Fracking Rules? Leave Them to the States.

A version of this article appeared March 26, 2013, on page R5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: FrackingRules? Leave Them to the States. By Govenor Thomas W. Corbett of the Great State Of Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania Governor Thomas W. Corbett tells WSJ’s Kim Strassel that his state has imposed the strongest fracking regulations in the country and that his state is taking action against violators.

On states regulating fracking

States have a greater interest in what is going to be in the best interest of their residents and businesses than the federal government does.

Last year, we passed a natural-gas act to protect communities. We now have the toughest environmental regulations in the country.

We have also increased the number of inspectors going out and looking at wells. These are people who live in those neighborhoods, who are going to be interested in making sure that the neighborhood is good for themselves and their families, as well as for the people around them.

Genesis Photos for The Wall Street Journal

Thomas W. Corbett

As for regulating businesses, one of the best ways to make sure that they're following the rules is the ability to take an action against their permit. If somebody downstream is doing something...

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A Model for Reducing Emissions

By EDUARDO PORTER Published: March 19, 2013 in New York Times Business Day

This is the nation, after all, where a former chairman of the Senate committee on the environment, James Inhofe, wrote a book about global warming called “The Greatest Hoax.” This is where a presidential election took place not six months ago in which climate change barely merited a mention, buried under an avalanche of promises to dig for coal and drill for oil.

Fuel economy performance for cars and trucks is still among the worst in

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New center to set stringent standards for fracking in East

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The governor of NYC - Cuomo ignores Upstate’s needs

Apparently New York politicians are not aware of the fact that when you take a mans dignity  you make a lifetime enemy. We may have little power to control the state politicians but we surely know how to make our voices heard nationwide if any of them is foolish enough to seek national office. We will never forget the losses we have experienced as a consequence of NY politics !! JLCpulse

By BOB McMANUS 3/20/2013 New York Post Editorial

US Census Bureau data last week revealed that, for the first time in memory, more people are moving into The Bronx than are leaving. This is good news for that economically battered borough — and for New York City generally.

But those same stats show ever more tumbleweeds blowing through Upstate’s leafy lanes — and that dichotomy goes a long way toward explaining Andrew Cuomo’s slow-motion evolution from Different Democrat to just another poll-driven blue-state pol.

Let’s be clear: The city numbers aren’t huge. In The Bronx, net population growth of 115 was noted since 2010 — while the city itself grew by 160,000, roughly 2 percent, with immigration and a marginal rise in the birth rate accounting for the higher numbers.

It may be too early to declare a trend in the city; sadly, that’s not true of the numbers for Upstate, which continue a dreary, decades-long population...

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Susquehanna County bank pushes into downtown Scranton

A very nice problem for a bank to have, more money available than borrowers to borrow it. JLCpulse

By David Falchek (Staff Writer)Published: March 15, 2013 in Times-Tribune.com

A Hallstead-based community bank is setting down roots in downtown Scranton, joining a competitive banking landscape.

The newest Peoples Neighborhood Bank office planned for Mulberry Street and Penn Avenue at the site of PDQ Print Center won't be a full-fledged retail banking office. The modest 2,200-square-foot office will be for commercial lending and administration.

The Electric City outpost of the bank whose center of gravity is firmly in the Endless Mountains may eventually evolve into a branch with tellers and an ATM, said Joe Ferretti, Peoples Neighborhood Bank chief lending officer, but for now, the plans call for some administration function and commercial lending.

The bank hopes to use the office to set a new marker in its service area, Mr. Ferretti said, with a Binghamton, N.Y. branch to the north and now Scranton in the south.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s approval for the office is still pending, but Mr. Ferretti is hoping to have the bank ready to lend in June.

The bank is doing business in Lackawanna and Luzerne counties, he said, and the hopes the office will help better serve those customers.

Banking observers say the move is as much about getting new customers as it is about serving existing customers.

The stable, if long sleepy, country bank has grown fast over the past four years, fueled by Marcellus Shale...

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John Stossel: Being against fracking is the latest cause for silly people

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Blueblood agenda The truth about fracking foes

• by TOM SHEPSTONE  Posted: 10:39 PM, March 18, 2013 in New York Post

GOV. Cuomo has put natural-gas development on hold yet again, plainly thanks to the power of New York’s environmental lobby. But the real issue has nothing to do with the supposed health concerns cited by the opponents of “fracking.” No, the delay’s been engineered by some extremely powerful special interests — New York’s bluebloods —at the expense of the hopes of blue-collar NewYork.

Consider the governor’s advisory committee on hydraulic fracturing. It includes his brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy Jr., a former senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, and two current senior attorneys for the NRDC. That’s three NRDC seats on a panel of 13 (later expanded).

And the NRDC is also represented in the individual whom these three attorneys are supposed to advise: JoeMartens, the Department of Environmental Conservation chief, who was president of the Open Space Institute when he took the DEC job, and is also a founder of the Catskill Mountainkeeper.

Both those groups, along with the NRDC, were creations of John Adams, a close associate of the Rockefeller family. Adams’ son, Ramsay, is Catskill Mountainkeeper’s executive director, and still another NRDC senior attorney is the group’s president.

Cuomo’s fracking panel also contains four other opponents of the practice and one of those, Robert Moore, just got hired by the NRDC. Altogether, they still account for half the committee, even after it was expanded for greater...

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America's Energy Bonanza Is Reshaping The Country And Saving The Economy

The Economist | Mar. 16, 2013, 8:41 AM

WHEN KEN ALEXANDER started working at the J&L steel mill in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, in the 1970s, he was one of 17,000 workers. But the workforce quickly declined as the American steel industry withered in the face of cheaper foreign competition. In 1984 J&L shut the mill. Four years ago another mill where Mr Alexander had found a job, across the Ohio river in Ambridge, also stopped work because of the recession. He was one of a skeleton staff of 20 kept on as watchmen.

Derelict mills pepper the region, loose sidings flapping in the frigid Appalachian wind. The once celebrated steel industry around Pittsburgh (whose football team is called the Steelers) survived a series of crises over the years, notes Mr Alexander, but was further diminished by each of them--until now. These days the Ambridge mill, bought by a Russian conglomerate six years ago, is humming away. Its 400 workers transform solid steel bars produced at another mill nearby into seamless pipes, in demand by oil drillers, among others. The management is taking advantage of a seasonal lull in demand to straighten out kinks in the line and thus increase its capacity.

Other firms are making much bigger bets on the local steel industry. Fifty miles to the north-west, in Youngstown, Ohio, a French firm, Vallourec, has spent $650m building an entirely new mill to make similar pipes. It began production in...

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Celebrity anti-fracking group not registered as lobbyists

3/18/13 in CNYCentral.com by Associated Press