T. Boone Pickens behind Swiftboat advertising

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/11/MNGO68N64F1.DTL

I won't expand much on the validity of these swift boat ads because the topic is so insipid except to point out that some of the veterans have been documented to have recently changed their historical account dramatically, previously praising Kerry, and the author of the "unfit for Command" book is infamous for his prejudice against non-Christians.

What I'd like to do is set down some links to articles written elsewhere about T. Boone Pickens, who has used his money to threaten and damage the lives of thousands. This man is 75 or 76 years old but he can't retire and enjoy life. He still spends his days scheming to disrupt the economic lives of whole towns. Should it even be possible for one person to have so much power for bad? There are other wealthier people such as Bill Gates or Paul Allen, but because they do symbolically good things like giving money for malaria research or Microsoft computers in schools and the Seattle Seahawks, people don't realize or object to their power, but imagine if they became mentally ill or malintentioned or senile and started pushing it, and suddenly spent their billions for evil political causes. How would the rest of the world be able to stop them.

In Seattle, I first heard of T. Boone Pickens when the news reported that he was trying to do an aggressive takeover of Boeing and supposedly lots of people would lose their jobs if he were successful. He does these corporate takeover attempts quite a lot, focusing on oil companies, and he makes lots of money each time as the company and its stockholders pay him off to go away.

This is a great description of the guy here, which I recommend reading.
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/02/01/water_texas/index.html

Perhaps the most evil thing he has tried to do is buy a lot of land in West Texas, dig a bunch of deep wells into the Oglalla aquifer, and siphon the money to dry towns outside of the aquifer for big $$. People in several arid states must share the Oglalla, and the levels have been dropping precipitously in recent years. You have probably heard about Peak Oil, and the concept that as this resource starts to become more scarce in the next decade, the price for oil will rise at an exponential as opposed to linear rate, causing lots of suffering. Well, in the SW United States, 'peak water' could easily become a big problem before peak oil.
As large populations of people move from the South and Northeast where there is a lot of rainfall into booming Southwestern towns such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Albuquerque, the water tables are plummeting, the Colorado River and big reservoirs are drying out, and people have barely started to employ a conservation ethic regarding water. This is a dangerous combination. But even when people will inevitably start reducing household use, switch away from lawns and swimming pools, and reusing water, apparently the decisions by one jerk can counteract the decisions of everyone else. Should it even be possible that one company or one person could lower the water table and devastate farms across several states that must pay more for water, and then go bankrupt and cause people to pay more for food.
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/071602/opi_futuregets.shtml
http://southwestfarmpress.com/news/farming_boone_pickens_floating/

On the Navajo land, a large part of the population doesn't have access to running water. Wells that functioned for decades have gone dry due to coal mining companies sucking up. My friend's sister is a doctor in Gallup, and many rural people there now must drive into town to take showers once a week and pick up water in tanks to carry back, due to the excessive water use of Peabody coal, which does not give anything back to the local residents.
http://www.nrdc.org/water/conservation/nblmesa.asp