Gas drilling tax an issue in Pa. budget and governor’s race































Steve Esack reports for The Morning Call:

Politics has always been lurking in the shadows of Pennsylvania’s long, drawn-out budget fight and ever-present deficit. So it was just a matter of time before budgetary politics came into the light being cast by the looming 2018 election for governor.


It happened this month, when Republican gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Scott Wagner, R-York, told a gathering of York County residents that he urged Rep. Stan Saylor, R-York, to fight a gas drilling tax proposal because it could help Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf win a second term. Saylor is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, which is a key cog in the budget talks.
Wagner’s Sept. 14 comments were recorded by a state Democratic Party tracker who tails him on the campaign trail. Here’s part of what the audio picked up: “I went to school with Stan Saylor,” Wagner said. “And I told Stan at a meeting three weeks ago, he was sitting like fifteen feet away from me, I said ‘Stan you cannot let this severance tax get through … because if that happens the governor is going to get reelected. Stan, you take that to the bank.’”
A severance tax was one of the 2013 campaign promises Wolf made on his way to defeating an unpopular incumbent, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. Every year since being in office, Wolf has proposed a severance tax on natural gas drillers who already pay an impact fee on wells. Every year, the Republican-controlled Legislature has rebuffed him. But this year, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill that included higher sales taxes on utility bills and a severance tax that also carried regulatory changes for business. Wagner voted against the bills and the GOP-controlled House rejected them, too. Budget talks are ongoing.
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Lost weekend: How Trump’s time at his golf club in New Jersey hurt the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico


Abby Phillip, Ed O’Keefe, Nick Miroff and Damian Paletta report for The Washington Post:At first, the Trump administration seemed to be doing all the right things to respond to the disaster in Puerto Rico.
As Hurricane Maria made landfall on Wednesday, Sept. 20, there was a frenzy of activity publicly and privately. The next day, President Trump called local officials on the island, issued an emergency declaration and pledged that all federal resources would be directed to help.
But then for four days after that — as storm-ravaged Puerto Rico struggled for food and water amid the darkness of power outages — Trump and his top aides effectively went dark themselves.
Trump jetted to New Jersey that Thursday night to spend a long weekend at his private golf club there, save for a quick trip to Alabama for a political rally. Neither Trump nor any of his senior White House aides said a word publicly about the unfolding crisis.
Trump did hold a meeting at his golf club that Friday with half a dozen Cabinet officials — including acting Homeland Security secretary Elaine Duke, who oversees disaster response — but the gathering was to discuss his new travel ban, not the hurricane. Duke and Trump spoke briefly about Puerto Rico but did not talk again until Tuesday, an administration official said.
 Play Video 1:14
San Juan Mayor on desperate need for Puerto Rico aid: ‘Save us from dying’
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz desperate plea for aid in the wake of Hurricane Maria’s aftermath on Sept. 29. (Municipio Autónomo de San Juan)
Administration officials would not say whether the president spoke with any other top officials involved in the storm response while in Bedminster, N.J. He spent much of his time over those four days fixated on his escalating public feuds with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, with fellow Republicans in Congress and with the National Football League over protests during the national anthem.
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Overturned convictions loom over Senator Menendez trial

United States Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, is on trial on federal corruption charges in Newark. Recent court rulings overturning the convictions of former New York legislative leaders Dean G. Skelos and Sheldon Silver could play a role in Mr. Menendez’s case.Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Nick Corasaniti reports for The New York Times:

NEWARK — They were two of the most notable corruption convictions in recent political history, two entrenched New York power brokers seemingly brought to justice, their cases reverberating well beyond the wood-paneled walls of the Statehouse in Albany.

And in a span of less than three months, both convictions were overturned.

The legal turn of events in the cases against Sheldon Silver and Dean G. Skelos, the two former New York State legislative leaders, is almost certain to resonate in another corruption case unfolding just across the Hudson River in the federal courthouse here where the defendant is United States Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey.

What has given Mr. Silver and Mr. Skelos a reprieve was the ruling last year by the United States Supreme Court overturning the conviction of the former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell. In its unanimous decision, the court severely narrowed the definition of the kinds of official acts a politician must perform to be considered as having partaken in an illegal quid pro quo.

Making phone calls, arranging meetings or offering support on an issue no longer qualified as an “official act” as defined by the court. Instead, an act had to be more directly tied to an elected official’s office, such as offering a government contract or writing legislation.

In all three cases, the indictments were filed before the Supreme Court ruled in the McDonnell case and Mr. Skelos and Mr. Silver were convicted before the Supreme Court ruled.

Read the full story

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Climate change and energy to-do list for NJ’s next governor

More than two dozen state leaders have prepared a plan to help next administration get right to work cleaning up New Jersey’s environment

Tom Johnson reports for NJ Spotlight:

Polluting smokestack

Within his or her first 100 days, New Jersey’s next governor should undertake bold new steps to address climate change and significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, a diverse group of state leaders urged yesterday.
The actions include incorporating climate-change impacts into state planning and rulemaking — a difference that would for the first time monetize the social cost of carbon. It is a tool clean-energy advocates and health experts have long argued is needed to more accurately assess the cost of fossil fuels and benefits from carbon-free energy.
The far-reaching recommendations, embracing many of the steps detailed in a recent report, range from much-debated policies like rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to factoring climate-change impacts into state funding decisions.
Significantly, the list of leaders reaching a consensus on the suggested policies include former Govs. James Florio, a Democrat, and Thomas Kean, a Republican; Kathleen Ellis, a former gubernatorial advisor; and Dennis Bone, the former CEO of Verizon New Jersey. They are among two dozen dignitaries who signed a letter. Not all endorsed the actions suggested, but agreed the next governor should consider these steps.
“We are a group of individuals who share a similar commitment to advancing sound climate-change policy in New Jersey because we believe that doing so will contribute to global efforts to address changing climate conditions and will also bring public health, economic, environmental, community development and other benefits to the Garden State,’’ the letter said.

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A promising start to 2017 Monarch Butterfly migration



                                                                                                          Dale Gerhard, AC Press Photo


Michelle Brunetti Post writes for the Atlantic City Press:

CAPE MAY POINT — Her friends aren’t surprised when Rebecca Zerlin suddenly calls out “Monarch!” when they are driving with her.
She’s trained to spot the migrating butterflies from far away in a moving car.
The 25-year-old Cape May Bird Observatory intern drove slowly around a set 5-mile route from Higbee Beach through Cape May Point, clicking a hand-held counter every time she saw one of the orange-and-black butterflies.
Her total was 38 in 20 minutes.
The 20 mph drive and count is repeated every day at 9 a.m., noon and 3 p.m. from early September to late October and provides data for a census of monarchs passing through Cape May on their fall migration to Mexico.
Rebecca Zerlin and to monarch butterflies – Dale Gerhard photo
“You are here on a good day,” said Zerlin, of New Orleans. A wind from the northwest and sunny skies had brought lots of the migrants to the tip of Cape May, where they will put on as much weight as possible sipping nectar from wild sources and garden flowers before making the 17-mile trip across Delaware Bay to Cape Henlopen in Delaware.
The data aren’t in yet, but early anecdotal reports predict a strong showing for the beautiful insects that travel thousands of miles to huddle together in trees on protected mountainous land in the Reserva de la Biosfera Mariposa Monarca, about 62 miles northwest of Mexico City.                           
The butterflies’ many fans are hoping for a big population rebound this year.                                      
“At the very least, we can say that in Atlantic and Cape May counties lots of people have seen a lot of monarchs in the last generation before migration, which means lots of caterpillars now, and more are going to be headed (south),” said Mark Garland, director of the Monarch Monitoring Project run by CMBO, a part of New Jersey Audubon. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”
The species has declined about 90 percent nationally in the last 20 years, with particularly rough years in 2004 and 2013. Bad weather and dwindling supplies of milkweed for the caterpillars to feed on are generally blamed for the crashing population.
The data collected here, however, have shown ups and downs but, overall, a more stable population, said Garland, probably because milkweed is more plentiful along the East coast than in the Midwest, where changing farming practices have wiped it out.
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Yet another giant Iceberg breaks free of Antarctica



USA Today reports:


A massive iceberg broke off Antarctica on Saturday, the latest piece of ice to leave the continent.

The U.S. National Ice Center measured the iceberg at 71.5 square miles, about three times the size of Manhattan. Previous media reports had the iceberg at over 100 square miles.

The iceberg is now in the Amundsen Sea but will eventually drift into Pine Island Bay, notes the Ice Center. The iceberg shows signs of fracturing, meaning smaller pieces of ice may break off. The Ice Center said it’s not expected to cause any shipping hazards.

Chris Shuman of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center said the break is part of a natural process, but the frequency of the breaks is concerning. Forces such as wind, tides, currents and even collisions with other icebergs can create rifts in the ice. Warm water moving underneath the glaciers causes the ice to thin and perhaps accelerates the rifts.

“The fact that the calving events have gotten a little more frequent is not a good sign,” Shuman said. He adds there is no sign the trend is reversing.

The continuation, he said, means further ice losses to Antarctica and possible rising sea levels as a result.

The glacier, reports the Washington Postis a part of West Antarctica that already loses 45 billion tons of ice annually, contributing to sea level rises. Pine Island Glacier, Gizmodo reports, is the “fastest-melting glacier in Antarctica.”

The break comes two months after a 2,200 square-mile piece of ice detached from Antarctica in July. At nearly the size of Delaware, the iceberg was one of the largest ever recorded. In 2014, a 255-square-mile iceberg also calved from Antarctica.

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