Very long newspaper article about something or other.
http://www.vindy.com/news/2013/apr/28/landowners-face-challenges-new-leasing-rules/ (http://www.vindy.com/news/2013/apr/28/landowners-face-challenges-new-leasing-rules/)
this article did not surprise me. i read articles about the gas and oil co doing the samething in other states when it came to gas and oil exploration. frac free mah co has brought this practice to light to our public officials in past discussions.
After reading all the posts by the people on this forum who support a NO vote on the fracking charter, this article poses a good question.
Opponents of the bill of rights claim individuals should not have the right to determine if neighbors can sell mineral rights or not. So, why can the oil and gas companies have the right to determine and pool individual properties of neighbors for mineral rights? Seems like a double standard to me. Can the pro-fracking folks explain this to me?
Lets suppose for the sake of argument that you decide to bring in a garden expert to redesign your lawn by planting wild grass and flowers that make your lawn look unkempt to those who do not appreciate the beauty of it all, and your neighbors complain. Should they have the right to tell you how to landscape your property? Suppose also that you decide to cut down all the trees on your property, should your neighbors have the right to stop you?
You invest thousands of your own dollars in your property ... it's the largest investment that you will ever have ... so what right should the man down the street have to tell you what you can or can not do with it?
Now there are, to be sure limitations as to what we can or can not do with our land ... that is set by municipal laws, but what we are discussing here truthfully does not fall under those exceptions, so you should have the right to lease your lands mineral rights without some total stranger poking his or her nose into your business.
The Vindicator says: Vote No on Charter Amendment
http://www.vindy.com/news/2013/apr/28/vote-no-on-charter-amendment/?newswatch
I couldn't have said it any better.
Have any of you actually read the charter amendment? Please do.
http://www.voterfind.tzo.org/mahoningoh/data/20130507PS/0004%20%201D.pdf (http://www.voterfind.tzo.org/mahoningoh/data/20130507PS/0004%20%201D.pdf)
As you read through it, please consider the following.
1) a city charter cannot supersede state law, federal law and especially not the U.S. constitution, but this amendment proposes to do just that.
2) it could be construed that if you do as much as drive an automobile within city limits that any citizen could file suit against you for violating their inalienable right to clean air.
3) the text of this amendment was NOT WRITTEN by anyone in Youngstown or even anyone within this state, but was written by OUT OF STATE SPECIAL INTERESTS.
4) This amendment would prohibit any new economic development within the city related to oil and gas. Do you think that the city's finances would be better served if V&M never built their new plant here? If this amendment had been in place three years ago we would have denied ourselves OVER A BILLION DOLLARS of private investment and would have denied he city MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of tax revenue.
5) on top of it all, our water supplies are already safe, and this amendment would do nothing to protect meander which is NOT EVEN WITHIN THE CITY!!!!!!!!
Billy, if you want to ban the actual practice of fracking within the city then do that, but why support an amendment that not only bans fracking but bans just about all economic activity within the city? You should oppose this amendment even if you do want to ban fracking because of all the intended and unintended consequences that this very poorly thought out amendment will bring.
If this becomes law I think I may have some fun and move my legal residence to the city then find out who were the major proponents of this amendment are and sit outsideheir houses and as soon as I see them start their cars I will record it and file suits against them for violating my right to clean air. Billy you will be on the list too, as wil be iwasthere. Heck you don't even have to live here. I'll find you and fine you!
I have read all your posts, but no one has answered my original question: why do oil and gas companies have the right to pool my property for fracking if I do not agree? To Rick Rowlands...why are you threatening me? I don't even know you! Why are you so mean-spirited to new members?
As usual I am not just talking out of my ass. Here is the provision that gives me the authority:
"b. Right to Clean Air. All residents, natural communities and ecosystems in The City of Youngstown possess a fundamental and inalienable right to breathe air untainted by toxins, carcinogens, particulates and other substances known to cause harm to health."
Evidence that auto exhaust is carcinogenic: http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3429499?uid=3739840&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102108995681 (http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3429499?uid=3739840&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102108995681)
And here is the authority to file suit against you:
"9. Any person, corporation, other entity that violates any prohibition of this Law shall be guilty of a summary offense and, upon conviction shall be sentenced to pay the maximum fine allowable under state law for that violation, and shall be imprisoned to the extent allowed by law. A separate offense shall arise for each day or portion hereof in which a violation occurs and for each section of this Law found to be violated. Enforcement of this article may be initiated by the Youngstown Police Department, the Director of Public Safety, or other designee of City Council. Youngstown may also enforce this Law through an action in equity. In such an action, Youngstown shall be entitled to recover damages and all costs of litigation, including, without limitation, expert and attorney's fees.
10. Any City resident shall have the authority to enforce this Law through an action in equity. "
Don't think I can do it?? I can even put you in jail. The word "shall" is included meaning that jail time is not an option but a requirement. Can you see now just how dangerous this amendment is, and how dangerous it is to support something that you know absolutely nothing about just because you bought into the propaganda?
I am simply trying to illustrate the fallacy of your support for this hair brained amendment by presenting an example of how this can be taken to an extreme, hoping that you see that not everything that looks good on its face is actually good when you dig deeper.
Billy the answer to your question lies with an interpretation of state law. The way to combat that law is on the state level where it actually would do some good. Since Youngstown is already redlined for gas drilling there really sin't much of a threat here in the city, so if you really feel strongly about it become an activist for change on he state level. But don't shoot our hometown in the foot in the process, especially when this amendment would do nothing to change that state law.
I happen to agree with you on the issue of unitization. If a property is unitized against the will of the property owners those owners should bear no responsibility at all and should receive the royalties that the surrounding lease signers would receive. Forcing someone to join the pool then making them financially responsible for the well is absolutely insane!
The U. S. Supreme Court would strike this charter ammendment down in a minute as would the State Supreme Court. Everything about it is Unconstitutional.
Thinking about this further I am puzzled by Billy's remark that I made a threat. If this passes and if Billy drives a car within the city he will be in violation, and it is the duty and responsibility of any citizen to take action against criminals. So Billy I guess is asking me to overlook his lawlessness and to permit him to flagrantly flaunt city law, especially a law that he may be supporting? I simply am confused why anyone who would support this would consider its mere enforcement as a threat?
Rick, some folks simply think that they are above the Constitution, both State and Federal, and nothing that even Constitutional experts say matters to them, and if they succeed here, there would be no stopping them and we would see a dictatorship of the environmentalists which would excees the wildest actions of the Communists.
Thankfully the State Attorney General will not sit back and allow this to happen. The same is true with the U. S. Attorney General. This grand scheme would negate so many Constitutional provisions that it can not be ignored.
Very simple answer to questions about forced pooling by energy companies, National Energy Interest folks. If you use energy (NG,Electric,Sewer, Roads, Schools,Gasoline, Nuclear) you have NO right to stop the production of it.
If your acre is required for a unit of your entire neighbors, you cannot stop them from harvesting their minerals. It is the same as that road in front of you house, eminent domain, you use it, you are a part of it. Nothing to do if fracking is right or wrong, it is about hypocracy so to speak. The Amish are an ancient example of it, they do not participate in government, they take nothing from government (as much as possible) so they provide no soldiers for government wars. It is about substantial justice for all.
The fractivist are the worse offenders, they love the $3 cost of local NG, but they decry how it is produced, hypocracy and profiting from the development. And this is what the fight is about, the few radicals who will not accept the truth and are brainwashed to believe that perpetual motion exist. For that matter, I bet Iwasthere, and the rest here who support the antifrackers cannot even explain what is energy and how it is produced and why we die as a civilization without it.
So here it is again for the low information people, National Energy Interest for survival.
But we had this debate here before, many times. The nays here can win the debate by simply leading us all. Showing us by example cleaner energy, solar, wind, tidal, we all want pure energy without a footprint, but science cannot deliver.............yet. Even so, the fractivist have no answers either.
Billy: The anti-fracking folks in the so called Bill of Rights measure that they have put on the ballot are ignoring some very fundamental principals of law which leads us to ask what lawyer is advising them, because every lawyer knows that local communities can not enact laws that supersede state or federal laws or Constitutions ... this has been settled law since the founding of our country.
The State and Federal Constitutions are the final arbiters of all laws notwithstanding anything the private citizen may want, and the one and only recourse there is, is a Constitutional Amendment.
What these folks are asking for reach beyond the Constitution, negating many of it's provisions by taking away from us the very rights that are guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights, and if it passes, you can bet that it will be challenged in both state and federal court and will be struck down.
As citizens, we should all be outraged at the frivolous disregard for the Constitution, and am reminded about how, at another time, and another place people were lulled into surrendering their constitutional right only to loose all their rights. We cannot allow this to happen.
Like I wrote on the other topic, I have had the opportunity in my travels across Ohio and PA. to see and hear these fracking wells. The noise bothers me, the truck traffic is a pain to deal with, and the fear of a cement casing going bad scares me. I'm sorry if I am not 100 percent on this money train. If local communities now have no say, I would hope we begin to elect state representatives and senators who will give citizens the right to not have to be forced into land pooling, etc.
Billy humor me, out of curiosity, what line of work are you in and what education do you have?
This would go a long way in my understanding of your writings.
There are many ... very many things that I do not like or approve of, but I am also mindful that in a country such as ours, I do not have the right to infringe on the rights of others, nor do I have the right to force my views on others under the color of law.
The anti crowd wants to strip all of us of our civil liberties, and put them in the hands of a few.
As the Vindicator put it, this so called bill of rights goes far beyond simply the fracking question, and would do violence to our civil liberties as expressed in the Constitutional Bill of Rights, and that can not be tolerated a single second.
Now there are those who would be comfortable living in a totalitarian state, but I am not one of them, and neither should you.
It wouldn' just stop with the drilling issue, but would extend to other things that these people happen to oppose.
Would you want strangers telling you what foods you can eat ... what clothing you can wear ... where you can live? The list of "anti's" is lengthly, but because we are dealing with a specific topic I won't go into any lengthy detail that would sidetrack us.
I'm just a simple person. I struggled in school. In today's world I guess I would be labeled as being somewhere on the autism spectrum. For the past 2 years I've been doing temporary and part-time work in various jobs.
Well, Billy I have to say from what you posted, that you are more advanced than many...you show humility and you cannot learn this but have to experience it.
I'm sure as we travel thru this chapter of energy production in Youngstown, we will all find what is good for Youngstown.