HYDROFRACKING IS “AN OUTLAW ENTERPRISE” – RFK JR

Petro Plutocracy

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., May 9, 2012 (EcoWatch)

“Last week, the world got a preview of America’s new post Citizens United petro plutocracy with the oil lords flexing their political muscles like oil soaked body builders pumped up on a steroid drip of campaign dollars. It was all about fracking…The petro tycoons first orchestrated the firing of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) top frac pach enforcer, then adeptly forced the same cowed agency to stall its release of a damaging scientific study on fracking and finally strong armed the Interior Department to open America’s public lands to gas companies without prior disclosure of their frac chemicals…

“…From its inception, hydrofracking has been an outlaw enterprise. The industry was born in a provision drafted in secret by oilman Dick Cheney’s clandestine energy task force specifically exempting it from the Safe Drinking Water Act, a shale fracking method devised and patented by Cheney’s former company Halliburton. The Vice President’s henchman then rammed the exemption though a supplicant post 9/11 Congress…Rough and tumble competition among fracking companies have turned the frac fields from North Dakota to Pennsylvania into modern Dodge Cities. Regulatory capture has given the industry’s worst actors de facto immunity from their criminal behavior…These species of habitual lawbreakers require the protection of crooked politicians and captive agencies to insulate criminal companies from the consequences of their illegal behavior. Oil companies are experts at using campaign contributions to purchase this class of government cooperation…”

“…[T]he Supreme Court’s Citizens United case removes all the past restrictions that once deterred Big Oil from employing these enormous profits to completely dominate America’s political system. As a result of that court ruling, the oil barons will pick the winners and losers in America’s upcoming elections at every level—in secret if they desire…The industry is already poised to flood America’s political landscapes with hundreds of millions of dollars in newly legalized bribery. In addition to their generous contribution to the Tea Party, CATO Institute and other oil industry front groups, and oil tycoons Charles and David Koch, on Feb. 3 pledged an extra $60 million of their private money for direct campaign donations to ensure that their oil friendly candidate wins the presidential election in November.

“Chevron, Exxon, the American Petroleum Institute and other oil moguls will match the Koch brothers’ largesse many times over…[I]n 94% of American elections, the candidate with the most money wins…It was the underlying idealism of our successful experiment with self-government that made America an exemplary nation and the template for the world’s democracies. If American democracy is to survive, we clearly need to restore integrity and representative democracy to our electoral process and get control of an industry that is using its enormous financial power to enrich itself, destroy the planet and undermine everything we value. Last week’s events are merely a foreshadowing of the devolution that is inexorably propelling us toward a corrupt venal and petro kleptocracy.”

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