Month: November 2023

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PRESS STATEMENT: PA Will Lose $3.1 Billion to Corporate Tax Cuts by 2028

  By Blog post, Statement

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 30, 2023. November 30, 2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Kirstin Snow, Communications Director, Pennsylvania Policy Center, snow@pennpolicy.org; Ellie Blachman, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, (202) 325-8718, eblachman@cbpp.org New report: Pennsylvania will lose $3.1 billion to corporate tax cuts by 2028 Pennsylvania is part of historic, nationwide tax-cutting wave that jeopardizes investments in communities and our ability to meet the challenges of the future. Harrisburg, PA — In recent years, policymakers in Harrisburg joined their counterparts in more than half the states across the country on a historic revenue-reduction spree that shifted public funds away from public investments and toward tax cuts that primarily benefit wealthy households and corporations. Those corporate income tax cuts have already cost Pennsylvania $127 million in revenues and will cost an additional estimated $3 billion by 2028, according to a new report by the Center on Budget… Continue reading

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Making Our Votes Count for the Issues We Care About

  By Blog post

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 28, 2023. Voting access. Abortion access. Climate change. Public education. Redistricting. Pennsylvanians continue to focus on critical issues that matter to our quality of life. In 2023, we showed up to elect school boards, local municipal officials, and county commissioners AND to elect judges to our local and state courts. We both voted by mail and went to the polls on Election Day, showing that we want to participate in our democracy in ways that work for us. In fact, voter turnout was higher than in 2021! A couple of key reasons: abortion access continues to be a hot topic, and people are responding to threats to voting rights and seeing, more than ever, the roles that courts play in other critical issues such as protecting our right to a “thorough and efficient” education, which was affirmed in a landmark school funding… Continue reading

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Editorial Board Memo on Education Funding in Pennsylvania

  By Blog post, Editorial Board Memo, Penn Policy Center

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 22, 2023. November 22, 2023 In February 2023, Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer called for a new funding system in Pennsylvania to fulfill the state’s obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education for its children. The Basic Education Funding Commission has been charged by Governor Shapiro and legislative leaders with developing a response to Judge Jubelirer’s decision in the school funding lawsuit, which held that every student in Pennsylvania should have—but doesn’t have now—access to a “comprehensive, effective, and contemporary system of public education,” as required by the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Pennsylvania Policy Center has prepared materials for the Commission that address a number of questions raised during its hearing, drawing on both our own analysis of education policy in Pennsylvania and summaries of the relevant academic research. As members of the General Assembly will ultimately be making the critical decisions about… Continue reading

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You’re The Top: Active and Receptive Modes of Being In Life and Sex

  By Love and Sex, Philosophy

This is a draft of a chapter from my forthcoming book Civilization and Its Contents A short precise of the book can be found here. Click here to read or print it  full screen. Continue reading

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Patriarchy, homophobia and sexual fluidity in women

  By Love and Sex

It is commonly held that sexual orientation varies in degrees rather than kind. Some men and women are exclusively interested in sex with their own sex; some are exclusively interested in sex and love with the opposite sex, while many of us fall somewhere between these two poles, being little more or less interested in our own sex or the opposite sex. Kinsey claimed that his research found that that most men and women were not at the far poles of his seven point sexual orientation scale but somewhere in the middle Yet it appears that women tend to be more sexually fluid than men. The percentage of women who have had sex with women is higher than the percentage of men who have had sex with men. More importantly, it appears that women are far more likely than men to pursue sex with both men and women during some… Continue reading

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PPC Statement on PA Court’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Decision

  By Blog post, Statement

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 9, 2023. The Pennsylvania Policy Center (PPC) joins several of its partners in expressing concern about last week’s Commonwealth Court ruling, which struck down Pennsylvania’s opportunity to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The court’s decision was made along procedural lines and is antithetical to RGGI’s purpose, which is to limit damaging carbon emissions in the state and surrounding region. “Among the many steps Pennsylvania can, and should, take to limit climate change, joining RGGI is among the most important. Governor Wolf’s decision to join RGGI is justified by the substantial authority the law grants the Governor to protect our environment,” said PPC’s executive director Marc Stier. This is of even more concern for communities of color and low-income families and is a setback for environmental equity in our Commonwealth. We echo calls for Governor Shapiro to appeal this decision to… Continue reading

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The Contribution of K–12 Education to Economic Growth and Democracy

  By Blog post, Penn Policy Center, Policy Brief

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 8, 2023. VIEW IN A PDF READER, PRINT, OR DOWNLOAD. November 8, 2023 The-Contribution-of-Education-to-Economic-Growth-and-DemocracyDownload Continue reading

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Shuffling the Deck Won’t Solve the Pennsylvania School Funding Crisis

  By Blog post

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 8, 2023. In February 2023, Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer called for a new funding system in Pennsylvania to fulfill the state’s obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education for its children. But, opponents of increased education funding cite the state’s high per-student spending, compared to other states, as a reason not to increase our total spending on K-12 schools. The comparison to other states’ spending per student is misleading in multiple ways. VIEW IN A PDF READER, PRINT, OR DOWNLOAD. Click to access Minimum-Wage-and-Economic-Justice.pdf Continue reading

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Education Funding and School Achievement

  By Policy Paper

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on November 8, 2023. November 8, 2023 Context A year ago, Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer ruled that Pennsylvania violates its constitutional obligation to create a “thorough and efficient” system of school funding. In response, legislative leaders and Governor Shapiro have charged the Basic Education Funding Commission with providing a blueprint for General Assembly action that would meet our constitutional obligation. In in developing that blueprint, the General Assembly can learn from what other states have done. Seen from a national perspective, Judge Jubelirer’s decision is not an outlier. In response to similar court decisions, about half the states have added substantial state funding of K–12 education in the last thirty years.  In almost every case, the judicial decisions, like that of Judge Jubelirer, focused on the inequity in school funding created by over-reliance on locally raised revenues to pay for schools. Because Pennsylvania is… Continue reading