CHESTER, Pa. – Three thousand students at Pennsylvania’s largest charter school face the imminent risk of having their school year cancelled in the coming days or weeks, and seeing their school “stop operations” entirely due to a lack of funds.

That grim reality is a direct result of decisions by officials in the nearby Chester Upland School District to keep state funds legally owed to the Chester Community Charter School, and to use them instead to bail the district out of its “self-inflicted budgetary crisis.”

That’s according to a legal brief filed by attorneys representing the Chester Community Charter School in response to last month’s judicial ruling that gave the Chester Upland School District a $3.2 million state bailout, and left the charter school holding almost $7 million in I.O.U. notes.

Attorneys for the Chester Community Charter School (CCCS) say the school faces a very real risk of shutting down because it cannot pay its bills.

As a result, it is “extremely likely that Chester Community Charter will have to stop operations, turning in excess of 3,000 students, nearly 700 with disabilities, out on the streets in the middle of the school year.”

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These days a lot of school budgets are being held together by the accounting equivalents of bailing wire and duct tape. But one Pennsylvania school district is so broke that it needs the state to provide the wire and the tape.

The Chester Upland School District began this week with only $100,000 in its savings account, and had no way of meeting its $1 million payroll – that is, until a judge ordered the state to give the district a  $3.2 million advance in its allowance, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The money will allow the teachers to be paid and the lights to remain on, at least for a few more weeks. The district is on track to be $20 million in debt by the end of the school year.

“Anxious parents are looking at other options for their children, such as sending them to private schools or having them live with relatives and go to other public schools,” the Daily Journal reported two days before the bailout was announced.

What’s causing Chester Upland’s financial meltdown?

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Pennsylvania’s Neshaminy Federation of Teachers has agreed to end its nearly two-week strike, and members will return to the classroom Friday morning. But that doesn’t mean the nastiness is over.

The school board had refused to continue contract negotiations while the union was on strike, which means the disagreements about future pay raises, health insurance contributions and retroactive pay are still unresolved.

State law requires that a three-member arbitration panel be brought in to help assist negotiations, reports PhillyBurbs.com. The panel will make its non-binding recommendations by spring. If the district and the union still cannot agree, the NFT has the legal option of going on strike a second time this school year.

School board President Ritchie Webb said that a second strike would prompt the district to file an injunction with the state, asking that the teachers be ordered back to work.

“Teachers need to understand that you can strike until the cows come home, but it doesn’t create more money in the district,” Webb said. “We have limited resources.”

The community seems to have had enough of the NFT’s selfish behavior, too.

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A small-town newspaper (scroll down to Section B after hitting the link) profiled a local land developer, explaining how he started and grew his own business.

Harry Fox, Jr. spent the past few decades becoming a successful land developer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (Fox generally does not build but instead acquires large tracts of land and goes through the necessary steps in order to subdivide the land into lots and bring them to market.) He mentioned to the newspaper that if he had tried getting into the land developing business today he would have a much harder time doing so because of all the government regulation that exists. I wanted to know what he meant by this so I contacted him and conducted an interview of my own.

South-central Pennsylvania on a foggy, autumn day. Photograph © Paul Hair, 2011.

I wanted Fox to explain to me all the steps needed to bring a piece of land to market in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. However, government regulations and requirements are so extensive that we couldn’t go through all the steps in just a few hours. So we focused on just one area: what a developer needs to do to bring a piece of land to market with that piece of land having a private septic system. The description that follows pertains only to Pennsylvania. Any errors made are mine and mine alone.

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NESHAMINY, Pa. – Some well-meaning people still cling to the notion that teachers union collective bargaining is healthy for public schools.

We invite them to visit Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, or at least do some research on the three-year labor standoff that has been tearing the school district and community to shreds.

Neshaminy teachers are among the most highly compensated in the state, with above-average salaries, generous insurance and retirement benefits. Their last contract expired in 2008, and they haven’t been able to negotiate a new one because the school board, battling financial problems brought on by the recession, can no longer afford extravagant compensation.

The teachers union has responded with ugly tactics, including a threat to strike and a decision to “work to contract,” which is a nice term for a general work slowdown. The community has reacted with anger toward the union’s self-serving demands, and the Philadelphia suburb has been poisoned with an environment of anger and mistrust.

“What started as a skirmish a few years ago has become an all-out war, precipitated by union misinformation, deception and malice,” one citizen wrote to a local newspaper. “In this two-sided war between an intransigent teachers union and suffering taxpayers/parents/students, there can be no sitting on the fence; we’ve advanced too far for that.

“Everyone should take a stand for what they believe in.”

Spoiled union avoiding concessions

Let’s start with a few facts:

The Neshaminy school district, like most across the nation, is facing dire financial problems. It has closed two school buildings in recent years, laid off more than 60 employees and cut several student programs, in an effort to keep up with runaway labor costs.

The Neshaminy Federation of Teachers has been working under the terms of an expired collective bargaining agreement for the past three school years. Those terms are very generous indeed.

The 675 teachers on staff are the second highest paid in the state, with an average salary of $81,816. Teachers have never had to contribute a dime toward health insurance premiums for themselves and their families. Teachers receive longevity bonuses, reimbursement for unused sick days, as well as a $27,500 cash bonus and full health coverage upon retirement.

The school board has made it very clear that the district can no longer afford lucrative labor expenses during the current economic crisis. Still, it has offered contract terms that would be considered generous in many school districts across the nation.

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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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This was a victorious week for Republicans, as Republican candidate Bob Turner defeated the Democrat, David Weprin. The vacant seat of “tweet this” Anthony Weiner was up for grabs. The 9th district of New York which typically votes Democrat spoke loudly against the current administration. Many of the residents of that district are Jewish and expressed dismay for President Obama’s stance on Israel. A fact that was pointed out by talk show host, Audrey Russo on a recent episode of The Rick Amato Show.

A Democratic media consultant told The Atlantic that if they had let Weiner “go to rehab and then reapportioned the district out of existence, they’d have saved everybody a million dollars’. Is that the Democrats answer to silencing the opposition? Redistricting?

Not long ago, I spoke to Tom Del Beccaro, Chairman of the Republican Party of California. We here in California recently underwent redistricting. Mr. Del Beccaro told me that Republican Senate seats were lost in the new districts due to the map changes. He went on to say that much of the boundary changes made little or no sense. It only succeeded in reducing GOP seats.

Well, here is a bit of poetic justice. State Senator from Pennsylvania, Dominic Pileggi has proposed a plan on how Pennsylvania will divvy up its electoral votes. With the support of the governor of Pennsylvania Tom Corbett, Senator Pileggi unveiled his plan.

In 2012, his state will have 20 electoral votes. One for each of their 18 members of the US House of Representatives, and 2 for US Senators. Under Mr. Pilleggi’s proposal, there would be 2 for the statewide vote. 18 would be for the Congressional district in regard to the presidential vote.

Both Pilleggi and Corbett argue that this is a fairer way to divide electoral votes. Saying it would represent the views of the people more. Maine and Nebraska both have this system in place.

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Later this month, Pennsylvania lawmakers will return to debate privatizing state-owned liquor stores.  Yes, for our friends in California, Texas, Florida or any of the 30 states that have never seen a government-run liquor store, Pennsylvania state government remains in the business of selling alcohol to its residents.  Pennsylvania is one of only two states in the nation (Utah being the other) with complete government control of wine and spirits sales.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board’s (PLCB) recent failures help demonstrate why government in the booze business is a lose business.  In a notable example, the agency tried its own form of Perestroika, allowing wine to be sold in grocery stores through wine kiosks: Rube Goldberg-like contraptions in which consumers would blow into a breathalyzer and show ID through video to a state worker sitting in the PLCB’s central office.

The program was a catastrophe from the start, as many – including the PLCB’s own advisory committee – predicted.  The machines broke down during the Christmas rush and the kiosk contractor now reportedly owes the state $1 million (a cynic might point out the contractor has deep ties to former Governor Ed Rendell).  Wegman’s, one of the state’s largest grocery chains, dropped all wine kiosks in June.  This week, state Auditor General Jack Wagner released a report declaring the program a failure.  The Philadelphia Inquirer said of the fiasco, “Rarely before has any government agency so succinctly, thoroughly, and convincingly made the case for its own elimination.”

Although Pennsylvania and Utah are the only states with a complete government monopoly on liquor sales, other states continue to fight for libation liberation.  State liquor store privatization remains a hot issue in Washington and Virginia where, although private stores are permitted to carry wine, government control still remains.

The latest effort to get government out of the booze business is spearheaded by House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (R-Pittsburgh).  His proposal calls for auctioning off 1,250 liquor store licenses (up from Pennsylvania’s current 650 stores), divesting the wholesale operations, and selling off the state store inventory.  With Republicans controlling both the state House and Senate, and Gov. Tom Corbett supporting privatization, momentum is building to enact liquor liberty this year.

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Wealthy liberals are spreading false and misleading information about new drilling techniques that have opened up natural gas resources in Pennsylvania, according to a report from the Commonwealth Foundation.

A geologic formation known as the Marcellus Shale, which cuts across New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Viriginia, was beyond reach not too long ago. Fortunately, this has changed as a result of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Almost 489 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is sufficient to cover all of America’s natural gas needs over a 20 year period is now recoverable, the foundation reports.

Unfortunately, anti-drilling activists have stepped in to obstruct further development of the natural gas industry, which is responsible for creating tens of thousands of new jobs, according to the report. Herb and Marion Sandler, who founded the S&L known as World Savings Bank, are identified as the primary culprits here. In 2007, they launched an investigative reporting outfit called ProPublica, which proceeded to inveigh against the natural gas industry.

“Much attention has been paid to the efforts of gas companies to influence the political debate through campaign contributions and lobbying efforts,” the report says. “But anti-drilling activists—while claiming gas companies use their vast financial resources to weaken regulatory structures and silence poorly funded environmental groups— influence politicians through their own lobbying efforts and by spreading myths about drilling. Among the myths alleged about “Big Gas” is that drillers are flocking to Pennsylvania’s rich Marcellus Shale reserves, engaging in dangerous and highly polluting drilling activities, and shirking responsibility for damages while successfully avoiding paying taxes.”

After scrutinizing several of the natural gas articles produced by ProPublica, the Independent Institute uncovered several “errors and exaggerations” that cast the industry in very bad light. There is, for example, a 2002 study from the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission that could not find any evidence of groundwater contamination resulting from hydraulic fracturing contrary to what was reported in ProPublica. The commission surveyed agencies in 28 states. This effort spanned the entire history of hydraulic fracturing in those states.

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In his recent address at the National Summit for the American Federation for Children in Washington D.C., Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett made an important point about the state of public education.

“For years, we’ve talked about failing schools,” Corbett said. “Now, in addition to talking about failing schools, we find ourselves talking about dangerous schools. How on Earth –how on Earth—is a child whose own parents see no other kind of school other than a failing school, supposed to learn basic mathematics, reading and literature?”

Many Americans are asking that same question.

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On Tuesday, across the state of Pennsylvania, unions and other Left-wing organizations will be boarding buses and heading to the state capitol in Harrisburg to engage in a mass rally to fight for economic and social justice and against budget cuts.  The rally, is being organized by the Coalition for Labor Engagement and Accountable Revenues (CLEAR) which is comprised of government unions, such as AFSCME, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), PSEA (part of the NEA), SEIU, as well as the AFL-CIO, IAFF, UFCW and others.

The economic agenda of the rally organizing group CLEAR consists of raising taxes on consumers and retailers,  internet shoppers and vendors, corporations and, of course, the wealthy. CLEAR is clear, they do not want any cuts in spending.

Also in attendance will be a diverse group of other organizations, such as:

• Just Harvest, a community-organizing group that has been “sowing the seeds of economic justice since 1986″
• Pittsburghers for Public Transit
• Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania

In addition, there will be elementary schoolchildren bused in from all over the state.
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It’s one of the most beautiful times of the year in the lovely Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, when the trees are gorgeous hues of crimson and gold, and the sweet smell of hot apple cider is in the brisk autumn air.  As you walk in and out of little village colonials and saltbox houses donning  fall mums and pumpkins on their porches, you’re hit with that waft of burning fireplace aroma – the sort of scene that gives you that comfy feeling of peace and contentment.

But turn the corner and that picturesque scene is disrupted by a tiny sea of purple t-shirts and angry faces.  Yep, you got it – it’s the SEIU!   And they’re not in the holiday spirit, apparently.

Pocono Medical Center, a mid-sized, not-for-profit community hospital nestled in the Pocono Mountains near East Stroudsburg University, has been in SEIU’s crosshairs for months.  The union has been demanding a closed shop at the hospital, despite the desires of other workers, and has since made it the crux of its contract negotiations. They were out protesting last week, making their demands known.  (Not many from Pocono Medical Center participated in the protest, so they resorted to recruiting some nearby friends to join them).

For those not familiar with what a “closed shop” is in union terms, this means that all of those employees would be required to be a member of the union and to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

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This week, the Pennsylvania House Democrats unveiled a new tax proposal, which would give Pennsylvania the highest severance tax in the nation—on top of current taxes.

Natural gas exploration has become a modern-day gold rush, spurring development across the United States. The Barnett Shale play in Texas, for example, is estimated to accounts for $8.2 billion in annual economic output and 83,823 jobs, and the Marcellus Shale formation—extending across New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, has the potential to be even larger. Despite one of the worst recessions in years, this industry is growing, stimulating the economy, and creating high-paying jobs.

But some see this opportunity as a threat to the environments, and others merely want to tax natural gas drilling to fund special interests.  A leading opponent is George Soros, a billionaire who is behind left-wing attacks on the free market. American Thinker reports that Soros has attempted to combine the forces of his MoveOn.org and the Working Families Party, based in New York, to oppose natural gas drilling. Soros’s stake in the alternative energy campaign is just one part of his plan to inhibit the burgeoning domestic natural gas industry.

Many environmental groups that want to see fossil fuels replaced with alternative energy strongly oppose the industry.  New York has put a moratorium on drilling until more studies can be done.  In Pennsylvania, politicians are using fears about environmental and social costs of drilling to pass a natural gas tax.  However, natural gas companies in the state already are paying for both the costs of inspection and cleanup, and pumping millions into road and infrastructure improvement.

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You’ve probably heard about eminent domain abuse.  That’s where the government takes your land and hands it over to another private party….one that is more politically connected.

But you may not have heard about civil forfeiture.  And yet, today, it could very well be the most egregious abuse of private property rights in America.

We all know that one of the many beautiful things about the United States is that citizens are innocent until proven guilty.  But civil forfeiture turns that fundamental principle on its head.

This sounds bizarre, but with civil forfeiture, your property is guilty until you prove it innocent.

Consider the case of Margaret Davis.

As a 77-year-old woman living alone with multiple medical problems, Margaret left her Pennsylvania home unlocked so her neighbors could regularly check on her.  One day while the police were chasing alleged drug dealers through her neighborhood, they all ran through Margaret’s house.  The dealers dropped some of their stash on Margaret’s floor, in plain sight.

Instead of apologizing to Margaret for the traumatic experience, the government seized her house.

Under civil forfeiture laws, Margaret’s property—her house—was guilty until she could prove it innocent to get it back.  And that’s not all.  As it turns out, most state and federal laws allow the government to keep the property they take through civil forfeiture.  So authorities have a big incentive to pursue property over justice.

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Last week’s national unemployment numbers demonstrated that the economic recovery President Obama promised us is still a ways away.  In Pennsylvania the unemployment rate increased last month hovering just above 9%.

Given these numbers, the last thing Washington politicians should be doing is supporting legislation that would cost thousands more jobs. But that is exactly what my very liberal opponent, Congressman Joe Sestak, is doing.

Not only did Congressman Sestak sponsor and vote for a cap-and-trade energy tax, he argued that the tax did not go far enough!

A cap-and-trade energy tax would impose an onerous indirect tax on the production and consumption of carbon-based energy. It would cap the amount of carbon dioxide businesses could emit, impose a penalty when the cap is exceeded, and would require that carbon emissions be cut by 20 percent of 2005 levels by 2020.

Independent studies have found that this would cost the country millions of jobs, but in an industrial state like Pennsylvania, the cap-and-trade tax would be even more harmful than elsewhere. Our state’s coal, natural gas and manufacturing industries would be especially hard hit.

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This week, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell will sign his eighth and final state budget (term limits prevent him from seeking re-election).  The budget passed with no tax increase, and represents $1 billion less than Gov. Rendell requested.  However, the budget merely passes the bill onto future years, and future generations, through accounting tricks and borrowing for egregious pork projects.

The budget relies on $2.7 billion in federal aid, including $850 million in Medicaid funds (FMAP) that has yet to pass Congress.  Indeed, no one believes Pennsylvania will get that much, if any, as the legislation doesn’t have enough support in the US Senate.  Gov. Rendell, along with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, New York Gov. David Paterson and others were in Washington last week to lobby for more federal aid.

The state will use $121 million from Tobacco Settlement Funds for teachers’ pensions, which will then be backfilled, and another $35 million from other one-time sources to balance the budget.   Still unresolved are a projected $4 billion annual pension contribution hike and a $3 billion Unemployment Compensation Fund deficit.

Finally, the budget deal includes increasing the debt ceiling for the Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program (RACP) by $600 million.

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The extraction of shale natural gas is set to become a major growth industry in the United States.  Recently, Amy Myers Jaffa wrote in the Wall Street Journal that natural gas could become “the game-changing resource of the decade.” Already Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Louisiana, and other states are beginning to reap the economic benefits of a natural gas boom.  A study by Penn State University predicted that the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania alone will be responsible for the creation of 111,000 jobs and for bringing in an additional $987 million in tax revenue to the state by 2011. Natural gas extraction has been one of few industries growing (without government subsidies) during this recession.

However, this promising “game-changer” is under attack.  Some assert that the extraction of shale gas is harmful to the environment.  Josh Fox’s documentary “Gasland,” airing on HBO this week, is full of misleading allegations, inaccuracies, and occasionally outright lies.   Fox, for instance, alleges that Dunkard Creek fish were killed from natural gas drilling (the EPA and West Virginia Department of Environment Protection cite other causes), that residents of Dish Texas grew ill from gas drilling (the state Department of Health disagrees), that no one knows what goes into fracking fluid (though a complete list is available online), and numerous other myths.

When fracking is carried out responsibly under current regulations, the process poses no threat to humans or to the environment.  Fracking has been well documented, with no confirmed cases of groundwater contamination in 1 million applications over 60 years. Further, over 98% of the fracturing fluid is composed of water and sand, with most of the remaining 2% presenting low to very low risks to human health and to the environment.  An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study determined that fracking posed no danger to water quality.  In Pennsylvania, eight federal and eleven state laws regulate drilling, and hundreds of inspectors routinely inspect each drilling site.

These environmental scare tactics are often used by those who simply want to tax the emerging industry to fund ever-growing government spending.  In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell has pushed a severance tax on natural gas, under the aegis of environment protection, though 90% of the funding would go directly to fill a budget deficit.  In fact, natural gas would be taxed to subsidize the energy providers Gov. Rendell favors. While many states do have severances taxes on natural resources, those that have been successful in letting these industries flourish have delayed taxes until firms became profitable, lowered tax rates in hard-to-drill areas, and used severance taxes to lower other state taxes.

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M. Night Shyamalan’s latest film production, The Last Airbender, was recently awarded over $35 million in film tax credits from Pennsylvania over two years.  The award is the largest in the history of Pennsylvania’s Film Tax Credit (FTC), breaking the record held by his previous project, The Happening, which received $12 million in tax credits.  His film Lady in the Water also received a film production grant. The only good news is that taxpayers are only forced to subsidize these movies, not to watch them.

Pennsylvania first created a film tax credit in 2004, replaced it with a film grant program in 2006, then enacted its current $75 tax credit program in 2007, in which films can receive up to 25 percent of production costs in the form of tax credit. The state’s FTC was temporarily reduced, as the 2009 state budget agreement reduced all tax credits by 33% for three years.

Forty-four states offer tax incentivizes or grants to filmmakers for in-state production, according to a recent report on film tax credits by the Tax Foundation.  Pennsylvania is among the 26 states that offer transferable (or in some states refundable) tax credits to film producers.  This means that tax credit awarded is more than the actual state taxes the recipient owes, they can sell the remaining credit to another business.

But movie incentives by-and-large have failed as economic policy.  As the Tax Foundation notes:

Movie production incentives are costly and fail to live up to their promises. … Among these failures, the two most important are their failure to encourage economic growth overall and their failure to raise tax revenue.

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Some news of the weird – and wired: The office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett, as part of an ongoing grand jury investigation, has filed a subpoena against Twitter to reveal the names of two anonymous Twitter accounts.  The revelation came hours after Mr. Corbett won the Republican primary for governor.

The subpoena asks for name and contact information for the Twitter accounts  BFBarbie and CasablancaPA. It is unclear the reason for the subpoena, but both Twitter handles have been harsh critics of Mr. Corbett.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Pennsylvania ACLU will represent CasblancaPA in fighting the subpoena. WTAE Pittsburgh has video of the story, including an interview with Mr. Corbett in which he refuses to comment on the “ongoing investigation.”

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We’re all about the headlines this week as we’ve got Mark Steyn calling in from Arizona at the white hot center of the immigration debate, author John O’Hara discusses his new book “A New American Tea Party” and his recent appearance on “The Daily Show,” and we talk to Tim Burns the Republican candidate in the hotly contested race for Jack Murtha’s seat in Pennsylvania. Questions? Comments? Write us at podcast@ricochet.com or come join the discussion on or Facebook page.