Pa. to poor: We're cutting your aid and, oh, by the way, don't wander onto our sidewalk because we might shoot you
HARRISBURG - In Pennsylvania, as in most states, your home is your castle and you have a right to defend it.
Soon, you will be able to add your car. Or the sidewalk. Or anywhere you "have the legal right to be."
The state Senate, in a 45-5 vote, gave final approval Monday to the so-called castle doctrine bill to expand the right of people to use deadly force against attackers in places outside their homes.
Of course, you can blame the National Rifle Association for this worthless piece of legislation (opposed by many prosecutors and police chiefs) but then you also have to wonder if the growing inequaility in this country has more people thinking about the need for self-defense. Now inequality's about to get worse, right here in Pennsylvania. The new solution to the state's education funding crisis isn't to use the state's $500-million-plus surplus (for a rainy day, which I believe to be happening, um, right now) or tax natural lucrative gas drilling but instead to take the money from programs for poor people:
The proposed welfare cuts have been all but overlooked amid the outcry over school aid. But advocates for the poor say the House GOP proposal, which includes $280 million in Medicaid cuts, will hurt citizens who depend on state help for survival.
There's more -- the maddening thing is that bogus notion that these savings are pain free because the budget cutters are targering "waste, fraud and abuse." Just like the great myth of voters fraud, so-called "WF&A" is greatly, greatly overstated:
Then-Gov. Ed Rendell, who often clashed with Wagner, called that number "out of whack" and cited a federal audit that put the error rate about 4 percent. Wagner stood by his findings.
Though welfare recipients are often viewed as cheats by a suspicious public, evidence suggests that's rarely the case. In recent years, the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office has investigated accusations of welfare fraud and found real instances of crime to be statistically insignificant.
"Nobody has ever proved systemic fraud at DPW," said Michael Froehlich, an attorney with Community Legal Services in Philadelphia. "It's all anecdote."
Of course, as Ronald Reagan taught us with the case of the Cadillac-driving welfare queen, anecdote is what rules the day in American politics -- at least when the anecdote helps our politicians balance the budget on the backs of people who can least afford it.