From 2010 thru 2012, I wrote numerous letters outlining how the Obama administration was leading us down the road to perdition. Regrettably, most of what I foresaw came to be. While we regained control of the House in 2012, the nascent emergent Tea Party was not yet mature enough to completely vet their candidates. The resulting loss of the Senate seats in Nevada and Delaware blunted our return to responsible government. Currently, the conservative majority in the House can only slow down our rush to Socialism (or worse).

If you are concerned that a few more years of Obama policies will forever “transform” America, it is imperative  you commit your money and energy to defeating every Democrat (all of whom voted for Obamacare) who is on the ballot this November. Taking back the Senate and holding the House will prevent the further encroachment of an imperial presidency (rule by Executive Order) but it will take commitment on everyone’s part.

While this might be in the realm of wishful thinking, keep in mind that should we go over the top in November, it might be possible to impeach the current administration in it’s entirely and return our country to the Republic created by our Founding Fathers. Remember that idea? Hard work and responsible spending leads to prosperity. Government facilitating economic growth, not self growth leads to prosperity. Not welfare, food stamps, unlimited unemployment benefits, EPA running wild, debt and more debt. Government assistance as a safely net, not a way of life. I intend to double down this fall – both in political donations to the campaigns of conservatives and in being another boot on the ground working for worthy candidates. I invite you to be part of a return to national sanity.

Sincerely,

Joe McCann

Elk Lake, PA

The real unemployment figure is not the usually quoted 6.6 percent, but almost twice that at 12.7 percent if all the unemployed are included. It's a staggering statistic reflecting hard times.

So when shale companies threw an economic lifeline of 200,000 jobs to Ohioans, who could blame them for grabbing it? Well, for one, a team of economists at the Ohio State University. It seems the shale stat suffered from an excess of zeros.

The Ohio State study forecasted a maximum creation of 20,000 jobs over the four years.  “However, our 20,000 job estimate does not account for displacement losses in other industries such as tourism,” said the study. Lop off another zero.

How, then, did the industry come up with such an exuberant number?  “This is not surprising,” said the OSU report.  “These studies are typically industry-funded, [and] not the best sources of information for economic effects.”

When it came to Pennsylvania the shalers decided to pull in their horns and promised an increase of only 100,000 jobs.

But the prediction of 100,000 jobs is another foot-in-the-door, industry-funded come-on.  Drill down into it and you will find more holes in it than in a colander.

For example, the “study” does not consider how many jobs will be lost because of scattered industrialization, jobs such as in tourism, recreational activities, hunting and fishing, and job loss from those looking elsewhere to find a peaceful rural environment.

The “study” also ignored the difference between part-time and short-term employment, and out-of-state workers.  Most of the jobs went to non-Keystonians, experienced workers like circus riggers, carnie roustabouts, and oil-rig roughnecks who follow the circuses, carnivals, and drilling platforms from site to site.

The official unemployment figure for Susquehanna County is more dreary than cheery. In 2006, about the time shale drilling started, it was 4.5 percent. Fast forward to 2013 and unemployment increased to 6.9 percent. That's right, unemployment increased by 53 percent.

But if shale employment is more fantasy than physical, royalties are not. The reality of a monthly check cannot be denied---except by decline of a shale gas well and the gas company itself.

First, let's look at well decline.

Suppose you are one of that sliver of 1 percent in Susquehanna County who will receive a sizable monthly royalty check. Let's further suppose that your first check is $5,000.  That's $60,000 a year, more than enough to retire on comfortably.  Only it doesn't work that way.

According to an idealized chart plotting well decline, gas production, and royalties, after one year that $5,000 gusher will have waned to $1,500. After two years your check is down to $1,000.

And after three years that gusher of $5,000 will have dwindled to a trickle of $500. And somewhere along a time-line of four to six years gas production will have become uneconomical and that monthly check will no longer be in the mailbox.

Then there's the gas company.

Many signed a lease that contained this clause: “Lessee shall deliver to the Lessor one-eighth part of all hydrocarbons produced from the sale of gas (meaning the amount realized less costs of gathering, transportation, compression, fuel, line loss and other post-production expenses incurred downstream of the wellhead.)”

It's succinctly referred to as “gathering costs.”  It allows the gas company to take 100 percent, every dime of your royalty check even if gas production remains the same.  And it's all at the whim of the shalers.

What's left after the drillers have gone? An underground cesspool of notoriously toxic sludge. The gas companies say not to worry. The subterranean pool is too far underground to be a threat to groundwater. But scientists dispute this claim.

The availability of water quality data that would allow scientists to fully assess the extent to which the Marcellus gas boom may be contaminating groundwater is not available, said Susan Brantley, Professor of Geoscience at Pennsylvania State University.  “Release of data is still very, very difficult [to obtain],” said Brantley.

So what are you---and all the rest of us---left with: royalty checks that evaporated like ice in the summer sun, surface land frackicided with a barren drilling pad, rutted access roads, pipeline pathways, noxious spills, abandoned drilling junk, and a million gallons of subsurface effluvia with an uncertain destination.

And that lifeline of hope thrown by the shalers' to the economically distressed, a line seized by so many, will have only pulled them further into troubled waters.  They're fracked.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA