I've written several posts about the recent legislative pay raise and the unvouchered expense fund used to collect the increase before it actually takes place. To make matters worse, Bill DeWeese, House Minority Leader, replaced Democratic sub-committee chairs who voted against the increase with other Democrats who had voted for it.
In today's Inquirer, Larry Kane (whom I'm not normally a big fan of) writes an editorial on this. One paragraph in particular jumped out at me:
Two young Democratic represntatives from Montgomery County, Josh Shapiro and Michael Gerber, voted against the pay raise and refused to take them early. DeWeese can't take away their committee chairman posts, because they don't have any. But these are two freshmen who won upset victories against Republican opponents. They are already going to have a hard time retaining their seats. If they lost constituent service funds, they will be weakened politically by their own party leader. Figure that!
He goes on to point out that it is hard enough to find people willing to run for office, without having to worry about being stabbed in the back by their own party. I've looked at Shapiro's work for an earlier posting on some legislation he (and others) introduced on creating a statewide articulation agreement among state funded colleges and universities, allowing students to transfer from one school to another more easily. He has also made child safety, especially reducing the number of children who die in household accidents, a priority. He's a young man with a long political future in front of him. He took a stand for his beliefs. We need to encourage more like him to run, not toss him to the curb.
I've also written about Greg Vitali, who has not only lost the chairmanship of an energy sub-committee (he's been involved in energy-related issues for years), but also seen some cuts in constituent services money. Vitali is a good guy.
Come on, people, can't we do better than this? There's another year before election season on the state house heats up. We have to keep talking about this, keep it fresh in the minds of all voters. It's important.
[Note: one spammed comment deleted]
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5 comments:
Jane - I saw the comment in your "comment section" and thought it might be Rep. Cohen chiming in, but alas, junk blog, which seems to be happening more and more. Yuk. Nothing is sacred!
Anyway, nicely put. I know, some people are sick of the Legislative pay raise thing, which i actually have mixed feelings about - raise, perhaps legitimately due, but the vouchers...no way. Unacceptable.
Well, summer vacation is officially over in my neck of Penn's Woods on September 25th and I can't wait to see what the rest of the 2005 session will bring.
Keep posting - BipartisanBetty
Betty,
Nice to hear from you. Yes, the spammers have found me. I've been debating on whether to leave them or not and decided to remove at least some of them, with a note as to why.
Compared to his colleagues, Rep. Cohen does seem to get around doesn't he, at least on blogs.
I'm looking forward to the new legislative session, too, and hope you will stop in now and again and give us a bird's eye view!
personally, I'll never delete a comment just because I don't agree with it, but I delete all comment spam, and I do so in the permanent way that doesn't even leave a trace. it's not at all hard to tell these groups apart, but I fear the gradual increase in spam frequency...
ACM,
I really fretted over deleting those comments but it seemed to be interfering with actual people commenting. I don't want to disable anonymous comments and the only other option is putting in the verification link where people have to read and re-type those squiggled eye-doctor-looking text/number lines. I worry that this would dissuade people as well. On the rare occasions when I do delete comments I like to let people know that in case they are returing visitors and wonder what happened to that comment. The only other times I have deleted comments was when a group of people were going around to Latoyia Figueroa posts and arguing with each other on them. The language got rough and threatening, so I took them off. It is a tricky line to walk, and tough decisions to make.
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