Recent editorials of statewide and national interest from Pennsylvania’s newspapers:
Pennsylvania lawmakers must pass a red flag law in 2020
LNP
Jan. 6
We have urged the passage of a strong federal red flag law (in addition to stronger federal background checks on gun sales).
But there’s no saying when or if such a law will be enacted by Congress. And so it makes sense to simultaneously push for a red flag law in Pennsylvania.
Mahon and Meyer lay out compelling evidence for why our state needs such a law, and they detail how a majority of us want such a law in Pennsylvania. They also explain why the road to passage in Harrisburg has been so difficult. Frustratingly difficult, as far as we’re concerned.
In Pennsylvania, there were more than 1,600 gun deaths in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - a mortality rate higher than the national average. Easy access to guns can be a contributing factor in some homicides (especially domestic homicides) and some suicides.
Other states, responding to the epidemic of gun violence, are moving faster than Pennsylvania on the passage of red flag laws. Much of the legislation happened in the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018. Seventeen states and Washington, D.C., now have red flag laws, according to Mahon and Meyer, with those in Nevada, Hawaii and Colorado taking effect this month.
“The particulars of the laws vary by state,” Mahon and Meyer explained. “Generally, they allow someone … to request that a court temporarily take weapons from a person who may be dangerous or suicidal. Judges can decide to take away someone’s gun rights without the gun owner having a chance to mount a defense, but only at first.
“After the initial seizure, the subject of the order is generally able to appeal and have a full hearing before the judge, in which the gun owner can make a case for reversing the original order. The judge then decides whether to give the weapons back or continue the ban for a longer period, often three months to a year.”
In Pennsylvania’s proposed red flag laws (House Bill 1075 and Senate Bill 90), family members, household members or law enforcement officers could request that the court temporarily take guns from individuals presenting a danger to themselves or others.
We think that’s appropriate.
We believe in the need for extreme risk protection orders here.
So do many citizens and disparate groups in Pennsylvania.
According to an October Franklin & Marshall College poll, 62% of Pennsylvania registered voters surveyed said they strongly favored having a red flag law and another 18% somewhat favored such a measure.
That’s 80% of those surveyed favoring a proposed law. We don’t see 80% supporting much of anything these days.
Additionally, passage of a red flag law “is a top priority for the Pennsylvania chapter of Moms Demand Action and CeaseFirePA,” Mahon and Meyer wrote. “(Those groups have) organized rallies in the Capitol and across the state.”
And there’s this: Law enforcement groups, including the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, have endorsed red flag laws.
The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, after having initial concerns about due process and the proposed standard to be met for temporary gun removal, worked with lawmakers to tweak the bill’s language and “now has a neutral stance on the measure,” Mahon and Meyer reported.
The National Rifle Association remains opposed, but that’s hardly a surprise.
What’s frustrating is that there’s a good level of support from both Republicans and Democrats in Harrisburg, but efforts are still stalled.
“In a state Capitol that sees most political debates break down on party lines, the proposed extreme risk protection bill is strikingly bipartisan,” Mahon and Meyer wrote. “The main division rests within the Republican party, between the more moderate suburban wing and the libertarian-minded, NRA-endorsed rural bloc.”
We would think that having some Republicans, most Democrats, advocacy groups, law enforcement, and 80% of Pennsylvanians (per the F&M survey) in favor of a bill would be enough - more than enough - to spur rapid passage.
But this is Harrisburg and our bloated and byzantine Legislature, where it’s still possible for a few influence-wielding lawmakers to grind things to a halt.
“One powerful committee chairman, state Rep. Ron Kauffman, R-Franklin, pledged to never bring up the measure for a vote,” Mahon and Meyer wrote.
That’s wrong. And infuriating.
A red flag law wouldn’t solve all of our gun violence. But it’s one sensible step Pennsylvania can take - following in the footsteps of other states - to help save lives and reduce suicide deaths.
We urge our lawmakers to get this across the finish line in 2020.
Online: https://bit.ly/2Qy36Nh
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There’s a crisis in higher education, and the colleges are largely to blame
The York Dispatch
Jan. 7
There’s a crisis in higher education.
There’s no doubt about that. Each year, fewer students are enrolling in college.
A recent story in The York Dispatch detailed some statistics that have to leave college administrators frightened to their core.
College enrollment now lowest in a decade, affecting York County campuses
Enrollment decline has been a reality for a number of years, but a report last month showed the situation is growing more dire. For the first time in a decade, unduplicated enrollment - meaning students who were not counted more than once for applying to multiple schools - dropped below 18 million nationally.
Locally, Penn State York accepted 120 fewer students in 2019 than in the year prior, and overall enrollment fell 25% from 2015 to 2019. York College saw 5% fewer freshmen enroll in fall 2019 compared with fall 2017.
Less bang for the buck: The cause of the crisis, however, is a matter of great debate. Many factors are blamed.
A declining number of high school graduates and a strong economy are often cited as root causes.
While they may be contributing to the crisis, they don’t get to the heart of the matter.
The biggest issue is simply this: Middle-class families are deciding that a college education doesn’t provide the bang for the buck that it once did.
For the baby boomers generation, a college education was a no-brainer. The cost was relatively low and the benefits were generally high. They could leave college with a relatively small amount of debt and embark on careers that would provide a lifetime of higher earnings.
That is no longer the case.
Raising tuition and creating debt: Over the past few decades, colleges consistently raised tuition at a rate far above the inflation rate. As tuition rose, so did the college debt that faced students after they graduated.
When the Great Recession hit in 2008, the college crisis really began to take hold. College graduates entered a workforce with precious few jobs, while carrying a huge amount of debt. As a result, more and more college grads ended up working as baristas and living in their parents’ basements.
The longtime argument that a college education would pay off in higher career earnings was no longer consistently valid.
The fault for this crisis resides largely with the colleges. Year after year, no matter the economic conditions, raising tuition always seemed to be the default position. For administrators living in their proverbial ivory towers, cutting costs never seemed to be an option.
Anyone who has ever attended college can tell you that there is plenty of fat that could be slashed without having a negative impact on the education of the students.
College no longer such a good bet: Now, the decisions to consistently raise tuition rates have finally come back to haunt the colleges.
As the economy rebounded from the Great Recession, parents came to realization that their kids could get a job straight out of high school without piling up a college debt north of $100,000. Yes, the jobs would likely not come with great paychecks, but a little hard work, and maybe some technical education, could provide the chance for advancement and better wages. That option suddenly seemed like a better bet than a college degree that may not pay off in the end, especially if that degree came in a liberal arts curriculum.
Many parents simply learned that college is not necessary for everyone.
As a result, higher education finds itself in a largely self-created crisis.
The best guess is that, in a decade or two, many colleges will go out of business, and they will have no one to blame but themselves.
They forgot that, for middle-class families, going to college is largely a business decision and that their outdated business model no longer fulfilled the needs of their customers.
Online: https://bit.ly/2NndXYz
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Taxpayer Protection Act could stop the brain drain and keep Pennsylvania’s bright young millennials home
Harrisburg Patriot News/Pennlive.com
Jan. 8
State Rep. Dawn Keefer is right. The state’s budget process should be cleaner, clearer and far more transparent. Money shouldn’t be hidden in off-the-books slush funds and legislators should make sure we spend no more than our revenues support.
And legislators need to take a long, hard look at how heavily they tax both individuals and businesses. We’re draining our state dry of talented young people who are fleeing to places where their dollars will go a whole lot further than in their own hometowns.
That’s the contention of Rep. Keefer who has joined Rep. Ryan Warner, to sponsor legislation to implement the Taxpayer Protection Act (TPA).
It takes new eyes like Rep. Keefer’s to see things for what they are. And she’s seen right through the state budget process.
“It’s a sham of a budget system,” she said. “We’re always looking for the next fee or the next tax.”
Keefer recently met with PennLive’s Editorial Board and described her initial days as a new legislator learning the budgetary process. She asked a lot of questions and started making some people a little bit cranky.
“We like you, Rep. Keefer, “ she recalled one of her colleagues said. “But if you keep asking all of these questions, you’re not going to have very many friends.”
It’s easy to understand why Keefer’s questions may be ruffling some feathers. The budget process is admittedly murky, and Keefer is calling for clarity.
It’s murky because legislators can hide money in funds that are not a part of the official budget. And they can dole out the money to special interests that may be key to their political careers or keeping their constituents happy.
Keefer says It’s called “supplemental spending,” which is really spending more than the budget allows.
Plus, legislators can raise fees that are just another form of taxes that hurt individuals, families and businesses.
One example: “The fees for the Ski Roundtop elevator left went up over 100 percent ,” she said. That caused the price of ski passes for families to increase. “We just had to stop going.”
“It’s nonstop and it’s embedded everywhere,” she said.
Keefer would do away with all of the side dealing, increasing fees and off-line accounts. She is co-sponsor of House Bill 1316 that would bring transparency and predictability to the state budgeting process, which many legislators say they want but don’t seem eager to enact.
Rep. Ryan Warner is the bill’s sponsor, but it has been stalled since June, waiting for a vote in the House.
Senate Bill 116, sponsored by Sen. Camera Bartolotta, is in the same predicament, awaiting a vote in the Senate.
Their bills would reign in future spending, pegging it to the combined rate of inflation and population growth over a three-year period.
In extraordinary circumstance, legislators would be able to exceed the spending limits, with a two-third supermajority vote of both houses.
Both these bills would require voters to approve changes to the state constitution once they passed all of the legislative hurdles.
Former Sen. Mike Folmer also introduced Senate Bill 7, which would provide a statutory implementation of the TPA.
Nathan Benefield, Vice President of Commonwealth Foundation, supports these efforts and believes state spending is directly connected to the exodus of young and talented Pennsylvanians. The cutting edge, new industries shy away from Pennsylvania because of our high taxes, he says, forcing our brilliant young people to find jobs.
“PA has been lagging the nation in economic growth,” Benefield said. Pennsylvania is what he called an “out-migration state, especially among the college educated, working age millennials.”
What that means is the best and brightest young people in Pennsylvanians leave home for greener and less taxing pastures elsewhere.
“This is the trend … we lose 36 college-educated individuals every day,” Benefield said. They’re heading to low-tax states like Texas and Florida, he said.
Pennsylvania taxes each person an average of $4600, which is higher than the national average. “We’ve had five tax increases since 2009,” Benefield said.
Enough is enough already. Until we curtail our spending, lower our taxes and bring some transparency to our budgeting, the commonwealth will continue to repel innovative businesses and watch young college grads leave.
Keefer and her colleagues are pushing to get the TPA legislation passed this spring. We wish them luck.
Legislators should support their efforts and stop the brain drain that allows other states to steal our most valuable assets – the young, educated people seeking meaningful careers and lower taxes.
Online: https://bit.ly/301uV3H
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Is there enough talk about Pa. Turnpike safety?
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Jan. 6
There is a lot of talk about the turnpike.
People gripe about the annually escalating tolls and the large amount of debt the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission carries with huge annual payments to the state Department of Transportation for non-turnpike-related services.
But is there enough conversation about how safe the turnpike is?
It is a chat worth having after five people died Sunday and 55 were injured in a twisted mass of metal that included a passenger bus, three tractor-trailers and a car.
In November 2016, the PTC released its latest look into the future, “Long Range Plan 2035: The Bridge to Zero Fatalities.”
That sounds like a comprehensive effort to make the Pennsylvania Turnpike the safest road in America. The executive summary is available on the PTC website.
In 14 pages, the word “fatalities” appears seldom, generally only in the name of the document on the cover and the top of every other page.
“The updated LRP - ‘The Bridge to Zero Fatalities’ - is a significant step forward for the organization and will serve as a blueprint for capital asset investment decisions over the 10-year Capital Plan planning horizon and beyond,” it says on page 3.
There is a sentence on page 4 about one goal being to “provide the safest possible environment for customers, employees and business partners.” But this document that titles itself about ending death doesn’t devote one sentence to that idea.
Four whole pages, however, talk about money, and a considerable chunk of the others are wrapped up in revenue, which was up, and debt, which was up, too, and future debt, which is expected to rise even more.
Now, this is the executive summary. Executives do tend to look at bottom lines, and those numbers generally mean money. It wouldn’t be fair to say that safety isn’t a consideration.
Likewise, there is no reason to believe the commission could have prevented Sunday’s crash. The idea of “Zero Fatalities” is the kind of thing that looks good on a report cover page but is as distant a goal as world peace and an end to poverty.
It should still be part of the goal.
“The LRP is more of a process than a plan per se. It is dynamic, guiding the development of the 10-year Capital Plan, operating budget and long range planning in general,” the executive summary says.
That makes sense. You can’t plan for everything. But safety is more than a destination. It’s a journey with detours and side roads and unexpected stops, and it seems worth a little more conversation about we get there from here.
Online: Online: https://bit.ly/2sPvd1y
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We have seen war. Why can’t we learn from that?
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jan. 7
In 1936, in the midst of a the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a campaign speech in Chautauqua, New York. In his address, Roosevelt famously said: “I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded… I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”
Almost a century later, the drums of war are beating yet again — loudly. On Thursday night, the Pentagon announced that the United States killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force that conducts clandestine operations overseas, by drone strike while he was in Baghdad, Iraq.
Iran has vowed revenge. The question now is less whether Iran will retaliate but more when, where, and in what form. President Trump seems to welcome the prospect of war. Over the weekend, the tensions intensified when President Donald Trump tweeted that 52 targets are already lined up to respond to Iranian retaliation. Among those sites, are Iranian cultural heritage sites — striking them, according to Trump’s own defense secretary, would constitute a war crime.
As we all know — and dread— the human cost of war is staggering.
According to data from the Defense Manpower Data Center, as of January 3rd 2020, the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan after claimed the lives of more than 7,000 American services members — of those, 300 from Pennsylvania and more than 120 from New Jersey. Some of the casualties are as young as 18 years old.
In light of such loss, it’s easy to forget how staggering the financial cost of war is. Yet it never seems to be a consideration when weighing the prospect of fighting.
The first response to any proposal to solve big problems like healthcare, poverty, housing, and gun violence is: “How are we going to pay for it?” That question is never posed to those leading us into endless wars.
A Brown University researcher estimates that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was $3.6 trillion from 2001 and through 2016. That’s a burden that Pennsylvania and New Jersey taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay if there is a choice.
According to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), the administration did not inform Congress — the branch with the constitutional authority to authorize war and the power of the purse — before the attack was carried out. On Wednesday, almost a full week after the assassination, Trump administration officials are scheduled to brief Senators on the situation behind closed doors. Meanwhile, House Democrats are planned to vote on a War Powers Resolution that would to limit Trump from unilaterally using force against Iran.
At the same 1936 “I hate war” speech, Roosevelt said: “Peace, like charity, begins at home.” Those representing our region in Congress must resist another futile and costly war that sends people from our region into harms way — and spurs anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. With the past two decades as prologue, if war with Iran is coming, we know how it’s going to end.
We have seen war. We hate war.
Online: https://bit.ly/2uolAqK
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