Mitch McConnell Takes $1.3 Million in Bribes to Let Corporations Poison Our Drinking Water

I've been saying it for more than 20 years, ever since I read Water, the Nature, Uses and Future of Our Most Precious and Abused Resource, by Fred Powledge: the wars of the next century are going to be over not oil, but water.

The news has finally caught up with Powledge.

Down with Tyranny:

If you were listening to NPR (last week), you may have heard their report about water rights in the U.S. "Oil was probably the fluid of last century where there was a lot of turmoil, and I think water is the fluid of this century," explained Michael Walsh, a major general with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

    So often, we take water for granted. We turn on the faucet and there it is. We assume it's our right in America to have water. And yet, water is a resource. It's not always where we need it, or there when we need it.

    Rivers don't follow political boundaries-- they flow through states and over international borders. And there are endless demands for water: for agriculture, drinking, plumbing, manufacturing, to name just a few. And then there's the ecosystem that depends on water getting downstream.

    So what are our legal rights when it comes to water? And who decides?

The NPR report talks about the role of Congress and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, municipalities, ranchers, fishermen and American Indian tribes. But they never got around to what trumps all of them: Corporate America, where the bottom line is... the bottom line. Greed and avarice trumps all, especially when you're talking about "the fluid of last century." Tom Kenworthy made the case over the weekend that fracking is already straining U.S. water supplies.

    As the level of hydraulic fracturing of oil and gas wells in the United States has intensified in recent years, much of the mounting public concern has centered on fears that underground water supplies could be contaminated with the toxic chemicals used in the well-stimulation technique that cracks rock formations and releases trapped oil and gas. But in some parts of the country, worries are also growing about fracking’s effect on water supply, as the water-intensive process stirs competition for the resources already stretched thin by drought or other factors.

SNIP 

   ...As the Ceres report concludes:

        Shale energy development highlights the fact that our water resources were already vulnerable before additional demands were introduced. Regulators, water managers and ultimately all significant economic players who rely on abundant supplies of water must double-down their efforts to better manage this limited and most precious resource.

Worse news: because of the role of money in our politcal system-- i.e., systemic bribery-- those charged with protecting our clean drinking watre supplies (something that basic) have given a green light to Big Oil and Gas to ignore previous clean water regulations and frack away to their hearts' content. I thought this might be a good time to mention the dozen most corrupt Members of Congress in terms of Big Oil shillery. These are the Oil and Gas whores still in Congress who have made sure our watre would be poisoned-- with the amounts they have taken from Big Oil in blatant, legalistic bribes:

    • John McCain (R-AZ)- $3,043,404
    • John Cornyn (R-TX)- $1,990,350
    • Joe Barton (R-TX)- $1,734,255
    • Steve Pearce (R-NM)- $1,479,701
    • Jim Inhofe (R-OK)- $1,457,696
    • Miss McConnell (R-KY)- $1,348,311
    • Don Young (R-AK)- $1,193,613
    • David Vitter (R-LA)- $1,144,385
    • Mary Landrieu (D-LA)- $1,086,084
    • Mike Conaway (R-TX)- $942,118
    • Pete Sessions (R-TX)- $868,346
    • Lord Charles Boustany (R-LA)- $803,655  

You can live without fossil fuels. You can live with cars, without electricity, without even an IPad. You can even live without indoor plumbing.

You can't live without drinkable water.

And that's exactly where Mitch McConnell's good corporate buddies want you - unable to live without drinkable water, the last gallons of which they will own.