“Perhaps there’s something that we’re not aware of underground”

The little guy gets it in the neck . . . again . . . this time in Texas

Actually we’re very much aware, but fracting operators just won’t tell us what their chemical cocktail is. According to them, it’s a ‘trade secret,’ even though governments (local, state and federal) demand the information and citizens beg to know, as tap-water catches fire, their children are sickened, cancer-rates jump and the ground shakes beneath their feet. All that jumping and shaking is bound to rattle those who have to live with it. But the Chairman lives in Austin, a three-hour drive away from the mess.

Barry Smitherman, who uttered the amazingly ignorant statement that titles this article is the Texas Railroad Commission Chairman. You be the judge of whether he was answering or kissing-off complaints from residents of Azle, Texas. They’d frantically appealed to the tone-deaf chairman about earthquakes that followed fracking in their area.

If you wonder what they were doing at a railroad commission and if th…