The Bulletin reported on July 3, 2007 that Hillary Clinton told ACORN that "No person should work full time and bring home a wage that leaves them below the poverty level." I was encouraged to read this conceptual agreement with the efforts of former Senator John Edwards and myself to raise the minimum wage to over $9 an hour in the not too distant future.

The current $7.15 minimum wage in Pennsylvania--already behind Oregon ($7.93), Washington ($7.80), Connecticut ($7.65), Vermont ($7.53), California ($7.50), Illinois ($7.50), Massachusetts ($7.50), Rhode Island ($7.40)--will fall both farther behind many of the states ahead of us as their scheduled raises take effect, plus states that are now tied with us or behind us, in the next few years if no further legislative action is taken in this session.

2008 Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards became the first national figure to back a minimum wage of over $9 an hour yesterday, when he proposed that the federal minimum wage, now scheduled to hit $7.25 in 2009, go to $8.00 in 2010, $8.75 in 2011, $9.50 in 2012, and be adjusted according to the cost of living increase thereafter.

His proposal is close to my proposal, first made a year ago, that my proposal that the Pennsylvania minimum wage, now at $7.15, go to $8.15 in 2008, $8.75 in 2009, $9.35 in 2010, and be adjusted according to the cost of living increase thereafter. Assuming a 3% cost of living increase in 2010 and 2011, the effect of my proposal would be a Pennsylvania minimum age of $9.63 in 2011 and $9.92 in 2012.

Assuming that the Pennsylvania legislature will not be able to muster agreement on the very sensible plan now pending for a vote on the House floor to move the Pennsylvania 2008 Presidential primary to February 5, the earliest possible date allowed under national Democratic party rules for Pennsylvania, and the date on which at least 20 other states will be voting after at least five states have had earlier elections, I am planning litigation to have the law providing for a late April primary be declared unconstitutional by the Pennsylvania appellate courts.

Many people, including myself, were rather frustrated by the 2000 election results which gave President Bush the election over Al Gore on the basis of a highly disputed 500 or so vote margin in Florida, at the same time as Gore received over 500,000 votes more than Bush.

I have joined a national effort to create an interstate compact to cast each participating state's electoral votes for the winner of the national popular vote. This agreement will take effect when states with a majority of the total electoral votes agree to abide by it.

I have introduced House Bill 1028 to have Pennsylvania join this proposed interstate compact. Maryland has become the first state to ratify this compact, and it has passed at least one house of the legislatures of Arkansas, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, and North Carolina. See http://www.nationalpopularvote.com for further information about both the Pennsylvania bill and the national movement.

One of Marc Stier's recent blog entries deals with The Amateur Democrat, a book over 40 years old now that deals with intraparty Democratic insurgencies in the 1950's and 1960's. The Amateur Democrat was a major influence on him in forming Neighborhood Networks, he said. This statement struck a strong chord of recognition in me.

The book's author is James Q. Wilson, a young scholar when he wrote the book, who is now one of the conservative movement's venerable and thoughtful stars. Wilson's most recent major public impact has been as a promoter of the broken windows theory: that the way to fight major crime is to concentrate first on the small stuff to establish that crime will not be tolerated.

Beginning to participate in politics is like starting to read a novel in the 40th Chapter.

So much has gone on before you started. Characters have lived, died, prospered, failed before you. People have fallen in love and out of love many times. Unless you read the early chapters, there will be a lot of things you will not understand about why people act the way they do.

It is a commonplace understanding among political scientists that voting behavior has a large hereditary component, and a large component based on life experiences. How campaigns are run is far from the most important factor for the vast majority of voters.

Candidates who connect with voters are able to figure out the relevancy of current issues with many of the influences on the voters. They are able to address the concerns of political leaders, opinion leaders, civic leaders as well as the concerns of ordinary voters. They are also very lucky people for at least that particular campaign.

It got 71% of the vote in the May 15 primary election, despite little or no fundraising being conducted on its behalf. That's a higher percentage of the vote than all four losing mayoral candidates combined, or alternatively, a higher percentage of the vote than the top two candidates plus Dwight Evans combined.

The Inquirer and Daily News urged its defeat. No other newspaper that I am aware of endorsed it. I have not seen or read of a single sample ballot that endorsed it. If anyone blogged in support of it at young philly politics, I missed it.

I blogged in support of it at phillyblog, and a number of people responded by indicating strong opposition to it.

I am increasingly wondering what is going on. Why is something considered so important by so many people being so ignored or even opposed by so many who consider themselves progressive political leaders?

The Ogontz Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, located at 6019 Ogontz Avenue-- (four blocks north of Central High School and across the street from the old headquarters of the Consumer Education and Protection Association (CEPA)-- will officially be named after my father Councilman David Cohen on Saturday, May 12 at 11:00 a.m. City Council has passed, and Mayor Street has signed, legislation making this name change.

One of the legislative achievements of which I am most proud is the establishment of Pennsylvania's $7.15 minimum wage--effective July 1,2007 for employers of 11 or more people, and effective July 1, 2008 for employers of 10 or less people. (The latter group's minimum wage hits $6.65 on July 1, 2008).

As proud as I am of this achievement-- for me, for Democratic legislators, for labor and community groups, for bloggers, and a large cast of supporting activitists--I have one problem with it: $7.15 is not enough.

Recently New Hampshire's Governor John Lynch signed into law a bill to raise New Hampshire's minimum wage to $7.25, making New Hampshire the 19th state to either pass an annual cost of living increase minimum wage with no cap, or to pass one with a higher cap than Pennsylania's.

The official word in New Jersey is that Jon Corzine will be back as Governor in a few days or a week, but that official word is undercut by statements by medical personnel and Corzine's own family as to how badly he has been hurt.

So, for an uncertain period of time, State Senate President Richard Codey--who briefly served as Acting Governor after Christine Todd Whitman resigned to became director of the Environmental Protection Agency and served for over a year as Acting Governor after Jim McGreevey stepped down--will return to his now familiar role. But it will be complicated by the fact that Governor Corzine is still in charge with his own appointees.

There is a sense among a considerable number of people that the language of people who are educated or informed or professional or engaged is the language of people who are putting on airs and is not the language of people who are authentic or sharing in their views and emotions.

True communication, they often believe, consists in focusing on what "everybody"--or "every" male, or "every" white person, etc--has in common: a low opinion of women, minorities, people from "bad" neighborhoods, people from "lower" social classes, etc.

There is no question that the creation of the character Archie Bunker decades ago resonated with a lot of people who saw, often for the first time, a television character that they could really identify with.

Since the success of Archie Bunker, the barriers of conversational acceptablity have continuously expanded so that television and radio have become more and more like "real life." Just about everything related to sex and sexes is now fair game.

In a long-ago novel,probably War and Peace, a soldier ruminated "They're shooting at ME. Me, whom everybody loves." Over the years, I found that air of outraged innocence common among people whose nomination petitions were challenged.

A lot of people are against political corruption. It comes as a great shock to many of them that the minute they start running for office they are suspected of corruption.

The Ethics Act requires disclosure of sources of income over $1300 and debts over $6500 and businesses where the candidate has a partnership interest because the legislature wanted to deter corruption.

Nobody introduces legislation entitled "An act to increase the prevalence of evil" or "An act to maximize the incidence of political corruption." Instead we have pieces of legislation that may benefit specific property owners or specific economic interests--tenants, landlords, attorneys, accountants, small business owners, stockholders, large business owners, etc.

What one's important relevant experiences are depends on the issues of the day. For the next several weeks, I suppose my most relevant legislative achievement is this: I invented the term "governmentally mandated benefits" and convinced the House to stick it in the Ethics Code. Without any active role on my part, the Senate accepted the decision of the House on this issue, and Governor Casey signed it into law.

This all took place in 1989. State Rep. Jeffrey Piccola had won a previous vote which sought to require disclosure of worker's compensation payments, and/or unemployment compensation payments, and/or welfare payments (I forget which). Piccola was deeply hostile to all these benefit programs, and it was clear that he and some other Republicans were substantially motivated by a desire to keep recipients of such benefits out of public office to the degree possible.

I am one of a group of people who will be meeting tonite with Barack Obama.

He will be speaking to, and answering questions from the people gathered.

I would welcome advice from anyone here about what questions should be asked.

Shortly after I was elected to the legislature, Rep. Sam Hays, a rural Republican who later served as Republican Majority Leader, Secretary of Agriculture, and Chief of Staff to Governor Mark Schweiker, told me about Bud Shuster's campaign for Congress in 1972.

On the election filing deadline day, Hays' Republican County Chairman called him and said "A guy in your neck of the woods just filed for Congress. His names is E.G. (Bud) Shuster. You ever hear of him?"

No, Hays said, he never heard of Shuster. "Well," the County Chairman told Hays, if he lives near you and you never heard of him, he can't be much of a candidate. It looks like our man (State Senator Elmer) Hawbacker should have an easy time in the primary."

Hays hung up the phone, vaguely disturbed. He decided to go for a drive. He turned on the car radio, and the first commercial he heard was one for Bud Shuster for Congress. He switched to another station, and soon heard another Shuster commerical.