art/world newspaper

DR- hi Mike you look pretty sad, i am here for you, tell me your heart, unburden your heavy soul.

MK- i’m an ethical guy, Doug, and damned clever.  and damned proud of me.  i got that first in class i got that big job as DEP  = Deputy Enforcer of ceo Privileges from that guy who likes the Penguins, i’m for the Flyers.  we still seem to have one thing in common, our puppet master is bigFrack.

DR- it is marvelous how a miserable tiny twit like yourself could be put in the historic heroic position of defending the entire environment of the state of pennsylvania,  'penn’s woods’   for the safety and welfare of the trees and people and fish and cows, and at this amazing time when a vast mining operation is about to take place over half the entire land mass, with 60 tons of chemicals shot down each well with incredible pressure that explodes the rocks below creating horizontal gaps to release the sweet gas but also creating vertical gaps under incredible pressure to shoot the poisons back up to us.

you must be between some rock and some hard place Mike, no?

MK   ‘i sure am, Doug, but i try to make light of the perfect storm i am the perfect attendant upon.

after all, there’s been wells dug for water pretty much everywhere, that’s pretty dangerous too!!

DR- water wells are dangerous like frack wells? you’re saying that right to my face like you think i am that stupid?  

MK- sure, Doug, that’s a logical syllogism.  get it.  i also insist that the energy industry has inherent risks for people and the environment, hence Solar and Wind must have inherent risks if one just looks hard enough!!  

DR- did you actually say that?

MK- sure, it’s on the video of me talking.  i have to put Wind/Solar in the same bad light as Fracking, otherwise people will casually naturally intelligently and gladly veer off to Wind and Solar like Germany just did, and leave the Frack Ceo’s without a christmas bonus.   we wouldn’t want that.  Look at all the stockholders who just bought our promise of returns.

DR- At 2$ instead of 4$ a unit on the market, isn’t Fracking losing money for the shareholders?

You need 4$ market value just to break even.  

MK- Don’t worry, Doug,  i’ve jimmied the regulations so that Frackers will never have to pay any liability to those farmers and families ruined by the devastation in Pennsylvania.   We wouldn’t want the Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Industry to clean up their mess, nor pay for dying people and dead herds and property value crashes.  That would really piss off the shareholders.  INTERNALIZING COSTS OF DOING BUSINESS, like paying out for damages, like actually cleaning up the superTOXIC sites so we LEAVE NO TRACE BEHIND,  is simply not in our “budget”.

DR- i heard you plan on giving each township 38,000 dollars as an impact fee, that sounds pretty generous.

MK- Yeah, we figured they could fix about 300 feet of roads with that money, pretty cool huh, Since we’re driving trucks 24/7 across their roads and really trashing the place.   The rest they can come up with taxing the locals, but the payout is really a symbolic sum for their saving face at their complete submission and utter humiliation as they bend over and we fuck them up the butt.  and that is not a pretty picture i can tell you.

DR- How come the townships don’t simply say no?

MK- It’s a funny thing about human nature, these otherwise magnificent specimens of the male race who are towering figures in their community, protectors, defenders, firemen, fathers, good neighbors, will let us tie their hands behind their back, they will bend their heads low while we put a black hood over their face,

they will stumble with manacled feet as we guide them to the open pit, they will say nothing audible as we do our business in Srebenica in Katyn in Buchenwald in Darfur in My Lai,  

you’d think they would at least shout 'viva la france!’   or 'raise the siege at Orleans!“  or "solidarnosc!’

but no.   they really bought my trick.

I told them they were fired, no longer township supervisors representing their tender good neighbors who elected them, no longer obligated to follow their blood oath to protect their children and cows.  they were freed from the responsibility of history.  they were not men.  they were shot.

they obeyed.  like cows.  amazing isn’t it?  i pissed on them lying in the pit, when it was all quiet, when it was over, i had no pity for them, no pride in their manhood, they didn’t even know how to take a hit and hit back like my 'enforcers’ on the Philly Flyers Hockey Team who are my real heroes.

the Supes of Pennsylvania, i know them for the dogs they are.  you kick them and they lick your hand.  

DR- wow Mike, that is pretty harsh, i thought you were their great white father, the DEP defender of the environment and the people therein. no?  

MK- hey look Doug, i’m a litigation lawyer.  that is in my blood.  i am setting the regs that render any class action suit against the frackers useless.  'we were following the regs’ my frack buddies will say, we don’t have to pay you nutting’.   true story! i wrote em!  

of course i’m just one guy rubber stamping the same M.O. committed across two hundred years of mining RAPE across the country.  why pick me out as special.

DR- interesting you should ask me that, Mike, i am picking you out as special, because you know yourself to be 'ethical’, your word.

Mike Krancer- 'ethical’ means toss them a flower as you kick them in the stomach.