Category: Pennsylvania

Toll roads apparently divert traffic and increase accidents.

The researchers analyzed decades of data from the Ohio Turnpike and nearby alternate routes in Ohio, comparing both to national data to determine the effects the toll rates had on nearby free roads. Ohio raised toll rates in the 1990s and subsequently lowered them, allowing an easier calculation of the effect of different rate levels. The study showed that as the Turnpike toll increased, truck traffic increased on alternate, free routes as truckers balanced the monetary savings with the cost of the extra time needed to take an indirect route.

I doubt Rendell will care.  The sections of Pennsylvania that I-80 goes through are the parts that didn’t vote for him.  If their costs go up, so what?  As long as everyone else can keep paying more for Philadelphia dysfunctional mass transit system, I’m sure that’s fine by him.

I pretty much agree with Tony Phyrillas that Ed Rendell has had a bad year.  Any year that’s bad for Ed is good for us.

None of the governor’s initiatives made it past the Legislature. Rendell sought $2.5 billion in new or expanded taxes to pay for his agenda. He got none of it. Rendell proposed an $850 million energy plan, a multi-billion dollar plan to provide health insurance to the uninsured and a proposal to lease the Turnpike to continue sinking money into the state’s failed mass transit systems. He struck out on all three.

A personal plea for more gun control was shot down by the Legislature late in the year and Rendell couldn’t even get a smoking ban passed by the time 2007 ended.

Rendell squandered what political muscle he had going into 2007. My theory has always been that Rendell lied too often about property tax relief. While voters still liked Rendell and rewarded him with a second term, they stopped believing anything the governor had to say.

I guess I’m odd.  I never believed anything he had to say.   Read the whole thing.  Also bad news for Ed Rendell’s gun control agenda, Representative Lisa Bennington, who voted against us in the Judiciary Committee last month, had decided to quit after her term ends, because the pace of reform is just too slow for her.

We should all pat ourselves on the back for this one.  I for one am happy to help contribute to frustrating the anti-gunners out of the Pennsylvania legislature.

Here’s a good CenterDaily article about the primary system in Pennsylvania.  Originally my opinion on open primaries was negative.  I felt that it was a freedom of association issue, and that the parties should be able to control who votes in their primaries.

I’ve since changed my mind, and decided that if the political parties wish to hijack the election apparatus of the state in order to choose delegates to their convention, then the state gets to set the terms under which its election apparatus gets used.  If the parties don’t like this, they can go back to using a caucus system like they do in Iowa.

So I’ll get on board with making Pennsylvania primaries open, and while we’re at it, how about joining Super Duper Tuesday so that candidates will actually pay attention to us.

It makes sense, since a lot of southern and western states are gaining population lost from the Northeast.  Massachusetts is probably going to lose one congressional seat when the next census is taken.

Pennsylvania isn’t experiencing population loss, but we’re growing at about 1/4th the rate of the rest of the country, and, most importantly, the state is having difficulty keeping young people from leaving.  In the long term, Pennsylvania will probably also begin to lose population, unless we can improve the business climate in the state.  Our governor, who has never seen a tax he wouldn’t like to raise, certainly isn’t helping in this regard.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court got around having to rule whether or not the Auditor General has the power to audit how the Pennsylvania legislature spends the $300 million dollars it drains from the public treasury every year in order to operate.  It did this by ruling the plaintiff didn’t have standing to sue the Auditor General.

Personally, I think the Auditor General should have the power to audit legislators.  Whether or not the law allows this is not a matter I’ve investigated, but it ought to.   Good luck getting legislators to hold themselves accountable though.

It’s Louisiana’s moniker, but we pretty impressively rank:

Texas may have more hunters and anglers than Pennsylvania, and Texans may spend more money on their outdoor pursuits, but Keystone State hunters spend more days hunting than those in any other state.

A study released last week by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation ranks Pennsylvania among the top five states in all five hunting-related categories.

That includes first for days afield (16 million), second for number of resident hunters (933,000), spending ($1.7 billion) and hunting-related jobs (28,000), and fourth for number of out-of-state hunters (111,000).

When the state’s 830,000 anglers are added to the mix, Pennsylvania ranks fifth in the country in total number of resident sportsmen with 1.4 million, following Texas (2.6 million), Florida (2 million), California (1.7 million) and Ohio (1.48 million).

And the folks in Philadelphia would be happy to throw it all away for the sake of looking like they are doing something about violence in Philadelphia, instead if, you know, doing something.

Here are some of the many ways that hunters impact our state’s economy, according to the Congressional Sportsman’s Foundation.

Pennsylvania’s 1.4 million hunters and anglers are among the most prominent and influential of all demographic groups, spending more than $3.5 billion a year on hunting and fishing, according to a new report.

That’s quite a lot.  Other interesting facts:

• Sportsmen support more jobs in Pennsylvania than Penn State University and the Philadelphia Airport combined (51,000 jobs vs. 45,000).
• Annual spending by Pennsylvania sportsmen is more than the revenues of York-based BonTon Stores ($3.5 billion vs. $3.1 billion).
• Annual spending by Pennsylvania sportsmen is more than the cash receipts from dairy products, cattle, greenhouse/nursery, mushrooms and broilers – the state’s top five grossing agricultural commodities ($3.5 billion vs. $3.1 billion).
• Pennsylvania sportsmen spend $104 million anually on outboard boats and engines to get out on the water and around the rivers for fishing and hunting.
• Pennsylvania sportsmen outnumber the combined populations of Allentown, Erie, Pittsburgh, Reading, and Scranton, two to one (1.4 million vs. 680,297).
• More Pennsylvania residents hunt and fish each year than attend Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia 76ers games combined (1.4 million vs. 1.3 million).
• The economic stimulus of hunting and fishing equates to an astounding $9.6 million a day being pumped into the state’s economy.

Certainly nothing to sneeze at.

While Congress is trying to solve our energy problems by banning light bulbs, Pennsylvania Power and Light says it plans to file an application with the NRC to build a new reactor unit on its Susquehanna site.   Building more nuclear power plants seems to me to be a preferable way to produce more emission-free power, rather than having Congress meddle in what kind of lighting I’m allowed to have in my house.