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Asher vs Castor, again (still?)

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Dale, but Casey is a conservative Democrat. He was going to be allowed different.

Except on the close issues, then he’d have to vote with the caucus.

Rick was a leader on life-issues. Casey? Looks like he’s a follower.

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The media fetish for round numbers continues.

100 dead in Philadelphia this year.

A violent night left two people dead, several injured and the city marked a grim murder milestone.

 

The city’s 100th homicide this year occurred on the 4900 block of Aspen street around 5:45 a.m. Saturday morning.

 

36-year-old, Dwayne Green was shot in the torso and taken to HUP where he was later pronounced dead.

 

Three males were shot, one fatal, on the 2800 block of North Ringold Street in North Philadelphia around 10:00 p.m. Friday night.

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Thanks for the response Dale.  My main point, which I think I failed to really hammer out, is that Mayor Lou Barletta is not some racist or isolationist.  He made a wise public policy decisions based on the need of his city. His City was dead and needed new residents, so he welcomed Hispanics with open arms.  Too many illegal immigrants moved to Hazleton, including some illegal Eastern Europeans and Russian, and he had to act.

By “critical mass” I mean the number of illegal immigrants, not Hispanics, became too much for the City to handle.  In a town of more than 25,000 one thousand illegal immigrants is no big deal, but three to five thousand can cause many problems such as an increase in crime and the loss of quality of life, especially among the Hispanics themselves.
I do blame the national government for not securing the borders and having so much red tape that Hispanics cannot wait for the bureaucrats to approve them.

For the record I believe the plurality of Hispanics in Hazleton are Dominican. While Wilkes-Barre’s much smaller Hispanic population is mostly Mexican, and I am almost certain the more established Hispanic population in Re4ading is Puerto Rican.

Finally, I remember that Judy is from Hazleton; Rudy mentioned when he visited Wilkes-Barre during the last Bush Campaign.  I think too many people in NEPA will vote for him just because he has some family ties. They have casted their votes for dumber reasons before. (See the  Luzerne County Commissioner)

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The Inky reports:

Sen. Bob Casey’s first moment of truth in the U.S. Senate is approaching. And the issue is stem-cell research.

 

When he ran last year against Rick Santorum, Casey left no doubt where he stood on the sanctity of life. He was following in his father’s footsteps.

 

That father, a two-term governor of Pennsylvania, never backed down from his pro-life convictions, despite the scorn it sometimes earned him from his Democratic colleagues – or the speaking slot it cost him at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

 

Given his campaign commitment to oppose federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and given the role pro-life Pennsylvanians played in electing him, you would think the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2007 would be a no-brainer for Casey. Yet, suddenly there is some question about his position.

….

Despite the position candidate Casey took last year, bloggers pushing for embryonic stem-cell funding this year – bloggers including the Daily Kos and Californians for Cure – have listed him as one of the “Swingable Seven,” a group of senators who might be swayed on the issue.

….

Congressional Quarterly Today also reported that Casey “said he was still studying the measure.” Studying it? What part of this issue could Casey have forgotten in the few short months since he was elected? Could he have forgotten he believes life deserves protection from conception? Could he have forgotten taxpayers should not be forced to pay for the taking of what he himself affirms is a human life?

Who would have thought that so soon in his Senate career young Casey would face a defining dilemma: Will he still follow in his father’s footsteps, or trample on his legacy?

Well, what did you expect? Of course he’s “swingable” — He’s a Democrat!

Read the whole thing here.

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Bill, nice response to my admittedly provocative post. You point out some important stuff that gets us beyond the common stereotypes that have unfortunately characterized the national debate on immigration.

1) Barletta’s support among Hispanics is important because it reminds us that the recent immigrants are not a homogeneous group.

2) Immigrants are not for the most part partisans in the political wars, although they could easily become such if they perceive one party as being particularly dangerous to their future prospects.

3) They are not ethnically homogeneous. There huge differences among Mexicans, Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, etc. A coherent “Hispanic” or “Latino” identity is something that is imposed upon immigrants in this country.

4) Much is made of the idea that “illegal immigrants” are, by definition, already “criminals.” But that obscures the fact that the vast majority of “illegals” are seeking a stable, legal, and respectable life in America. They by no means support the small criminal element that preys upon them. They are, in other words, no more homogeneous than the legal immigrants. Instead of blanket condemnation we should be trying to work together with immigrants to try to marginalize and control the criminal element.

5) As President Bush has emphasized time and again, Hispanics [both legal and illegal] are, for the most part, conservatives who can be attracted into the ranks of Republicans. Past support for Barletta illustrates this fact. This is a tremendous opportunity that should not be allowed to pass.

6) Hazleton’s future is by no means determined. The WSJ article I linked to below points to Flushing, NY as a community that has been successfully revitalized by immigrants. On the other hand residents of Hazleton can look south to Reading where a community already in decline was plunged into chaos by youth gangs, the drug trade, and a homicide rate twice the national average. Those are the extremes. There are plenty of other cases of communities attempting to deal with an immigrant influx throughout Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. It would be interesting to see just how these various communities have approached the problems, what has worked and what hasn’t, and why.

All that being said, there are a couple of points I would question.

I’m not sure what “critical mass” means in this context. Different groups and individuals in different situations would have different judgments on the meaning of that term. It implies a community consensus that doesn’t seem to be there.

Blaming the Federal Government is not going to solve local problems. Basically there are only two things the Feds can do — they can funnel resources into local communities, or they can close the borders to cut off the influx. Both of these alternatives have serious adverse consequences that should be considered.

By the way, Rudy Giuliani’s third wife, Judy, is from Hazleton. Think of it…, a Hazleton girl in the White House.

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Chris Carney claims the recently passed budget he voted for has Middle Class Tax Cuts.

Congressman Christopher P. Carney has delivered on one of
his ardent promises: creating tax cuts for the middle class. “I came to
Congress to balance the budget and create tax cuts for the middle class,”
said Congressman Carney. “My vote today will do just that without raising
taxes.

Patrick Murphy voted against the same budget because it does not have Middle Class Tax Cuts.

Murphy voted this way because he believes that more should be done to get the nation’s fiscal house in order. In this budget, non-defense discretionary spending has increased and the budget does not do enough to guarantee middle class families the tax cuts they deserve.

So who is right who is wrong and who is wrong? I will side with fellow King’s College Alumnus Patrick Murphy on this one. It shows he, like Mike Fitzpatrick, can be independent.  I will give him credit for taking a stand on spending and tax cuts this time around. it is a shame last week he voted to give money for spinach farmers in the Iraq Supplemental Bill.  As for Chris Carney, it does not matter how he votes on anything, because he is toast as long as the GOP does not nominate a creep.

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I can no longer resist the urge to give my take on the Hazleton/Immigration Issue. I went o School for four years in Wilkes-Barre and took a class on Hispanic growth in NEPA taught by a former member of Hazleton City Council. It is long so click “more” below to read

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Testimony has concluded in the ACLU’s suit against Hazleton’s “Illegal Immigration Relief Act.” A federal judge will hand down his decision in June. It will probably go against the town. In the meantime we can consider some of the things that have come to light regarding the case.

Steve Chapman, writing in Townhall, notes:

The trial… has not shed flattering light on the competence of those who drafted the law. Mayor Lou Barletta said he was compelled to act when a resident was shot to death, allegedly by two illegal immigrants.

But he had trouble explaining why, if illegal immigrants generate crime, they have been implicated in only about 20 of the 8,500 felonies committed in Hazleton in the last six years. ACLU attorney Witold Walczak also pointed out that amid this supposed crime wave, the city has reduced the size of the police force, despite having a budget surplus.

If Hazleton’s illegal immigrants are prone to crime, they’re the exception. Despite the growth of illegal immigration in the last decade, crime rates have dropped sharply across the country. This may not be a coincidence. In every ethnic group, reports a recent study by Ruben Rumbaut and Walter Ewing for the American Immigration Law Foundation, young men born in the U.S. are far more likely to wind up in prison than those who come here later.

In Hazleton, as elsewhere, the main reason Latino foreigners come is to work and stay out of trouble. In fact, those qualities are the same ones that get them accused of stealing jobs. Even those immigrants who work off the books contribute to the economic health of local businesses by buying goods and services. Hazleton has seen an expansion of its tax base.

So it’s too simple to blame all the city’s newfound troubles on illegal immigrants.

Read the whole thing here.
Chapman argues that the anti-immigrant legislation does not reflect prejudice so much as the strain on local resources caused by the sudden influx of thousands of new residents. He calls on the federal government to stem the tide of immigrants.

But then Julia Vitello-Martin, writing in the Wall Street Journal, reports:

Mayor Lou Barletta argued that some 10,000 undocumented immigrants have ruined Hazleton’s quality of life: Violent crime has doubled in the past two years, unreimbursed medical expenses at local hospitals have jumped 60% and the annual school budget for teaching English as a second language has soared to $875,000 from $500. Yet business owners and landlords argued the opposite–that immigrants had revitalized Hazleton’s moribund economy, filling once-vacant apartments and patronizing once-declining businesses. As a result, Hazleton’s budget has been in the black for three years–a far cry from its $1.2 million deficit in 2000.

So apparently the influx has had a beneficial effect on local resources. Ms. Vitullo-Martin notes that this has been a general pattern in other cities that serve as immigrant destinations.

Read it here.

So, if it isn’t an upsurge in crime, or depletion of local resources, then what is left? Sheer prejudice? I think not.

A friend of mine from Hazleton explains:

[T]he thing is not the sheer number of crimes, but the types of crimes that were committed.  Very public ones, very frightening ones.  It was the couple of drive-by shootings and, I think especially, the melees and assaults and alleged rapes in public schools, and the brandishing of guns in playgrounds and malls.  There may  not have been all that many of these events, but their symbolic import is out of all proportion to their actual numbers:  they are the sorts of things that seem to indicate that anarchy is actually engulfing the place.  And the cultural issues matter, too.  It really does matter when people don’t bother to use garbage cans, and befoul neighborhoods that people had once at least tried to keep reasonably clean.  The loud music that makes sleep difficult, the smarmy sexual come-ons to unescorted women on the streets.  They matter.  They aren’t felonies.  In fact, they’re standard operating procedure in the barrios of San Juan.  But they matter.

Indeed they do! Behavior that outrages mainstream middle-class sensibilities is an important element in quality-of-life issues and a clash of cultures can explain a lot of the anti-immigrant reaction, but even this is something of a fantasy.
My friend writes:

I see Hazleton as a place where a lot of ordinary, middle-to-working class people wanted nothing other than to be allowed to live the way they had lived for years.

I’m sure that a lot of people see things that way. However, as Ms. Vitello-Martin, points out — change was already taking place before the immigrant influx. The downtowns of small cities were already hollowing out as businesses and people moved away, and rather than precipitating decline, immigrants were responding to it, flocking to places were property values and rents had already declined to the point where homes were now affordable even to recent arrivals in the country. Immigrants are being blamed for a decline that they did not cause, and to which they may well represent a solution.

So what we are left with is outraged sensibilities, and as my friend pointed out, they do matter. The question is, do they matter more than the aspirations of the newcomers and the economic revitalization they represent?

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Alex,

So you’re the one!

That explains a lot.

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It’s too bad Mark Schweiker didn’t run for Governor when he had the chance.

Elections matter.

The Morning Call opines about the I-78 mess and what happened and what could have been done.

A Mark Schweiker was sorely missed on Valentine’s Day. This page and many others in Pennsylvania have criticized Ms. Baker Knoll for her rambling speeches, malapropisms and detachment. But, she is popular in the state’s western counties and people see her as a beloved figurehead, but harmless. The Witt report on the Feb. 14 storm shows that probably isn’t so. Since the lieutenant governor is an elected official in her own right, she cannot be removed from office just for non-performance, and the governor has said he doesn’t intend to fire anyone over the storm response, anyway. That makes it all the more critical that Gov. Rendell define who is in charge instead before the next emergency.

 

One of the report’s key recommendations is to fill the command and communications void by creating the position of state director of public safety. Exactly that function could have been served by PEMA with an adept lieutenant governor in charge.

Like I said before, it’s a miracle no one died.

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I could have sworn in 2004, a Bush victory would have led to a draft.

Sworn!

Murtha is a Democrat, in case anyone forgot.

(tip to Extreme Mortman who titles his post, Murtha, Wind and Fire)

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Dale, the base c’est moi.

But, What if Ronald Reagan were a hippie-hating serial killer?

?

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…. the business climate, that is.

In the [Lincoln Institute] poll to be released next week, 49% of the respondents said business conditions in the state have gotten worse in the past six months. That is a substantial spike upward from the 34% in last September’s survey who said business conditions were deteriorating. Only 9% of the business leaders polled said business conditions in Pennsylvania had improved over the past six months.

 

The 49% saying business conditions had gotten worse over the last six months represents the most pessimistic result to that question since the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

 

Among the factors driving negative views of the state’s business climate: the governor’s proposed 2007-2008 state budget and his effort at establishing a socialized medicine program in Pennsylvania.

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Duke at Pennypack Post (i love that blog), comments on my building the perfect legislator post.

He cites Edmund Burke…

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Democracies long have the reputation of being fickle with their opinion. See Athens and the Peloponnesian War for an early example, look to Iraq for today’s example, see Dale’s post, Getting Over Reagan.

It never hurts to say I’m “spot on” and “excellent”, btw… though handsome and genius didn’t make the cut for some reason.

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Plenty in the news….

* Contracting Contracts
* Audits Audits Audits
* No higher office for Matthews
* Illegal Immigrant Health Care

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David Brooks, writing in yesterday’s New York Times, riffs on a perceptive piece by Tyler Cowen in Cato Unbound [the essential blog for libertarians]. Brooks’ piece is behind a subscription firewall so I will cite it extensively. The Cowen piece is online and can be read here.

Brooks’ argument is roughly as follows: Republicans cannot revive their political fortunes by looking back to Reaganism. That was an appropriate response to a particular historical situation but the principles on which it was founded are no longer applicable to the very different world of the twenty-first century.

Ronald Reagan came to the presidency at a time when the top tax rate was 70%, when socialism had not yet been discredited, and when federal regulation was stifling the economy. In that situation many reasonable, non-ideological people could accept the argument that big government was a serious threat to their liberties and future prospects. As Cowen puts it, the “old story” was “big government crushes liberty”.

But things have changed in the past quarter century. Today reasonable people see external forces as the greatest threats to their lives and liberties. They worry about globalization, environmental change, Islamist terrorism, the high costs of health care and the like, and in these circumstances people look to the government to protect them and their liberties. A new storyline, “advances in liberty bring bigger government,” or as Brooks has it, “security leads to freedom,” has replaced the old Reaganite formula in the minds of most Americans.

Because they are heavily invested in abstract principles intellectuals and political activists have been slow to recognize that the ground has been shifting beneath their feet. They still hold to principled arguments long after they have become politically dysfunctional. People might not like big government, high taxes and bureaucratic regulation, but they also want government to act to protect them from a myriad of threats and to them Reaganite rhetoric is a turnoff. The GOP, in other words, finds itself increasingly out of touch with the mainstream of American public opinion.

Brooks then makes an important point. He writes:

The sad thing is that President Bush sensed this shift in public consciousness back in 1999. Compassionate conservatism was an attempt to move beyond the “liberty vs. power” paradigm.

Here Brooks is absolutely right. President Bush has been far more astute and prescient than his critics.

Both major parties are afflicted with ideological hard-liners who, proclaiming themselves to be “the base”, have sought to force the mainstream into a retro political mode. If the Democrat Left is forever reliving the Seventies and Vietnam and Watergate, the Reaganite Right remains mired in the Eighties. The one major political figure who has been willing to take a mature and responsible approach to the problems of government is the man who actually has to govern — President Bush. For this he has paid a terrible political price.

Not only has Dubya been vilified by both the Left and the Right, but in last year’s elections fringe elements of the Republican coalition, determined to administer a “thumpin’” to those who they saw as not sufficiently principled, delivered control of the government to Democrats who are now using that power irresponsibly to undermine the administration. Pelosi and company are less concerned with effective government than in being able to enter the next election cycle portraying Bush as a failure, and that seems to be OK with the hardliners.

Brooks argues that President Bush could have avoided this if he simply explained his policies more effectively. I’m not sure. For those who consider themselves “the base” the “politics of principle” are impenetrable to explanation. The ideologues stubbornly hold to a reassuring vision of a glorious past and comfort themselves with the fantasy that a return to Reaganite principles is all that is necessary to regain political ascendency, but that is a recipe for disaster. Rather than luxuriating in the politics of the past, Republicans have to align themselves, as Dubya has tried to do, with the sensibilities of today’s voters.
As Brooks concludes, “Goldwater and Reagan were important leaders, but they’re not models for the future.”

To which I can only add, “Amen!”

UPDATE:

Oh my! No sooner do I post this than I go over to the “Corner” to find this. Jonah Goldberg, who I respect and read regularly, produced a paragraph that perfectly sums up the unfortunate attitude I was decrying above. He writes:

The conservative movement is not primarily nor even really secondarily about winning elections. Conservatives are about winning arguments or, if you prefer, winning hearts and minds. The Republican Party can be a useful tool in this regard, but it’s an unwieldy and ultimately unreliable one. Personally, I think the GOP and conservatism have become too intertwined. This is good when it makes the GOP more conservative, but it’s bad when it makes conservatism more like a political party.

He wrote this in response to the Brooks article, which seems to be causing quite a stir in the conservative blogosphere. Read the whole post here. And, by all means, go over to The American Scene and read Ross Douthat’s eminently sensible take on the controversy [here]. Douthat points out that many of the policy issues that really interest conservatives, free-trade, ending farm subsidies and the home-mortgage deduction, means-testing Social Security, and the like are “either extremely uninteresting or extremely unpopular with most voters” and when Bush has followed conservative recommendations he has suffered politically.

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AboveAvgJane points to a thought provoking John Micek blog post…

Among them are recurring complaints about how state Rep. X is a waste of space, or how state Sen. Y doesn’t deserve his big, fat paycheck because he’s a worthless sack of protoplasm.

 

And that got us thinking:

 

What constitutes a productive and effective state legislator?

John provides a number of criteria.

Is it the number of bills they pass?

 

Is it how quickly they respond to citizens’ needs?

 

Is it a combination of both?

 

In any given legislative session, hundreds, if not thousands, of pieces of legislation are introduced. Only a handful ever become law. Based on that, you could divide the number of bills a lawmaker sponsors by the number he or she actually gets passed. That’ll give you a batting average of effectiveness.

 

But is that a fair way to do it?

No, I don’t think it is… because “doing work” doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing the people’s work… (midnight payraise, golden pension parachutes, passing the “tax hike savings” on to us… bonuses, etc)

While that term (”people’s work”) is out there, who really defines the people’s work? My kind of people’s work is probably not John’s people’s work and I’d wager a lot that it’s not AboveAvgJane’s.

Smoking ban?
Casinos?
Property tax “relief”?
Eddycare?
Tax hikes?
Tax cuts?
Drug wars?
Funding Abortions?
Defunding Abortions?

As a matter of fact, I’d say the more laws that a government creates, the more our freedoms are abridged.

Perhaps the correct metric is vote for or against a bill which bumps up against the commonwealth’s Constitution.

To pick a part of the Constitution at random, Section 21.

The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall not be questioned.

That’s the entire section and there is simply no way that right can be misconstrued in anyway to say anything it does not. It is unambiguous.

Now contrast that with gun control legislation (take your pick)… a law like that fails.

But even then, the Constitutional metric can be foggy.

I obtained a license to carry in Montgomery County about a year ago. Could I argue that requiring a license to carry in and of itself is questioning? Walking into the Sheriff’s office and walking out with one wasn’t enough. I had to take a form to my local police… then wait a week or two for them to mail it back to Norristown. Is that questioning? Without question I think it’s weeding out the lazy.

Maybe the question is of their continued re-electability… the only “fair” un-gerrymandered comparison we can make are US Senator, local municipal executives and at-large legislators. Given that legislators like John Perzel can pick their voters, that’s certainly not a fair metric.

I’d love them to be honest and forthright, even if I disagree with them certain issues.

In the end, I want a legislator politician who doesn’t get (or aspire to get) in my way… which ever way that it is.

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Earlier this week, Matthew Brouillette of the Commonwealth Foundation delivered testimony before the Senate State Government Committee.

He recommends that the following be addressed.

• Term Limits
• Session Limits
• Redistricting
• Initiative And Referendum
• Compensation
• Tax And Spending Limits

Read it all.

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Interesting.

According to a recent Quinnipiac poll for the democratic candidates Clinton leads with 36% of the vote followed by Barack Obama with 17%. Al Gore, who hasn’t announced he’s even seeking the nomination got 13% of the vote and John Edwards follows with 9%.

 

As for the republicans, former New York Mayor Giuliani leads the poll with 33% followed by John McCain with 18%, Newt Gingrich with 7%, and Fred Thompson with 6%.

Romney got 5%.

(Tip to Chris)

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