Cassandra was given the gift of forsight and the curse that no one believed her.

There used to be a factory-outlet store, Frenchy, in a small city up here near me ...

It's out of business now, I believe, due to the ever-evolving American economy, which subsidizes big business at the expense of small business ...

Once a year, they would hold a BIG SALE, and people would come from all over to be first in line down there when the doors opened ...

If you had got yourself to the head of that line ahead of opening time, and you were giving out a thoughtful dissertation on sound economic policy in America when the doors opened, you would have been trampled to death in the stampede ....

You would have been nothing but a thin paste on the floor with a bunch of shoe-sole marks all over you when the herd got done passing you by down there on the floor ....

If you would have had Ron Paul there with you at the time, he would have been trampled, too ....

Is that a simile for something in our times of today?

Or a metaphor?

OH, I WISH THAT I WAS AN ENGLISH MAJOR, SO THAT I TOO COULD KNOW THESE THINGS ....

And so ...

Oh, come, come, Frenchy ....

But we are like so grown up in here ....

And socially sophisticated, to boot ...

Isn't that just a tale for children?

And anyway, I think she got old and died sometime back in the 1950's ....

Down in New Jersey, it might have been ...

Newark or Hoboken, perhaps ...

And so ...

One can learn much from mythology...Or nothing at all. We repeat badly when we don't learn.

Dynamic Equilibruim occurs when two opposing forces proceed at the same rate. A living organis, as in Human Being, is the best example of an Open System. It takes in matter and energy from the
enviornment and gives back matter and energy to the environment, while maintaining its structure and function through maturation and learning. Our furnace therostat is also a system and acts
cybernetically but it is much more of a closed system. Openness is not absolute. The local school system is less open than a human organism but more open than a thermostat. While it may appear
to be a closed system of buildings , equipment, supplies and an hiearchial organization of Administrators, Teachers and Students, it is being shaped by its history, and many community, state
and national forces and is also influencing these forces. The mathematical concept of a, "Moving
Average" is related to the concept of Dynamic Equilibruim.

Applying this to the current discussion of the Economy, laying on my desk is the Business & Farm
section of the Arkansas Democrat & Gazette (which occured when the conservative Democrat swallowed the liberal Gazette). The Section Headline: Traded-in SUVs a hot commodity abroad. SUVs
are being packaged and shipped to middle eastern and Affrican countries that produce oil and provide government subsidies so that their citizens pay only about 50 cents per gal. Increased oil
prices increased Entropy in our national economy. The question is, can emerging trade patterns
reduce this entropy? It is not as if individual persons in the world had a choice about whether
Globlization will occur. We have a choice as to how we respond to this globilization process.

CITIZENSHIP TRAINING is the ticket--Not patriotism training.

Ontology, a branch of Epistemology which is the study of the nature of knowledge, is the study
existence, so in the broadest sense, I suppose that's where we are. Whereas, Ecology evolved as
a more comprehensive language system to integrate such disciplines as chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology, geography and anthropology, General System's Theory evolved as a language system to integrate all the Arts and Sciences and I think that's where we're going.

When I was young, Frenchy ...

MYTHOLOGY was in fact one of my first teachers ....

And it remains with me to this day, which makes it one of my most long-lasting teachers, as well ....

I speak to a younger person up this way often enough about Icarus and Daedalus, and what having wax wings really means if you are an overly-ambitious type of person down here on this earth of ours ....

Beware how close to the sun one does fly ....

And so ....

rla ....

GLOBALIZATION, whatever in the end it might actually be .....

DID OCCUR ....

And is still occurring ....

And has always been with us in one form or another, including having SPECULATORS buying up commodities and food to make a profit off of people's suffering and misery ...

And as a result, whether or not we are cognizant of it, we have been responding to the globalization process, ALL OF OUR LIVES ....

When I was young, I was fascinated reading about Marco Polo and the silk trade along the SILK ROUTE ...

And now, Yoyo Ma has a SILK ROAD ENSEMBLE, and they have traveled the silk route, playing with native muscians along the way ...

When I was young, I used to always be reading National Geographics to keep track of what was going on out there in the world, because I was taught that I was a part of that world as an American citizen, and that I had a duty to my community to understand that outer world, so that I could then interact with it to the benefit of my community at home ...

Soooo ....

Yes ....

In life down here on earth ....

Where we have free will ....

We do have choices to make ....

Each and every day ...

And so ....

We've got common ground right here, alright, rla ...

But you still need to understand PATRIOTISM to understand the world ....

I think, anyway ....

And so ....

However powerful our intellects might be in here, rla ....

And full our vocabularies ....

As human beings, we live out there in the real world ....

And one of the most basic aspects of what is considered to be civilization is protection of public health ...

That is where I come in, or used to, anyway, as a certified associate level public health engineer in the CORRUPT EMPIRE of New York ....

After Viet Nam, as a disabled veteran, I was given a choice of being rehabilitated as something, and so I chose the path of public health engineering ...

In the state of New York pursuant to Section 11.100 of Title 10 of the New York Code of Rules and Regulations, the term public health engineer SHALL mean a person who applies engineering principles for the detection, evaluation, control and management of THOSE FACTORS IN THE ENVIRONMENT WHICH INFLUENCE MAN'S HEALTH .....

One of the chief tools that an associate public health engineer in New York state would use to fulfill those duties is ECOLOGY ...

You cannot be an associate level public health engineer in New York State, SUPPOSEDLY, anyway, without being MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ...

And so ...

For the record, we need to make clear that size, per se, does not define complexity. Elephants are larger than humans but not more complex. My guess is that those ecological systems with the greatest range of organisms--from the most simple to the most complex--would have the greater survival probability. In the over-all scheme of understanding things, I see Why Questions coming last after What, when, where and how. Conversly, in the actual existence of Human Beings, in real time, I agree with Victor Frankl (A Jewish, Existential Psychiatrist who survived the German prisons),
who quotes Nietzsche, "He who has a Why to live can bear with almost any how."

I say supposedly because in the CORRUPT EMPIRE of New York, these associate level public health engineer positions are seen by the corrupt politicians as political plums, or patronage positions where they can stick their political supporters, regardless of a lack of any qualifications for the position, whatsoever ...

The associate public health engineer positions are considered valuable PATRONAGE PLUMS because the associate public health engineer can sign off on evaluations of land in New York State to be used as residential land ....

POLITICAL HACKS in New York state holding associate public health engineer positions have signed off an countless thousands of acres of worthless swamp land as being fit for subdivision and human habitation ...

This is a part of the BLATANT FRAUD in evaluations that underlies the MORTGAGE CRISIS here in America ....

That mortgage crisis has increased the entropy of our financial system here in the USA ....

And it is CONTRA-SURVIVAL to civilized society ...

If a real public health engineer had been in there doing the job as it is supposed to be done pursuant to our New York State laws, entropy would have been decreased, instead ....

The public health engineer is supposed to bring stability to the open system of human health and well-being ....

The ENTROPIC POLITICAL HACKS have only brought CHAOS ....

And REGRESSION as OUR evolution up here ....

Our society is in decline ...

And violence in our community up here is a manifestation of that ....

And so ...

So the political problem facing us USAians is really pretty simple. How can we keep the public's
attention focused on removing corruption and incompetence from government? In spite of the fact
that 2 billion dollars will be spent on this Presidential election, this question gets totally ignored. As
well as the even more basic questions of what is a Person, what is a Community and what is a
soverign nation?

History says that you can't, rla ....

CORRUPTION in government cannot exist without the acquiescence of the people who are its citizens ....

CORRUPTION in government is a source of income for people, rla ....

It feeds them ...

People are not prone to give that up, when it benefits them so ....

And so we have had it up here for years and years and years, going back into the 1800's, and earlier, even ....

Recall that BOSS TWEED was from New York City ....

And BOSS TWEED was not some made-up comic book character ...

In New York State, BOSS TWEED was quite real ....

And people in New York State aren't against BOSS TWEED ,,,,

To the contrary, people want to be the next BOSS TWEED ...

They want that same kind of political power as he had ....

Because it is LUCRATIVE ....

Honesty is not the best policy in New York State, anyway ...

And so it goes ....

And so ....

I.ve been busy doing some writing on my own site the past several days. After my fall it has been hard typing and I can pace it when writing for my site.

Here's the link to one of the three pages I have uploaded in the past few days. if anyone is interested. It is called "A Time to Harvest" .. Title is deceiving. Its very political and pro American. A lot of my visitors come from foreign countries in addition to all over the US and Canada.Well over 200,000 to date. I figured this page was overdue.

http://www.slimsplace.com/ATimetoHarvest/index.html

If you have your sound on you might like the music. Its courtesy of my husband.

Thanks for posting that here, CO ....

And my good thoughts are going out to you for your recovery ...

And so ...

Thanks CO. A very fine read. I too, feel a change in direction coming on. Even a reduction of 20 %
in the government's corruption and incompetence, in the next four years, could make a tremendous difference in the quality and length of our lives.

Allowing non-adaptive structures to persist in our social system, where & when there are better alternatives is, I think, more a matter of Ignorance than of inherent Greed. Better Education reduces ignorance.

I see .....

Hhhhhmmmmmmmmm ....

WHERE?

Protecting and promoting public health, rla, IS NOT perceived as a better alternative up here where I am, rla ....

There is no money to be made in protecting and promoting public health and it impacts on the profits that a BID-NESS can reap when the BID-NESS can pollute and defraud with impunity ....

And people are FOR the corruption in New York State, rla, because it feeds them ...

Haven't you ever read Dickens?

Fagan's gang?

Children who become thieves and pickpockets and cutpurses because that is the family BID-NESS?

Up here, you don't work for government if you are against corruption ...

Either you won't get in, or you won't last ....

Which is why we have corruption up here ....

And New York States spends huge amounts of money on "education" ....

There is absolutely no correlation, rla, between money spent of "education" and reduction of ignorance in a state like New York ...

It is a fallacy to think otherwise ...

Our high-priced schools turn out some very ignorant graduates, and those are the top students ....

And so ...

It is not "our" social system, rla ....

There is where your thought stream goes south, right off the bat ....

That is one of the underlying themes in this thread, I would say ....

And so ...

And here you are once again with this persistent riddle of yours, rla ...

WHY do you think that a person or community or sovereign nation have not been defined?

WHO do you think is supposed to be doing this defining?

The REPUBLICAN party?

The DEMOCRAT party?

A plenum of the Communist Party?

WHO, rla?

Yes, patriotism and citizenship are important for a full appreciation of the concept of, "Sovergn
Nation" which appears to me to be not fully understood and appreciated. Freedom and Equality,
Rights and Responsibility are all required for there to be Liberty and Connectivity.

In the cases of Livyjr and rla.

I agree that the amount of money spent does not provide an index for estimating the quality or
quantity of Education. From a system's perspective, a big chunk of the problem is the miss-use of language. Just because something is called, "Education," doesn't mean that it is education.

The part of it that touches John Doe and that John Doe touches, is John Doe's system. That
is the Existential Nest that John Doe got thrust into, even though he didn't ask for it.

In a humanitarian constitutional democracy with a democratically regulated open market
economy, that is our individual and collective task. We can all get off our a$$ and start doing
that, or let George do it.

I was thinking of PATRIOTISM in that context from the aspect of a psychological stimulus ....

I don't think excessive patriotism or jingoism can be taught, but then I do not know, because nobody has ever succeeded in teaching me either of them as an acceptable alternative to the way that I am now ...

I certainly have been around CHEST THUMPERS, and I am frankly uncomfortable around them ...

And who, or whom, rla, do you think does not fully understand the concept of sovereign nation?

Now, you have said a mouthful here, rla ....

I meet a lot of people who have the credentials of an education, but it is surprising how little they know of life and the world out there ....

I think that at the time of the American Revolution and thereafter, in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, that many of those people in attendance were much better educated than we are today ....

John Quincy Adams at 14 or so was much better educated than are many adults here in the USA today ...

We have become overly specialized, or something ....

I recall watching Jay Leno one night several years ago when he was at a college graduation asking college graduates questions about where was the United Kingdom and when was the American Revolution and who did we fight in the American Revolution, and the answers were incredible ....

I think somebody had the American Revolution in the 1950's ...

They had us revolting from the control of New Jersey, or something inane like that ....

And the one young woman admitted that she did not know if the United Kingdom was in Disneyland or Disneyworld ....

To become a citizen here, a foreigner has to take a test and know about our history ...

And I have met naturalized citizens who were very knowledgeable about our history and form of government ....

Vietnamese in Viet Nam were more knowledgeable about our history than many of the American soldiers were ...

I was in the Army in 1968 with people who could not read or write ...

In the 1970's, I taught for a bit at a local community college, and the New York State Board of Regents wanted us, ordered us, actually, to make space in the schedule to teach remedial reading and math to incoming freshman who had managed to get out of HS and accepted into college without being able to read or do math ...

That was the end of that gig for me ....

I thought that that was incredible ...

And I thought that it was an admission of GROSS NEGLIGENCE on the part of the NYS Board of Regents ....

The college president told me that I could not think that way if I wanted to work there ....

I told him that I neither needed to, nor wanted to, after finding out that we, at the alleged college level, were going to be spending our time teaching people stuff that they should have learned in the fourth grade or so ...

And from my own experiences at citizenship here, I have found it impossible to function as a citizen without knowing the context in which my citizenship was to take place ...

If you don't know the form of your government and how and why it is that way, how then can you really practice citizenship?

And so ...

Okay ....

Stated that way, I must agree with you ...

The point is and remains, though, rla, that in the United States of America, a person, a community and a sovereign nation have already been defined ....

It sounds as if you don't like those definitions, or are not aware of them ...

AND WE DO NOT HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY HERE IN THE USA ....

WE HAVE A REPUBLIC ....

And the economy is happenstance ....

Our REPUBLIC does not exist for the sake of its economy ....

Our REPUBLIC is what allows us to have the economy that we wish to have ....

Although the one we have right now has been imposed upon us from above ....

It is not my economy ...

It exists to exploit me and bleed me ....

The economy of the USA today is a PARASITE ....

And so ...

I think that one of the best educated people in here in terms of the United States and its history is CO, who has never been a US citizen ....

I think that makes a statement ....

People around the world are aware of our history ....

And we are about the only ones on the planet who are not ....

I have a friend who came here from China, and she is very cognizant of our history as a nation ....

For being citizens of THE WORLD'S ONLY SUPERPOWER ...

We really are pretty dumb ....

And so ...

AND SPEAKING ABOUT POLITICAL HACKS AND THE PUBLIC'S HEALTH ...

WE HAVE ....

"I DON'T KNOW NOTHING, I ONLY WORK HERE ..."

"Upstate New York's looming natural gas nightmare - Regulators asleep as lawmmakers attempt to declare vast acreage open to the energy industry's iffy underground fracturing technique"

By ABRAHM LUSTGARTEN, Albany, New York Times Union

First published: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Of ProPublica, Special to the Times Union

On May 29, top state environmental officials assured state lawmakers that plans to drill for natural gas near the watershed that supplies New York City's drinking water posed little danger.

A survey of other states had found "not one instance of drinking water contamination" from the water-intensive, horizontal drilling that would take place across New York's southern tier, the officials said.

Reassured, the legislature quickly approved a bill to streamline the permitting process for a huge influx of wells which could bring the state upwards of $1 billion in annual revenue.

Gov. David Paterson has only until Wednesday to sign the bill, and the state's Department of Environmental Conservation says drilling permits could be approved in as little as 12 weeks.

But a joint investigation by ProPublica and New York City public radio station WNYC revealed hundreds of instances of drinking water contamination in states where comparable drilling has been done.

In New Mexico, oil and gas drilling using waste pits like those proposed for New York has caused toxic chemicals to leach into the water table at some 800 sites.

Colorado has reported more than 300 spills affecting its ground water.

DEC officials told ProPublica and WNYC they were not aware of those incidents, even though that information could have been found through a rudimentary internet search.

They apparently hadn't understood that the new drilling techniques pump trace amounts of toxic chemicals into the ground, and they couldn't say for sure how New York would dispose of the millions of gallons of hazardous fluids that are the byproducts of this type of drilling.

Four days after one interview, the DEC sent a letter to the drilling companies asking for detailed information about the type and amount of chemicals they will use.

With energy prices at record highs, a growing number of difficult-to-reach deposits of oil and gas in the United States are becoming commercially viable.

At least nine companies have been locking up leases in New York, Pennsylvania and the southern Appalachian states for drilling rights to the Marcellus Shale, a gas-rich rock layer that lies 9,000 feet beneath the earth's surface.

Some geologists predict it could meet the entire nation's natural gas needs for more than two years.

Protecting the environment from the effects of this drilling falls to individual states, which have a patchwork of laws and viewpoints.

New York's laws have served it well for the most part.

Since 1963 the state has permitted over 13,000 gas wells with few problems.

"When we say we are going to protect the environment, you don't have to trust us, you don't have to believe us," said Val Washington, director of the division of mineral resources at DEC.

"But look at our track record."

"I think it's pretty good."

But the Marcellus development will be far more complicated than any previous drilling operations in the state.

It will involve deeper, horizontal wells, possibly thousands of them.

Each well could suck up, and later spit out, between one million and five million gallons of water.

That would place an unprecedented burden on New York's watersheds, including those that feed New York City's reservoirs and farmland in Chemung, Tioga, Broome, Delaware and Sullivan Counties.

Some of the regional DEC offices that would oversee Marcellus wells have no experience with gas drilling at all.

Yet New York officials said they see no reason to update their environmental impact statement, which was drafted in 1992, long before this form of drilling, called horizontal hydraulic fracturing or "hydrofracking," was feasible on the scale now contemplated.

"There is a little bit of learning curve ... and that is where the concern falls," said William Kappel, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Ithaca, N.Y.

"The tremendous amounts of water used for these processes - where are you going to get it and what are you going to do with that?"

DEC officials could not answer those questions.

They acknowledged that the state's current rules allow independent contracting companies to take water from upstate streams and wetlands at will.

They also acknowledge they don't track the process drillers use to dispose of "produced water," as the gas and oil industry refers to its waste.

The gas in the Marcellus is held in tiny pockets, like bubbles in a brick of Swiss cheese.

To extract it, a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals is shot into the earth with such explosive force that it fractures the rock, releasing the bubbles to the surface.

Along with the gas comes most of the water that was shot down the well.

But by the time the water re-surfaces, it is laden with natural toxics from the shale layer below, as well as the chemicals added by industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy lists produced water from gas drilling as among the most toxic of any oil industry byproduct.

When that water is returned to the surface, it must be dealt with as toxic industrial waste.

Waste water from the Marcellus formation may turn out to be slightly cleaner than that from other formations because the water pulled back out contains fewer of the naturally occurring toxins - early trials indicate this - but the U.S. Department of Energy lists produced water from gas drilling as among the most toxic of any oil industry byproduct.

According to a 2004 report from Argonne National Laboratory prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy, "Studies indicate that produced waters discharged from gas ... platforms are about 10x more toxic than the produced waters discharged from oil platforms."

In most states the tainted water produced by gas drilling is injected back into the ground in areas where solid rock layers keep it isolated from people or their drinking water.

But the geology in New York and Pennsylvania is different and the water will be discharged into an ecosystem where it might wind up coming out of New York City's taps.

DEC's current regulations require only that produced waste be treated to "high standards" before being discharged back into rivers.

DEC officials said the water would be shipped to Pennsylvania and treated in specialized plants there.

But an executive for three of the Pennsylvania plants told ProPublica and WNYC that New York officials hadn't talked to him about the Marcellus wells.

He said his plants don't have the capacity to accept wastewater from New York.

"Don't bet on it," said Paul Hart, president of Hart Resource Technologies, which owns and operates three of the region's five qualified facilities, and whose phone number was given to Propublica by New York DEC.

Hart said his company can't even build plants fast enough to handle Pennsylvania's drilling expansion.

An executive with another plant said he had talked to DEC about taking some of the waste, but he too had serious concerns about limited capacity.

Few Regs for Hydrofracking

The challenges New York faces to control a drilling's effect on water are illustrated by what's happening at Tamarac Swamp, a state protected ecological area.

The swamp sits on a quiet rural road outside Oxford, N.Y., about a 45-minute drive from Binghamton.

Last year, Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy, the nation's third largest gas producer, approached the sprawling wetland's owners with an offer to lease drilling rights for $75 an acre, a bargain compared to today's asking prices of $2,500.

The Zunno family declined Chesapeake's offer, intending to reserve the wetland instead.

But last month the family spotted a tanker truck from another drilling company with a long septic hose draped over the side of the public roadway, draining water from the Zunno's culvert.

Lori Zunno said a well had been built on a neighbor's land and its operator had sent contractors in search of water for the drilling.

"We can't even build within 100 feet of [the swamp] so I don't understand why they can take septic trucks and pump it out," Zunno said.

Zunno filed a complaint with the DEC, but she said no one seemed to know who was responsible for protecting her land, or what, if anything, the tanker company had done wrong.

"They don't even know their own rules what's regulated and what's not," she said.

"There was such a lack of knowledge on their part about what could be done."

"There is no clear cut 'you cannot take water from this spot.'"

It turns out that thewithdrawals from the Zunnos' property should be regulated by the Susquehana River Basin Commission.

But Zunno didn't know that.

And neither, apparently, did the DEC, which declined to comment on the Zunnos' complaint because the investigation has not been closed.

Outside of specific areas regulated by the Susquehana River Basin Commission and the Delaware River Basin Commission, which requires permits for regular or large water withdrawals, New York does not regulate surface water extraction.

Anyone can take water from, say, the Hudson or Susquehana rivers, according to DEC's regional captain for law enforcement in the Zunno's part of the state.

When it comes to smaller water resources such as the Tamarac swamp, the rules say only that wetland cannot be drained.

Scientists and local land owners fear thousands of small water sources such as the Tamarac will be tapped to support the drilling industry.

"It's not clear to me that there is any group who is looking at the overall impact of withdrawing the amount of water that might be required for the hydrofracking."

"Who is looking at the broader picture?" said Susan Riha, director of the New York State Water Resources Institute, a federally funded study group at Cornell University.

Riha is especially concerned about limitations of the DEC's Environmental Assessment Form, a crucial environmental impact document drilling companies must file to get a permit.

It doesn't ask where drillers plan to get their water, and only asks for a vague estimate of how much they plan to use, which Riha considers standard questions.

"Looking at that short form, I was shocked," Riha said.

"It seems like we would have some procedures in place to put some pressure on the gas drilling operators to show that they are taking all possible steps to mitigate environmental impacts."

DEC officials acknowledged the gaps.

"You're getting into the concept of cumulative impacts," said James Tierney, assistant commissioner for the division of water.

"One water withdrawal may not have an impact, but 50 would have a huge impact."

"We're trying to figure it out."

This issue alone, says Riha, is reason enough under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, which mandates impact evaluations, to order a supplement to the 1992 environmental impact statement the DEC is still using.

Scientists are also concerned about chemicals added to the water to prevent corrosion in the drill bits, lubricate the drilling, and keep the drilling mud, as the mixture is called, at the right consistency to coax out gas.

As recently as last month, Bradley Field, the DEC's commissioner for the division of oil and minerals - the agency responsible for overseeing resource extraction in the state - appeared unaware of these additives.

At a meeting with conservation advocates and state legislators he said drilling fluids contained nothing more than water and sand, according to Roger Downs, a conservation associate of the Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter.

DEC has since adjusted its stance.

"They add chemicals, we know they do that," said Tierney, the water division official, in a meeting July 4.

"We don't know exactly what they are."

In part that's because the industry views its chemical recipes as trade secrets, akin to the formula for Coke or Pepsi, and the 2005 federal Energy Policy Act exempts the oil and gas industry from disclosing those recipes to the public.

For the most part, states have learned about the chemicals by analyzing waste pits and the contaminated ground water around them.

The Dirty Side of Water

In 2004 Theo Colborn, a widely respected scientist who specializes in the health effects of low-dose chemical exposure, began to investigate the makeup of drilling fluids.

She was spurred by the story of a Colorado resident who suspected her cancer was tied to water contamination from a nearby gas well.

To figure out what was in the water, Colborn collected shipping manifests that trucks must carry when they haul hazardous materials for oil and gas servicing companies.

When an accident occurred - a well spill in Colorado, or an explosion at a drilling site in Wyoming - she took water and soil samples and tested them for contaminants.

Colborn's list eventually grew to more than 200 chemicals, from suspated cancer-causing compounds like Benzene to a compound called 2-BE, which she connects to serious human health problems.

Colborn's findings are supported by studies in New Mexico and Wyoming.

Tests done by the New Mexico Office of Oil Conservation on mud and water from two gas drilling pits showed Benzene, Toluene, Naphthalene and other substances.

In Wyoming, where natural gas development has occurred on a large scale, the Environmental Protection Agency recently raised flags about one of the state's largest gas fields, the Pinedale anticline, where data appears to indicate that much of the drinking water aquifer has been contaminated.

In a letter circulated to drillers there this summer, the EPA wrote that it found Benzene and other compounds in more than a third of groundwater samples tested at one site.

"Such impacts are environmentally unsatisfactory" the letter said.

Washington, the New York DEC official, insisted New York can handle such problems.

"This is not New Mexico, this is not Colorado, this is New York," said Washington.

"Out of 13,000 wells that we have permitted we have not, for example, had a single ground water problem with any of them."

In conversations with ProPublica, DEC officials repeatedly downplayed the importance of chemical additives.

Additives make up just a tiny fraction of a percent of the fluids; 99.4 percent is water and sand, Field said.

But six-tenths of one percent of two million gallons of drilling water still equals 10,000 gallons of toxic chemicals and that's just for one well.

When pressed on whether New York would make such information a prerequisite for approving an application in the Marcellus, Field said:

"I don't know."

"We'd have to take a look."

"I can't say for sure right now."

Asked why he might not require it, he said:

"Because it would be a departure from how we typically do this."

"I haven't really come to terms with that just yet," he said.

Disposing of the produced water presents even larger challenges the DEC has also not addressed.

When water is sent thousands of feet below the surface for hydrofracking it picks up other contaminants held deeply underground such as fuel-related hydrocarbons, cancer-causing compounds including Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzine, and Xylene - and even radioactivity from uranium ore.

When asked how the DEC intends to shepherd its waste water, the DEC could offer few details.

Making sure the water gets treated isn't part of DEC's permit review process, so long as the end result complies with state laws that say, somehow, it eventually gets treated and meets discharge standards.

Paul Hart, the Pennsylvania treatmnent plant executive, said the last time he talked with New York's DEC, the caller, whose name he couldn't remember, displayed a general lack of understanding of water issues, and did not have a clear grasp of the waste water disposal alternatives.

"He did not understand the variations of the different chemicals and the potential for contamination," Hart said.

"Now with the Marcellus they are just completely unprepared for it."

"What I really think they are waiting for is the industry to make recommendations."

"I don't think they are going to be proactive."

On July 11 Bradley Field's office issued a hefty letter to the gas industry requesting exhaustive data and information that closely adhered in both substance and actual language to the questions presented to him by ProPublica and WNYC.

The letter gave the companies four and a half week to respond.

But it didn't indicate that a response would be required in order to continue drilling.

For now, DEC's officials are asking their critics to have faith.

"If there is any doubt in anybody's mind that we are going to proceed with these applications without full protection and consideration for the environment they are just wrong," Washington said.

"It may be that the applicants down the line are going to have to wait a long time for their permits."

"There are some things to sort out here."

WNYC will air radio versions of this story beginning this morning.

Abrahm Lustgarten is a reporter for ProPublica, a non-profit investigative newsroom based in New York City. He is a former staff writer and contributor for Fortune, and has written for Salon, Esquire, the Washington Post and the New York Times since receiving his master's in journalism from Columbia University in 2003. He is the author of the new book China's Great Train: Beijing's Drive West and the Campaign to Remake Tibet, a project that was funded in part by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I understand that we do not yet have in place, A humanitarian constitutional Democracy with a democratically regulated market economy. One can see shades of this ideal and it is my goal for us.
The best possible application of our Constitution and Bill of Right to the candid world , as it exist today, if we were true to the letter and spirit of that document would move us in that direction. The
distinction between democracy and Republicism is not absolute. Movement, since our founding has been in the direction of more democracy and I think that is a good thing. I think we need to be more up front and open about considering the role of the States.

Without a system for the exchange of goods and services, there is no Community. Without an aggregate of Communities, there is no Nation. (Good night, its past my bed time.)

In all truth, rla, it really sounds like you are proposing a revitalization of "commune-ism" here with your talk of a "democratically regulated market economy" ...

Seriously ....

People on earth have been trading and engaging in commerce now for thousands and thousands of years ...

And there have been communities for thousands and thousands of years ...

And there have sovereign nations for hundreds of years, at least ...

There are communities for the reason that that is about as far as we can effectively reach with our efforts ....

I am in New York and you are in Arkansas, which is some 2500 miles and a two or three day drive away, one way ....

But for this internet connection, I would not even know of your existence, nor would you know of mine ....

Are you proposing that I should trade with you in Arkansas, instead of in my local community?

Start driving down there on a Sunday, to get there on a Wednesday, so I can stock up on goods from you, in order to make it back home by Saturday, so that I can then leave again on Sunday to come back down and buy some more?

Have you stopped to consider the impracticalities of what you are proposing, rla?

Or aren't there any?

And I do not want to live in a DEMOCRACY, thank you very much ....

I don't want my "personhood" being debated and decided by some COMMITTEE of people somewhere ....

Just as I don't want some COMMITTEE of people coming to my home, to make judgments about my home as compared to theirs and my life, as compared to some model of "personhood" that they have decided on in this HUMANITARIAN DEMOCRACY of yours ...

That sounds like Nazi Germany, to me ...

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WHICH IS A REPUBLIC, I AM THE DEFINER OF MY PERSONHOOD, AND ME, ALONE ....

My LIBERTY in the REPUBLIC of the United States of America is what allows me to define myself as a person each and every day of my life ...

I can be law-abiding, and live one way ...

I can choose to be an outlaw and live another way ...

Either way, I am and remain a PERSON in a community ...

Bank robbers need communities more than I do, rla ....

And so ...

The "LIBERTY" guaranteed and protected by constitutional provisions denotes not only freedom from unauthorized physical restraint, but embraces also:

* the freedom of an individual to use and enjoy his faculties in all lawful ways;

* acquire useful knowledge;

* marry;

* establish a home;

* bring up children;

* worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience;

* live and work where he chooses;

* engage in any of the common and lawful occupations of life;

* enter into all contracts which may be proper and essential to carrying out successfully the foregoing purposes; and

* generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free people.

- Black's Law Dictionary

NEW YORK STATE TOWN LAW, ARTICLE I, SECTION 2:

§ 2. Definition of town.

A town is a municipal corporation comprising the inhabitants within its boundaries, and formed for the purpose of exercising such powers and discharging such duties of local government and administration of public affairs as have been, or, may be conferred or imposed upon it by law.

It sounds to me, rla, as if you might have some issues with incompetent or inept government down there in Arkansas where you are ...

The solution to that for you is not to impose some kind of HUMANITARIAN DEMOCRACY BY COMMITTEE on me up here in New York State ...

If Arkansas has no laws down there, then the solution is to leave Arkansas for some more civilized and advanced state in the union ...

Or work to change things down there where you are ....

I don't want my PERSONHOOD up here in New York State being determined or decided by some committee of disgruntled Arkansas residents ...

And so ...

Move us in what direction, rla?

How is your HUMANITARIAN DEMOCRACY going to improve upon the alleged and supposed liberties that we allegedly and supposedly already enjoy here in the USA?

What does this sentence state, rla:

... generally to enjoy those privileges long recognized at common law as essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free people .....

What do those words mean?

Exactly how old is the COMMON LAW?

From whence did the COMMON LAW come?

And how come people in the USA are so ******* STUPID, rla, that they don't know doodly squat about anything at all?

I am DEVOTED to MY COUNTRY, rla, because it is here that I was born and it is here that I have at least the promise of LIBERTY, if not LIBERTY in fact ...

Because I am DEVOTED to MY COUNTRY, then I have PATRIOTISM ...

My PATRIOTISM is inwards ....

DEVOTION to MY COUNTRY ...

My country is not in IRAQINAM ...

I am not at all devoted to IRAQINAM in any way ...

My country is not Colombia ....

I have no devotion to the government or peoples of Colombia ...

My country is the United States of America ....

My PATRIOTISM does not make me a WAR MONGER ...

My PATRIOTISM does not lead me to make or encourage the making of AGGRESSIVE WAR on other peoples or nations of the earth ....

My PATRIOTISM does not lead me to believe that my country has the right to go to other nations and to steal their resources from them at gunpoint ...

My PATRIOTISM, or DEVOTION to my country is healthful and nourishing ....

My PATRIOTISM is not destructive ....

If you are devoted to your country, then you do not work to destroy it, or usher in the seeds of its destruction ...

I thought that that was really a very simple concept ....

It is a simple concept that I was taught and learned as a mere child here in the USA way back in the early-1950's ....

YOU DON'T EAT THE SEED CORN ...

YOU DON'T FOUL YOUR OWN NEST ...

I wonder why it is so hard for people in the USA to understand today ...

Maybe I am just stupid, myself ...

Maybe I am just too unsophisticated .....

And I accept the distinct possibility of that, especially in here, where there are so many well-educated people with multiple degrees in this or that ...

And so ...

PATRIOT: one who loves his/(her) country and zealously guards its welfare, especially a DEFENDER OF POPULAR LIBERTY ...

- Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary

I find talking with you Livyjr, to be very educational and I really appreciate the opportunity. You have a real talent for pointing out how my words can sometimes be mis-construed and point the
reader in the opposite direction from the way I intended to point the reader. I, in no way advocate
Communism in the Economic domain nor Facism in the political domain. When I say the US needs
a Person-centered, Community-based, Nationally guaranteed Health Care and Wellness System, this
phrase emphasizes a bottoms-up Administrative arrangement where individual Persons select fee
for service professional health and wellness services, already existing in their communities and
the Federal Government processes the paper work and pays the bills with tax funds (since employers would no longer be getting big tax breaks for providing health care insurance, which is becomming less adequate and less universal every year, the funds would be available). Public Health Services at the State and Community level could direct their efforts more to keeping the Environment healthy because direct medical services to poor people would be handled by the regular service delivery system.

In reviewing the Threads on the board to day, I notice that as usuall, the issue of Regulation is
a constant across various threads. Terms such as Free Market Economy or Open Market Economy
are used in different ways by different people. Political discourse in the US and discussions of Economic theory imply that the economy of nations are either Capitalism or Socialism when actually
most are like the US, some combination of the two. Also, many persons use the terms socialism
and communism interchangeable (some out of ignorance and some as a way of discrediting
the concept of Socialism. I think that our History clearly demonstrates that common ordinary people
are criminally exploited, under unfettered Capitalism. When the concept of, "Free Market," is elevated to the position of God, the rich get richer and working people suffer. The movement for De-regulation, under Reagan is when the great Regression started, was not corrected by the Clinton
Administration and got a lot worse under GWB.

I use the term, "Humanitarian Constitutional Democracy/Republic to distinquish our system
from Christian Democracy, Jewish Democracy, Islamic Democracy or any kind of Democracy/
Republic, other than a Human one. To me, the distinction that needs to be made is between
a Government Managed Economy (whether communist or fascist) and a democratically regulated
economy. The later would be consistent with our Constitution, if Congress would do its job and
directly represent the citizens who elected them and the common good.

And likewise, rla ...

And what I appreciate is that we are in fact talking, or discussing back and forth, without the need for somebody to be smarter or better or wiser or more educated than somebody else ....

By being challenged, then I am caused to have to go back and re-think the validity of my premises, and what they are based on ....

We could be down a rabbit hole, where every word means its opposite, but not what they meant a minute ago ...

Which is why it is good to simply talk back and forth in here ....

Where I can ask you what it was you had in mind when you said something, because I do think that what you are trying to get across has relevance to this subject of DEVOTION TO ONE'S COUNTRY, and how that might manifest on a day-by-day basis out there in real life, where our communities are located ...

Are you familiar with a political scientist named William Riker, rla, by any chance?

Several things here, rla ....

One is that I think that it is a PIPE DREAM right now to believe or think that the U.S. CONGRESS is going to directly represent those who elected them and the common good ....

They represent who keeps them in office ....

They are like syndicated race horses, rla ....

If you happen to be in the syndicate that "owns" a certain Representative or Senator, and you have the money to buy their notice and interest, then YOU might get some service out of them ....

But not a disabled veteran without resources like me ....

Thanks to Congress, I have been squeezed out of the veteran's care network up here where I am to make room for the IRAQINAM veterans, since there is only so much money for veteran's care, and they have all the political clout to get what they want, at the expense of older veterans like me ...

But more to the point, rla ...

I honestly have no clue or conception of how or what a democratically regulated economy is, or how you see it functioning in a nation the size of the USA with 300 million souls in it ....

And I believe that one of the most democratic things I have is my dollar bill ....

Along with my not wanting to borrow money from those who need to loan it out to make a living for themselves ....

**** THE MONEYLENDERS is my mantra, rla ....

My LIBERTY here in the USA gives me the freedom to say that and mean that ....

Who needs whom?

I am quite content to see the MONEYLENDERS starve, now ....

If everybody boycotted the moneylenders, they would be gone ....

The moneylenders are PARASITES, like ticks ....

They need a host to survive ....

Generally, all they need to do is to hold out two bits or a dollar, and the average American will be right down on his or her belly, crawling to the MONEY LENDER to get another hit, another fix ....

So the MONEYLENDERS thrive ....

I vote with my dollar, rla ....

Sometimes, many times, I elect to leave my dollar in my pocket .....

I intend to put those businesses who are predators or polluters out of business by boycotting them ....

Starve them for the money they need to survive, and they can't survive ....

That is about as pure as economic democracy can get, in my estimation ...

Some merchant that I don't like, maybe I'll walk in the door of his shop, and pull out some money, and wave it in front of his face, and then put it back in my pocket and turn around and leave, without the need to say a word ....

The money not in the merchant's cash box is message enough ....

Economic democracy can't work in a nation of addicts and cowards, rla ....

And so ....

Nothing can work in a nation of addicts and cowards, if that's all there is. Everything being relative, some of us are less addicted and cowardly than others and all of us have the potential to become
much more fully functioning persons. If one doesn't believe that, it would be the height of folley to
spend one's time and energy doing education or psychotherapy. Granted that these kind of issues are difficult to communicate about, I prefer to keep trying.After Orwell's book, Animal Farm, came out, he had to continously explain that he meant to attack Communism, not democratic socialism, which he passionately favored. Even though he is given credit for being one of the best political writers, he also had to explain that, "1984," his futuristic anti-totalitarian novel wasn't a prediction of what would happen, but a satirical warning against what could.

I think we are back to the matter of balance--of maintaining a dynamic equilibruim--of emergent evolution reducing entropy in the system. However attractive a particular period of our history may
seem, we will continue to change for as long as we survive--as persons, as nations and as the
human social system. We need to improve our representative government for directing change. Our
worse problems are in our ineffective Regulatory Systems. Witness the melt down in the housing
market. A part of this problem is our ambivalence for accepting Regulations. People don't work hard perfecting something they don't believe they need. I agree with your thesis that a cash bases is the
best approach to personal finance. It is also the case that without credit, modern society could not exist. Upward social mobility in this country following WWII until the 1980's was made possible by
the accessability of credit, at reasonably good terms, especially for those in the racial and cultural
mainstream. Of course there were predatory lending practices then but they have gotten progressively worse since the 1980's and are litterally killing people now.