I often wonder if any of our public officials are truly pursuing office to help the will of the people come to fruition. There may be fewer in Pennsylvania than some other places but they're not unicorns; Surely a few do exist. The problem is, I'm having great difficulty finding them. Time after time in local elections, we appoint new judges who've never practiced law. We have district justices with no college education. We have representatives on the state & local level who've never held a job (outside of their lavishly compensated elected positions). How can they possibly make the best decision for Pennsylvanians when they know nothing of the struggles of the working class, have no idea how to run a business or create jobs, and have only a void where the voters have experience?
The state of politics in PA has been troubling for a very long time. We have blatant corruption on every level, from the county workers who are suddenly registered voters out stomping for a candidate they've never heard of until today, to the arrogant beasts in Harrisburg who fancy themselves not only above the law, but untouchable as well. Our biggest problem is voter ignorance, without a doubt. Probably half of the voters even care, displaying an almost total apathy for the political process. Having worked the polls, campaigned & volunteered in various ways, for various candidates in both parties over the years, my humble estimate is that about a quarter of the voters do enough homework to cast an educated vote. The rest are simply going through the motions for the political machine, pulling the (usually blue) lever as told.
Clearly our strategy isn't working. We have some of the highest taxes in the nation, don't attract many new employers (or see much expansion among existing ones) & lose a lot of our professional population, especially in W PA. We have severe fiscal problems. We utilize a completely antiquated & arbitrary way to fund education. And these are just some of the most serious issues off the top of my head. Yet Pennsylvanians aren't mobilizing to take back our state. What is wrong with us, PA?
Just a few weeks ago, our esteemed Governor managed to force the passage of a bill permitting table games by threatening to lay off more than 1,000 workers by week's end if the legislation wasn't passed. These layoffs would be particularly troubling because the state government is consistently the single largest employer in the state. In 2008, the state employed more than 160,000 people according to the US Census Bureau. The census figures also show us where our priorities are in PA: The state employs more people in the welfare department than it does police officers; Nearly 10% of it's employees in the highway department so that we can enjoy countless structurally deficient bridges & what are consistently voted to be the nation's worst roads. More than 25% of state jobs are in education. Although their compensation ranks in the top 9 in the nation & our cost of living is considerably lower at 22nd in the nation we lead the nation in teachers strikes with nearly 4 times as many strikes as the second ranked. Out of a total of 137 strikes between 2000 & 2007, 82 were in PA while Ohio came in second with just 23. This information is at our fingertips thanks to the work of a group that actually cares about the quality of our education, stopteacherstrikes.org.
I'm not sure what to do to squash the apathy, can't figure out how to make people care. How can we be so disspassionate as they waste our money & indulge themselves to our detriment? The state's own Labor & Industry statistics show that there were only 3 exceptions, otherwise jobs in every sector decreased between December '08 & December '09. Well sure, the whole country was experiencing the same thing. Some things set PA apart from the rest of the country, however: In most sectors, our losses exceeded the national average; Also, the only private sector with growth during this period was mining & logging, but there was growth in education as well as both state & local government, even as there were losses in federal government positions (pages 10, 12 & 13 of of particular interest in this report). Also of interest is the general salary data on all occupations provided by the state. There are averages for salary data listed for every occupational sector in the state except for commercial pilots . . . politicians & education-related positions. The explanation in the report is that these jobs aren't generally paid hourly thus can't be represented in the report but there are lots of occupations listed there which are generally salaried or commission-based yet still received numerical values. Read the state's own report on wages here.
It's almost like our government is an abusive spouse who the taxpayers are afraid to leave. But why? We have everything to gain & nothing to lose. As it stands, they're taking far more than what's needed to actually run the place plus they're mismanaging it to the point that we are worse off for their leadership. Wake up, Pennsylvania! We must effect change. So many of you had hope & an insatiable appetite for change in 2008, just where did it go? You all seemed to care so much about Washington & the rest of the world, the least you could do is muster up a little interest in your own front yards.
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