Archive for April, 2009
Wagner jockeying for Governor
Jack Wagner has made an art out of doing little as our Commonwealth’s Auditor General. Wagner has outsourced his job to newspapers to track down the fraud and waste that has run rampant during Gov. Ed Rendell’s two terms. Whether it has been PHEAA wasting tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on junkets and conventions at plush resorts or the current bonus scandal that is unfolding in Harrisburg, Jack Wagner has turned the other cheek…
Full StoryHe sure sounds like he’s running
On Friday I talked to Corey O’Brien, the Lackawanna County Commissioner who’s considering a primary challenge to Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11), in part because of Kanjorski’s vote against the stimulus package.
Reports, including
Full StoryRomney: Specter should make opposition to card-check ‘abundantly clear’
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney said this morning that Senator Arlen Specter’s recent opposition to “card-check” legislation should be long term, and not a position to be reconsidered when the political winds change.
After voting in favor of President Obama’s stimulus package, Specter assuaged some of the growing conservative outrage against him by coming out against the Employee Free Choice Act last month. But he also acknowledged that he would be willing to reconsider his…
Full StoryThat Specter-Toomey ad: Point by point
In a clear sign of the high stakes of Pat Toomey’s primary challenge to Specter, the Senator launched this Full Story
Thing of the Week, Volume 2
This week, we had a few nominees for “Thing of the Week”…
1. In the category of person, Pat Toomey. For a guy who is not supposed to be the wildly confused soap=opera candidate, he sure seems to be fitting that mold. I would not want this job, and I’d be bad at it… yet up by 21 points. Okay, I guess.
2. For some reason, Josh Shapiro’s cell phone bill seems to be a…
Full StoryPA Demographics: growth, contraction, the economy, and the election.
Tyler Cowen recently pulled a fact out of the book pAccording to the a href="http://www.census.gov/" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.census.gov']);return TrackClick("http%3A%2F%2Fwww.census.gov%2F','Census')" target="_blank"Census/a, Philadelphia has lost about a quarter of its size, or roughly half a million people, and Pittsburgh has fared worse, losing at least half its size or at least 300,000 people. The state as a whole has gained 2 million people in this time however./p
pThe Census further estimates that Pennsylvania will gain around 300,000 people for the 2010 census, and one can probably assume that the two cities will continue their shrinking in size./p
pThe effects on the economy are obvious. The cities are becoming less important, and as a whole Pemsylvania is growing slower than the rest of the nation, much like the rest of the mid-Atlantic. While this may be good for income per capita, it is bad for gross state capita./p
pFor the upcoming election, this means that successful candidates will increasingly campaign outside of the cities, courting voters that lean further right than city-dwellers./p
pThe capper: In 2010, the state is projected to a href="http://politicsnepa.blogspot.com/2008/12/2010-census.html" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://politicsnepa.blogspot.com']);return TrackClick("http%3A%2F%2Fpoliticsnepa.blogspot.com%2F2008%2F12%2F2010-census.html','lose')" target="_blank">lose one seat in Congress.
If James Carville’s famous adage—Pennsylvania is like Alabama, with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on opposite ends—is true, that may mean in the future that the Alabama part is growing.
Lessons from the Flyers
The kids and I attended the Flyers’ funeral, I mean, hockey game Saturday afternoon, at which the Orange Crush were eliminated 5-3 by the cross-state Pittsburgh Penguins. Not a happy occasion, to be sure, but one that provided several lessons for Keystone politics in the next cycle. Here are a few:
1. Never give up. The Penguins were down 3-0 but came back. The Flyers, for their part, won Game 5 in Pittsburgh, which no…
Full StoryBig names aided Torsella’s first fundraising haul
Gov. Ed Rendell is on the list. So is Susan Rice, the Ambassador to the United Nations. Ditto Rhonda Cohen, the wife of Comcast executive and political bigwig David Cohen. Big-money names from Philly like Ken Jarin, Arthur Makadon and Peter Buttenweiser all make appearances. Restaurateur Stephen Starr is thrown in for good measure.
All gave money to Democrat Joe Torsella’s nascent Senate campaign.
Torsella has never held elected…
Full StoryThe First Read — April 27, 2009
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Big names aided Torsella’s first fundraising haul
Gov. Ed Rendell is on the list. So is Susan Rice, the Ambassador to the United Nations. Ditto Rhonda Cohen, the wife of Comcast executive and political…
