hydraulic fracturing

Toasting their success with imported bottled water:

The group, North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections, counted donations totaling $209,000 to state senators and $300,000 to representatives who voted for the 2011 Energy Jobs Act, which authorized studies of hydraulic fracturing.

Pay-to-play politics at its worst. Unfortunately, it's just business as usual in the NC General Assembly.

Hat-tip to CWFNC for e-mailing this link. The ugly starts on page 37:

AN ACT TO: (1) ESTABLISH AN OIL AND GAS BOARD WITH JURISDICTION AND AUTHORITY OVER MATTERS RELATED TO OIL AND GAS EXPLORATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE STATE, INCLUDING THE USE OF HORIZONTAL DRILLING AND HYDRAULIC FRACTURING

Before I proceed, let me go ahead and say this up here so you can see it on the front page: This bill needs to be Vetoed with extreme prejudice as soon as it makes contact with Bev's desk. Here's one reason:

It's kind of hard to regulate something if you don't know what it is:

This weekend, as part of a story on ALEC's political activity, The New York Times noted that the group recently adopted "model legislation" on fracking chemical disclosure, based on a bill passed in Texas last year. According to The Times, the model bill was "sponsored within ALEC" by ExxonMobil, which runs a major oil and gas operation through its subsidiary, XTO Energy.

We generally dedicate front-page acreage to North Carolina-specific articles. But since Republicans in the General Assembly are so hot-to-trot on fracking, and they also appear to be more than happy to embrace ALEC's pre-fab "legislation For Dummies" (TM), I'm afraid this story does comply.