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The demonization of Pennsylvania’s biggest industrial phenomenon in the last 50 years continues. This time, it’s not just hyperventilating environmentalists getting into the act, it’s gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato (D):

First the thuggery…

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dan Onorato says he’d pressure natural gas drilling companies to hire Pennsylvania residents by threatening to withhold state drilling permits.

snip…

Onorato says he’d be justified to use permits as leverage, arguing, “I think all governors apply pressure on every industry. The whole idea of being governor is you try to bring jobs and improve the economy of your state. We have a golden opportunity here, with the Marcellus Shale find. But we get one chance to get it right.”

The problem is, Onorato’s idea isn’t legal. “It’s not what we do,” says Governor Rendell. “And you might be able to do that, but you’d probably have to change some regulations or get some legislation.”

OK–when Ed Rendell suggests to you that something is illegal, that should be your signal to back away slowly and not make any sudden moves.

Actually, this is a real shame. I like Onorato and have even had some personal dealings with him where I thought he was both fair and open-minded. This kind of thing is, frankly, beneath him, and is exactly the kind of sleazy crap that everybody’s sick of.

Now on to the hype. The P-G never disappoints. From Saturday’s letters to the editor, we get this gem:

The Marcellus Shale drilling plans of the carpetbagger natural gas interests are going to create disasters for many Pennsylvania communities.

Our most precious water supplies are being totally put at risk. Pennsylvania politicians sit idly by, doing nothing to stop this attack upon our commonwealth.

It is not a matter if such disasters occur, but when and how many times.

The promise of economic benefit to Pennsylvanians is only a pipe dream to mollify those who think such financial gain would justify the ecological risks.

Come on, people, wake up! Get our state politicos to get with it and put a complete halt to this; otherwise thousands of Pennsylvanians will have to deal with poisoned water supplies.

This is the Silent Spring of the 2010 decade !

AH HA! AH HA!! THE MARCELLUS SHALE PEOPLE ARE POISONING OUR WATER AND AIR AND SUNSHINE! AND THEY’RE ATTACKING US! ATTACKING US WITH JOBS! WOO-HOO! WOO-HOO! I’M CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS!

For the love of Pete man, calm down. Zoloft. Seriously. Like 50 mg is all you need. It’s heaven in a little pill.

What amazes me is the accusations of “carpetbagging” that are thrown at natural gas drillers. First of all, has anyone actually looked to see how many jobs are out there because of natural gas drilling? A quick search on indeed.com lists about four pages of natural-gas related jobs in Pennsylvania posted by one company in the last 30 days. And has anyone ever stopped to think about Pennsylvania’s long history of oil and gas drilling? Perhaps if we hadn’t driven all those jobs away to places like Texas, we would still have people living in Pennsylvania who know how to drill.

And finally, reason. Also from Saturday’s P-G:

The Environmental Protection Agency recently held a meeting at Southpointe in Washington County to receive public testimony on the possible negative effects of hydraulic fracturing on fresh water. I spoke and was received with a chorus of boos from the crowd because I presented a factually based argument in support of hydraulic fracturing.

Based on my own research, more than 48,000 wells have been hydraulically fractured to date in Pennsylvania. Other studies have estimated that more than 1 million wells have been fracked throughout the United States since 1960. Yet not one case of fresh water pollution by hydraulic fracturing has been documented. This is a large enough database to conclude that it is highly unlikely that any future contamination will occur.

Physics also dictates that fractures created at depth do not reach the water table, which has been verified in lab and field tests. Upward growth of induced fractures cannot reach above about 2,000 feet in depth — approximately 1,500 feet below the deepest fresh water. Below 2,000 feet, fractures in the Appalachian Basin for geological reasons are propagated vertically in a general northeast-southwest direction. Above 2,000 feet, the basin’s geological characteristics stop fractures by forcing them to move horizontally.

It is physically impossible to force a vertical fracture upward from the Marcellus Shale to shallow fresh water layers. And no matter how hard anti-Marcellus zealots try to connect hydraulic fracturing to the contamination of fresh water, they won’t be able to do so unless they repeal the laws of physics.

GREGORY WRIGHTSTONE
McCandless
The writer is a petroleum geologist

Holy crap! These are actual facts based on real science articulated by someone who has a background in the subject! Sanity–so refreshing ™.

As an aside, I’ve met Greg Wrightstone, and he is a terrific guy. He heads up an organization called the Pennsylvania Coalition for Responsible Government. Check it out.

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Actually, I hate to call it a debate since its really more like a tantrum. As usual, we have the enviro-socialists on one side screaming about how the Marcellus Shale WILL KILL US ALL! and on the other side we have the rest of us who sense that we are witnessing the rebirth of industry in a State whose glory days were thought to be past. Yes, I understand that there can be impacts both to the environment and the communities where gas drilling takes place if these drilling companies mismanage their wells. I also know that we have plenty of laws on the books which require industry–any industry–to minimize its environmental impacts and which hold industries liable when they don’t. The idea that drilling in the Marcellus Shale is unregulated is a myth.

Leave it to the folks in Bradford, where they’ve been producing energy for over a century, to inject reason into the debate.

Is it, or isn’t it?

But we need to know, before we create an environmental disaster. Or nearly as bad, stifle an industry that can replace imported oil and power our vehicles and heat our homes, and bring a certain amount of prosperity to an area where there has never been prosperity since the big timber harvesting days of the early 1900′s.

Amen. Let’s get the facts. And while we’re at it, let’s examine the motives of the players. I think we can safely assume that the drilling companies are motivated by profit. Being a capitalist, I think that’s great. The reason I think it’s great is that the profit motive keeps the drilling companies from doing all the things that the enviro-socialists accuse them of doing: polluting waterways, damaging wildlife, building unsafe wells, and so on. Companies that do that be liable for clean-up costs and civil penalties that will make a healthy dent in their profit. Do it too many times and there will be no profit to speak of and the company will fold. Fine by me.

On the other hand, what are the motives of the enviro-socialists? It isn’t “sustainability” and it isn’t for industry to be “good neighbors”. It’s control. Consider that nothing is good enough when it comes to regulation. We have literally thousands of pages of regulations on the books, and still they are not enough. We need more more more. More regulations on dissolved solids, more taxes, more permits, more everything. Also consider that the enviro-socialists do not seek to educate; they seek to inflame and frighten. I dare you to read the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for one week and not see a letter to the editor calling for regulation, taxes, or an outright ban on Marcellus drilling. If you don’t find a letter like that you will certainly find one that accuses these drillers of wantonly visiting environmental and social destruction upon the landscape. It’s slander, and in a just world these environmental groups would be called to account in a court of law.

It is time for all of us to have a mature conversation about where we are in post-industrial America in the 21st Century. It is a fact that industry does impact the environment, our communities, and our lifestyles in ways that we do not like. We have noise, pollution, traffic, and inconvenience aplenty all thanks to our local power plant, water utility, chemical plant, or steel mill. But we also have a high standard of living, a long life expectancy, and a clean environment because the goods we produce in those same industrial plants generate the money that allows us to afford those things. Do you know how much it costs to install a sulfur dioxide scrubber on a power plant? A lot. Yet we can still afford cheap electricity. Contrast that with the Chinese who have no idea how much one of those scrubbers costs because they don’t have to install them. Instead, people walk around Beijing with masks on to filter out the pollution. Remember the ‘08 Olympics?

Equally important are the the secondary benefits of our industrialized economy. We have cheap reliable energy which allows us to have things like the most advanced healthcare in the world. Solar power is fine, but how would you feel knowing the hospital where you’re having open-heart surgery can only keep the lights on on sunny days? If you’re life depends on getting from your hospital in Philly or Pittsburgh to one in New York or Cleveland, you want to be sure the helicopter can gas up and go, right? Or would you rather there be a shortage of fuel because there aren’t enough oil refineries left to produce a sufficient supply at a reasonable price?

These are the conversations we ought to be having because these are things that might come to pass. It is my firm belief that the enviro-socialists and all their fellow travelers on the left want to control every aspect of our lives. They mean to make themselves our rulers before we figure out what is going on. So open your eyes and fight back. The people in Bradford have figured it out. The rest of us can, too.

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Obama And More Offshore Drilling: The Opportunity Of A Lifetime

They say timing is everything.      

And they are right.

If not for perfect timing, and a near impossible confluence of events, Barack Obama would most certainly not be President.

But he is, and once again, timing has played a huge role in his life.

The question now is whether he possesses true leadership — the internal fire that pushes a man to do great things against almost impossible odds — to turn the largest environmental disaster in American history into one of the greatest opportunities ever to come before a President.

Will Obama have the strength and will to seize this opportunity? If so, he will, more than any other President, free this nation of its dependency on foreign oil, bolster the economy and substantially increase our national security.

*****

The BP oil spill has had tragic consequences, but none greater than the calls to stop drilling, and instead concentrate on “alternative” energy sources.

That would be a huge mistake.

As Freindly Fire noted in a 2008 column:

“Investing in alternative energy is important, to be sure…wind, hydro and solar power initiatives are key, as are battery and electric powered vehicles and machinery. But many of these technologies will require trillions of both public and private funding, and realistically, all are many years away from making a substantial difference. They are all longer-term solutions, and, to be honest, are unproven in how effective their widespread use will be….”

Fact is, we live in something called The Real World, where a tremendous amount of oil is used, with more and more consumed every year. That won’t change, period.

So while “green” solutions are nice, black gold still rules the day.

The quicker we recognize that and focus our primary energies on domestic oil production, the better off we’ll be.

*****

Which national leader innately understands this? 

Would it be the oilman George W. Bush or his Halliburton-affiliated sidekick Dick Cheyney?  Or is it the patriarch of the Bush family, George Herbert Walker Bush?

None of the above.

Ironically, it is Barack Obama.

*****

The elder Bush signed the moratorium on offshore drilling.  His son left it in place for SEVEN years, despite having sizable majorities in both Houses of Congress.  Only after fuel costs skyrocketed to over $4.50/gallon did W. call for the lifting of the moratorium.

Too little, too late. And it never happened.

What could have prevented those crippling spikes at the pump?

Offshore drilling — both off the continental shelves and in ANWR (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) — and the construction of new refineries, given that the last one was built in 1976.

And what better time to have pushed it through than right after the September 11 attacks.

In addition to having a Republican congress and nearly 100% of the nation behind him, Bush had the world’s goodwill in his corner. 

Instead, this nation’s reliance on foreign oil — which is a kind way of saying we are pumping petro dollars into the coffers of some who are hellbent on destroying us — has only increased.

*****

Earlier this year, before the BP spill, Obama proposed that we expand our offshore drilling ventures, and freed up millions of acres of coastal water for exploration and development.  In addition, he called for an increase in nuclear power plants across America.

Since Obama is the leader of the Democratic Party, that move took guts.

Most Democrats oppose both initiatives, and some of the Party’s most powerful constituencies, such as the environmental lobby, are stridently supporting their position with millions of dollars and votes.

Nonetheless, Obama pressed on, fighting for issues generally associated with Republicans.

The response from the GOP?   They attacked him.

And why? …..

Read more at http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2010/06/22/barack-obamas-opportunity-of-a-lifetime/

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And it looks like “Get out of the way’ is the best option:

Regarding these “homemade” barges that Louisiana launched, Reuters reports:

Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard shut down 16 vacuum barges that were sucking up crude from Louisiana marshes. The units, which consist of trucks and tanks on barges that suck up thousands of gallons of crude, needed to be checked for stability and if they had life jackets and fire extinguishers.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had asked officials to inspect them quickly without bringing them back to dock. But the units sat idle for 24 hours before being allowed to travel back to oil-fouled Barataria Bay, Bay Jimmy and Pass A Loutre.

After 24 hours, the barges went back to work, and according to media reports, no inspections were performed.

Then there is that damnable Jones Act:

Some critics of the Obama administration cite offers by the Netherlands in April to supply sophisticated skimmers and dredging devices, and the administration’s failure to accept the offer. The issue is as murky as the oil slick now threatening regional beaches.

A Houston-based company is now cleaning oil off surface water in the Gulf of Mexico using sweeping arms that attach to a boat and help gather large amounts of oil. These sophisticated devices were provided by a Dutch company with years of experience in such operations, but instead of using the Dutch ships and crews immediately, when The Netherlands offered help in April, the operation was delayed until U.S. crews could be trained.

The Obama administration declined the Dutch offer partly because of the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from certain activities in U.S. waters. During the Hurricane Katrina crisis five years ago, the Bush administration waived the Jones Act in order to facilitate some foreign assistance, but such a waiver was not given in this case.

The Dutch also offered assistance with building sand berms (barriers) along the coast of Louisiana to protect sensitive marshlands, but that offer was also rejected, even though Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had been requesting such protective barriers.

For those of you keeping score, Bush waived the Jones Act during the Hurrican Katrina clean-up.

So let’s be absolutely clear here: The BP oil spill is NOT Obama’s fault. But the Federal government’s response to it most certainly is. And even conservatives can probably forgive a little government incompetence, because conservatives expect federal government incompetence. Those of us on the right have been making the case against the sloth-like inefficiency of bloated big government for years.

But this? The actual hindering of clean-up operations? This goes beyond mere incompetence and into the realm of not only contributing to the problem, but exacerbating the problem. It is as compelling a case for small, locally controlled government as there ever was.

No wonder Obama cheerleaders like Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman and Howard Finemann are disappointed: if Obama goes down, so too do their dreams of central planning; of a country run by the brightest minds, of the permanent placement of the academic class in a leadership role. As Peggy Noonan notes,

No reason to join the pile on, but some small points. Two growing weaknesses showed up in small phrases. The president said he had consulted among others “experts in academia” on what to do about the calamity. This while noting, again, that his energy secretary has a Nobel Prize. There is a growing meme that Mr. Obama is too impressed by credentialism, by the meritocracy, by those who hold forth in the faculty lounge, and too strongly identifies with them. He should be more impressed by those with real-world experience. It was the “small people” in the shrimp boats who laid the boom.

And when speaking of why proper precautions and safety measures were not in place, the president sternly declared, “I want to know why.” But two months in he should know. And he should be telling us. Such empty sternness is . . . empty.

Are you comforted to know that these same “top men” will be working on your health care? Your energy needs? Your economy?

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(1) The UAW wants to “pound” Toyota. Because apparently they don’t want any cars to be made in America, regardless of where the company is domiciled.

(2) Why aren’t foreign ships helping with the Gulf cleanup?  The Obama administration’s servitude to unions:

Had Obama instead waived the Jones Act via executive order — as did Pres. George W. Bush three days after Hurricane Katrina — that S.O.S. would have summoned a global armada of mercy. Who knows how many fishing, shrimping, and seafood-processing jobs this would have saved? Instead, thousands of Gulf Coast workers will endure a long march from dormant docks to bustling unemployment lines.
…
“If there is the need for any type of waiver, that would obviously be granted,” White House spokesman  Robert Gibbs promised  on June 10. “But, we’ve not had that problem thus far in the Gulf.”

Problem? What problem?

(3) Despite his vendetta with public sector unions, Chris Christie’s approval numbers are hanging in there… barely.

(4) Kagan compared the NRA to the Klan?  Looks like it.  As the second Obama SCOTUS nominee, Kagan’s not getting the scrutiny that Sotomayor got despite the presence of plenty of objectionable material.

(5) Hey, I’m for capital punishment, but this is inappropriate: execution decision announced on Twitter. (h/t)

(6) Original Tea Partier — Palin didn’t not inhale:

 Palin has admitted to smoking when it was legal for personal use in Alaska, saying she “can’t…say that I never inhaled.” The state recriminalized the drug in 2006.

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Our friends at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette don’t want this crisis to go to waste:

In his speech, the president also promised to avoid a repeat of the disaster at the Deepwater Horizon rig, in part by reforming the failed U.S. regulatory mechanism, the Minerals Management Service, which has been cozy with oil companies.

He then tackled the root of the environmental and economic horror festering in the Gulf, America’s addiction to fossil fuels, which has led to ever-riskier offshore deep drilling. Mr. Obama vowed to dedicate his administration to a clean energy future for the United States and said that inaction was the only outcome he would not accept.

Actually, the cause of “ever-riskier offshore deep drilling” is government regulations which push oil companies many miles out to sea rather than allowing them to drill where they don’t have to go through so much water to reach the seabed.

Obama and the PG propose “clean energy” to stop disasters like this. What kind of clean energy?

Nuclear? Sure, there are never disasters from nuclear power plants. Just ask anyone who lives in Chernobyl.

Hydrogen power, maybe? Ever heard of the Hindenburg?

Solar? Doesn’t produce nearly enough output to maintain modern civilization.

Wind? Hydroelectric? Again, these don’t generate nearly enough power.

There’s always the “electric car”. Except that advocates of said car always seem to forget that the electricity used to power it is created by burning coal, and that has its own hazards associated with it, environmental and otherwise.

I would like Obama to shut up about how he’s going to kick BP’s ass, and how he’s going to somehow magically stop disasters in the future. I would also like him to actually do something about fixing this oil spill, such as waiving Jones Act, which Bush did after hurricane Katrina.

It’s unbelievable how partisan this country has become. This morning I heard a liberal call up the Quinn & Rose radio show and explain to Quinn that Bush’s reaction to Katrina was terrible while Obama’s reaction to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is great. Other than threatening to kick someone’s ass and picking up a few tar balls off the beach, has Obama actually done anything?

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Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the $75m liability cap is actually a governmental market-fixing mechanism. Without that cap incentives for risky behavior would not be as attractive, and energy companies might be far more likely to restrain themselves from activities that would result in catastrophic accidents.

I concur that our President, and the government, do not have the legal authority to require BP to put that $20B in an escrow account, of course. But, contrariwise, there’s no good reason for them not to do it voluntarily. The ethics of the situation are pretty clear. They broke it, they bought it.

This ethical logic should have informed our actions when putting in this anti-market liability cap. Hopefully similar logic will prevail as we move forward extracting energy from the Marcellus. The environmental costs associated with energy extraction should absolutely be a part of the market price of that energy. If it were, alternative energy sources may start becoming more attractive in the marketplace.

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Ugh.

Natural gas and drilling fluids spewed from an out-of-control well in Clearfield County on Friday morning and early afternoon.

Emergency officials said a mile-wide area was evacuated after an operation drilling into the Marcellus Shale ruptured.

Just before 2:30 p.m., Team 4 Investigator Jim Parsons reported that Dan Spadoni of the state Department of Environmental Protection said “situation over.” EOG Resources, the company that runs the well, informed the DEP that they have capped the well and no additional frack water is being released.

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Brian O’Connor thinks so, based on this Trib article. I’d tend to agree, given Obama’s reverse Midas touch this year.

WTAE has semi-objective reporting on the presidential visit.

Cross-posted to Renner’s Here.

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Short answer – no.

(1) Senator Judd Gregg says the Financial Regulation bill is “a disaster because it doesn’t address the fundamental underlining causes of the economic issue, which were real estate and underwriting”. — Well isn’t that just fan-frickin’-tastic.

(2) More Spam Stimulus! Larry Summers wants Congress to pass a mini-stimulus on the order of $200-bn.  But oh, it gets better…

Summers:

“I cannot agree with those who suggest that it somehow threatens the future to provide truly temporary, high-bang-for-the-buck jobs and growth measures.”

Would that be because the last stimulus worked so well?  What are these “high-bang-for-the-buck jobs and growth measures”?  Looks like a lot of transfer payments to me.  And some war spending to boot.  And that includes some tax increases!

(3) Increased calls for stimulus come in spite of increasing evidence that the old-school Keynesian multiplier model is totally whack.  Economist John Taylor shares this graph comparing the Obama fantasyland model with a somewhat more realistic model.

(4) And how’s that old $787 billion porkulus doing? Well, I checked in on Recovery.gov for the first time in a while and found that they seem to have obfuscated the information.  Here’s a screen cap taken this morning:

If my math is right, we’ve only spent about half of the Obama stimulus.  Seriously.  This is an unmitigated disaster of a program.

(5) “What else could we do to screw up the economy?”, you ask.  I know, let’s raise taxes on oil.  For the spill cleanup fund… or something.

(6) Senator Casey also wants to bail out union pension plans to the tune of $165 billion.  Yeah, Casey wants you to pay for union members’ retirement.

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The Rendell Legacy: Pennsylvania’s Fiscal Catastrophe

Let’s give credit where it’s due. Fast Eddie never gives up, no matter how short-sighted his ideas may be.

When we last left our lameduck leader during the 2009 fiscal debacle, which took 101 days to pass  a budget, the Governor was doing what Democrats do best — transferring  money from the people to government coffers.  How? By initiating yet more tax increases on an already overtaxed public.

No surprise there.

At a time when Pennsylvania families are doing the responsible thing — tightening the belt and exercising fiscal restraint — the Governor does the polar opposite. Rendell has proposed a budget increase of 4%, in large part to pay for his pet projects, while incomprehensibly ignoring the fact that revenues are declining. 

But given the fact that Rendell hasn’t signed an on-time budget since taking office, why not go 8 for 8?

He pays no attention to the coming pension bomb, in which obligations to state pensions will increase eightfold over the next three years, from $550 million to over $4 billion. 

The Governor has apparently ignored the recent court ruling that the $800 million raided from the MCARE fund —money specifically allocated to alleviating high medical malpractice premiums — must now be paid back.

And he conveniently forgets that there won’t be the $2.7 billion in federal stimulus money that we had last year, and that accounting gimmicks won’t work anymore — such as counting the anticipated tolling of Interstate 80 as “revenue.” 

(Despite Ed’s vehement objections, the federal government shot down the I-80 tolling plan, so it’s back to the drawing board).

All of which means higher taxes and an expansion of gambling — government at its finest!

But because Rendell believes that government, rather than the people and their employers, knows best, his approach makes perfect sense — at least to him.

And he’s dead right if you believe in: a) spending beyond your means, b) grabbing money and property that isn’t yours…..

Read the rest at Philadelphia’ Magazine’s Philly Post:

http://blogs.phillymag.com/the_philly_post/2010/04/20/how-ed-rendell-wrecked-pennsylvania/

Chris Freind is an independent columnist and investigative reporter who operates his own news bureau, www.FreindlyFireZone.com

Readers of his column, “Freindly Fire,” hail from six continents, thirty countries and all fifty states. His work has been referenced in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, foreign newspapers, and in Dick Morris’ recent bestseller “Catastrophe.”

Freind also serves as a weekly guest commentator on the Philadelphia-area talk radio show, Political Talk (WCHE 1520), and makes numerous other television and radio appearances.  He can be reached at CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

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Blame Bush and the GOP For Health Care Mess

“I believe that the will of the people is reflected sooner or later in the will of the government.”

So says the only man in America who can make George W. Bush look like a genius — John McCain. The Arizona senator was making a prediction that the Democrats would pay a heavy price for passing government-run health care along purely partisan lines.

If you didn’t know how incompetent McCain is, you’d actually think he makes sense.

But unfortunately for John and his dysfunctional Republican Party, the real message of the health care debate is still lost on them.

After a year of battling on the issue, from the town hall to the halls of Congress, the Republican Party’s leadership —and that term’s a stretch— still can’t figure out why it lost, despite virtually every poll showing a majority of Americans opposed the Democrats’ health care reform plan.

Instead, all its leaders can weakly muster are statements that it will attempt to have the bill declared unconstitutional, and, even better, that the GOP will repeal the bill once it retakes the House and Senate in the November elections.

Well, John, I’ve got news for you:

1) Fat chance of that happening. The Republicans will, in fact, pick up their fair share of seats, as almost always happens for the party not in the White House, but it is an extreme long shot that either chamber will swing back to the GOP.

2) The main reason is because the Republicans haven’t given the American people any reason to vote FOR them. They have become the Party of No, virtually bereft of ideas—-and have precious few leaders who can articulate a vision for the ideas they do have.

3) This is the most important one: The GOP has not yet recognized or even acknowledged its past mistakes — all the ones George Bush and his Republicans made when they controlled the House and Senate by sizable majorities from 2000 to 2006. And as philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.”

*******************

Blame for the sake of blame is counterproductive. But casting blame to recognize past failures so that positive results can be achieved is invaluable……

Read the rest at www.FreindlyFireZone.com

Column Link: Please feel free to post a comment:

http://www.freindlyfirezone.com/index.php/national-news/item/33-blame-george-bush-and-the-republicans-for-health-care-mess

Chris Freind is an independent columnist and investigative reporter who operates his own news bureau, www.FreindlyFireZone.com

Readers of his column, “Freindly Fire,” hail from six continents, thirty countries and all fifty states. His work has been referenced in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, foreign newspapers, and in Dick Morris’ recent bestseller “Catastrophe.”
Freind also serves as a weekly guest commentator on the Philadelphia-area talk radio show, Political Talk (WCHE 1520), and makes numerous other television and radio appearances. He can be reached at CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

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For some strange reason, this trend is no longer the daily news story that it was before the era of hope and change:

The price at the pump has gone up nearly ten cents in the last two weeks across the nation.

Analysts say there are signs prices will climb even higher. The nationwide average is $2.73 for a gallon of regular unleaded. In Eau Claire we’re now sitting at $2.84 a gallon at most stations.

Analysts say prices could reach above $3.00 by summer. But Erin Roth with the Wisconsin Petroleum Council says there’s no certainty on that.

Roth says, “It’s all predicated on one: the price of crude oil and two: demand. And crude oil today is trading well over $80 a barrel which we haven’t seen over the course of last summer and over the winter.”

Roth says driving usually increases as the weather gets warmer, which hikes up demand and costs

Wait, you mean it’s supply and demand now and not lining the pockets of Bush’s big oil buddies?

Huh. Who knew?

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James Delingpole at the London Telegraph has been on top of the Climategate scandal and the general unraveling of the fraud that is Anthropogenic Global Warming.

In case you need further proof that there is a well-organized group of political types pushing the AGW agenda, Delingpole gives us this:

After two studies refuted President Barack Obama’s assertions regarding the success of Spain’s and Denmark’s wind energy programs, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals the Department of Energy turned to George Soros and to wind industry lobbyists to attack the studies.

Via the FOIA request, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has learned that the Department of Energy — specifically the office headed by Al Gore’s company’s former CEO, Cathy Zoi — turned to George Soros’ Center for American Progress and other wind industry lobbyists to help push Obama’s wind energy proposals.

The FOIA request was not entirely complied with, and CEI just filed an appeal over documents still being withheld. In addition to withholding many internal communications, the administration is withholding communications with these lobbyists and other related communications, claiming they constitute “inter-agency memoranda.” This implies that, according to the DoE, wind industry lobbyists and Soros’s Center for American Progress are — for legal purposes — extensions of the government.

George Soros! I would never have guessed.

Read the whole thing.

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OH MY GOD!!! AHHHHHHHHHH….KA-BOOOM! Once again the sound of my head exploding echos through the neighborhood.

Take a look at your federal stimulus tax dollars at work. Take a good hard look. But first wrap your frigging skull in duct tape because I guarantee it’s going to explode. You heard of $700 toilet seats from the Pentagon? $500 hammers? That’s amateur hour compared to this. Pictured above my friends is a three thousand dollar trash can courtesy of the City of Philadelphia and Uncle Sam. That’s right. It costs a lot of green to go green.

(more…)

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Since I am a capitalist, I only trade my money for things that will have value to me. Thus I read the online edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette because it is free.

I found this article the other day which made me wonder if the free version of the PG isn’t still overpriced.

Refinery Struggles Bruise NJ Communities

Harry Schaeffer was a toddler when his family moved in 1955 to National Park, where nearby Eagle Point Refinery had been turning crude to gasoline, heating oil and other products for years.

Schaeffer grew up near the towers and tanks and got a job at Eagle Point as a young man. He spent 34 years controlling the valves and switches that moved oil products around the 1,100-acre spread of giant tanks before he was furloughed indefinitely this month.

A tragedy to be sure, and I want to be clear that stories of closing factories and good people losing good jobs infuriates me. What absolutely puts me over the top, though, is that this article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, a newspaper which routinely vilifies business and industry and has never met a tax it didn’t like. This article is nothing more than a bone they’ve thrown to the seven actual factory workers who still read the PG.

What I find most interesting, though, is a little further down in the article.

Schaeffer and others at the Sunoco Inc. plant are among more than 1,000 workers who lost their jobs in the past few months in the refinery industry within 50 miles of Philadelphia, a bad sign for an enterprise that paid blue collar workers well for decades. And when the company hosted a job fair for workers facing furloughs or layoffs, the refinery positions available were far-flung — in Illinois and the Texas Gulf Coast.

That’s because the economic and regulatory environment is much better in the gulf coast states and even in Illinois than it is in New Jersey. Even Pennsylvania is better it seems.

In October, Sunoco announced its plan to idle refining operations and furlough some 400 employees, leaving a much smaller staff to handle already refined oil shipped in from overseas. The company has not announced a long-term plan for the plant. Refining functions remain at Sunoco’s nearby plants in Philadelphia and Marcus Hook, Pa.

Of course that’s a little like being the healthiest guy on death row.

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Earlier this month, the PA Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling which bars the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection from imposing its own set of mercury regulations on coal-fired power plants (more info on that here). This is good news. I say that not because I’m an evil conservative who likes pollution, but because these regulations would have been one more thing that put Pennsylvania industries, in this case power plants, at a competitive disadvantage compared to plants in other states.

“But,” you say, “I’ve heard mercury is bad, so shouldn’t we regulate it somehow?”

Good question. The answer to that is found in the information that is not in any of the articles you’ll find on the subject. The US Environmental Protection Agency is already working on regulations which address mercury emissions and other emissions like it. These regulations are called Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards and, as the name suggests, they are already pretty stringent. More importantly, these regulations will apply to virtually all power plants in the US, including those in Pennsylvania. The end result is that power plants in Pennsylvania are going to be regulated one way or another. The only question is whether or not they’ll have to meet federal AND state regulations or just federal regulations like most of the other power plants in the country.

Having spent most of my career complying with federal environmental regulations, I can tell you first-hand that EPA is not lobbing regulatory softballs at anyone. Environmental regulations, and MACT standards in particular, are very strict and very difficult to comply with; there are no loopholes. The state DEP with its limited resources isn’t going to come up with anything more protective of the environment. State regulations are, more often than not, nothing more than cover for politicians in Harrisburg who want to be seen as “doing something”. All they’re really doing is increasing the cost of doing business in Pennsylvania and continuing to drive jobs and people out of the state.

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WPVI:

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the small amount of radiation detected at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant is not significant.

Specialist John White has told ABC News that there is no indication that radiation at the plant exceeded or even approached regulatory limits.

The commission sent investigators to the central Pennsylvania plant after a small amount of radiation was detected.

About 150 employees were sent home Saturday afternoon, but officials say there is no public health risk.

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Friends,

I am pleased to inform you that Philadelphia has been selected to host a monthly Center-Right Coalition meeting, following the hugely-successful model of Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR). We will be one of the few non-state capital cities to have such a gathering.

The kick-off meeting, which I will be hosting, will be Thursday, November 12 at the Union League in Philadelphia, with Mr. Norquist in attendance. Light refreshments will be served at 7:00 AM, with the program going from 7:30 to 9:00. The Union League is located at 140 S. Broad Street, just two blocks south of City Hall.

In Grover’s words, the objective is “to get everybody who is center-right to tell each other what they are doing, to share technology and tactics, and to tell stories” regarding issues facing Pennsylvania and the nation.

One key function, according to ATR, is to facilitate collaborative activities of coalition members, many of whom may have not previously known one another, and foster the potential for mutual cooperation.

The rules are simple: Anyone who so desires may speak for three minutes on current initiatives, answer questions, and pass the microphone to the next speaker.

The only prohibition is whining. It is a positive meeting, one that will unify southeastern Pennsylvania.

Attendees will typically include influential political, business, policy and grassroots leaders.

If anyone who would like several minutes on the agenda, please let me know.

You are encouraged to bring any literature for distribution.

I hope to see you next Thursday.

For future reference, the monthly meetings will be held on the FIRST THURSDAY of each month at the Union League, with the same time format as above.

Feel free to invite colleagues and associates. All meetings are off the record.

Steadfast,

Christopher Freind
“Freindly Fire”
Audaces fortuna iuvat
610-659-0098
christopherfreind@hotmail.com (E before I in Freind)
CF@FreindlyFireZone.com

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The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review has some photos from last night’s “Green” Jobs Rally/Concert/Propaganda Event at Point State Park in Pittsburgh. Fast Eddie was there, but here’s my favorite photo:

I don’t know what he’s saying there, but it’s probably something like, Only YOU can destroy save the American economy via Cap ‘n’ Tax and the EFCA!

Here’s a photo of the crowd of college students listening to one of the speakers:

They look very interested, don’t they? Some of them look like they’re about to say, Hey man, like, start the music. I’m starting to get wee-wee’d up here.

But, no, that’s not right. These kids are the future of America! They are the best and the brightest:

Or, not.

The good news is that at least there were some reasonable people at the rally:

Thanks for keeping our city safe, officer!

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