They say goldfish have short memories. Some lawmakers haven’t realized that’s not quite true for Pennsylvania voters.
At least we don’t think it’s true. We can’t be sure who’s on the voter rolls these days with the state’s history of putting dead people on ballots , electing them to office , and letting them sign candidate petitions . We wouldn’t be surprised to find goldfish at the polls, but someone should tell the House Democratic caucus that most voters have longer memory spans than fish. In a joint press release last night, spokespeople for three House Democratic leaders lauded the chamber’s passage of a revenue bill that doesn’t include a hike in the income tax. "House Democrats fought successfully to defeat proposals to increase the personal income tax" and other broad-based taxes, the release reads. That leaves us to wonder how they had time for such a fight between all the press conferences and interviews during which the caucus advocated for the personal income tax, also known as a PIT. That’s where the whole memory thing comes into play. House Democrats want you to forget about June 16, when their leader Todd Eachus told the Post-Gazette: "I will support a higher income tax because of our eroding fiscal situation." It would help if you could forget about a June 29 memo by House Appropriations Chairman Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia. "It is time for us to find a responsible balance, using all our options, includign a broad-based tax increase," he wrote. "The most responsible approach would be a temporary increase in the personal income tax." And Democrats won’t mind if your memory of Aug. 3 is shaky. That’s when caucus leaders "took the PIT off the table" to appease a conservative Pittsburgh-area contingent who called themselves blue dogs and threatened to vote against the budget if the tax were part of it. If Mr. Eachus had been fighting against the tax, he wouldn’t have characterized the change as a concession by leaders. Apparently, it’s the blue dogs that the caucus wants you to remember, not the chieftains who advocated the tax. It’s Gov. Ed Rendell who gets the credit for that. He’s the one who proposed it, caucus spokesman Brett Marcy said in an e-mail message to the The Post-Gazette late last night. "Our caucus rejected that proposal, due in no small part to our southwestern Pennsylvania members," Mr. Marcy wrote.
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Apparently I have a few blog readers -- or, as Julia Powell would say, "bleaders." Not many at all, but a few check in every day. I don't advertise the site at all so I'm curious about how you found me. Leave a comment. Please.
I would like to put myself out there a little more but I need to be cautious with what I write so I don't compromise the perception of journalistic objectivity. Yes, I said perception. There's no such thing as true objectivity. Just ask (the ghost of) Walter Lippmann. But a little idealism never hurt any one, did it? Apparently I have fans. Actual fans. It's very weird. They invited me to lunch today and then actually took out a camera to take my picture like I'm some sort of celebrity. One of them, who was dressed in a t-shirt, actually even said she should have worn a suit to the lunch. To meet me. So, yes, I'm letting this go to my head.
I should tell you that these are Twitter followers. My Twitter group is small but hardcore. In other news ... apparently we're going to be doing more Web casting. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that. I don't like seeing myself on camera and I don't like being put on the spot. This is going to be LIVE! In a way that may be better than pre-recorded because then I'd keep doing retakes all day long. At least this way I can't overthink it. Well, I probably will overthink it anyway, but by then it will be too late. I guess I'm becoming a brand. Here's what's in my MoJo (mobile journalism) kit. What's in yours?
In the laptop backpack: Sony camera Flip camera IBM Thinkpad Air card Earbuds for listening to audio 2 reporter notebooks Astronaut pen (writes upsidedown, in rain, wherever) Press pass / credentials Cell phone Cell phone charger Camera charger Camera-to-computer USB cable Small tripod for Flip camera (Gotta ditch this. I've never used it.) Extension cord Gaffers tape (to wrangle extension cords) A few singles for vending machines & quarters for parking meters Seabands -- motion sickness bands (for train travel or long cab rides.) Digital audio recorder Spare AA batteries for Flip camera & audio recorder Business cards Things I carry just sometimes: Laptop shade Thumb drive List of addresses of places I need to go Manila envelope for receipts Travel rewards cards (ie. Marriott rewards, Amtrak rewards, etc.) In the car: GPS Power inverter Is it me or does it reek of disingenuity when different lawmakers use the same anachronistic terms to describe a plan that clearly has been fed to them? Hard to believe, but House Democratic Whip Bill DeWeese issued his first bonusgate-related statement in three years that doesn't contain the phrase "cooperating fully." Shocking. "Yeah, but he did it too" never worked with my mother, but it just may work in the criminal defense system. Various defendants in the "bonusgate" government corruption case are using the they-did-it-too defense in pre-trial motions filed this week in Dauphin County Common Pleas Court. I'd like to keep this blog highbrow and write about industry trends and issues in contemporary journalism, but I'll leave that to the academics. Instead, I'm going to use this space to log things I learn on the job and, occassionally, off the job. |
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