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Corbett transfers tax money to private interests
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Tom Corbett's accomplishments and initiatives as governor reveal his philosophy with respect to good middle-class Pennsylvania jobs.
On the one hand, he has committed $1.5 billion of Pennsylvania tax revenue to a European company to create 300 to 500 permanent jobs and thousands of construction jobs at a cracking plant located where it is likely to draw as many employees from West Virginia and Ohio as from Pennsylvania. Those revenues could have been used to improve our crumpling infrastructure.
Mr. Corbett has prohibited a natural-gas extraction tax and surrendered the autonomy of local governments and the viability of our environment to the shale-gas industry, which has created thousands of drilling jobs many of which go to out-of-state workers.
On the other hand, he seeks to privatize both the state liquor-store system and lottery at the expense of thousands of good middle-class jobs. In exchange, businesses, not necessarily in Pennsylvania, will reap profits employing thousands of low-wage employees at liquor stores, while the potential lottery operator isn't even in the United States.
Mr. Corbett's education policy transfers state funds from the neediest school districts to private schools, resulting in layoffs of middle-class school employees. Such private schools are not held accountable for student achievement or for the employment standards of their employees.
Actually, Mr. Corbett does not have a policy on middle-class Pennsylvania jobs. Whether they are created or destroyed is incidental to what appears to be his sole guiding political philosophy: the massive transference of taxpayers' money to private enterprises.
MICHAEL JOYCE
Mt. Lebanon
First Published December 10, 2012 12:00 am
