News & Brews August 28, 2024
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Harris, Biden to campaign in Pittsburgh Monday
On Labor Day, Vice President Harris and President Biden will campaign in Pittsburgh, marking the first time the pair has made a joint appearance since Democrats booted Biden off the presidential ticket in the name of democracy and put Harris in his place without the voice of the voters (but I digress). The Harris campaign didn’t give details on the event.
Fetterman has a book deal
The news that was previously sourced to “unnamed sources” has been confirmed: U.S. Sen. John Fetterman has a book deal. The Post-Gazette reports that the confirmation came via Fetterman’s required annual financial disclosure statement. The book—a memoir—will be published by Penguin Random House and reportedly co-authored by “Friday Night Lights” author Buzz Bissinger.
Trump campaign launches new mail-in voting site
Hoping to increase the GOP share of mail-in votes, “[t]he Trump team and Republican National Committee announced on Monday their latest push to get out the vote, launching a website that gives full access to Pennsylvania’s election toolkit and lets voters directly request a mail-in or absentee ballot,” the Post-Gazette reports. The new site, swampthevoteusa.com (don’t blame me for the name), lets folks request a mail-in ballot, but apparently only after providing personal contact info (i.e. email address and phone number) to the GOP and signing up for text messages by default. That said, the site is very transparent that it’s a pro-Trump site, unlike the Democrat-aligned vote.pa.
NEA ignores 2/3 of its members
It’s no secret that the National Education Association is pretty much an arm of the Democrat party. About 95% of the union’s political donations (or nearly 98% this year!)—amounting to millions upon millions of dollars—goes to Democrats. But NEA President Becky Pringle recently boasted that the union “tries to remain non-partisan” (I’ll wait while you stop laughing….) and that “its membership is nearly evenly split between Democrats, Republicans, and independents.” Labor Union News does some basic math and points out that if that’s the case, “it would mean that two-thirds of NEA’s members are not members of the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, the NEA spends nearly all of its political money on Democrats.” What’s that about unions “representing” their members?
Pa.’s gaming tax revenue is highest in the nation
Well, Pa. finally hit #1 on a state ranking list! Unfortunately — it’s for a tax. PennLive reports, “Pennsylvania’s total gaming-specific tax revenues from casinos top every other state in the nation.” American gaming Association “data for 2023 puts Pennsylvania at $2.3 billion in casino tax revenue, roughly $250 million dollars higher than New York and one of only three states – along with Nevada – to top a billion dollars.” Why are PA and NY higher than Nevada? Well, “the Keystone and Empire states’ casinos are taxed at much higher rates.”