CSI Investigates A Chesapeake-ish Fracking Operation In Nevada That Is Killing People

A few weeks ago I discovered video on demand on my AT & T U-verse DVR. This enabled me to watch  CSI this afternoon while I consumed lunch.

I would have thought I would have already heard mention made of this particular CSI episode, it being Episode 8 of Season 11. Titled "FRACKED"

This episode of CSI aired November 11.

That is a screen cap from the episode, from a sort of tutorial a CSI guy watched to wise himself up to the evils of hydraulic fracturing.

This episode of CSI was not the first time CSI has used a Fort Worth crime for story fodder.

Years ago CSI used the incident where a Fort Worth women left a man to die, stuck in her windshield, in her garage. Which actually sort of took place in my neighborhood. High crime, dangerous place to live that it is.

In the CSI Fracked episode, people in a little town outside Las Vegas are dying from real bad cancers. As well as their animals. A couple guys turn up dead. Clues lead the CSI guys to a farmer who is also dying. The farmer knows it is the Chesapeake alias that killed his wife, killed his animals and is now killing him. The farmer does not quite know what the chemical stew is that the Chesapeake alias has caused to be in his water, but he knows it is explosive.

So, before the CSI guys can bring the guy in, he drops a match in his well, causing it to kaboom, toasting him.

One of the CSI guys, a CSI guy who an Erin Brockovich type newspaper lady, also dying from the Chesapeake alias cancer, had clued him into the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, turned on one of the now dead farmer's faucets and proceeded to light it on fire, like something you'd see in GASLAND.

Eventually the clues lead the CSI guys to the heart of darkness, that being the location of the Chesapeake alias's operation in the valley it is killing. There they find one of those "Evaporation Ponds" that Chesapeake Energy has installed in various locations on Fort Worth's landscape.

The first guy who had been murdered, got wonked on the head while trying to get a sample of the water in the pond, then was left in the pond til he drowned, and then moved to another pond where kids were skinnydipping. The next guy to get murdered was a Chesapeake alias inspector who was trying to do the right thing. Then the unseen Aubrey McClendon alias ordered one of his flaks to kill the whistleblower and then he ordered another flak to kill the whistleblower's killer.

I tell you, those people up in DISH think they have it bad with Chesapeake Energy and the other Barnett Shale Drillers. Apparently it is much worse in Nevada. And just like here in Fort Worth, the powers that be, the regulating agencies, the government, the people who are supposed to look out for the welfare of the people, look the other way, even when the crime is direct murder and murder by poisoning a water supply.

Anyway, this was an interesting episode of CSI, using Fort Worth and its environs for story fodder again.

Fort Worth's Corrupt, Incompetent School Superintendent Melody Johnson's Mishandling Of The Joe Palazzolo Whistleblower Scandal

If I remember right I think I have mentioned before that I live in an area of America where insanity is the norm. Well, more accurately, where insanity is accepted as normal. Where right gets turned wrong. And, where, even when what is right, is clearly clear, wrong prevails.

No, I am not talking about the fashion faux pas of Texas Big Hair as demonstrated by the woman in the photo.

The woman in the photo is yet one more person in Fort Worth who clearly is not competent to do the job she has been hired to do.

The woman's name is Melody Johnson. She is the Superintendent of Fort Worth Schools.

As long as I have been in Fort Worth there have been  tales of corruption in the Fort Worth school system.

Arlington Heights High School assistant principal, Joe Palazzolo, went to his superiors, including Superintendent Johnson, to report some serious wrongdoing occurring at Arlington Heights High School

The Whistleblower, Palazzolo, became the problem, in Ms. Johnson's and her fellow corrupt lackey's eyes. Palazzolo was gradually marginalized til he no longer had a job.

There are laws that protect whistleblowers from retaliation from those about whom the whistle was blown. Those laws are now in play. How well this works in Texas, I have no idea.

FW Weekly has once more performed extremely well in its role as Fort Worth's only actual legitimate newspaper, doing actual real investigative journalism. Unlike the Fort Worth Star-Telegram which pretty much acts as the mouthpiece for the local stoolies in various positions of power.

If you want a good dose of the extreme madness that passes for Fort Worth's adults in positions of power, read this week's Fort Worth Weekly article about the Joe Palazzolo Scandal.

If this was a town where sanity was in the majority, Ms. Melody Johnson would have been fired, by now, over this scandal. If this were a town were sanity was in the majority, someone with Ms. Melody Johnson's Big Hair would never have been hired as a school superintendent.

Does anyone know if Melody Johnson is another Kay Granger relative?

UPDATE: Reading Anonymous Comment #2 causes me to think this Joe Palazzolo Scandal may not be quite as black and white as I thought it to be from reading it described in FW Weekly.