Long time readers of this blog will be surprised to learn that I have been on the campaign bus with governor hopeful Ed Pawlowski. Of course I'm not allowed in the bus, but have been staying on the top luggage rack, as he goes from one town in Pennsylvania to another. This will be the first in a series of reports on how the march to the governor's mansion is progressing. Last week, candidate Pawlowski released his
education plan for the Keystone State. In it Pawlowski states,
He (Corbett) has sacrificed public school funding in order to fund more corporate tax giveaways that in some cases businesses didn’t ask for or even need. That’s not the way to put our economy back on track. I suppose that Ed forgot about the biggest tax giveaway in state history, Allentown's $Billion dollar NIZ hockey arena complex.
I am amazed and disgusted at the continued fawning coverage of Pawlowski's run in the Morning Call.
ReplyDeletePawlowski claims to be able to work in a bipartisan manner, yet where is any evidence of this over the past nine years? Pawlowski claims decreased crime, yet the Call mentions nothing about APD no longer responding to many calls, and nothing about similar decreases in crime elsewhere. Pawlowski touts no tax hike, yet he just gave all water users a BILLION dollar hike (including interest) to pay for his mismanagement. The Call won't even look at the obvious problem of city taxpayers paying for a full-time Mayor who is out campaigning for state office.
If any organization has the ability - and responsibility - to present the truth about Pawlowski, it's the Call. Yet they fail at every level, from editor, to columnist, to reporter.
As far as I'm concerned, all Pawlowski ever did is spend a boatload of taxpayer dollars that were placed in his lap, spend the gain from selling off assets, avoid quality of life issues important to his city's health, and bully his way over a VERY weak city council.
ReplyDeleteI don't see any competence, ability, or wisdom in that man.
I cannot wait to hear how Ed explains his "jobs program" to PA residents outside of Allentown. It seems to me that most of the jobs that may come to Allentown will be due to using funding from PA taxes that should have gone to the Commonwealth to subsidize only Allentown developers located in the NIZ. Adding insult to all of this, the NIZ developers so far seem to be attracting tenants who are mainly being poached from other PA locations. I wonder how well Ed's campaign theme will play in Boyertown?
ReplyDeleteI allways new the king and fleck road the short bus? When they voted him in did they no they were putting a special person out front?
ReplyDelete@10:28, although it won't play well in boyertown (former headquarters for national penn bank) it will play well elsewhere. i have seen two videos, they're slick and well produced.
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that the state's share of education funding has never been higher. The numbers were padded during the Rendell Administration because Obama stimulus money was run through the states.
Hence the old canard that Corbett cut education by billions.
The real question any candidate for governor needs to answer on public education is how he/she will address the public pension crisis that has already led to severe budget cuts in many districts. Because of a lack of action on this in Harrisburg the process will repeat again this year with more tax dollars being directed out of classrooms and into PSER's(state pension system) contributions.
Scott Armstrong
So that brings up a very important and unanswered question. Why hasn't Corbet done anything about the pension problem? He owes nothing to any union and will not get their support. So where is his leadership to work with his own party to make the change needed. The Republicans have the majority in Harrisburg so whats the excuse. So they get their shot at the helm and they blow it. So whats the end result they do nothing and when they lose power they prevent the next gov from doing anything. What a mess we have become politically. Our forefathers would be very proud of us.
ReplyDelete