Folks on here may enjoy seeing the faces of folks standing up to natural gas drillers. These are leaders in the Williamsport area that Clean Water Action has found working on the issue of natural gas drilling in the Marcellus formation.

I came across this letter to the editor in the Inky on Tuesday (emphasis mine):

Jim Florio states, "Businesses are deciding . . . higher levels of U.S. unemployment are a necessary and acceptable way to control costs and boost profit." Florio has obviously never run a business. Businesses don't consider the overall employment level when determining their staffing needs; they hire based on their own needs, nothing else ("Economic barriers to hiring," Thursday).

If the governor were truly concerned with unemployment rather than berating businesses for trying to be profitable, he should focus on eliminating the economic barriers to hiring Americans imposed by well-intentioned politicians such as himself. A machine or a worker in a developing country will work overtime for regular pay, doesn't get family or medical leave, or require workman's comp and unemployment insurance, and won't sue for every alleged slight, as American workers do.

Andrew Terhune

Philadelphia

Environmentalists call on General Assembly to pass a severance tax like WV’s

On behalf of its 185,000 members in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Clean Water Action called on the General Assembly today to impose a volume based 45¢ per thousand cubic feet severance tax on Marcellus Shale gas drillers and earmarking 3¢ of the tax to restore the Department of Environmental Protection budget to 2008 levels.

“We believe three pennies from each thousand cubic feet of gas should restore the DEP budget to a level where it can better protect the public from the dangers of gas drilling,” said Myron Arnowitt, State Director of Clean Water Action. “That still leaves us with an agency that is about half what it was in 2000, but it could slow the bleeding.”

Given today's article about the private bail industry angling to move their business into Philadelphia, I am bumping back up my post from January of this year. Please, please listen to the NPR series linked at the bottom of the post, if you haven't already. And thanks to the decision-makers - the courts, DA, and Public Defenders - who are pushing back on this.

While I have concerns with the recent Inquirer series on the city's criminal court system, there are certainly problems with that system, and the series certainly drew attention.

Since it went to press, state Supreme Court justice Ron Castille finally took the step many of us were waiting for: he is stripping all significant responsibilities from the Clerk of Quarter Sessions and handing them over to the courts. The elected position and accompanying salaries will still exist for now, but that office will functionally no longer be administering the bail system.

Also, Arlen Specter convened Senate subcommittee hearings to examine many of the issues raised by the Inquirer. Seth Williams, our new DA, testified at those hearings. Seth also focused on problems with the bail system. He emphasized need for not harsh punishment, but sure punishment. This is key. The issue is not the dramatic $1 billion plus figure the newspapers have trumpeted, since much of that money is surely uncollectible. It's the need for more resources to be devoted to bail enforcement. This will take detectives, though Specter also noted that the city could start by simply registering fugitives in an existing national database.

(However, as it risks continuing the blood from a stone mistake, I hope Seth's comment about the possibility of going after bail scofflaws' family members stays on the drawing board.)

Joe Sestak, running against Specter in the upcoming primary, also put forward a plan to help cities deal with the long-term fugitive problem:

Also in response to the newspaper's work, U.S. Rep Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), running against Specter in the Democratic primary, called for a nationwide study on how to reform bail. He said that under his proposal, Philadelphia could be selected as a place to test the best new approaches.

Specter said he would urge his colleagues in the Senate to revive a proposal to channel federal money to cities to help stem the tide of fugitives.

The hearings also raised the private versus public bail question, a subtext to a lot of the newspaper coverage. Many are agitating to open the doors to private bail providers again, though Philadelphia abandoned that practice in the face of abusive practices. Specter has invited research into the private bail option, though initially seemed opposed to it.

However, as we've seen, any attempts to increase the stringency of the bail system based on increasing dollar amounts of bail runs the risk of just swelling the city prison population with poor, pre-trial detainees who simply have no way to get even a small amount of money together. Any reform of the bail system should focus not on raw dollar amounts, but on means tests and refining how we evaluate risk of flight, coupled with stricter oversight and enforcement. This must include supervised alternatives to incarceration for those who can't translate their commitment to show up for court into a monetary payment.

Yesterday NPR's 'All Things Considered' opened a chilling three-part series on the half million Americans sitting in jail--not because they've been convicted of any crime--but because they can't afford bail, sometimes as little as $50 (the subject of the story, when told, 'that's not a lot of money,' says, 'it is to me. To me it's like a million dollars.'). Everyone concerned with plans for Philadelphia's system should listen.

Mayor Nutter spoke at an immigrant rights rally at Welcome Park yesterday organized by the Pennsylvania chapter of the Reform Immigration for America campaign. The rally was intended to show that Philadelphia is a welcoming city to immigrants, in contrast to Arizona, where the anti-immigrant law SB1070 was implemented in part yesterday.

WHYY News reported that Mayor Nutter said he was excited by the decision of Judge Bolton to strike down key elements of Arizona’s immigration law.

Nutter got cheers from the assembled crowd when he said, “Immigration for some has become the new segregation in the United States, that's what’s really going on, people need to pay attention to what this is about.”

But what is really going on in Philadelphia? What is this really about?

Tuesday was the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.  The ADA is another product of 1960s and 70s movement building (an oral history and archive is fittingly hosted by UC Berkeley).  There's too much history to telescope into a short post, but the dimensions of what the movement was fighting against are shown in a few examples.  Through much of the 20th century it was legal for states to forceably sterilize disabled people.  Lack of curb cuts made basic movement impossible.  Policies pushed the vast majority of disabled people into institutions like nursing homes and made it impossible for them to use public benefits to live even semi-independently.

Whether someone is temporarily or permanently disabled, physically or developmentally, the protections created by the ADA are crucial to full participation in society. This became starkly clear to me after my father's massive stroke in October. I spent time with him at Magee Rehab Hospital, and being in a space focused on allowing people to be recognized as full, functional people, regardless how severely their bodies are compromised, was completely radical and sadly uncommon.

This work - and the struggle that gave rise to the ADA - continues.  We are waiting to appeal my father's initial Medicaid denial (we had to turn to Medicaid since even expensive private insurance categorically excludes any long term care).   Once it is approved, we'll need what are called 'waiver programs', which fund home and community-based care, to get him out of the nursing home and actually home.  Without these types of waiver programs, my father and others could be stuck indefinitely in institutional care, like nursing homes, where residents have little control over their lives.

And the situation is even starker for those with less resources than my family.  States have cut funding for home care programs to try to make up budget shortfalls, despite these programs costing much less than nursing homes.  Proposed legislation - the Community Choice Act - would help mandate that states provide a choice to live at home with support for anyone who qualifies for nursing home benefits, but doesn't yet have the votes to pass.  This one local news story, about a man moving into his own apartment for the first time, shows how huge it is to have the chance to live independently.  If you want to be part of making this kind of systemic and individual change over the next twenty years, please think about donating to the Disability Rights Network of PA.

In case you have not seen it, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) has filed suit against Wells Fargo Bank. The PHRC, which is responsible for enforcing Pennsylvania's anti-discrimination laws, has alleged that Wells Fargo systematically 'reverse redlined' Philadelphia neighborhoods, by concentrating expensive, abusive loans in Philadelphia neighborhoods that have a high percentage of African-American residents.

PHRC Wells Fargo Complaint

Among other things, the Complaint alleges that:

• Respondents underwrite adjustable rate loans for African Americans and Philadelphia’s African American neighborhoods that those borrowers cannot afford.
• Respondents’ pricing sheets show that it targets homes that are more likely to be located in African American neighborhoods for an interest rate increase, and lowers rates for homes that are disproportionately located in white neighborhoods.
• Respondents originate unfair and predatory mortgage loans to African Americans and African American neighborhoods in Philadelphia.
• Publicly available Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data shows that respondents’ high-cost loans are disproportionately provided to African Americans and are located in African American neighborhoods in Philadelphia
• Respondents’ loan officers were given substantial discretion to increase the costliness of mortgage loans and they regularly used this discretion at the expense of African Americans borrowers and borrowers in African American neighborhoods.

This is, of course, a very big deal, and my guess is that will be hearing a lot more about it in the coming months.

WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT SUMMER FILM FESTIVAL

PRESENTED BY ITVS, WHYY and the Leeway Foundation
in partnership with the Coalition of Labor Union Women, the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians and the Women's Medical Fund.

Escape the heat, grab your friends and family, and join us for an air-conditioned afternoon of award-winning films!
All screenings are FREE and open to the public.
August 7, 2010
@ The Leeway Foundation
1315 Walnut Street, Suite 832
(Venue is wheelchair accessible)

A full schedule and descriptions of the films are below. All films are closed captioned and audio description is available by request.

Join us in the evening for a discussion with two of the films' subjects, Rocky Otoo (Bronx Princess) and Avery Klein-Cloud (Off and Running) directly following the films.

I haven’t posted on YPP for a while because I’ve been doing a blog about Women and Retirement at http://www.the-next-stage.com/

However, I find my self increasingly writing about politics rather than focusing on retirement issues. It’s become clear to me that one of the main reasons I retired was to be able to devote more time to my activist projects. My job was getting in the way of my volunteer work. However I just wrote a post which belongs more on YPP than on my blog (or any other blog that I know of), so I’m cross-posting here:

Philadelphia preschoolers with a disability have — for more than a year — been shut out of critical services by a private agency hired by the state to deliver those services. Now the state has stepped in — thanks to a complaint filed by the Education Law Center and Disability Rights Network — and issued a directive to the agency: Compensate these families immediately, either by providing overdue services or by writing a check.

Following a month-long investigation, the Pennsylvania Department of Education issued its findings on June 21, sending a clear message to Philadelphia families whose young children need special services: Delays are not acceptable.

In recent days there has been a fair bit of ink spilled over the agreement that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to have access to Philadelphia’s PARS database. YPP was no exception to this. Nor was my old friend, Stu Bykofsky. Unfortunately we still stand at a deadlock on this issue. Here is what you need to know about this issue as a progressive.

After a period of anonymous blogging, my father, Frank Murphy, just announced his true identity over at the Notebook:

http://thenotebook.org/blog/102663/f

He began blogging to share his perspective on public education as someone with a strong pedagogical and practical basis for his opinions. He felt like he needed to be anonymous because, in his words:

In my last months as a principal, it was important to me that my children, parents, and staff be removed from any distractions or retributions that could have been generated as a result of a principal publicly critiquing the school reform efforts of his School District.

He retired a few days ago after spending more than 30 years in Philadelphia as an educator. For the past 12 years, he was the Principal at Meade Elementary School in North Philly.

Check out his posts over at the Notebook to get more of an insider's perspective on how the School District and its politics work.

This post especially may be of interest to YPP readers which covers the connections between Sen. Williams, his million dollar benefactors, charter schools and the political structure:

http://thenotebook.org/blog/102535/schools-all

It's been said that the family who blogs together, stays together. I am not sure if this is trues, especially because I don't blog like I used to, but I hope my Pop's online voice can help, in some way, in the effort for real education reform in Philadelphia.

UPDATE: We did a report on DEP funding, adjusted for inflation, for the last ten years. You can see it here

(Harrisburg) – Clean Water Action issued a strong statement today calling for restoration of large cuts to the budget for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The proposed state budget deal released yesterday by the Governor and legislative leaders cuts DEP’s budget by 9.2%. This is on top of last year’s budget cut of 26% for DEP. [ATTACHED - PDF of 2000-2008 budgets in actual numbers, not accounting for inflation]

[We spoke too soon. The Inquirer issued a correction stating that the District Attorney has not publicly expressed support for ending the contract. Furthermore the contract actually ends in August giving more time for the city to make a final determination.

There will be a rally Friday at noon in the City Hall courtyard. You can also call 215-686-8000 to tell Seth why building trust with the immigrant community is good policy.]

Great news from both the Mayor's office, the Police Dept. and D.A. Seth Williams - all of whom, according to Public Safety Director Everett Gillison, agree that the city should sever its controversial contract with Immigration Customs & Enforcement Agency (ICE). The contract, which has been in effect the past two years and is up for renewal, gives ICE access to full police and court records including victim and witness identification and their country of birth.

In the past six months, immigration advocates had pushed hard for the city to sever its contract with ICE, telling stories about shocking interactions between ICE and police that challenged the City's written policy on avoiding such interactions. The school district as well is implicated because of its relationship with police and school safety.

In the past several months, immigration advocates have met with the Mayor's staff and the District attorney. Yesterday, advocates turned out a packed audience in South Philadelphia to demand an end to PARS and a more immigrant friendly city.

Kudos to Philly's active and engaged immigrant community and to city and civic officials who responded to this important call.

Clean Water Action Responds to Drilling Industry Group’s Self-Praise

<>: In response to the drilling-industry-funded Marcellus Shale Coalition press release touting their members’ various boons to the state, Clean Water Action [CWA] today pointed to accounts from Pennsylvanians and media outlets across state that tell the darker, more tragic side of natural gas drilling.

“The press release the Marcellus Shale Coalition put out yesterday with news clips singing their industry’s praises would have you believe natural gas drilling is all economic gain, no environmental cost,” said Myron Arnowitt, State Director of Clean Water Action, “But the truth is, unfortunately, that this is an industrial activity that brings with it many problems, including toxic chemicals, polluted rivers and contaminated water supplies. And that’s just a small sample of the problems tied to this activity.

“Pennsylvanians and communities across the state are now struggling to cope with the effects of drilling in their neighborhoods; that’s a sad, tragic reality that we—and the drilling industry—shouldn’t ignore or sweep under the rug.”

To illustrate the problems natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale has brought to Pennsylvania, Arnowitt pointed to the following statements and news reports (click "Read More"):