Category: Public Policy

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Penn ACTION and CLEAR lead Democrats and Republicans to Stand Together In Support of FMAP, Education Funding

  By FMAP, Penn ACTION

Just three hours before the House of Representatives voted to extend FMAP funding and provide additional federal funds for education, a bi-partisan group of state legislators from the Greater Philadelphia suburbs stood together on the steps of the Delaware County Courthouse in Media with representatives of labor unions and social service providers to urge Congress to extend funding of the FMAP program through the end of June 2011. They were joined by a crowed of more than fifty people. Republican and Democratic State Senators including Edwin Erickson, Stewart Greenleaf, and Daylin Leach, and state Representative Tom Murt, come together or issued statements with Penn Action, CLEAR, the SEPA Budget Coalition, Education Voters PA,  the Mental Health Assocation of SEPA, and the Delaware County Literacy Coatlition.  to say that the House of Representatives should follow the Senate in passing an extension of FMAP. The theme of the event was that FMAP… Continue reading

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Statewide Conference on Drilling in the Marcellus Shale

  By Marcellus Shale, Marcellus Shale Conference

     BUILDING A STRONGER MOVEMENT: STATEWIDE CONFERENCE ON NATURAL GAS DRILLING      For community groups, activists, and residents concerned about the effects of drilling in the Marcellus Shale. Saturday, October 16, 2010 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Radisson Hotel Harrisburg 1150 Camp Hill Bypass, Camp Hill, PA 17011 Participating organizations: ACLU, Campaign for Clean Water, Common Cause, Clean Water Action, Protecting our Waters, Democracy for America, Responsible Drilling Alliance, Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, Delaware Riverkeepers Network, Penn Future, Penn Environment, and many more. The extraction of natural gas in Pennsylvania has been going on largely with minimal state and federal oversight. This conference is an opportunity to exchange information about natural gas drilling or “fracking” and learn how to make our voices heard in the Marcellus Shale debate.Conference topics include: Best practices of how to wage a winning campaign Training on organizing and getting your message out How… Continue reading

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Penn ACTION, Democracy for America and UFCW tell Pat Toomey to come clean on Social Security

  By Penn ACTION, Social Security

In response to Pat Toomey’s waffling on Social Security, dozens of seniors, labor leaders, and community residents brought together by Penn ACTION, Democracy for American and UFCW Local 1776 gathered at the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall to tell Toomey to come clean about his position on Social Security.  “When Pat Toomey attacks Social Security he is attacking all of us, every participant, which is every American that participates in that system,” said Arshad Hasan of Democracy for America. “Worse than that he’s attacking me and my generation – people who are working, and he’s saying, ‘you work for it, you pay into it, but you don’t get it. I don’t want to leave a system for you.’ And I think that is fundamentally unfair.” Seniors held up bars of soap and shouted, “Come clean Toomey!” Toomey came under criticism last month when he responded to a question… Continue reading

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Penn ACTION takes the lead on exposing Pat Toomey on Social Security

  By Social Security

  Penn ACTION has taken the lead on exposing Pat Toomey as not only the biggest threat to Social Security east of Nevada’s Sharon Angle, but also as a hypocrite on the issue. Pat Toomey Waffls On Social Security Privatization Click here to see video.   Toomey has long been a supporter of Social Security privatization. A chapter in Toomey’s book, The Road to Prosperity, details a plan to allow workers to invest their payroll taxes on Wallstreet instead of being part of the Social Security system. Yet in a speech in Harrisburg, taped by Penn ACTION’s Jeff Rousset, Toomey claims that “I’ve never said I favor privatizing Social Security,” Our work in capturing Toomey’s flip-flopping on the issue was reported in Paul Krugman’s blog and in Philadelphia and Harrisburg newspapers. Social Security privatization is a terrible idea for a few reasons. First, it puts our Social Security benefits at… Continue reading

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The Health Care For America Campaign in Pennsylvania

  By Health Care

Penn ACTION and our Executive Director, Marc Stier, led the Health Care For America Campaign in Pennsylvania, which was critical to enacting the Affordable Care Act in Washington. Here is an overview of the strategy and achievements of the biggest issue campaign in Pennsylvania history—Health Care For America Now. We mobilized Congressional champions for healthcare reform. Some of our members of the House—such as Allyson Schwartz, Bob Brady, Chaka Fattah, Joe Sestak, and Mike Doyle—and Senator Casey were long time supporters of health care reform. But in Washington, there is a huge step between an abstract commitment to some ideal and the hard, slogging work of moving legislation through Congress. So first task was to light a fire under potential champions for health care reform. This began during the election of 2008. We focused the election on the health care issue. And together with HCAN groups in 42 other states, we… Continue reading

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What did you do during the class war, Mommy and Daddy?

  By Politics, Progressive Politics, Public Policy, Published op-eds, Social Justice, Taxation, US

Published in the Daily News, September 23, 2010 THOUGH I lead a progressive grass-roots organization, I’m a little embarrassed by the question that serves as a title for this essay. For 25 years, I taught political philosophy, most recently at Temple University. The key to my teaching was to encourage students see both sides of every issue. I was always proud when my students didn’t know where I stood politically. Teaching both sides of the issues rubs off. So, even now, I’m politically just a little left of center. I supported the Obama health-care plan rather than single-payer not out of political expedience but conviction. I believe that a hybrid public-private plan is most likely to give us the most effective health-insurance system. So, I’m uncomfortable saying we are in the midst of a class war right now in America. But it’s time for all of us on the left,… Continue reading

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Marcellus Shale State Wide Conference

  By Marcellus Shale

Building a Stronger Movement: Statewide Conference on Natural Gas Drilling Sponsored by Penn Action and Conservation PA Saturday, October 16, 2010 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Radisson Hotel Harrisburg 1150 Camp Hill Bypass, Camp Hill, PA 17011 You are invited: a conference for community groups, activists, and homeowners who are concerned about effects of drilling in the Marcellus Shale. The lack of federal oversight on natural gas drilling has left us with little protection against the potential dangers of fracking to extract gas from the valuable Marcellus Shale in our state. Penn Action and Conservation Pennsylvania are convening this conference to share knowledge and learn how to make our voices heard in the Marcellus Shale debate: Strategy of winning advocacy efforts Trainings on organizing and getting your message out How to build an organization, fundraise, and do outreach Success stories from different regions of the state Networking And more. Who… Continue reading

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Health Care will (almost) be a right not a privilege

  By Health Care

The Patient Care and Affordable Care Act was not everything we progressives wanted. Many of us were distraught over losing something that is important to our vision of health care reform: a public option that would compete with private insurance and hold down health insurance costs. Make no mistake, that was, indeed a loss. But the public option was not the only important feature of the legislation we have been supporting. Indeed, while holding down costs are important to this country, the fundamental moral issue is making sure that everyone can get affordable health care. And, the legislation we won goes incredibly far to attaining that goal. The Affordable Care Act will take this country close to the ideal of making health care a right not a privilege. It will, over ten years, save perhaps 100,000 lives. It will reduce the suffering of millions of people. And it will save… Continue reading

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The old romanticism and the new environmentalism

  By Environment, Philosophy

Political environmentalism is a movement shaped by twentieth century romanticism. And that is one source of its political difficulties, especially in America. Twentietth century romanticism presumes a sharp divide between the creativity of the arts, which draws inspiration from the untamed natural world we perceive with our unaided senses, and the routinized development of scientific knowledge whose goal is to give us the power to transform, and thereby destroy, nature with our machines. It thinks of the natural state of nature as pure, peaceful, and unchanging and humans as malignant interlopers in thus natural world. Thus it looks incessantly back to the past¸ to the time before mankind interfered with the natural world and it only appreciates with some reluctance how we use technology to shape the natural world to serve the interests of human beings. This is a romanticism that stands against both science and humanism. And, the environmental movement it has inspired… Continue reading