July 22, 2022
President Biden has contracted COVID and is apparently suffering mild symptoms and quarantining at home. After spending the past week traveling all over the earth, the mind reels thinking about the contact tracing that happened after that little announcement.
Dr. Anthony Fauci announced he will be retiring at the end of Biden’s first term. Apparently, he is looking forward to relaxing and spending some quiet time prepping for the endless hours he will spend testifying in front of Congress when the GOP takes over next year.
The race for control of the U.S. Senate just might come down to Pennsylvania, and this week both the Oz and Fetterman campaigns really heated up. From what we can gather, the entire race will be won by whichever candidate has the best social media memes. Just out here trolling our way to Gomorrah.
Despite having the ‘rona, Biden announced that if members of Congress don’t get off their collective keisters and pass climate change legislation, by golly he will do a bunch of things by executive order and YOU’LL ALL GO TO BED WITHOUT SUPPER!
Gas prices continued their three-week slide from the record-breaking numbers we saw in June. For a primer on what this all means: prices high = Biden’s fault, prices drop = Biden had nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, if prices drop to below $4 bucks a gallon, Biden will be blamed for not having done anything sooner.
The big news out of Philly this week was the 76ers announcing a $1.3 billion plan to build “76 Place at Market East,” in the heart of downtown Philadelphia, privately financed by a group of billionaires. Philadelphia 76ers owners David Blitzer and Josh Harris formed 76 Devcorp with Philadelphia real estate mogul David Adelman to lead the project. The project is targeted for completion in time for the 2031-32 NBA season.
If you were wondering whether you were getting a stimulus check this year, PennLive has a very lengthy rundown on where Governor Wolf’s plan sits and what could be next. All of which is to say “you ain’t getting no stimulus check.” Check back next month when you still won’t have a check.
For Wolf’s part, the big NO he got on the stimulus idea was tempered a bit by a bunch of other policy victories he achieved. Education spending, tax cuts, mental health investments, clean water funds, law enforcement investments… all of it adding up to a Wolf Final-Term Victory Lap, which began last week and will last until he’s good and ready to stop. Those are the bennies that come with the job, folks.
There is much consternation over a newly-enacted law (that the governor didn’t really want but accepted as part of a budget deal) that will freeze bonding levels for new wells, as well as set up a mechanism for the millions the feds are giving us to cap old wells. To learn more about new wells, shallow wells, unconventional wells, and abandoned wells, we take you live to Triad President Roy J. Wells…
Pennsylvania’s casinos reaped their largest revenue number EVAH last year, topping the $5 billion mark, which in turn dumped more than $2 billion in tax revenue into state coffers. Go ahead and let us know what other industries generate that much tax revenue while getting zero subsidies. We’ll wait.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike’s decision to go to all-electronic tolling has been a bit rocky out of the gate. The PTC is lugging around about $155 million in unpaid tolls from various traffic scofflaws and miscreants. Collecting these delinquent tolls has been so much of a problem they hired Lou from South Philly to try and get some of that cash back. Nice Nissan you have there, Mr. I Don’t Pay My Tolls. Shame if anything happened to it.
Pennsylvania, like much of the nation, is facing a teacher shortage, and Team Wolf this week laid out an aggressive plan to combat this troubling trend. We wonder if anything in particular has happened with frightening regularity that is keeping folks from wanting to enter a classroom? It’s a mystery, for sure.
Pennsylvania taxpayers who have wee ones will get to write off some of their child-care expenses on their taxes this year. This is most certainly a welcomed change, made even more impactful as Congress allowed the Federal Child Care Tax Credit to expire because, well, Congress.
Do you know who is stepping up to train 200,000 kids for the cyber jobs of the future? That would be our friends at Cisco (SHAMELESS CLIENT PLUG ALERT!) Check out the details here.
Shameless Client Plug number two goes to our pals at the Lehigh Valley International Airport, who set a record for passengers last year. Well done, team!
And finally, we give a shout-out to Greg Deavens, CEO of Independence Blue Cross, for being named as one of the most influential Black executives in the state! For the uninformed, that would be Shameless Client Plug number three. Someone stop us before we toot our own horn again!
If you haven’t been keeping up with Triad VP Todd Brysiak’s budget analyses on the Triad Socials… the hell are you waiting for? We are delivering excellence here, people!
In our We Can’t Make This up segment, we take you to Oklahoma (where the winds come sweeping down the plain), where a man confessed to killing his friend because he was convinced that the man had lured him to the fishing hole to feed him to Sasquatch. Which might be the most demented confession of all time, especially considering the fact that everyone knows Sasquatch summers in upstate New York.
And that’s what passes for news around here as the sidewalk melts. Should any of us live through this brutal heat, we will be back next week. Can’t really make any promises at this point. Until then, from all of us at Team Triad, have a great weekend!