Democrats Try to Demonize PJM Elec. Grid for THEIR Failed Policies
Democrat politicians, like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, are predictable. Shapiro, Murphy, and other Dem governors in the PJM Interconnection electric grid region, which includes all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C., have ratcheted up their rhetoric blaming PJM for higher electricity prices, even though it is their own policies that are driving electric prices higher! Always blame someone else for your shortcomings; that’s their motto. Read More “Democrats Try to Demonize PJM Elec. Grid for THEIR Failed Policies”
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to limited government, free markets, and federalism. Comprised of nearly one-quarter of the country’s state legislators and stakeholders from across the policy spectrum, ALEC members represent more than 60 million Americans and provide jobs to more than 30 million people in the United States. Even though Pennsylvania is a natural gas haven, Pennsylvania ranks only 32nd in energy affordability according to ALEC’s recently-released Energy Affordability 2025 report (full copy below). ALEC says PA’s existing policies under Gov. Josh Shapiro, meant to wean the state off fossil fuels, have made affordability WORSE. 
Last week, Pennsylvania State Senator Gene Yaw (Lycoming County), chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, sounded the alarm for all Pennsylvanians. Yaw said, “We are going to have to suffer some hardships. Meaning, we probably are going to have some blackouts, brownouts.” Why would PA, an electricity exporter, experience blackouts? The plain, simple, and short answer is because of Governor Josh Shapiro’s idiotic energy policies. 
After the shocking news in 2022 that then-U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (from West Virginia) had sold out his state and the entire country by agreeing to support the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) bill, the details began to come out about just how bad the bill (now law) really is for the oil and gas industry. First and foremost, it slapped a new methane tax on oil and gas activities (see 
Last December, MDN told you that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection could find $600,000 to blow on “environmental justice” nonsense, but the very next day, it cried poverty that there’s not enough money in the budget to fund the Oil and Gas Regulatory Program (see 
In 2022, after the shocking news that U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (from West Virginia) had sold out his state and the entire country by agreeing to support the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) bill, the details began to come out about just how bad the bill really is for the oil and gas industry. First and foremost, it slaps a new tax on oil and gas activities (see 
In December, Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO), the agency charged with providing revenue projections along with impartial and objective analysis of fiscal, economic, and budgetary issues for the citizens and legislature of Pennsylvania, provided its best guess as to how much revenue the PA impact fee (i.e., severance tax) will generate from shale wells drilled or flowing in 2024 (see 
Pennsylvania mineral rights owners (i.e., landowners) now have a well-deserved tax break thanks to a bill passed by the PA legislature and signed into law last summer (see 
Not only did New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an extremist liberal, sign a ban on using carbon dioxide to frack wells in the state at the last minute before the end of the current legislative session (see 
Pennsylvania assesses an impact fee (PA’s version of a severance tax) on shale drillers, raising revenues that are paid to local municipalities and the black hole of Harrisburg politicians. Yesterday, the PA Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) issued an estimate for how much the impact fee will raise this year, which will be distributed next year. The IFO says it thinks, based on the price of low natural gas and the number of new and existing wells, that PA will generate $163.8 million from the impact fee in 2024, a decrease of $15.8 million (8.8%) from 2023. Looking back further, the price is down $115.1 million (41%) from 2022. Why did impact fee revenues drop so dramatically over the past two years?