As you report, our state administration has passed a budget that reduces funding for public schools. That means we will have increased property taxes to make up shortfalls in every school district in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth.

Meanwhile, we are donating almost a trillion dollars’ worth of natural gas to billionaire oil magnates in Texas. Our new governor, Tom Corbett, was given a million-dollar “campaign contribution” by the gas industry last year, and he promised not to impose an extraction fee for the gas. What we are seeing now is the payback for that million. It turns out to have been an excellent investment.

All three of the New World’s original English settlements, in Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, were founded as commonwealths. The word means and intends that residents share whatever resources and riches come from the endeavor. The idea of subsidizing people who have more money than they will need for a thousand lifetimes with our taxes is a complete perversion of the concept.

How did we get in this position?

Anthony Splendora

Milford, PA