In this, the first of a two-part interview, Julie talks about her personal odyssey that led her into becoming an activist. She also talks about the effect her activism has had on her relationships with the people in her life.  Next month Julie will talk about the issues that have made her the passionate activist that she is. Don’t miss it.–Chuck

Chuck:  Julie, thank you for giving me this time. I’d like you to give me a history of your life up until now–the abridged version.

Julie: Okay. I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  My folks moved to the Lehigh Valley when I was nine. I graduated from Emmaus High School. I

Julie at Interview

went to Washington University in Lexington, Virginia, where I studied Music and changed at the very last minute in the very last year and did a Philosophy major in one year. I married before I finished college and had my first daughter  right after I graduated. I graduated pregnant (laughs). I moved out to California, and I had  my second daughter out there. I moved back to the Lehigh Valley in 1999. I’m just a Pennsylvanian (laughs).

I was a waitress for quite a while. I was always environmentally concerned. I was a radical recycler. That’s an empowering thing that one can do to protect the environment. But I was never an activist per-se until a confluence of events that happened all at the same time. Three things happened all at once. It was literally like the universe pulling its curtain and saying, “Phew! Here’s your path.” I embarked on becoming an activist after seeing Gasland.

Chuck: Okay. You said there was a confluence of things that led you into activism. Could you be specific about exactly what it was that troubled you enough to rearrange your life to take in activism?

Julie:  I’d love to because it was a huge turning point for me. For years I had been, let’s say, researching  about what  is the problem with this world. What is going on in this world. Trying to peel away layers of disinformation.  Trying to get a truly global picture of the political situation. I wasn’t in a very empowered place. Literally thousands of hours of research. I was disturbed about the direction that the world was heading in. I could see many of the things that were wrong with it but I didn’t know what I could do about it. I was falling into a very deep despair, actually. So what happened is that I just kind of fell into campaigning for an independent

Making a point

candidate for Congress for the seat now held by Charlie Dent. I campaigned for Jake Towne. He’s an Independent, not a Democrat or Republican. He was the only anti-fracking candidate, the only anti-war candidate and the only anti-bailout candidate. He’s fiscally conservative but socially “live and let live.” A very appealing combination to me. I kind of agreed with him on just about everything.

So, towards the end of his campaign, I started actually jumping in–going to parades, political forums, and engaging the public. I just came alive doing these things. Wow, this is really great I thought–being out in the streets doing something. At the same time I was very interested in the fight against modified food. Vandana Shiva of The Future of Food Fame was speaking and I went out to see her.  Honestly, it had a lot to do with Facebook and finding people who were interested in these things. The very next week there was a screening of Gasland at Lafayette College. Josh was on his original tour where he was traveling every day and every night.

Chuck: Tell our readers what Gasland is. Many of our readers may not have seen it.

Julie ponders a thought

Julie: Sure. Gasland is a documentary film that came out in 2009 or 10. The first wind I got of it, I believed they screened it at the South Side Film Festival in Bethlehem. I saw an article referencing that probably in June of 2010. I was amazed. Here were real residents of Pennsylvania that could set the water out of their taps on fire due to the gas drilling. If that doesn’t grab you, I don’t know what will. It’s a documentary about shale gas drilling that starts in Pennsylvania, and Josh (Josh Fox) travels around the country to where there is shale gas drilling going on in other states. He basically does an investigation and documents what he turns up. A trail of contaminated water and waterways. Sick animals and sick people. When I saw that, well, it’s just one of those things that once you know about it you can’t not ever not know it again. I felt something shift inside of me. I saw that around October 10th. He spoke of a rally that was going to happen in Pittsburgh, the place of my birth and a place that is very dear to my heart. It has that confluence of three beautiful rivers. It was the very day after election day where they were going to rally and march against shale gas drilling. I made up my mind right that minute before I even walked out of the screening room that I’m inking that in blood. I’m definitely going to go.  It’s something I needed to do and committed to right that minute.

The third thing that happened was also incredibly important. A journalist friend of mine that I had just friended on Facebook  gave me the information on Democracy School. It is something held by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. Democracy School was dedicated to a young man who died in the prime of his teenage years from getting ill from the application of toxic sewage sludge on farmland in Pennsylvania. This was hosted by the Alliance of Sustainable Communities in the Lehigh Valley. I had tossed around the word sustainable and to me it had always meant generally being environmentally friendly. I started to do a lot of thinking about the essence of what sustainability really means. It means an activity you can do repeatedly–over and over again and it never becomes untenable. I think that some people use sustainable on a more superficial level.  They don’t understand the real heart of sustainability. Over the last 18 months, Ive come to realize that some things we do as a society are just not sustainable. So I

Julie

went to Democracy School and Ben Price of the CELDF presented. It was a Friday night and a Saturday. It’s a short intensive course on the history of corporations and law, colonization and Supreme Court decisions. I saw two documentaries: One called Future Food and one called The Corporation. In one day those two literally blew my mind and opened my world to engage in the community. It wasn’t until I attended Democracy School that I understood the full impact as to why the corporation is a basic problem in society. Why did it take me so long? (laughs). But that was an incredible eye-opener to me. So campaigning for Jake, seeing Gasland and going to Democracy School sent me off and running on community rights and anti-fracking.

Chuck: So you went to the films, went to CELDF and campaigned for Jake. These had a tremendous impact on you. How did it change your life? What percentage of your life did it take over?

 Julie: Well, it wasn’t overnight that I was doing what I call “frack-around-the-clock”(laughs).  The frack channel–all frack all the time.  I stood at the polls outside in the cold for Jake for 12 hours, which is a kind of marathon in and of itself. Went to an after-party at 11 something–got home late and went to bed. Got up and left at 6:oo a.m. for Pittsburgh the next day because it’s not a short hike from here. I was absolutely on fire and pleased to do it. It was the first public rally or protest that I ever went to in my life (laughs).  Like I said, I wasn’t an activist. For me, that was brazen. And I was amazed. I thought–Wow! There’s a community of people that I identified with immediately. In the beginning there wasn’t something about fracking every day. Let’s just say I dove into the pool. I was engaged every day on Facebook with fractivists. Slowly but surely. I wrote in Virginia Cody as a write-in candidate for Pennsylvania Governor. I was already associated with her husband and partner on Facebook. He organized a rally in Wellsboro because Tom Ridge was at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Wellsboro shilling for the big gas agenda. He organized a rally for December 9th. It was like 31/2 hours away, and he wanted to start it at 7:00 a.m. I said by golly, I’m gonna get up and go there. Whatever I find I can do about shale gas drilling, that’s what I’m going to do.

So it didn’t start like every single day, but it picked up speed. By February, 2011, I was fully engaged and aware of the fight at the level of the Delaware River Basin Commission. How they had drafted regulations to permit fracking and avoid a moratorium. It’s one of the last protected watersheds in Pennsylvania and one of the cleanest watersheds in the world.  It serves 15 million people. So I went. That day in February I had my first taste at

Julie with friend

testifying at a public hearing which I kind of have a knack for. So I’ve done a lot of that. In March things kicked up to another notch. I wrote a resume and applied for a job with Clean Water Action, and they wound up not hiring for that position.They just closed down the Bethlehem office instead in October. I wrote for them every single thing I’d done in the movement and that took me 48 hours just to get it down.

While it may be silly to refer to Facebook on one level, but on another not, because that’s where I found out about everything. Like the minute it happens. I started going to Berks Gas Truth meetings and Lehigh Valley Gas Truth meetings.  I pulled out all the stops to do whatever I could whenever I found that something was going on. I had the freedom to go everywhere. And the time. I thought it was incumbent upon me to do for people who didn’t have the freedom to do such things. I wasn’t constrained by a job and thought this is something I need to do for other people.

Chuck: When you became an activist and started looking into all these issues, were you shocked with your pre-activist view about how our government  operates contrasted with what you know now?

Julie: Well, already in my thousands of hours of research I was already moving towards engaging in the community and moving to a place of empowerment. I was already aware of the farce and circus and the layers of dis-information that go on at both the state and national levels. The research I had done had opened my eyes quite a bit.  You see that people are not engaged until they’re drilling in their back yards. Justifiably, I might add. They’re engaged in raising a family, keeping a roof over their head and their social lives. It’s very necessary to be a responsible citizen, but it’s very easy to just focus on your own lives. You know, there are very big successful people out there telling you to do just that. An editor of Success magazine says: No! You should just have a tunnel view. You’re just going to be in despair if you try and look at the whole world. What you need to do is focus on the things that you are in touch with. Day by day. You know, your job, your family, your life.

Chuck: That attitude destroys the community. Right?

Julie: I think so. Excuse me, but what an elitist agenda. I mean, he’s trying to keep our noses in the TV or what? That really makes me angry. You’ve got to be crazy. You know, I was doing the same thing for years. At one point, I was working full time and being mother-father and homeschooling my children full time. I was a semi-professional musician so I was juggling all these balls in the air as a single mom. So that was eating my life, but what I started doing at night was internet research. I just got a couple of topics in mind and pretty soon, even though I had all these responsibilities, I was spending the hours I should have been sleeping – reading. I was trying to become more aware and more conscious of the political process in the outside world. It took me until 2011 to actually jump in and try to do something about it. Gasland was my entry point.

Chuck: Okay. So as you started to become more deeply involved as an activist did it have an effect on your family, your friends, or your boyfriend? How about your parents and relatives?

Julie: Yeah. It’s funny. Whenever I see my parents, I’m so passionate about it. I’m so consumed with it. Holidays, dinners, birthdays –there’s always like some section where I can’t help myself. I can’t stop myself from trying to let them know what’s going on. You know–they live in Pennsylvania so it affects them too. I try not to alienate them or preach to them, but it’s just like bursting out of my heart. I can’t keep it inside so, yes, there’s been a lot of frack talk and politics talk. My boyfriend’s gotten used to it.

Chuck: Is he jealous of the time you give to it?

Julie: No. He’s been incredibly supportive.  He totally agrees with me. It’s just that he probably gets a little angry. I mean, I get angry. But men get angry in a different way.

Chuck: Does he feel that the time he wants for himself with you is going to others all the time?

Julie: No. I make a point to give him plenty of time. Most of the time I’m doing stuff and attending rallies is when he’s at work during the day. It wasn’t really directly competitive. By the end he was doing stuff with me. We made a family trip out of going to the Epic No Frack event on July 25th. That Saturday there were 68 speakers and 10 musical acts and 7 documentary films. He stuck with me all day long (laughs).  A long diet of nothing but frack.

My children, as well, are no strangers to sacrifice. Last year they were in 9th and 10th grades, respectively. My oldest daughter was 15 and 16 during the year. So, they’re perfectly capable of minding the house, being responsible for themselves, making dinner, doing their homework. Even putting themselves to bed. A couple of times when I had to get up really early and get up at some ungodly hour like 3 in the morning to drive to Binghamton.  They actually would get themselves up for school.

Chuck: Wow! That’s impressive!

Julie: That is seriously impressive! There’s nothing quite like Mom at 6:00 a.m. getting you up and saying, “Okay, let’s get this party started.” Of course, I’d be so nervous leaving them alone. I’d be in touch with them by phone: Are you doing this? Are you doing that? Are you getting dressed? My children spent a lot of time alone in 2011. Some people look askance at me, you know. I’ve had some people read me the riot act for running around. But I look at them and I look at the situation and I think that this stuff is all going to come down on them. I’m fighting for them. I’m fighting for Pennsylvania. I’m fighting for the tri-state area. I’m fighting for everyone who’s suffering fracking. It doesn’t mean that I can move the world myself and that it all comes down to me. But if I can be engaged, I feel compelled to do so. On one hand, they say, “Are you leaving again?” On the other hand, they take a deep breath and look at me with their big eyes and say, “Mom, we’re so proud of you. We totally understand why you are doing what you’re doing. We support you 1,000 %.” My children are very, very conscious little creatures. Everything I’ve found out I’ve basically told them. Because I don’t want them to grow up with the wool over their eyes in terms of what’s going on in this world. I want them to have their eyes wide open as sad as that can make you. But if you know the truth you are prepared to deal with reality better.

Most kids are sequestered in a world of pop culture and careless teenage pursuits. At one point it kind of alienates my kids from other students who are living in teenage land. But they’re glad that they know what they know. It’s a burden to carry around that knowledge. When you’re a teenager and you’re worried about the quality of your food supply and you’re worried about whether or not your water is poisoned or your air is poisoned or if the government is doing this insidious activity, well, it’s a burden. But I’ve tried to be an example for them of what you can do about it so they don’t fall into despair. That is what every activist is ultimately staving off. On a monthly, weekly  and daily basis you come across activists both in person and on Facebook who despair.

Chuck: I think that’s something that every single activist struggles with.

Next month: Julie discusses the issues that are near and dear to her heart. Check it out in the MarchCS2

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking (author of A Brief History of Time) a few weeks ago advised his fellow earth-dwellers to begin probing the sky for another planet with livable conditions much like our own to which we can transfer ourselves with ease since our beloved Earth has already entered its death throes regarding its ability to support human life. In other words, our favorite planet is running out of patience for the human species despite our lengthening life spans.  About eighty years ago, e.e. cummings wrote in a poem that “progress is a comfortable disease.”  British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, who was roughly a contemporary of cummings’, lauded the benefits (perhaps with tongue-in-cheek) of human progress (he was writing in the early 1930s) such as the motor car as a replacement of “the horse-drawn vehicle…the replacement of the priest or witch doctor” by the M.D. or surgeon, and “the automatic pistol or a shell in place of a dagger or battle-axe.”  Thus we now believe the earth is round and the heavens nearly empty instead of solid. Also “we are beginning to believe in our animal ancestry and the possibility of vast improvements in human nature by biological methods.”  Haldane, of course, had faith in the benefits of science.  Apparently Hawking, in our own day, is not so sure.
*
Honesty in poetry counts for much even if not for everything.
*
It takes a vast capacity for boredom to accept the world’s respectable ways. If one is to fit oneself into the machine  like a necessary bolt and not a wrench that will disrupt the motion of the turning wheels, one must first discipline oneself to grin and bear the whole horrible burden.  When Carlyle in his days of poverty was offered a clerkship by a well-meaning friend, the insult nearly tore him in two.  He was determined that if he could not live by truth then he would die by it.
*
As I mount my third consecutive day of early rising, I ask myself some questions with implications that are both personal and social. How can a poet operate behind the facade of such a schedule? If he is always trembling on the edge of weariness he can never be at full mental or imaginative strength. The long necessary stretches of alertness which every poem demands cannot exist. The most he can hope for are fragmentary spurts, an occasional hothouse eruption that knows nothing of fresh air and sunshine. It takes little insight that a society geared so overwhelmingly to a stringent routine such as I am presently enduring must stand low on the creative ladder. It can neither be sensitive to its environment nor profound enough to recognize any philosophic relationship between itself and the past or itself and the universe. It must gradually become stupid.
*
Yes, I am disconcerted aplenty by the concept of Utilitarianism. I see myself being trapped on all sides by its demands. It substitutes charity for life, social engineering for freedom. Extricate men from the land, which is their natural inheritance, and herd them together into urban circuses and you make performers out of what were formerly human beings.
*
Conversation stimulates thinking. Even though one is not operating on one’s profoundest level when talking, one’s mind is usually being thrust in a variety of directions which would have gone untouched if one had remained exclusively in one’s own silent depths.
*
Too often when I have tried to recapture those small successes of the past which made my life seem worthwhile I found myself condemned to a blank memory. It is as if that which I wanted most persisted in avoiding me no matter how intense my pursuit.
*
I sit in a room sealed tight enough to prevent any alien sounds from reaching me. Sounds are the most disturbing intrusion a meditating mind has to contend with. This is why being partly deaf is not always the curse it sometimes appears to be. Surely the great philosopher of our era will be a deaf man. A man with normal hearing can hardly be expected to disengage himself from the steady bombardment of noise inflicted on human ears by our contemporary utilitarianism for a sufficient number of hours to deal effectively with our deepest metaphysical enigmas. Unfortunately, a consensus of opinion holds that if noise and progress are not exactly synonymous they are at least components of the same blueprint.
*
Most Egyptian and Babylonian gods were married, but the gods of the nomadic Semite were celibates mainly because children were often more of a burden than an asset in the steppe country where food was always in scarce supply. For the Catholic Church to attribute its own tradition of priestly celibacy to a sacred source is a ludicrous distortion of an ancient historical fact. The more primitive a people are the more completely they are at the mercy of their physical environment since it enters into virtually every aspect of their lives.
*
There has always been a temple or a god in the next town or community. And therefore it has always been a preoccupation of priests to chain their parishioners to the beliefs over which they themselves reign in order to prevent their rivals in the neighboring towns from coaxing their followers into alien parishes. Intense jealousy among priesthoods has scarred the sacred edifices of the world throughout history.
*
I am doing my best to laugh off a snub, but this is not easy for me. Yet, if I am incapable of bearing such a slight unsavoriness, my salt can’t be worth much. I keep telling myself this. I guess it is a way of trying to rejuvenate my ego.
*
Here I am with nothing particular to do, free time, and yet nowhere to go. Only the clock can bring about my release, or rather return me to my enslavement. The memory nearly always takes over during these lapses from useful labor. With moments to spare from the scrutiny of the world’s eagle-eye, I like to think of my memory as a receptacle for all that is most pleasant among my experiences. But this is wishful thinking, for it contains as much of the bitter as the sweet. This makes brooding, occasionally, at least, unavoidable.
*
It amuses me to listen to friends and acquaintances take opposite points of view on the headline questions of the day. I almost never argue with them even though I often have to repress a desire to prove to them how wrong they are. The basis of friendship apparently goes much deeper into human nature than mere opinions. Frequently, it is only necessary to look a person in the eye on first meeting him to know that he is someone you would like and with whom you could establish a congenial rapport.
*
Don’t take sleeping pills. Instead, murder your mind with a book of critical essays until you make the irresistible drop into the sandhole of nod.
*
Too often it is the quest for a living that keeps us from living.
*
Life goes on passing through its own seasons within the general atmospheric seasons of the calendar. More often than not the twain never meet. Only the undomesticated animals and plants are exempt from this incongruity. Yet, it is man and man alone who is out of step with the stars, and more specifically the mind of man which stands him on his head in relation to the globular revolutions. His mind is weighed against his body. It has grown out of proportion to his limbs, and so heavy is it, in fact, that he is barely able to prevent himself from toppling over. If this process of mind development is the manifestation of a sort of evolutionary fatalism, then he will eventually be crushed by his own preponderance of brain power. His head will one day come crashing down upon his neck and shoulders like a boulder traveling the crest of an avalanche. To put it more simply, man will one day become all brain and no body.  The success or even the survival of the human animal depends on maintaining a delicate balance between the physical and mental aspects of life.
Let one side or the other grow to a disproportionate abundance and the balance will be upset. Existence will cease.
*
Education nowadays rides on the back of a strictly utilitarian mule. One goes to school in the Atomic Age to increase one’s functional skills and knowledge. One must know, so the propaganda insists, in order to earn more money. And where else can one go to acquire the rudiments necessary for higher salaries and wages than to school? Education has become a highly sanctimonious religion in our day. We do penance before its priests by handing over to them an ever-increasing proportion of our paycheck each week. New modern sanctums of learning are springing up so rapidly from coast to coast that a man from Mars might well suspect an epidemic.

Yet where is it all leading? Perhaps in more than one direction. First of all, the material side of life for the great majority of Americans is swinging ever upwards (please forgive my gloss over present-day economic conditions). This would have never happened were it not for the miracle of mass production, which, at least until the age of ultimate automation, rests wholly on the shoulders of a vast functionally literate labor force. Nevertheless, the actual educable capacity of no man has been truly expanded. Intelligence remains today as rare as it was in the 10th century, while genuine education is probably harder to come by in the present era than it ever was before in civilization’s long history. Culture is a part of life which only an infinitesimally small number of people today can look back on with atavistic nostalgia. What this boils down to as far as Western man is concerned is that he is so dominated by the philosophy of quantity he has all but forgotten how vitally necessary the need for quality is in his life to prevent him from lapsing back into the age of barbarism.
*
The neglect of quality may not be as acutely felt in the immediate present as it will undoubedly be in the near future, which some of us can already envision
as a time of general deterioration in all things. The splendid leadership of the intellectual elite, which lasted for so many centuries, will be a bygone memory.
*
Occasionally I feel a nostalgic urge for the seashore. I remember the thrill I felt as a boy whenever I knew myself to be approaching the shore. I eagerly looked out of my car, bus or train window to catch a first glimpse of sand, because as one drew within a few miles of the ocean the soil began to change from fertile loam to sand. Crossing the borderline of sand with its hundreds of acres of scrub pine and long thin grass also brought a change of air. The inland breezes ceased or were overwhelmed by light but stronger winds blowing in from the ocean. The lungs expanded and every limb became reinvigorated with a new zest for life. Not even the seashore itself with its endless stretch of beach and interminable rumble of waves could lift me to the same state of exhileration as that first breath of sea air when still several miles from the ocean.

Outsourcing

“Ola, Amigo! Pack your bags; we’re going to Mexico!” bubbled Dr. Franklin Peterson Comstock III, faux physician and money-maker.

“Yeah, I could use a decent vacation,” I replied, figuring he’d pay for both of us since he had just set the world record for the most nose jobs in a 24-hour period.

“What vacation?” he said. “I’m setting up practice.”

“And give up catering to rich people with inflated bank accounts and deflated ethics?”

“Don’t have a choice. I’m getting laid off.”

Comstock had been a rainmaker for the Megabucks Happy Health Care Medical Center for the past decade. There was only one reason I could think of why he’d be laid off.

“Megabucks tired of paying your malpractice insurance?” I asked.

“Not just me,” he said. “Hospital’s laying off most of the staff, making the rest work overtime, and hiring outside contractors. They said it was hard to survive when the profit was down to only 20 or so million a year.”

“I didn’t realize it was that serious,” I said. “You planning to set up private practice to help the poor in Mexico?” I asked admiringly.

“Not a chance! Gonna get rich working for Megabucks!”

“You just said you were laid off.”

“Been laid off in the U.S.,” said Comstock while putting a frozen burrito into the microwave.

“Megabucks/Mexico just hired me. There’s cheaper labor down there.”

“You crazy?” I asked. “You’re the cheaper labor.”

“Obviously you don’t know American business,” said Comstock haughtily.

“Megabucks/U.S. closes its auxiliary operations, and then contracts with Mexican companies for a fifth of the cost in the U.S. They do the work, ship it back to the U.S., and Megabucks bills Blue Cross the full rate as if it was done locally.”

“So where do you fit in?” I asked.

“Just as before. Nose jobs. Breast augmentations. Tummy tucks. All the important medical procedures. But this time, I do it in Cancun.”

“To rich Mexicans,” I said disgusted.

“To rich Americans!” said Comstock. “If they want the best care, they’ll take their private jets to Mexico and then deduct the trip as a necessary business expense.”

“And what about the impoverished and middle-class Americans?”

“If they can sneak across the border, they can also get medical care.”

“What about prescriptions?”

“Megabucks contracted with some of the best drug dealers—I mean pharmacists and chemists—in Mexico. Quality is just as good and it’ll only be four or five times production costs. Unlike the U.S. there’s no TV advertising and six-figure MBAs and lawyers that require drugs to be 30 or 40 times production costs.”

“With prices that low, how do you know there won’t be mass rushes by Americans to grab everything they can?”

“Because there’s security! Every hospital and pharmacy has armed guards with the best automatic weapons smuggled through the God-fearing Second Amendment patriotic Southern states.”

“Is Megabucks outsourcing all its operations?”

“Keeping the ER. After tummy tucks and butt lifts, that’s the hospital’s ‘cash cow.’”

“So, then, it’ll have to keep some services like X-Ray and the lab,” I said. “Maybe even a doctor or two.”

“Too expensive,” said Comstock. “Megabucks will hire more residents and foreign-educated doctors, and work them 18 hours a day. More work, less time to complain. Residents will do anything to get experience to pass their boards. May even hire a couple of hospitalists. You know, the ones who graduated at the bottom of their class and can’t even get work in a Free Clinic.”

“I suppose they’ll also do the lab work?” I asked.

“Do you know some of those lab techs are making as much as $30,000 a year! Made sense to lay them off, too.”

“So how will the ER know a victim’s blood chemistry, or if there’s internal injuries?”

“Technology,” said Comstock. “They scan the blood here, and send digital X-Rays to Mexico. Mexican lab technicians—you know, the ones that don’t know about unions and will work for only a few bucks a day—will analyze everything, then text the results back to the U.S.”

“This sounds like it’s not only a way to maximize profits, but also a way to avoid dealing with the President’s health care reform program.”

“Obamacare!” spit out Comstock. “Nothing but socialized medicine.”

“Most countries have forms of socialized medicine,” I countered, “and they not only have good health care but affordable prices to their citizens.”
Comstock put his hands to his ears and began chanting, “We’re Number 1, We’re Number 1.”

“Number 37,” I corrected him. “The World Health Organization ranked the U.S. just below Costa Rico.”

“They’re all Commies,” replied Comstock. “Besides, that study is a decade old.”

“Last year, the independent Commonwealth Fund compared the nations of the United Kingdom against the U.S., and the U.S. ranked seventh of the seven.”

“Yeah, like Americans will go to Canada? It’s covered by snow and run by a queen who can’t even speak English.”

“You and Megabucks are crazy!”

“Possibly,” said Comstock, “but outsourcing is the American way. By the way, do you put ketchup or mustard on a burrito?”

[Dr. Walter Brasch isn’t licensed to practice medicine, but he goes to some excellent physicians who are—and they’re just as frustrated with the costs, insurance companies and myriad forms as anyone else. His current book is the critically-acclaimed mystery novel, Before the First Snow]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Walter M. Brasch, Ph.D.
Latest Book: Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution
(www.greeleyandstone.com)

www.walterbrasch.com

www.walterbrasch.blogspot.com

www.facebook.com/walterbrasch

Donald Kahneman

I was reading an excerpt on amazon.com of Donald Kahneman’s new book,  Thinking Fast and Slow.  Mr. Kahneman, a respected psychologist, states that decades ago sociologists felt that humans were basically rational creatures who could make good decisions. That view has changed. Now, humans are regarded as quite irrational in their behavior, frequently both emotional and illogical.

When I criticize right-wing assertions, I have done so on the basis of their logical flaws. After the Tucson massacre, one right-leaning newspaper stated that it was clear that the shooter, Jared Loughner, acted alone without any political motives  and uninfluenced by anyone.  My response was, “How could anyone know what influences prevailed on Mr. Loughner?” Did someone follow him around noting what websites he visited, what books he read? Schizophrenics can read, they can listen to speeches. Finally, my view was vindicated when a moderator on MSNBC interviewed a psychiatrist. His opinion was that there are numbers of quite deranged people in our society who may interpret any loose talk about shooting people as a command to go shoot someone!

Making completely unsupportable assertions is a habit with right-wing writers. These people have a faith-based view of reality: the world is the place they would like and imagine it to be. They rail against women getting abortions or using birth control because in their view women have no wants or needs other than nesting. And as for the poor, they simply have not taken advantage of the opportunities that are all around them: the poor are poor because they haven’t worked hard enough..

Information from the social sciences can assist in the effort to further liberate women. The right wing seems more determined than ever to insure that the status of  women resembles that of cattle. Testifying on behalf of future wives of my college  classmates (men) , our sociology professor announced that in earlier times, women were assigned their duties, their roles. (“I’m going hunting with the guys. You stay home and make me a nice dinner.”) This was in case we thought it “natural” for women to spend their lives cooking and cleaning.

I don’t wish to start a new holy war, but social science can also refute the claims of conservative clerics in some denominations who refuse to ordain women.  When they state that Jesus’ disciples were all men, you can ask them how many fourth century Hebrew women are you aware of who would have wanted to be seen running around the countryside with a band of men. What would have happened to the reputations of these women?  Scholars reveal that in that era, a woman’s  sphere was the home, the synagogue and not much more.

You don’t hear much from Christian writers today—except from the fundamentalists, that is, unless you are among the decreasing numbers of Americans who attend worship services regularly. But the fact is that many scholars consider the Creation story in Genesis  1 and 2 to be a poem. Some commentators in a former day made much of Eve’s having been the first to succumb to Satan’s temptations ( and  then having offered Adam the forbidden fruit). Eve was painted as the “weaker sex,” and that was when the critics were being kind!  We now know that the writer of Genesis was male, and it is not likely he would have portrayed a man as the weaker partner.

Literary scholars tell us that anything written came via a human brain and bears the marks of that particular mind. There may well be divine inspiration, but it was communicated to the rest of us through a human mind. That colors it. Shakespeare is Shakespeare. Steven King is Steven King. Virginia Woolf is herself.  And what God said to a writer on religion is what the writer was disposed to hear.

I guess in being a heretic I have good company.

Deborah Rogers became involved in natural gas when she learned that an energy company planned 12 high impact wells next to her property, Deborah’s Farmstead, a nationally recognized artisanal cheese-making dairy in Texas where they have been drilling for gas. Since 2009, Ms. Rogers has spoken publicly on economics and other the topics regarding shale gas drilling and is currently on a speaking tour throughout New York. “After working more than ten years as a financial analyst it wasn’t very difficult to find discrepancies in the public reporting of financial records belonging to various public companies once I examined them,” Rogers said.

Rogers has served on the Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas since 2008. She was appointed in 2011 by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to a task force reviewing placement of air monitors in the Barnett Shale region in light of air quality concerns brought about by the natural gas operations in North Texas. She also joined a regional steering committee for the Oil and Gas Accountability Project (OGAP) in 2011 with responsibility for economic questions.

For more information on the Energy Policy Forum, please visit energypolicyforum.com. To learn more about Berks Gas Truth, please visit www.gastruth.org.

Republican Tap-Dancer!

Watching the Republican presidential candidates’ debates has been perversely entertaining. It is fascinating to observe the verbal pirouette of politicians trying to distance themselves from their former incarnations. Particularly guilty is former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. We are tempted to ask, like the long-ago TV game show To Tell the Truth, “Will the real Mitt Romney please stand up.”

Romney’s diatribes against President Obama are typical Republican fare, but on no issue does it reek of outright hypocrisy more than the question of health care. With a straight face, Romney rails against Obamacare even though he is well aware that the president’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions are modeled after his own Massachusetts health care plan, put in place when he was governor. If Romney becomes the Republican nominee, stay tuned to see how the Democratic and Republican candidates’ handlers choreograph that discussion.

Massachusetts Health Care

Let’s take a look at the situation in Massachusetts. The Census Bureau reports that 370,000 Massachusetts residents are uninsured. About 77% of employers offer health care insurance, but only 54% of workers buy it because of the high cost of premiums, deductibles (some $1,000 or more), and co-pays. A Massachusetts Medical Society survey says the percentage of medical practices accepting new patients is declining. Even for those with insurance, access to care is limited by high deductibles and difficulty finding doctors to accept low reimbursement payments.

Corroborating this analysis, Harvard Medical School researchers report that many in Massachusetts find insurance unaffordable and employer-sponsored insurance unavailable. The Harvard research finds that “the uninsured remain predominantly the working poor.”

The researchers issued a news release which states, “…Of the 189 patients (in the study) without health insurance, two-thirds (65.9 percent) were employed, but only a quarter had access to employer-sponsored insurance…” Job loss or change of jobs also caused many to be uninsured.

“These findings illustrate that tying insurance to employment can be an unstable mechanism for providing coverage,” said Dr. Rachel Nardin, the study’s lead author. “We found that employer-based coverage failed the self-employed; those who worked for firms that did not offer insurance, especially small firms exempt from a requirement to offer insurance; and the poor who could not afford employer-sponsored insurance even when it was offered to them. The system of coverage also failed those who lost their job, which is particularly problematic with the current economic downturn.”

Another author of the study, Dr. Danny McCormick said, “It appears that for people with very low incomes, even state plans with subsidized insurance premiums may be too costly. Also, under the reform law workers who are offered employer-sponsored insurance but decline it due to cost are not eligible for state subsidized insurance, no matter how poor they are.”

The authors of the Harvard study raise a cautionary note about the national Affordable Care Act. They sound a warning that since the Massachusetts health care legislation was the model for ACA, the less than stellar performance of Romneycare in Massachusetts does not bode well for Obamacare on the national stage.

Prospects for the Affordable Care Act

Like peeling back the layers of an onion, new information about what’s really in ACA is coming to light and in some cases being altered or adjusted. Dr. Walter Tsou, former Philadelphia health commissioner, commented on a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services informational bulletin. “Well, it looks like we now know what kind of health benefits we will be getting on the Affordable Care Act – the cheapest plan of the three largest small group health plans, which generally offer pretty skimpy plans. Add additional insult by realizing most people will be spending around $10,000-$14,000 for a bronze family plan which only pays 60% of the bill and you realize we will be paying $10,000-$14,000 for a family plan where you still pay an additional 40% toward the actual bill. Talk about under covered. People will surely still go bankrupt. The insurance industry is breaking open the champagne on this…”

Researcher extraordinaire Jerry Policoff of Health Care for All PA offers his analysis:

“A new Gallup poll out today (1/24/12) combined with other well-reported health care utilization trends offer strong evidence that the Affordable Care Act is not improving access to health care, and that access is actually getting worse, not better.

“Consider the positive fact that under the Act’s provisions at least 2.5 million young people aged 19 through 25 who were previously uninsured have obtained insurance under provisions of the Act that allow them to continue under their parents’ policies from age 19 until they turn 26 (not well known is that insurers can still deny them continued coverage if they have pre-existing conditions until the part of the Act that forbids this takes effect in 2014). Consider also that there are now high-risk pools that for the first time allow people with pre-existing conditions to obtain health insurance, though only about 40,000 people have signed up because these plans are more expensive than many can afford.

“Still, one might expect that the substantial increase in insured young people would be starting to positively impact over-all insured statistics, yet the opposite is true.

“What is also true – and one of the reasons why statistics revealing what percentage of the population has health insurance are misleading – is that even among the insured, utilization of health care has dropped dramatically over the past two years. Virtually every quarterly report by virtually every major insurance company reveals this to be the case, and it is one of the main reasons insurance companies are reeling in record profits these days. Less utilization results in fewer claims to pay (or deny) and bigger profits for insurance companies. The media has largely attributed this disturbing phenomenon to the weak economy, and that may be playing some role, but the major cause is the calculated efforts by insurance companies to shift costs to their policy holders by moving them out of comprehensive policies with affordable co-pays and deductibles into policies that offer somewhat lower premiums but high co-pays and deductibles that their policy holders often cannot afford to pay when they fall ill.

“The fact that utilization of health care among the insured has taken a nosedive does not bode well for the future health of Americans under the Affordable Care Act, especially since many people who are forced to buy insurance under the Act will also be compelled by their economic circumstances to opt for these high deductible/high co-pay policies. In other words, they will be underinsured, and access to health care is severely limited where the underinsured are concerned.”

Hope on the Horizon?

By now, CS2 readers are well aware that a single-payer system provides the best hope for covering everyone with inexpensive, comprehensive coverage. We are not alone.

The Capital Times editor emeritus Dave Zweifel explained, “The answer to the nation’s health care crisis is staring everyone in the face, yet as a country we continue to refuse to come to grips with it. It is far from rocket science. What this country simply needs is a single-payer national health insurance program that covers all American citizens from the day they’re born to the day they die – just as other advanced countries have done for decades.”

Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect, wrote, “By pursuing a brand of reform built on the existing insurance system, both Massachusetts and President Obama have opted for a strategy that increases complexity and administrative cost and then responds to fiscal pressures by shifting costs onto patients and doctors. Some of this squeezes out inefficiencies, but it often squeezes out care as well…But eventually, this nation will reach a crossroads, where we must choose between seamless universal coverage or relentless incursions on care.”

Harvard Medical School’s Dr. Rachel Nardin stated, “Although arguments about political feasibility are a major challenge, our study suggests that a comprehensive reform guaranteeing coverage to all residents without eligibility restrictions – such as that provided by many single-payer systems – would be a more effective way to achieve universal coverage than the Massachusetts reform.”

But you likely won’t be seeing politicians clambering toward single-payer health care in the 2012 election cycle. Instead, be prepared to be subjected to some fancy dancing around the failures inherent in health care ‘reform’ married to the piggish health insurance industry.

Enjoy the show!

Statue of Liberty

In a 5-4 decision on January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission, ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from putting limits on political spending by corporations. The ruling allowed unlimited amounts of money from undisclosed sources to be spent on political campaigns.

“Citizens United is a group that says it is ‘dedicated to restoring our government to citizens’ control,’ but they really mean they want only the wealthiest individuals and corporations controlling the government,” says Ralph Kabakoff, a Facilitator of Occupy Reading.

We, the People, believe that rights protected by the Constitution are for natural persons. The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.

The Citizens United decision has allowed corporations to further wrest the reins of government from We, the People. Our system is weakened when corporations possess inalienable Constitutional rights to influence public opinion, shape public laws, and mold public officials.

The assault on democracy caused by the Citizens United ruling can be seen in the rise of so-called Super PACs (Political Action Committees). Super PACs are front groups with no limit on how much money people or corporations can contribute. There have been calls for a Constitutional amendment to undo the Citizens United ruling.

Reading Occupy the Courts

Occupy Reading marked the two year anniversary of the ruling by joining with movements across the U.S. to call attention to their opposition to the Citizens United decision. A diverse group of citizen activists gathered outside the Berks County Services Center and Courthouse for the event. A lively bit of street theater illustrated their points.

Characters such as Uncle Sam, the Statue of Liberty, a wealthy bankster, and a corporate CEO participated in the presentation. Chants, mic checks so familiar to the Occupy movement, and music made for a lively production. A fitting end to the Courthouse event was the playing of “Taps” while cards representing the death of democracy were placed into a wooden coffin. The ‘funeral’ cortege then marched down Penn Street and ‘occupied’ the Penn Street Bridge for the usual Friday afternoon vigil.

Stay tuned for more from the fine folks of Occupy Reading.

Bankster

*Ironically Hegel is buried only a few yards from Bertolt Brecht

Hegel

”Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.”– Winston Churchill

On January 6, 2012 a Fracking and Nuisance Litigation meeting took place in Montrose, Pennsylvania.

Energy-In-Depth’s (EID) – Northeast Marcellus Initiative Field Directors Bill desRosiers and Nicole Jacobs, along with Helen Humphries, Senior Corporate Communications Specialists for the Williams Company, attempted to attend the meeting.  They were asked to leave, as the purpose was to meet with people seeking information regarding nuisance litigation against Natural Gas Corporations, and the presence of representatives from the Natural Gas Industry would chill candid discussions about available legal remedies, according to a Responsible Drilling Alliance spokesperson.
The following day, “Bill” desRosiers published a blog entry on the EID-Northeast Marcellus Initiative website entitled “You’re Not Welcome Here” – This Is Transparency?”.

An article appeared on the We Are Powershift website, entitled “From Township Planning Consultant to Fracker: Tom Shepstone” by Alexander Lotorto.   EID-Northeast Marcellus Initiative followed up immediately with  “Who Is Alex Lotorto, Well Street Occupier?” by Giles Howard, a Guest Blogger.

I would not be surprised to find an EID blog entry entitled “Who is Dory Hippauf?”  to appear within hours of publication.   Who is Dory Hippauf?  I’m a 56yr old woman, I moved to a small town in the Back Mountain area of Northeast Pennsylvania about 14 years ago from Massachusetts.   I am the Research Committee Chair for the Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition of Luzerne County.   I hold no degrees in economics, the corporate world, or politics.   I have an AA in Graphic Design, and an AS in CAD drafting.  I am currently employed as a CAD Drafter.   I have a great deal of curiosity in how corporations have influenced our government and our lives, and this led me to start “Connecting the Dots”.    All the information I have and will present is easily found on the internet using Google, and I do cite my sources.

In the interest of transparency, Part 3 of the Connecting the Dots series will be asking “Who Is EID”.

According to SourceWatch “Energy in Depth (EID) is a pro-oil-and-gas drilling industry front group formed by the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) and dozens of additional industry organizations for the purpose of denouncing legislation proposed by Colorado U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette to regulate underground hydraulic fracturing fluids.”

In 2009, EID mounted a fierce “rebuttal” campaign against the documentary film, GASLAND, by Josh Fox.  EID sent a letter to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences stating Gasland should be ineligible for nomination because it was based on inaccuracies.   EID also published several blog entries “debunking” the film.

The funding sources for EID include: Anadarko, BP, Chevron, El Paso Corporation, EnCana, Halliburton, Marathon, Occidental Petroleum, Schlumberger, Shell API, Talisman and XTO Energy.

EID has two satellite branches:  EID-Northeast Marcellus Initiative which covers Pennsylvania and New York area, and EID- The Ohio Project which focuses on gas/oil drilling in Ohio.  If you have clicked on these links, you will see nice profile pictures, each person’s EID Title, and a “hometown”.   The purpose of this is to make you feel more connected to EID, especially if you recognize the hometown, as in “Gee, these are nice people, they are from my home town.”  This is a time honored public relations tactic, used by many ad agencies to sell you products, and politicians to make them seem more “likeable”.  Public Relation firms know you will be more apt to believe someone who appears to have a connection to you, as opposed to someone you don’t know.

The “grassroots” initiative was launched around May 2011 by EID.  According to the website Marcellus Drilling News: “EID has also launched a major new grassroots initiative now spreading from county to county in the region.”

Marcellus Drilling News further states “The program, known as EID’s “Northeast Marcellus Initiative,” calls for the hiring of several full-time organizers charged with engaging and educating the region’s many supporters of the Mighty Marcellus, and providing them with the tools they need to act. Led on the ground by campaign manager and well-known local natural gas advocate Tom Shepstone, the initiative is already up-and-running in several counties across the region, with field organizers now in place in Luzerne, Lycoming and Wayne Counties, Pa. – all with reach into New York State.” (emphasis added)

EID is not grassroots.  EID’s “GAS”roots extend from the front groups, Corporations, Public Relations, to the halls of Congress.

There are 3 main “DOTS” of intersection with EID where multiple people have multiple “dots” in common:

• Independent Petroleum Association of America
• FTI Consulting
• U.S. House of Representatives

The GASroots Echo Chamber Singers:

• Institute for Energy Research
• American Energy Alliance
• ShaleNet (Pennsylvania College of Technology, a Penn State Affiliate)
• Responsible Resources
• Marcellus Shale Coalition
• Townhall.com
• Mackinac Center for Public Policy
• Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP)
• Ohio Oil and Gas Association (OOGA)
• Interstate Oil & Gas Compact

The following is going to be eerily reminiscence of the “Begat” from the Book of Genesis, however this format is the most expedient and concise manner to present the information.

EID Players:

“Talk to anyone in PR and they will admit that increasingly clients suggest ideas which are straight from the astroturf. Often they seek to utilise the power of the internet with extensive, but spurious, social media campaigns. But Tim Pinto, a specialist in media and advertising law with Taylor Wessing, cautions that the law can bite, and bite hard, if an astroturfer is exposed: “It’s a wrong to think that the law lags behind here. The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 provide for a criminal offence for traders who falsely represent themselves as a consumer or engage in misleading marketing.” Good and bad reviews: The ethical debate over ‘astroturfing’ There’s a fine line between telling the truth well and lying.

Lee Fuller is the Executive Director of EID, he is also the Vice President of Government Relations for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.  According to Open Secrets, the top industry represented by Mr. Fuller was Oil & Gas.

Regarding Gasland, “The filmmaker alternates between misstating and outright ignoring basic and verifiable facts related to the impact of these activities on the health and welfare of humans, wildlife and the environment,” said Lee Fuller, executive director of Energy in Depth (EID), in a letter (pdf) today to the academy.

Jeffery “Jeff” Eschelman is listed as Executive Vice President at EID.  In addition to his position at EID he is the Vice President of Public Affairs & Communication at the Independent Petroleum Association of America and former employee of Dittus Communications.

Julia Bell: Researcher at EID, and Public Affairs & Communications Coordinator for the Independent Petroleum Association of America.

Chris Tucker: EID Team Lead, Spokesperson, and Advisor for – you guessed it – the Independent Petroleum Association of America.  Mr. Tucker is more closely associated with the EID-Marcellus Initiative branch as Team Leader and Blogger.

• Senior Vice President Oil & Gas: FTI Consulting
• Advisor to the Marcellus Shale Coalition
• Former Press Secretary/Communications Director for Rep John E Peterson R-PA (Retired at the end of 110^th Congress)                                                                                          Rep. Peterson’s Campaign Donors for the 2006 campaign:

$10,300: Devonian Resources (Energy Conservation and Management                                                        Consultants) Top Single Contributor

$35,500: Oil & Gas Top Industry Sector Contributor

• Former Communications Advisor for House Minority Whip Rep Roy Blunt R-MO, (elected as Senator in 2008).

2008 Senate Campaign:

$23,300: Chevron, 2nd highest individual contributor

$128,250: Oil & Gas, 3rd highest industry sector contributor

2010 Senate Campaign:

$32,173: Murray Energy, 15th highest individual contributor

$29,200: Koch Industries, 16th highest individual contributor

$28,800: Exxon Mobil, 17th highest individual contributor

$342,050: Oil & Gas, 7th highest industry sector contributor

At a conference in Houston Texas, on November 1, 2011, Chris Tucker gave a presentation entitled “Understanding, Responding to, and Working with Environmental NGOs“   (NGOs are Non Government Organizations.)

This was the same conference where Matt Pizarella, Range Resources Communications Director advocated using “Psy Ops” to “overcome stakeholder concerns” .

The presentation divides “Environmental NGOs” into two categories:

Ones oriented toward solutions (most of the time), which include Worldwatch Institute, Sierra Club, CleanAir Task Force, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Nature Conservancy.  I assume the “ones oriented toward solutions” means these NGOs are the easiest working partners for the gas & oil industry.

Others Driven by Ideological Attachment – NRDC, EWG.org, Oil & Gas Accountability Project, Friends of Earth, Riverkeeper, Food&Water Watch.

The presentation continues with how to support and push the message: “Anatomy of a “Movement”: Start with $$$.  The slide shows the “splash page” for the Park Foundation.

Park Foundation Environmental Grants

Public Policy is focused on efforts to advocate for strong and enforced water policies and increased public investment in sustainable water infrastructure at state and federal levels. Support is primarily targeted to organizations with national policy agendas and New York and North Carolina programs. The Foundation has developed a specific policy interest in addressing concerns about hydraulic fracturing and gas drilling activities proposed for New York State. (emphasis added)

I wonder if the specific policy interest puts the Park Foundation in the “Solutions Oriented (most of the time) or the “Driven by Ideological Attachment” category?

The next 3 slides are called “PLANT YOUR SEEDS“, and lists:

• $150,000 – American University for Josh Fox “investigative workshop” Series
• $150,000 – American Rivers
• $100,000 – Environmental Work Group (EWG)
• $100,000 – Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
• $100,000 – National Public Radio (NPR)
• $  95,000 – Environmental Advocates of NY
• $  75,000 – Earth Justice
• $  70,000 – OGAP, described as Anti-Marcellus organizer for PA/NY
• $  70,000 – Democracy Now, Shaleshock, SourceWatch, Media Matters, and As You Sow

It appears this is the money that has been spent or will be spent to disrupt, discredit and/or debunk those who are “Driven by Ideological Attachment”.

The presentation goes on to tell the audience to “Manufacture Your Studies“.

This is a very nice “HEADS UP” from EID to let us know the studies that will be coming from the Gas Industry will be Manufactured.

The section of the presentation ends with “And Finally, Mobilize Your Attack“.

Psy Ops?

The Talking Points are still focusing on “the shiney” in “The Way Forward” section:

• Going above & Beyond on the ground: HSE, community engagement
• Maximize local opportunities: jobs, revenue, cost savings
• Revitalization of the middle-class
• Reintroduction of great industries of the past – Rail, Steel, Manufacturing

The choreography will include:

• EID/trade groups well-equipped engage ideological opponents
• Reorientation of communications approach – General public our new “landowners”, “regulators”
• Blocking and tackling: accept every invitation, get as many folks to rig sites as possible, respond in a straightforward, expeditious manner

Dana Bohan: EID Staff Geologist

Junior Associate – Strategic Communications – Energy Sector: FTI Consulting

Steven “Steve” Everly: EID Spokesperson

Assistant Vice President: FTI Consulting Financial Dynamics

                        The strategic communication division of FTI Consulting, Financial Dynamics                                     helps ensure that its clients’ brand, reputation and market valuation reflect the                                     true worth of their businesses.

Columnist: Townhall.com

Steve Everley is Manager of Policy Research at American Solutions and a                                     contributing author to To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-                                                Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich. Prior to joining American                                                             Solutions, Everley worked as a research assistant at the American                                                             Enterprise Institute. He graduated summa cum laude from the University                                                 of Kansas and attended graduate school at the University of Southern                                                 California. (emphasis added)

Nicole Jacobs: EID- Northeast Marcellus Initiative Field Organizer.

Independent Consultant – Shalenet

Shalenet operates through a grant from Department of Labor, Employment and                                     Training Administration to provide the gas industry with a local workforce.  Key                                     partners include 15 Workforce Investment areas (not named), focusing on                                                 Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and New York, PA Independent Oil an Gas                                     Association, Pennsylvania Independent Oil & Gas Association (PIOGA) the                                     Veterans Administration, Allegheny Conference on Community Development,                                     Broome Community College, Eastern Gateway Community College,                                                 Pennsylvania College of Technology,  West Virginia Northern Community                                                 College and Westmoreland County Community College.

ShaleNet operates out of Pennsylvania College of Technology which is affiliated             with Penn State.

Brian Kennedy Per: NATURAL GAS: BP, others push against federal regulation of fracturing, Brian Kennedy is cited as a spokesman for Energy In Depth. (emphasis added)

Although, Mr. Kennedy is cited as spokesman in this and others articles, there is no sign of him the Energy In Depth websites.

“This language seems to be a restatement and endorsement of policies and procedures             the industry has been following for decades, as mandated by federal, state and local             laws,” said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for Energy In Depth. “To the extent the             language helps clarify the existing framework and highlight its overwhelming success to             date, it could be a valuable educational tool moving forward.” (emphasis added)

• Senior Managing Director Strategic Communications: FTI Consulting
• Former Senior Managing Director: FD Americas-Public Affairs
• Former Communications Director: former Rep. Richard Pombo R-CA

Rep. Richard Pombo lost his re-election bid in 2006 to Jerry McNerney.
“Rep. Richard Pombo’s loss represents the most significant electoral                                                 victory the environmental movement has seen in decades,” said Rodger                                                 Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund. “It should                                                 now be clear to all that we have the political strength to take on and defeat                                     extreme anti-environmental politicians.”

                                    Environmentalists opposed Pombo for efforts to rewrite species                                                             protections and increase oil drilling in Alaska and off-shore while                                                             fundraising from industry groups. He also faced questions about ties to                                                 disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in a congressional                                                 influence peddling scandal.

2006 Campaign:

$34,800: Chevron, 2nd highest individual contributor

$197,648: Oil & Gas, 4th highest industry sector contributor

• Former Aide – House Committee on Natural Resources
• Staff Member – Rep. John Boehner R-OH
  Rep. John Boehner R-OH was Minority Leader in 2008.  He became House       Speaker in 2010.

Campaign 2010:

$58,100: Murray Energy, 2nd highest individual contributor

$47,800: FirstEnergy Corp, 3rd highest individual contributor

$369,772: Electric Utilities, 4th highest industry sector contributor

$185,650: Oil & Gas, 14th highest industry sector contributor

The Speaker’s Pipe Dreams: Big Oil Investments Muddy

 Boehner’s Message On Keystone XL

January 18, 2012 11:25 am ET

Shortly after the Keystone XL pipeline permit process started gaining steam in Canada and the American Midwest, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) began investing significantly in companies tied to the project. In addition, since 2008 a number of companies that stand to benefit from Keystone XL have donated thousands of dollars to Boehner since 2008. As approval has floundered, Boehner has used his clout as Speaker of the House to try to push the project through in the name of “jobs.”

According to public financial disclosure statements published by the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2009 Boehner invested $15,001-$50,000 in each of a number of companies that stand to benefit from the Keystone project (documents for 2008-2010 provided for comparison).

Boehner Invested Between $15,001-$50,000 In BP In 2009. [Boehner 2009 Financial Disclosure, 5/14/10, via OpenSecrets.org see bottom of page 13]

• Co-Founder – Institute for Energy Research, DC office

Rhonda Reda: EID – The Ohio Project, Executive Director

• Executive Director: Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP)

Ms. Reda currently serves on the Public Outreach Committee of the Interstate                         Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC) and the Colonial Drake Well                                     Historical “Oil150” Steering Committee. She is an active member of the                                                 Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Society of Petroleum                                     Engineers and the Ohio Geological Society. Recently, Ms. Reda served on                                     the White House Task Force on Energy Education, and has received                                                 numerous state and national awards for OOGEEP’s efforts including: AAPG                                     Eastern Section’s Presidential Award for Public Outreach, Friend of Science                                     Award from the Science Council of Ohio, EPA’s Ohio Environmental Education                                     Award for Outstanding Program, World Oil Runner Up for Best Public Outreach                                     Program, Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Minerals Education Award,                                     and the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission’s Public Outreach                                                 Stewardship Award. Ms. Reda is a graduate of both Ohio University and Edison                                     State College. (emphasis added)

• Executive Director – Ohio Oil and Gas Foundation

Thomas Stewart: EID – The Ohio Project, Executive Vice President

• Member: Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission
• Executive Vice President and Board of Trustees: Ohio Oil & Gas Association (OOGA)

Travis Windle : EID Presenter.  Although Travis Windle’s name does not appear on any of the EID websites, he was cited as a presenter on a powerpoint presentation: THE MARCELLUS SHALE: Powering America’s Future,Thanks to Hydraulic Fracturing, dated October 14, 2010, and the email cited is for Mr. Windle at EID.

More recently, Mr. Windle has been cited as Spokesman for the Marcellus Shale Coalition:
“Likewise, Marcellus Shale Coalition Spokesman Travis Windle said the closure of any one             well will have little to no impact on those using it for waste disposal.”

• Vice President – FTI Consulting
• Press Secretary, House Republican Conference – US House of Representatives
• Communications Director, House Financial Services Committee  – US House of Representatives
• Press Secretary – former Rep John E Peterson R-PA (see Chris Tucker for Campaign Contribution Info)
• Staff Assistant – former Rep. Melissa Hart R-PA, she was defeated in the 2006 General Election.

Rep. Melissa Hart 2006 Campaign:

$17,938: K&L Gates, 4th Highest Individual Contributor.

K&L Gates represents leading global corporations, growth and                                                             middle-market companies, capital markets participants and                                                                         entrepreneurs in every major industry group as well as public sector                                                 entities, educational institutions, philanthropic organizations and                                                             individuals.

• Press Secretary – Rep. Tom Petri R-WI  Up for re-election 2012

Committee Assignments:

Education and Labor Transportation and Infrastructure

Leadership PAC: Badger Fund

The Public Relations:

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers”. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

To recap EID staff, 6 are employed by FTI Consulting, 3 are former US House of  Representative aides, and 4 are also part of Oil & Gas Industry organizations.

FTI Consulting:

The registrant information for the EID website is listed as FD Dittus Communications.  

FD Dittus Communications became known as FD Americas Public Affairs, and later FD Americas was rebranded as FTI Consulting.

FD Americas: A unit of UK-based strategic and financial communications consultancy             FD, FD Americas Public Affairs (formerly Dittus Communications) offers public relations, marketing communications, and issue advocacy services. The firm provides the usual corporate services (media relations, corporate communications, and crisis management) plus public affairs services (issues management, legislative strategy, grassroots organizing and coalition building) as well as marketing, creative, and design services. Clients have included Kraft Foods, Dell, the US Department of Energy, and International Paper. The firm was founded in 1993. 

FTI Consulting: global business advisory firm             dedicated to helping organizations protect and enhance their enterprise value, today announced that Financial Dynamics             (FD), the Strategic Communications practice of FTI Consulting, has adopted the FTI             Consulting brand globally. FD now will be known as the Strategic Communications practice of FTI Consulting.

Side Note:

The original founder and CEO of Dittus Communications is Gloria Dittus, who later became CEO and President of FD Dittus-Strategic Communications.  

Ms. Dittus is now the founder and CEO of Story Partners.

Our Story:  a public affairs firm focused on helping trade associations, corporations and coalitions amplify their story through carefully aligned online and offline campaigns designed to drive public policy debates. (emphasis added)

Our principals have an extensive history of developing and executing strategies that make a difference – whether our clients are trying to influence a public debate, define and dominate a market, or successfully position an executive team.

Our philosophy is simple: leverage your story through compelling messages, amplify your story through an echo chamber of friends and allies, and broadcast your story through every communications channel available.

The GASroots Echo Chamber Singers

“When you’re singing you can hear the echo of people in the audience singing every single word with you, and that was that big dream that I had for myself. It’s happening.”  ~Taylor Swift

These are companion organization which will “amplify the story through an echo chamber”.  In conjunction with the main “GAS”roots,  the echo chamber repeats the talking points, industry approved “buzz words” and keeps repeating them as often as possible across all media, internet platforms and legislatures.

The Institute for Energy Research (IER)

Per SOURCEWATCH: founded in 1989 from a predecessor non-profit organization,                         advocates positions on environmental issues including deregulation of utilities, climate             change denial, and claims that conventional energy sources are virtually limitless. It is a             member of the Sustainable Development Network.

Robert L. Bradley Jr:  Chief Executive Officer and President.

Currently a member of the International             Association for Energy Economics, the                                     American Economic Association, Southern Economic Association, and the                                     American Historical Association, and a former Director of Public Relations Policy                                     at Enron.

Campaigns

In 2009 IER ran a campaign on “green jobs” attacking the expansion of             renewables energies. IER commissioned three studies on renewable energies and green jobs in Denmark, Germany and Spain. These studies by different think            tanks were than promoted by IER and other free market think tanks in the US but also used in Europe.

            Robert P Murphy:              Senior Fellow

Robert P. Murphy is an economist with IER specializing in climate                                                             change. His research focuses on the proper discount rate to be                                                             used in cost-benefit analyses and the implications of structural                                                             uncertainty for policy solutions.
Robert Murphy is also a columnist at Townhall.com

Board of Scholars: Mackinac Center for Public Policy

Per SOURCEWATCH: The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a                                                             state-level conservative policy think tank in Michigan. Founded in                                                             1987, it is the largest state-level think tank in the nation. It was                                                             established by the state’s leading conservative activists to promote                                                             free market, pro-business policies. The Center voices its policy                                                             positions though publications and has moved beyond Michigan by                                                             helping the leaders of similar conservative institutions to improve                                                             their operations in many other states and countries around the                                                             world.

Richard Stroup:  Board of Directors

Former Director: Responsible Resources

The Best Environment Money Can Buy

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on March 6, 2008 – 12:08pm

Former Republican staffers of the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources have formed a new group, Responsible Resources, to impact “the perennial debate over energy production and environmental protection.” The group’s first ad campaign criticizes “efforts to raise taxes on energy companies,” reports The Hill. Responsible Resources is not a lobbying group and will “not take any corporate donations,” according to its co-founder, Brian Kennedy. He described the group as “an educational resource principally for members of Congress and their aides with the ultimate goal of growing large enough to influence the debate beyond the Beltway.” The House recently passed a bill that would repeal tax credits for the oil industry and use the revenue to fund renewable energy resources. Responsible Resources claims that “taxes on energy companies are a threat to affordable and reliable energy.” Kennedy said, “A clean environment is a luxury that only the wealthiest countries can afford.” (emphasis added)

NOTE: There is no website for Responsible Resources.  It’s unknown, at this time, if Responsible Resources has “closed up shop” or was absorbed by another “GAS”roots organization.

Lisa Wallace: Senior Vice President Operations and Development

Senior Vice President Operations and Development: American Energy Alliance

Former US House Aide: Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)

(Side Note: Former House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo has joined a lobbying and public relations firm which backed his attempts to rework the Endangered Species Act and open the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil drilling.

Co-Founder: Responsible Resources

            Robert Testwide III: Board of Directors

Former Director: Responsible Resources

Thomas Pyle: President

Previously, Mr. Pyle was the founder of his own consulting firm, Pyle Consulting, Inc., an active public affairs consulting firm with a wide range of private and not-for-profit customers. Prior to starting his own firm, Pyle served as vice president of the Rhoads Group in Washington, DC where he represented and advised a variety of association and corporate clients in meeting their strategic public policy goals and priorities. Additionally, he also served as director of federal affairs for a major integrated manufacturing and services company focusing on energy, environment, regulatory and transportation issues.  Before coming to the private sector, Pyle held numerous positions on Capitol Hill including serving a policy analyst for the Majority Whip (Rep Tom Delay R-TX) of the U.S. House of Representatives and as staff director for the Congressional Western Caucus, as well as other legislative staff positions.

Mr. Pyle was also a lobbyist for the Koch Brothers.

Founder: American Energy Alliance is a “partner” of Institute for Energy.                                      Relations and the same people work for both.

The American Energy Alliance (AEA) was founded in 2008 by                                                             Thomas Pyle.

The Podium:

A neutral expert sends an informative message to an uninformed voter. An interested party can pay a cost to replace the expert’s message with its own. The more informed is the expert, the greater is the interested party’s incentive to replace the expert’s message. In equilibrium, making the expert more informed has no effect on the voter’s beliefs and strictly reduces social welfare. The model thus implies an endogenous limit on how credible a purported expert can be. ~ Abstract: On the Limits of Expert Credibility: Theory and an Application to Climate Change

EID often cites Professor Terry Engelder as an expert on the Marcellus Shale.  Professor Engelder is their local “go to” expert on all things Marcellus.  Use of academia to tell a story is a vital tool for any Public Relations campaign.   By virtue of their position within a respected educational institution, the “Professor” is ready made with a cloak of credibility and public acceptance.

Professor Terry Engelder: Professor of Geosciences, Penn State University, Department of Geosciences.

Committee Member: Marcellus Shale Advisory Commission

Co-Founder/Co-Owner: Appalachian Fracture Systems Inc.

Engelder has an ownership stake in Appalachian Fracture Systems Inc., a consulting firm that has done work on Marcellus Shale. Gary Lash, Professor of Geosciences at SUNY Fredonia, is also Co-Founder/Co-Owner.

The Marcellus Boom / Origins: the story of a professor, a gas driller

and Wall Street

Sunday, March 20, 2011

By Jonathan D. Silver, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

EXCERPT: By the time Mr. Engelder was hired by Penn State in 1985, he had been doing research on gas shales since the 1970s and was knowledgeable about fracturing in the shale.

That background set the stage for his long association with the petroleum industry. Shortly after Mr. Engelder arrived in State College, oil giant Shell approached him and offered to subsidize research by some of his students into fracturing and gas shales.

Shell’s offer, Mr. Engelder said, must be seen in a broader context. Penn State prides itself, he said, on broad collaborations on research with industry, which contributes roughly $100 million a year to the university.

A long line of other petroleum companies, including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Dominion, Range Resources and Texaco — would eventually help fund research at Penn State through Mr. Engelder’ s lab.

Mr. Engelder estimated that over his career his research has benefited from at least $6 million in grants from industry and $8 million from government.

“There is a symbiosis between academic research, and by that I mean big-time research of the type that Penn State does, and industry. Industry really does benefit from this. There is a reason that industry contributes very handsomely to the academic world.”

For instance, Mr. Engelder  said Range and Chesapeake Energy Corp., both major players in Marcellus, are collaborating with Penn State to solve problems involving hydraulic fracturing.

One of the contracts involves the federal government putting up $3 million, which is matched by $2.4 million from industry.

Penn State is playing a central role in the Marcellus Shale in the form of “research” for the industry.  How much Penn State has received from the gas industry and for what is unknown, there is a serious lack of transparency.

Corporate funding of Marcellus Shale studies at universities raises alarms

Drilling on Campus: the second of two parts

Monday, November 07, 2011

By Reid R. Frazier, The Allegheny Front; and Olivia Garber, PublicSource

EXCERPT: At Penn State, the percentage is even higher. The school ranks fourth in the country in corporate research support, behind Duke University, Ohio State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For decades, it has maintained research relationships with companies such as Bayer, Dow and ConocoPhillips.

“Penn State maintains its distinction as one of the nation’s top universities in industry-sponsored research,” said Henry C. Foley, Penn State’s vice president for research, in a year-end university report.

If you combine the lack of transparency and the advice given by Chris Tucker to “MANUFACTURE STUDIES”…..  well, it kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

Chesapeake Energy Update:

Where WALL STREET meets WELL PADS

“It is essential that the activities of corporate executives are under constant, vigorous and public scrutiny, because those activities are crucial to the economic well-being of society. If anything, developments both locally and internationally during 2001 have emphasized the need to continuously update and upgrade corporate governance standards.“ ~ Ann Crotty (Business Day)

Origins Of The Marcellus Natural Gas Boom

2011-03-31

By Jonathan D. Silver

PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

In October 2007, Engelder was named a distinguished lecturer for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. That position brought him to the attention of Chandra, the investment banker.

Wall Street’s interest had already been piqued by the success of the Barnett Shale in Texas, but analysts thought it was a unique formation.

Just as Zagorski had realized, Chandra grew to understand that Barnett and Marcellus bore intriguing similarities. What investment firm Jefferies Group needed was someone who knew the rock.

“We looked around and Terry seemed at the time to be a geologist focused specifically in Pennsylvania or the Appalachian region,’’ Chandra said.

Jefferies Energy Investment Banking is part of the Jefferies Group.  Ralph Eads III is the President of Jefferies Energy Investment Banking Group, and often cited as a source by EID.

Small Player on Wall Street Carves Out a Niche

November 22, 2010, 7:20 pm Mergers & Acquisitions | Investment Banking

By THOMAS KAPLAN

EXCERPT: Alongside these global giants in oil and natural gas has been an investment bank that is only middling among merger advisers: Jefferies & Company. Yet the bank has managed to broker nearly every single major deal in shale.

Indeed, nine of the 10 biggest shale transaction in the last three years — including Exxon Mobil’s $31 billion acquisition of XTO Energy last December and Chevron’s $3.2 billion purchase of Atlas Energy announced Nov. 9 — have included Jefferies as an adviser, bringing no small amount of attention to a bank that is ranked 16th in Thomson Reuters’ merger advising standings.

Jefferies could not have scripted it any better. While bigger banks pare back their business, Jefferies is in the midst of a hiring spree aimed at bolstering the stature of its investment banking arm.

Shale deals have garnered some of the biggest doses of public relations. They have been brokered by an investment banker and former natural-gas executive, Ralph Eads III, who joined Jefferies in 2005, when the bank bought the oil and gas advisory firm Randall & Dewey.

Mr. Eads stands out as a star in the increasingly prominent deal advisory business at Jefferies, which was founded in 1962 with a focus on block trading and did not even get into the investment banking business until the 1990s. (emphasis added)

Between 2010-2011 Jefferies Energy Investment Banking assisted Chesapeake Energy with at least 8 business transactions:

• April 2011- Acquisition of Bronco Drilling Company, Inc.
• Feb 2011 – Sale of Fayetteville Shale assets to BHP Billiton Limited
• Jan 2011 – Niobrara Shale Joint Venture with CNOOC Limited
• Oct 2010 – Eagle Ford Shale Joint Venture with CNOCC Limited
• Feb 2010 – Sale of Volumetric Production Payment
• Feb 2010 – Sale of Volumetric Production Payment
• Jan 2010 – Barnett Shale Joint Venture with Total E&P USA, Inc.
• May 2010 – Convertible Preferred Stock Offering

In addition to being President of the Jefferies Energy Investment Banking Group, he is on the Board of Trustees for Duke University, and on the Board of Trustees for American Clean Skies Foundation.

American Clean Skies Foundation is a front group for Chesapeake Energy.

Washington D.C. based 501(c)3 non-profit group — states on its website that it “was formed in 2007 to provide all the facts on clean energy — particularly natural gas and other clean fuels such as wind and solar — and about the need for greater energy efficiency.” The organization was founded by Aubrey K. McClendon, the billionaire CEO of Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp., one of the country’s top sellers of natural gas.

Dec. 29, 2011: Analysts at Jefferies & Co Defend “BUY” rating for Chesapeake Energy…. I wonder why?

On Dec, 29, 2011, Reuters reported on Chesapeake’s “shell” company:

Special Report: Energy giant hid behind shells in “land grab”

Excerpt: That’s because the company rejecting their leases hadn’t signed them to begin with. In fact, the company issuing the rejections wasn’t much of a business at all. It was a shell company – a paper-only firm with no real operations – called Northern Michigan Exploration LLC.

One jilted land owner, Eric Boyer-Lashuay, called to complain to the broker who had handled his lease. Northern, he recalls saying, is “a shell company … a blank door with no one behind it.”

Today, he puts it this way: “It was all a fake, all a scam.”

Northern has voided hundreds of land deals, and was indeed a facade – a shell company created so that one of America’s largest energy companies could conceal its role in the leasing spree, a Reuters investigation has found. Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy Corp., the nation’s second-largest gas driller, was behind the entire operation.

Chesapeake had created one shell company that set up another, Northern Michigan Exploration. Next, Northern hired brokers who signed leases with residents such as Boyer-Lashuay. And those brokers were under strict orders not to divulge Chesapeake’s role, records reviewed by Reuters show.

The appearance of a “shell company”, although not surprising, did pique my curiosity.   I stumbled across a document: CHESAPEAKE ENERGY CORPORATION and the Subsidiary Guarantors named herein 6.875% SENIOR NOTES DUE 2018 AND 6.625% SENIOR NOTES DUE 2020  FOURTH SUPPLEMENTAL INDENTURE

DATED AS OF FEBRUARY 7, 2011

Of particular interest is Page 4, where Jennifer M. Grigsby is listed as Senior Vice President, Treasurer & Corporate Secretary of the Company and of the Subsidiaries :

• Carmen Acquisition, L.L.C.
• Chesapeake Aez Exploration, L.L.C.
• Chesapeake Appalachia, L.L.C.
• Chesapeake Energy Corporation
• Chesapeake Energy Louisiana Corporation
• Chesapeake Energy Marketing, Inc.
• Chesapeake Exploration, L.L.C.
• Chesapeake Land Development Company,L.L.C.
• Chesapeake Louisiana, L.P.
• Chesapeake Operating, Inc.
• Chesapeake Plaza, L.L.C.
• Chesapeake Royalty, L.L.C.
• Chesapeake Vrt, L.L.C.
• Chesapeake-Clements Acquisition, L.L.C.
• Chk Holdings, L.L.C.,
• Compass Manufacturing, L.L.C.
• Diamond Y Enterprise, Incorporated
• Emlp, L.L.C.,
• Empress, L.L.C.
• Gene D. Yost & Son, Inc.
• Gothic Production, L.L.C.
• Great Plains Oilfield Rental, L.L.C.
• Hawg Hauling & Disposal, LLC
• Hodges Trucking Company, L.L.C.
• La Land Acquisition Corporation
• Mc Louisiana Minerals, L.L.C.
• Mc Mineral Company, L.L.C.
• Midcon Compression, L.L.C.
• Nomac Drilling, L.L.C.
• Northern Michigan Exploration Company,L.L.C.
• Ventura Refining And Transmission, LLC
• Winter Moon Energy Company, L.L.C.
• EMLP, L.L.C. , On behalf of itself, and as general partner of the following limited partnership: EMPRESS LOUISIANA PROPERTIES, L.P.
• Chesapeake Energy Corporation

How many of these companies are real and how many are shells?  It’s on my list to connect the dots and find out.

The industry continues to create front groups which begat astro-turf groups and all stand before you as a big booming chorus singing the same song.  With the entrance of the “SUPER-PACs” into the political arena, expect to see a great number of groups to quickly appear and most will disappear at the end of the campaign season.  They will be focused on a candidate or issue.

One such group that has entered the arena early is VOTE 4 ENERGY  It proclaims:.

“A Vote 4 Energy is a vote for more jobs, higher government revenues and greater energy security.”

Vote4Energy is a project of the American Petroleum Institute representing more than 490 oil and natural gas companies, leaders of a technology-driven industry

Vote 4 energy won’t be the last ad campaign you will see between now and November.  Pay attention to the small print on the ads, the “sponsors” and do a bit of connecting the dots on your own.  You know I will be doing it.

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” –George Orwell

Tension City

Lehrer, formerly of the PBS program The News Hour, has penned one of the greatest books not only on debating, but on the rules of the presidential debates—a topic which is almost as uncovered as the protocols for the presidential inauguration, but which is just as interesting and filled with many twists and turns. Having moderated more presidential debates than any other reporter, Lehrer has the perspective of a privileged insider which only a handful of people can claim. From his first debate between then Vice President George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, to his most recent (and he claims, last) with Obama and McCain, Lehrer has always handled the debate in the most professional way he can, dealing with everything from malfunctioning microphones to dodgy candidates attempting to slip out of the question. Reading through the preparation material for the debate is particularly interesting—finding out what topics are off-limits, where the cameras are to be set up, how long each person has to reply (if they can reply and follow-up at all), and so forth. Also included are snippets of his post-debate interviews with the candidates, which can sometimes bring out more candid revelations than one would expect.

Two Sisters by Gore Vidal

Vidal’s novels have always been viewed (in this country at least) as inferior to his essays. Until I came across Two Sisters in a small bookshop, I thought that with the exception of Myra Breckenridge (1968) and his “Narratives of Empire” novel cycle, most of Vidal’s novels are period pieces which have very little charm except for some saucy one-liners. Two Sisters remains an intriguing send-up, not only of the movie business, but of the awkward marriage between the literary world and the movies. The two sisters from which the title is cribbed are the main characters in an unproduced screenplay that a late friend of the narrator (who is a very thinly-veiled version of Vidal) was working on at the time of his death. Vidal’s character is asked to finish the screenplay by a woman who’s clearly based on Anais Nin, and, in reading the notes for the screenplay, finds a diary written by his dead friend, which reveals some things that Vidal would not like to have known. It’s a charming book, though some will probably be unhappy with the fact that large sections of the novel are made up of the incomplete screenplay—most people hate reading plays because they’re too slow or it’s too awkward, something I sympathize with. Plays (screenplays especially) were not meant to be read, but to be performed, and so it’s aggravating knowing that someone is trying to show you something (a moving picture in this case) but you are unable to see it.

Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood

If Two Sisters made the movie world into a grand pastiche, then Isherwood’s earlier short-novel laid the foundation. Called up by a British movie studio to fashion a screenplay by a German director (who can barely speak English) in spite of his many arguments that he is not a screenwriter and has no interesting in writing a script based on an absurdly unrealistic and universally panned play, Isherwood finds himself tossed into the movie business. Again, as in Two Sisters, the main character is a veiled version of the author (though Isherwood doesn’t bother to pretend he’s someone else). The characters of Isherwood’s novel, however, are much more evenly spread, with greater detail being given to their personas.

The Matisse Stories by A. S. Byatt

A. S. Byatt is probably the strongest woman writer currently writing on the British literary scene. Her prose invades in prisms of the private life, intersecting mundane lives with great art. Three women, each handling middle age, each suffering from the contamination of men in various ways, each hold their own in stories inspired by paintings and drawings by Matisse. All of the stories also touch on academic life, particularly “The Chinese Lobster,” which is about two professors meeting to discuss a harassment case at their University which has grown to involve them both. “Art Work” is about a woman’s uneasy relationship with the cleaning lady, who makes her own garish outfits out of odds and ends that people throw out. Both of these stories are small gems. Unfortunately, “Medusa’s Ankles,” the first story of the book, doesn’t really go anywhere, though it does have a peculiarly lovely dénouement which gives the reader an understanding of all that has proceeded.

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

I have gone too long without saying something about Franzen’s latest book, but this is because I’ve been hesitant to describe it. What’s the book about? Well, it’s about everything, for starters. Franzen seems to have hooked onto every little detail of modern life and jam-packed it all into a single book. The high ambitions are noble. But this is the key problem of the novel. In attempting to portray modern life in all its medicated, hyperactive, disconnected complexity, Franzen has set himself a task in which cannot succeed. Since the late 1990’s it seems, Franzen has been trying to write “The Great American Novel,” a guiding principle which results in books being top-heavy, over-written, intentionally polemical and fascinatingly dull. The most interesting sections of Franzen’s latest are when he eschews his usual devices of narration and lets the characters’ thoughts wander freely over the page. But, his grip on the pen is too tight for them to wander far, and they quickly return to stereotypical, allegorical figures that are as thin as the paper their story was printed on. But that is not to say that the book doesn’t have its moments. For those who enjoy the yearly presenting of the “Bad Sex in Fiction Award” by the Literary Review, Freedom contains several passages which are quite fun to read out loud, making everyone else in the room laugh, then cringe and shift uncomfortably in their seats.