Friday, April 9, 2021
We kick off this week’s revelry on a serious note as we send our best wishes for a speedy recovery to State Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver, who recently received a new kidney. Word is that both she and the donor are doing well, and Team Triad wishes them both a speedy recovery! Off we go!
If you are looking for a good laugh on Twitter, consider following the account of mild-mannered Media Matters employee Matt Gertz, who on many occasions throughout the day is mistaken for Congressman Matt Gaetz. Gaetz, as you may have heard, currently finds himself in a bit of a tussle with the U.S. Justice Department. In any case, Gertz’s measured responses to some of the most outrageous insults are truly something to behold.
Well folks, it is infrastructure time in the Federal City, but this time around, President Biden is armed with one last reconciliation bullet to use to make his dreams come true. If we learned anything this week it is that anything is infrastructure. Roads, bridges, ports, transit, broadband, childcare, elder care, middle-aged care, the coffee maker in our kitchen, the cracked windshield on our damned Jeep that WAS NOT THERE THE LAST TIME I DROVE IT… all infrastructure. Joe is going big, people.
While Joe is basking in the glow of the rave reviews for his plan, we politely remind him (again) that there is a pretty big crisis happening at the southern border, with encounters up 71% in March. Therein lies the danger of criticizing the border policies of former President Trump (which Democrats did unceasingly for four years), and then not really having any plan at all when he left. Criticize our departed leader all you want, but did we ever have to guess what his border policy was? Pretty sure it had something to do with a wall or something…
Biden this week also rolled out some very small gun-control appetizers (looked like some Second Amendment meatballs and maybe some gruyere) as he pleaded for Congress to pass a big buffet of way more restrictive measures that were immediately dismissed by enough senators to make them all moot, even if the filibuster were to leave us all and fly to Mars tomorrow. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Meanwhile, gun sales in Pennsylvania continue to soar, based upon the number of background checks conducted and reported, but apparently also don’t exist.
Speaking of guns, former House speaker and Marlboro Light afficionado John Boehner is emptying his rhetorical guns at some of his old Capitol Hill friends. Should be a fun beach read this year!
As more and more companies flex their positions on policy matters such as Georgia’s voting law (and LGBTQ rights before that, and civil right before that, and environmental stewardship before that, and apartheid before that), here is your daily reminder that the corporations of 2021 are NOT the same as in 1970. They have social responsibility policies, diversity and inclusion policies, and they listen very closely to their customers, many of whom are Millennials and Gen Z’s. You cannot boycott capitalism into being silent. It’s a brave new world, Aldous.
Back here in Pennsylvania there is a bit of a kerfuffle brewing over whether Pennsylvania will lose $100 million in supplemental nutrition benefits from the feds when/if the COVID disaster declaration is ended. The GOP leaders who put a question on the primary ballot about potentially ending the governor’s emergency powers are calling Team Wolf’s SNAP claim nothing more than dirty pool, which is never, ever, ever played in Harrisburg, as we all know. We are also shocked there is gambling going on out in Grantville.
The state’s Department of Labor & Industry is targeting June as the time to roll out a brand-new online unemployment compensation system, choosing to actually land the old plane before trying to build a new one in midair. There are gonna be some really nervous vendors out there when the department hits the “on switch” on June 8. Nobody wants to be Han Solo when he hits the hyperdrive button and nothing happens. 
This just in: there was a massive black rat snake found in Pittsburgh this week, and it sent the media into a frenzy not seen since Antonio Brown got caught driving his Porsche at 100 miles per hour. Just paint some yellow stripes on the little fella and drop him off at Heinz Field. Voila! New Steelers mascot, Snakey McBeam!
A new report came out this week that said Pennsylvania will need to contribute $500 million a year for the foreseeable future to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. This is roughly $500 million more than we had currently budgeted for that little expense. Any more of that yummy federal stimulus money lying around?
Pennsylvania public school advocates are once again saying that Pennsylvania’s public schools are not funded equally and need more cash, and there is no fairness in the formula, and things they have normally said for the past decade. This time around, opponents are cautioning to wait until we see how much our schools are getting from the feds before we go down that road again. It sure as hell looks like a chunk, and they wanna hit cruise control this year.
Meanwhile, 11 of the state’s 23 prisons are now vaccinating the people inside those facilities, a real turning point in the fight against COVID. Vaccine hesitancy continues to be a problem, as there are inmates who reportedly believe that the vaccines are fake, and only Donald Trump got a real one. God bless Corrections Secretary John Wetzel. He has a tough road ahead.
Over on the socials, our own Mike Manzo went on KYW Radio and weighed in on the expanding field of candidates for the 2022 U.S. Senate primary. There are now 612 people in that race.
And in our We Can’t Make This Up segment, we take you to North Carolina, where a woman was arrested after 260 grams of cocaine was found in her child’s school backpack. How many times do we need to say this? The schoolwork and lunches go in the JanSport, and the yayo goes in the North Face. C’mon people!
That’s what passes for news around here as we slide into the weekend at Triad World HQ (which is also called “Harrisburg”). We will be back next week with more things you don’t care about! Until then, from Team Triad, have a great weekend!