PSoTD

George Will seems to be saying that Lynn Swann is okay but there's no way he's going to beat Ed Rendell. Gonna have a HARD time raising money with that kind of Republican attitude...

Going to our annual neighborhood picnic. Have a fun day!

I retired from PCNblog last night. PCN ought to build their own blog, which I would gladly blogroll... but a blog needs an owner who is invested in the subject, and PCNblog had none.

Robin asked me to pass along this notice:

Lower Bucks for Democracy is sponsoring a free screening of the award-winning documentary Why We Fight. Why We Fight takes a careful look at the American military-industrial complex from the end of WWII to the Iraq War.

When: Thursday, July 13 at 7:00 pm sharp Where: Langhorne Public Library

In addition, there's also Medicare D-Day:

PA Action is organizing a Lobby Day at Rep. Fitzpatrick's office dedicated to reforming Medicare Part D. The official name of the event is Medicare D-Day. We want to get one hundred people to show up to Rep. Fitzpatrick's Langhorne office on the morning of July 29 (the weekend of Medicare's birthday) to ask the congressman to fix Medicare's prescription drug benefit.

When: Saturday, July 29 at 9:15am
Where: the Congressman's Langhorne office, One Oxford Valley, Suite 800 (JC Penney lot)

The Pennsylvania General Assembly doesn't do much, compared to most other state legislatures. They have the second highest number of members of any state legislature in the country. It is a "full-time" legislature. State Legislators have both Capitol and district staff. They get paid well, both in salary and benefits, and they were just seriously spanked by the public for a year for trying to sneak another payraise in the dead of night in 2005.

And yet, for the fourth straight year, they cannot complete a state budget within the Constitutional requirement. This is as much practice as rarity in Pennsylvania the past 15 years. I know it's relatively common in other states as well, but when you take into effect how much labor is available to get the budget completed on time and how much Pennsylvania spends on a legislature which doesn't do much beyond this, it's rather galling.

I think the solution is a pay dock, and a severe one. 10% of annual salary for each legislator for each day a budget is delayed being sent to the Governor beyond the end of the previous fiscal year ought to be motivation enough, I would think...