Dear Citizens and Elected Officials:
Introduction:
I spoke last night in rural, “red county” far western mountain Maryland. It was at a public hearing held to consider Republican Governor Larry Hogan’s new rules that will allegedly protect us from the unavoidable ravages of fracking, and was held at Garrett College, the Maryland Department of Environment presiding. Maryland has a temporary legislative moratorium on drilling, chiefly aimed at the two counties that are underlain by the Marcellus Shale formation, Allegany and Garrett, and these new regulations were developed to replace the supposedly “gold" standard ones left by outgoing Democratic Governor Martin O’ Malley, and must be in place by October 1, 2017. However, all present clearly understood that the actual political dynamics will now center on legislative efforts to ban fracking entirely in Maryland, and a number of speakers pointed out that there were other jurisdictions in Maryland which have shale gas pockets in different geological formations. So the stakes will be high.
The turnout was large and loud, but not out of bounds, some 150-200 people, filling the auditorium. I would say 80-90% attending were opposed to fracking and skeptical that these weakened, more “flexible” regulations would be effective — or that even the best intended and toughest regulations can be effective, given the 24/7 all-out industrial nature of the fracking process.
As if often the case at this type of public hearing, slated to run from 6:00-8:00 PM, with 50-60 people signed up to speak, a two minute time limit was slapped on the citizens, driving up the frustration level — on opinionated citizens with a lot to say, with hundreds of pages of regulatory complexity and sophisticated political maneuverings to unravel. So the mood turned informed populist, I would say, with more than a touch of anger with a process that has gone through Commissions, two rounds of regulations and an already monumental legislative struggle to get the current moratorium. Yet these emotions seemed fitting given the background of the populist revolt in both major parties, and now the upheaval against the Neoliberal governance of the European Union - and the British revolt.
This was my second public hearing in seven days, having spoken, unrehearsed, at the first one held last Wednesday at Allegany Community College, which was also well attended, filling the large classroom forum with about 60 people, also mostly all opposed to fracking. For last night’s hearing, I had formalized my previous comments, coming out at about 1,000 words, three pages, and intending to say something direct about the incongruous nature of these proceedings under anti-regulatory, anti-spending Governor Hogan, a Governor whose popularity rating is in the 70% range, deterring, for now, a “contemplating" Congressman named John Delaney from a potential challenge.
And of course, I intended to frame my comments so that these heavily Republican counties could hear, for once, unfiltered, an entirely different set of assumptions about regulatory and economic matters. And that’s because the local newspapers, The Republican, in Garrett County and the CumberlandTimes-News, covering the Potomac Highlands in MD and WVA, are heavily slanted to the Republican Right, although they will print dissenting letters to the editor from time-to-time. And of course, the radio air waves are dominated by the Right, all day, every day. Despite that, Bernie Sanders carried both counties in the April Democratic Party primary.
Before leaving you with the very slightly edited text of my 1,000 word formal speech, which I had to cut to barely a page and a half under the 2 minute gun last night, hardly enough time to fully shape what I had intended to say, I wanted to share some of my background thoughts over the past week.
The Maryland revolt against fracking has been led, its emotionally intense core, comes from those residents of the two western Maryland counties who have developed green leaning businesses or bought farms or retirement properties in the Deep Creek Lake area. I suspect quite a few are Libertarians at least, and many are long-time Republican voters. Everyone got a lesson in Neoliberalism’s reach, however, as they have learned that both liberal Martin O’Malley and conservative Larry Hogan each support fracking with varying degrees of regulation. The revolt against fracking has posed the greater problems, however, for the Republican Party in the state, because it is confronted by a deep split in its core constituency: business. That’s something the leadership ignores at its peril. Meanwhile, the Democrats have learned from the national curve that is turning against natural gas, and fracking, as the so called “Bridge to the Future,” the future being alternative energy. I address the evolution of the greens in the natural gas story in my formal comments.
But what I wanted to share most with readers here at the Kos were my thoughts on driving the 32 miles west and then south from my home in Frostburg, MD to the hearing site. Five miles from home on U.S. 68, I see the sign that says I’m entering Garrett County; another tells me I have crossed the Eastern Continental Divide, the watershed line which delineates which waters flow East to the Atlantic, and which flow west to the Mississippi and then to the Gulf of Mexico — or perhaps north to the Great Lakes in some cases. It always surprises me when I encounter this Divide so far east of the “Father of Waters.” Another sign notes Big Savage Mountain, 2860 feet high, and I recall reading of the labors and groans of Coxey’s Army of economic protestors struggling to climb it up the slope of Route 40, the Old National Road, heading east in the spring of 1894 to petition Congress for public jobs to fight the horrendous unemployment levels in the wake of the great financial panic of 1893. That was at a time in the nation’s political economy when government intervention into the economy, much less the sacred labor market, was unheard of, unthinkable, unless one had read a lot of Thomas Paine and had a very good memory — a century long memory, in fact. And the Neoliberal stances of both parties have brought us back to those “liberal” (read conservative laissez-faire) 19th century economic “commandments,” the same ones that dictate that German Banker minds cannot approve of a New Deal for Greece — the proposal which Yanis Varoufakis has advocated, and still is pushing in his attempts to “Democratize" Europe with his DiEM25 movement.
Forgive me here: I should mention that every time I pass that Continental Divide sign, I start to think in large terms, continental terms, and beyond: there is something stirring about the very words, and you begin to think of the great Western push out of the seaboard in the 18th century, and the costs of it, the "Last of the Mohicans." And I begin to think about the coming election and what is at stake.
And then I’m heading south on a state road, MD-Route 495, and I’m in the local world, heading steeply downhill for about a mile, with curves bending back against themselves. It’s a state road, but it is only two lanes, and there are long stretches of guardrails to warn of the nature of the rugged, mountainous terrain all around you. The speed limit is 50 miles per hour, 40 at the bad curves, but it’s hard to keep that up for safety’s sake, and I find my eyes pulled off to the gorgeous scenery of 19th century farms, and the famous hollows of the region. It’s a struggle between beauty you can’t resist for long — and common sense safety . And then you realize that this would be one of the main routes for the fracking traffic, heavy truck traffic, 24/7 with bleary-eyed drivers, probably not entirely local, struggling to stay awake at 2:00 AM on the same road challenging me even on a beautiful early summer’s day, in broad daylight. It’s a big national economic obsession, fracking is — international now thanks to Sec. Clinton’s State Department — meeting some daunting local realities, and I hope that this incongruity is registering on the minds of the local and state Republican leaders. And with the permanent Maryland Governor, Senate President Mike Miller and Speaker Busch over in the other house. It’s another aspect of the local-global tensions so well written about by Naomi Klein in her book This Changes Everything, and the national forces, led by unhappy middle class and working class workers getting the short end of the economic stick in Neoliberal dominated Europe. These tensions are threatening to break up the U.K. itself, shatter what has stood since the early 18th century.
My eyes want to look up to the landscape’s great beauty, and my mind wants to soar a bit over that “Eastern Continental Divide," but I have to pay attention to the local reality, that I’m driving on dangerous roads...and about to speak in very red territory, and say things that are not often mentioned in public here. Civility prevailed, I’m pleased to report. What sunk in, registered, I’ll probably never know.
That’s what I tried to do in my speech. Here it is: