Happening Today--Fracking Demonstrations

Fracking demons sep 22 2012

Over 150 Organizations to Call for Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing Through the Global Frackdown

September 22 Day of Action Will Unite Stakeholders Around the Globe to Demand Clean, Sustainable Energy Solutions

WASHINGTON - September 21 - The global grassroots movement to protect public health and the environment from the risks associated with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) will intensify this weekend as concerned citizens around the world come together for the Global Frackdown. The first coordinated international day of action against fracking, the Global Frackdown will unite activists on five continents through over 150 events on September 22 to call for a ban on fracking in their communities, and to advocate for the development of clean, sustainable energy solutions. Initiated by Food & Water Watch, over 150 consumer, environmental and public health organizations including CREDO Action, Environment America, Democracy for America, Friends of the Earth and 350.org are expected to participate in the Global Frackdown.

“Fracking and drilling for oil and gas poses a direct and immediate threat to our drinking water, our health and our communities,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “While big oil and gas continues its spin campaign to obscure the dangers of this toxic, polluting process, people around the world are taking a stand through the Global Frackdown.”

Worldwide, opposition to drilling and fracking has escalated dramatically over the past year, and the oil and gas industry has intensified its public relations campaign to obscure the dangers of fracking from the public. Earlier this year, The American Petroleum Institute launched its Vote 4 Energy campaign, an astroturf effort to promote drilling and fracking during the 2012 election and promote candidates who support the oil and gas industry’s agenda.

“It should be a no-brainer—if fracking causes your tap water to light on fire, it should be banned," said Zack Malitz, campaign manager at CREDO Action. "We're telling environmental regulators, politicians and governments all around the world that no community should be sacrificed so that the fossil fuel industry can make more money. We need to ban fracking now.”

To date, over 270 municipalities in the United States have taken action against fracking, and Vermont, France and Bulgaria have stopped the process. There is a moratorium on fracking in the Czech Republic, Romania, the German state of North Rhine Westphalia, New Jersey and New York. This week, it was also announced that the oil and gas company OMV would also halt drilling in Austria, due to escalating public opposition.

"The events taking place around the world as part of the Global Frackdown prove that people are tired of the lies from big oil and gas,” said Jim Dean, chair of Democracy for America. “Time and again, studies prove fracking is unsafe—for our communities, our families and our country. We've learned our lessons from Love Canal and the Horizon oil spill—when money is involved, corporations lie to the people to keep their profits up. It's time to end the lies."

“Fracking operations are contaminating drinking water sources and making nearby families sick,” added John Rumpler, senior attorney for Environment America. “This dirty drilling has to stop.”

Over 150 events are planned for the Global Frackdown, and each will challenge local decision makers to oppose fracking. Major actions in the United States include a rally in the Los Angeles County community of Culver City, which shares part of the largest urban oil field in the country; a rally and human sign near San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge; a rally in Longmont, Colo. to promote a ballot measure that would make Longmont the first Colorado city to ban fracking; actions across Ohio, including rallies in Cincinnati and Mansfield; and several actions in New York where Governor Andrew Cuomo continues to consider opening up the state to fracking.

Major actions overseas include a rally on the steps of the European Parliament; demonstrations in front of Parliament buildings in South Africa, Bulgaria and the Czech republic; marches in Argentina; grassroots activities in Paris and the south of France; and screenings of the film Gasland in Spain.

“This past summer, we’ve gotten one stark reminder after another of the human and economic costs of a climate system starting to spiral out of control,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “Substituting one bad fossil for another doesn’t solve the climate crisis. But the good news is that communities all over the world aren’t buying what the oil and gas industry is selling: more extreme energy fueling more extreme weather. They’re organizing inspiring actions all over the world to turn up the heat on the fossil fuel industry and its bought-and-paid-for political cronies.”

An increasingly controversial form of energy extraction, fracking involves blasting millions of gallons of water mixed with carcinogenic chemicals underground to release natural gas and oil from tight rock formations. Drilling and fracking has been linked to water contamination and climate change, and the process has been responsible for industrializing rural areas, destroying property values and undermining local economies.

"Big oil's plan to frack the world will keep us addicted to fossil fuels at a critical moment when we need to immediately transition to clean, safe, renewable energy," concluded Duncan Meisel, anti-fracking campaigner at 350.org. "This is the world's richest industry, and they're doing all they can to buy off politicians in order to frack our communities, but this event shows that the entire world is ready to stand up to stop them."

For a full list of events and partners, visit www.globalfrackdown.org.

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Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink.

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Birth Control Prevents Abortion

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	Free birth control cuts abortion rate dramatically, study finds By Brian Alexander, NBC News Contributor October 5, 2012, 7:26 am NBCNews.com A dramatic new study with implications for next month’s presidential election finds that offering women free birth control can reduce unplanned pregnancies -- and send the abortion rate spiraling downward. When more than 9,000 women ages 14 to 45 in the St. Louis area were given no-cost contraception for three years, abortion rates dropped from two-thirds to three-quarters lower than the national rate, according to a new report by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis researchers. From 2008 to 2010, annual abortion rates among participants in the Contraceptive Choice Project -- dubbed CHOICE -- ranged from 4.4 abortions per 1,000 women to 7.5 abortions per 1,000. That’s far less than the 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women nationwide reported in 2008, the latest year for which figures are available. Among teen girls ages 15 to 19 who participated in the study, the annual birth rate was 6.3 per 1,000 girls, far below the U.S. rate of 34.3 per 1,000 for girls the same age. The study’s lead author, Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University, expected both measures to fall, but even he said he was “very surprised” by the magnitude. In all, Peipert said, one abortion was prevented for approximately every 100 women who took part (the actual estimate is 1 per every 79 to 135 women). The results were so dramatic, in fact, that Peipert pushed the journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology to publish the study before the Nov. 6 presidential election, knowing that the Affordable Care Act, and its reproductive health provisions, are major issues in the campaign. “It just has so many implications for our society,” he told NBC News. Several factors contributed to the declines, he argued. First, a large majority of the women in the study were encouraged -- and chose -- to use intrauterine devices, or IUDs, and hormonal implants over more commonly used birth control pills. Because birth control pills require strict adherence, and people forget to take them, that method fails about 8 percent of the time. IUDs and implants are over 99 percent effective. Second, program enrollees included high-risk populations like women and girls who’ve already used abortion services once -- and are more likely to have a second abortion -- and women and girls who are economically distressed and may not have means to obtain contraceptive products and services. That’s important because an IUD, including the device and the physician’s service to place it in the uterus, can cost between $800 and $1,000. Since an IUD lasts at least five years, it saves money in the long run over a monthly cost of roughly $15-$25 for pills, but the up-front charge is prohibitive for many women. James Trussell, a Princeton University professor of economics and public affairs and an expert in family planning called the results “terrific, great work, and a very important demonstration project.” But it’s also politically fraught. The Affordable Care Act requires insurance plans to cover contraceptive costs. That’s led to conflicts among the Obama administration, the Catholic church, and the church’s political allies who argue that requiring a Catholic employer to provide such insurance contradicts the church’s teaching and represents a breach of religious freedom. Conservatives have also objected to contraceptive coverage on cost grounds. Some have focused their anger at Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who agitated for the Catholic school to offer an insurance plan that covers contraception. Radio host Rush Limbaugh famously called her a “slut” and a “prostitute.” But experts, including Peipert, point out that no-cost contraception saves money. According to a 2011 study from the Guttmacher Institute, unplanned pregnancies costs the United States a conservatively estimated $11 billion per year. “The way I look at it as a gynecologist with an interest in women’s health and public health and family planning, is that this saves money,” Peipert said. “When you provide no-cost contraception, and you remove that barrier, you finally reduce unintended pregnancy rates. It doesn’t matter what side one is on politically, that’s a good thing.” The Catholic Church is unlikely to be moved. “If, as supporters of the contraceptive mandate argue, it will pay for itself in reduced medical expenses, so will free embryo engineering and other eugenic services, including infanticide, doctor-assisted suicide, organ harvesting, and genetic manipulation,” wrote Thomas Joseph White, director of the Thomistic Institute at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., and R.R. Reno, in the conservative journal First Things. But to academic experts, the results of CHOICE are clear. “What the study suggests to me,” said John Santelli, professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, “is that it’s totally supportive of the president’s provisions on reproductive care and preventive services for women in the Affordable Care Act.” In a 2009 study, Trussell and colleagues reported that long-acting contraceptives like IUDs were far cheaper than an unintended birth, an abortion, and especially an ectopic pregnancy. Trussell argued that cost savings go “well beyond” those immediate medical savings. They don’t, for example, take into account costs associated with longer term issues such as economic stress on the mother and family, a teenager who doesn’t finish high school or skips college because she’s had a baby. Research has also shown that neglect, stress, anxiety, or simply a low level of nurturing in early life has effects on a child that can last far into adulthood. It may influence, for example, the cycle of teen pregnancy and crime. “It’s hard to imagine how politicians wouldn’t like to spend a dollar to save four,” Trussell said. As to the objections like those of White, he concluded that “it makes no sense whatsoever. Regardless of your views on abortion, virtually everybody says preventing unintended pregnancies is smart.” Brian Alexander (www.BrianRAlexander.com) is co-author, with Larry Young Ph.D., of "The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex and the Science of Attraction," (www.TheChemistryBetweenUs.com), now on sale.

 

Independents and Mugwumps

How is that the appellation “Independent” has come to be applied to a person who has no convictions, no philosophy, no political acumen, no opinion, no knowledge, no information, no wisdom?  Can this person even name the candidates of the major parties?  Has this person read the platforms of the major parties?   Has this person watched any speeches or debates?  Has this person read any books or columnists about economics?  On election day, one month hence, will he toss a nickel as he walks into the voting booth?  My mother called such an independent a mugwump, which she described as sitting on a fence with its mug hanging over one side and its wump hanging over the other.

According to Thomas E Mann and Norman J Ornstein, in their book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, “…[independents’]  presumed centrism or pragmatism in most cases reflects political disengagement and a lack of knowledge about the parties, candidates, or policy choices, rather than a considered position in the center.  They are classic referendum voters, when times are bad, their instinct is to throw the bums out, not to carefully attribute responsibility or parse alternatives.”

Upon reflecting on this question, I realized that I am a true independent.  For years I have read, listened, researched, questioned, paid attention to issues and policy, watched the president, the legislature, the Supreme Court, the debates, and reached conclusions independently as to the issues that I believe to be important.  Determining that these issues best comport with the platform of the Democratic Party, I register as Democrat, support Democratic candidates, and vote Democrat (mostly).  This does not mean that I do not recognize that there are Blue Dog Democrats, and DINOS (Democrats in name only), that I do not take issue with Democrats whom I believe betray Democratic principles, that I do not hold their feet to the fire, write or call them to express my opinion, and yes, at times, not vote for them.  And of course, there are others just as independent who choose to be Republican.  The important thing is, we independents do not choose a party, and then suspend our own judgment to adhere to everything they espouse.

Of course, those who register as Independents, or “No Party,” (as in West Virginia), may be smarter than we think.  They do not have to worry about being called to be pollworkers, to man political headquarters, do phone banks, display yard signs, bumper stickers, and buttons, campaign for any candidate, contribute to candidates, help with candidate events, or write letters to the editor.  The personification of apathy.