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Op-Ed: Cliffs Notes Aren’t Good Enough for Marcellus Policy; State Rep. Jesse White (D-46); Beaver Countian; October 11, 2011. Mr. White lost in Beaver County in both 2006 and 2010.
Previous White pieces I critiqued are here, here, here, here, and here.
Mr. White usually posts his comments on both the Beaver Countian website and his own, but when I posted this critique the article was only on the Beaver Countian website.
Below is a critique of excerpts from the subject opinion piece.
A big chunk of the piece describes what’s allegedly in Gov. Corbett’s proposal. If you want to hang your hat on this info, I suggest you do your own research. Note Rep. White didn’t provide a link to his source of what’s in the proposal.
Mr. White complains Mr. Corbett presented a proposal instead of “an actual bill clearly laying out what he would support.” I don’t know if it’s a hard-and-fast protocol, but I learned the General Assembly writes our laws. Had Mr. Corbett presented “an actual bill,” I’ll guess Mr. White would have complained Mr. Corbett had crossed some line and tried to shove the bill down the GA’s throat. FYI, other than a simple gas tax, then-Gov. Rendell didn’t even present a proposal yet it appears Mr. White didn’t utter so much as a peep.
FYI, Mr. White’s definition of “a massive majority in both the House and Senate” is Republicans holding 55% of the seats in the House and 60% in the Senate.
Mr. White doesn’t like that “each county could enact their own fee less than the limit set forth by the Governor, which means neighboring counties would be competing with one another by undercutting the fee and setting up ‘border wars’ within the state.” If there’s anything lefties don’t like, it’s competition to hold down government fees, taxes, et cetera. That’s why lefties always push for state- and country-wide regulations, taxes, et cetera. Continuing, Mr. White wrote, “The natural gas drilling industry has made it overwhelmingly clear that they want to eliminate local ordinances to create uniformity and consistency in the law; doesn’t this proposal make it even more fragmented?” It appears Mr. White currently doesn’t support local control, but that’s not what he wrote all the way back on July 18, 2011, when he told us “local control” was important. On his website (“White introduces local impact fee bill on natural gas extraction”), Mr. White supported not “forcing our municipalities to give up their local control over a critically important issue” and then wrote “we should not punish the municipalities that have worked long and hard to craft and pass reasonable ordinances that reflect the will of their community, while still permitting drilling to take place.” What changed between July and October?
Mr. White asserts Mr. Corbett’s proposal for some local control is because of “the ‘no tax pledge’ from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which is signed by Governor Corbett and over thirty legislators.” This is at least the second time Mr. White made a similar claim.
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