NM Sheriff Stands Against IRS & Federal Marshals - Cancels Land Sale

It’s good news and its happening now  – County sheriffs throughout the land are beginning to stir by standing up against the IRS and the corporations for the Constitutional rights of their citizens - - let’s appreciate them as they do their duty and apply the Rule of Law.

Let’s get behind our deputy sheriffs all over. While you’re at it ask your state government politicians why they haven’t reclaimed your sovereign state lands from the federal government. It’s yours, why let the fedgov & corporations live off it?

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Tim Brown , 02.09.2015

Constitutional Sheriffs are becoming more vocal and demonstrating why they are a valuable asset to freedom and their communities. The latest sheriff to take a constitutional stand is Eddy County, New Mexico's Scott London, the first sheriff in twenty-five to stand up to the IRS against a tyrannical attempt to sell a citizen in his county's land without due process.

Priscilla Jones provides the background information for the sheriff's actions:

Approximately ten days before Christmas, U.S. Marshals broke in the door of Carter's rental property with their guns drawn. The tenant was a young mother with a new baby—home alone while her husband was at work. Sheriff London was called to the property to intervene. He advised the Marshals that Carter's case was in appeal and he deserved due process. They threatened to arrest London, but he stood his ground and they backed off....

The Taxation & Revenue Department ordered Carter to cease "engaging in business in New Mexico" until his arbitrary tax debt was paid. Carter appealed this injunction on the grounds that it was both unconstitutional and vague, as it deprived him of his right to make a living and also prohibited him from, "carrying on or causing to be carried on any activity with the purpose of direct or indirect benefit."

Kent Carter's property was in the sights of the corrupt Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury has slated a sale of the properties in question for the 19^th of February. When Sheriff London found out about it, he issued the following certified letter on February 4. 

Sheriff London cites Section 18 of the New Mexico Constitution and the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution as the basis for his stand against the federal tyrants.

"Thus I am notifying you that under compulsion to my oath to the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of New Mexico, I shall not allow the sales of these three properties on 19 February 2015," he wrote.

Sheriff Mack, founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association praised London's actions.

"Many officers have stood up over the years for the rights of citizens being victimized by the federal government," Mack said. "But Sheriff London is the first one to stand up to the IRS since the early 1990s." Mack said, "His actions show courage and humility. London is setting a good example for the rest of our sheriffs."

KrisAnne Hall documents why sheriffs like London are so important to the people in her excellent article on what is taking place in New Mexico.

"Short of physical resistance, due process and community oversight (a jury of your peers) was intended to be some of the greatest protections against government threat against property," Hall wrote.  "So important was to be the protection of due process, that it is placed multiple times in our Bill of Rights."

"For example, the 5th Amendment in the Bill of Rights declares that '…nor shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law;'  The 7th Amendment also declares, 'In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right to trial by jury, shall be preserved…'" she adds. 

"Both of those Amendments express the due process protections guaranteed to the people.  Sheriff London accurately states in his letter to the IRS that Mr. Carter has NOT exhausted his right to due process.  Yet, the IRS under the auspices of Judge Brack and the US District court, are attempting to deprive Mr. Carter of his property with full knowledge that Mr. Carter's right to due process is still engaged."

Currently, 100% of the Carter's Social Security benefits have been seized every month by the IRS. Under the law, Carter claims that the IRS can take no more than 15% of his Social Security benefits, but they've not only taken 100% of them, they've even deprived him of $2800.00 via his bank account.

Carter said the IRS is "worse than the mafia" and called them a "lie."

"Why should they be able to take anything?" he asked.

One court document, according to Jones indicates that Carter owed $145,000, which Carter maintains has no basis and was "pulled out of thin air" by an assessing agent. However, now the IRS claims that he owes upwards of $890,000! Carter says that number "doubled with the stroke of a pen."

"The IRS fabricates evidence against citizens by pulling numbers out of a hat and adding fees," said Sheriff Mack. "They wear people down emotionally and financially until they can't take it anymore. No citizen should ever have to fight the IRS for decades in order to keep his land."

Ms. Hall also provided updated information on Carter's motion. She wrote on February 7:

I have spoken to Kent Carter.  He filed a Motion to Stay the judges decision and was DENIED with NO explanation.  If I were to make a professional guess as to why the court denied it, it would be because he filed the Motion outside the "allowed" time frame.  That is no excuse for the court to not make that explanation, but there you have it.  I also spoke to Sheriff London. 

He received a call yesterday from the acting Under Secretary of the Department of Treasury, Matthew Rutherford.  Mr. Rutherford claims this case has been decided by the appellate court already in favor of the IRS.  If he is correct that is a record pace decision.  
Sheriff London told Mr. Rutherford that he had better present proof of that before he will ever consider allowing the sales to take place.  Apparently Mr. Rutherford was not at all happy about that.  This could get very interesting!

Perhaps it is not only Sheriff London that needs to take a physical stand at the properties of Mr. Carter, but also the people of New Mexico, just as Americans did for Cliven Bundy and his ranch.

As our forefather Benjamin Franklin once wisely said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

via  federaloutpost

Has Washington Just Shot Itself in the Oily Foot?

06.11.2014 Author: William Engdahl

By now even the New York Times is openly talking about the secret Obama Administration strategy of trying to bankrupt Russia by using its oil-bloated Bedouin bosom buddy, Saudi Arabia, to collapse the world price of oil. However, it’s beginning to look like the neo-conservative Russia-haters and Cold war wanna-be hawks around Barack Obama may have just shot themselves in their oily foot. As I referred to it in an earlier article, their oil price strategy is basically stupid. Stupid, as all consequences have not been taken into account. Take now the impact on US oil production as prices plummet.

The collapse in US oil prices since September may very soon collapse the US shale oil bubble and tear away the illusion that the United States will surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s largest oil producer. That illusion, fostered by faked resource estimates issued by the US Department of Energy, has been a lynchpin of Obama geopolitical strategy.

Now the financial Ponzi scheme behind the increase of US domestic oil output the past several years is about to evaporate in a cloud of fictitious smoke. The basic economics of shale oil production are being ravaged by the 23% oil price drop since John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah had their secret meeting near the Red Sea in early September to agree on the Saudi oil price war against Russia.

Wall Street bank analysts at Goldman Sachs just issued a 2015 forecast that US oil prices, measured by a benchmark called WTI (West Texas Intermediate) will fall to $70 a barrel. In September 2013, WTI was more than $106 a barrel. That translates into a sharp 34% price collapse in just a few months. Why is that critical to the US shale production? Because, unlike conventional crude oil deposits, shale oil or tight oil as industry calls it, depleted dramatically faster.

A comprehensive new analysis just issued by David Hughes, a Canadian oil geo-scientist with thirty years’ experience with the Geological Survey of Canada, using data from existing US shale oil production that has now become public for the first time (the shale oil story is very recent), shows dramatic rates of oil volume decline from US shale oil wells:

The three year average well decline rates for the seven shale oil basins measured for the report range from an astounding 60-percent to 91-percent. That means over those three years, the amount of oil coming out of the wells decreases by that percentage. This translates to 43-percent to 64-percent of their estimated ultimate recovery dug out during the first three years of the well’s existence. Four of the seven shale gas basins are already in terminal decline in terms of their well productivity: the Haynesville Shale, Fayetteville Shale, Woodford Shale and Barnett Shale.

A decrease in oil daily of between 60% and 91% for these best possible shale oil regions means the oil companies must drill deeper to even stay still with oil production, let alone increase total oil volume. That means the drillers must spend more money to drill deeper, a lot more. According to Hughes, the Obama administration Department of Energy has uncritically taken rosy forecast numbers given them by the companies that boost the US shale oil myth. His calculations show future US shale oil output only 10% that estimated for 2040 by the Energy Department.

Hughes describes the current deadly dilemma of the shale oil companies as a “drilling treadmill.” They must drill more and more wells just to keep production levels flat. The oil companies have already gone after the most promising shale oil areas, so-called “sweet spots,” to maximize their production. Now as production begins to decline terminally, they must start drilling in spaces with less rich oil and gas returns. He adds, “if the future of U.S. oil and natural gas production depends on resources in the country’s deep shale deposits…we are in for a big disappointment.”

Oil price collapse

What Hughes describes was the state of shale oil before the start of the Kerry-Abdullah Saudi oil price war. Now US WTI oil prices have dropped a catastrophic 25% in six weeks, and still falling. Other large oil producers like Russia and Iran are in turn flooding the world market with their oil to increase revenue for their state budgets, adding to a global oil supply glut. That in turn pressures prices more.

The shale oil and gas bonanza of the past five years in the USA has been built on a foundation of zero Federal Reserve interest rates and huge speculative investment by hungry Wall Street firms and funds. Because of the ultra-rapid oil well depletion, when market oil prices collapse, the entire economics of lending to the shale oil drillers collapses as well. Money suddenly vanishes and debt-strapped oil companies begin real problems.

According to Philip Verleger, former head of President Carter’s Office of Energy Policy and now an energy consultant, in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, one of the most important new shale oil regions, oil at $70 a barrel could cut production 28 percent to 800,000 barrels a day by February from 1.1 million barrels a day in July. “The cash flow will go down as the prices go down, the amount of money advanced to these people to continue the drilling will dry up entirely, so you’ll see a marked slowdown in drilling,” said Verleger.

Myths, Lies and Oil Wars

The end of the shale oil bubble would deal a devastating blow to the US oil geopolitics. Today an estimated 55% of US oil production and all the production increase of the past several years comes from fracking for shale oil. With financing cut off because of economic risk amid falling oil prices, shale oil drillers will be forced to halt new drilling that is needed merely to maintain a steady oil output.

The aggressive US foreign policy in the Middle East—its war against Syria’s al-Assad regime, its hardball oil sanctions against Iran, its sanctions against Russian oil projects, its cynical toleration of ISIS in Iraqi oil regions, its refusal to intervene to stabilize the Libyan oil economy but instead to tolerate dis-order are all premised on a cocky view in Washington that the USA is once again the King of Oil in the world and can afford to play high-risk oil geopolitics. The official government agency responsible for advising the CIA, Department of Defense, State Department and White House on energy, the US Department of Energy, has issued projections of US shale oil growth based on myths and lies. That has led the Obama White House to launch oil wars based on those same myths and lies about the rosy prospects of shale oil.

This oily arrogance was epitomized in a speech by then Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon. In an April 2013 speech at Columbia University, Donilon, then Obama’s national security adviser, publicly expressed this: “America’s new energy posture allows us to engage from a position of greater strength. Increasing US energy supplies acts as a cushion that helps reduce our vulnerability to global supply disruptions and price shocks. It also affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.”

The next three or so months in the US shale oil domain will be strategic.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/11/06/has-washington-just-shot-itself-in-the-oily-foot/

CALIFORNIA COUNTY QUIETLY VOTES FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM STATE AND FEDERAL LAWS

Mendocino County, CA. Makes History and Passes Law Establishing Local Self-Governance

  November 5, 2014 

 

“The sacred rights of mankind, are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.  They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”   ~ Alexander Hamilton

Mendocino County, Ca Makes History

by Jamie Lee

                                                                                                                                                                                                          Mendocino County, in the pristine northern lands of California, where the magnificent ancient coastal Redwood trees meet the inland California Oaks, has voted itself into the constitution writing (righting) business.

Yesterday, by a significant margin, they became the first county in California, and only the second county in the country to pass into law a very powerful local ordinance that declares local self-governing rights in their communities over state and federal jurisdiction. Over 67% of the votes cast were in favor of the measure.

The ordinance provides for waters free from toxic trespass; preemptively bans all fracking activities countywide with heavy fines and penalties for violation of the ordinance; and establishes a Community Bill of Rights to, for, and by the residents of Mendocino County while checking corporate powers as well.

In addition, the newly created law gives the Rights of Nature to exist and flourish without toxic trespass whereas previously Nature had no standing in the court of law.

Here is some of the powerful language in the proposed ordinance which you can read (source):

“Right to community self-government.
All residents of Mendocino County possess the right to a form of governance where they live which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people and all free governments are founded on the people’s consent.
Use of Mendocino County government by the sovereign people to make law and policy shall not be deemed by any authority to eliminate or reduce that self-governing authority. Rights as self-executing, fundamental and unalienable.
All rights delineated and secured by this ordinance are inherent, fundamental and unalienable; and shall be self-executing and enforceable against both private and public actors.”

The people of Mendocino County have made history once again after being the first county in the nation to ban Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s) in 2004. Now these Mendonesians of premier wine making, medical marijuana growing and self-declared independence are continuing to assert and reclaim their inherent rights to decide for themselves what the laws will be in their communities and their county.

What may seem radical to many is only following in declarations and rights acknowledged to, by, and for them by the California State and U.S. Constitution’s as well as the Declaration of Independence:
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.

Article 1 of the California State Constitution of 1849:

Sec. 1. All men are by nature free and independent, and have certain inalienable rights, among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing, and protecting property: and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.
Sec. 2. All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security, and benefit of the people; and they have the right to alter or reform the same, whenever the public good may require it.

Across the nation a truly grass-roots movement of taken back power by, and for the people at the local levels has begun in earnest.


In California, in this election alone, two other counties, Santa Barbara and San Benito, put anti-fracking measures in front of the voters while Big Oil spent over $7 million to defeat them. Santa Barbara was defeated last night but San Bernardino County’s measure passed into law.

Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania have in recent years passed into law local ordinances banning everything from toxic pig sludge dumping to Community Bill of Rights legislation as well as legal standing for the Rights of Nature to exist.  In 2010, the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania made history by becoming the first city to pass a local ordinance banning hydraulic fracking.

So far, state courts have upheld these rights in Colorado and Ohio. However, a bigger challenge comes  in coming months as a federal judge will make ruling on Mora County, New Mexico’s recent local ordinance passed that bans fracking in their county. It will be high stakes for all as over 30% of the states revenues comes from the oil and gas industry.

Yet clearly the people of Mora County are choosing to protect their health and well being over profit, jobs and revenues for their county.

Last week NASA released photos taken from space showing mass methane gas releases from the four corners region of the Southwestern United States, stunning all as to the widespread drastic effects that intense and increasing fracking activities are having on our environment.

Up north in Oregon, Lane and Benton Counties are bringing to vote local ordinances to preempt Oregon state laws for the right to determine local food sovereignty.  Last year, Oregon had preempted local counties from banning GMO’s in their communities. Communities are now empowering themselves and fighting back.

Who is the Author of Authority?

Finish reading

 

Pennsylvania Fracking Company Offering Monetary Bribes to Property Owners to Shut Up

Ostensibly, while the fracking klan offers a monetary bribe to property owners, the corrupt Pennsylvania legislators and magistrates slip out from any oversight investigations or punishments. The PA voters will have to attend to business beginning Now!  Bordering states remain mum about the toxic water runoffs onto their own state lands. More of our fracking posts here.

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 Fracking Company in Pennsylvania Offers Residents $50,000 Each to Promise not to Sue about Anything

Sunday, July 06, 2014

EQT fracking site in Finleyville,
Pennsylvania (photo: Marcellus
Air)

With litigation beginning to mount against fracking companies, one driller in Pennsylvania has tried to preempt lawsuits by paying off residents living near its operations.

EQT Corporation, which operates a fracking well near Finleyville in Washington County, has offered $50,000 to those willing to sign a comprehensive no-liability waiver that prevents them from ever suing the company for any problem stemming from the drilling.

The agreement, which at least four residents have signed in exchange for the money, covers "current operations as well as those to be carried out in the future," ProPublica says.

It covers "potential health problems and property damage," and gives "the company blanket protection from any kind of claim over noise, dust, light, smoke, odors, fumes, soot, air pollution or vibrations," ProPublica's Naveena Sadasivam reported. The deal also applies to work beyond the actual fracking, such as the building and maintenance of pipelines, tanks, ponds, pits and other developments connected to or in support of drill sites.

Doug Clark, a Pennsylvania lawyer who specializes in gas leases and representing landowners, called the legal waiver "crazy."

"The release is so incredibly broad and such a laundry list," he told ProPublica. "You're releasing for everything including activity that hasn't even occurred yet."

The legal agreement, typically referred to as a "nuisance easement," is commonly used near airports, wind farms and landfills to compensate residents for noise, vibrations, fumes and other disturbances. However, its use by the oil and gas industry is highly unusual, according to experts. "They're absolutely not common at all," said Clark. "This is only the second time I've seen one."

EQT, which is one of the largest natural gas producers in the state, initially tried to get at least 30 Finleyville residents to sign the agreements, with the understanding that the money would only be paid out if all the local landowners came onboard. When many of them balked at this provision, the company adjusted its approach and targeted them one by one.

Clark suggested that the industry might be cautious about employing these contracts on a regular basis because it could raise red flags in the eyes of the public. "People are going to say the gas companies must be concerned about air pollution because they're offering these easements," Clark told ProPublica. "Everybody's going to get suspicious."

Some residents who refused EQT's offer are angry about the company's pitch. "I was insulted," Finleyville resident Gary Baumgardner told ProPublica. "We're being pushed out of our home and they want to insult us with this offer." He said his house is "most often not livable," because of vibrating from the drilling, and his family has been forced to leave numerous times due to the intensity of the fumes. His pregnant daughter moved away on the advice of her doctor.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Danny Biederman

To Learn More:

Aggressive Tactic on the Fracking Front (by Naveena Sadasivam, ProPublica)

Natural Gas Industry Hires Politicians' Relatives (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov)

Pennsylvania Health Dept. Accused of Ordering Employees to not Speak to Residents who Complained about Fracking (by Steve Straehley, AllGov)

Chevron Offered Free Pizza to Help Make Up for its Fracking Well Explosion in Pennsylvania Town (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/fracking-company-in-pennsylvania-offers-residents-50000-dollars-each-to-promise-not-to-sue-about-anything-140706?news=853606

U.S. Approves Fracking on Federal Land in California

The US Government continues to unleash their corporate hounds to defecate on the people's front lawns, and the states remain impotent (influenced) by not nullifying this un-Constitutional Unlawfulness. "Legal" the government courts decree, but not Lawful under our Constitution which is our law of the land, not man's interpretations.


Fracking approvals on the rise, in spite of virulent disapproval from the American citizenry. These ongoing intrusions on the sovereign rights of the states result from the purchase of the people's representatives in Washington by corporatists and special interests. 

Your state legislators lack the political courage to expel the fedgov from state sovereign land. We've been through this before as fracking relates to corrupting Pennsylvania and Ohio, here, here, and here.

Folks, it's nothing new that political corruption in America has gone viral. To survive as a free country we must expunge the immorality from our culture at the state level. It can be done. We were bequeathed the tools by our Founders.

Re: Has Your State taken any Steps to Reclaim Your State Sovereign Land from the Federal Government? Why not?

Ken Broder of AllGov puts the cap on the bottle:

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-- Ken Broder, ​AllGov 09.07.2014​


The federal government gave the green light for oil and gas companies in California to drill on federal lands using hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and acidization techniques after a receiving a report (pdf) from an independent, non-profit group created by the Legislature.

The California Council on Science and Technology enlisted Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Pacific Institute to do the study after U.S. District Judge Paul Grewal ruled last April that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) couldn't approve 2,500 acres of land for oil and gas development until it studied the effects of well stimulation on the environment.

"The potential risk for contamination from fracking, while unknown, is not so remote or speculative to be completely ignored," Grewal wrote.

The report essentially says: We studied well stimulation. Now it is known and can be completely ignored.

The report said groundwater is not in danger of contamination when pressurized water, unknown chemicals, acid or other materials are injected deep into the Earth. 

Earthquakes, air pollution from greenhouse gas emissions, impacts on wildlife and vegetation—not a problem. 

Its assurances, taken by the BLM as sufficient cause to open the land up, did come with one large caveat: It didn't have much current information:

"Much of the data available to analyze current practice come from voluntary sources plus six weeks of data from well stimulation notices required by SB4."

The report acknowledges that there have been many instances of problems in other states, but California is different: "Available data suggests that present day well stimulation practices in California differ significantly from practices used for unconventional shale reservoirs in states such as North Dakota and Texas."

So they "are not necessarily applicable."

Acidization isn't used as often in California as other states: "These technologies are not expected to lead to major increases in oil and gas development in the state."

So, skip that.

Most, but not all, of the chemicals used were of low-toxicity. However, "Approximately one-third of the chemicals had insufficient available information for evaluation. This toxicological assessment is limited….Further review of the constituents of injection fluids used in well stimulation jobs in California is needed."

The Center for Biological Diversity, whose lawsuit last year triggered the study, was not happy. "A few months of incomplete data simply can't support a federal decision to resume selling off our public lands in California to oil companies," said Kassie Siegel, director of the center's Climate Law Institute. "Using this report as a basis for continued fracking in California is illogical and illegal."

It may be illogical, but right now it's legal.

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

Feds to Resume Leasing for Fracking in California (by Ellen Knickmeyer, Associated Press)

Federal Scientific Review Highlights Grave Risks of California Fracking (Center for Biological Diversity)

Federal Judge Blocks U.S. Drilling Leases that Ignored Dangers of Fracking (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)

Advanced Well Stimulation Techniques in California (California Council on Science and Technology, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Pacific Institute) (pdf)

Fracking Companies Buy Silence of Families with Contaminated Water

Monday, June 10, 2013

Jeffrey Ventura, president and
CEO of Range Resources

From the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachian range to the Texas panhandle, American families have found themselves with contaminated water supplies. Time and time again they have blamed the problem on hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) and won settlements from drilling companies—but only if the victims agree never to talk about the impact that fracking had on their lives.

Pennsylvania Health Dept. Accused of Ordering Employees to not Speak to Residents who Complained about Fracking

Criminally liable, you say? Nay, government employees are now excused from being penalized for any 'mistaken' disregard of responsibilities while in the discharge of their obligations to the taxpayer. Just as the fedgov does not punish federal wrongdoers, neither shall states impose personal punishments. If any, punishments shall be monetary and levied against the taxpayers. Likely, to be more timely & financially rewarding for litigation lawyers as well. In this instance it's the state legislature which has been negligent in their oversight mandate.

It would be amusing, nevertheless, how Pennsylvania overseers explain the health risks to neighboring states onto whose land Pennsylvania frackers dumps its toxic swill!

Be sure and read our earlier report on Pennsylvania's dependence on crony capitalism & health risks elsewhere:

• Pennsylvania Republican-controlled state leislature: Sponsored by the fracking prostitutes of American colleges 

• Fracking Companies Buy Silence of Families with Contaminated Water

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Monday, June 23, 2014

Dr. Eli Avila

Two retired employees of the Pennsylvania Department of Health say they were muzzled by their managers on the subject of fracking.

Nurse Tammy Stuck and program specialist Marshall P. Deasy III say they were given orders not to talk to concerned citizens who called the department with questions about fracking. Deasy also said that after a consultant addressed the practice at a community meeting, department employees were restricted from speaking to such groups, according to a report by StateImpact Pennsylvania.

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is a drilling technique wherein fluid is injected into wells to facilitate the removal of oil and gas. The used fluid, often toxic, is then reinjected into the ground. More than 6,000 natural gas fracking wells have been drilled into Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale, which covers the northern and western parts of the state, over the past six years.

Stuck said she was given a list of words to watch for by her supervisor. “There was a list of buzzwords we had gotten,” Stuck said. “There were some obvious ones like fracking, gas, soil contamination. There were probably 15 to 20 words and short phrases that were on this list. If anybody from the public called in and that was part of the conversation, we were not allowed to talk to them.”

Employees were told only to take the caller’s information and forward it to a supervisor, who would address the issue, according to Stuck, who said that she would often speak to those whose calls had not been returned.

Department spokesperson Aimee Tysarczyk said employees were not told not to return citizens’ calls and that all complaints should be forwarded to the Bureau of Epidemiology. She also said that there was no requirement that department employees get advance special permission to speak to community groups, as Deasy and Stuck charge.

Those living near drilling sites have reported nosebleeds, nausea, rashes and other issues, but doctors say they don’t have the data to connect those ailments to fracking.

Eli Avila, who was the state health secretary during the period Stuck and Deasy say the orders not to talk about fracking were given, said he wasn’t aware of the policy, but that one of the deputy secretaries could have given the instruction without his knowledge. Avila resigned in October 2012. He is best known for an incident in which he accused a Harrisburg restaurant owner of serving him an egg salad sandwich made of eggs that were less than fresh. In April 2014 the state of Pennsylvania to pay $75,000 to settle the dispute.

-Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

Former State Health Employees Say They Were Silenced On Drilling (by Katie Colaneri, StateImpact Pennsylvania, NPR)

Texas Family Wins First Jury Award for Health Damages from Fracking (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Fracking Companies Buy Silence of Families with Contaminated Water (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

via AllGov

Pennsylvania Republican-controlled state leislature: Sponsored by the fracking prostitutes of American colleges

Note: Due to a change in FracTracker’s mapping utility, data from the last half of 2011 has been replaced by data from the first half of 2013 in the map above.  Please press the expanding arrows icon in the top-right corner of the map to access full controls.Map source

The fracking prostitutes of American colleges

Part 2 of a 3-part series

By Walter Brasch

Posted on May 6, 2014 by Walter Brasch

 

Two of the reasons Pennsylvania has no severance tax and one of the lowest taxes upon shale gas drilling are because of an overtly corporate-friendly legislature and a research report from Penn State, a private state-related university that receives about $300 million a year in public funds.