One of the things that makes Charlie Dent so inoffensive to swing voters is that they think he’s pro-choice, and not some religious fundamentalist. So it’ll be interesting to see where he comes down on this new John Boehner bill. The Republicans want to roll back Obama’s new HHS rule that employer health plans have [...]
Why Bob Donchez Should Never Be Mayor of Bethlehem
February 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Daryl Nerl: After nearly two hours of discussion, including further questioning of two of the nominees, three controller candidates each had the support of two council members. Four votes are necessary to fill the vacancy. Councilman David DiGiacinto was supported by Councilman Robert Donchez and Councilwoman Jean Belinski; Retired economist William Scheirer was supported by [...]
Shorter GOP: Fed Should Stop Telling Us We’re Wrong
February 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Zachary Goldfarb: In Washington, the reaction to the Fed’s efforts to bring down unemployment has divided along partisan lines. Democrats say the steps are necessary, but Republicans say they risk sparking inflation and undermining the currency. The latest commotion follows the Fed’s release last month of a report analyzing housing policy, which central bank officials [...]
White House Pushes Back on Lafayette College Economists’ Study
February 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
The White House is pushing back on this week’s cover story in The Economist which argues that regulations are holding back the US economy. The lack of evidence for this view is noteworthy, given how central it has been to the Republican Party’s political message. Indeed, the Economist article only cites one study to prop up this message, [...]
What Ben Bernanke Can Do About Gas Prices
February 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Two Views on the Reassessment Rollout in Lehigh County
February 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Chris Briem thinks Lehigh County had a better rollout than Allegheny: Of course it all begs a bigger question…. why do we all need to do such contortions to figure out what is going on with assessments in Allegheny County? On that note, check out all the new data citizens of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania learned [...]
GOP Senate Primary Turning into Rich Dude Fight
February 22, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Tim McNulty has Steve Welch’s campaign finance report: We’ve been waiting to get a look at GOP US Senate hopeful Steve Welch’s year-end report for about three weeks now, so the campaign for the Chester Co businessman sent it over. We saw the top of the report before — he had $1 million in cash [...]
Did Allentown Pay Too Much for Arena Properties?
February 22, 2012 by · 5 Comments
WFMZ looks at the numbers, and seem to lean towards yes. I’m not so sure. I feel like if you have the taxpayers saying they paid too much, and the property owners saying they were paid too little, you’re probably at least in the neighborhood of the real market price: The city of Allentown paid [...]