I was on jury duty yesterday, but before I left the house, I caught this Will Bunch piece on Attytood and it made me really, really angry -- and afraid for my state of Pennsylvania. Because the corrupt new Republican governor Tom Corbett is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the natural gas industry, and wants to make Pennsylvania the only state that doesn't even tax these polluters enough to cover the damage.
Then I came home and found that Keith Olbermann picked up the story, too:
You know where Karl Rove spent the day after the all-important mid-term election? Here in the state of Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh to be exact -- gnawing on steak and potatoes and running a political victory lap with the fracking polluters who can now befowl our state's water supply with impugnity for the next couple of years, aided in no small part by the $38 million in mostly secret donations from large corporations that was donated to Rove's American Crossroads outfit that ran attack ads smearing congressional candidateswho support sensible environmental laws.
In celebrating Tueaday's GOP win with the Marcellus Shale frackers, Rove showed himself a man who not only knows where his cow flesh is seared but where his bread is buttered.
Here's what Rove told them:
Rove said a new Republican House of Representatives supportive of the energy industry "sure as heck" would not pass climate-change legislation that the outgoing Democratic Congress had been unable to pass.
"Climate is gone," said Rove, the keynote speaker on the opening day of a two-day shale-gas conference sponsored by Hart Energy Publishing L.L.P. And Rove told the trade show, "I don't think you need to worry" the new Congress will consider proposed legislation to put the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing under federal rather than state regulation.
The procedure, known as "fracking," is responsible for the dramatic growth of shale-gas drilling in formations such as Pennsylvania's vast Marcellus Shale.
And really, rape and pillage of the environment, the working class and the Social Security trust fund is what this election was all about -- even though the Republican campaign ads never, ever mentioned any of those issues.
That's because whenever Republicans admit their real agenda, the voters soundly reject them. This election is no different.