The Hightower Report

Big Oil's frigging frackers are wrapping their shameless profiteering in our flag.

In shale fields across the country, you'll see fracking rigs festooned with Old Glory, and they even paint some of their rigs red, white, and blue. This ostentatious patriotic pose is part and parcel of the industry's cynical PR campaign to convince you and me that its assault on our health, water, air, and economic future should be mindlessly saluted, rather than questioned. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE! is their deafening cry – this shale gas boom, they exclaim, will free America from dependence on foreign producers.

"O say can you see [through the frackers' big lie]?" One who has peeked behind their star-spangled curtain is investigative digger Joel Dyer, editor of the Boulder Weekly. What he uncovered is "one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on America."

Far from independence, we're going to get the pollution and other problems, but foreigners will get the energy, for the gas extracted from our fractured land is destined for the export market. How do we know that? First, because the industry and its government enablers admit it in their internal communications. But, secondly, guess who's paying for the fracking of America? Dyer cites reports by Bloomberg News that China has pumped five and a half billion dollars into the U.S. drilling "boom" – not only so it can export the energy back to its people, but also so the Chinese can "redeploy the best US practices and technologies" back to China.

Other foreign owners fracking us are Japan (more than $5 billion invested so far), India ($3.5 billion), France ($4.5 billion), as well as billions more from Korea, the UK, and even Norway.

Norway? Come on, America – don't let the profiteers wrap us up in our own flag. It's the 4th of July – let's rebel!