Poll Dancing

Apparently Dan has been bragging about the latest poll in which he is only down by 5%, with 40% of people undecided.  Just one problem - that poll doesn't exist.

[W]e think Onorato is making it up (unless it’s one of his campaign’s internal polls, in which case his pollsters are making it up). We checked out RealClearPolitics, whose average of all polling shows Corbett up 9.3 percent and not a single poll showing Onorato anywhere near “five points down.”


...

Onorato also claimed 40 percent of voters are still undecided. Except. The latest poll, by Rasmussen, says that number’s more like 8 percent.

Now, for those of us who live in Allegheny County, this is nothing new.  Dan habitually pulls numbers either out of thin air, and those numbers are always on his side.  Whether it be the $390 million subway tunnel (actual cost: $529 million), the Port Authority-saving 10% drink tax (we have a surplus?  Make it a 7% drink tax! Oops... Port Authority is broke again.  Maybe a sales tax?)  or the "hundreds of thousands" of Shale jobs that total in Dan's own later statement is just 80,000, Dan sells policy like he would sell a used car.  There is always a catch, and often that catch is "bad numbers".

Should we be surprised that his next fundraiser is with Bill Clinton and Ed Rendell, two men whose relationship with the truth can politely be described as "rocky"?

The Company One Keeps

Dan Onorato has a fundraiser next week, and he is trotting out the big guns.

Bill Clinton AND Ed Rendell?  I would say that Dan is the meat in a bullsh** sandwich, except that calling those to greaseballs the bread is an insult to bakers.  This is more like the KFC Double Down "Sandwich" - a cheese covered slice of soggy bacon mashed between two giant greaseballs, virtually guaranteed to give you heartburn, indigestion, and buyers remorse.

Yum!

1. Dan's Horrible Gas Problem

I thought about starting off with some background, but decided rather than talk about how Dan Onorato has already screwed up Allegheny County - drink taxes, PAT shutdowns, unfunded pension funds, gold-plated subway tunnels - I would instead lead off with an issue that would affect all Pennsylvanians - Dan's little problem with "natural gas".

If you have not seen the documentary "Gasland" yet, go see it.  (And then go see if you can light your sink on fire, because although you may not want to drink it, it looks like it would be awesome to see in person.)  Seen it?  Great.  Now you have a background on the Marcellus Shale issue.  Our fair commonwealth apparently sits on top of one of the largest collections of dinosaur farts in the country, and the companies that specialize in extracting these farts are interested in setting up shop here. 

A reasonable person might suspect that, running as a Democrat and seeing a documentary about pyrotechnic plumbing, Dan would take the strong environmental approach and oppose it.   That person would be wrong.  Those of us in Allegheny County know, Dan Onorato never passes up an opportunity to pass a new tax.

Marcellus Shale has become the golden-egg laying goose for Dan.  He wants to use it to fund everything from college educations to art museums.  He even wants to use it to fund the DEP, the organization responsible for regulating and overseeing the environmental performance of this industry itself.

Does this sound a little too cozy for anyone?  Would you voluntarily pull the plug on the industry that pays your bills?  If you watch the film, you see our esteemed DEP Secretary John Hanger, who already appears to be too close for comfort with an industry that has two dinosaur fart well explosions in the state just in the last 2 months. 

Can we really expect Dan Onorato to replace Mr. Hanger?