Making America Gangrenous with Fear, Again: Donald Trump and the "New" Face of the Ku Klux Klan

  

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee, 2.17

Note: The Following is a letter to the editor of the Press Enterprise, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, 2.25.17. It's a response to an editorial written by Pete Kendron, editor of the PE--included in full below. Kendron's editorial is a response to criticism the PE received for having printed a Klu Klux Klan flier--including contact phone numbers as part of its new coverage. The article--sans KKK flier in also included in full below.
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To the editor:

While it may be true that the Press Enterprise didn’t publish the Ku Klux Klan flier “to promote or endorse” white supremacism, it’s Kendron’s insistence that PE editorial decisions are driven by journalistic integrity that’s the fig leaf—one intended to cover crass opportunism. 

Kendron knows that salacious details sell papers, and while news demands an unbiased account of the facts, obscuring the KKK phone number would neither have detracted nor altered anything of substance in the news coverage. The claim that including the number helps us “face our fears” is absurd. 

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee 2.17

  Were the PE committed to that noble mission, it’d be awash in accounts of the Trump regime’s efforts to make Big Bank, Big Gas, Big Gun, Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Private Prison, Big Factory Farm, and Big Russia great again—at the peril of civil, reproductive, environmental, educational, healthcare, religious—and free speech rights. 

Were the PE interested in news, it’d tell the truth about the relationship between the growth of hate groups, the election of Trump, and the confirmations of his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, his corrupt, climate change denying, EPA director Scott Pruit, and his anti-education, privatize it all, DOE director Betsy Devos.

But just like Trump knows his base doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about niceties like a free press, the PE knows its 30 Seconds readers are more interested in having their biases confirmed than fancy notions like news. Kendron knows that printing that number titillates the Trumplodytes who, buoyed in their bigotry by a kleptocratic white nationalist for president, feel perfectly just calling Michelle Obama an Orangutan (30 Seconds, 2.25). 

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee, 2.17

It “justifies” a travel ban on Muslims even though we know neither geography nor religion are reliable indicators of terrorist affiliation. Printing that flier as if it were like any other advertisement aligns the PE with NewsMax and Breitbart—the rags of Steve Bannon’s alt-right. However much a fig leaf the PE story offered to decrying racism, Kendron knows the flier confirms local bigots who support the repression of voting rights via racist Voter ID initiatives. 

Willful ignorance, moreover, is no more excusable. 

Who needs the Klan when you’ve got 30 Second frequent fliers who deploy free speech to demonize everyone and everything not them? It’s deluded to defend Trump against his weakening of regulations to protect puppies; it’s demented to thank a butcher like Putin for helping Trump win; it’s daft to believe a swamp glittering in Goldman Sachs will trickle down its wealth. It’s nuts to think the “free market” can make healthcare accessible to poor folks, or that appeals to “state’s rights” will protect gay kids.

As for “facing our fears,” it’s ironic that while we’ve plenty to fear from the Trumpster’s militarist, anti-science, Islamophobic, bigotry-soaked agenda, his sycophantic followers stand to be harmed the most when the only jobs that materialize are low wage “right to be fired” jobs, or when education becomes just another product—the real thing for the kids of the wealthy, and the knock-off on-lines for the rest. 

It’s hard to admit you’ve been had by hucksters. 

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee, 2.17

Easier to excuse puppy mills, trash Muslims, and defend tabloid tactics as free speech. 

Kendron’s excuse-editorial for printing that number is like CPAC’s pretense that Robert Spencer is an outsider to conservative values: it forgets that the very platform upon which it would decry racism is paid for by racists. 

Here’s a suggestion for the next edition of the PE: print a flier calling out Brandon Eyerly to demand its editors produce a newspaper instead of a tabloid, or fire them: 570-387-1611.

Wendy Lynne Lee

Lightstreet, PA

595 words.

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 Kendron's editorial:

We don’t believe in fig leaves – those comforting, but useless, courtesies that let people say they did everything they could to shield people from ugliness while still allowing the ugliness to exist.

So on Tuesday, when we published a story about some hateful Ku Klux Klan flyers showing up in Berwick, we also printed the flyers in their entirety. But we didn’t do it to promote, or endorse, those views.

We did it because it’s news. It’s ugly, it’s dismaying, but it’s news.
Some have asked why we didn’t blur or crop the flyer so contact information for the KKK group would not have been visible. It certainly would have made our editors’ phones ring less.

But it would have been a fig leaf.

Even if we hadn’t published the phone number, a person looking for like-minded haters would have had no trouble finding the Klan via the Internet. Before even seeing the flyers, it took our reporter only about two minutes.

The vast majority of our readers – who know a white cloak and hood are about as in fashion as knickerbockers – wouldn’t be enticed into membership just because they had the Klan’s phone number. But they now have a better idea of who or what has been skulking around Berwick, trying to stir up hate.

We are not a nation of cowards. Most of us are descendants of people who uprooted their families and took huge risks in search of a better life. There were no fig leaves to hide the challenges they faced. They had to confront their fears. And so should we.

So if those flyer reprints upset you Tuesday, good.

Take action.

Get to know your neighbor who’s from a different culture.
Reach out to the family who sits alone in the church pew on Sunday.

Maybe even call the East Coast Knights of the True Invisible Empire — you have their number — and tell them in no uncertain terms that Berwick, Bloomsburg and Danville are not fertile recruiting grounds for their hateful tribe.

Managing Editor Peter Kendron supervises the reporters, photographers and daily gathering of news for the Press Enterprise newspaper and website.

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Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee, 2.17

 The original story:

Woman decries KKK leaflets

Berwick activist fears rise of hate crimes

By Julye Wemple - Press Enterprise Writers

Published: February 21, 2017

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BERWICK — Another round of Ku Klux Klan flyers has hit the Berwick area, but this time in a small neighborhood a stone’s throw from City Hall.

Bette Grey, 57, of Arbor Street says she’s lived in Berwick all her life and she’s never encountered such hateful beliefs.
And when she told council members about the flyers Monday night, council President Alvin Hill assured her such ideas have no place in the borough.

“We’re a community of immigrants, not a community of hatred,” he said. Other council members murmured in agreement.

Grey says she and her husband, Robert, found the first flyer in their yard on Friday, then another one on Sunday afternoon when they came home from church. Both times, the leaflets were tucked neatly under a bag of rice in the grass, Grey said.

At first, Grey, a former councilwoman, thought she was being targeted because of her political activism.

But at least six other neighbors got them, too. Some of them had different messages than the ones Grey received, she said.

Hers questioned the lack of a “white history month” and touted the accomplishments of white people over the centuries. It states the “technological advancements of our people — from the megalithic calendar of Stonehenge to the moonwalk of the Apollo astronauts — are unequaled.”

Grey said another neighbor’s flyer says God loves the KKK, and encourages white people to be proud of being white. None of the flyers were put in mailboxes, which would have been a federal offense, and all were weighted with rice.

The Klansmen knew what they were doing, Grey said.

The pamphlets also provided a website and hotline number for anyone wishing to join the group.

Considering the political climate in the country, Grey’s afraid these leaflets are just the start of trouble, she said.

“I think you’re going to see more of this stuff,” Grey said. “Hate crimes will start.”

Berwick Police Chief Ken Strish says he’s been made aware of the handbills. The ones on Arbor Street are the first of their kind in the borough, he added.

He urged residents who see anyone distributing the flyers to call 9-1-1.

It’s not clear the pamphleteer is breaking the law, but police at least want to talk to the person, Strish said.

Same group
The papers are the work of the East Coast Knights of the True Invisible Empire, a Klan group with a home base in Rising Sun, Maryland, just over the state line. It was the same group that distributed flyers in the 800 block of East Third Street in Salem Township in September.

Those leaflets, decrying illegal immigration, angered Hispanic families living in that neighborhood.

According to the group’s website, the East Coast Knights are a “traditional Klan” that seeks to “ensure a safe and secure future for Caucasian Americans.”

“We do not preach hate, and at no time would we react hatefully to any man, woman or child,” the website proclaims. “We strive to cleanse the Klan name by our positive actions.”

But Grey’s not buying their “positive” message.
“It frightens me,” Grey said. “This is significantly nasty.”

Grey said that’s why she was taking her concerns to council.
“It’s not that I want to draw attention, but I want people to be informed,” she said.

Julye Wemple can be reached at julye.wemple@pressenterprise.net, or at 570-387-1234, ext. 1323. Susan Schwartz contributed to this article.

"I'm glad no one is dead": Williams Pipeline Explosion, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania

Photo, Wendy Lynne Lee, 10.13.12, faulty re-welded weld, TRANSCO Pipeline,
CNYOG Compressor Station, Sullivan County, PA

Update 6.18.15: Letter from Kevin Heatley, Restoration Ecologist, 

Press Enterprise, 6.17.15

Pipeline Risk Unacceptable

Pipeline explosions rattle more than just windows in the same way that nighttime home evacuations result in more than just lost sleep.  These are public relations disasters for Williams Pipeline Company – the same firm that wishes to build the 42 inch, high-pressure Atlantic Sunrise pipeline across Pennsylvania.  Given recent events here and across the country, how do you justify subjecting citizens and property owners to the involuntary risk of a catastrophic event?

If you are editor Sachetti of the PE, you trivialize the opposition position as an emotional “...rush to judgement” as if a technical explanation from Williams will be sufficient assurance that future events will not occur.  It also helps if, as editor, you engage in adolescent name-calling and refer to concerned citizens as “greenies” and “anti-energy.”  If you are Gregory Markle (PE letter-to-editor 6/16/2015) you employ ad hominem attacks coupled with the standard logical fallacies and false equivalencies that industry apologists have promulgated for decades.

Markle, for example, improperly compares the risk of driving a car to living within the blast radius of a pipeline. What he fails to realize is that there is a profound difference between voluntary and involuntary risk.  Research into risk tolerance clearly shows that people have a lower risk threshold with respect to allowing the reckless conduct of others to impinge on their safety.  Choosing to skydive is fundamentally different from being pushed out of a plane, regardless of the quality of the parachute.

While a small number of property owners will receive a financial return on the permanent conversion of their land to a pipeline ROW, Willliams is forcing adjacent property owners who live within the “blast zone” (potentially well over 1,000 feet from the pipeline) to involuntarily submit to catastrophic risk. It is also requesting that citizens downwind of any compressor stations involuntarily submit to the chronic risk associated with toxic air emissions.

While there is indeed risk in any endeavor, it is inherently absurd to claim that because we assume some risk we should assume all.  The effect of additional risk may cause harms to increase exponentially rather than arithmetically. It is also absurd to argue, as editor Sachetti is fond of doing, a false “all or nothing” dichotomy.  Opposition to the reckless endangerment of the public health and welfare is not predicated upon living an ascetic existence void of energy consumption.  Arguing that people who drive cars or heat their homes and oppose extreme energy extraction are hypocrites is like chastising someone attempting to lose weight for not going on a starvation diet.

A more intelligent and prudent response to the recent explosion of the Williams Transco pipeline would be to employ the “Precautionary Principle.”  Given the severity of the event and the nature of the risk, the burden of proof falls upon Williams Pipeline Corporation to show that catastrophic ruptures and toxic compressor station emissions will not occur.  Appeals to existing regulations are insufficient given that the regulations pass involuntary risk onto an unsuspecting public. In the interim, to allow the building of a second pipeline is irresponsible.

Kevin Heatley M.E.P.C, LEED-AP

Bloomsburg PA.

Update: 6.17.15: Response to Gregory Markle 

from Wendy Lynne Lee

First, a local gentleman by the name of Gregory Markle went straight for the ad hominems and faulty analogies to try to refute my letter, writing that since, say, living in Tornado Alley is dangerous that living near a pipeline is comparatively safe--so nothing to worry about in William's pipeline explosion near Unityville, PA just last week. 

What Mr. Markle doesn't get, apparently, is that there's a world of difference between voluntary and involuntary risk.

Folks who live in Tornado Alley know that they may be at risk for cyclone activity--they take that on as a voluntary risk. But if, say, you lease YOUR land to Williams, and they build a pipeline that later explodes setting MY house on fire, I have been subjected to an involuntary harm. 

Indeed, I have been made to subsidize with MY house, MY property values, and potentially MY life and health YOUR voluntary risk. And I have been made to do so involuntarily. There's nothing remotely defensible in THAT. Hence, faulty analogy.

Second, Markle claims that my response to the Williams explosion has nothing to do with "concern for human lives," but rather is about "promoting" my "personal politics via fear-mongering." Mr. Markle then says precisely nothing about what these "personal politics" are, but blithely slides right on to falsely report that Williams accident record is just fine since, at least in Pennsylvania no one has died! 

But, we might ask Mr. Markle, if DEATHS are what's required to become wary of Williams plans to build a monster 42 inch pipeline through far more densely populated regions of Columbia County, then why regulate the company at all? 

Mr. Markle as much as admits that pipeline inspection is not what it ought to be (and, of course, better to drive Williams out of the state altogether), when he tells us he "won't go deeply into [his] opinion on government inspectors, but let's just say that for every one who actually has the skills to be in the field doing inspections, there are 10 who should be slogging their way up through the ranks." That's pretty cold comfort for safety, yet Mr. Markle would have us put our faith in a company who didn't even know how long the exploding 24 inch, 1000 PSI pipeline had been in the ground.

Third, on this point about deaths, Mr. Markle implies that because "there is risk in any such endeavor" we must balance that risk against the benefits of natural gas production.

Sounds reasonable--until you realize that what he's really saying is that even though the risks are expected to be borne by people who did not agree to them--for whom they're involuntary--and the benefits accrue to a few already wealthy landowners and, of course, to the tune of billions to Williams, that THAT'S balance enough.

But it's clearly not. Indeed, the only "balance" resides in Williams flush bank accounts.

All of this dithering with Mr. Markle, however, pales in comparison to the embarrassment that Columbia County, PA commissioners ought to be feeling in the wake of this explosion--one that could have taken the lives of the very people who voted these politicians into office.

The photograph below came to me this morning from a friend. I'll let him identify himself should he wish, and I wish to thank him here. It's a letter dated 5.21.15 from Chris--my support is not unconditional!--Young, silent Richard Ridgeway, and equally silent Dave Kovach, thanking Kimberly Bose of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (whose name they misspell as "Rose"(!)) for FERC's support of the 42 inch, 12-1500 PSI monster pipeline set to bi-sect Columbia County.

In it they claim that "Williams has been a good neighbor...respectful of our community," and that they're happy for the county to be a part of the future growth of natural gas.

In other words, they're happy to be a party to subjugating the citizens of Columbia County to the involuntary risk associated with Williams' profit venture.

A last point. Williams will be more than happy to enhance YOUR level of involuntary risk. 

The moment they execute their "right" to eminent domain against landowners who said NO to that risk, they've not only made you an involuntary--COERCED-- subject of your neighbor's decision to convert their property into a right of way, they've made YOU effectively forfeit your own land, drinking water well, health, and potential life to their profit venture. 

Eminent domain is intended for projects that clearly perform a PUBLIC good--like a bridge to an island. 

The gross abuse of eminent domain appropriated by Williams--and endorsed by your elected representatives--is in no fashion whatever a public good. The gas will be shipped to the global markets, and the profits go right into Williams pockets.

A last last point: What states have seen LOADS of gas production, pipelining, export? Louisiana and West Virginia--two of the poorest states in the union. So the next time commissioners Young, Ridgeway, or Kovach tell you about how the Atlantic Sunrise is going to benefit you and your county--tell them that if you wanted to live in West Virginia or Louisiana, you'd move there.

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Original Letter to the Editor, the Press Enterprise, 6.12.15, Concerning Williams Pipeline Explosion, Lycoming County, Pennsylvania

To the Editor:

What if that 24 inch, 1000 PSI Williams TRANSCO transmission pipeline explosion—a blast that fired a  “huge boulder” 300 ft., forced evacuation of 60 people, and was heard “miles away”—had been the 42 inch, 1200-1500 PSI Atlantic Sunrise expansion of the TRANSCO Williams wants to build? The one that will intersect a far more populated area throughout Columbia County?

What if you were confronted with that second explosion—potentially double that of Tuesday night’s blast that spread debris hundreds of yards into the tops of trees—and asked to evacuate even though it meant leaving your dog? What if you’d need to transport an elderly parent? What if there’d been a fire? What if you’d just happened to be driving, cycling, or walking near the blast zone?

Mr. Mordan points out that he’s “glad no one is dead.” Me too, but are we really entitled to let that be the end of this when the disaster that might have happened could have taken life?

These are the questions you should direct to commissioner Chris Young who says his support for the Atlantic Sunrise is “not unconditional,” but when queried by concerned citizens demonstrates his support is precisely that: unconditional. Young’s posturing for the sake of protecting his political capital is disingenuous; Kovach’s and Ridgeway’s silence, both staunch cheerleaders for Williams, is equally telling.

Williams’ appalling history of regulatory violation, accident, their effort to deflect responsibility and avoid liability is well-documented. Even more reprehensible is the willingness of local agencies and townships to be bribed by the company’s spare pocket change. Orange Township Secretary/Treasurer Erika Burkhardt, for example, recently sent a letter of thanks to Kimberly Bose, Secretary of FERC, the deceptively named Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, for FERC’s support of the Atlantic Sunrise—and the money that will flow from that township’s silence to Kocher Park. Burkhardt writes that “Because of Williams support, Orange Township will be able to improve areas that hold the greatest needs in our community.” What Burkhardt fails to calculate is the prospect that the township’s greatest needs might be a burn unit, an expanded graveyard, or far more voluntary firefighters and expensive equipment.

This smug arrogance, however, appears to belong not only to Burkhardt, but to county commissioners, township supervisors, PE Editor Sachetti, Senator Gordner and Representative Mallard. We seem to be lulled by the mantra of “jobs” as if “jobs” had some magical power demanding our wholesale acquiescence. We’re willing to horse-trade the future of the county for a few paychecks, a spattering of royalties, and some absurd hand-waving at “national security” for a pipeline whose golden gas is headed straight for the global markets. Or maybe we’re just that lazy—happy to ignore the hazard at our doorsteps because Wheel of Fortune’s on.

Maybe folks think that Tuesday night’s explosion just couldn’t affect them, that the Atlantic Sunrise will somehow be safer, that Williams actually gives a damn about anything but the money they’ll get from mid-streaming the gas the industry is prepared to eek out of the ground at literally any cost—so long as it’s not theirs’.

Williams record is clear: they’ll do everything they can to cover this up, avoid investigation, and make sure you don’t know diddly about the causes. They’ll hale local firefighters and reassure us “there’s nothing to see”—until we forget. Until next time. Here’s a question: What will it take for our electeds to decide to care about us? I’m glad no one died, but if that’s what it takes, we’ve acceded to moral bankruptcy.

Pick up your phones—starting with Young: 570-389-5608.

Wendy Lynne Lee

Bloomsburg

600 words.

CADAVER COSMETICS: Penn State's "Marcellus by Design," MCOR, and the Edu-Green-Washing of Big Gas

Penn State just doesn't seem to be able to figure out how to be a university--as opposed to a corporate-sponsored research hub, job training program center, and now green-washing "reclamation" aesthetics authority--for the natural gas industry.

It's old news that Penn State epitomizes Frackademia. As reported by Reid R. Frazier of The Allegheny Front and Olivia Garber of PublicSource in 2011, "the school does not give out the information because companies do not want their competitors to know what research they’re doing — or that they’re sponsoring university research at all." Moreover, "[i]n 2007, Penn State President Graham Spanier lobbied the state legislature to not include {Penn State] under the state’s revamped "Right-to-Know" law... Mr. Spanier said the schools should not have to disclose donor gifts, vendor contracts, intellectual property licensing agreements or the source of the university’s $100 million in corporate sponsored research..."Making details of contracts publicly available will threaten our competitive position with universities outside of Pennsylvania, as well as with private universities within Pennsylvania," Mr. Spanier said." (http://publicsource.org/investigations/public-colleges-private-money-how-research-about-marcellus-shale-funded).

No doubt that dollar amount as increased since 2007, and with it the prerogative and influence of the corporations upon whose fortunes Penn State depends. And no doubt that funding will remain as undisclosed as Penn State can make it.

Hence it's just astonishing that since the well-deserved public flogging Penn State suffered over its industry front-group funded 2009 study was exposed as in the tank for the gas--right along with its lead researcher--Tim Considine (http://www.examiner.com/article/ex-penn-state-professor-receives-more-oil-gas-industry-funding)--that the university has sought to shore up its compromised reputation through the creation of its own industry-sponsored front group, the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research (MCOR--http://www.marcellus.psu.edu/):

University officials say confidentiality makes universities more attractive partners to corporations and, furthermore, the agreements help to educate students. Gas companies fund the research of Dan Kohl, 23, a master’s student in Penn State’s Department of Geosciences. Kohl has a job lined up after he graduates working in Marcellus shale for Chevron. "Who are our main customers? They’re the students," said Mike Arthur, a Penn State geologist and co-director of the school’s Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research. "Students expect an education that will get them a job." Mr. Arthur helps run a shale gas research group funded by a consortium of a dozen gas companies. The companies pay $40,000 each to fund graduate student projects regarding the geology of the hydrocarbon-rich Marcellus Shale. Funders include large shale gas players such as Chesapeake Energy, Shell and Statoil. A spokesman for Statoil said in an email that the state-owned Norwegian oil company was "interested in collaborating with key North American research institutions" to better understand shale gas formations such as the Marcellus. "Penn State is one of those leading institutions and has a great deal of experience in studying and interpreting the Marcellus Shale," he said. Mr. Arthur says the consortium, the Appalachian Basin Black Shale Group, gives his students real-world experience, working with industry scientists to study problems the energy industry is interested in. "Part of that means we have to work with industry. We have to know, ‘What techniques are they using? How are those techniques evolving? What are the possible hot topics in the future?’ " Mr. Arthur said. "We’re not going to learn this by sitting and reading books. We have to go to the field and go to their laboratories, their conferences." In an email, a Shell spokeswoman said funding research at universities such as Penn State allowed students "to attain the opportunities and experience they need" (http://publicsource.org/investigations/public-colleges-private-money-how-research-about-marcellus-shale-funded).

Let's do an easy-peasy deconstruction:

1. "[C]onfidentiality makes universities more attractive partners to corporations": You bet! That way the gas companies can use the universities to (a) externalize the cost of doing research at least partly onto the public, (b) fund "research" specifically tailored to advance their profit-motives, and (c) conceal and/or kill research that does not support (b).

2. "[t]he agreements help to educate students": You bet! At least if what we mean by "educate" is job-training that saves the industry the trouble and expense of having to conduct searches for qualified job candidates, or go to the trouble of training the hires themselves. That Mike Arthur--MCOR director (http://www.marcellus.psu.edu/about/directors.php) refers to students as "customers" really tells the whole story of MCOR's mission--an employment office and public relations firm for the natural gas industry safely edu-washed behind the doors of academia.

3. "The companies pay $40,000 each to fund graduate student projects regarding the geology of the hydrocarbon-rich Marcellus Shale. Funders include large shale gas players such as Chesapeake Energy, Shell and Statoil": You bet they do! $40,000 is a hell-of-a good deal in exchange for a well--trained, fully indoctrinated, uncritical workforce for the gas.

In my 2011 exchange with Penn State Geoscience Professor and self-professed "father" of the Pennsylvania natural gas boom, Terry Engelder, I warned of the "unholy alliance" between the state, the fossil fuel industry, and the university:

Penn State has effectively forfeited its responsibility to act as an independent agent for the public good, and uses the professorial status of one of its celebrity own—Terry Engelder—to legitimate it. Engelder’s “letter to Colleagues” makes marketing look like education—great for Penn State, Inc. Professor Engelder is beholden not to Penn State (other than to legitimate his status), but to those corporations who fund his research into the Marcellus Shale, who fund his graduate student’s future careers, who donate enormous sums to his university—and to his place in history (http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-unholy-alliance-of-big-energy-big.html).

Precisely the same can be said about MCOR. Hence it's particularly disturbing that MCOR has been able to secure a 2.5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant: "“Marcellus Matters: Engaging Adults in Science and Energy” aims to enhance the general public’s understanding of science, engineering and energy through community-based activities that promote “doing” science, develop local expertise on energy issues and draw on residents’ knowledge of their environment" (http://www.marcellus.psu.edu/news/PDFs/NSF_Web.pdf). And who is the "principal investigator"? Mike Arthur: "The need for science-based information is critical as discussion about drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale is increasingly contentious, with opponents and advocates claiming "facts" in support of their polarized positions. Without sufficient knowledge to evaluate those "facts," the public is left uncertain about what to believe and who to trust."

Needless to say, we have no more reason to trust Mike Arthur than we do Tim Considine or Terry Engelder, and much remains to be said about the capacity of a big name university to secure NSF funding for projects whose thinly concealed aims are to benefit industry.

But what makes MCOR different are the lengths to which it is willing to put its NSF funding to edu-wash, green-wash--and now aesthetics-wash--an industry whose record of environmental devastation and health hazard are now as well-established as climate change, evolution, and the age of the earth. Indeed, naysayers who decry the ecological damage wrought by hydraulic fracturing and its massive infrastructure are akin, for example, to the manifest frauds perpetrated by The Creation Science Research Institute (http://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/institute-for-creation-research-still-fraudulent-after-all-these-years/) and climate change deniers (http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115022/how-talk-climate-change-deniers).

Enter: Marcellus by Design, whose job is not to outrightly deny frack-damage, but rather to call into question whether it's really irremediable. After all, if a dab of green paint, some picnic tablets, and a hedge will make a stretch of pipeline appear visually acceptable, how bad can it all be, right?

Setting aside the fact that the recent (12.4.13) Sullivan County Courthouse workshop sponsored MCOR presentations that "were about cosmetic fixes, and simply disguising industrial infrastructure," that these were the work of primarily undergraduates who clearly had no idea the real issues concerning hydraulic fracturing, and even that these "fixes" were literally as thin as paint--what's astonishing about Marcellus by Design is that Penn State is now conducting outreach, into departments outside geoscience--but inside Penn State, in this case, Interdisciplinary Programs( Brian Orland), and Landscape Architecture (Timothy Murtha). Besides insuring complicity in Penn State's shale aspirations, Marcellus by Design provides another avenue for its claim to "educate." Undergraduates who are not geoscience majors destined to become roustabouts, geo-engineers, or Big Energy execs can now get in on the frack-action by participating in an NSF-sponsored program that takes advantage of their major.

It's difficult to exaggerate the perversity of the MCOR strategy. But the questions left utterly unanswered by the Sullivan County workshop offer a clue. As Shale Justice (http://shalejustice.org/) executive board members, John Trallo and Kevin Heatley put just a few of these:

- How the hell are you going to assure desirable forest regeneration when you are creating edge habitat EVERYWHERE!!!!! (all trees are not created equal).

- How are you going to correct the problem with nutrient loading of streams after you cut down "only 2%" of the forest? We are not talking about sediment and erosion - we are talking about changes in stream chemistry when they change deep forest into open field.

- How are you going to maintain viable populations of interior forest dwelling critters like neotropical migrants and amphibians?

- How are you going to prevent population isolation and genetic inbreeding from critters that avoid road and ROW crossings due to predation threat and moisture gradients?

- How are you going to provide for viable corridors for wildlife migration when you are creating a grid of pads, roads, and pipeline ROW's?

- Why are you trying to convince us that ubiquitous species - species that exist everywhere due to human disturbance (deer, raccoons, groundhogs) are a fair exchange for deep forest species?

-What is your restoration plan for interior forest, what is the timeframe and where is the funding source?

- Never mind "beautification" - How the HELL are you going to assure the forest structure and function - the very ecosystem services that drive our economy are going to remain viable!!!

- Is Penn State, the DCNR, or the gas industry going to control invasive species along all this new edge habitat for the LIFE of the OPENING???

- Who is going to pay me to control the invasive species on my property when it migrates off your damn pipeline ROW???

- Mr. Penn State LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT - how are you qualified to address forest sustainability issues? Or is your job just to "greenwash" i.e. throw green paint on a building riddled with termites?

- What about the impact on climate change/climate instability that increased methane leakage and our continued use of fossil fuels?

(http://pacitizensane.blogspot.com/)

While these questions indicate the extent to which Marcellus by Design is a green-washing strategy consistent with the industry sponsorship of MCOR, what they don't address is the appropriation of other programs and departments by the industry, particularly programs from which we might reasonably expect criticism of the fossil fuel industry: the arts and the humanities.

Indeed, the very idea that landscape architecture (arguably an oxymoron on its face) can be put to the service of concealing frack-infrastructure behind a facade of green paint, bush plantings, and picnic tables amounts to the substitution of a diorama--a dead museum display--for a living ecosystem. The very idea that we can substitute some lines read by theater professors and their students for the real and heart-wrenching exchanges people are having at their kitchen tables over fracking is, if not simply insulting, absurd.

The website text promoting Marcellus by Design says it all: "We strive to provide a balanced approach to integrating environmental, economic, sociological, and aesthetic dimensions of landscape through strategic research and design. Accepting that Marcellus Shale gas will continue to be a driving force behind economic development in many Pennsylvania communities, we are committed to expanding the breadth and accessibility of knowledge about alternative approaches to landscape planning under current and future gas development scenarios" (http://marcellusbydesign.psu.edu/)

Let's do another easy-peasy bit of deconstruction:

1. "We strive to provide a balanced approach to integrating environmental, economic, sociological, and aesthetic dimensions of landscape through strategic research and design": we are being sponsored by the edu-green-washed MCOR to provide strategies for concealing the real scale of the damage to the environment, community and the possibility of aesthetic and recreational experience wrought by fracking.

2. "Accepting that Marcellus Shale gas will continue to be a driving force behind economic development in many Pennsylvania communities": we are entirely in the tank for the gas.

3. "[W]e are committed to expanding the breadth and accessibility of knowledge about alternative approaches to landscape planning under current and future gas development scenarios": we are committed to insuring the most convenient possible access for the gas companies to the shale fields all the while working to guarantee the least possible outcry from the affected public. And if we can use "landscape planning" as frack-speak for slapping some green paint on some pipeline, we're happy to do it.

What's perhaps the most laughably stunning aspect of Marcellus by Design is that while none of Trallo and Heatley's questions were addressed at the Sullivan County workshop at all, the appeal to "best practices" receives specific attention as justification for landscape design: "Best Management Practices (BMPs) are methods and processes that have consistently shown or produced effective results where they are applied, and serve as a benchmark for making decisions. Over time, BMPs may evolve and develop as better improvements are discovered" (http://marcellusbydesign.psu.edu/why-design). This is not only demonstrably false, it shows just how naive are the architects of the Marcellus by Design program. And--to be very clear--naive without a shred of excuse.

These are my fellow humanities academics--and it is simply painful to witness their being suckered by so transparently charlatan an objective, especially when it involves the additional suckering of students into the bargain.

Our jobs as academics is not to indoctrinate our students; it is to equip them with the critical thinking skills to evaluate for themselves the relevant evidence and arguments for a claim. To the extent that Marcellus by Design accepts without question that fracking will continue, that it can be done safely, and that there are benefits that exceed the costs to ecosystem and health, and that its students are implicitly encouraged to do the same, Marcellus by Design, MCOR, Penn State act inconsistently with that mission.

Here's my question: What is Marcellus by Design going to do for Jerry Skinner? What are Brian Orland and Timothy Murtha prepared to do to fix the "muddy brown strip of earth [that's] the telltale sign of a buried pipeline" right through his land, or the forest fragmentation that has disrupted and destroyed Pennsylvania's forests? What are they going to do about the 61,000 forest acres in Pennsylvania [that] will be cleared by 2030," or the "additional 91,000 to 220,000 acres of interior forestland near the developed areas" estimated to be affected by pipeline construction?

"Pipelines are going in and dissecting forest habitats and creating corridors within (them)," said Margaret Brittingham, an ecologist at Penn State University who has been studying the impact of gas drilling on forest habitats, concentrating on songbirds in Pennsylvania.

She and others have discovered that right-of-ways enable larger animals to move into parts of the interior forest they had not explored. As a result, interior species become exposed to new predators.

Brittingham and her colleagues predict that as more forest territory is chopped up into smaller pieces, habitat for specialists—species that require a specific set of conditions for survival—will decrease, which may in turn lead to their extinction. Those include the scarlet tanager, the blue-headed vireo and the hooded warbler.

In contrast, animals that tend to do well around people will likely increase in number. Raccoons, deer, crows and blue jays are among them.

"It's a shift in the competitive advantages that you give species," Brittingham said. "It's biotic homogenization."

(http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20131210/gas-pipeline-boom-fragmenting-pennsylvanias-forests?page=3).

Yeah for Penn State's Brittingham--she's up against a university whose value for her work pales in comparison the shills of MCOR.

Here are the facts: Marcellus by Design can't do a goddamn thing for Jerry Skinner. And they can't do a goddamn thing for the species of wildlife and other biota destroyed by forest fragmentation.

The only appropriate name for such a project is fraud: the pretense to a benefit where there is none, the fakery of a fix where there is naught but erosion and potential extinction.

It's an easy thing to point out that you can't restore 100 year old trees. And that's true. But it's another thing to try to appropriate university faculty and their students to a project aimed at convincing the public that a pipeline painted green where a forest of 100 year old trees used to be is a fair swap.

It ain't.

Instead, it's the industry's latest advertising campaign--brought to you by Penn State.

"Marcellus by Design": cadaver cosmetics.

Wendy Lynne Lee
Professor, Bloomsburg University
The Shale Justice Coalition

All photographs, Wendy Lynne Lee

Also see: http://www.nofrackingway.us/2013/12/18/cadaver-cosmetics-penn-states-marcellus-by-design-mcor-and-the-edu-green-washing-of-big-gas/