News & Brews January 12, 2025
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‘Josh Shapiro’s Harrisburg problem’
Gov. Josh Shapiro likes to tout his “GSD” mantra, but Pennsylvania-based UnHerd columnist Ryan Zickgraf writes that even as Shapiro is being eyed as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, “if you want to see the limits of Shapiro-ism, visit the seat of his power — Harrisburg…. In 2023, the same year Shapiro rode to the rescue of I-95, an electrical fire consumed the Broad Street Market, the oldest continuously operating stone market house in the country…. A day later, Shapiro stood amid the charred remains and again promised lightning-strike efficiency…. Nearly three years later, Broad Street Market is in worse shape than ever before.” This is just one reason that Zickgraf questions Shapiro’s “readiness to lead in a national environment.”
Garrity announces nearly $1.5 million in fundraising
WHTM reports that state Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Stacy Garrity’s campaign “announced Friday that it raised nearly $1.5 million in 2025, ending the year with more than $1 million cash on hand.” Earlier last week, Gov. Shapiro’s campaign announced it was entering 2026 with $30 million cash-on-hand. Garrity stated, “Josh Shapiro has never faced a campaign like ours. We will have the funds to both prosecute Josh Shapiro’s failures and scandals while painting our positive vision for the Commonwealth’s future.”
Report: Philly burbs have highest school taxes in state
Broad + Liberty highlights that per a new report from the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office, “homeowners in the Philadelphia suburbs are paying the highest school district taxes across the commonwealth.” Per the report, Philly’s collar counties—Chester, Montgomery, Delaware, and Bucks—”have the highest school district taxes in the state by a large margin.” Whereas the median statewide amount is $2,700, Chester’s median clocks in at $5,386; Montco’s is $5,009; Delco’s is $4,952; and Bucks is $4,909. The next highest median, meanwhile, is Northampton, which trails significantly behind at $3,571.
WSJ: About that ‘disappearing’ middle class
As the Left and the Right both spread “populist gloom” of a “disappearing” middle class, the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board writes, “Most studies purporting to find a shrinking middle class are prone to a variety of measurement and analytical problems.” And measuring the data based on “an absolute marker for different income groups” actually shows that “the story of the past 50 years is steady progress out of the core middle class and into the upper middle class. The share of families in the ‘core’ middle class has declined to 30.8% in 2024 from 35.5% in 1979, but so have the proportions in the poor and lower-middle-class cohorts…. The upper middle class, meanwhile, has exploded.”
Anti-ICE protests take place in Pa.
Over the weekend, anti-ICE protestors gathered in locations across Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh, the Philly suburbs, and elsewhere. The protests came following the incident in Minnesota last week in which a woman was killed during a confrontation with an ICE agent. Unfortunately, emblematic of the deep partisan division in our country, reaction to the incident among many on both sides of the aisle relied less on attempting to discover what actually happened and more on whether someone is pro-Trump or anti-Trump.