Governor of Connecticut Gets Owned

Apparently, on September 13th, the Governor of Connecticut made a public statement condemning Chesapeake Energy for choosing not to sell some natural gas that it could not make money on. In response, the CEO of Chesapeake sent him and all of Connecticut’s congressional representatives a letter explaining all the ways in which Governor Rell was wrong. It is not only an excellent piece of writing, but very informative with regard to an industry that most Americans thoroughly misunderstand. The entire letter is available here (PDF). I encourage everybody to read through it, which shouldn’t be a problem as it is quite entertaining.

Here is my favorite part:

After demonstrating that external speculators were the cause of bizarre swings in oil & gas prices:

If it is true that large speculators have influenced trends in oil and natural gas prices, who are these speculators that have driven oil prices to record levels that are punishing U.S. oil consumers and natural gas prices that are causing the U.S. natural gas industry to sell their product below oil price equivalency levels? From what we have read, these speculators are primarily hedge funds and, significant to this discussion, many are Connecticut-based hedge funds, most notably last year, Greenwich-based Amaranth Advisors. Over the past week, we have examined your campaign contribution records and it is evident that you have received donations from principals and employees of many hedge funds, some of which may have been involved in causing oil prices to be higher than they should be and natural gas prices to be lower than they should be.

Now, it’s no surprise that a politician would favor his sugar daddies over what’s right – especially when the group in the right is unpopular – but to publicly make factually incorrect accusations is a whole other level of stupid.