Susan Bradford on BLM Obstruction of Oil on Indian Land

We like to help our friends with their blogs, here's an article from investigative reporter Susan Bradford on the fracking issue. There's a new movie out that's anti-fracking with Matt Damon. FINANCED BY Middle East Oil Interests. Susan's website is SusanBradford.org Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has earned a place in the hall of infamy for backing three ridiculous Alex Gibney documentaries which purport to educate and entertain the public while generating heaps of profits for the investors, including Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, and Casino Jack, a film about Republican superlobbyist Jack Abramoff. All three films amount to blatant propaganda designed to advance false, media-generated narratives surrounding targets of scandals manufactured by special interests for private gain, two of which emanated from Indian Country, the bastion of socialism and liberal entitlement. Enron, a leading fundraiser for the Republican Party and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, imploded in scandal after the energy giant attempted to tap into the lucrative energy markets in Indian Country. Abramoff, the nation’s leading tribal lobbyist, was railroaded into prison for routine lobbying behavior after he successfully enlisted wealthy tribes to become powerful champions of conservative political interests and economic causes. Now Cuban is back in the game, this time directing his network, AXS-TV, which he co-owns with Ryan Seacrest, CAA, and AEG, to pick the rights for FrackNation, so that they can “make the case that dangers associated with fracking, a technology for extracting energy from rock formations (that was previously unreachable), are way overblown,” the Hollywood Reporter opined. While Cuban reportedly eschews discussing politics nowadays, he certainly doesn’t mind allowing his films to speak for him. “Of course the timing is relevant,” he told the Reporter. “We want people talking and using AXS-TV when they watch and discuss it.” Of course. “We don’t take a position one way or another,” he continued. “If there was an anti-fracking OpEdocumentary, we would show it as well.” Luckily for Cuban, the film just happens to benefit his allies in Indian Country who brought him the Enron and Abramoff scandals from which he profited through films. Just a few months ago, back in April, the Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs held hearings on the “Bureau of Land Management (BLM)’s Hydraulic Fracturing Rule’s Impact on Indian Tribal Energy Development.” Citing the pervasive poverty and unemployment on Indian reservations, the Committee documented that tribal lands hold significant amounts of oil and natural gas that would enable tribes to create jobs, spur economic development and improve their heath, education, and infrastructure. Much to the dismay of oil-rich tribes, the BLM established rules that could obstruct the ability of tribes to tap into those resources, which stand to generate profits for them that far exceed those generated by casinos. As a result, “while non-Indian landowners will prosper, the tribes will lose,” remarked Committee Chairman Don Young. “This would be nothing less than another breach of the United States’ trust responsibility to Indians.” Among the groups promoting oil development in Indian Country is the Council of Energy Resource Tribes, whose address, until recently, was the Colorado office of Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff’s former employer, which held a reception for CERT and the Western Energy Alliance around the time of the hearings. The WEA has taken to publicizing Cuban’s latest film on its website. As the Alliance alleged, the new federal fracking rules could cost oil companies in the United States over $ 1 billion. Cuban’s associates have taken an interest in tapping unrecovered oil, including, for example, Mike Muckerloy, a whistleblower who appeared in the Smartest Guys in the Room after being fired from Enron.