From the HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS Editorial: Gov. Tom Corbett and state legislators can ignore what is happening in Reading and other cities in this commonwealth or they can wake up and attempt to do something so a Pennsylvania community never tops the list again of poorest places in this nation.

From the HUFF POST: The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned. The decision to pull out fully by January will effectively end more than eight years of U.S. involvement in the Iraq war…

From the NEW YORK TIMES: Inside City Hall, the calls poured in late Thursday, predicting a debacle: Hundreds of people sympathetic to the Occupy Wall Street protest were streaming into Lower Manhattan, vowing to resist a forced cleanup of the park taken over by demonstrators…

From the HUFF POST: The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president’s signature health overhaul law – a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency…

From the FINANCIAL TIMES: …The Obama administration is eager to spur “refi” at today’s low interest rates as a way to put money into consumer pockets, while the US Federal Reserve has also identified the lack of refinancing as a barrier stopping its ultra-loose monetary policy from helping the economy…

On a trip Tuesday to New York City, the Watchdog stopped by Occupy Wall Street to better determine who were participating in the ongoing demonstration. He snapped a number of photos and, in this case, the photos are worth a thousand words.

From the PITTSBURG POST-GAZETTE: New laws that make it harder for people to vote — like insisting on photo ID at the polls — have been fairly criticized as being solutions to no documented problem. But with the laws overwhelmingly sponsored by Republicans, conservatives apparently see a problem…

From the HARRISBURG PATRIOT-NEWS: Harrisburg City Council answered the state’s takeover threat by voting to seek Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy protection Tuesday night, essentially adding the courts and more turmoil to the fight over the capital city’s fate.

From POLITICO: Democrats may not vote on President Barack Obama’s jobs bill just once. They could hold several votes on it, even though they know it’s going nowhere. But that’s just the public theater. Behind the scenes, Senate Democrats are trying to develop a Plan B: a series of smaller bills that actually have a chance of passing a badly divided Congress.

From the NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions.

USA TODAY: Compared to people who don’t smoke, smokers face twice the risk of stroke and they are likely to have that stroke nearly a decade sooner, a Canadian study finds.

But within two years of quitting smoking, the risk for stroke or heart disease drops to non-smoker levels, the researchers said.

Editor: The following is a monthly report from a syringe exchange for a comparable metropolitan area. Lancaser General Hospital refuses to help support a syringe exchange here in Lancaster, despite an offer by the Urban League to be the operator.

September 2011 Monthly Report