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Pennsylvania is one of the "Terrible Ten" states with the most regressive tax structures nationwide, hitting the poor hardest while taking the least from the rich, according to a new report from the liberal Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC) and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
"No one would deliberately design a tax system where low-income working families pay the greatest share of their income in taxes, but that is exactly the type of upside-down tax system we have in Pennsylvania,” according to a release from PBPC director Sharon Ward.
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[updated]
Negotations between the union representing Inquirer and Daily News reporters and the owners of Interstate General Media have gotten nasty pretty fast: the union, in an email to members, accuses management of demanding a "poison pill" that would undermine seniority, even after the union had proposed what they describe as significant financial concessions via a buyout package.
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Workers and labor advocates flanked City Council President Darrell Clarke and Councilman Bill Greenlee this morning to support a bill mandating paid-sick leave for workers. Greenlee thinks he has better odds than in 2011, when Mayor Michael Nutter vetoed legislation passed by council.
A representative of Comcast, who has clocked serious time lobbying against the bill, was spotted at the press conference. Greenlee says that he is willing to dialog with business leaders, who contend that the bill will drive up costs.
"But one thing we're not going to do is not do this bill," he said.
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The AIDS advocacy group ACT UP Philadelphia disrupted a Liberty Bell speech by Gov. Tom Corbett today, according to activists. (It doesn't appear as though Corbett's visit was much publicized in advance. He is usually greeted by protesters whenever he visits the city.) The group is demanding that Corbett restore General Assistance cash welfare to the state's poor and disabled. In November, Project HOME told City Paper that they had seen an influx of people requiring shelter, food and services since Corbett and legislative Republicans cut the $205 per month benefit.
In March, CP profiled the city's recovery houses for recovering drug addicts, which heavily depended on General Assistance checks.
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"Interstate General Media today threatened to liquidate or sell the assets of the company" on January 18 "if it does not reach tentative agreements with all of its unions, including the Newspaper Guild," according to a Guild email today to members.
The owners also announced a new round of buyouts, even as they continue to hire young new reporters. The new owners, led by parking magnate Lewis Katz and South Jersey Democratic political boss George Norcross, had already sent newsroom morale into the tank last October with a flurry of unpleasant reassignments widely perceived to be an effort to push some older reporters to take a buyout.
Though other unions's contracts expired in October 2012, the Guild's is in force until October 13. Management is not willing to wait. Last summer, the Guild says the owners asked for voluntary pay cuts before the contracts was up--$8 million in wages and benefit givebacks.
The letter notes that when the new owners "acquired the company in April, Interstate General Media was well aware that the Newspaper Guild had a contract in place through October 2013. It was also at this time that owners George Norcross and Lewis Katz both stressed how much the newspapers meant to them and how they were in this business for the long haul."
The Guild letter also lands a blow on Norcross, noting that "while bullying and scare tactics might be have helped at least one of the owners to make his millions, that's a horrible way for a company responsible for publishing newspapers vital to the public trust, to operate."
I'll be writing a more about this. People in the newsroom with something to say can email me at daniel.denvir@citypaper.net.
Here's the full letter:
Dear Guild member,
Interstate General Media today threatened to liquidate or sell the assets the company, which owns the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com, as of January 18, 2013 if it does not reach tentative agreements with all of its unions, including the Newspaper Guild.
As you know, our contract expires in October 2013 while the other ten union contracts expired in October 2012.
Last summer, IGM ownership asked that the Guild volunteer to take pay cuts a year ahead of our contract expiration in order to help the company which was hemorrhaging money. The company seeks to cut $8 million out of our wages and benefits.
While bargaining with the other unions, the company shamefully, and repeatedly assured the other groups that the Guild would be opening its contract and giving concessions at this time. Nice of them to have such confidence that we simply couldn't wait to give up our pay.
When they acquired the company in April, Interstate General Media was well aware that the Newspaper Guild had a contract in place through October 2013. It was also at this time that owners George Norcross and Lewis Katz both stressed how much the newspapers meant to them and how they were in this business for the long haul. We will not be held out as scapegoats, to be blamed for not bargaining a new agreement while we have one standing. The owners are smart businessmen who do not leap into business deals or investments blindly.
While bullying and scare tactics might be have helped at least one of the owners to make his millions, that's a horrible way for a company responsible for publishing newspapers vital to the public trust, to operate.
As an example of the kind of fiscal foolishness we are dealing with, at the same time it threatens us and claims to be on the verge of liquidation, Interstate General Media is also issuing a buyout program today, using money it claims not to have to get our members to leave.
The company also continues to hire.
We are unwilling to once again bail out an ownership group without full access to the company's books and a realistic discussion of future revenue plans.
In solidarity,
Dan Gross, President,
Bill Ross, Executive Director, and the Executive Board of the Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America Local 38010
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Paleoconservative conspiracist radio host Alex Jones has, well, captured the nation's imagination after yelling at Piers Morgan that "1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!"
Pennsylvania's leading right-wing figure, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, appeared on Jones' show in 2010.
Notably, Metcalfe failed to respond to Jones' assertion that "Israeli art students" were involved in the 9/11 attacks and then in Nevada undertaking surveillance against the National Security Agency. Metcalfe, as I discussed in my 2012 profile, has led the charge to dismantle gun control and implement voter ID in this state. And he has ties to the far right and white supremacists.
Metcalfe's agenda has made him a number of friends and fans on the political fringe. In October 2010, he decided to appear on the radio show of popular conspiracist Alex Jones, who believes that 9/11 was an "inside job"; who promotes the idea that Obama and a secret global cabal of bankers is going to round up Americans in FEMA-operated concentration camps before setting into motion a eugenics plan that will wipe out 80 percent of the human population via poisoned food; and who claims to "have the government documents where they said they're going to encourage homosexuality with chemicals so that people don't have children."
During his appearance, Metcalfe did not contest Jones' statement that "federal Homeland Security is fully infiltrated" by the Israeli government and that "Israeli art students" involved in the 9/11 attacks were now in Nevada undertaking surveillance against the National Security Agency. Instead, Metcalfe responded that Obama and other political enemies "embrace these socialist leftist policies of the Eastern Bloc nations that when I was in the military, we were prepared to go to war against during the Cold War."
Watch the Jones-Metcalfe interview here:
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*correction/update below*
People throughout West Philadelphia were devastated to watch Elena's Soul Lounge, a reputedly century-old meeting place for drinks, music and food drawing people from both east and west of Cedar Park, burn to the ground on Christmas Eve. What happened later that week, however, is confounding: The demolition crew taking apart Elena's severely damaged the two neighboring businesses, Gary's Nails and the new-but-beloved Cedar Park Cafe, affectionately known to some as "breakfast-lunch."
The fire that destroyed Elena's had left both businesses largely intact; the cafe even opened the next day. Today, Gary's and Cedar Park Cafe's roofs are caved in, and orange violation notices from the Department of Licenses and Inspections are pasted to their facades: they have 30 days, as of Dec. 28, to repair or demolish their buildings.
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City Commissioner Stephanie Singer took down meeting transcripts from her personal website after Deputy Commissioner and legal adviser Fred Voight told her it would violate a city contract with Class Act Reporting Agency, LLC. The public must pay Class Act $4 per page to access the transcripts.
"If the public doesn't want to pay for it, then they should go to the Commissioners' meeting," says Ralph DiFronzo, who identified himself as Class Act's office manager. (The company, which boasts a laundry list of union and city contracts and whose website displays photos of former Mayor John Street and ex-City Councilman Frank Rizzo Jr., says that it is "woman-owned"--by Rose Tamburri and Clarissa DiFronzo.)
Ralph DiFronzo says the proceeds belong to the hardworking person who typed out the meeting and called Singer's posting of the transcripts "unethical." He says she did it "because she was so pissed that [her fellow Commissioners] voted her off" as Chairwoman after this November's election.
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A Pennsylvania National Guard advertisement affixed to SEPTA student transpasses is drawing criticism from parents.
"We are very concerned about whether there's a policy around advertising to young people and about the issue of military recruitment and why parents have not been clearly informed about these policies," says Helen Gym of Parents United for Public Education.
SEPTA does not see a problem, and notes that the ads are sold by an outside agency.
"SEPTA's advertising agency, Titan, solicits a variety of companies and organizations to spend marketing dollars to advertise on SEPTA. We hope the public appreciates our efforts to bring additional revenue to the Authority," says spokesperson Jerri Williams.
Military recruitment aimed at minors has been controversial throughout the last decade's ultimately very unpopular wars on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond. In 2008, the U.S. Army opened a very expensive virtual-reality-video-game-complex called the Army Experience Center at Franklin Mills Mall, which I wrote about in my debut freelance contribution to this paper. It closed in 2010. SEPTA advertising, I think, was likely cheaper.
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I greatly admire Philadelphia Daily News editorial writer Sandy Shea, read her pieces every weekday morning, and generally agree with them. But I believe Shea is profoundly wrong in her defense of the William Penn Foundation's funnelling of millions of dollars to pay for the Boston Consulting Group's proposal to radically restructure Philly public schools.
Friday's Daily News editorial criticizes groups that filed an ethics complaint against BCG and William Penn last week that accuses them of violating the new city lobbying code, telling the misfits to not "scare private money away from public schools" by asking too many questions. I disagree. Citizens, journalists very much included, should always ask tough, skeptical questions about how powerful private interests exercise influence over our government.
Here are some quotes from the editorial, followed by questions I think Shea was remiss in not asking:
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