Tag Archives: steve

Book Review: The Powerhouse

Mother Jones

The Powerhouse

By Steve LeVine

VIKING

Arguably no existing technology holds more potential to slow climate change and reboot the economy than the lithium-ion battery. Quartz reporter Steve LeVine chronicles the global race to develop a battery cheap and durable enough to supplant the internal-combustion engine. The field is littered with hype and people left in the dust—including LeVine, whose book, in its slow march to press, didn’t get to the solid-state battery technology that’s now at the cutting edge. Even so, he offers a revealing deep dive into the challenges of creating a killer app for the planet.

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Book Review: The Powerhouse

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Music Review: "Mama Let the Wolf In" by Allison Moorer

Mother Jones

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TRACK 9

“Mama Let the Wolf In”

From Allison Moorer’s Down to Believing

EONE NASHVILLE

Liner notes: Allison Moorer sheds her honeyed country twang on a nasty swamp-rock rave-up inspired by her son’s autism diagnosis, shouting, “I’d do anything to take your place.”

Behind the music: Moorer gets personal throughout the album, addressing the end of her marriage to Steve Earle in the title track and pondering her bond with sister Shelby Lynne on “Blood.”

Check it out if you like: Musical storytellers like Emmylou Harris and Kacey Musgraves.

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Music Review: "Mama Let the Wolf In" by Allison Moorer

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This Is an Early Contender for the Worst #SOTU Tweet of the Night

Mother Jones

If you are one of those people who enjoys watching congressmen and women make fools of themselves—and you are—then things like the State of the Union are precious delicacies to be savored. The stately class dolls themselves in hashtags and tweets their “smart takes” and insightful “jokes” out into the world so they can inevitably get pulled over by the information superhighway police for being despicable, stupid, and possibly racist.

The SOTU isn’t for a few more hours but we’ve already got an early contender for the night’s worst tweet from a sitting member of Congress. Quoth Rep. Steve King (R-Pleasantville):

“A deportable”!

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This Is an Early Contender for the Worst #SOTU Tweet of the Night

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Should We Regulate Poop As a Drug?

Mother Jones

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In 2011, Mark Smith was working on a Ph.D. in microbiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when his friend’s cousin—we’ll call him Steve—was diagnosed with C. difficile. Known by the shorthand C. diff, it is now the most common hospital-acquired bacterial infection, and, as the name implies, it’s difficult to treat. Patients have near-constant severe diarrhea and bleeding from the bowels that can last for months, or even years. Many sufferers can’t hold a job because they’re housebound.

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Should We Regulate Poop As a Drug?

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These 204 Republicans Don’t Want to Punish Companies That Steal Workers’ Wages

Mother Jones

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Last week, House Republicans voted to protect companies that steal workers’ wages.

According to the Department of Labor, many big firms that receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year in federal contracts—including Hewlett Packard, AT&T, and Lockheed Martin—have a history of wage theft. Wage theft refers to employer practices such as not paying overtime, paying employees with debit cards that charge usage fees, or requiring workers to arrive to work early to get ready without paying them for that extra time. On Thursday, House liberals introduced an amendment to a defense spending bill that would forbid the government from handing out contracts to companies that jack their employees’ pay. The amendment barely passed, with 25 Republicans voting with Democrats in favor of the measure. But most GOPers—204 of them—voted against the change. (The full list is below.)

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), a group of about 70 liberal Dems in the House, has introduced the same anti-wage-theft amendment to other spending bills in recent weeks, in the hope that it will make it into the final version of one of those spending bills and be signed by President Barack Obama.

In May, House Republicans voted down the anti-wage-theft amendment when it was attached to a spending bill that funds several government agencies. (Ten GOPers voted in favor.) That led to some bad press for GOPers—perhaps one reason why, when the CPC added the same provision to a defense spending bill Thursday, it passed, with 15 more Republicans crossing over to vote with Democrats.

Obama has cracked down on federal contractors in other ways this year. In February, the president signed an executive order mandating a minimum wage of $10.10 for federal contractor employees. In April, he signed another directive which forbids contractors from retaliating against workers who discuss their pay with each other.

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.)

Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.)

Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas)

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.)

Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.)

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.)

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas)

Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.)

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas)

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.)

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio)

Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.)

Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas)

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.)

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.)

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)

Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.)

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.)

Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.)

Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.)

Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.)

Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.)

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.)

Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa)

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas)

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.)

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.)

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas)

Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas)

Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.)

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas)

Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.)

Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio)

Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho)

Rep. Lee Terry (R-Neb.)

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.)

Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.)

Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas)

Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.)

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.)

Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.)

Rep. Randy Forbes (R-Va.)

Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.)

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.)

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah)

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

Rep. John Carter (R-Texas)

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.)

Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.)

Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.)

Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.)

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas)

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)

Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.)

Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.)

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.)

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)

Rep. Mike D. Rogers (R-Ala.)

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio)

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas)

Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.)

Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas)

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.)

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.)

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.)

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)

Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas)

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas)

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.)

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.)

Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas)

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.)

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.)

Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.)

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.)

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.)

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)

Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.)

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.)

Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio)

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.)

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.)

Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.)

Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah)

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.)

Rep. John C. Fleming (R-La.)

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.)

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.)

Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.)

Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.)

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.)

Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.)

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.)

Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas)

Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.)

Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.)

Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.)

Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.)

Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.)

Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.)

Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.)

Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.)

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.)

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.)

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.)

Rep. Dan Benishek (R-Mich.)

Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.)

Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.)

Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.)

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.)

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.)

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.)

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas)

Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas)

Rep. Cory Gardner (Colo.)

Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio)

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.)

Rep. Tim Griffin (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.)

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.)

Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.)

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.)

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.)

Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.)

Rep. Robert Hurt (R-Va.)

Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio)

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.)

Rep. Raúl Labrador (R-Idaho)

Rep. James Lankford (R-Okla.)

Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.)

Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.)

Rep. Pat Meehan (R-Pa.)

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.)

Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.)

Rep. Rich Nugent (R-Fla.)

Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.)

Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.)

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.)

Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.)

Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.)

Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.)

Rep. Todd Rokita (R-Ind.)

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.)

Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.)

Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.)

Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio)

Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.)

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.)

Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.)

Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.)

Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.)

Rep. Todd Young (R-Ind.)

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas)

Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.)

Rep. Kerry Bentivolio (R-Mich.)

Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.)

Rep. Susan Brooks (R-Ind.)

Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.)

Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.)

Rep. Paul Cook (R-Calif.)

Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)

Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.)

Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mon.)

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.)

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.)

Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.)

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.)

Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio)

Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.)

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.)

Rep. Luke Messer (R-Ind.)

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.)

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)

Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.)

Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.)

Rep. Keith Rothfus (R-Pa.)

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah)

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.)

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.)

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.)

Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas)

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio)

Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas)

Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.)

Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.)

Rep. Vance McAllister (R-La.)

Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.)

Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.)

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These 204 Republicans Don’t Want to Punish Companies That Steal Workers’ Wages

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Charts: How Work Email Has Taken Over Our Personal Lives

Mother Jones

It’s dinnertime, and you know its just wrong to be checking your email. Your spouse and kids are giving you the stink-eye. But it’ll just take a minute. One minute. Seriously. There’s just this super-quick thing from the boss that you’ve gotta deal with.

American workers, especially white-collar workers, are becoming an army of smartphone addicts, and we beat ourselves up even as we indulge in the rudest of modern habits. But we’re not entirely to blame for our weakness, as Clive Thompson reports in the latest issue of Mother Jones. Much of the encroachment of technology into our lives is driven by work, and workplace demands are escalating as a direct result of the so-called convenience that Steve Jobs has placed in our pockets. As Thompson notes in his must-read essay, “You could view off-hours email as one of the growing labor issues of our time.” So here are a few stats that outline the issue, and one that suggests how smart companies might help address it.

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Charts: How Work Email Has Taken Over Our Personal Lives

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Here Is "Stone Cold" Steve Austin’s Wonderful Defense of Gay Marriage

Mother Jones

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Hello. Good afternoon.

“Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s defense of gay marriage is filled with cursing and common sense. All in all, pretty great!

I don’t give a shit if two guys, two gals, guy-gal, whatever it is, I believe that any human being in America, or any human being in the goddamn world, that wants to be married, and if it’s same-sex, more power to ’em. What also chaps my ass, some of these churches, have the high horse that they get on and say, ‘We as a church do not believe in that.’ Which one of these motherfuckers talked to God, and God said that same-sex marriage was a no-can-do? Okay, so two cats can’t get married if they want to get married, but then a guy can go murder 14 people, molest five kids, then go to fucking prison, and accept God and He’s going to let him into heaven? After the fact that he did all that shit? See that’s all horseshit to me, that don’t jive with me.

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Here Is "Stone Cold" Steve Austin’s Wonderful Defense of Gay Marriage

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"I Don’t Want to Create a Paper Trail": Inside the Secret Apple-Google Pact

Mother Jones

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Whether waxing poetic about net neutrality or defending the merits of outsourcing, Silicon Valley execs love to talk about how a free market breeds innovation. So it might come as a surprise that some of those execs were engaged in a secret pact not to recruit one another’s employees—in other words, to game the labor market. The potentially illegal deals suppressed salaries across the sector by a whopping $3 billion, claims a class-action lawsuit scheduled for a May trial in San Jose, and were done to juice the bottom lines of some of the nation’s most profitable companies.

Documents filed in conjunction with the litigation, first reported last month by PandoDaily’s Mark Ames, offer a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse of interactions among the likes of Apple’s Steve Jobs, Google’s Eric Schmidt, and Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell. In early 2005, the documents show, Campbell brokered an anti-recruitment pact between Jobs and Schmidt, confirming to Jobs in an email that “Schmidt got directly involved and firmly stopped all efforts to recruit anyone from Apple.” On the day of that email, Apple’s head of human resources ordered her staff to “please add Google to your ‘hands off’ list.'” Likewise, Google’s recruiting director was asked to create a formal “Do Not Cold Call List” of companies with which it had “special agreements” not to compete for employees.

A few months later, Schmidt instructed a fellow exec not to discuss the no-call list other than “verbally,” he wrote in an email, “since I don’t want to create a paper trail over which we can be sued later?”

Eric Schmidt Google

Good luck with that. The “no poaching policies,” as they were known among senior-level executives at companies such as Adobe, Intuit, Intel, and Pixar, were first exposed by a 2010 anti-trust lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice. The DOJ complaint is the basis for the current class action, which was filed in 2011 by the San Francisco law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, alleging that some 64,000 tech workers were harmed.

The case, interestingly, has garnered little attention outside of the tech world. Sure, the average middle-class worker probably won’t shed a tear for the most likely victim here: Silicon Valley code jockeys and junior execs banking six-figure salaries and perhaps million-dollar stock options. The Bay Area, after all, is recently ablaze with animosity over tech-fueled gentrification and income inequality. And yet the collusion of CEOs to artificially suppress high-end salaries speaks to an economic malaise that affects every working stiff: The widening gap between the rich and poor isn’t some accident of free-market capitalism, but the product of a system that puts corporate leaders and their shareholders ahead of everyone else.

The lawsuit describes the rapid spread of anti-recruitment pacts between 2004 and 2007—arrangements perhaps facilitated by the overlap on Silicon Valley’s corporate boards: Jobs, who became Disney’s largest shareholder after it bought Pixar, served on Disney’s board until his death in 2011. Eric Schmidt sat on Apple’s board until 2009, and Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell (a former Schmidt advisor) still does. Intel CEO Paul Otellini has held a seat on Google’s board since 2004. Such close ties have long been seen as a problem for shareholders, but the non-recruitment pacts suggest that such cozy relationships could harm workers, too.

Steve Jobs, according to unsealed court documents obtained by Mother Jones, was a leading advocate and enforcer of the non-recruitment pacts. Two months after entering into the agreement with Google, he emailed Bruce Chizen, then Adobe’s CEO, complaining that Adobe was poaching Apple employees. Chizen’s reply, that he thought they’d agreed only to avoid “senior level employees,” didn’t satisfy Jobs. “OK, I’ll tell our recruiters that they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not Sr. Director or VP,” he shot back. “Am I understanding your position correctly?”

Steve Jobs Acaben

Chizen responded that he would rather the arrangement apply to all employees:

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Adobe Apple Emails (PDF)

Adobe Apple Emails (Text)

The next day, Adobe’s vice president of human resources announced to her recruiting team that “Bruce and Steve Jobs have an agreement that we not solicit ANY Apple employees, and vice versa.”

In one instance not yet reported, Jobs allegedly played hardball with a reluctant CEO. In mid-2007, he called Edward Colligan, then president and CEO of Palm, to propose “an arrangement between Palm and Apple by which neither company would hire the other’s employees,” Colligan testified in a sworn deposition. When he refused, citing the deal’s possible illegality, Jobs threatened to sue Palm for patent infringement. “I’m sure you realize the asymmetry in financial resources of our respective companies…,” he wrote Colligan in a followup email. “My advice is to take a look at your patent portfolio before you make a final decision here.”

The Valley’s hush-hush wage-control policies have been in play at least since the 1980s, soon after Jobs bought Lucasfilm’s “computer graphics division” and renamed it Pixar. As George Lucas later put it in a deposition, firms in the digital-filmmaking realm “could not get into a bidding war with other companies because we don’t have the margins for that sort of thing.” Lucas and Pixar’s then-president, Edward Catmull, made the following agreement, according to the lawsuit:

(1) not to cold call each other’s employees; (2) to notify each other when making an offer to an employee of the other company even if that employee applied for a job on his or her own initiative; and (3) that any offer would be “final” and would not be improved in response to a counter-offer by the employee’s current employer (whether Lucasfilm or Pixar).

George Lucas redtouchmedia/flickr

After its purchase by Disney in 2006, Pixar made the same “gentleman’s agreement” with Apple, according to unsealed emails from the lawsuit. (Last year, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Intuit settled their part of the class-action lawsuit for an undisclosed sum in a deal that allows the affected employees to file anonymous claims.)

In its earlier anti-trust suit, the DOJ argued that the Valley’s no-poaching agreements were patently illegal—clear violations of the Sherman Antitrust Act’s ban on restraining interstate commerce. In 2011, without admitting fault or paying fines, Google, Apple, and four other tech firms settled with the DOJ and agreed to discontinue their anti-competitive behavior.

Representatives for Apple and Google declined to comment for this story, but Google argued at the time that its pacts hadn’t hurt workers. There’s “no evidence that our policy hindered hiring or affected wages,” a Google attorney wrote on the company’s public policy blog. But “we abandoned our ‘no cold calling’ policy in late 2009 once the Justice Department raised concerns, and are happy to continue with this approach as part of the settlement.”

Whether and how the pacts truly affected wages is at the heart of the ongoing suit, which is slated for trial May 27. The defendant firms insist that their employees’ salaries weren’t widely suppressed because they were based on a “pay for performance” model. That is, workers got raises based on their accomplishments, not on what their co-workers earned.

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"I Don’t Want to Create a Paper Trail": Inside the Secret Apple-Google Pact

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Posted in WheatgrassKits.com | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Omega 8005 Juicer and the Organic Wheatgrass Growing Kit – Combo Includes Juice Machine & Wheat Grass Grow Kit – Grow & Juice Wheat Grass for Pennies a Day. Includes: Electric Juicer, Trays, Seed, Soil, Azomite Trace Mineral Fertilizer, Instructions & a Book; Wheatgrass, Nature’s Finest Miracle By Steve Meyerowitz

How one fracking company bullies residents and elected officials alike

How one fracking company bullies residents and elected officials alike

chriswaits

Indeed.

When the EPA last year dropped its inquiry into methane seepage from wells fracked by Range Resources, it seemed like an unusual move. Texan Steve Lipsky’s water supply was bubbling over with the explosive gas, after all, which seemed like the sort of thing an agency built around protecting the environment should look into. But Range Resources threatened to pull out of a key fracking study, and the EPA backed off.

Because, according to a report from Bloomberg, that’s the game the frackers at Range Resources play: bullying, threatening, intimidating.

Critics say the Fort Worth-based company, which pioneered the use of hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale, has taken a hard line with residents, local officials and activists. In one case it threatened a former EPA official with legal action; in another it stopped participating in town hearings to review its own applications to drill, because local officials were asking too many questions and taking too long.

“Range Resources is different from its peers in that it chooses to severely punish its critics,” said Calvin Tillman, the former mayor of Dish, Texas, and an activist who has been subpoenaed and issued legal warnings by Range. “Most companies avoid the perception of the big-bad-bully oil company, while Range Resources embraces it.”

The Bloomberg article outlines some of that bullying. A lawmaker who criticized Range had emails leaked to the local paper. And Steve Lipsky, he with the methane water, was sued.

[Range] argued in local court that Lipsky conspired to defame the company by getting his air and water tested by Alisa Rich, president of Wolf Eagle Environmental consultants, and taking that complaint to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and to the media.

“The object of the conspiracy was to make false and damaging accusations that Range’s operations had contaminated Lipsky’s water well,” the company said in its suit, filed in July 2011.

While the case is still being fought in court, Lipsky stands by his charge of Range’s culpability: “It’s ludicrous,” he said, referring to the case. “They’re ruthless.”

As Bloomberg notes, there’s a potential downside to alienating citizens and politicians for a company that relies on permitting and leasing land. Tangling with the EPA, however, seems to carry very little cost at all. At least to Range Resources.

Source

Texas fracker accused of bully tactics against foes, Bloomberg

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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How one fracking company bullies residents and elected officials alike

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