Bill Ayers speaking to a crowd at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA on December 14, 2011. Occupy Harrisburg invited Ayers to speak. Photograph © Paul Hair, 2011.

This is the second time I have covered Occupy Harrisburg.

Bill Ayers spoke at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA on December 14 at the invitation of the militant Occupy Harrisburg. I estimated between 100 and 200 people attended the event.

Eric Papenfuse owns the Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Papenfuse, a former public school teacher, previously invited Ayers to speak in south-central Pennsylvania in 2010. He wrote an OP-ED explaining why he did so and The Patriot-News published it, revealing his radical, anti-capitalist views.

I summarize the night in a list of bullet points in the following section but I don’t go into extremely thorough commentary because there is a bigger point here than Bill Ayers and Occupy Harrisburg.

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Occupy Wall Street recently came to south-central Pennsylvania by way of Occupy Harrisburg. Occupy Harrisburg began its occupation of the Capitol at 12:01 a.m. on October 15, 2011 and ran through the day. Various media outlets reported that the group would extend its occupation through October 16, 2011, although they would legally be required to move from the Capitol. This report offers a brief reference list of how local media covered Occupy Harrisburg and then provides my firsthand account of what happened along with analysis of the event.

How Local Media Covered Occupy Harrisburg:

Various south-central Pennsylvania media outlets reported on Occupy Harrisburg. Some of the stories are written by the local media outlets and others are AP feeds. I did not do an exhaustive search to see if the media outlets that ran AP feeds did stories of their own. Also, I did not check every single local media outlet, although I tried to choose some of the major ones. I’m linking to some of them so that the reader can compare and contrast how these media outlets reported on Occupy Harrisburg with how my report on it is.

The Patriot-News: Harrisburg, PA:

• October 5: “Occupy Harrisburg holds first organizational meeting, allied with Occupy Wall Street movement”
• October 15: “Occupy Harrisburg comes to Pennsylvania Capitol”
• October 16: “Occupy Harrisburg plans to continue protests against ‘Wall Street greed’ at Capitol”

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Rep. Babette Josephs, Chair of PA House State Government Committee & ACORN Member

Despite receiving a “cease and desist” notice from the Department of State to stop soliciting contributions, Pennsylvania taxpayers have given ACORN over $200,000 in state grants since November 2007.  Yet none of the mainstream media in the Commonwealth is bothering to cover this issue.  Nor has it reported on recent efforts to defend this rogue organization.

Jeff Lord, writing in The American Spectator, noted how Rep. Steve Barrar’s efforts to investigate ACORN’s activities in Pennsylvania are being stymied by Rep. Babette Josephs—a self-identified member of ACORN.  Josephs is the Chair of the House State Government Committee—the committee where good government legislation goes to die.

Nate Benefield of the Commonwealth Foundation wrote about her blocking reform bills in May 2008, calling her the Cerberus of the Pennsylvania General Assembly.  Cerberus is the giant three-headed dog in Greek Mythology that guards the river Styx, allowing the dead to enter Hades, but preventing anyone—save a few legendary heroes—from exiting.  Josephs is that guard-dog that allows all types of substantive and good-government legislative proposals—like Barrar’s—but never again allows them to see the light of day.

Earlier this week, with the vote to de-fund ACORN in the US Senate and the Census severing ties with the organization, one would think such actions in Harrisburg would yield similar success.  Not so.  Barrar, in an effort to circumvent Cerberus, attempted to suspend House rules to amend a bill that would prevent taxpayer money from flowing to this nefarious group.  But House Democrats, holding a slim majority, stood shoulder to shoulder with Cerberus to thwart Barrar’s efforts.

Haven’t heard about this?  Unfortunately, neither have the people of Pennsylvania who continue to be forced to subsidize Babette Josephs’s organization.

Now, with a budget deal apparently and finally in place—Pennsylvania was the last state without a budget—maybe the media will finally get around to asking where all our money is going.