From the March 17 Philadelphia Daily News:

It hasn’t gone unnoticed to Pennsylvanians that the natural-gas industry is drilling the Marcellus Shale without paying taxes, while Gov. Corbett has been drilling into education and Medicaid. According to a Daily News/Franklin & Marshall College Poll, Pennsylvanians strongly oppose Corbett’s education and Medicaid cuts. Meanwhile, they favor taxing the natural-gas industry, and smokeless tobacco and cigars, and selling the state-owned liquor stores to private companies… The poll may fall on deaf ears, though. “While he was running for governor, Tom Corbett did not comment on polls,” said Corbett spokesman Kevin Harley. “As governor, he will be governing on policy, not polls.”

I believe Harley. The new crop of Republican governors aren’t looking at polls or listening to constituents. They’ll worry about that stuff a few years from now at election time. For now they’ll remain on their knees, servicing their corporate johns, coming up for air only long enough to announce the appointment of another corrupt hack to further undermine public safety.

PA’s governor, who accepted about $1 million in campaign contributions from drilling interests, made it clear from the get-go that it’s open season on the environment — most alarmingly, on PA’s fresh water supply, which is being polluted by fracking, the process through which drillers get to natural gas.

Corbett defends his blatantly submissive relationship with big business by claiming his goal is to create jobs, as if jobs creation and environmental protection are mutually exclusive.

When labor union-hating Republicans talk about creating jobs, they always mean creating tax breaks for their corporate masters, and more opportunities to overturn laws that were drafted to protect us from these people.