News & Brews August 23, 2024
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Harris ‘sets sights on Pennsylvania’
The Inquirer reports that now that Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted the Democrat nomination for president, her campaign is setting its sights on none other than our own Pennsylvania. Indeed, a theme throughout the Democrat convention was as Pennsylvania goes, so goes the nation. And “Harris campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez told the [state’s] delegation Pennsylvania was the Harris team’s ‘largest operation,’ with 36 field offices and more than 300 staffers on the ground.”
Party of COVID tyranny tries to rebrand as party of freedom
Reason.com excoriates Democrats for simultaneously trying to campaign “both on their pandemic record and minding your own damn business.” In tallying whether “joy” or “freedom” appeared the most at the DNC, the story notes that “joy” was in the lead. “But then Pennsylvania governor, veep pick runner-up, and professional Barack Obama impersonator Josh Shapiro ladled out the freedom thicker than a 1980s direct response television commercial.” But one thing Shapiro had that Walz does not is the ability to say he was not governor during the Left’s COVID lockdowns. “Making your own health care decision to gather outdoors with the people you love is a freedom as fundamental as it gets. And Walz criminalized it.”
PSEA must ‘level with members’ on where dues go
The Freedom Foundation’s Maxford Nelsen writes in PennLive that since 2018, the Pennsylvania State Education Association “has routed more than $4.3 million in members’ dues through” a special fund the union created “for the express purpose of supporting and opposing candidates for office.” Nelsen writes that PSEA’s “nearly 140,000 members deserve to know that, whether they approve or not, their union dues will be hard at work this election season.”
Moving to new crime reporting system is heavy lift
The Delaware Valley Journal reports that a switch to a new system to report crime data to the FBI provides a more comprehensive view of crime statistics, but changing over to the new system is “cumbersome for police departments.” Because of this, “the data the FBI is using for its crime statistics, the statistics often cited in the media to show that crime has risen or been reduced, are based on a smaller data set.”
Witness against Johnny Doc gets probation
The Inky reports that contractor Anthony Massa, “[t]he only member of John Dougherty’s inner circle to ever agree to testify against him,” will avoid prison and instead has been given probation for “the role he played in securing the former labor leader’s conviction.” The judge sentenced Massa to three years’ probation, 120 hours of community service, and said he must reimburse the union $84,000 in addition to paying a $10,000 fine.