The Marcellus Shale Boom

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Marcellus Shale is becoming a household name, from discussions around kitchen tables to town halls with (sometimes) angry citizens. Endless media coverage, economic analysis, geological prediction, business maneuvers and political debate encompass this complex topic. Even the experts concede that the breadth of this issue will only be fully understood after gas production continues for many more years.

An important effect of natural gas production in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia is simple: jobs. In contrast to America’s chronically high unemployment rate, the Marcellus-generated job activity within these regions can only be described as a gold rush. Thousands of trucks, ranging from semi-tankers to white diesel crew-cab pickups, have flooded the streets and back roads of many towns. While billions of dollars in federal spending have done little to nothing to improve jobs and infrastructure, the dollars invested into these reborn communities, once hurting by economic depression, are all thanks to subsurface layers of dirty black shale.

Land Owners Reap Benefits

Infrastructure improvements and job creation are not the only byproducts of Marcellus Shale drilling. Land owners are likewise reaping tremendous benefits. Three years ago, some land leased for gas production had a market value of $10 an acre, tops. The driving market force of competition has caused that number to surge, with landowners negotiating payment terms upwards of $3,000 an acre with 15 percent or better royalty rates. That’s cash in hand, checks in the mail, and escrow in the bank.

And still, a mere one percent of expected wells have been drilled within the Marcellus-rich region, with a potential of 200,000 wells. The full potential offers a source of American energy that is hard to estimate. The pipeline system needed to transport the hydrocarbons has only begun to be constructed, with boom-centers of crackers and compressors along the way. This could portend an economic viability extending 100 years.

This phenomenon can be understood in very basic economic terms. The development of Marcellus Shale could only happen in America. Consider: citizens in this nation have long enjoyed not only the unique freedom to pursue happiness but the liberty to own property. Although other portions of the globe could be cashing in shale—namely China, Canada, and Europe—an individual citizen’s control of land, even to the depths of thousands of feet, is unique to the United States. Furthermore, it is only through private industry and corporations that the efficient technology of hydrofracturing is made available. Companies like Chesapeake Energy, Range Resources, Hess, BP, and Consol are all publicly traded and held liable to their creditors, and thus are making private business decisions for their own sake and profit.

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 Read More at epaabuse.com By Steve Irwin, epaabuse.com

On Congress’ ‘battlefield’ American liberty dies

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I turned about and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but opportunity and happenstance befall them all. For man does not know his lot: as the fishes caught in an evil net, and as hunted birds caught in a snare; so are the sons of man caught in an evil time, when it falls suddenly upon them.
– Ecclesiastes, 9:11-12

In all that we do, we should strive to show the decency, the civility, the respect for human dignity that ought to characterize a free people. It is not our way to answer hate with hate. But we are a people conscious of our God-given right to live in peace and without fear. And it is our duty to make clear to all those who seek to deny that right that we are willing and able to answer war with war. (from the column “Remember who we are”)

Regarding those foreigners who are actually accused, or might be accused, of a crime under American law, the Constitution clearly indicates that due process must be followed – not just for citizens, but for all persons. For this reason, I believe that it would not be justified to try foreigners captured in America – even those accused of terrorist acts – outside the normal course of our legal procedures simply because they are foreigners.

What is also unclear is whether enough people in our citizenry and government understand that no degree of executive branch confidence in the guilt of a citizen can justify the suspension of that citizen’s constitutional rights.

Such suspension would indeed be a powerful government weapon against terrorists. But it would be a more dangerous threat to the liberty of American citizens. The Washington Post last week carried a story about a former Boston cab driver, once identified by authorities as a major terrorism suspect, who was kept in solitary confinement for more than eight months without seeing a judge or being assigned a lawyer.

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 Read More at WND By Alan Keyes, WorldNetDaily

Congressman wants probe of Geithner’s GM bailout ‘conflicts of interest’

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Ohio Republican Rep. Michael Turner is pushing for a congressional investigation into what he considers Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s “conflicts of interest” during and after the government bailout of General Motors.

Turner made his request on Thursday in a letter to House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa.

Turner alleges there was a conflict of interest with Geithner playing the part of Treasury Secretary, co-chair of President Barack Obama’s Auto Task Force and being be a board member of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, an independent U.S. government agency created to monitor pension payments and ensure payouts promised by failed companies.

The House oversight committee recently held a field hearing in Ohio on the GM bailout, and how the Treasury Department’s actions caused 20,000 non-union workers from Delphi to lose their pensions.

Delphi, a GM company, is one of the largest automotive parts manufacturers in the world. Its workers lost their pensions when the government bailed out GM.

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Read More at The Daily Caller By Matthew Boyle, The Daily Caller

With Barney leaving, ethically challenged Maxine Waters waits in wings

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Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., will be remembered in retirement as a Democratic Gingrich but with only half Newt’s charm. The brainy and insufferably arrogant former chairman and current ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee is best known for his blustery, partisan, and plain wrong insistence for years before the collapse of the housing bubble that there were no problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Another memorable moment of Frank’s career will be the interminable and extremely ungracious victory speech he gave after his unexpectedly close 2010 re-election: “The collective campaigns that were run by most Republicans were beneath the dignity of a democracy,” he declared.

He was frequently wrong and never in doubt, but, Mark Twain’s “native criminal class” aphorism notwithstanding, Frank was not a crook. He understood the vicissitudes of the nexus between big government and big business. When one of his aides on the Financial Services Committee quit in 2010 to take a job lobbying for the financial industry, he took the highly unusual step of criticizing him in public and ordering the rest of his staff to cut off all contact. It was an act for which we praised him at the time, and an example that we encouraged Republicans to follow.

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Read more at WashingtonExaminer.com HERE.

Senator attempts to gut congressional insider trading ban

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Peter Schweizer’s book, Throw Them All Out, has been a topic of much discussion in Washington, in no small part because of shocking details about how congressmen trade stock based on their private knowledge of how legislation will affect markets. Amazingly, this is completely legal. As I put it in an editorial in the current issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, “At a time when Americans hate Wall Street with the fire of a thousand suns, behavior that would get a bank executive a perp walk and a jail sentence is business as usual in the nation’s capital.”

Now that Schweizer’s book has been getting lots of attention, the Washington Post reports that a bill to ban congressional insider trading that had been languishing is “suddenly popular.” However, it seems not everyone in congress is too happy about taking away one of their lucrative perks. John Carney at CNBC reports New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand wants to radically alter the legislation in some unusual ways . . .

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Read more at the WeeklyStandard.com HERE.

Peter Schiff: “The Economy is About to Implode…We’re Not Even Near the Bottom Yet!”

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“You Got this Occupy Wall Street crowd that wants to have a communist revolution,” says investment guru and outspoken defender of free enterprise Peter Schiff, “but hopefully we can have more of a free-market…second American revolution and understand all the pain we’re about to endure is because of government. It’s not because of capitalism.”

Schiff caused a sensation last month when he visited New York’s Zuccotti Park and argued with Occupy Wall Street protesters about the causes of and solutions to the Great Recession. In this video, he talks to “the 1 Percent,” a group of wealthy individuals who gathered recently in the Bel Air home of Judd Weiss.

Regardless of his audience, Schiff’s message in entirely consistent: Cronyism and government policies have distorted the economy and “we’re not even near the bottom yet” in terms of the downturn.

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See the video and read more at Reason.com HERE.

PA Senate Candidate Scaringi: US Citizens’ Rights Must Not be Surrendered in War on Terror

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The “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, wrote, “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” Regrettably, tyranny and oppression have already arrived in America in certain sections of the Patriot Act, the TSA’s invasive procedures at our airports and presidential-ordered assassinations of U.S. citizens among other examples. Now, the Congress is poised to violate the Constitution again in the name of the War on Terror.

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has co-authored S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Section 1031 of this bill will allow the U.S. military to capture and detain indefinitely an American citizen on U.S. soil who the President suspects is involved in terrorism. Thus, this bill will deny U.S. citizens basic Constitutional rights such as the right to a trial, to bail, to an attorney, to be presented with the charges against them and other rights and protections afforded to all Americans under the U.S. Constitution.

Furthermore, not only does this bill strip U.S. citizens suspected of being involved in terrorism of their Constitutional rights, Section 1031 also essentially repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the U.S. military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a staunch supporter of this bill, declared on the floor of the U.S. Senate this bill declares all of the United States is now part of the “battlefield,” and he apparently intends for U.S. troops to be engaged on the ground here in America.

Senators McCain and Graham are urging two dangerous proposals that will infringe substantially upon the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and push America closer to a dictatorship under martial law. That is why I congratulate Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) for taking to the U.S. Senate floor recently to challenge Senator McCain and to defend the Constitutional rights of the American people. That is also why I support Senator Paul’s amendment, S. 1062, to strike the offending section, S. 1031, of the National Defense Authorization Act.

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Read more at ScaringiForSenate2012 HERE.

Obama’s Proposed Internet Identity Ecosystem

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One evening I was looking for some information on the National Institute for Standards website (www.nist.gov) when something on the sidebar caught my eye and it was an announcement about “National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace” at https://www.nist.gov/nstic/. Being the techie that I am I was curiously drawn to it as I remember a previous announcement Jan 7, 2011 on CNet about establishing an Internet identity system (https://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20027800-281.html.)

We’ve heard all the stories before about people getting their identities stolen through hackers, phishing, and workers within financial institutions illegally selling customers’ confidential information. This is the premise for President Obama’s proposed Internet Identity Ecosystem.

How does this affect you? Imagine this. Your child gets issued a smart card from their school. This smart card has all of your personal information on it and your child’s personal information, plus their school records. You can plug the card into a reader on your computer and access your child’s records online by sending verification data from the card to a centralized network to verify it’s “you,” and then to your child’s school to access the records.

This card is issued only to you. According to the proposed Internet Identity Ecosystem (National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, pg 5), there will be no need to remember many different login passwords on the websites you like to visit. The issuer of the card could be from either an office of the government or a private issuing company (“standardized reliable credentials and identity media…in use in both public and private sectors,” National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, pg 13) has verified your identity so whenever you plug in the card, participating vendors will read the card and recognize that it’s “you.” No more painful memorizing a password for every site you interact with.

The card can also be tied into your banking records so it’ll work just like a credit or debit card. No more carrying around several kinds of credit or debit cards so you can use it for online shopping or public shopping. At participating businesses, your transaction remains anonymous to the business, but the transaction is recognized as having come from “you” as it goes around the network from the business to the government or private identity issuer network to your bank or credit card account.

 Read More at thedailysheeple.com By David Blair, thedailysheeple.com

Video: Mittstant Replay

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This video produced by the Huntsman for President Campaign shows why Americans don’t really know what Mitt Romney believes. But Mittstant Replay captures it best.

Gingrich’s contradictions on ‘climate change’ run deep

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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has recently offered seemingly contradictory views on “climate change,” claiming to oppose climate taxation while partnering with a group that promotes such legislation.

The former House speaker earlier this week called his partnering with Nancy Pelosi on an environmental mission a “mistake.” However, last year he not only defended the move but said he would have done it again.

In a Fox News interview with Bill O’Reilly earlier this week, Gingrich was asked about a 2008 commercial starring himself and Pelosi in which the duo urged “action” to address “climate change.”

“We do agree, our country must take action to address climate change,” says Gingrich in the commercial, sitting on a couch next to Pelosi.

“We need cleaner forms of energy, and we need them fast,” Pelosi chimes in.

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 Read More at WorldNetDaily By Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily