New York: We'd Rather Tax Than Drill !

Example #762 of how liberals would rather starve a society to death than rethink one of their core beliefs, no matter how much it flies in the face of reality...

Dateline: New York. Teetering on financial ruin due to choking taxation and regulation, a recently discovered natural gas reserve is being ignored, because to access it would involve....drilling:

The Marcellus Shale is a massive natural-gas reservoir extending from southern New York through western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. It is thought to be the largest natural-gas reservoir in America.
The SUNY-Fredonia geologist who broke the news of this huge reserve last year recently estimated it could hold 1,300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- more than 10 times what Texas's Barnett Shale contains. The Marcellus might hold 65 years' worth of US natural-gas needs.

Paterson last year signed a bill to streamline the permitting process for gas drilling -- but threw a wrench in the mix by insisting on a one-year moratorium while his team studied drilling's environmental impact.
The one-year deadline came and went last month, but drilling remains on hold. Now Paterson's Department of Environmental Conservation says it won't release any findings until the fall.

Imagine what a windfall this would be for the long-suffering people of New York state. But apparently, they'll never have an opportunity to exploit this opportunity due to the rigid intolerance of their liberal leadership and the political connections of environmental activists such as Robert Kennedy Jr.'s "Riverkeeper" organization, among others....

It's kind of like a parent denying a poor child grandpa's inheritance money because "he made his fortune in oil, and we're too green to accept his dirty money".

One would think the parents to be cruel, or insane, or maybe both. But certainly both can be said of New York's liberal leadership, who would rather tax businesses until they break and residents until they flee, than offer their citizens a bounty of riches found under a rock in their backyard...