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Screwing Philly
“Oh no they didn't” is Daniel Denvir's weekly blog post on last week's state politics. Philadelphians know precious little about the legislature or governor, but pretending that Tom Corbett doesn't exist will not make him go away. Follow on Twitter @DanielDenvir.
Pennsylvania's new law requiring voters to present ID at the polls is, critics say, a solution in search of a problem — and one that could needlessly suppress the votes of hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians, disproportionately impacting students and the poor, black and elderly (i.e. Democrats).
And so right-wing state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe was thrilled by Republican Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt's new report on voting irregularities, declaring that it “finally confirms what leading Democrat opponents of voter photo ID and those in the mainstream media have been denying all along. … Philadelphia is without question one of our nation’s most infested epicenters for rampant election fraud and corruption.”
On Monday, busloads of people from Philadelphia and from towns and cities throughout the Commonwealth descended on Harrisburg to take part in two separate protests against the policies of Gov. Tom Corbett and Republican legislators: for immigrant rights and against the complete elimination of cash welfare assistance.
Corbett is not a big fan of protests: police once again took the (previously) unprecedented step of closing off access to the Capitol Rotunda to some demonstrators. Earlier this year, they allegedly singled out people in wheelchairs protesting cuts to disability services and barred them taking the elevator to the governor's office.
Protest one: Juntos and other immigrant rights groups demonstrated against anti-immigrant legislation, much of it introduced by the very, very right-wing state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler), who City Paper described in a July 2011 profile as the “the gun-toting, gay-bashing, tea-partying state rep who's taking over Harrisburg.”
Proposals include denying undocumented immigrants public benefits, and, in a copycat of Arizona's controversial law, requiring local police to enforce federal immigration laws. One Metcalfe bill would require employers to use the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify database to check workers' Social Security numbers―an interesting call for the expansion of federal power coming from a politician with long-standing associations with the paranoid Obama-is-planning-on-rounding-up-dissidents-into-FEMA camps militiaman fringe right-wing.
More pain is on the way, Pennsylvania. Today, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett proposed a new budget that includes 30% in cuts to state-funded institutions like Temple and Penn State.
Here is the budget, and here is the speech.
That adds up to big money: a $42 million cut to Temple, and $64 million cut to Penn State. In 2011, Corbett proposed a 50% cut to higher education, which the legislature decreased to 19%: Temple tuition increased by $1,172, Penn State's by $712.
City Controller Alan Butkovitz today slammed Governor Tom Corbett's attack on food stamp recipients, joining other city leaders in warning that the new 'asset test' will harm low-income Philadelphians. Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare announced that on May 1, people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings or other assets will be barred from receiving food stamps. People over 60 would have a $3,250 cap.
“This decision is not only ‘mean-spirited’ but counter-productive in helping those on the lower economic rungs gain eventual long-term financial self-sufficiency,” Butkovitz wrote in a letter to Public Welfare Secretary Gary Alexander and Governor Corbett. “In a time when many are still struggling to recover from the near-collapse of our economy, both of these groups are especially vulnerable and in need of financial help to feed their families while trying to secure their future financial survival.”
The food stamp program feeds 1.8 million Pennsylvanians, including 439,245 in Philadelphia.
Butkovitz criticized Corbett for playing politics with hungry people's lives, saying the campaign for “eliminating food stamps for the poor and working is really a red herring aimed at masking an ideological agenda.”
As I noted yesterday, eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” is an old and recurrent refrain from those who seek to dismantle the country's social welfare system. But it's a cynical ruse with almost no basis in reality: 30 percent of those eligible for food stamps in Pennsylvania don't receive them. According to federal data, the Inquirer notes, Pennsylvania has a fraud rate of just one-tenth of 1 percent.
In the face of widespread and growing need alongside dwindling resources, the conservative answer is to change the subject and blame the poor.
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has announced a major assault on the food stamp program that feeds 1.8 million Pennsylvanians, including 439,245 in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare announced that on May 1, people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings or other assets will be barred from receiving food stamps. People over 60 would have a $3,250 cap.
As the Inquirer points out in a detailed look, the move to cut food stamps is way out of line with what other states are doing: “Pennsylvania plans to make the amount of food stamps that people receive contingent on the assets they possess — an unexpected move that bucks national trends and places the commonwealth among a minority of states.”
The trend during the Great Recession, with millions falling into poverty, has been to remove such barriers to assistance. Gov. Ed Rendell eliminated the state's asset test in 2008. Pennsylvania now joins 11 states with asset tests — including Indiana, Kansas, Missouri and South Dakota.
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