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Pennsylvania: The worst of the worst

Posted: October 26, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

Next Tuesday, I have the honor of voting for a representative on arguably the most corrupt and incompetent political institution in the country: the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Pennsylvania is one of the few states where judges run on a political ticket for 10-year terms. Over time, this formula has created one of the worst assemblies of jurists both Democrat and Republican.

Here is just the top of the pops:

Cynthia Baldwin served on the high court in 2006 and 2007 as an appointee of then-Gov. Ed Rendell. She later became chief counsel for Penn State. Baldwin received a reprimand in February by the high court over a complaint that she violated professional rules for lawyers by testifying about university officials accused in the Sandusky scandal when before that she represented them.

In 2010, two sisters of Justice Orie Melvin, Pennsylvania state senator Jane Orie and Janine Orie, were arrested and charged with theft of services and criminal conspiracy after a Pittsburgh grand jury investigation. They were accused of using Jane Orie’s Senate staff and office resources to help run their sister’s 2009 campaign for the State Supreme Court. Three years later, the justice also was charged and convicted on similar charges. Nevertheless, she didn’t spend a single day in prison.

Seamus McCaffery, another Supreme Court judge, sent e-mails with sexually, racially, and ethnically objectionable images and language. He apologized for sending the e-mails and confessed that it was “coarse language.” He was suspended from the bench for the e-mails and investigated for referral fees directed to his wife from personal injury law firms. He retired in 2014 with a full pension of $134,000 a year.

Michael Eakin resigned in 2016 from the bench after being suspended for sending e-mails containing pornographic material to his colleagues on the court, attorneys, and lower court judges. According to news accounts, the e-mails also featured sexual, racial, and ethnic humor that many found objectionable.

Eakin insisted that his “humor” and “sexual preferences” did not interfere with his ability to decide cases before the court fairly. By resigning, Eakin was able to escape a hearing before the ethics board and any punishment. He retired with a full pension.

Kevin Dougherty, the brother of union boss John Dougherty, reportedly got his snow shoveled and house repaired from an illegal union slush fund, according to federal prosecutors trying John for corruption charges. Justice Dougherty has not been charged.

When Kevin was elected to the court in 2015, it raised more than a few eyebrows because his brother was arguably the most powerful man in Philadelphia politics before his indictment for corruption.

But the court isn’t just about unethical and illegal acts; it also makes bad law. 

As you may recall, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court delivered a neck-snapping decision to allow ballots to be submitted three days AFTER the presidential election in 2020.

The law unambiguously stated that voters must “fill out, date and sign,” yet the state Supreme Court said the ballots should be counted, in a one-time exception for 2020. Earlier in the case, Judge Kevin Brobson had ruled the opposite. “To remove the date requirement,” he wrote, “would constitute a judicial rewrite of the statute.”

It will take a long time to get rid of these meatheads, but at least I can vote for Judge Brobson, a Republican whose website says he’ll defend “the law as it is written.”

Jimmy Carter redux

Posted: October 19, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

As a young reporter for Newsweek, I headed to Washington, D.C., during the administration of Jimmy Carter, the most ineffective president during my lifetime.

Almost every week, I was assigned to what became known as the Jimmy “f***-up” story. These missives included his administration’s failure to curb inflation rates and mortgage costs to problems with energy supplies and labor unions. At the end of the Carter administration, I reported on the biggest blunder of all: the Iran hostage crisis. 

It’s taken a few months, but the comparison of Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden is finally creeping into the media. 

In a column in The Hill, political operative Bill Schneider explained some of the similarities.

If Congress fails to pass the mega-buck omnibus bill to grant money to virtually every Democrat, Biden will look bad, Schneider argued. “Biden will look weak. Which is exactly the problem Carter had. Carter was called weak, ineffectual, and “’wishy-washy,’” Schneider wrote.

As history.com notes: “Despite Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, Congress blocked Carter’s proposal for welfare reform, as well as his proposal for a long-range energy program, a central focus of his administration. This difficult relationship with Congress meant that Carter was unable to convert his plans into legislation, despite his initial popularity.”

Sound familiar? But the comparisons of the ineffectiveness of Carter and Biden go much further than passing legislation.

Carter sent special forces to Iran to rescue the American hostages in the U.S. embassy in Iran. Two helicopters crashed in the desert, leaving soldiers dead and a public relations disaster for the country. The withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden provided the same type of victory to our enemies and an embarrassment for the United States.

Carter managed to send inflation and mortgage rates skyrocketing in an economy that fell flat during his tenure. Although mortgage rates are staying relatively low so far under Biden, inflation is rampaging to its highest rate in years. For example, the Social Security Administration recently announced that the cost-of-living increase will reach nearly 6 percent, a rate that will only exacerbate the already-weakened retirement system.

Inflation at the supermarket and the gas pumps is worsening under Biden as it did under Carter.

Labor unions picketed coal mines, steel mills, postal offices, and many other businesses under Carter. Replace that unrest with strikes at hospitals, cereal makers, and equipment manufacturers under Biden.

Even the families of Carter and Biden have created embarrassment for the country. Carter’s brother Billy got drunk with the Georgia locals and hobnobbed with dictators like Muammar Gaddafi of Libya. Biden’s son Hunter disgraced himself with cocaine orgies and China hijinks.

There may be one significant difference between the two presidents. Carter was a pretty decent guy. I’m not so sure the same can be said about Biden.

Help Wanted!

Posted: October 12, 2021 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

As you drive throughout central Pennsylvania, it’s difficult not to notice something other than fall foliage: Help wanted signs abound throughout the region.

On Route 11, which snakes along the countryside near my home, more than 70 signs seeking employees dominate the highway. 

Fred Gaffney, executive director of Columbia Montour Chamber of Commerce, told a local newspaper that he’s at a loss to say why. “This is a workforce crisis unlike anything I’ve seen in my years at the Chamber,” Gaffney said.

Recently, a local job fair featured more than 500 openings from 25 employers. But only 40 people attended, Gaffney said. Businesses in the area have raised their minimum wages to $15 an hour and higher. 

What’s happening near my home is occurring throughout the country. According to the National Federation of Independent Business, 67% of small businesses reported hiring or trying to hire in September, and 42% raised compensation. But a record 51% still have openings they couldn’t fill.

The Wall Street Journal postulated in a recent editorial: “So what’s causing the worker shortage? One possible culprit is government and employer vaccine mandates that set ultimatums for workers. President Biden’s vaccine order first applied to nursing homes, which lost jobs in the month. Many states and school districts have also imposed mandates, and state and local education employment fell 161,000. The White House claims its vaccine mandates will boost job growth, but not if unvaccinated workers quit.”

The lack of workers has clearly become a drag on the economy. Ships are backed up at ports partly because there aren’t workers to unload and transport goods to where they need to go. Labor and material shortages are delaying projects and increasing prices in the home-building sector.

Another factor is that it doesn’t pay to work in some cases when the government provides enough money to keep people off the job. 

For my wife and me, it’s meant postponing work on our new home because there aren’t enough painters and other tradespeople to perform needed maintenance. For example, we can’t get anyone to paint the exterior of our house until next spring.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration seemingly has no strategy to solve the problems.

In an interview with Business Insider, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has a lame analysis:

–People are afraid to go back to work because of the Delta variant.

–People have moved out of areas where employers are hiring.

–People are rethinking their attitude toward work—what one psychologist has called the “the great resignation.”

“I think a lot of people are re-imagining or rethinking about what’s next for them,” Walsh said. The pandemic has changed people’s views about work, causing them to “ask existential questions about their purpose and happiness,” Business Insider noted. 

Whatever the case, it would appear that the labor conflagration won’t be solved anytime soon, particularly under this administration.

I guess I may have to get out the work clothes and ladder to ponder the existential question of whether to paint or not to paint.

The Supremes are back

Posted: October 5, 2021 by chrisharper in abortion, crime
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By Christopher Harper

This term for the U.S. Supreme Court, which opened yesterday, may be the most compelling in our lifetimes, particularly for conservatives.

Poised with a relatively solid five-vote majority, the justices have an opportunity to make some significant changes in the law. Please note that I have excluded Chief Justice John Roberts from this majority.

At the center of this new-found power, Justice Clarence Thomas came out firing rapid questions in a case involving a dispute between Tennessee and Mississippi. Justice Thomas had been known for saying few words during oral arguments, mainly because he was often a sole voice of reason in years past.

It will be refreshing to see Justice Thomas at the forefront of arguments.

On its first day, the court sent a clear warning to the left when the justices issued a terse decision NOT to grant congressional voting rights for the District of Columbia. The ruling was clear: DC isn’t a state!

The court has agreed to hear appeals that explicitly call for overruling Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that women had a constitutional right to end pregnancy.


The case surrounds Mississippi’s “Gestational Age Act,” which was passed in 2018 and allows abortion after 15 weeks “only in medical emergencies or for severe fetal abnormality.” If doctors perform abortions outside the parameters of the law, they could have their medical licenses suspended or revoked and may be subject to additional penalties and fines. The state’s attorney general has argued that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong” and should be overturned.

In September, the court declined to block an even more restrictive Texas abortion law, on a 5-4 vote. Chief Justice Roberts found himself in dissent along with the three liberal justices.

Another case, which is set for arguments in November, challenges a New York state law limiting concealed weapons permits. The court could expand Second Amendment rights to allow handguns in public. In 2008 and 2010 decisions, the court recognized a constitutional right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense.

Several cases reflect the court’s concern for religious expression. In November, the justices will consider a condemned Texas inmate’s claim that the state must let his pastor lay hands upon him while he is executed.

A December argument challenges Maine’s public education system, which relies on state tuition vouchers for private schools. Half the state’s school districts don’t have enough students to justify schools of their own, so the state reimburses tuition at secular private schools. Parents who prefer religious schools argue that the program is discriminatory.

The court also agreed recently to consider whether the city of Boston, which allows outside groups to fly their banners from flagpoles outside City Hall, violated the First Amendment by rejecting a cross-bearing “Christian flag.”

The hollering from the left started even before the court convened, with abortion advocates protesting in front of the court’s building. Moreover, the media have renewed their rumblings about the rightward tilt of the court. For example, The News York Times has declared that the court is “off the rails.”

I guess it’s time buckle up for what is likely to be an interesting year!

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