Fracking Shills for Hire – Energy in Depth
January 13, 2012
Clarification of Home Rule will help communities preserve our NYS constitutional rights of municipal self government. Without protections, the gas industry just keeps coming at us with their annual 100+ million dollar PR & lobbying budgets.
January 12, 2012
Clarification of Home Rule will help communities preserve our NYS constitutional rights of municipal self government.
Without protections, the gas industry just keeps coming at us with their annual 100+ million dollar PR & lobbying budgets.
I hope some points I make in this letter can help a wider audience. My Letter to the Editor was just published in today’s (1/12/12) FREEMAN’S JOURNAL.
John Kosmer
Sustainable Otsego
Otsego County Rep, District 8 (Cooperstown & the Town of Otsego)
They Lie, Cheat, Steal
JOHN KOSMER –
Otsego County Rep, District 8
During “privilege of the floor” at my first Otsego County Board meeting, open to anyone wishing to speak, I witnessed a food fight over considering a resolution supporting Sen Seward’s Home Rule clarification bill. The pro-gassers offered up red herring and baloney. The anti frackers offered up organic home grown food, yogurt and beer.
The red herring was the claim of “unintended consequences” in other commerce areas, when the bill actually applies solely to mineral extraction. The baloney was that passing it would send the message NYS was “closed to business.” Chip Northrup, a Texas oil man who summers here emailed me countering, “All of the major O&G producing states – notably Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado are Home Rule states.” Clearly those states are “open for business.”
Anti-frackers offered organic food as a growth industry dependent on clean water. They also offered the job expansions of Chobani and Ommegang, dependent on clean water for beer and uncontaminated grazing fields to provide milk for Yogurt.
Pro-gassers do not understand that the gas industry is like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. It eats everything. It eats the good guys. It eats the bad guys. Pro-gassers will not be spared. The gas industry won’t deal with them. Gas companies want leases for next to nothing and simply want enough leased acreage to compulsory integrate the adjoining acreage without paying any sign-on bonuses.
Simply put, the gas industry lies, cheats and steals. It lies like it did in the Traverse City, MI area, where it promised sign-on bonuses per acre to those willing to lease, then walked away after drilling a dry hole without paying a cent. It cheats as a successful class action lawsuit in Virginia demonstrated where they shorted lease holders the full amount of gas royalties they were due. It steals as it does in 5 year leases they signed with landholders that actually have clauses that allow them to keep the mineral rights forever.
Clarification of Home Rule will help communities preserve our NYS constitutional rights of municipal self government. Without protections, the gas industry just keeps coming at us with their annual 100+ million dollar PR & lobbying budgets.
Cortland County Poll on Hydrofracking Supports Local Control
January 10, 2012
GDACC 
