Sinking in the polls as he continues to gut funding for education, the sick, the elderly and the poor, Gov. Tom Corbett, R-Drillers, is about to show his critics that there are some people he really does care about.

In fact, his concern for their welfare knows no limit.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC may seem an odd name for an individual, but the international energy behemoth is, indeed, a person, just like you and me. Ask Mitt Romney. Or the U.S. Supreme Court, any Wall Street gangbanker or cheerfully exploited tea party patriot eating Hamburger Helper minus the ground chuck as Rush Limbaugh earns $45 million a year explaining why it's all the Kenyan-in-Chief's fault.

Unlike you and me, the Netherlands-based Dutch Royal Shell posted $31 billion in profits last year, earning the distinction of second-most-profitable person on the planet. "Shelly" has never been in better financial shape, so naturally, Mr. Corbett wants to give her nearly $1.7 billion in Pennsylvania taxpayers' money.

Like a pimply freshman trying to woo a varsity cheerleader, Mr. Corbett is sparing no expense in romancing Shelly into locating a new petrochemical refinery about 30 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. The plant would process ethane in one of the most industry-abused regions in America about a 10-minute drive from my mother's house.

When I was in high school, it was revealed that the local Westinghouse Electric plant poisoned my community's drinking water. For years after, we drank bottled water provided by the company. My Uncle Don, my mother's brother, worked at Westinghouse and lived two minutes' drive from the plant. Westinghouse poisoned his water, too.

I loved my Uncle Don and still do. He was one of the warmest, funniest, fairest people I have ever known. He was also a Company Man, and might object to my referencing how Westinghouse poisoned me and mine, but Uncle Don is dead.

So I'm naturally all for a new petrochemical plant to open up on my mother's doorstep under a governor who never met an environmental regulation he didn't find frivolous.

Corbett a-courtin'

So taken by Shelly is Mr. Corbett that a note folded into a paper football might read:

Dear Shelly, My name is Tommy Corbett and I like you 1.7 million times more than anyone else! Do you like me too? Please check a box:

â Yes!

â No.

â Maybe so!

There are other suitors for Shelly's refinery, which Mr. Corbett says could create 7,000 new hires and as many as 20,000 jobs from here to eternity. BUYER BEWARE: These alleged jobs are dependent upon gas drilling, which despite Mr. Corbett's claims, has failed to produce many jobs for anyone not "visiting" from Texas, Louisiana or Oklahoma and collecting DUIs and protection-from-abuse orders like baseball cards.

West Virginia and Ohio are also gathering taxpayer-funded trinkets to attract Shelly's attention. She has "tentatively" agreed to go to the Big Dance with Pennsylvania, but the Corbett administration has warned it is too early to buy the corsage. She could back out at any time, just like the drillers Mr. Corbett stubbornly insists might abandon the Saudi Arabia of Natural Gas if we dare insult them with even a nominal severance tax.

Anything, for a price

Welcome to the new gilded age of political prostitution, where the world's wealthiest sirens dangle empty promises of mass job creation before desperate elected officials who will chase anything shiny so long as they can claim to be promoting prosperity for anyone other than themselves.

The dowry Mr. Corbett is offering Shelly includes a 15-year Keystone Opportunity Zone tax break (banking on the stunning past successes of KOZ) worth $66 million a year. It also promises infrastructure money from the "impact fee" that Mr. Corbett and his enablers tried to sell as a "responsible alternative to a severance tax," as if such a thing exists outside of Mr. Corbett's compromised mind.

Because Shelly can already count on paying zero taxes, industry analysts say she may sell the $66 million in annual tax credits to other corporate people, maximizing her profit from the free ride provided by Mr. Corbett at the expense of Pennsylvania taxpayers.

I swear I am not making any of this up.

Incredibly, there's more. The state is considering paying for the remediation of the Horsehead Corp. (not a made-up name) zinc smelter site - the largest in the country. It has been in business for decades and God knows how much it might cost to clean up its stables. Horsehead sold the property for the proposed refinery to Shelly. Horsehead is moving to North Carolina, taking 600 existing Pennsylvania jobs with it.

Still not making any of this up.

Or this: Five years ago, a now-defunct corporate person named Bionol Clearfield LLC built a $270 million ethanol processing plant in Clearfield County. At the time, it was hailed as a "transformative investment" in a region left for dead by the coal industry (sound familiar?).

Then-Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Cheesesteak, and the Republican-controlled Legislature backed the Clearfield deal, which included $27 million in state grants and loans and $67 million in tax-free bonds. It was pushed by Big Oil mainstay Getty Petroleum Marketing Inc., which promised to buy the ethanol to blend into its gasoline.

Bionol Clearfield - which created a total of 55 jobs - went belly-up last July. In April, the $270 million plant built with $27 million in direct state aid and $67 million in tax-free bonds was bought by an outfit called Pennsylvania Grain Processing for $9.35 million.

The new owners have announced plans to hire an additional 10 to 12 employees. Best case, that's 67 jobs created by a $270 million facility built with $27 million in taxpayer money and $67 million in tax-free bonds that eventually sold for less than $10 million.

What a bargain.

No reason to worry your pretty little taxpaying heads, Mr. Corbett assures. The deal with Shelly, if ever finalized, is a sure thing, just like the casinos that were going to cut our property taxes and the Marcellus Shale drilling that was guaranteed to employ tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians.

If you still trust Mr. Corbett to put the interests of Pennsylvanians above the desires of his corporate masters, you are among the few remaining apologists who will fill my inbox with condescending emails like: 'Kelly, you idiotic, America-hating, liberal pansy! Shelly is super hot, and Corbett has no choice but to pursue her job-creating curves! Why get hung up on the costs when Shelly is so hot?"

I'll answer in the form of a word problem that could appear on the SAT exam, which many Pennsylvania students will never take if Mr. Corbett continues his assault on education:

There is an insatiable monster that eats money and must be fed every day or it will devour the village. Every villager must contribute, except a special class who have the resources to charm the beast in other ways. The monster rewards them at the expense of the common villagers. Meanwhile, it gets hungrier by the day.

Who pays the difference?

Hint: Not Shelly.

CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, is no sheep, but knows when he's being fleeced. Do you? Contact the writer: kellysworld@timesshamrock.com, @cjkink on Twitter