Lesson for congressmen: step out of line and be forced out in a contrived scandal....
January , 2012 -- Former congressman run out of town after taking on Obama-connected energy firms....
Former Representative Eric Massa (D-NY) was subjected to gay sexual harassment charges, all subsequently dismissed by House-appointed attorneys and which were partly-engineered by senior staffers for outgoing openly-gay Representative Barney Frank (D-MA), after Massa took on two energy firms closely connected to the Obama White House.....
Before he resigned from office amid unsubstantiated harassment charges made by his chief of staff Joseph Racalto, the former "driver" for Frank, in March 2010, Massa took on Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corporation and its CEO Aubrey McClendon, the natural gas "fracking king" and a proponent of non-coal carbon energy sources, including the Canadian Keystone oil sands pipeline project. McClendon has been a political donor to Democrats and Republican presidential candidates, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain.
Chesapeake Energy is the major exploiter of fractured natural gas from the Marcellus Shale of Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio and shale oil from the Utica Shale of New York and its operations have contaminated fresh water supplies and caused earthquakes.
WMR has obtained correspondence documenting Massa's opposition to Chesapeake's environmentally-damaging operations in western New York. In a January 10, 2010 letter to McClendon, Massa asks for a meeting to discuss a proposed Chesapeake disposal facility in the town of Pulteney in the pristine Finger Lakes region. Massa pointed out to McClendon that Keuka Lake was surrounded by several communities that relied on tourism and agriculture, both of which rely on clean water.
Massa demanded that the politically-connected McClendon withdraw plans for the facility, which would store resurfaced fluids from hydraulic fracturing and endanger the fresh water resources of the region. The letter was followed by communications between members of Massa's staff and Frank's staff to bring down Massa in a contrived scandal.
Earlier, on September 11, 2009, Massa took on President Obama on one of his pet energy projects, wind energy. Under Obama's "stimulus" package, designed to create hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, including in wind energy projects, $74.6 million in taxpayers' money was awarded by the Departments of Energy and the Treasury to Canandaigua Power Partners, LLC and Canandaigua Power Partners II for wind projects in Coshocton, New York.
The two firms are shell companies that operate on behalf of First Wind, a firm under investigation by then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for bribery, intimidation, and other misconduct involving wind energy projects across the northeastern United States. First Wind was financially backed by Dearborn Partners, a major source of campaign funds for then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. White House economic adviser Larry Summers was also linked to First Wind.
Alarm bells went off among the Emanuel-Summers cabal after Massa's September 11 letter was received. The letter stated: ". . . the award of $74.6 million dollars to corrupt companies that have changed names time and again forming new LLCs and new Inc.s but maintaining their business model of lie, cheat, and corrupt at the expense of taxpayers has stirred great unrest in New York's 29th Congressional District." Massa pointed out that Canandaigua collected electricity production rewards for non-existent energy.
Eventually, Massa was forced to resign. Republican Tom Reed replaced Massa in the 29th district and WMR's sources in the district report that Racalto and Reed continue to maintain a relationship. Reed is wholly-owned and operated by the natural gas fracking and the wind power industries. Frank has announced he is not running for re-election, citing re-districting. It is highly unlikely that the addition of a few hundred more Republican voters in Frank's heavily-Democratic district is the real reason behind his decision not to run again....
