Zephyr Teachout: the most awesome gubernatorial candidate in New York history [endorsement]

[Permalink]

1 Like

I almost said she gets my vote just for being named Zephyr, but thatā€™s stupid - a fascist could just as easily have the same name. Her policies sound pretty damn good. Pity Iā€™m not a New Yorker.

1 Like

She might also do well in Chicago.

2 Likes

Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Iā€™m pretty sure that Douglas Adams named her, and I think Teachout/Wu was a big industrial firm in the movie Alien. I wish I could vote for them (policy wise).

1 Like

Why is it that advocates never seem to run for lower offices and work their way up through Govt?

I feel like Obama and Carter were of this limited Govt background with big ideas, and then they get elected and run into the brick wall of institutional momentum, donā€™t know how to work it, and then make bad compromises just to get anything at all done.

Change is won in the trenches. Not by a general on a white horse.

4 Likes

Except thereā€™s actually a more awesome gubernatorial candidate.

I would seriously consider voting for her except for the banning fracking thing. I totally understand why weā€™d want to regulate the heck out of a new technology that has potential for external harm, and why we might want to tax dirty sources of energy to encourage the development and use of cleaner sources of energy.

But in a state that relies heavily on coal and imported oil, why would we want to BAN a cheap and far cleaner source of energy than what we use today? Shouldnā€™t we ban coal and oil first? Itā€™s like those schmucks who want to stop the gas pipeline in the West Village. Stopping that pipeline isnā€™t going to enable us to start heating our homes with solar power. Itā€™s just going to keep hordes of heating oil trucks running around town, tying up traffic, spewing diesel fumes in our air, and storing toxic fuel oil in our homesā€™ basements.

The New Yorker had an interesting article on her, and on corruption in politics in the US.
Citizen United really needs to be overturned, it is ludicrous that money= free speech and that corporations=people. Uphill battle though. If I lived there, they would both have my vote.

The Rent is too Damn High

You mean other than all the environmental effects fracking has on the places where it is done?

The environmental effects are why there is a need for very strict regulation of fracking. But I havenā€™t seen anything demonstrating that fracking is worse for the environment than traditional oil drilling/refining, coal mining, chemical production, industrial agriculture, private automobile ownership, or any number of other hazardous but supremely useful things that we regulate rather than ban.

A friend of mineā€™s parents may have to leave their retirement home in Pennsylvania as the groundwater is being destroyed by fracking locally. Folks are already moving out of the town.

Tell me again why people love fracking in their communities?

1 Like

That really sucks. But drinking water can also get contaminated by things related to agriculture, coal scrubbing and conventional oil. We respond to those kinds of incidents by improving regulations and (where possible) making the companies responsible pay, not by banning fertilizer, livestock, ā€œcleanā€ coal or oil tankers. We definitely need stronger regulations to prevent leaky fracking wells from contaminating ground water (and maybe funds set aside by the oil/gas industry to pay damage claims to people who are affected if they screw up). But I still fail to see whatā€™s so special about fracking that it deserves to be outright banned.

Fracking is like sitting in a Fiat with the windows rolled up, while someone else smokes formaldehyde. Sure theyā€™re exercising their right to destroy themselves, but their fumes and crap are AFFECTING YOU directly.

Fracking is the same kind of situation. They donā€™t just ā€œextract gas by injecting water into the ground.ā€ They inject water, a bunch of other nasty shit and it COMES UP IN PEOPLEā€™S WELL WATER. Whole swathes of land are RUINED. Aquifers are DESTROYED FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS. You may as well have stripmined hundreds of square miles or sown salt into the soil or exploded hydrogen bombs over it. Itā€™s that bad. Fracking is one of the most destructive extraction practices ever used. Itā€™s not benign. Itā€™s malignant. Iā€™m all for banning it.

Fuck the frackers. We have the sun, letā€™s use the damn thing.

3 Likes

Iā€™ve seen articles suggesting that leaky wells can elevate methane levels in nearby well water. But is there real evidence that the injected water and other nasty shit actually come up in peopleā€™s well water and that whole swathes of land are ruined and aquifers destroyed for hundreds of years? Iā€™m not asking to be a dick about it. If there is real stuff out there that shows this to be the case, Iā€™d like to see it, because Iā€™m far from an expert in the area.

It does pollute. It doesnā€™t always pollute. But it pollutes significantly enough to deserve stricter regulation, and thatā€™s not being done.

Iā€™ll just point you in the direction of one article, and then if you are curious, you can take it from there.

2 Likes

Thanks. I searched a bit on my own earlier and that was one the articles I came up with, too, but the article directly contradicts the headline and lede, as it says that two of the four states they surveyed have NOT confirmed any cases of water pollution from fracking.

Obviously youā€™re not my google slave, but if you (or any other happy mutants) happen to come across any articles that discuss actual scientific findings of injected water and other nasty shit coming up from wells into drinking water, please try to remember to come back here and reply as Iā€™d like to learn more about it.

Pick a different article, then. The facts are that fracking destroys the land. I donā€™t know what the exact percentage of land it fouls. 20% 99%? But the facts are against the notion that fracking is safe. Go do some additional research instead of leaning on other people for it.

Speaking as an environmental scientist with a really quite good working understanding of the hydrogeology of bedrock and surficial aquifers, petroleum contaminiation, as well as environmental fate and transport of toxins I can say this.

Fracking -can- be done responsibly. And when the price of the product retrieved justifies the amount of research necessary to prove that there is a negligible chance of expose to humans - at EACH WELLHEAD INDIVIDUALLY - backed up with some serious on-site data collection and environmental monitoringā€¦ and I mean of a sort that grad students dream of being able to do, nothing like what ā€˜monitoringā€™ is today. Then it -might- be safe. But I am certanly speaking of a research cost in the 100-400K per wellhead range.

So, basically, after all the other oil is gone, oil would be valuable enough to barely pay for fracking to be done safely. Thatā€™s my opinion, and I find and clean up (yeah, right, I manage it) contaminated groundwater.

Itā€™s more valuable than oil, clean waterā€¦ You can go a day without oil.

5 Likes