Posts Tagged → fracking
“The Elites Have Revolted and Are In a State of World War Against Us”
Today we host Tom Shepstone as a guest here. His essay below is a well written aggregation of some of the different things I myself have written here over the years, and also things which other much better known commenters than either Tom or I have said and written. If I recall right, it was radio show host Mark Levin who first pointed out that the elites are in full revolt against the people. What Tom has done is pull a bunch of these related threads together for a coherent appeal to moderate American voters: If you like your civilization, and you want to keep your civilization, you must vote for the one person who will protect your civilization.
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The Elites Have Revolted and Are In a State of World War Against Us
By Thomas J. Shepstone
Every day there’s further evidence global elites are at war with the people. Western Civilization has periodically been the exception to the rule that the people ordinarily live as serfs in totalitarianism nations dominated by the elites. Those times when the people have actually had a role in governing themselves have been relatively few, in fact, over the centuries. The signing of the Magna Carta by King John giving up some of his rights to lesser nobles was such a moment. The American Revolution was another. Sooner or later, though, the elites claw back their power as the people are conned into giving them a bit of it back only to see the inch given turn into miles and miles.
This process of decay has reached to the very core of Western Civilization at our present point. Free speech is evaporating like a dragster taking off for the hay bales at the end of the strip. Rumble has been banned in France and X chased out of Brazil. The developer and CEO of Telegram has been arrested for not cooperating with government. The UK is jailing people for Facebook posts challenging the government narrative and has threatened to extradite Elon Musk for allowing the same thing. The Biden-Harris administration bullied Twitter into downplaying the significance of the Hunter Biden hard drive during a political campaign.
The mainstream media has allied itself with totally corrupt CIA and FBI agencies. Politicians lie with abandon and tell ever bigger lies with straight faces. The heads of other Federal agencies such as Homeland Security and the Department of Justice make flat out false assertions with no embarrassment whatsoever. The Attorney General [Merrick Garland] refuses to pursue perpetrators of violence against pro-life centers but is willing to put grandmothers in jail for praying outside abortion mills. The main bodies of both political parties have joined forces as a uni-party focused on special privileges for themselves as they bankrupt the country. The President and a Vice-Presidential nominee both appear to be all but Chinese Communist Party agents.
The rot simply cannot be denied. Oh, it’s always been there. Woodrow Wilson was a vicious racist who reduced free speech to whispers and even Lincoln arbitrarily took away many basic rights but those were war-time situations and temporary. There was also corruption with the Teapot Dome scandal, Alger Hiss and so many other cases, but it’s never been as deep and widespread as today. France’s Macron refuses to leave office despite being massively defeated in the recent election. The UK’s new leader replaced one never elected and the new one is more aligned with the World Economic Forum than his own country.
The elites are in full revolt — world war, if you will — against us. They are stealing elections now but hope to end them soon. They are pushing self-appointed world government on every front with phony campaigns against ‘malinformation’ (their invented word for accurate information opposed to the government narrative), proposals for digital currencies, 15-minute cities, health care dictatorships and so much more. It’s all in the name of control, control and more control and it’s mushrooming like crazy.
What can we do about it, short of another dangerous and counterproductive French Revolution like the one two centuries ago that ended up consuming the advocates of revolution? Well, the first thing it seems to me, despite my gloomy observations above, is not to despair. There are reasons to hope after all. It is clear, for example, there is worldwide revulsion of the elites who are currently running our institutions not only of government, but everything else that matters as well. There is also a realignment of some nature taking place.
The new divisions are ever less of a left vs. right nature and more a matter of the elite establishment vs. versus anti-establishment commoners, insane folks who wish to destroy the family vs. normal people who recognize it as the building block for any civilization, and wannabe masters of the universe vs. freedom lovers. Each of these divisions is important because they clarify what the problem is and what must be remedied, which can only happen if we talk to each other and abide our differences. Reforming or abandoning corrupt institutions so as to realign on principles are the only ways that can happen.
That’s how I see what’s happening in the political realm these days. The RFK, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard endorsements of Trump are indicative of what I’m talking about. I strongly disagree with both on certain matters, especially on abortion and, in Kennedy’s case also on climate and energy matters. Yet, look what’s happened. Bobby, Jr. unforgivably helped killed fracking in New York. He once stated, too, that he wanted to jail ‘climate deniers.”
But, in recent speeches and interviews, Kennedy has attacked the billionaire green grifter class sucking up all our money on wasteful green boondoggles. How can we possibly disagree? He also went after Anthony Fauci in a way no else was capable of doing. And, he has defended free speech like a lion. He came to Trump because he had no other principled choice, and so it must be with us. We need to unite with one-time enemies where we can and destroy the old divisions on the way to restoring Western Civilization.
Notwithstanding all this, elections, while mattering greatly, won’t save us by themselves. No one individual can do it and events always intervene, making it extraordinarily difficult in the situation we face, which is a world war of entrenched special interests against those of us who would ask questions. Yet, individuals of principle do make a difference, so it falls on all of us to live by our principles. Chief among them are life, liberty and truth-telling, all of which rest on a foundation of free speech and the elite troops arrayed against are making simultaneous major assaults on this principle on every front.
Free speech is the prerequisite of any truly functioning democratic republic, despite the disingenuous wails of the left suggesting that democracy is threatened by it. They want to separate good speech from bad, but don’t tell us they plan to be the arbiters of what is good and bad. And, what they mean by democracy is anything but the vote of the people. No, what they mean by democracy is no more than the institutions they now control, whether they be government agencies or electoral bodies. They aim to kill true democracy, as in “the will of the people,” to save their captured form of it.
Their so-named democracy lives by lies and, therefore, can tolerate no truth telling. The only way they know to stop others from speaking truth to power is smother it by throwing a wet blanket over all speech on the excuse that some of it’s bad. Free speech, though, has no such distinctions. It is mixture of good and bad and it’s only by comparing the two that free people get to make up their minds. The antidote to bad speech in the eyes of the beholders is always more speech. Even if ends in both sides calling each other liars, those observing the debate get to decide where the truth really lies. That is true democracy. All speech must be protected or there is no speech for any of us.
We will not turn back the elite troops attacking us without free speech. If we do not insist upon it, we are doomed. We will be forced to live in city colonies and give up our right to travel. We’ll be forced to subsidize the lives of elites by paying for unreliable and pricey energy systems that make no sense but fatten the wallets of grifters. We’ll lose the right to farm, to possess our own homes, to vote and to live in a nation of our own making. We will revert to a feudal society.
Let’s all remember this when we vote. Let’s vote like our very lives depend upon it, because they do, but more than that we all owe it to ourselves and each other to speak up and challenge each other. That means getting on social media, becoming activists and talking with others, especially with whom we disagree. There can be no running away from argument.
That doesn’t mean making everything political or acting hostile. No, it simply means engaging others in a civil way. We must cross the divides and ask questions…lots of questions so those aligned against us might understand us better and vice versa with a view toward identifying areas of agreement. We will not win the war against the elites without making friends of some of our enemies. And, we will not wrestle the beast we have created to the ground alone.
#Elites #FreeSpeech #WesternCiviization #Democracy
There is hope: Dinosaurs on the river
One of the reasons I object so strenuously to the fake climate alarmism nonsense is that it not only takes away attention and energy from real, measurable environmental problems, it also is so transparently fake and ridiculous that more and more Americans are beginning to doubt the entire environmental quality cause with which “climate change” is unjustifiably included.
When the public is lied to for five decades, told that the climate sky is falling, and that we have only five more years until… pick your fake end-of-times flooding, crop failure, too hot, too cold, end of oil, end of natural gas etc… and those predictions do not play out, then that public becomes weary and suspicious about everything the climate alarmists say, including the very real problems like loss of farmland, forest fragmentation, invasive bugs and plants, loss of wildlife habitat, loss of wild places. And that is bad, because Americans do need to maintain environmental quality, and improve it where needed. If we lose public support for true environmental problems that have real world solutions, then we will truly and needlessly suffer in the end.
Aside from being wrong about literally everything they claim and then demand, one of the other problems with climate alarmists is that they assume and promote a view of nature as steady state. That is, Nature never changes, it is always a Garden of Eden, except for human intervention. And when humans make mistakes or act greedily, climate alarmists say massive government intervention is needed, to the point where Western Civilization must be turned on its head, democracy must be canceled (for our own good, of course), and government bureaucrats must be in charge of every choice and decision we now make (we can’t be trusted to make “the right” choice). This is yet more nonsense, for the simple reason that Nature heals itself naturally.
How else does Nature recover from natural catastrophes like explosive and polluting volcanoes, floods, huge fires, meteor strikes, tornados etc? Well, Nature abhors a vacuum, and where a gap exists in Nature, some animal and some plant will adapt to exploit it and make room to live and grow in it. Even if the prior plant or animal can no longer live there.
In 2006 something very bad and mysterious was suddenly happening to the Susquehanna River. A hard-fighting smallmouth bass fishery so good (100-200 fish per day per fisherman) that fishermen came from all around the world to fish (and spend the night and spend their money locally) from Sunbury down to the Conowingo Dam in Maryland, was suddenly gone. Vanished. And gone along with the vanished smallmouth bass were the big predacious muskellunge, brown trout from the feeder stream mouths, largemouth bass, fallfish, sunfish, redeye, and shad.
Within just a few years a highly tangible and visible environmental catastrophe had revealed itself as a long stretch of the Susquehanna River literally went belly up and died. Native aquatic insects, the backbone of all life in the water there, disappeared. Up until 2005, you could stand on a late summer afternoon in Harrisburg along the Front Street Greenbelt walk and watch as the entire river surface practically boiled with dimples from rising fish eating hatching mayflies, caddis flies, and stone flies. In 2006 that whole activity ceased. Literally everything in the river died, and it still has not come back.
Long story short, what caused the demise of the Susquehanna River was a perfect storm of every bad thing that could happen to any waterway anywhere. If it could go wrong for the Susquehanna, it did go wrong in just a few short years, and the sum total was a total unmitigated shock and detonation of the waterway.
Several years of drought and unusually warm summers led to unusually low water flows, which left fish exposed and with no where to hide from predators. The over-heated water then developed algae blooms that robbed the water of its oxygen, suffocating fish and prey crustaceans like crayfish. When large summer thunderstorms happened, they overwhelmed and drowned the many community sewage treatment plants along the river, resulting in “Combined Sewage Overflows” up and down the river. These huge torrents of raw, untreated, undecomposed human filth blasted into the low, warm river water. There was no dilution of the mess, because the river was too low and too slow. One can only imagine that the conditions then were ripe for that human excrement to sit in still waters and become a feast for bacteria, which attacked the few surviving fish and left them with open wound lesions. Then viruses appeared, apparently rejoicing in the poor conditions, further attacking the remaining fish. Finally, when Pennsylvania’s shale gas boom started in 2006, there were some documented and suspected incidents of “midnight dumping”, where large tanker trucks filled with well brine or frack water were illegally unloaded into waterways that, of course, went into the Susquehanna River.
With the demise of the river’s fish, native grasses and watercress, the birds that migrated to, lived on, and migrated down the river, had nothing to eat. They also disappeared. Hundreds of egrets and herons, and huge rafts of ducks and geese used to grace the shores and skies above the river around Harrisburg on any given summer or Fall day. Not any more.
In 2005 one of America’s largest Great Egret rookeries flourished on the islands in the Harrisburg Archipelago across from Harrisburg City. My fishing buddy Ed Weintraub and I used to wade half a mile out to fish among the archipelago’s islands, and marvel at the hundreds of these gigantic pterodactyl-looking birds and their enormous nests. The place sounded like what a Jurassic jungle must have been like, with loud screams, cries, grunts, groans, and other weird sounds from the huge birds and their babies assembled in that relatively small place. All the boulders jutting out of the river were coated in bright white bird dookie, as were the trees. The entire place stank to high heaven of rotting fish. It was a natural marvel of human-Mother Nature coexistence that reflected the incredible environmental diversity and health of the waterway, despite it being surrounded by huge train yards and human communities. This all was also eventually lost to whatever was ailing the river.
In 2011, while kayaking and wading the unnaturally smelly river in Harrisburg, I contracted MRSA in a tiny scratch on my leg, and then spent four days on a drip IV in a hospital, successfully avoiding the loss of my leg. The river was deader than a doornail and I almost joined it.
Last week two of us took a nice long canoe trip down river, my first in years, to see how the river has changed. We see a few bass fishermen now, local catfish guides brag about sixty-pounders, and walleye boats are out every day. Something in the river must be improved. It seems to be healing, but it is nowhere near where it was twenty years ago. I know that the West Branch of the Susquehanna is greatly improved from twenty years ago, when acid mine drainage turned its waters an unnatural turquoise blue. Now those old mines are washed out by the subterranean springs that first unleashed the mines’ acid, and the cold water is now clean and actually improving the West Branch.
Large bass and catfish -a more rugged critter filling the void left by the formerly numerous smallmouth bass- scurried out of our shadow, and as we approached the Harrisburg Archipelago, we began to see Great Egrets wading around the upstream islands. Lots of them. A juvenile bald eagle patrolled above. We paddled around and through the Archipelago and were surrounded by cormorants (a federally protected pest), mallards, wood ducks, turtles, a snake, and lots of nesting Great Egrets.
The dinosaurs were back on the islands and so were my hopes for a comeback by the river. No metaphysical cataclysmic environmental or political catastrophes were required for Mother Nature to bounce back. She always does, and she always will, despite what the Al Gore type fakirs predict.
The Rockville Bridge is the longest stone arch bridge still in use in the world. I think it is longer than the Glenfinnan Viaduct in Fort William, Scotland, which I have ridden over in a train. The Susquehanna River is slowly recovering from the many things that ailed her, and is now a delight to experience.
Court testimony proves criticism of Corbett natural gas policy is partisan, unfair
If you have been following the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Fund lawsuit against the Commonwealth, over its natural gas policies on public lands, then you’ve no doubt been reading the testimony of former political appointees from the Pa Gov. Ed Rendell administration.
The lawsuit is being ably reported in the Patriot News.
Former DCNR secretaries DiBerardinis and Quigley have testified that their boss, Governor Ed Rendell, was the one who dropped the natural gas extraction bomb on the State Forests in his gluttonous rush to gain as much money as he could to fund his wild history-making over-spending.
I won’t bother to repeat their testimony here, but it is not pleasant. They are not covering up for their former boss. Instead, they are laying it all out there, describing how the public interest was subverted by greed and political malfeasance. These are two good men, devoted to the public interest. Kudos to them.
Here’s the thing: Rendell is a Democrat.
Here’s the thing: Then, and now, Rendell was not roundly criticized for his public land gas drilling policies by the very environmental groups who represent themselves to the public to be non-partisan, fair-minded, honest brokers on environmental policy and issues.
Instead, in extreme contrast, since even before his first day in office, Governor Tom Corbett has been vilified, excoriated, badmouthed, cussed, maligned, and blamed for everything that is wrong, and right, with the public policies he inherited from the Rendell Administration.
And this gets to the point here: A lot of the heat that is created around environmental policy issues is accompanied by very little light. That is because most environmental issues are innately politicized, and partisan, before a valuable discussion about their merits can be had, in the public interest.
In other words, the by-now old narrative goes like this: Republicans always stink on green issues, and Democrats are always blameless little innocent blinking-eyed babes on environmental issues, even when they are wearing the red devil suit and sticking Satan’s trident deep into the public’s back.
In the interest of good policy, this partisanship must end. The mainstream media, run by liberals, is only too happy to carry on this unfair, inaccurate narrative. But conservatives can overcome that if only they will cease ceding the battlefield to the partisan groups who roam it at will.
Instead of cavalierly writing off everyone who cares about environmental quality as an “environmental whacko,” which is the standard conservative reaction, and it is wrong, recognize that environmental quality is important, but what is also important is how one goes about achieving that goal. This critical policy nuance seems to be lost on most conservatives.
Also, call out the Statists/ Socialists who mis-use environmental policy as a means to achieve their larger Marxist goals of wealth redistribution. These people are not ‘environmental whackos’, they are anti-American socialists who have hijacked an important issue and commandeered it to suit their larger purposes.
Want to win? Want good government? Want fair coverage of political issues? Then fight back! Meet these folks on their own battlefield, and defeat them using good policy that is grounded in science and public-interest goals. The Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Fund lawsuit court room testimony is an excellent place to begin this fight. It is loaded with ammunition in the interest of honesty, accuracy, and fairness.
Disconnect between Democrat chiefs and braves on gas drilling
Interesting wrinkle hasn’t really bubbled up yet into the governor campaign. That is the odd policy adopted a month ago among state Democratic leaders to embrace a gas drilling moratorium.
While to my knowledge none of the Democratic candidates for governor have embraced this policy, only one that I know of has strongly repudiated it. That’s John Hanger.
Hanger recently wrote that “if you support environmental quality, you support gas drilling.”
While Hanger’s polling numbers are on the radar but low among a field of candidates so large that it looks like a Hubble photo of some huge constellation, his prospects are looking better and better. By hewing to a moderate, common sense set of policy positions, Hanger is increasing gathering followers. My understanding is that Hanger does not support more gun control, which is my litmus test for a serious candidate in either party.
Natural gas is about the only thing going on in Pennsylvania right now. And for the future, too. Prospective leaders like John Hanger get my respect for acknowledging that and not playing to fake fears.
Do you believe in your private property rights?
Isn’t it intriguing that the establishment wings of both the Democrats and the Republicans believe that your private property rights are actually theirs?
Several weeks ago, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party took a position on natural gas drilling in deep shales, saying that a moratorium on “fracking” is needed. That adds up to the government taking away from you the right and ability to develop a resource on your property, without compensating you and without demonstrating good cause.
When I inquired of a bewildered Democratic operative whether or not the proposed fracking moratorium would include nitrogen, or be limited to just water, he said “I don’t know, I don’t know. I cannot believe they did this. It makes no sense.” To be sure, it’s an indefensible and politically suicidal position. Unsurprisingly, I don’t believe any of the Democrat gubernatorial candidates have adopted this fatally flawed position.
This week, Republican Governor Tom Corbett signed into law a bill that, aside from two deadly sentences, was an otherwise fine solution to a lot of outstanding, unresolved problems associated with deep gas extraction.
Two deadly sentences are an issue, however, because they basically strip landowners\ oil, gas and mineral owners of their ability to negotiate new leases when the prior one has ended. The new law is a theft from you and a gift to a select industry. Gas is a good and necessary industry, for sure, but no more deserving of a free ride on someone else’s dime than you or I.
The arguments made in favor of what I would call ‘forced apportionment’ were ridiculous and laughable, except that so many private property rights have just been in effect taken and handed over to industry, so it is not funny. Apportionment is a term never used before in Pennsylvania OGM, and the 11th-hour two-sentence amendment to the bill lacks a definition of it. Surprise, surprise.
The worst argument is that by being forced into a “pool” of landowners, basically a fragmented production unit, this new law is guaranteeing that landowners will get paid (!). The state minimum payment, by the way. Never mind that you are due that payment already, and you’d prefer to renegotiate an expired lease on your own, thank you very much.
My sense is that these two sentences could cost Governor Tom Corbett his governorship and several lawmakers their seats. State representative Garth Everett and state senator Gene Yaw were the sponsors of the two sentences. Both are from Lycoming County, a place where private property rights are still held dearly and natural gas is plentiful.
How sad that the establishment wing of the Republican Party is so close to the Democrats that they adopt policies that are practically the same….
Next up, the courts will undoubtedly weigh in on this new law. Let’s hope they save the Republicans from themselves.