Well as we all know last night was a disaster for Democrats and most of the blame can be placed on the feet of the party that choose to run as Republican light, rather than as Progressive Liberals. However, there are a few rays of sunlight. For example:
http://www.wfaa.com/...
DENTON (AP) — Voters in the oil-rich North Texas city of Denton voted Tuesday to ban further permitting of hydraulic fracturing, upsetting a campaign backed by big oil and gas companies opposing the measure.
The vote made Denton, which sits atop a large natural gas reserve, the first city in Texas to pass such a ban.
With early returns indicating the ban passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote
Scores of cities in other states have considered similar bans over health and environmental concerns. But the proposal in Denton was a litmus test on whether any community in Texas — the nation's biggest oil and gas producer — could rebuff the industry and still thrive.
In
recent years there has been a massive increase in Earthquakes in North Texas that many scientists blame on fracking:
The link between manmade quakes and disposal wells in Texas and other parts of the county is well established, with several peer-reviewed studies showing that waste water from oil and gas drilling injected underground for disposal can cause faults to slip. That was the culprit behind other swarms of quakes nearby in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, as well as other manmade quakes in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Ohio.
This
Website breaks down the earthquakes locations in North Texas and should show pretty well why the citizens were concerned enough to bypass their city council and take the issue directly to the voters:
For more than a decade, Denton has drawn its lifeblood from the huge gas reserves beneath its streets. The gas fields have produced $1 billion in mineral wealth and pumped more than $30 million into city bank accounts.
The push to limit fracking began years ago but got a boost in June when Frack Free Denton submitted a petition to the City Council with enough signatures to force a vote. Because the council rejected it, the measure went to a public vote.
Citizen action is how we will win the big fights, and this is a perfect example for Texans. We cannot rely on anyone flooding our inbox with donation requests, or D triple C's, or 3 dimensional chess players.... it is up to us.
As my sig line states, If you stand for nothing, you will fall for anything.