{"id":5292,"date":"2011-07-03T02:40:06","date_gmt":"2011-07-03T09:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5292"},"modified":"2011-07-03T02:50:05","modified_gmt":"2011-07-03T09:50:05","slug":"to-pas-students-frack-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/07\/03\/to-pas-students-frack-you\/","title":{"rendered":"To PA’s Students: Frack YOU!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The education of our young people has to be a key element in restoring American competitiveness in the global marketplace.\u00a0 Simply put, if other countries have a better pool of well educated workers than we do, those countries will get (and are getting) the best jobs.\u00a0 A friend, who is an educator at a major university, recently told me how most freshmen from Europe and Asia come ready for advanced college work, while most American freshmen go straight to remedial reading and math.\u00a0 Therefore, it seems an act of pure insanity to gut education to give tax breaks to criminal polluters, but that is exactly what Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) has done, while also destroying the safety net.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"3corbett\"Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (R) signed a disastrous state budget last night that favors the natural gas industry at the expense of the state\u2019s children and least fortunate citizens. The $27.15 billion<\/a> budget does not raise taxes, but cuts health care for more than 100,000<\/a> of the state\u2019s poorest residents. It did this by slashing Medicaid contributions by $280 million, which will result in a $425 million loss in matching federal funds. State universities and community colleges have announced the largest tuition hikes in state history<\/a> as education funding took a heavy, $863-million hit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Yet, state Republicans and Corbett did not have to punish children<\/strong> and the neediest to plug a $4 billion budget deficit. Several variations of natural gas drilling taxes<\/a> were proposed this year, and an extraction fee<\/a> tacked onto the budget by the state Senate last week would have raised $310 million. However, Corbett threatened to veto any tax<\/strong>, and he strong-armed the state House<\/a> into withdrawing a vote on the tax this week just hours before it was scheduled to be debated. Corbett\u2019s obstinacy continues even though Pennsylvania is the only major gas producer<\/a> that does not tax<\/a> its use.<\/p>\n

So why is Corbett very friendly to natural gas, despite its documented dangers<\/a>? It may be because the governor owes part of his political career to the industry<\/strong>, having accepted almost $1.3 million<\/a> in campaign contributions from drillers. The Philadelphia Inquirer<\/a> reported this week on the cozy relationship between Corbett and Chesapeake Energy, the state\u2019s largest natural gas driller<\/a>, which began during Corbett\u2019s first statewide campaign for attorney general… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

RepubliCorp will get a second benefit here.\u00a0 Pennsylvania\u2019s children will grow up too dumb to know that their tap water is poisoned by fracking.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The education of our young people has to be a key element in restoring American competitiveness in the global marketplace.\u00a0 Simply put, if other countries have a better pool of well educated workers than we do, those countries will get (and are getting) the best jobs.\u00a0 A friend, who is an educator at a major […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5292\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}