Get fracking informed!

A Daily News poll yesterday showed nearly half of the respondents had "No fracking clue" what this technology to extract natural gas is about, much less knowing about the controversy Earth to Philly has already touched on in posts such as Drilling Pennsylvania for Dollars and What the Frack? So the Editorial Board, with Ben Waxman of It's Our Money, put together a whole package that should be required reading for every PA taxpayer. Hopefully, once armed with the facts of this controversy you may be moved to take action. Here's the opening of Waxman's main piece.

ONE OF THE big questions this fall on the state's legislative agenda is how much of a tax will be imposed on companies extracting gas from the Marcellus Shale formation.

The legislature failed to impose a tax last year, but did authorize a tax. The amount of the tax will be determined in the fall.

It's worth asking why such a tax failed - at a time when the state was facing a $3.2 billion budget shortfall, and when every other state with gas drilling imposes an extraction tax - especially since the answer will likely have a big impact on this year's debate over how much to tax.

Opponents of the tax say that they were hesitant to impose a tax on a fledgling industry before it got established in the state.

That's one argument. Another is that the natural gas industry poured so much money into lawmakers' campaign accounts that it was able to buy favorable legislation from state lawmakers. It did this out of the public eye, yet perfectly legally. And thanks to loopholes in the law, it's likely to do it again.

Read the whole thing here.

And see also: Editorial: Gas and money don't mix || Who gets the gas-industry donations || Take action on Marcellus Shale tax vote