PA Politics

Pennsylvania is an odd state. I grew up in New Jersey, a state that is more divided than people think. Most people I talk to from out of state think of New Jersey as a solid liberal Democratic state. There are actually a great number of conservatives there. For instance, even though the networks called the presidential elections in '92 and '96 very early for Clinton, the end results were actually very close.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, is divided in a very different way. In another blog, I quoted James Carville as saying that PA was, "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama inbetween". He's absolutely right. Our Governor, the beloved (well, in Philly and P-burgh anyway) Ed Spendell has boasted on his Governor's website that he has not and will not raise any taxes on the citizens of Pennsy. Well, Mr. Rendell, that depends on what the definition of a tax on citizens is. He has raised tax on gas, cigarrettes, certain food items, raised tolls 40% on the turnpike, and so on, and so on. I guess he meant no raises in state income tax 'cuz everything else has gone up. He also brags of creating 70,000 new jobs in Pennsylvania since he took office. Wow. Talk about using statistics falsely. Being the former Philly mayor, he scratched their backs real good and left the mid-state out in the cold. If you take the four biggest cities in PA, you have well over 70,000 jobs created, so the rest of the state lost jobs. We have lost a significant number of jobs in central Penna. Depending on the county (and you can pretty well determine that the bigger the county went for Bush, the bigger the loss of jobs has been), it can range from just about holding it's own to facing serious depression.

Rendell has made it clear, in spite of retoric, that he will do anything for the cities, and will stick it to the rural areas as hard as he can. He has created legislation that will tax farmers more and big businesses less. He has created environmental legislation that will make it significantly harder for hunters to find places to hunt...although I admit it will be a long time before hunters are out of land. He plans on creating a whole new "Green" legislation in the spring of this year that will damage the hunter's rights further. He has changed the laws concerning car inspections so that two separate inspections have to be made per year. This second inspection, which only a few stations are able to perform comes at a gaudy price to us, the untaxed citizens. He has also upped their licencing and is working on making it more difficult to get a hunting rifle. He has caused the state to take over education decisions accross the board and removed any ability for the local school districts to make decisions for their own particular needs. The man hates us.

The up side is that in 2006, he will learn that the mid-state holds more voting clout than he believes. At this point, we don't like him very much either.