On Saturday, a perfect day for exercising the couch, I spent a few hours with some whip-smart ladies in sensible shoes. The League of Women Voters sponsored a conference on the promise and potential peril buried within the Marcellus Shale. Here was an opportunity to unearth a few facts about natural gas in a hysteria-free setting.

The 380-million-year-old rock formation, which runs from New York to West Virginia, is in the news. Gov. Rendell eyed taxing the riches being extracted from land underneath Pennsylvania forests. While the House agreed, the Senate balked, even though the state is likely sitting on a gassy mother lode.

In January 2008, researchers announced that new drilling techniques suggested the presence of enough natural gas to supply the entire nation for two years. The rush was on.

In August, results from preliminary drilling led one of the authors of that study, Pennsylvania State University geologist Terry Engelder, to be even more optimistic: The natural gas in the formation, he figured, is the equivalent of four times the amount of U.S. oil reserves.

The biggest loser in Pennsylvania gas leasing and drilling: conservation

By Patriot-News Op-Ed

October 08, 2009, 6:20AM

Most of this state’s citizens have never heard of the Oil and Gas Fund, which is just fine with Gov. Ed Rendell and the Senate Republicans who are proposing to loot the fund and destroy a conservation program that has worked for more than 50 years.

The fund was created by conservation leaders in 1955 to accomplish a simple purpose: The revenues from oil and gas that came from state forest land would be reinvested in conservation programs that would have long-lasting public benefit, such as Gifford Pinchot State Park in York County.

When the oil and gas in the state is depleted, current and future generations will still be able to enjoy the benefits from these investments when visiting state parks or state forests. But now, the governor has sided with those who propose to destroy the fund.

How's this for a reason to vote against the public option?...

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, (in voting against an amendment to add a public option to the Senate Finance Committee reform bill) said he feared that a government plan would prove so popular it could never be uprooted.

So there you are. If it would be good, if people would like it, you can't have it. What planet does he spend most of his time on?

Yesterday, I posted this Oliphant cartoon:

...and then today, I see this:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery, and a law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word 'fed" was scrawled on the dead man's chest.

 

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky. The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation.

Too creepy.

 H/T Bob Ceska's Awesome Blog:

Best Person of the Week:

 Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY) for proposing an amendment banning Medicare. The Republicans, who claim to be loudly opposed to government-run healthcare, voted against the amendment.

We've heard a lot of sniping about the public option as a part of any sick care reform. Unfortunately, much of it has been disingenuous and does not contribute to a rational and productive discussion.

In his entry this week, "How Not to Talk About Health Care", NYTimes ethics writer Randy Cohen takes some of our legislators to task on the subject:

In his critique of the public option, Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, invoked the inability of his 7-year-old daughter’s lemonade stand to compete with McDonald’s. (You’d think she’d thrive, incidentally, what with lemonade not being on the McDonald’s menu.) “It’s impossible to have a level playing field with a public plan,” Ryan said, asserting that private insurers could be driven out of business by the unfair competitive advantages enjoyed by a government-sponsored insurer (presumably much as the University of Massachusetts turned Harvard into a ghost town, or the New York Public Library system drove Barnes & Noble into the ground). Again, this is not to challenge Ryan’s conclusions about the public option: that’s politics. It is to demand veracity in his arguments: that’s ethics.

This is typical: pass the costs down the line so you can say you held the line and let the less powerful fend for themselves...

From PennLive

[Emphasis added - Ed.]

Palmyra struggles with negative budget impact from Senate bill

by BARBARA MILLER, Of the Patriot-News

Thursday May 07, 2009, 10:00 PM

PALMYRA-Palmyra Area School Board plans to pass a preliminary budget May 14 with a 6.8 percent increase in taxes next week - rather than the maximum 4.2 percent increase it expected to adopt - due to the state Senate's cut of $1 billion from the governor's budget.

Board members said they want to make further cuts in the $36 million budget, but may need more than a week to decide where the money will come from.

Superintendent Larry Schmidt estimated at least $439,000 has disappeared from Palmyra's budget - the equivalent of nearly two mills of real estate tax - out of the $1.4 million in stimulus funds the district was expecting.

Schmidt said the Senate budget returns basic education funding to 2008-09 levels and uses federal stimulus funds to supplant education funds and help balance the state budget.

"It circumvents the whole intent of the stimulus act," Schmidt said.

"It's ethically wrong, it's probably legally wrong, it's just wrong,"
said board member Brad White.

"It's a stonewalling technique by the Senate to make a statement," said board member Christine Horn. "This'll never pass the House."

Schmidt said a lengthy battle over the budget is expected, but school districts must have their budgets adopted in mid-June to get tax bills in the mail in July.

The preliminary budget will be voted on at the 6:30 p.m. May 14 board meeting.

A 6.8 percent, or six-mill tax increase, would add $141 to the real estate tax bill of the owner of a home assessed at the district average of $23,500. The tax rate would become 94.25 mills.

Expect more of this, especially when the state and contract mandated employee health insurance premiums get jacked up again. State single-payer, anyone?

Actually, it recently crossed my mind that the Commonwealth could at least be self-insured and quit padding the profits of insurance companies.

PA Senate: Playing politics with our children's future.

Had enough yet?

Please, people, when I send a message in the fall asking you to get organized to take back the state Senate next year from the irresponsible cranks that run it now, please, please, please say "Yes!"

This is just some of what the Republican-controlled PA Senate passed as a budget proposal:

Cuts:

Is Arlen Specter the best we Pennsylvanians can do?

Is he the smartest, most honest, most empathetic politician in the state and the most likely to vote to represent your values?

Who would you nominate for the US Senate?

Click here to answer.

You can keep score on Specter's votes at  Keystone Progress' Specter Scorecard site.