hatred.
You guys need better trolls. Maybe a Kickstarter?
Considering we just posted 100 comments on this one troll, it’s not clear to me that we really do deserve better trolls.
+1
I suppose you can’t always get what you want, as the man said.
California wingnuts are as wingnutty as they get. After November, there will likely be fewer of them in both the Lege, and Congress, as redistricting takes effect.
See, Joe – Jennie can’t help but invoke the specter of insufficiently manly people. It is his dumbprint. Jennie =/= timb.
You couldn’t even be bothered to read the post; you saw the word “fracking” and your knee jerked. Go back to troll school.
Somehow I’m not surprised to learn sticking it to environmentalists is a more important value to Anonymous than property rights are.
Amazingly enough, both the cite and the article are completely dishonest! Three (3) environmentalists were looking at natural gas as a cleaner alternative to coal and would serve as a “bridge” to cleaner energy. The Podesta article was, in fact, a shale gas article, the Kennedy thing I have no idea — he said that “natural gas” was cleaner than coal, but I might have missed his commitment to fracking.
In any event, three (3) doesn’t = “the environmental movement”, people have been turned off by fracking since 2009 because they’ve discovered what it actually does and the resources it actually uses to de-stabilize and contaminate.
And, finally, people on the left tend to disagree about things!
And is apparently done near residential property and seems to have a nasty habit of poisoning groundwater and the air around it.
I guess your attitude is, “its California, Liberal Heaven, fuck’em”.
Only when he’s posting under this name.
And yet, what could be more manly that a long-term plan to deindustrialize the country? After all, Romney has been busily deindustrializing everything he could get his hands on all his adult life, and he is the epitome of manliness, as I’m sure Anonytroll will tell us.
And yeah, much as I long for a unified theory of trolling, I don’t think we can conclude that everyone who says something foolish on this site is this guy.
You have a much higher opinion of Annonytroll’s abilities than I do. You really think he is creating multiple personas and is able to keep track of them and which nyms to use?
Nope. This obsession bleeds through. Always. Anony can’t stop with the fag jokes, the less said about manly man “Guy Noir”, let alone “Jennifer Steel” the better, whatever name the cracker used to complain about uppity blacks voting yesterday – they all have masculinity compensation issues. Always. Subtext will always become text, and quickly.
Yea, I’m still pissed that lawyers got paid to stop the Ford Pinto from exploding. The market was gonna fix that on its own, amirite?
Shocking that Anonytroll doesn’t know the difference between general civil and writ litigation.
So if the relaying of information would cause a lawsuit, it should not be done? If a hit and run driver ran you over, and I got the license plate number, I shouldn’t tell you because it would make money for a trial lawyer?
You certainly don’t understand the economics of the legal profession.
The big payoffs are either contingent fees or big hourly rates from rich clients.
Give the neighbors advance notice, and they’ll sue for an injuction. That can’t be done on a contingent fee, because the recovery is nonmonetary. And, unless the neighbors are millionaires, the hourly rate for such a case has to be relatively low–the thousand-dollars-an-hour litigators won’t be invovled in such a case except for the defense, because the plaintiffs won’t be able to afford them.
Don’t give them advanced notice, and suit will have to be for money damages after the fact–contingent fee time.
The Sierra Club was originally open to fracking as a bridge fuel away from coal. Which is happening. But they’ve received a lot of pushback from their membership on this so they’ve backed away from the method, especially in the face of the increasingly obvious problems it causes.
WE DO NOT!
I’ll kick your ass!
You keep referring to fracking and natural gas as if they were the same thing. They’re not. The drill is not the oil, and the shovel is not the dirt.
WTF? If I have a wind generator and or/solar panels on my house, I can say fuck you to any central authority, ’cause I can generate my own electricity. Seems to me that it’s more of a threat to the power company than to “centralized authority.” But I know that big business=good authority and govt= bad authority to whatever political ideology you owe allegiance to.
One more try (my two earlier posts got trapped in moderation). Ridiculous stories like this? Troll need to consult reliable sources rather than RedState and his copious and tightly clinched ass.
“solar and wind that must be rationed by a central authority”
Huh? Solar will probably end up on the roof of every house, liberating all of us from centralized control. How, pray tell, do we get more freedom by buying gas from a monopolistic owner of underground pipes? On what planet?
He screws up the names sometimes. He did in a recent sub-thread in the Scott Walker recall post.
JenBob screws up names all the time. That’s why the consistent link to a blog by TK421, and a consistent personality for timb, mean that neither of them are Jennie.
You should shut up and mind your own business is what you should do. Fuckin’ do-gooder, don’t want your stupid help.
No. You should follow the hit and run driver, being sure to follow exactly in his tracks.
Shorter Jennie: I just can’t read.
Lawyers — The last line of defense against an abusive government and greedy corporations.
What I always love about the “trial lawyers” thing is that right-wingers have no problem at all with incredibly wealthy and greedy corporate lawyers going to trial to protect corporate interests. “Trial lawyers” are by definition Democrats and therefore must be destroyed.
I dunno, you’re the rightwing troll, what about it?
Are you actually losing your mind, right here in the comment thread? I used to think your comments were just hilariously dumb, but now I feel like I’m watching your mind turning on itself. Watching someone visibly descend into madness is an uncomfortable feeling. Don’t you have some family you can call and talk things over with?
Right. Because earthquakes are a totally unknown phenomenon in California and therefore a complete left-wing shibboleth.
9-11 was an inside job!
I agree with Mal, JenBob’s emasculated existence is obviously an obsession, and the over-compensation is his signature.
This just in: Anonytroll’s real identity is Douglas J. Feith.
source: itsobvious.com
Dude, you’re a nut. This is “Eisenhower is a Communist”-level nuttery.
They want us to go back to the early 18th Century at the latest
Even if true, that would be 400 years later than the Talevangicals are shooting for. Plus, the Age of Sail! Once again, even the caricature of liberals is an improvement over conservative policies.
Won’t “deindustrialization” force us to go back to a much manlier way of life? Dare I say, a very un-weenie way of life? I mean, without fracking surely we will have to grow and harvest our own crops, hunt and kill our own food, tailor our own clothes, make our own tools. Like they did in the 18th century. You know who else lived in the 18th century? The Founding Fathers! Why, exactly, do you hate America?
I’d say more of a dumbass, and this is “liberals are the true fascists” level stupidity.
JenBob sounds more and more like the Donalde with each passing day, doesn’t he?
AnonyJenBob’s comments are pretty consistent with the wingtard email forwards that turn up in my inbox periodically — someone on some list somewhere thinks I’m someone I’m not.
When was natural gas expensive?
Fracking is what makes natural gas so cheap and abundant. As long as natural gas was expensive, Enviros loved it!
No, the price of natural gas has risen until the expensive process of frackign has (maybe) beecome economical
I think we just legally decree à la North Carolina that fracking doesn’t causes earthquakes. Problem solved.
http://www.bestviral.com/video/3532/george_washington_song
Why, we’d have to grow our own natural gas, just like Republican Jesus intended!
Given that this reply is to JenBob, you could have followed “You certainly don’t understand” with literally any subject, and you would still be correct.
Where does Erik blame Republicans in the post? So how is it relevant if some Dems also opposed the bill?
According to the wiki, there are 14 Rs in the Calif Senate. The final vote was 18-17 against. Four Ds jumped the aisle. Therefore, bipartisan!
Not actually funny. Trolls should be starved or stockaded, not run over.
Also, there’s a chance that it’s actually a paid troll, in which case that’s 29 cents that’s not going to actual harmful Kochtopus activities, ie, a net good.
I stand on the left more than anyone, and I always agree.
so was 1906
If you can push the externalities off onto the adjacent landholders, then sure, it’s economically viable.
Ah, wingtards, always failing basic law, basic economics, and basic law and economics.
The wingtards were always my worst students when I taught econ. Without exception.
Obviously, the government will build a large, elevated sun-blocking disc to prevent us from getting off of Big Electric’s teat.
“Malaclypse” = Mal-cop-LIPS
It doesn’t get any GAYER than this.
How does it feel, Suzie?
or think
“
Trial lawyersCOMMUNISTS” are by definition Democrats and therefore must be destroyed.Fixed that for ya’
I’m pretty sure most twelve year olds these days have gotten past the point of moronically calling people “gay” as some sort of insult. But for whatever reason, the troll is absolutely dead-set on revealing all its neuroses to the world.
Subtext becoming text again, Jennie. You seem rather compelled. Driven, even.
Someone doesn’t understand communism….
or English, logic, decency, or basic humanity
29c ? have they raised the pay again?
Monty Burns for President!