Government reps must protect us
At the Independent Oil and Gas Association's recent presentation, we learned that, "No evidence of water contamination from drilling in New York has ever been detected." No one can prove our aquifers are contaminated because chemicals we might test for will remain classified. Earlier estimates showing 70 percent of fluids to be reclaimed are now as low as 9 percent. The rest remain below our aquifers, separated only by casings of concrete and steel, which will last for a few decades, but not indefinitely. We received no answer for the disposal of the millions of gallons of toxic fluids to be withdrawn. We were told that "high pressure, high volume horizontal hydrofracking is not new to New York." Were this true, the state Department of Environmental Conservation would not have undertaken a year-long study of these practices. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finally begun testing water wells near drillers in Wyoming, with very disturbing results.
We were asked to put our faith in the regulations of the DEC, an agency grossly understaffed and underfunded. Yet when asked about why the industry's lobbyists killed the state severance tax on gas, which might have provided that inspectors actually enforce DEC rules, we were told "we weren't sure this tax was fair, or what we were going to be taxed for." Drillers pay local taxes, based on self-reported figures. When one Madison County town supervisor was quoted as saying that this tax to the town had covered only a small fraction of the road damage, he was called a liar.
Perhaps these industry reps felt it really didn't matter how well they reassured us, they will have their way. They will if enough of us do not demand protection of our public health from our county, state and federal representatives.
Paul Mendelsohn
Cherry Valley
Senators hold too much power
Educator Robert Maynard Hutchins predicted: "The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment."
Recently, "Street Talk" quoted Rodney Mills as saying: "Regardless of what they say, they (politicians) will make promises now and won't be able to live up to them later."
That "why bother" attitude is usually expressed by those who consider politics a spectator sport. They're shirking their responsibility to be actively involved in the political process. "Why bother" is often capitulation to corporate aristocrats. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass said it best: "A struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will."
In 1941, Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have democracy, second the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."
Our Founding Fathers were aristocrats, who insisted on a Senate consisting of two senators from each state regardless of the enormous population disparity between the states. Today, America faces a health care crisis. Several senators from states with populations about the same as Staten Island are undermining the process. It's a delusion that we have democracy, because the Senate was designed to protect the interests of the powerful.
The health care industry has a great deal of influence over senators, like Wyoming's Mike Enzi, who represents 265,000 voters, slightly more than Staten Island's 201,794 registered voters. Today's aristocrats are without a doubt corporate CEOs.
For Obama to get health care legislation through Congress, he'll need help from 60 senators. Fortunately, Obama will never say: "why bother."
Jim O'Leary
Delhi
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