Posts Tagged → harrisburg
Harrisburg politics as usual from someone we should not expect it from
“Politics as usual.”
That is a statement, a curse, a wry observation, an accusation, a vexation to the free citizen, and most surely, it is a threat to good government.
Wherever there is “politics as usual,” we find double standards, empty promises, hypocrisy, a lack of forethought, an absence of careful or diligent thought, and an act of putting political gain ahead of citizen gain. And please don’t kid yourself that only “their” political party does it. Both main political parties engage in politics as usual, and even some of the fringe political parties are awash in it, because for their single issue cause to succeed they must overlook tons of contrary evidence to keep selling their purist issue.
This past week saw a classic example of politics as usual, and it disappointed me, because the person who engaged in it ought to know better. I certainly believe that he is better than that, and that he has a capacity to act bigger than his silly politicized statement.
What happened was that Governor Tom Corbett line-item-vetoed some “legislative” funding (that is taxpayer dollars used by the legislature for their office coffee, cars, walking-around-money, and parking on Capitol Hill), and state senator Rob Teplitz claimed that it would damage Harrisburg’s recovery plan.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, because that money vetoed out of the budget belongs to taxpayers and has zero to do with Harrisburg’s recovery. Only an overly creative imagination can find some vague link between the loss of cheap cash for legislators and the loss of economic advance for Harrisburg City.
Making it worse is that Senator Teplitz voted against the state budget to begin with. If he votes against something, how can he then claim that someone else shouldn’t vote against it, too?
The simple reason that Teplitz said this is for cheap political gain, a lame attempt to damage Corbett among voters in Harrisburg City. This qualifies as politics as usual, and it is destructive of the political process because it cheapens the political process. It dumbs it down. Instead of talking about Big Important Issues, we end up talking about nonsense that has nothing to do with anything material or substantial, and voters walk away from it.
When voters walk away from the political process, America is damaged. Maximum voter participation is needed for the nation to function properly.
Teplitz should know better than to do this. He is a bright guy, and I think he is a good guy. Although principled, he is overwhelmingly partisan, and that is why this kind of silly waste of time came naturally to him. Like all other partisans, Democrat and Republican, Teplitz only really cares about the party enterprise. He forgets about the citizens, their Constitutional rights, their personal money they remove from their pockets and place in the state coffers.
It is no secret I hope to be the Republican nominee in 2016 for the 15th PA senate district. If he runs for re-election then, Teplitz will be my opponent. I have no problem publicly singing his praises where he has earned them, and I can attest to several good things he has done for me and other people in the district. If Teplitz has had one strength so far, that I have seen, one truly laudable characteristic, it has been his willingness to wade into bad government, force a meeting or two, confront recalcitrant bureaucrats, and represent well a constituent’s interests. That is a real skill, and we should all recognize it.
That is why Teplitz disappoints so badly with his spurious attack on Corbett. I just know he can be bigger and better than this politics as usual.
Guns – Your individual right
Gun ownership is an individual right, not a “collective” right.
There is no such thing as a “collective” right in the American liberties enumerated in our Constitution.
If you think otherwise, you really must study the Constitution more. Local to the Harrisburg area is an organization that provides classes on Constitutional issues: http://reclaimliberty.com/
The “collective right” idea was ginned up out of thin air in the 1970s by anti-freedom activists. The US Supreme Court has rejected it twice, and there is not an honest scholar anywhere who believes in it.
The Bill of Rights is exactly that – a list of individual rights and liberties that belong to American citizens. No one can take them away. Whether you choose to exercise those rights, or not, is your choice.
Hear Ye, Hear Ye…step back in time
Last Sunday was the Maple Festival at Fort Hunter, here in Harrisburg. Today and tomorrow is the Honorable Company of Horners at the US Army Heritage Center in Carlisle, PA. If you enjoy mingling with people dressed as if they just emerged from a 1770s time machine, this is the event to go to this weekend. Flintlock rifles, lots of modern and antique powder horns and various accoutrements like knives, tomahawks, etc. I find this sort of diversion from politics, work, and politicking refreshing. Maybe you will, too.
Warmer weather can’t come too soon
What began as a happy trip to the wood shed for a load of seasoned oak in the Fall is now a crabby trudge through deep snow and ice, a drudgery opposite the cheerfulness felt with the first flames to beat back Winter’s early chill.
Spring warmth cannot come too soon. Naturally, it will arrive, melt the Arctic snow cap occupying my lawn, and probably result in some Biblical flood carrying my home down river to the Chesapeake Bay.
Speaking of floods, and flood insurance, I am hopeful that the insane congresswoman Maxcine Waters will have her bizarre legislation permanently overturned, so that people can either afford to own their homes (something she is not familiar with or supportive of) or the Federal government will buy out the landowners so the societal costs and benefits are not concentrated on just the private property owners. Government cannot change the social contract in one week. Well, under liberals it can, of course. Let’s rephrase that: Government should not restructure the social contract in such a short time that private property owners see their investments destroyed overnight. That would be good government, something unknown to Maxcine Waters and her fellow liberals.
No snow plows: Harrisburg’s new policy
Former Harrisburg mayor Linda Thompson had issues, no question about it, and she’d probably be the first to admit it.
But at least she got the snowy streets plowed.
This is something the new “brilliant” administration is not doing. They’re a failure on this basic count.
I guess that if your election competition is artificially removed, so that “winning” is practically guaranteed, you might think that it’s easy, this governing stuff.
If our streets are not going to be plowed, then what is the role of government?
UPDATE: Fifteen minutes after this post went up, a snow plow cleared a lane here in Uptown Harrisburg. First time all winter. I cannot claim responsibility, but I will admit to being surprised. I had been under the impression that the city’s snow plows had all been sold off to pay for Andy Giorgione’s incinerator debt.
Last day of Great American Outdoor Show
If you have not yet gone to the new Great American Outdoor Show, today’s the day.
Even if you’re not a hunter, there’s still much to see and do. The Farm Show complex is enormous and every hall is packed. RVs, campers, boats, fishing everything, mapping, GPS technology, clothing. Etc.
One thing I noticed last week was a booth full of furs also selling turtle shells. Whether or not these shells are from wild native turtles, illegal, or from some farmed non-native species, it disturbed me to see them. Turtles take a good ten years to reach maturity, when they can begin breeding. Their nests are subject to raids by raccoons, skunks, snakes, possums, and bears. ATVs and dirt bikes often are ridden over the soft soils turtles choose to lay their eggs. Collectors grab them for illegal sales, dads take them home for their kids to see, etc.
You get the picture. Turtles don’t have it easy.
If there’s one thing missing from the GAOS, it’s an emphasis on land, water, and wildlife conservation. Plenty of emphasis on the taking part, not much on the conserving part. Maybe that’ll change at next year’s show.
Some observations on knives sold at the Great American Outdoor Show
Knife production is reaching an apex, it appears. Never before in one place have I seen so many higher quality production knives as I have seen at the Great American Outdoor Show. Many booths selling hundreds and hundreds of better quality folding knives, with some custom and semi-custom knife sellers sprinkled around.
Oddly, you can’t find a sharpening stone in the entire Farm Show complex to save your blade’s life. No one is selling sharpening stones. Blades out the wazoo, yes. Ways to keep them functioning, no. Whether it is a sign of the throw-away society meeting Pleistocene Man, or too much optimism about modern steels’ edge retention capability, it is an odd sign indeed.
Once the purview of expensive custom knives, Damascus blades are now ubiquitous, although most are probably made in Pakistan and India, so their quality cannot be real high, and you’ve got no idea of their cadmium, arsenic, or lead content, either, although I am willing to bet these blades are positively toxic to human health. They do look nice, though.
[Damascus steel is a mix of different types of metals that when folded over and over and then hammered out reveal an appealing variety of patterns. Because metal types used in Damascus steel vary widely, quality varies widely. I use only Alabama Damascus in my knives]
Clearly, there is a bleeding over from the custom knife market into the high production market, where quality used to suffer badly. Knife buying Americans evidently have improved tastes and higher expectations for their over-the-counter knives. That’s a good thing. But do they have to be made in those rainbow colors? They hurt my eyes. Camo handles are humorous – drop your knife, never find your knife, lose your knife. Maybe those rainbow colored handles work, after all.
One other observation is the high number of bug-out bags being made. Man, Americans seem ready for the apocalypse. After seeing so many of these grab-and-run packs, I now realize that I need one, too. No, my oh-so-1970s Kelty backpacks do not seem up to snuff, even though they have served me well on rugged wilderness trips for many years. Nope, camo is de rigeur here, too.
Come on by the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs booth and buy a raffle ticket for our Bushmaster AR-15 M4. Just ten bucks gets you a lot closer to having your bug-out bag fully equipped with a state-of-the-art rifle.
Good show! JRJ Knives sells out at Great American Outdoor Show
Want the sign of a good show? Watch the vendors sell out of their items only a couple of days in.
JRJ knives of New Buffalo is my go-to source for top of the line custom knives. John uses ATS-34 steel and stock removal (with a little welding and hammering now and then) to make any knife you want or need. He and I have several knife projects under way, mostly using Alabama Damascus steel and hippo tooth, and although the wait can be longer than you’d like, the results are always better than you could have imagined. JRJ makes high quality knives.
Well, last Sunday I stopped in at the JRJ Knives booth at the Great American Outdoor Show, and John was nowhere to be seen. He was back at the shop, his wife Jodi said, because they had sold out of nearly all their knives. That is, they had sold more knives in the first 24 hours of the show than they expected to sell during the entire week.
Today I was shopping around for old fashioned whet stones. You know, the old fine-grained novaculite Arkansas sharpening stones that were once a staple in every American kitchen. You’d expect to find lots of them for sale at the Great American Outdoors Show, especially given how many knife vendors there are. Nary a one, oddly. Either modern newfangled steels have become self-sharpening, or even rugged outdoorsmen no longer sharpen their own knives. Something odd is afoot. One knife vendor said that he had sold out of all of his premium knives, and had to order more; he hoped they would arrive by tomorrow.
But back to the main point here: All this selling out of items in a day or two is a good show. So far, it is a big success. If you haven’t yet visited, you should. It has a whole new look, feel, and energy. And yes, there are AR15s on display everywhere.
Goin’ to the big show
The NRA may not do a great job of thanking, recognizing, or appreciating its members’ grass roots work that shut down the Eastern Outdoors Sports Show and turned it into the Great American Outdoor Show, but the show is on, nonetheless. I’ll be there all week, off and on, and I hope to see you there.
Harrisburg’s new parking scam
Today I parked in a Harrisburg municipal garage. Got my ticket when I entered, and tried to pay when I returned four hours later.
Several poorly written, hand-written notes on lined paper were taped to the payment kiosk. These notes said that the kiosk was now taking only exact payment, that no refunds were being given, that inserting your credit card to pay could result in the permanent loss of your card, and that receipts slips were not printing.
In other words, you might mistakenly over-pay, because few people carry exact cash for anything, the machine would not give you a receipt for proof that you had overpaid, and you’d get no change back. What happens if you are in a rush to exit the garage and get on your way to your next destination? You might just leave a few extra bucks behind to save the time…no doubt that’s part of the purpose.
And we are not talking about nickels and dimes, but dollars only. It cost sixteen bucks to park in the garage for the four hours I was up at the Capitol. That is four dollars an hour, or four quarters for fifteen minutes of parking time (as opposed to one quarter for ten or fifteen minutes like it was until last year). It is a huge amount of money for parking.
And on top of the rip-off parking price, you get zero service, theft of your change due back, and no receipt to prove you did indeed pay.
Harrisburg has some serious challenges, and this parking scam is going to make recovery worse. One of the ways the city is supposed to re-coup its bad debt on the incinerator is lease out the parking garages. Well, here ya go; here is the natural result of that leasing arrangement: All rip-off, no service, outrageous prices, no due process. Really hope the “geniuses” who thought this up are held accountable for this failure.
Wait a minute! The guys who ripped us all off with the incinerator debt never got held accountable, and now we have a whole new set of rip-off guys milking us in new ways. I guess it just doesn’t end, until every taxpayer will have moved from the city and abandoned the place to the crows and the weasels.