Sitting on a Powder Keg

There seems to me to be a total disconnect between political reporting and commentary in our country and the reality of our politics on the ground. Political reporters and pundits are dying for the world to return to the pre-Trump era (forgetting that in many ways, the Republicans were, in their abuse of gerrymandering and the filibuster and embrace of ideas like the independent judiciary theory, well along the way to rejecting the basic norms of representative democracy long before Trump). Harrisburg reporters focus on the calls for bipartisanship from both sides. So, we are seeing reporting on, for example, the Republican presidential nomination race that normalizes it, as it focuses on who is up and who is down, what the strategies of the candidates are, etc. And yet, on the ground, what do we see? –Trump continues to make wild claims about 2020 and masks racist attacks on Alvinā€¦ Continue reading

Our rights and democracy are at stake

The threat of SCOTUS approving the the independent state legislature doctrine is so great that it is absolutely imperative that the filibuster be overturned and federal law protecting our elections be passed NOW! (And of course we have to end the filibuster to embed Roe in federal law, too.) If we wait and Democrats lose the majority in the House and Senate, the 2024 election will be over before it begins. Republican state legislators, including possibly in Pennsylvania, will choose the electors. Our rights and our democracy are at stake. Continue reading

The GOP Design

ā€œWhen people show you who they are, believe them.ā€ Itā€™s time to believe what Pennsylvania Republicans have shown us they are. Begin with what they have shown us they donā€™t care about: Public health: They have opposed efforts to encourageā€”not mandate–people to wear masks and be vaccinated. They have not funded programs to make COVID tests available to all of us. Relief from the burdens of the pandemic: Despite having huge sums of our tax money in the bank, they have provided insufficient housing assistance that was distributed unfairly. They have provided too little relief to small businesses and blocked a proposal to help the restaurant industry. Unlike other states, Pennsylvania has not used ARP money to provide paid family and medical leave or support for those with low incomes. Wages: Pennsylvaniaā€™s minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 for 14 years, keeps falling farther and farther behind neighboringā€¦ Continue reading

We The People ā€“ PA Statement on Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Actions

Harrisburg, PA ā€” the following is a statement from Marc Stier, director of the PA Budget and Policy Center and chair of the We The People PA campaign. Pennsylvania Senate Republicans are unwilling to address the problems of working people while small businesses and families all over the Commonwealth are still suffering from the effects of a COVID-19 pandemic that has recently become more serious due to the Delta variant of the virus. They haveĀ noĀ plans to spend the $7.5 billion of our tax dollars in state bank accounts to help citizens, yet theyĀ doĀ have time to continue to spread Donald Trumpā€™s lies and misstatements about the 2020 election under the guise of conducting an utterly unnecessary and duplicative ā€œforensic auditā€ of it. The latest example of this effort was a decision today, on a 7-4 party-line vote, to issue subpoenas to secure more information about whichĀ Pennsylvanians voted andĀ howĀ they voted in recentā€¦ Continue reading

On the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee Hearing on the 2020 Election

Rather than address the needs of Pennsylvania workers, small business owners, and families still suffering from the effect of the pandemic, the Republican-led Pennsylvania Senate begins yet another round of hearings about the 2020 election todayā€”an election that most Pennsylvanians believe was settled in January. It is important to put this hearing in its proper context. We offer six observations. First, Senator Dush, the chair of the committee, and Senator Corman, the Senate president pro-tempore, have repeatedly said that these hearings are a response to doubts about the probity of the 2020 election. They fail to add is that those doubts have been stirred up again and again by Republican leaders, starting with former President Trump and his disgraced lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, and continuing with Republican members of the U.S. House and Pennsylvania House and Senate who have repeated falsehoods that have been discredited by fact-checkers and by both stateā€¦ Continue reading

Why House Bill 1300 is a Clear Attempt to Restrict Voting

  ā€œThe vast majority of us care about democratic government and want secure and free elections. We want to go to the polls and know that our vote is being counted. We want it to be easy to vote. We want all eligible votersā€”not ineligible onesā€”to cast their ballots. We want our votes to be counted fairly, and we want to know who won relatively quickly. And, ultimately, we want everyone to acknowledge the legitimate results of free and fair elections. We can have modern free, fair, and secure elections. We can use technology to ensure that people are able to vote conveniently and without sacrificing security. Yet on Tuesday, the House State Government Committee, in a purely partisan vote, moved a bill that makes voting harder. It would make the election process more confusing, change deadlines for no reason, and would roll back alternative and easy ways to voteā€¦ Continue reading

1968 and 2020

I was talking on a national call about this time and 1968. I was only 13 then and maybe don’t recall how crazy and unsettled and uncertain that time felt, what with the Tet Offensive (which made it clear that Vietnam was a lost cause), the assassinations and riots, the Democratic convention, and the election of Nixon (and probably more I don’t remember). But this time feels more uncertain and scarier. I’m not exactly sure why but I suppose it’s mostly Trump and the support he has from half this country. Police brutality, property destruction in cities, even COVID-19 wouldn’t feel utterly unmanageable if we had a president who was not both incompetent and a threat to our Constitution, democracy, and freedom. And while Nixon’s possible election was scary, he was never nearly as scary or as bad as Trump. The immorality of Vietnam weighed heavily on us, but itā€¦ Continue reading