Fracking Tom Corbett

Just as Wisconsin's new Republican governor Scott Walker is paying back his mega-contributor Koch Industries by union-busting and even a sweetheart deal, comes now new Prennsylvania governor and Leslie Nielsen look-alike Tom Corbett with his own recording of "The Big Payback." According to news accounts, Corbett received at least $875,000 from the oil and gas industry in 2010, and so we now see this in 2011:

Gov. Corbett has made good on his promise to reverse one of Ed Rendell's last acts as governor: he has rescinded an effective moratorium on natural gas drilling on state lands.

The Pittsburgh Business Times reports today that the Rendell document called "Policy for the Evaluation of Impacts of Oil and Gas Development on State Parks and State Forests" has been rescinded and erased from the Department of Environmental Protection website.

The four-month-old policy required environmental impact assessments be conducted by the Department of Conservation and National Resources before a driller could apply for a permit with the DEP.

The question has arisen over the last couple of days...if Cairo can come to Madison, Wisconsin, then why can't Madison come to Harrisburg? The short answer is that it could -- and fracking could prove to be Tom Corbett's Waterloo.

Currently, thanks to the environmentally odious practice of fracking, Pennsylvania is now the largest gas-producing state in the nation that doesn't charge an extraction tax. This despite the fact that the state is facing a $4-5 billion budget gap. If Corbett decides to close that gap on the backs of state workers and the middle class and the poor, while giving his millionaire donors a free pass, then, well, it's time for the pizza-delivery shops of Harrisburg to brush up on their Arabic.