What did you expect?

The memo by DEP Secretary Michael Krancer stating that all enforcement actions against Marcellus Shale drillers must be personally approved by him is about as blatant as it gets.

No matter how this is spun, it is a payoff to the gas corporations from Texas that funded Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's election campaign. No one should expect that this will increase environmental regulation of the gas industry. In fact, real enforcement is likely to sharply decrease except in the most blatant of cases. Short of there being an entire town with flaming faucets, there won't be any serious citations issued, and then only if the media finds out.

Think of the police officer who sees a speeding car with the distinctive Legislative license plate. Unless that car is going outrageously fast, not just 10 miles over the limit, he's going to pretend he didn't see anything rather than take the grief for ticketing a Legislator. Or issue a "warning" if he didn't see the plate and pulls him over anyway. It's just human nature.

DEP's inspectors will learn which Marcellus drilling companies contributed big to Corbett's campaign, and will pretend not to see violations. If a citizen complains, they will discover a million little bureaucratic reasons not to respond as they ought to do. It will all be perfectly legal, and entirely wrong.

Remember, this administration is only three months-old and still in the Linda Thompson $4,000 desk phase--the early, blatant idiocy that diverts attention from the really bad stuff going on behind the scenes.

Krancer ought to resign over that memo, but you know he was only doing what Corbett ordered him to do to please his big money donors.

More about that "Meeting"

When I started blogging again a couple of weeks ago, I took note of the current political scene and wondered when the meeting was at which the Republicans coordinated and developed their current strategy for what I, with no hyperbole intended, call their blitzkrieg against regular Americans. That is to say, the seemingly coordinated effort in statehouses from Madison, to Indianapolis, to Columbus, to Harrisburg to attack public employee unions and public education funding and the Affordable Care Act, promote "voter i.d." laws, and a range of other actions that seemed to come out of lets-git-em discussions around the campfire at Republican Fantasy Camp.

I was thinking that a meeting was mainly true in a metaphorical sense, but silly me. Thanks to an article in the New York Times today calling attention to Republican demands for the e-mails of a University of Wisconsin professor, William Cronon, I learned about the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is the Washington-based clearinghouse for many of the current assaults on the American public being carried out in statehouses, including Harrisburg. Cronon wrote a blogpiece, "Who's Really Behind Republican Legislation in Wisconsin and Elsewhere?" that exposed the role of ALEC, as it is known. Every Democrat and every Republican who is upset about the direction of his or her party since it was taken over by the Tea Party radicals should read this piece.

The Times article, with its link to Cronon's blog piece, alarmed ALEC to the extent that it took down its website in the early morning hours of today. But you can still find its slimy fingerprints elsewhere on the Internet.

ALEC charges $100 to conservative legislators, who must be vetted, for membership, but charges much more to corporations. I found this 2009 news release from the Amoore Group, a legislative affairs group with an office here in Harrisburg, soliciting sponsors for big ticket "Pennsylvania Night" events, including one at the ALEC meeting in Atlanta. PPL and FirstEnergy Corporation (MetEd, Penelec) muckety-mucks were the hosts for that event.

More to the point on the impact of ALEC was this ALEC news release dated Jan. 26, 2009--note that date, six days after the Obama inauguration--lauding two Pennsylvania Republican legislators, Rep. Matthew Baker of Tioga County and Rep. Curt Schroder of Chester County for introducing legislation, HB 2053, which would make it illegal to require individuals or corporations to purchase or offer health insurance coverage--the financial heart of what became the Affordable Care Act enacted by Congress in 2010, and HB 2079, which would enshrine that ban in the state constitution. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, when he was still attorney general, joined a number of other Republican AG's in attacking the Affordable Care Act in court.

ALEC boasted that the Pennsylvania legislation was styled on its own "Freedom of Choice in Health Care" model legislation, that legislators in 19 other states had filed or pre-filed similar bills modeled on what ALEC suggested, and that legislators in 11 other states were considering the idea. The news release said ALEC's Christie Herrera--I know I've seen that name somewhere, perhaps in op-ed bylines--directed a task force that was "coordinating the nationwide effort."

One hesitates to use the phrase, but if this isn't a vast rightwing conspiracy, what is? More than a year before Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, rightwing Republicans and corporations around the nation were plotting to destroy national health care. Rep. Baker in Pennsylvania now chairs the House Health Committee and continues to work against the interests of his rural constituents in Tioga County by fighting against the Affordable Care Act, which he predicted recently would put "three million people" on welfare. Or maybe everyone in Tioga County has good health insurance.

All journalists and political bloggers need to pay close attention to ALEC and find out which members of the Legislature are members. Letting an undemocratic, secret organization call the tune on laws important to our lives doesn't strike me as very American.

A recipe for education decline

Republican Sen. Jeffrey Piccola's "Mandate Relief/Taxpayer Protection" package of bills, which he unveiled at a news conference Tuesday, seems mainly about holding down taxes, not improving or even maintaining public education in Pennsylvania. A lot of this is Republican Fantasy Camp stuff, but if even a few of them are passed it will do major damage.

Perhaps the most obnoxious part of it is a bill that would require two-thirds votes on school boards before taxes can be raised, instead of a simple majority. Forget about majority rules. This will allow a determined minority to thwart the will of the people of the school district. As long as the anti-education types can get four votes on nine-member school boards, they can stop any tax increase. You can be sure that if this passes, the next step will be to require voter approval of any tax increases that happen to slide through.

I grew up in a state, Michigan, where all millage increases had to receive voter approval.  I remember when millage votes failed and we lost art, music, and physical education teachers in the schools. The regular classroom teachers filled in as best they could, but no one was fooled. There were school districts, fortunately not mine, where millage votes failed for years and complete shut-down of the schools was contemplated. Imagine if your kid ends up in one of those?

I also love how they're going to replace the requirement for trained, certified superintendents, allowing boards to hire instead anyone with a graduate degree in business or finance. Yes, let's make sure tax-cutting school boards don't have to face push-back from a superintendent who cares about educating kids and understands how it's done. Let's put a hard-nosed bean-counter in there instead.

Then comes the real killer, allowing school boards to lay off teachers for purely economic reasons. This one comes from the distinguished Republican senator from Lebanon, Mike Folmer, who claimed the other day to have seen iPhone toting, designer-jean clad, Cadillac Escalade-driving welfare queens at his local Wal-Mart store. Really? Oh, and this bill would also eliminate seniority protection in layoffs so the most veteran, highest-paid teachers could be gotten rid of and replaced with fresh college graduates, assuming anyone will still want to enter the teaching profession in Pennsylvania.

The Republicans are trying to ram these through with minimal hearings, calling for a committee vote the first week in April. That's the same tack they used in 2004 to ram through the odious Chapter 14 law that made it easier to shut off utility service to the poor, and which resulted in several deaths. Sen. Piccola ought to keep in mind how close he came to losing to Democrat Judy Hirsh the last time he ran for re-election, in 2008. A lot of Democratic voters will be going to the polls in 2012, drawn by the opportunity to re-elect President Obama. And a lot of Republicans are going to lose.

How Republicans used to be

There was a time when Republicans were willing to approve modest tax increases to balance the budget. I happened to run across this actual article in the Centre Daily Times of Sept. 30, 1967, about Republican Gov. Raymond Shafer (1966-70) of Pennsylvania and his attitude toward raising taxes. Read it and think about Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's plan to gut public education and his refusal to even consider an extraction tax on Marcellus natural gas:

Shafer OKs Corporate Tax Boost

HARRISBURG (AP) - Taxes went up in Pennsylvania for the first time in four years Friday, as Gov. Shafer approved a 1 percent increase in the corporate net income tax.

Shafer signed two bills that raise the tax from 6 to 7 percent, retroactive to Jan. 1. The tax will climb another 1/2 percent next January, and is expected to add $60 million to the current fiscal revenues.

While the governor undoubtedly welcomed the increase as more ballast for his $1.8 million budget, he signed the bills with a note of remorse.

"It is not an easy thing to ask for new revenues in these days, when costs are rising throughout our economy, but it is our responsibility to do so," he said [emphasis added].

He said that the revenues from the corporate tax hike and other sources he is seeking "will mean better schools, better jobs in new and expanding industries, better treatment for our infirm, the mentally ill and retarded, better housing and better cities."

Shafer has a tax program in the legislature totaling $285 million, but so far the corporate net income tax levy, affecting only big business, has won approval from both House and Senate.

The House passed a 5-cent increase in the cigarette tax, but Senate Democrats have managed to block passage of the proposal. In the meantime, several appropriations, which Shafer contends are essential to the well-being of the Commonwealth and its citizens, have been stalled for lack of revenue

The governor postponed signing a $34.7 million appropriation to finance college scholarships until next week. Democrats had agreed to provide votes for the corporate net income tax so that the scholarship bill could clear the legislature."

Wow. If you think this is some made-up, Bizarro World story, e-mail me and I'll e-mail you back the actual article. And if you're voting Republican because you've always voted Republican, remember it's now a completely different political party than what you grew up with.

Shellshocked

I think a lot of voters in Pennsylvania, both Democrats and Republicans, are shellshocked by the Republican assault on public education. They can't quite believe it's happening, but they know they don't like it, as was made clear by a new Franklin & Marshall poll that showed about two-thirds of state residents oppose Gov. Corbett's slash-and-burn attack on public schools and public universities. Sixty-two percent of people surveyed support levying an extraction tax on natural gas taken from the rich Marcellus Shale deposits below the state.

Corbett said today that he will not approve a gas extraction tax because shale gas will become "a cornerstone of the state economy." This is wrong on many levels. For one thing, no extraction tax means that all the profits from the industry will flow to Texas, doing no good for the people of Pennsylvania. This resource is the heritage of all the people of Pennsylvania and it should benefit all of them, not just a wealthy elite who can afford to make big campaign contributions to Corbett and other Republicans.

For another, gas drilling will create relative few jobs, and most of those jobs will go to people brought in by the gas drillers from out of state. Local municipalities will be left with the cost of repairing roads damaged by gas industry trucks, and the people of Gasland will be left with the environmental damage. We've seen this movie twice before, first when coal mining ravaged Pennsylvania for a hundred years, leaving catastrophes like the Centralia mine fire, and second when wind farms despoiled mountaintops and killed migratory birds while providing almost no local jobs or tax revenue and precious little electricity.

Speaking of Gasland, the Corbett Administration--hey, there's a price to be paid for getting a boatload of gas industry money for the campaign--has moved against the father of Gasland documentary director Josh Fox, a day after Fox posted an open letter on his website calling for Corbett to fire a DCNR official who called him a Nazi propagandist. I won't say who targeting the families of political critics reminds me of. No one who keeps up with the CasablancaPA blog should be surprised by any of this.

Yes, Republican voters (and some Democratis), you may have thought you were getting Tom Ridge II when you elected Corbett, but the Republican Party has changed, changed, changed.

When was the meeting?

I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but I have to wonder when the Republicans held a meeting to coordinate their current attacks on most all of the good things about government and modern life that we have taken for granted for the last 60 years.

 Did they meet secretly in Biloxi, Mississippi, in late November of last year, after the election? Perhaps with a visit to the home of Jefferson Davis? That would have been appropriate, since much of the ideology pushed by the Tea Party and their radical Republican allies has roots in the old Confederacy. States rights? 10th Amendment? The South will rise again!

 I imagine the meeting went something like this: Okay, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, you're going to take the lead. First you'll blow a hole in your state's budget with new tax cuts for business, then you'll cry poverty and declare the "only" option for fixing it is to emasculate your public worker unions. Gov. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, you'll announce that education is not a "core function" of state government and that you are stripping nearly a billion dollars in state funding from the public schools, and cutting state support of public universities by a half. At the same time, you will refuse to consider taxing Marcellus Shale gas extraction, as every other state does, or even a modest, temporary increase in your state income tax.

And so on, and so on. It's a creeping, silent coup, folks. Wake up.

I'm back

I've decided to resume blogging. I had been burned out on "By the River" and thought I was done. But the state of modern politics, with the radical Republicans mounting a concerted attack on the modern social democratic state, has drawn me back in. So it goes.