October 29, 2021
President Biden announced on Thursday that congressional Democrats had finally reached an agreement on a $1.75 trillion social spending package. The Dems seemed to be unaware of such a deal and immediately went back to clawing each other’s eyes out.
Biden’s popularity in Pennsylvania has continued its free fall, with 32% of those polled saying he is doing a good or excellent job. To put that in the proper contact, 33% of Pennsylvanians actually like candy corn. When you are less popular than the worst Halloween candy on earth, you got trouble in River City.
Facebook is changing its name to Meta, we learned this week. Apparently, “Depressing Hellscape” was already under copyright by Twitter.
The delta variant surge of the summer may be on the wane, as hospitalizations continued their downward trend. Since it is also First Responders Week, go hug an EMS worker or a nurse. They have had a long 18 months.
Scientific games, a company that holds a $600 million contract to run the PA Lottery, has been sold to a Canadian venture capital firm. Our fondest wish for the new lottery overlords is that they retire Gus once and for all and replace him with a Canadian moose wearing a tuque.
Speaking of our state lottery, lawmakers expanded income eligibility limits for the state’s prescription assistance program, which is funded by said lottery. Just imagine how much more loot the lottery will rake in for PACENET when the moose with a tuque makes an appearance!
Lawmakers are also close to revising Pennsylvania’s probation and parole system. It is rather astounding to see what bipartisan cooperation can do, huh? WE ARE LOOKING AT YOU, CONGRESS!
Eighteen months after COVID-19 first became a permanent fixture in our lives, traffic on our nation’s highways have finally returned to pre-pandemic levels. If you’ve been on the Schuylkill or Parkway West, you are already acutely aware of this fact. Oh, and the roads and bridges didn’t fix themselves while you were gone.
The Keystone State’s unemployment rate continues to tick down, dropping to 6.2% last month. But like the rest of the country, people are withdrawing from the labor market at levels not seen in decades, leading us to wonder where they all went. Canada, maybe?
The legislative reapportionment committee formally accepted the census data it will use to redraw the House and Senate maps. The clock is now ticking on the 90-day window, and if you think recent debates about masks in schools and greenhouse gas initiatives were heated, wait until those maps drop. You may wanna be on vacation when they do.
Next Tuesday, tens of people will schlepp to the polls and vote for their preferred slate of school board members, council members and judges. If you have not yet mailed your ballot, you may wanna drop it off in person, because in the year two thousand freaking twenty-one, it might take the U.S. Postal Service five days to deliver a ballot to a location three miles away. Yes, William Shatner went to space and our postal service is stuck in 1965.
At least $5 million has been spent on Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court race, which will have no impact at all on the partisan makeup of the court. If you think $5 million is some sort of an obscene amount of cash for a statewide race, we can’t wait to see what you think of the 2022 U.S. Senate race to replace Pat Toomey. Those candidates will spend $5 million roughly every six minutes.
As Halloween approaches, it is a good time to share this story about how our own Delaware County burned witches way before Salem, Massachusetts ever did. This is a fact that shocks exactly nobody who is actually from DelCo (paging Todd Brysiak.) Oh, and did we mention the Eagles also beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl? 
On the Triad socials this week, we shared plenty of photos from the recent House Democratic Policy Committee meeting with our friends from the Doral Group.
In our We Can’t Make This Up segment this week, we take you to Australia, where after a 20-year hunt, a man finally found a massive bloodsucking dinosaur eel with rows of spinning teeth. Outside of the fact that this is a truly terrifying creature, who in their right mind spends two decades searching for something that can kill you and drink your blood? Happy Halloween!
That’s what passes for news around here on a Friday in gloomy and cold Harrisburg. If you don’t vote next week, you cannot complain about the election being rigged, so get to the polls. From all your friends at Triad, have a great weekend!