White playing with laws
On Aug. 26, state Rep. Martina White took to her Facebook account to defend the Republican majority’s attempt to override Gov. Wolf’s veto of their proposed budget on a line-by-line basis.
Unfortunately for the GOP, that bit of legislative trickery is barred by the state constitution. A Duquesne University School of Law professor, Bruce Ledewitz, recently explained that if the governor “vetoes it [a bill] as a whole, you have to override it as a whole.”
In her post, Ms. White didn’t mention anything about playing fast and loose with the law in an effort to score political points against the governor. However, she did say that she remained, “committed to bringing this budget impasse to an end by negotiating toward a responsible and reasonable state budget.” Is there anything responsible or reasonable about subverting the state constitution?
Most people in the commonwealth stand with the governor and against business as usual in Harrisburg. A recent poll conducted by The Philadelphia Daily News and Franklin and Marshall College suggests that that 54 percent of voters feel the General Assembly is responsible for the budget stalemate. The poll’s director, G. Terry Madonna, said “Wolf gets elected by 10 points and says he wants to increase education spending. That was a big issue. How’s he want to pay for it? With a shale tax. What he has proposed to do, the voters want.”
I implore Rep. White to get off the partisan merry-go-round and do the will of the voters who put her in office a few months ago.
Matthew J. Darragh
Parkwood
City holds world records
In the city of Philadelphia, these have to be several of the world records achieved.
1. The person booed the most without being on a sports team — Mayor Nutter.
2. The organization with the most highly compensated and non-understood job titles — The School District.
3 In recent times, the city with the most fathers who were the mayor and sons who were Councilmen within the shortest time period. (Goode, Green, Rizzo)
4. The city over the longest time period and total amount of unpaid taxes of every kind.
Mayer Krain
Modena Park
Obama naïve on Iran
The recent Iran nuclear accord brings to mind the 1938 Munich Agreement struck between then-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Nazi Germany, wherein Chamberlain elected to “trust” Hitler to limit Germany’s expansion to the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.
Such ill-informed, blind “trust” of an avowed racist, unpredictable regime brought about the consequences we know of today as World War II and the Holocaust.
President Obama’s naivete in according similar “trust” to another totalitarian regime — Iran — which has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel and refuses to back down from this stance, will consign him to the same historical rank as Chamberlain.
One can only hope that the consequences — to both Israel and America — will not be the same as those resulting from Chamberlain’s folly.
Brian Smith
Castor Gardens
Toomey against vets
An article in your Aug. 26 edition reports Sen. Pat Toomey’s spokesman lauding Toomey’s support for veterans. Nothing could be further from the truth.
This is why: Sen. Toomey voted against the Veterans Job Act, which would have assisted veterans in finding jobs; Sen. Toomey filibustered the Veterans Health and Benefits Bill, which would have strengthened treatment for veterans with PTSD; Sen. Toomey voted to close 16 Veterans Business Outreach Centers across the country.
It is more than ironic that Toomey’s spokesman suggested that Toomey works in a bipartisan manner when Sen. Toomey has been ranked as one of the 10 most obstructionist senators in Congress.
Bill Cooney
Fox Chase
