September 19, 2025
With very heavy hearts, we open this week’s edition by sending all of our collective prayers to the families and friends of the police officers gunned down in northern York County this week. This unspeakable tragedy shines a light, once again, on the risks that our first responders take each and every day. Please keep them close to your heart.
Of course, y’all are probably expecting us to weigh in on yesterday’s Jimmy Kimmel/Disney/ACB/FCC kerfuffle. Well, keep expecting; we ain’t that stupid. We will simply point to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s words from earlier this week at an event where he was introduced by former Gov. Tom Corbett, and said we all need to do a better when it comes to politically motivated violence and the subsequent hate we see in the aftermath.
Pennsylvania has until close of business today to turn over all of the personal data of the Commonwealth’s SNAP recipients to the feds, or it’s gonna lose up to a half-billion dollars in federal cabbage. Call us crazy, but perhaps there is a better solution to policy disagreements over benefits fraud than letting people starve.
The federal continuing resolution budget fight that is on the horizon will also have an impact on the Keystone State. At stake are the Obamacare health insurance subsidies that, if sh*tcanned, will cause Affordable Care Act exchange rates to jump by 80% next year, hitting about 150,000 Pennsylvanians right in the ol’ ear hole. If you were wondering if Pennsylvania has the cash to backfill the loss of these funds, that would be a big, fat negative, Ghostrider.
If you have not been living in a cave, you may have heard that SEPTA and Pittsburgh Regional Transit have both been granted permission to dip into a big vat of capital funds to keep the trains and buses rolling. Well, isn’t that just FINE AND DANDY FOR SEPTA AND PRT! We are all just gonna ignore those 33 other smaller transit systems, huh?? LOOKS LIKE BAKE SALES FOR THEM!
People who are not lucky enough to live in Pennsylvania coughed up $50 billion last year just to visit us. The top three destinations for tourism were Philly (duh!), the Pennsylvania Dutch counties (of which there seem to be many), and Pittsburgh. If you think $50 billion is a big number, just wait until 2026.
When the overall issue of mass transit funding was dumped from the state budget negotiating table a few weeks back, onlookers expected it would speed up a final budget deal. WELL THINK AGAIN, JACK SPRATT! Our pals over at SpotlightPA took a crack at explaining why, so there is no need for us to wade into that particular political and fiscal morass. We lack the proper footwear.
The push to include significant funding reform for Pennsylvania cyber charters got an unexpected boost from Auditor General Tim DeFoor, and now some GOP members are pushing for change. When the numbers guy says, “this doesn’t look quite right to me,” people tend to take notice.
Pennsylvania is $750 million closer to having high speed connectivity for its underserved areas, and the Trump-era shift from straight up requiring fiber optic connections to a mix of fiber, satellite and wireless coverage seems to be working out, at least initially. Lost in the debate over which technology is better is the simple fact that consumers just want their phones, laptops and other sh*t to turn on and work. They don’t really care how.
The AI/data center discussion landed in Pittsburgh again this week, and a lot of the talk centered around energy, and more specifically, how we don’t have enough of it. As one speaker at the summit remarked, “we have a good hand to play, but it’s not a royal flush.” Energy generation, therefore, would be the ten and the ace needed to fill out that particular top hand.
The City of Harrisburg and PennDOT seemed to have reached an agreement on securing access to City Island (where the Harrisburg Senators play) during the upcoming construction on the Interstate 83 bridge, which is slated to cost a bazillion dollars and take about 30 years. Original plans had the island’s vehicular access basically sealed off, which would mean that Senators fans would have to either walk to the ball game, or swim there. Or in late summer, simply walk across the Susquehanna. If you know, you know.
This year marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Celebrate accordingly, which would be by hijacking a truck outside of JFK airport, then making a nice, pasta dinner in prison. Just don’t put too many onions in the sauce.
In our We Can’t Make This Up segment, we take you to Germany, where a woman was driven completely wahnsinnig (that would be “crazy” in the mother tongue) by what she thought were some little German teenage rascals doing the old “ding, dong, ditch” on her doorbell. Weeks later she discovered her doorbell was actually being rung incessantly by a slug that had managed to slither its way up to the bell. The perpetrating slug was then lovingly placed in a small field and set free, a level of compassion you don’t see in Germany all that often, we’ve been told. KIDDING! DON’T CANCEL US!
That’s what passes for news around here on this late summer Friday on the banks of the 8-inch-deep Susquehanna River. Someday we will have a budget, but until then, from all of us at Team Triad, have a great weekend!