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State Politicians
“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.”
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."
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.
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.
A bipartisan group of Pennsylvania legislators wants to give the owners of private and corporate jets a $10 million to $14 million subsidy, according to a new report by the left-leaning Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (PBPC). House Bill 100, according to the report that you can read right here, would exempt the sale of private aircraft from the state sales and use tax.
“If you buy a car, a truck, a boat or any other vehicle in Pennsylvania, you pay sales tax,” according to PBPC. “But if you are one of the few in the market for a Learjet or a Gulfstream aircraft, you would get a pass on paying that.”
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed legislation that will require abortion clinics to spend millions of dollars on renovations that are not medically necessary or shut down, and the Senate is expected to follow suit today before breaking for the holidays. The transparent bid to drive abortion clinics out of business would require them to meet the standards of “ambulatory surgical facilities” that perform far more complicated and risky operations.
No medical association supports the legislation and The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes it. This bill is unambiguously about the political movement to criminalize abortion.
Seven Republicans who want to take on Democratic Senator Bob Casey faced off at a debate at the Pennsylvania Society, the annual confab that brings the state's major political and economic power brokers to New York for schmoozing, cocktails and a really fancy banquet dinner. This event has been in New York for a century, and has been criticized for not bringing the big-spending to, say, Scranton, Philadelphia, Erie or Pittsburgh and for its general lobbyist-industrial complex decadence.
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