Jim Hightower

Such energy powers as BP, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and Koch Industries have gone crackers over fracking!

Seeing huge profits from this dreadfully destructive and dangerously dirty method of forcing natural gas out of rock formations deep in the Earth, the industry is presently scurrying all over the country asking landowners to sign contracts allowing them to drill & frack on farms, parkland, playgrounds, and even people's backyards. But now, in cities and rural areas alike, this unbridled "gas rush" has become a matter of deeply grave concern. Literally.

In the shriveled ethical universe of these fracking profiteers, money trumps everything, and nothing is sacred – not even graveyards, the eternal resting place of our loved ones. Yes, gas frackers across the country are out to get drilling rights in hundreds of cemeteries, promising maintenance money to caretakers in exchange for letting the corporations sink their explosive siphons down under the dearly departed. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust… and mineral rights to Exxon." How spiritual.

Oh, come on, snap the industry's impatient hustlers, the fracking takes place way underground, so it won't disturb the graves. Yeah, but what about the souls? A cemetery is a spiritual sanctuary – a place of respect, serenity, and moral decorum. But a fracking corporation has no soul, and its moral concerns penetrate no deeper than its bottom line. For a measure of just shallow corporate morality is, note that frackers even threaten the hallowed ground of some of our veterans' cemeteries. Their ethos is clear: "Hey, outa the way – decorum is one thing, but there's money under those graves!"

It's not just deep rock that they're out to fracture, it's our deepest values, too – our sense of who we are as a people. To fight this, go to www.FoodAndWaterWatch.org.