Asked in a 20-minute phone interview this morning when she plans to launch the investigation into the Attorney General’s office’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse case, she said, “I am sworn in on the 15th. The 16th sounds like a good time to me.” …

Part One By Robert Field (Author’s preface:   Even the wife complained that reading the below tended to put her to sleep.  But the intention is to share with the reader the type of economic matters that were being debated prior to Keynes’ break through ideas which were the basis of The General Theory.  Hayek remained […]

Editorial “Thrown for a loss” opines:

“…it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Gov. Corbett’s antitrust lawsuit over the NCAA’s penalties against Penn State University is all about politics and a run for re-election next year.”

The last-minute deal struck by the departing 112th Congress raised taxes on a handful of the highest-earning Americans, with about 99.3 percent of households experiencing no change in their income taxes. But the Tax Policy Center estimates that the average family in the top 1 percent will pay a federal tax rate of more than 36 percent this year…

Circumstances create unsavory realities that counter what we would prefer to do and cause us to make the best we can out of a terrible situation. As readers from time to time may have observed, we not only do not approve of weapons of war in civilian hands, but we question the wisdom of hand guns of any kind, since they often lead to accidental and spur of the moment shootings. In an ideal world, we would do away with both.

All those losses generated more than $1.3 billion in tax revenue for the state, about 2 percent higher than in 2011. Slot machine revenue is taxed at roughly 55 percent in Pennsylvania, with the proceeds going mainly toward property tax relief…

SF GATE / AP: Pennsylvania’s attorney general said she granted Gov. Tom Corbett the authority to file a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA because the litigation could present a conflict of interest as her office prosecutes three Penn State administrators…

EDITOR: Is this a move by Tom Corbett to keep incoming Attorney General Kathleen Kane from overseeing the litigation and being privy to confidential information?

LEHIGH VALLEY MORNING CALL: …Pat Toomey bucked conservatives, the tea party and even his former employer, the anti-tax Club for Growth — all of whom helped him win a U.S. Senate seat — when he voted for the last-minute fiscal cliff deal in the early hours of New Year’s Day.

There are three groups of folks who are likely otherwise to support Corbett by decent margins who are now sort of down on him:
• K-12 public school parents and community folks who think Corbett is destroying their school, dollar by diminished dollar;
• Penn State Nation