Month: February 2024

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A Point of Extreme Political Danger

  By Resisting Trump, Tump, US

I wrote this in 2019. “Trump is like a Bond villain. Totally over the top. Bent on world domination and the accumulation of riches without end because of a terrible psychic injury in childhood. Determined to dominate all the men and sleep with all the women around him because of the same injury. Utterly self-involved and untrustworthy. In other words, almost totally unbelievable. Except that it is real we are stuck with him for the foreseeable future.” I have seen no reason to change my mind except to say that, even though I understood Trump’s appeal in teh summer of 2016, I did not expect that his hold over the this country would be so impossible to shake. Trump is not by any means a political genius. His hold over half the country is a a product of the gruesome fit between his psychic flaws and the deep, long-standing flaws… Continue reading

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STATEMENT on Governor Shapiro’s 2024–25 Budget Address

  By Penn Policy Center, Statement

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on February 6, 2024. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE February 6, 2024 Contact: Kirstin Snow, Director of Communications, snow@pennpolicy.org STATEMENT on Governor Shapiro’s 2024-25 Budget Address, Pennsylvania Policy Center A Pennsylvania Budget To Celebrate Overview Governor Shapiro took office a year ago at a time when there was a great deal of uncertainty about the economy and the fiscal state of Pennsylvania, and in the wake of a Commonwealth Court decision holding that Pennsylvania’s system of funding public schools is unconstitutional. There was little time for a new administration, led by a new governor and an entirely new set of cabinet members, to develop a long-term plan to address the school funding question. Accordingly, the administration said that its initial budget would be followed by a second-year budget, which would fully address the constitutional mandate to fund K–12 education fully and fairly and other issues. And… Continue reading

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A Pennsylvania Budget to Celebrate

  By Blog post, Penn Policy Center, Policy Brief

Originally published at Pennsylvania Policy Center on February 6, 2024. February 6, 2024 Note: This is an initial review of the fiscal year 2024–25 budget proposed by Governor Josh Shapiro on February 6, 2024. As we delve deeper into the budget we may need to revise or modify the conclusion reached here. Also note that rather than providing one lengthy, in-depth analysis of the entire budget seven weeks or so after it is released, as was done by the previous affiliate of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we will be rolling out our in-depth analysis over the next seven weeks in a series of reports. Overview Governor Shapiro took office a year ago at a time when there was a great deal of uncertainty about the economy and the fiscal state of Pennsylvania, and in the wake of a Commonwealth Court decision holding Pennsylvania’s system of funding public… Continue reading