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State Politics
“Oh no they didn't” is Daniel Denvir's weekly blog post on last week's moments in state politics. Philadelphians know precious little about the legislature or governor, though capitol lawmakers have enormous power over our schools, the care of our poor, and whether or not you can access a safe abortion. Are you an advocate, concerned citizen, legislator or aide with something to say? Email daniel.denvir@citypaper.net for tips or comments. Follow him on Twitter @DanielDenvir.
Budget negotiations continue. Democrats cut out—at least for now.
Legislative Republicans continue their negotiations with Gov. Tom Corbett over the budget, due June 30: Corbett wants big cuts to education and programs for the poor and disabled, GOP legislators want fewer.
“Oh no they didn't” is Daniel Denvir's new weekly blog post on last week's moments in state politics. Philadelphians know precious little about the legislature or governor, though capitol lawmakers have enormous power over our schools, the care of our poor, and whether or not you can access a safe abortion. Are you an advocate, concerned citizen, legislator or aide with something to say? Email daniel.denvir@citypaper.net for tips or comments. Follow him on Twitter @DanielDenvir.
SRC goes around Philly legislators, lobbies Republicans for more power to crush unions
The state-controlled School Reform Commission, which has run Philadelphia schools since 2001, continues to receive loads of criticism for its plan to dismantle the city's public school system and potentially privatize its management, while possibly outsourcing all blue-collar work and securing major concessions from teachers. (Whew! see “Who's Killing Philly Public Schools?” for details)
“The SRC,” writes Inquirer education reporter Kristen Graham, “has long maintained in public that never-used powers written into the 2001 state takeover legislation gave it sufficient authority to impose terms on unions.”
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.
A mysterious third-party group that supports school vouchers, which use taxpayer dollars to fund private and religious school tuition, has sent out a second round of mailers attacking West Philadelphia State Rep. James Roebuck.
The first mailer didn't mention vouchers by name, saying only that Roebuck, who opposes vouchers, "blocked parents from choosing which school is best for their children.”
The most recent attack is even more oblique—and unquestionably misleading. The mailer blames Roebuck for the controversies surrounding former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman's ruinous tenure, high dropout rates, overcrowded classrooms, school violence and, once again, for the enrollment cap at the prestigious and University of Pennsylvania-funded Penn Alexander public school.
If you think that's bizarre, try this last accusation: Roebuck is blamed for what appears to be widespread cheating on standardized tests at Philadelphia schools. Many observers, however, blame the cheating on the very same school “reform” movement that is financing the pro-voucher campaign, which has pushed for high-stakes standardized tests to play an increasingly important role in teacher evaluation and even a school's very survival.
A flyer attacking State Rep. James Roebuck for opposing school vouchers is hitting mailboxes throughout his West Philadelphia district.
“James Roebuck blocked kids from attending the schools of their choice,” is printed in big red letters above an unflattering photo of Roebuck with his mouth hanging open.
Perplexingly, the mailer also blames Roebuck, who has represented the 188th District since 1985, for the enrollment cap at the prestigious and University of Pennsylvania-supported Penn Alexander public school.
"It's obviously a really slanted piece. I don't support vouchers. I do support school choice," says Roebuck. "What we need to do is open up more options for students within the existing public school system so we don't divert money out of the system to the benefit of some kids and not the many."
You might think the political universe now stands upon its head: the Commonwealth Foundation, a potent conservative force in Pennsylvania politics, is criticizing a labor union for being too tough on crime.
Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, amidst a growing nationwide movement of conservatives (under the banner “Right on Crime”) embracing criminal justice reform, has proposed reducing the state's prison population. And a labor union representing prison guards is, as Commonwealth phrases it, “fear-mongering” over a proposal to—get this—simply speed the release of people already approved to be released on parole.
“The only way it can be done is they’re going to have to cut people loose that shouldn’t be cut loose,” Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association's Roy Pinto told the Patriot-News.
Commonwealth unleashed a deserved―though perhaps, as I will explore below, exaggerated―barrage of criticism: “While bad policies may have led to the explosion in state prison populations,” wrote Commonwealth's Katrina Currie, “it may be the unions that pose the biggest challenge in getting the inmate numbers down.”
The criticism was echoed one week later by the conservative Pittsburgh Tribune: “Corbett's plan to control escalating state prison costs through better efficiencies in the state Department of Corrections has met with predictable fear-mongering from the head of the prison guards' union.... Leave it to the union mentality to advance a straw-man argument against commonsense solutions.”
The legislature is moving to pass the orwellianly titled "Women's Right to Know Act," which would, as my editor Samantha Melamed notes, “require ultrasounds before abortions and then give women 'the right' to look at them.”
Doctors would also be required to invite women to listen to the fetal heartbeat.
“Ultrasounds,” says bill sponsor State Rep. Kathy Rapp, “dispel the myth that abortion is only about removing a ‘clump of cells’ and that information in itself is absolutely critical to every mother’s ability to make a fully informed decision.”
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.
Robert W. Patterson was paid $104,470 a year to advise the state's Department of Public Welfare (DPW). Patterson, the Inquirer discovered, also moonlighted as an editor of a journal called The Family in America published by “an Illinois-based research center that advocates for the 'natural human family...established by the Creator.'”
Patterson has now resigned thanks to what the Inquirer's Angela Couloumbis discovered about his weird and creepy opinions—including the view that women receive chemical health benefits from semen and so shouldn't use contraception. The ideal place for a woman to receive their routine dose of salubrious semen, Patterson believed, was in the home—from her faithful, and virile, lawful husband.
Patterson also holds less controversial, but perhaps more damaging, conservative commonsense opinions about social welfare programs: he thinks they are bad for poor people and exacerbate their cultural pathologies—the same sort of thinking undergirding Corbett's attack on food stamp beneficiaries (which the Inquirer broke) and Medicaid recipients (the latter news, 88,000 Pennsylvania children losing Medicaid coverage, is another solid Inquirer investigation):
In the journal, Patterson has weighed in on everything from what he called "misguided" programs that grew out of the 1960s War on Poverty - programs now administered by DPW - to what he described as a woman's ideal role in society: married and at home raising children.
For instance, he wrote about research that he said showed that if women wanted to find "Mr. Right," they should shun birth control pills; and if they wanted to improve their mood, they should not insist that their men wear condoms lest they miss out on beneficial chemicals found in semen.”
Indeed, he called the social welfare programs of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society “more of a quagmire than Vietnam ever was.
I won't even venture a comment on that one. But I will say this: congrats to the Inquirer on some great state politics reporting.
Addendum: A friend noted that there is research on the semen thing, which I'm not going to wade into. But my point, of course, is that it's wrongheaded to use this research to clobber gays and contraception.
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.
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