Apparently John Hanger, former Secretary of the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection under Gov. Ed Rendell, wants to tax the successful Marcellus drilling industry in his state into being far less successful. He’ll do just that if he wins his bid to become PA’s next governor. The Washington, PA Oberver-Reporter supports his nutty philosophy as well. The “looking-through-the-wrong-end-of-the-telescope” argument Hanger and other liberal Democrats try to make is that PA is leaving money on the table that could be used to fund a plethora of social programs (programs that create voters to keep Dems in office). Because PA doesn’t tax the drilling industry as much as Texas and other drilling states by using a severance tax, PA is somehow behind the Eight Ball. There’s just one problem with that argument:
