The value of Pennsylvania’s natural gas is roughly a trillion dollars. It is probably worth more than all the gold mined in the gold rushes of California and the Klondike, and is of the same order of magnitude as all the oil that ever came out of Texas. I mention these facts because our state legislature has counter-proposed to Governor Corbett’s budget their own, which would restore some of Corbett’s school revenue cuts while eliminating aid to the poorest of our citizens. In other words, surrendering a trillion dollars’ worth of our resources to billionaires in Texas while cutting our contribution to the most vulnerable in our society. Meanwhile Pennsylvania gets not a penny of revenue from that vast underground sea of methane.

If even a minor proportion of that value came to the state’s coffers and was efficiently managed, we could eliminate all personal and property taxes. We could remake our public schools in the image of private secondary and preps, with increased contact time, halved class sizes—verging on 10 rather than 25 or 30—and based on the lecture-recitation model; our teachers could be PhDs in subject areas rather than masters in education. We could rebuild and replace Pennsylvania’s bridges and roads, dams and power infrastructure. We could make our university system the envy of the developed world, the way California’s once was, with free tuition for all state residents.

Instead, we are slashing money for the poor so we can give that wealth to the mega-wealthy of El Paso Oil, in Texas. This is what happens when people don’t vote. The 2010 elections saw only about 44% participation from registered voters. So we end up with a governor who

received almost a million dollars in “campaign contributions” for promising not to impose an extraction fee for our gas, and legislators who toe the Republican line on bending over backward for business while shorting social programs, education, cultural outlets, and humanitarian agencies.

In the good old days, many of these people would have been tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

Anthony Splendora

Milford, PA