Another Governor says “F-you!” to the Governed
60 percent of Pennsylvanians would still support taxing the natural gas drillers at a rate similar to the other energy-producing states.”
Too bad those 60 percent of Pennsylvanians didn’t contribute $1.2 million to Corbitt’s recent election campaigns like the oil-and-natural gas interests did.
This is off topic a bit but sheds the ill light of untrustworthy idealology onto Chris Christie in a smugly satisfying way:
http://transparentchristina.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/cerf-and-christie-analyzed-charters-truth-evidence-sad-nj-education/#comment-20442
Just when you thought that 21st Century America would be in a place where the law is the law, science is science and oops, politics is politics.
Thanks for that link Nancy. It speaks to how astonishingly brazen these Governors are being when they attack the middle class compact under the ruse of addressing a “budgetary crisis.”
Christie is fucking horrible.
There’s some left fielder crying about “middle class” state employees taking a pay cut. So let’s spank some more out of Corporate America. They’re not middle class, they’re working class. The middle class own the businesses that employ the working class, and sometimes make less. You communists won’t agree, but the rise of the government employee was a product of the Reagan Revolution. With all the military cutbacks after we won the Cold War, there was a lot of extra money to waste. It started in law enforcement and spread like a virus from there. Now they’re crying because they have to make less when there are many of us who believe many of those jobs should not even have existed in the first place.
OTOH, from my inbox this morning ~
Henry A. Giroux | From “Morning in America” to the Nightmare on Main Street
Henry A. Giroux, Truthout: “Ronald Reagan’s infamous ‘it’s morning in America’ slogan, used as part of his 1984 presidential campaign, paved the way for a set of market-driven policies that historians faithful to the human record will be compelled to rename twilight in America to signal a historical crisis fueled less by a spirited hope for the future than by a shocking refusal to be held accountable to and for it. The policies that informed Reagan’s neoliberal agenda have given way to the intense assault now being waged by his more extremist governmental descendants on all vestiges of the democratic state. This brutal evisceration includes a rejection and devaluing of the welfare state, unions, public values, young people, public and higher education; and other political, social and economic institutions and forces in American life that provide a counterweight against the political power of mega-corporations, the rich and the powerful.”
Read the Article: http://www.truth-out.org/from-morning-america-nightmare-main-street68274
If anybody wants to follow delbert’s lead, and comment without reading the linked to article, you should at least know the basics:
1) Texas based oil and natural gas interests making billions in PA through environmentally hazardous “fracking” while paying $0.00 in state taxes. (Please note: $0.00 in state taxes).
2) Oil and natural gas interests give over $1.2 million to Corbitt
3) Corbitt elected Governor.
4) Corbitt proposes PA budget that slashes public education while adding $0.00 in revenue from oil and natural gas interests.
5) Texas based oil and natural gas interests continue making billions in PA through environmentally hazardous “fracking” while paying $0.00 in state taxes. (Please note: $0.00 in state taxes).
And the oil & natural gas interests are providing JOBS AND ECONOMIC STIMULUS to rural areas in Pennsylvania that have NEVER RECOVERED since the decline of coal production there. I’ve visited one of those areas for a week vacation/deer hunt every year for the past 25 years, and I’ve seen it. The biggest employers there have been a state penetentiary (recently built) and a Walmart distribution center. Absolutely no industry and damn little tourism. Now they’re mining gas. Ask the Pennsylvanians out there how they feel about the gas interests in PA, instead of the dregs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh that the left fielders use in their poles.
If anybody wants to follow delbert’s lead and appeal to “the real Pennsylvanians” who want the Texas based oil and gas companies to pay $0.00 in state taxes, they should be aware of the fact that 60 percent of Pennsylvanians don’t live in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. 14% of Pennsylvanians do.
Delbert, please clarify. The prison and wal mart distribution center are owned by the “middle class?”
And by your logic, any business who creates jobs and economic stimulus should pay no taxes? Even though they benefit from schools, roads, courts, laws, etc?
News flash, the reason why taxing the rich is on the table is because they have the money. Sorry, but perhaps if the rich cared even a little about the working class and shared the prosperity with them, then the tax burden could be spread throughout the economy.
Those oil and gas interests are following the well worn path of the steel manufacturers who used to be in PA. Since we already know this story, you know that they’ll leave an environmental mess behind. It unbelievable that we could be doing this again. At absolutely minimum the state should be requiring these land owners who think they are getting their lotto ticket stamped that if the land is contaminated via this drilling that they are a Potentially Responsible Party, and that they won’t have the option of asking taxpayers to clean up their mess.
“share the prosperity with them….” It’s called SS tax, unemployment tax, subsidized healthcare, life insurance, vacation, profit sharing, personal days, bonuses…..and all that for working. Guess the rich get no points for going out on a limb financially to establish a business, and the risk-taking that goes w/ that. There’s a bit more skin in the game than for the worker. And who isn’t benefitting from roads, schools, and other public services?
I’m not seeing the risk. I’m seeing a lot of chest-puffing, masters of industry hiding under their wee little beds hoarding the money.
For the small number of Pennsylvanians that are hired the oil and gas interests pay a share of the employee SS tax, unemployment tax. Healthcare? I doubt it. Most workers are probably kept to part time status.
Life insurance? Riiiiiiiiight.
Vacation? Please…
Profit sharing? OMG, my side…stop it.
Personal days? Sure, you can have all the personal days you want…you’re fired.
bonuses? ….your bonus is an undrinkable water supply.
“the rich get no points for going out on a limb financially to establish a business, and the risk-taking that goes w/ that.”
Another brainwashed member of the middle class. Do your research, Joanne — that is not how the rich get to be rich in the U.S. In fact, these days the U.S. has less economic mobility than most developed nations, including many in Europe with much higher tax rates on the upper classes.
There’s a bit more skin in the game than for the worker.
Which is supposed to be part of the deal. Why should they be kowtowed to for that? And unless said wealthy person does all of the work at that company him or herself, there *are* people who are contributing to the creation of that wealth.
With no regulation and no tax burden, I dont see the Texas based oil and gas companies risking anything.
In Western Pa, in the coalfields, independent truckers have been forced out…and guess who is now in. Halliburton! Halliburton has taken over small coal towns, their trucks are destroying roads and not a penny of their profits go for repairs. So hundreds of men have been put out of work so Dick Cheney’s thieving corporation can rob the poorest of the poor in these western counties. My friend has a farm, beautiful home filled with antiques. She refused to let them mine under her house. So they went all around her home ( so old the bricks were made with horse hair). Her antiques are falling off the walls due to the explosions underground. Thats how Halliburton treats people with no regard for health, air/water polution! No body has the money to file a class action lawsuit against them. Aint life a trip under these repukes.
When he was running for Governor, Tom Corbett was very specific: no new taxes. When they were running for the state legislature, our Republican candidates were very specific: no new taxes. And the voters in the Keystone State elected Tom Corbett as our Governor, increased the Republicans’ margin of control in the state Senate, and turned the state House of Representatives over from Democratic to Republican control. That’s how democracy works; sorry that you don’t seem to like it.
The facts reveal that Pennsylvanians are either a bunch of idiots who knew that Corbet’s plan involved raping the middle class, or they were snowed by the millions of dollars the Texas based oil and natural gas interests poured into the state.
Here is a refresher on the facts of the case;
Here is what Artrios says:
Republican Governors don’t mind turning their states into shit holes. In fact, they get off on it.
The jobs are a red herring; they would exist anyway. It’s a non-renewable resource and Corbett and the Republicans are giving it away. It’s not a matter of us not liking democracy. It’s a matter of us not liking people, whomever they might be, ripping off the middle class.
Yup, like I said: y’all just don’t like democracy.
I kind of wonder, though: how did all that money you say was spent on behalf of Governor Corbett get my state legislative district, which had been represented by a Democrat for the last 35 years, to elect a Republican?
We’re a small district, in a poor, rural, slightly Democratic county. The vast majority of political advertising is in the form of yard signs. I don’t listen to radio much, but I saw only a couple of television ads, for either candidate. There just wasn’t a whole lot of oil money visible here, in what was supposed to be a competitive district (the incumbent retired), and the Republican candidate won.
So “Pennsylvanians are a bunch of idiots” is the answer you are going to go with. Got it. As for the lack luster Democratic turnout in your shot hole – it should be no surprise to anyone that I blame President Obama.
That’s how democracy works; sorry that you don’t seem to like it.
And I’m sure you’ve shut down any criticism of President Obama because you love democracy so much.
Corbett may have campaigned on no new taxes, but it seems to be quite a surprise to folks that he wants to balance his budget by treating the education of Pennsylvania’s kids as a “nice to have”.
Besides, that no new taxes thing is a lie. It won’t happen today or tomorrow, but the owners of these gas extraction properties will be back on the doorstep of PA taxpayers looking for funds to clean up their mess.
The driller’s pay business tax on their revenues just like every other business in PA
The land owners pay income tax on the royalties they receive from the GasCo.
What jason is whining about is the fact that an extraction tax has not been levied. That is a tax, not on profits or sales but on production. It is equivalant to changing a per ton tax on the quary or a per bushel tax on the farmer.
For every question we get the same two “answers” from the moonbats:
More taxes and More Spending.