Wealthy GOP Donor: Env. Regulators "Vindictive"; "Out Of Control" - And In PA, He's Now Their Boss

[hatrack]

For years C. Alan Walker, a coal industry mogul and wealthy donor to Pennsylvania's Republican Party, clashed with environmental officials who tried to regulate his companies. He described them as "vindictive," "out of control" and "the most dangerous thing" affecting the country's welfare. In 1981 Walker even argued that the state should let someone from industry influence how environmental regulations were enforced.

Now, some 30 years later, Walker himself has been given exactly that role by the state's new Republican governor, Tom Corbett, who has accepted nearly $184,000 in political donations from Walker since 2004.

In January Corbett appointed Walker <2> acting secretary for the state's Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED). In March he gave him authority to expedite and influence permits at any state agency, including the Department of Environmental Protection, which regulates drilling in the Marcellus Shale, one of the nation's most important natural gas fields. Walker was also appointed to the state's Marcellus Shale Commission, a multi-stakeholder group that will advise the state in developing the shale. The goal, Corbett has said, is to "make Pennsylvania the Texas of the natural gas boom" and "create jobs, not votes."

EDIT

Ed. - Oh, and he's a bald-faced liar, too!

He has also defended his coal companies' environmental record. "As long as I have run those companies, not one gallon of polluted water went into a Commonwealth stream—period," he is quoted as saying in the March 24 edition of the Patriot News, a newspaper in central Pennsylvania. "I wouldn't want to live in the state of Pennsylvania if it had." However, a review of court documents, state records, and of Walker's own statements since the late 1970s revealed at least 15 cases in which Walker's businesses polluted the state's waterways.

EDIT

http://www.propublica.org/article/pas-new-jobs-czar-has-anti-regulatory-history

[phantom power]

1. Is this "out of control" in the new tea-bagging sense of "they exist?"

[pscot]

2. How fracked up is that?

A thug with a badge.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

3. friends of the Kochtopus I presume? n/t

[AlinPA]

4. PA is really screwed now, republicans control State Senate and House with a teabagger

governor. Corbett is crazed, and had his war against education going a few weeks after his inauguration.