Category Archives: Natural Rights

PA Chamber Hits Back at NIMBYs and Carpetbagging PovertyKeeper

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cost of renewables - Tom ShepstoneTom Shepstone
Natural Gas NOW

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The Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry (PA Chamber) has filed a brief in Commonwealth Court opposing the carpetbagging Delaware PovertyKeeper.

The Delaware PovertyKeeper a/k/a Riverkeeper and its radical lawyer have been out carpetbagging in Western Pennsylvania for some time. Though their pretend mission is the Delaware River, their real assignment is to fight oil and gas everywhere and advance an Environmental Rights Amendment that would help turn much of Pennsylvania into a gentry class wilderness playground. That’s why they are way out in Western Pennsylvania, 200 milew outside the Delaware still fighting an endless case in Middlesex Township, Butler County, of all places. The PA Chamber is speaking up against this legal abuse.

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Why Most Green Energy Schemes Are Doomed to Fail

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cost of renewables - Tom ShepstoneTom Shepstone
Natural Gas NOW

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There’s a huge problem with green energy schemes that no one is talking about; they rely upon planned government activity rather than spontaneous innovation.

Almost all green energy schemes rely upon government support and/or government direction. Dogma is their foundation and coercion of one form or another is their standard operation procedure. The combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, by contrast, is a matter of spontaneous innovation; a combination of two previous innovations that together have produced the shale revolution.

This innovative combination, moreover, involves no coercion, no subsidies, no renewable portfolio standards and no mandates. It is constantly changing, improving and upgrading with no limits and no end in sight. Meanwhile, the promise of green energy delivered on its own, absent government propping it up and forcing its use, is somehow always in the future, so close we’re told, we can taste it, except that it never happens.

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Thanks to Marcellus Shale, I Now Want to Move to Susquehanna County!

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Natural Gas NOWConnie Mellin
Natural Gas NOW
“PAShaleAdvocate”

 

A natural gas drilling rig picture appeared in my Facebook news feed today and now I am ready to move to Susquehanna County!

I usually start my day with a quick look at what is new on Facebook. Today took me by surprise. In my Facebook news feed was a picture of a natural gas drilling rig.  Who posted it and why?

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New York State DEC Slammed for Trying to Bury Propane Fracking

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DRBC fracking ban - Tom Shepstone ReportsTom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

 

An Albany County, New York judge just told Andrew Corruptocrat Cuomo his DEC’s excuse for sitting on a propane fracking application was palpably absurd.

A rather blunt and amazing fracking decision just came down from an Albany County, New York Associate Supreme Court Justice Catherine Cholakis on January 3rd. She called one DEC’s defense’s for sitting on a propane fracking application four years “palpably absurd” and ordered the agency to proceed with a review of the submission. It doesn’t mean a permit will ultimately be issued for the propane fracking discussed in Jim Leonard’s guest post here on Tuesday, but it does force DEC’s hand. It’s a big win for the rights of upstate landowners to develop their natural resources.

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Two Energy Futures, Which One Do We Want? It Should Be Obvious!

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energy futuresRobert Bradley, Jr.
Founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research

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Free markets will deliver the best, the cleanest and the least expensive of energy futures. We forget that to our great peril as some propose naive answers.

There are two energy futures for America. One is freedom and prosperity. The other is politics, conflict, and waste. As with other goods and services, energy’s availability and affordability will depend on whether natural incentives and economic law are respected or hampered by government policy.

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Jerry Brown Unwittingly Reveals Problem with Today’s Environmentalism

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peer reviewed health - Tom Shepstone ReportsTom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

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Jerry Brown couldn’t be elected to anything anywhere but in California but he has performed a service revealing what’s wrong with environmentalism today.

Jerry Brown didn’t get the title Governor Moonbeam for nothing. A flaky child of privilege, he virtually defines the modern trust-funder. He presents himself as some sort of exhibitionist in existentialism, floating on air between elected offices where he can he pontificate on this or that from the perspective of having never really worked at anything but having a sufficiently sad face to prove he cares.

When it comes right down to it, though, he’s just another humorless condescending member of the gentry class trying to prove his worth by dumping on others. It’s rural folks in his latest iteration and it serves to demonstrate so much of what is wrong with environmentalism.

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Where There Are Eagles the Spirit of Liberty to Fight DRBC Tyranny Lives

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DRBC fracking ban - Tom Shepstone ReportsTom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

 

As 2018 winds down, a case proceeds in Federal court to rescue Upper Delaware landowners from DRBC tryranny and takings. The spirit of the eagle lives!

The American Bald Eagle is the stern symbol of liberty, the spirit of resistance to tyranny. And, there are American Bald Eagles everywhere in the Upper Delaware Valley, where a special brand of tyranny—DRBC tyranny—has been temporarily imposed at the behest of an East Coast gentry class and its all too infamous shills. Those eagles include not only those of the Haliaeetus leucocephalus species, but also those falling into the class of Liber homines; the free men and women determined to fight this DRBC tyranny.

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Colorado Fracking Votes Uphold Property Rights

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natural gas now - Tom Shepstone ReportsTom Shepstone
Shepstone Management Company, Inc.

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Two interesting Colorado fracking votes indicate support for property rights and opposition to extremist regulations that amount to regulatory takings.

Yesterday’s election produced some rather remarkable votes regarding Colorado fracking. The state is a significant oil and gas producer. Fractivists, though, were able to get an initiative placed on the ballot called Proposition 112 that would have gutted the industry by requiring 2,500 feet setbacks for Colorado fracking. Farm Bureau and others responded with a proposed Colorado Constitution amendment requiring compensation to landowners for regulatory takings. The former was defeated by a wide margin, but the latter came significantly closer and, undoubtedly, contributed to that defeat. This tells us how to fight back against fractivists; by appealing to fairness.

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The Massive Lobbying of Special Interest Fractivist Foundations

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cost of renewables - Tom ShepstoneTom Shepstone
Natural Gas NOW

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The Institute for Energy Research is assembling invaluable documentation of the massive grass-roots lobbying by special interest fractivist foundations.

We often use this blog to repost important articles authored by our friends at the  Institute for Energy Research (IER). They put out a lot of material and it’s always well researched and presented, so we’re happy to pass along their information when it has a bearing on natural gas development. They’re now engaged, though, in a project off enormous importance that deserves special attention. It has to do with documenting what is the humongous amount of grass-roots lobbying (as the IRS defines it) by supposed charities. That lobbying by three special interest fractivist foundations has, in reality, no charitable purpose. Rather, it is aimed at fleecing taxpayers to finance a “green energy” corporatist venture in which the chief contributors are heavily invested.

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How Wealthy Foundations Are Subverting America by Buying Government

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cost of renewables - Tom ShepstoneTom Shepstone
Natural Gas NOW

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A thorough investigation of how Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and various wealthy foundations are subverting America should send chills down everyone’s back.

A number of readers have been pointing out a report to me from the Competitive Enterprise Institute about the way wealthy foundations are effectively taking over much of state government in many places. It’s entitled “Government for Rent: How Special Interests Finance Governors to Pursue Their Climate Policy Agenda,” and is authored by Christopher C. Horner. I reviewed it when it came out and because it’s primarily about climate change policy, which is not the principal subject of this blog, I held out writing about it.

It turns out, though, there’s just too much evidence in the report to ignore: evidence of how wealthy foundations—which are a frequent subject of this blog—are not just buying influence but actually subverting government.

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