Pennsylvania and Turkey

[Chuck Stromme]

It only took a month for the Pennsylvania deficit to balloon from $700 mil to a bil. If you can believe Gov. Ed Rendell (you can't) he couldn't possibly have predicted that last month. See my April 4 blog for details, such as they are. NOW Ed wants "spending cuts, new taxes and revenue transfers" to address the problem. Seems his income and corp tax forecasts were off by, oh, call it $376 mil. Now the state senate is predicting a $1.5 bil deficit by... wait for it... the end of next month. Nope, who coulda seen THAT coming? Not Ed, that's for sure.

Those "revenue transfers"?  They are from you (enter the amount of your budget), to him (proposed Penn budget = $29 bil)... because his needs are more important than yours.  BUT... I bet you could have foreseen a $1.5 bil shortfall in your budget a lot quicker than he saw the one in his - two months before the end of the fiscal year.

Good-bye Ed.

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Sadly (and tellingly) for me, I neglected to write my Armenian Genocide column on April 24. I wrote one a bit earlier but that's no excuse. Remember that one? And the one I wrote last year? And my brief mention on March 12? The inevitable has happened, as it is wont to do (Ed Rendell's myopia notwithstanding). The Turkey-Armenia talks have broken down because, to no one's surprise, the Turks won't discuss their massacre of 1,500,000 Armenians.

And so it goes. All those little kids' skulls and tiny skeletons in the desert? You can just forget them. Or you can try.

There is plenty of shame to go around.

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I see that Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thinks that gummint shouldn't be responsible for the care and treatment of wounded and disabled American military personnel. Say WHAT?! Yep, here's what he had to say as quoted in a DAV press release a day or two ago:

"I am not arguing in any way, shape or form that this should be the purview of our government because what I would like to see happen is community outreach to [servicemembers] and the government just be out of it," Mullen said.

Last November MikeyM said, regarding the Ft. Hood shootings, "We're at a point now where we really have to move forward to aid those families, the wounded and those who are suffering so much... (T)hat's really where we are putting our main effort."

That was then, this is now. Things can change in six months, as soon as the news cows move on to graze greener pastures.

I thought Mike was a good guy until that brain fart. Try telling the soldier with a recent TBI (traumatic brain injury) that his local docs back home will be his primary care-givers from now on. You know, because they've seen so much of that sort of thing.

I keep hoping to see a correction or retraction ("Sorry, I must have been drunk" would do) but nothing yet. Failing that, it's time to call for Mike's departure, with thanks for his previously honorable service.

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There is no cannibalism in the British navy, absolutely none, and when I say none, I mean there is a certain amount. -- Graham Chapman (of Monty Python)