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No need to panic; Editorial; Beaver County Times; March 6, 2011.
As with “Back in time” a few days ago, the Times could have saved some ink and newsprint by starting with the final sentence and eliminating the preceding seven paragraphs plus one sentence. This whole editorial is about taxing Marcellus natural gas to fund more government spending. Since there’s nothing new in this editorial on this topic, please read my critique of “Money talks” for most of my comments.
As I’ve written previously, companies harvesting our natural resources must do so in a responsible manner and must have the financial and technological wherewithal to handle worst-case scenarios. It is government’s responsibility to enforce these rules and to make sure everyone involved [businesses and government (local, state, federal)] is prepared (via drills, for example) to execute disaster plans. In the very, very unlikely case we can’t do this while providing a commercially-viable energy source, there should be no drilling until we can.
Local self-described Marxist Carl Davidson provided his comments about the editorial on the Times website on the same page as the editorial. I don’t think Mr. Davidson’s profile on the Times website does him justice. (Update: Mr. Davidson’s comments appear in letter-to-the-editor form here.)
When you read Mr. Davidson’s comments, keep in mind the left opposes so-called “carbon-based energy” of any kind as well as nuclear power and instead wants us to chase so-called “green energy,” “renewables,” et cetera. As I’ve noted before, you can identify “green energy” sources because they are not currently technically and/or economically viable enough to provide large amounts of energy. As soon as a “green energy” source gets close to commercial viability, it’s no longer deemed “green.” We’ve seen this with some hydro, wind, and solar projects. Knowing the manmade global warming myth increasingly falls on deaf ears, followers of this faith try to use safety, water quality, etc. as backdoors to stop drilling and production of Marcellus natural gas. You can find examples here, here, here, here, and here. At least four of those letters were written by Mr. Davidson’s fellow members of Beaver County Reds.
Mr. Davidson gives his agenda away right off the bat by advocating a “hefty” (not appropriate, fair, reasonable, etc., but “hefty”) tax on Marcellus gas and insisting on “union workers.” The goal is to make Marcellus gas too expensive to produce via regulations and taxes. If that’s unsuccessful, at least there would be a lot more revenue for government to spend and more revenue via dues for labor union management to spend promoting leftist policies/programs/politicians. This is not a new tactic and reminded me of a comment by then-candidate Barack Obama. Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle (January 2008), Mr. Obama said, “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Coal-powered plants, you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers … What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there … So if somebody wants to build a coal power plant they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” What Mr. Obama wants to do to the coal industry, other leftists want to do to the Marcellus gas industry.
I’m not opposed to taxing Marcellus natural gas within limits. For example, why should a tax on Marcellus gas go for anything other than covering regulatory costs? Anything else creates a slush fund for politicians to spend as is/was the case for Medicare and Socialist Security taxes. Texas taxes natural gas production at 7.5% of market value plus a regulatory fee of $0.000667 per thousand cubic feet, with variances for natural gas that’s expensive to produce. I’m not an expert, but a lower tax rate than Texas and some other states may be appropriate due to the higher costs of producing from formations like the Marcellus shale. Keep in mind, though, natural gas consumers (you and I) will ultimately pay any severance taxes via our gas bills. It’s true for all so-called business taxes. Opponents of Marcellus gas production tend not to mention that little fact.
Mr. Davidson says the employees must be union members “because they are not likely to be fearful of standing up on safety issues.” Sure. Mandating union membership is all about funding to advance leftist policies/programs/politicians and a big chunk of leftist funding comes from mandatory dues collected from employees forced to join labor unions by closed-shop labor laws. There’s also the labor union member manpower used for in-kind contributions (knocking on doors, manning phone banks, generating and distributing collateral, rallies, etc.) to support leftist policies/programs/politicians.
Mr. Davidson asserted “some of the brains of our local politicians have been scrambled by the industry money flowing into their campaign chests.” Have you noticed lefties never seem to be concerned about labor union management “money flowing into [local politician] campaign chests” scrambling politician brains? Perhaps that’s because 93% of labor union management PAC contributions to federal candidates (over $62 million) went to Democrat/leftist candidates in 2010. Of the top ten contributors to 527s for the 2010 election, six were labor unions and three others were Democrat/leftist-affiliated. Number one was Service Employees International Union at $17.6 million, more than four times number two (United Food & Commercial Workers Union) on the list and more than five times the largest business-related contributor (Pharmaceutical Product Development, Inc.) at number four.
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