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Archive: September, 2011
There's a lot to be said for sitting in the back of a room.
That's where this reporter was stationed Wednesday night, as former Governor Ed Rendell gave addressed the Shale Impact 2011 conference currently being held at the Philadelphia Convention Center — and it turned out to be a perfect place to observe the reaction of several hundred gas industry folks to Rendell's chiding the industry for having "screwed up so bad there are protesters anywhere anybody associated with this goes."
Chief among the gas industry "screw-ups" cited by Rendell were its failure to offer to pay a tax on gas production (which it does in every other state with shale gas), and its poor environmental record.
This wasn't the first time the (now-former) governor told the industry it would be in its own best interest to pay a severance tax: he did so several years ago during a gas industry conference in Houston.
But Wednesday's remarks went much, much farther than before. While emphasizing his own support of natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania, the governor had harsh words for the industry, accusing it of being "willing, it appears to me, to ride this out as long as possible without a legitimate, fair tax."
"It's a mistake. It's one of the things turning the tide of public opinion against you."
The governor seemed to give a nod to anti-drilling protesters, emphasizing (to an audience that seemed less than receptive to the message) that protesters were not "militants" and that "They're raising serious and legitimate issues. They express the fears of not just a few militants but the fears of a lot of good hard-working Pennsylvanians about what's going to happen to their land, about what's going to happen to their water supplies, and bout what's going to happen to their waterways."
Perhaps even more significantly, the Governor delivered a laundry list of accusations of poor environmental practices, citing everything from figures of spills and other accidents — a report by the Pennsylvania Land Trust finding more than 16,000 violations by Marcellus Shale companies; a report by the AP that found that nearly a fifth of fracking wastewater had gone unaccounted for and, therefore, Rendell said, "the logical assumption is that the waste was dumped into Pennsylvania waterways."; a finding by public utility companies that treatment plants downstream from fracking wastewater facilities have been struggling to keep cacinogenic contaminants below legal limits; and other seemingly-damning findings that Marcellus Shale gas companies have been reckless when it comes to the environment and public health. I've transcribed a hefty chunk of the speech below.
Rendell finished his speech to applause — but severely muted applause. As soon as he finished, the large room was taken over by winking, nudging, and an undercurrent of anger.
"That's why they call him Fast Eddie," I heard one gas exec explain to another.
On the escalator down, another gas exec described the speech to a colleague who hadn't heard it: "Oh, he said how we're taking away kindergarten from little kids," was the gist of it. The colleague rolled her eyes.
Afterward, I ran into a scientist acquaintance at the conference reception, who was in a mild state of shock at how vehemently everyone around us had hated that speech. "It seemed very middle-of-the-road to me," he said. "He told them, 'Yes, we want you here.'"
Rendell's goal was clearly to shame the industry into making voluntary changes. Judging from the crowd's reaction, he's a long way from doing that.
Exceprt from Rendell's speech:
The industry continues to screw up — you've screwed up so badly there's a movie that got an Academy Award nomination called "Gasland," ... screwed up so bad that there are protesters anywhere anybody associated with this goes. And the protesters grow stronger and deeper in number every day. The protesters used to be in the northern tier, now they're in Southeastern Pennsylvania. The protesters are beginning to be more than just gadflies, they're beginning to be a serious, long-term problem. And the things they're talking about are not incorrect. They're raising serious and legitimate issues. They express the fears of not just a few militants but the fears of a lot of good hard-working Pennsylvanians about what's going to happen to their land, about what's going to happen to their water supplies, and bout what's going to happen to their waterways.
When I spoke in Houston I said the industry should go public and say it wants to pay a fair and reasonable tax .. that will return benefits to the people of Pennsylvania. ... and to the Pennsylvania environment, That tax needs to go to replace the money in Growing Greener. But the industry hasn't moved and the industry is willing, it appears to me, to ride this out as long as possible without a legitimate, fair tax. It's a mistake. It's one of the things turning the tide of public opinion against you.
You have to understand the context, in which you pay a tax in every other state, you have to understand the context in which this is playing out. ... Governor Corbett had to cut from many programs ... Every one of those programs that got cut or eliminated has a group of advocates. They're not wackos, they're not militants. they're people who care very much. And they see $2 sliced form their program,... and each one of them develops a rallying cry. And the rallying cry is why aren't we taxing those Marcellus Shale companies that are making 64% return on investment of 48% return on investment. The fact that the Marcellus Shale companies don't pay a severance tax has become well known to every advocacy organization in the Commonwealth and has become the whipping boy of those groups.
One report by the Pennsylvania Land Trust .. found between January, 2008 and August 2010 there were 16,014 violations accrued by 45 Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale drillers. Of these, 1,056 had the most potential impact on the environment. ... 155 violations were discharges in waterways of industrial waste, meaning fracking solution. ... These violations and this record of seeming carelessness ... have created a bipartisan coalition that cuts across party lines and geographic lines against shale drilling. And the opposition is growing. It's growing because of the roughly 6 million barrels of well liquids produced int eh 12-month period examined by the Associated Press, 1.28 million barrels, about a fifth of the total, couldn't be accounted for. Meaning there's no record the water was treated anywhere, so the logical assumption is the water was dumped into Pennsylvania waterways. Opposition is growing because some public water utilities that sit downwater from Marcellus Shale wastewater treatment plants have struggled to stay under the federal maximum contaminants, which can cause cancer ... and are presumed to be entering the water from fracking solutions. That's not crazies — that's utility companies saying that.
The community activists in North Philly that I have now written about twice--opening a neighborhood recording studio and campaigning against shootings--have released a Youtube video for the Community Rap-tivist Michael Ta'Bon song “Education Over Incarceration,” featuring the “Youngest Rapper Alive LOWERcase g-L.A.W.”
They condemn cuts to Philly schools and ask, "Uncle Sam, is your plan to arrest the whole nation?"
This is just a teaser video, says Express Ur-Self Incorporated studio owner Terry Starks. They are filming the final video today in West Philly at the site of a recent shooting. More soon.
Yesterday, journalists at the Philadelphia Daily News and Inquirer were offered buyouts in the city's latest round of newsroom downsizing. According to a letter from Daily News management posted at poynter.org, “those eligible are all current full-time Guild Daily newsroom reporters, columnists, writers, editors, artists, photographers, copy editors, make-up persons and desk assistants.”
The buyout also includes The Inquirer, according to one newspaper employee who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the matter's sensitivity: three Daily News buyouts from any department and seventeen total from the Inquirer, including five “non-protected” positions (mostly management, like editors).
The buyout is open until September 21.
While we sometimes have scruples with the two dailies (that’s what puts the alt in alt-weekly), these papers serve a crucial watchdog role in Philadelphia. And they have incredible reporters, from Mike Newall’s crime writing and Chris Brennan’s inside look at local politics, to the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that uncovered rampant police corruption.
"It is certainly disheartening to see buyouts of journalists," Temple professor of journalism Andrew Mendelson writes to City Paper. "The buyouts are likely foreshadowing layoffs and other restructuring. This has been happening widely in journalism but it always seems worse when it is local (and many of the potential people affected by this are Temple alums) and at a publication that is more working-class-focused in its history."
This is one more sad day for Philly journalism, coming one year after The Philadelphia Media Network purchased the papers (and philly.com, with which City Paper has a content sharing agreement), which had gone into bankruptcy.
But perhaps it could have been much worse.
“I see this as a good thing, in that it gives us some idea of what the company is planning once the no-layoff clause expires at the end of the month,” according to an email from the anonymous source.
"Before this news yesterday, no one was sure how many people might be in trouble from that.
Now, we know that they're cutting (which people are obviously disappointed in considering how many cuts this place has gone through), but at least it's not a HUGE number. Any job losses suck, but losing 20 people out of hundreds isn't the apocalypse.
Anyone who thinks we can't put out great products with 20 fewer people is wrong.
As for feeling in the newsroom, I think there's a sense of 'waiting to see who's going to take it.' No one wants to lose a co-worker they've had for 10, 15, 30 years...but unfortunately that's going to happen for a few folks."
Yesterday, journalists at the Philadelphia Daily News were offered buyouts in the city's latest round of newsroom downsizing. According to a letter posted at poynter.org, “those eligible are all current full-time Guild Daily newsroom reporters, columnists, writers, editors, artists, photographers, copy editors, make-up persons and desk assistants.”
It’s not clear whether the offer applies to reporters at the Philadelphia Inquirer as well. The buyout is open until September 21.
While we sometimes have scruples with the two dailies (that’s what puts the alt in alt-weekly), these papers serve a crucial watchdog role in Philadelphia. And they have incredible reporters, from Mike Newall’s crime writing and Chris Brennan’s inside look at local politics, to the Pulitzer Prize-winning team that uncovered rampant police corruption.
"It is certainly disheartening to see buyouts of journalists," Temple professor of journalism Andrew Mendelson writes to City Paper. "The buyouts are likely foreshadowing layoffs and other restructuring. This has been happening widely in journalism but it always seems worse when it is local (and many of the potential people affected by this are Temple alums) and at a publication that is more working-class-focused in its history."
This is one more sad day for Philly journalism, coming one year after The Philadelphia Media Network purchased the papers (and philly.com, with which City Paper has a content sharing agreement), which had gone into bankruptcy.
View gallery“I’m out here because my water is already contaminated,” said Susan Breese, who joined a protest against natural gas drilling in Center City Philadelphia. The 49-year old union carpenter from Susquehanna County contends that the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to extract natural gas ruined her well water with high levels of chemicals like barium and strontium. And, like other rural Pennsylvanians, she says that the industry has divided her community--to the point where some friends refuse to believe her story. “In my neighborhood, some people hem and haw. Especially those who are collecting money.”
The crowd, mostly from across Pennsylvania, crowded both sides of Arch Street in front of the Shale Gas Insight convention, protesting the toxic pollution of drinking water. There appeared to be about 1,000 protesters, though organizers say it was 1,500 and a police officer that a Gas Insight public relations person directed me to talk to said that it was only 300 or 400.
City Council members Blondell Reynolds-Brown and Curtis Jones called on the Delaware River Basin Commission, which is controlled by a committee with representatives of state governments and the Army Corps of Engineers, to require an environmental impact study before drilling is allowed in the Delaware River watershed--the source of Philly’s drinking water supply.
“We just need an environmental impact study,” said Brown. “Just show us that our high-quality drinking water will not be affected.”
Councilman Jones took the stage and led the crowd in chanting “No fracking way.” He explained how a “poor boy from West Philadelphia” became an environmentalist, and called for caution.
“If something can be created 348 million years ago, then we can wait to see if we can find regulations that could better govern this process,” he told the crowd. “348 million years, and we can’t wait another year?”
A few conference attendees bravely stood outside to take in the scene, but a much larger crowd gawked from inside, taking cell phone photos through the windows as protesters mockingly waved dollar bills in their direction (scroll to the end of the slide show for those pics). One protester appeared to be praying.
Inside, natural gas industry representatives denied that fracking has contaminated underground drinking water, despite evidence to the contrary.
“We know for decades and decades that people in northeast Pennsylvania have been able to light their water on fire,” Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy (who according to Forbes has a net worth of $1.2 billion) told gathered media. “It’s part of local lore.”
According to Daily News reporter Chris Brennan, McClendon called the protesters environmental “extremists” earlier in his speech (before this reporter made it inside).
Outside, one Amtrak employee and Teamsters member explained why his union was critical of natural gas drilling, flouting the stereotypical conflict between labor and environmentalists.
“Right now, there’s gonna’ be a lot of profit made,” said Al Loran, a 53-year old from Pennsauken, New Jersey. “But I’m looking out for the future, our kids and grandkids.”
The protesters then marched from the Convention Center to the office of Republican Governor Tom Corbett, a close industry ally and staunch opponent of imposing a severance tax on drilling. Former Democratic Governor Ed Rendell, who opened wide swaths of state forestland to drilling and opposed taxing the industry throughout most of his time in office, is scheduled to speak Wednesday afternoon.
Daily News reporter Jan Ransom published an excellent article exposing Philadelphia Police regularly breaking people's cameras and arresting them for videotaping or photographing police action--and, potentially, police misbehavior. But Daily News columnist Will Bunch contends that the People Paper buried what should be a very big story by publishing it on a low-readership Labor Day weekend Saturday:
I can't fathom for the life of me why the Daily News -- the newspaper that won a Pulitzer just last year for its courage in exposing police misconduct -- all but buried this article by publishing it on possibly the lowest circulation day of the entire year, the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. I'm not casting aspersions towards anyone -- I've worked here long enough to know that usuallly when things happen here...it's usually just one of those things. That said, it was a big mistake not getting this article to a wider audience, which I hope to do my small part in rectifying.
Legs fly out, swing under and then around torsos before the pretzel-shaped forms freeze upside down — the breakdancers mocking their opponents in classic battle form. A big crowd comes to watch the tournament made up mostly of local high school students: black, Asian and white.
"Ladies and gentleman: this is not a flash mob," a judge yells out to the crowd. "This is young people in Philly supporting Philly."
And it's not racial violence that has plagued Philly schools either. As a matter of fact, it's the End of Summer Jam, says David Seng, a senior at Bok Technical High School.
"Everyone's coming from all over Philadelphia," he tells City Paper. "We started in Love Park, but people thought we were a flash mob and kicked us out."
By "people," he clarifies, he means the Philadelphia Police Department.
Speaking of which, check out this old BBC clip with lots of Philly breakdancing and hip hop (Scanner Boys) — thanks Sonja.
A few hours later, a horde of butt-naked cyclists came through the square on Philly's Naked Bike Ride. I did that twice when I lived in Portland, but don't have the guts to do it in tough gritty Philly. There were maybe 500 naked people — God bless them. You really put the naked in Naked City.
Kudos to those who don't mind their butt cheeks being plastered across philly.com's highest-trafficked photo gallery. Plus, you're all but guaranteed to get Daily News columnist Stu Bykofksy so excited that he will need a toke of his much-maligned devil's weed to settle down.
If you're reading this from home right now, you're not alone: a new study from the liberal Keystone Research Center finds that more than a quarter of Pennsylvanians experienced joblessness or underemployment in the past year. Republican Governor Tom Corbett and the GOP-controlled legislature have, like the federal government, made the problem worse by cutting government programs at a time when the private sector refuses to spend. Labor groups and many economists are pushing President Obama to offer a bold jobs initiative next Thursday. “The problems in our economy are self-inflicted,” says co-author Stephen Herzenberg, PhD, an economist and the center's Executive Director in a press release. “A bold shift of economic policy could restore growth and competitiveness, while bolstering the middle class.”
City Councilman Bill Green is calling for the City Controller and Auditor General to investigate former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman’s communications office. On Tuesday, City Paper reported that Ackerman used the School District Communications office as a personal public relations machine dedicated to promoting and defending her personally: coordinating and assisting public rallies in her favor, communicating regularly with private supporters, and spending taxpayer time and money on various kinds of "propaganda," including protest signs and a farewell tribute video.
"It seems like a real problem if, as a District employee, you are essentially inciting people to rally against the District that you work for," says Green, a critic of the District's large communications budget. "It's clearly not appropriate to spend public dollars that way, and I certainly hope that the city controller and auditor general look into it."
State Auditor General Jack Wagner's office declined to comment and City Controller Alan Butkovitz did not return repeated requests for comment.
“It’s certainly questionable,” says Zack Stalberg, president of good government group Committee of Seventy. “I think until an outside party comes in and takes a real close look, it would be premature to say that it is illegal.”
Stalberg says that he thinks Green’s call for an investigation “makes sense,” and that there’s a good chance the Auditor General or Controller will follow through.
“I think there’s a good possibility there will be a response,” he says. “The Auditor General has already expressed concerns about goings on in the Ackerman regime. And I think there’s an appetite from a lot of different directions to find out whether the SRC [School Reform Commission] has been doing its oversight job correctly. My hunch is that there will be interest in following this up.”
Illustration: Evan M. Lopez
Follow me on Twitter @DanielDenvir
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