FORTUNE: Legal pot sales jumped by more than 42% in Colorado last year, pushing the Centennial State’s revenue from marijuana taxes and fees to a new high. Colorado saw $996.2 million in legal sales of medical and recreational pot in 2015, according to the Denver Post‘s calculations of tax data reported this week (and throughout […]
Capitolwire: How did they finally balance the 2016-17 state budget?
By Chris Comisac Bureau Chief Capitolwire HARRISBURG (July 13) – The General Assembly performed a bit of budgetary magic Wednesday, balancing a $31.63 billion spending plan approved two weeks ago in a matter of less than one day. Of course it took every bit of those two weeks to get to that point, along with plenty […]
LETTER: Feigning ignorance or a lack of complicity is no longer acceptable
Friends, Donald Trump’s unabashed fanning of white bigotry at the core of his vision for “Making America Great Again” is unprecedented by a presumptive nominee of a major political party in my adulthood. I have never felt more apprehension about the prospect of a candidate being elected President of the United States. On the other […]
PA in deepest budget and debt mess since 1930s Great Depression
Gov. Tom Wolf and legislature ignore state constitution in budget fight, produce unbalanced budget State lawmakers in 2016 are scraping bare the barrel of money, and law, going all the way back to the New Deal and the Great Depression by Bill Keisling This week Gov. Tom Wolf shocked the state’s political and financial communities […]
Learning from “Brexit”
By Dick Miller WE.CONNECT.DOTS: How this presidential election plays out is neither complete nor foreseen at this writing. We explore two possible factors. First, the race could end up very tight due to a third party candidate. Gary Johnson, Republican and two-time governor of New Mexico, has been nominated by the Libertarian Party. He […]
Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings
NEW YORK TIMES: A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police. But when it comes […]
The Pa. Attorney General has tried to fix Hershey Trust for years. Will this probe be different?
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: … Members of Hershey’s boards have spent millions of dollars investigating themselves over possible conflicts of interest as they have also indulged in limo rides and costly travel and reaped millions in board compensation. [Mark] Pacella’s approach – and one backed by five elected or appointed attorneys general over him since 2000 – […]
Ukraine vs Russia: Will impending Polish arms sale tip the scale?
By Slava Tsukerman This June the war activity in the conflict area in eastern Ukraine had noticeably grown. It resulted in the highest number of civilian monthly casualties since August 2015. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) recorded 69 conflict-related civilian casualties in June (12 fatalities and 57 injuries). The […]
The Myths of Black Lives Matter
WALL STREET JOURNAL EDITORIAL: …The Washington Post has been gathering data on fatal police shootings over the past year and a half to correct acknowledged deficiencies in federal tallies. The emerging data should open many eyes. For starters, fatal police shootings make up a much larger proportion of white and Hispanic homicide deaths than black […]
Democratic Marijuana Reform Platform Plank Stops Just Short of Legalization
by Phil Smith, psmith, July 06, 2016, 07:38pm, (Issue #934) This article was produced in collaboration with AlterNet and first appeared here. DRUG WAR CHRONICLE: For the first time, a major US political party has embraced a strongly reformist platform plank on marijuana. Members of a panel of the Democratic National Committee Platform Drafting Committee approved the […]
A Black Ex-Cop Tells The Real Truth About Race And Policing
By Redditt Hudson, www.vox.com July 9th, 2016 POPULAR RESISTANCE: On any given day, in any police department in the nation, 15 percent of officers will do the right thing no matter what is happening. Fifteen percent of officers will abuse their authority at every opportunity. The remaining 70 percent could go either way depending on whom […]
Can the Hershey Trust survive in politically corrupt Pennsylvania?
The DNA of the Hershey chocolate company holds something that can’t be measured on ledger sheets Mondelēz’s recent offer to buy Hershey Foods is not so much a measure of the monetary worth of a company, so much as it is as a measure of the political and moral decline of Pennsylvania. by Bill Keisling […]
Anti-Donald Trump Forces See Convention Coup as Within Reach
WALL STREET JOURNAL: Months after Donald Trump appeared to seal the Republican nomination for president, anti-Trump forces are making one last push to force a vote on the party’s convention floor that would throw open the GOP contest again… Mr. Trump’s intraparty foes, led by a group of rogue delegates, are waging an intense behind-the-scenes effort to push the […]
LNP: It wouldn’t be our ox being gored
Editorial “Pa. Legislature needs to work quickly to fund budget plan” states: “Democrats are talking about the possibility of a gross receipts tax on natural gas. Such a tax would affect about 3 million natural gas customers — homeowners and businesses. “But many legislators, on both sides, recognize that any tax increase will be swallowed […]