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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SilentZ who wrote (540504)	1/4/2010 1:17:57 AM
From: tejek	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573691

Although, I liked the fact that Obama was able to tap into the population to raise so much money Not in the way we all think he did. He raised so much from people giving $1,000+. And those are still mostly the people he caters to. Oh come on........I know Obama bashing has become the soup du jour but really have you looked the change of regulations on your credit cards lately......the statements have been going out for the past three months. I didn't give Obama $1k and I am benefiting from those change of regs. Aren't you? Were we not supposed to benefit? Tim F. gives me nothing but flack about the proposal the Obama administration made for GM....a proposal that benefited the union members. Were those $1k donors? I know union members get paid well but..... Is health insurance reform supposed to benefit only the $1k donors? It doesn't look like it to me. The problem in this country is not whether anyone is a centrist or not, left or right......but the non stop bitching that goes on. The word, compromise, seems to have been deleted from the American lexicon. One week its gays who are unhappy, the next week its blacks, the week after that its women etc. It seems everyone wants their president created in the image they have in mind and everything he does must cater to their particular needs. It ain't going to happen. This inner squabbling is how the left lost the nation in the past and it will happen again. Actually, I should put a caveat on this post.......this rant isn't really directed at you. You are not here enough to complain. I am just tired of hearing the complaints in general.

To: SilentZ who wrote (540504)	1/4/2010 11:45:11 AM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1573691

A tale of two states....... Pa. political leaders must do more about the natural gas bounty Published: January 3, 2010 Like everything else in nature, the Marcellus Shale natural gas field pays no heed to man-made contrivances, such as the political boundary lines on maps. The Marcellus Shale, formed millions of years before humans started marking the surface, meanders from the Catskill Mountains, diagonally across Pennsylvania and into West Virginia. What is remarkable is the different approaches that states have taken to development of the gas fields. Pennsylvania politicians have strived mightily to get out of drillers' way, for example, while their counterparts in New York have determined that water is a more important resource than gas. Key environmental issues remain unresolved as the pace of drilling and gas extraction accelerates in Pennsylvania. In New York, by contrast, the state continues to carefully analyze the environmental impact of drilling before authorizing it. The issues revolve around water. Modern processes that enable drillers to get to the gas, which is trapped in rock deep underground, require the use of vast amounts of water. That water is extracted from surface sources such as ponds and rivers, and in some cases from wells. It is mixed with chemicals and injected underground at high pressure to fracture the rock and free the gas. Even as extraction rates increase in Pennsylvania, the state and drillers themselves have not finally resolved crucial issues regarding the treatment of billions of gallons of water that are contaminated in the process. While the state does require that the chemicals used be made a matter of public record, what is not public is the exact combination of the chemicals, and in what concentrations a given company uses. What's more, the state continues to play catch-up on monitoring and enforcement. Drilling has been on hold in New York as the state has collected data on its own and from interested parties. A team of engineers and geologists hired by New York City to examine the potential impact of drilling near the city's water sources in the Catskills has concluded, for example, that tons of chemicals could be added to the ground every day for years, and that its impact could not reliably be predicted. The genie is out of the bottle in Pennsylvania. Whereas the economic impact in local communities as well as statewide warrants exploitation of the massive gas field, the state retains the obligation to ensure that the extraction does not cause long-term environmental damage. While dissimilar geologic and other relevant factors make comparisons with gas plays in other regions of the nation risky, Pennsylvania's leaders in Harrisburg must demand the examination of results of the analyses in states over the Marcellus Shale, and apply them to drilling that already is under way across the commonwealth. Meanwhile, local political officials, as well as those at the state level, must continue to insist that towns and municipalities share in revenue that will be generated from the drilling to maintain the infrastructure the gas industry naturally will wear down in pursuit of prospecting, drilling, extraction and transmitting of the natural resource. Finally, local governments who themselves benefit from gas lease and royalty revenue must ensure that all residents, property taxpayers included, share in the bounty.