{"id":162941,"date":"2015-06-30T18:52:32","date_gmt":"2015-06-30T18:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=162941"},"modified":"2015-06-30T18:52:32","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T18:52:32","slug":"texas-sized-hypocrisy-served-denton-fracking-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/texas-sized-hypocrisy-served-denton-fracking-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas-sized Hypocrisy Served Up in Denton Over Fracking Ban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last February, Texas Governor Greg Abbott delivered his first State of the State and made some promising proclamations. \u201cIt\u2019s time for property owners \u2014 not government \u2014 to truly own their property,\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.statesman.com\/news\/news\/state-regional-govt-politics\/greg-abbott-texas-the-pinnacle-of-the-us-economy\/nkCrH\/\">he stated<\/a>. He also made <a href=\"http:\/\/www.statesman.com\/news\/news\/state-regional-govt-politics\/greg-abbott-texas-the-pinnacle-of-the-us-economy\/nkCrH\/\">ethics reforms<\/a> pledges, \u201cprohibiting lawmakers from voting on legislation from which they could profit and more disclosure of campaign finance information.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Abbott\u2019s commitment to giving citizens a real say in their property uses and taking on legislative influence-peddling couldn\u2019t have come at a better time for the people of Denton, Texas. In November of 2014, the Dentonians voted overwhelmingly to protect their property, their children and their communities from the many adverse impacts of fracking, an irresponsible and largely unregulated method of gas extraction. Abbott\u2019s promises presumably meant that under his watch, government would never be allowed to strip away the democratic rights of Denton\u2019s local citizens at the behest of industry.<\/p>\n<p>But then in May Abbott signed into law HB40, a bill reportedly <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DentonRC\/status\/613433209104134144\">scripted by<\/a> the oil and gas industry, thereby stripping away the property and local voting rights of the citizens of the city of Denton and every other town and city in Texas. Industry\u2019s lawyers wasted no time running into court to bully Denton\u2019s City Council into dropping its ban under the threat of attorney\u2019s fees.<\/p>\n<p>Abbott, like so many others who take up the mantle of political life in Texas and elsewhere quickly embraced the \u201ctalk is cheap, but campaigns are expensive\u201d mindset that permeates our political system \u2014 his oil and gas buddies had <a href=\"https:\/\/votesmart.org\/candidate\/campaign-finance\/50168\/gregory-abbott#.VY3LB2bHdD8\">funded his gubernatorial election<\/a> to the tune of over $1.5 million, more than any industry in the state.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.foodandwaterwatch.org\/blogs\/texas-sized-hypocrisy-served-up-in-denton-over-fracking-ban\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last February, Texas Governor Greg Abbott delivered his first State of the State and made some promising proclamations. \u201cIt\u2019s time for property owners \u2014 not government \u2014 to truly own their property,\u201d he stated. He also made ethics reforms pledges, \u201cprohibiting lawmakers from voting on legislation from which they could profit and more disclosure of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":162944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,18,1616],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-162941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-latest-news","9":"category-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}