Scranton Times-Tribune. March 14, 2022.
Editorial: Another prison incident surfaces
Less than a month after one Lackawanna County Prison controversy came to light, another surfaced last week.
County officials confirmed that two supervisors at the prison are on paid administrative leave. The circumstances involving Krista Purvis, a deputy warden, and Timothy Walsh, a captain, were not disclosed because they are personnel matters. Purvis told a reporter that she understood she was on a Family and Medical Leave Act absence.
The departures follow a bizarre development in February when it was disclosed that Lackawanna County Commissioner Debi Domenick had been in possession of a prison key that she had lost. The locks to the facility had to be changed at taxpayer expense and there was no explanation provided as to why a commissioner, or anyone who does not work at the prison, would have a key to the institution.
Domenick also resigned then from the prison board, which was strictly a pose because state law requires commissioners to be members of county prison boards. She also has engaged in an ongoing dispute with prison Warden Tim Betti, the origins of which remain murky.
The county prison board, which includes the commissioners, the sheriff, district attorney, county controller and treasurer and a judge, still owes taxpayers an explanation as to Domenick’s violation of prison security protocol. The personnel situation involving the deputy warden and captain will play out soon.
Embarrassing incidents and scandals at the prison have plagued one county administration after another for decades. County residents are justifiably disgusted with the drama.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. March 13, 2022.
Editorial: Why not a state gas tax holiday, Gov. Wolf?
On Monday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf joined his counterparts in Colorado, Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin in appealing to congressional leaders. Minnesota’s governor hopped on the bandwagon later.
The problem is the rising gas prices that are making it more expensive by the hour to fill up a tank. When they penned the letter, the national average was $4.17 per gallon. On Friday, it was $4.33.
“As Congress looks to relieve Americans of the financial stress caused by increased gas prices amid international crises and rising inflation, we support federal legislation to address rising gas prices by suspending the federal gas tax until the end of the year,” the governors wrote.
OK. That would knock 18 cents a gallon off the price at the pump. Not a lot, but it could provide a little relief. But experts such as Ulrik Boesen, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation in Washington, D.C., say it ultimately would be a bad idea, leaving less money for repairs it is meant to fund and possibly increasing inflation.
But here’s an idea: You first, Gov. Wolf.
Pennsylvania differs from the other states represented in that its gas tax dwarfs theirs. While New Mexico charges just 18.88 cents a gallon on the low end and Michigan sits at 45.12 cents on the high side, Pennsylvania has the third-highest gas tax in the nation at 58.70 cents per gallon. That’s more than three times the federal tax.
“Money saved at the pump translates into dollars back in consumers’ pockets for groceries, childcare, rent and more,” the governors wrote. “… We know it is possible to invest in infrastructure and also provide meaningful relief to consumers at the pump.”
Couldn’t this apply to the state tax as well? Why isn’t what’s good for the federal government something that would work in Harrisburg?
The Detroit Free Press writes that Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is planning to veto a bill to suspend her state’s gas tax. The National Federation for Independent Business is calling on Colorado to pull its 22-cents-per-gallon gas tax, too. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is pushing back on calls to suspend his state’s tax.
This isn’t just a Democrat or Republican issue. Gas pumps don’t charge less for one party or another. There is no consensus on how to handle the issue among Pennsylvania’s neighbors. To the south, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan wants to lift his state’s tax, while, to the west, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says a suspension of his state’s tax would be a mistake.
But Pennsylvania has the ability to do something other states don’t. It could ease its tax rather than lift it.
If Pennsylvania even temporarily slashed its gas tax by a third, it still would collect more than 35 other states — and be equivalent to what the federal government is being asked to do.
Instead, Wolf is asking Congress to do what Pennsylvania won’t.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. March 9, 2022.
Editorial: Pennsylvania can’t afford the death penalty
Ongoing controversy and costly legal challenges provoked by the death penalty, as well as botched executions themselves, are reasons enough for Pennsylvania and 26 other capital punishment states to abolish their death-penalty statutes.
Pennsylvania paused executions in 2015, but the moratorium imposed by Gov. Tom Wolf will expire in less than a year when the term-limited governor leaves office. With roughly 100 prisoners remaining on death row, the clock is ticking for Pennsylvania legislators to act on anti-death penalty bills in the General Assembly.
Partly due to ongoing constitutional challenges and waning public support, states are using the death penalty far less. Annual executions in the United States peaked at 98 in 1999 and steadily decreased to 11 last year.
In late October, during Oklahoma’s first execution since 2015, John Marion Grant, 60, who murdered a prison cafeteria worker, jerked, or convulsed, nearly two dozen times over several minutes as vomit spurted from his mouth and spilled down his neck. In other lethal injections, executioners have struggled for an hour or more to find a suitable vein.
Now, 28 death row prisoners in Oklahoma are challenging in federal court the three-drug cocktail Oklahoma uses for lethal injections.
Last week, the court learned Oklahoma used the wrong drug labels during at least three recent executions. Whether or not the Oklahoma Department of Corrections used the proper drugs in those executions, the labeling snafu highlights the kind of missteps that have become far too frequent. Secrecy continues to shroud where and how states procure lethal injection drugs; executioners work without adequate medical training or national standards. Physicians cannot participate in executions without violating the ethical principles of their profession.
However a federal court in Oklahoma rules on the constitutionally of lethal injections in that state, similar challenges, along with more bungled executions, are practically inevitable in Pennsylvania if the state resumes executions.
Meantime, the state’s death penalty statute remains active. Despite the moratorium on executions, prosecutors have continued to try people under the death-penalty statute — at an enormous cost to taxpayers.
With just three executions since 1976, Pennsylvania spent $1 billion on securing and defending death-penalty convictions, former Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale reported in 2020 — an average of more than $300 million for each execution. Even the most ardent supporter of the death penalty should ask whether the benefits — and in truth there are practically none — are worth the costs. No credible evidence shows executions deter murder or violent crime.
Moreover, since 1972 more than 180 death row prisoners — more than half of them Black — have been wrongly convicted and exonerated of their capital convictions, including 10 in Pennsylvania, reports the Death Penalty Information Center.
Legal and constitutional challenges like those in Oklahoma will continue to entangle the death penalty and exact enormous costs from states. Pennsylvania can no longer afford them.
Lancaster Online. March 10, 2022.
Editorial: Pennsylvania’s top ranking in hate propaganda is alarming. We must fight hate.
We’d like Pennsylvania to be No. 1 in, say, state education funding (it’s not close). Or in national sports championships.
But not in hate propaganda.
This dubious distinction makes us ill.
It does, however, make clear why the Lancaster County Local Journalism Fund, an initiative seeded and supported by The Steinman Foundation, is funding Carter Walker’s investigative reporting. (The Steinman Foundation is a local, independent family foundation that was funded by the companies that make up Steinman Communications; those companies include LNP Media Group.)
The hate propaganda disseminated in Lancaster County and across the commonwealth is not just a threat to minority and marginalized groups, but to democracy. As the Southern Poverty Law Center notes, the “reactionary and racist beliefs that propelled a mob” into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have “coalesced into a political movement that is now one of the most powerful forces shaping politics in the United States.”
That should worry us all.
As Walker reported, the ADL report “linked most of the propaganda to groups like the Keystone Nationalist Active Club, the New Jersey European Heritage Association, White Lives Matter and Keystone United. … The most active group by far in Pennsylvania was Patriot Front, a Texas-based white nationalist group whose recruiting in Lancaster County and surrounding areas was the subject of an LNP ‘ LancasterOnline story last month.”
We wrote an editorial Feb. 13 in response to that article, explaining why even a relatively small number of right-wing men cosplaying as fascists in Lancaster County should spark alarm. We also explained why we believe stickers spreading hate propaganda are a problem.
They “declare a group’s presence,” we wrote. “They seek to attract others to the group’s abhorrent cause. They test a community’s tolerance for the white supremacist beliefs the group is trying to perpetuate.”
Not everyone was convinced.
Michael D. Witmer, a West Hempfield Township resident who taught history at Millersville University, Alvernia University and HACC, wrote a column Feb. 23 accusing us of being divisive, unnecessarily alarmist and “afflicted with a sense of ‘historical guilt’ ” that approached self-loathing.
In a March 2 letter to the editor, Chris Beiler of Akron called Witmer’s argument that Patriot Front shouldn’t be taken seriously because of its relatively small presence here “absurd.” Asked Beiler: “At what size should a malignant tumor be removed?”
Indeed.
For many of us, this isn’t an academic debate.
As the Southern Poverty Law Center points out, the scapegoating of Asian Americans for COVID-19 has led to violent attacks on members of that community. Public health officials, lawmakers, election administrators and even school board members have been targeted for violence. Hate groups have encouraged and exploited the ferocious backlash to the 2020 protests over George Floyd’s murder.
And, according to Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s chief executive officer, “violent antisemitic assaults are on the rise,” even as white supremacist groups “are dialing-up their hateful rhetoric against Jews and canvassing entire communities with hate literature.”
For all these reasons, fighting “hate in Pennsylvania has never been more important,” Andrew Goretsky, regional director for ADL Philadelphia, said.
The ADL database shows that 425 of the instances of hate propaganda in Pennsylvania were attributed to Patriot Front, Walker noted. “The number is possibly an undercount, as Patriot Front claims on its social media pages that its members posted over 600 pieces of propaganda in the state last year.
“An LNP analysis of photos posted online by Patriot Front and cross referenced with the ADL database found there were at least 611 instances of the group’s members posting propaganda in the state in 2021.”
While this propaganda is often rendered in language that is not overtly hateful, private and public chats from groups such as Patriot Front, White Lives Matter and the Keystone Nationalists reveal members using antisemitic language or expressing adulation for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, Walker reported.
“Hate starts with white supremacist propaganda and hate propaganda, but it then escalates from there into more criminal behavior,” Goretsky said.
This is evident in the sharp increase in hate crimes in Pennsylvania in 2021, Walker reported. According to data maintained by the Pennsylvania State Police, 255 such crimes were reported last year — more than any other year since cases first were tracked in 1997, and nearly as many as the previous three years combined.
Walker reported that the state police data show that the majority of offenders in those cases were white. The documented hate crimes include a February 2021 incident in which a Mount Joy man threw Molotov cocktails at the home of neighbors, whom he described as “the Mexicans,” according to a police report, as well as a September 2021 incident in which a man in Pittsburgh entered a synagogue and shouted antisemitic remarks, Walker noted.
During a stop in Lancaster County last Thursday, Gov. Tom Wolf said the commonwealth’s top ranking in hate propaganda is “not who we are.”
“This can’t be who we are,” Wolf said. “Pennsylvania was founded as a commonwealth, as a place which was open to folks from every religious background and any part of the world.”
Living up to that heritage will require action. We cannot dismiss reports of hate group activity as insignificant and idly wait until hatred turns into violence before we pay it heed. We cannot allow hate propaganda to become a normalized part of the scenery here. We must oppose hatred and report any tangible signs of it in our public spaces. And, in our private lives, we may need to take uncomfortable stands against racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic language.
If the prevalence of hate propaganda in Pennsylvania doesn’t truly reflect who we are, we must prove it.
Altoona Mirror. March 12, 2022.
Editorial: As gas prices rise, remember local tourism
To resurrect a well-worn phrase, many people of this region are “screaming bloody murder” over the escalating price of gasoline and heating oil.
In this free nation, they have a right to express their views and complain, although they should take care to ensure their opinions are built upon accuracy, fairness and acknowledgment of the proverbial bigger picture.
For now, there should be agreement that only Russian President Vladimir Putin is the one responsible for the pain at area gasoline pumps. If he had not ordered the invasion of Ukraine, gas prices might have remained relatively stable, at least when stacked against the situation that exists at present.
However, there are numerous ways to make that gasoline-pump “pain” seem negligible or even non-existent, and people of this region should “drive up” to the opportunity to try them. Some examples:
(asterisk) Every year on Black Friday, the Mirror urges area residents to shop locally, both for the benefit of area merchants and themselves. Consider how much money people here could save by making their purchases at local stores and avoiding having to buy extra gasoline or vehicle maintenance services as a result of shopping elsewhere.
(asterisk) If the Ukraine situation drags on and America’s oil-based prices continue to rise, or merely remain high, much savings could be realized by avoiding a trip to Pittsburgh for a Pirates game — assuming that baseball’s current labor dispute will be resolved in coming weeks. Attending an Altoona Curve game, where ticket prices are lower and the trip to the ballpark will be much shorter and less costly, is a worthy savings option.
(asterisk) Most people don’t mind plunking down money for state lottery tickets, but if those people chose to forgo buying several tickets a week, the money they would save might fully cover the increased cost for needed fuel.
(asterisk) Many people enjoy trying their luck at casino slot machines and/or table games such as poker and blackjack. A source of savings for those not willing to give up this recreational activity would be to patronize casinos closer to home and perhaps scale back some betting. The casinos closer to home and the players both would be winners.
(asterisk) Be more savings-minded about water and electricity consumption, as well as about whatever heating fuel is used. Significant savings could accumulate rapidly.
(asterisk) Remember, tourism begins at home. There are many things to enjoy here without having to empty a tank of gas or pay exorbitant admission or participation fees. Area tourism agencies should focus on that message.
These are only a handful of ways to beat the higher prices at the gasoline pumps and at the heating oil distributor’s office during this presumably temporary, albeit dangerous, time.
Every American doing his or her part to circumvent the “pain” in question should be regarded as expressing confidence in this country’s ability to defeat tyranny.
Such efforts to get around the higher gasoline and oil costs would be reminiscent of how Americans living during WWII had to sacrifice while rationing of certain items was in effect, and how people mobilized in other productive ways on behalf of the war effort. Americans can and will continue to “scream bloody murder” about the escalating gasoline prices, but even those purportedly sky-high prices would seem like a bargain someday if Putin were permitted to run rampant
