You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me!
One of the things about keeping an eye on the political landscape is the tendency towards being desensitized toward the outrageous. Time after time you hear about the unbelievable blunders of government, so much so that the things that were once unbelievable and outrageous now become…well, believable. Allow me to demonstrate what I mean with some current news out of the great state of Pennsylvania (Edward G. Rendell, Governor). I thought I had seen the worst with the state legislature legalizing slot-machine gambling and then fighting for the right to have ownership interests in the slots. Hmmm, government regulators controlling an industry that they have great vested interests in; sure sounds questionable enough to me. All this under the cover of darkness when most of the press had called it quits for the day. If that weren’t bad enough, this new one takes the cake.
It started earlier this month when a bill was brought up for a vote as the last order of business at 1AM on the morning of July 7. It was brought up without any debate and quickly sailed through both the Senate and the House. This bill effectively raised the salaries of all the members of the state legislature making the state government of Pennsylvania the most expensive in the entire nation to run – 462 million dollars per year. A rank-and-file representative saw his salary rise from $69,647 to over $81,000, a raise of over 14%. They also made committee chairmanships more lucrative by raising their salaries to almost $89,155. Our beloved governor saw his pay increase 14% to $176,800, so you can be sure that he’ll put his John Hancock on this bill.
Comparatively, the bill now places Pennsylvania representatives with the second highest salaries in the nation behind only California. Let the cash flow!! I have to say, this news did cause me to sit and notice…at least a little bit. But after reading the headlines and frowning a bit, I forgot about the story. After all, they are politicians; what do you expect?
But it did kind of bug me a little bit. I thought we were in desperate need of property tax relief for our seniors but couldn’t find the funding (at lease outside of legalizing slots and taxing them). I thought we were short money for education thanks to “evil President Bush’s All-Children-Left Behind Act”. I thought we were having a difficult time with all these unfunded mandates by the federal government. I thought the states were in trouble because of Bush’s tax cuts. What happened to all those things, hmmm?? Guess they must not be as high on the list as giving everyone pay increases. Must be nice to give yourself a pay increase whenever you feel like you need one; (just do it in the dead of night so nobody notices until it’s too late). I’m feeling a run for the state legislature coming on!
And if all that weren’t bad enough, just wait there’s more! Take a gander at this headline from the Morning Call! “House Dems who voted against increase lose power posts.” That’s right, you’re not seeing things and you’re not going blind. House Democrat leaders have stripped away committee chairmanships and vice chairmanships away from those who voted against the proposed pay hikes and gave them to those who supported it. (Including my very own rep. Neal Goodman, a democrat – that I voted against, thankfully – who received a nice new vice-chairmanship thanks to his vote) And did you notice that now those chairmanships garner larger salaries making them lucrative not only for the power but also for the money. Coincidence?? I doubt it.
Micheal Manzo, the chief of staff for the Democrat Minority leader said the move was meant to reward lawmakers who supported the pay raise, not retaliate against those who didn’t. Uh…Mr. Manzo, I hate to tell you this, but that has got to be the dumbest statement I have ever heard. ''It's not retribution. It's not retaliation. From our position, it was an issue of fairness for members who voted yes,'' Manzo went on to say. “They expected that if they put up the vote, they'd be rewarded.'' (mcall.com)
At first, this took me some time to get my mind around. Giving yourself a pay raise and then punishing those who had the guts to stand up and say no?? How corrupt can you get? How “in-your-face” can you be? This is a travesty. It’s utterly ridiculous, and lest you think this is Republican beating on the Democrats, you couldn’t be more wrong. The Republicans bear much of the blame if not more of it. They are in charge; and they should be held to the fire. It’s is time to say “enough is enough”; the line has been crossed. Why has this been allowed to go on? Why does it seem that our legislatures care nothing about what there constituents think? The buck has to be passed to us; we hold the power. The time has come to do something; the time has come to tell the legislature that we are sick and tired of being fooled with or else we’ll be changing our license plates to say “You’ve got a corrupt politician friend in Pennsylvania.”
To find out how your Representative and Senator voted click here. I’m writing my representatives, what are you going to do? Oh, and special thanks to Doug Reichly, Rob Wonderling, Robert Freeman, Richard Grucela, and Jennifer Mann – local representatives who had enough guts to stand and vote against the pay hikes.