Posts Tagged → leadership
Why isn’t PA in the National Fair in DC?
Came as news to me that there even was a national state fair. Being held on the National Mall, in Washington, DC. Cotton candy, rides, Ferris Wheels, fried foods guaranteed to jump start your heart and then clog it, stuffed teddy bear prizes for your sweetheart, strong man competitions, rope-pulling contests, the usual fun stuff seen at most county and state fairs around America for the past 100 years or more.
Either I do not spend much time online, or the marketers for this big event were not aggressive about it. I just knew nothing about it, read nothing about it, heard nothing about it, had seen nothing about it until a week ago, when it was a couple days away from opening.
Turns out that this “National State Fair” is really big time. Almost a World’s Fair in some ways, with new technology and products being debuted. Pretty darned cool. It runs for a month, and covers America’s 250th birthday celebration on July 4th Independence Day. We are told the fireworks “will be like nothing you have ever seen, that Washington has ever seen.”
Yeah, OK, but is there a place and a role for one of my black powder cannons? Those things really go BOOM.
And so it came as a shock to see recent follow-up articles about how my home state of Pennsylvania is not (or was not) participating in this National State Fair on the National Mall in DC. Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, not participating in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington? Really?
Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State for some good reasons, some historic reasons. We were the keystone colony and then state that held together the northeastern and southern colonies and then states. Home of the Declaration of Independence. Pennsylvania’s natural resources literally built the America you experience today. Our own coal fueled the mills in Steelton and Pittsburgh that smelted our own iron ore into steel, that in turn became the railroad tracks laid on Pennsylvania oak railroad ties (of which I have sawed up many on my own sawmill).
The state of Wyoming is not some western name. It is an eastern name, from the Delaware Indian word for “great grassy plains.” The state of Wyoming is named after the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, because it was the eastern railroads built entirely of Pennsylvania materials that deposited European settlers out on the Wyoming plains (after the Indians had been forced onto reservations). I do not know what the various Indian tribes called what is today Wyoming. But I do know that Pennsylvania had a big hand in making it so.
Pennsylvania coal, iron, and old growth hardwood timber drove the Industrial Revolution in America. Forty minutes due east of Harrisburg is the village of Cornwall, in Lebanon County. An enormous pit there is now filled with water, but it used to be filled with men mining heavy iron ore from the ground. In 1776, those pits were opened to produce the iron to make the cannons that Revolutionary War general George Washington needed to face off against the most hardcore British military, with much of the subsequent cannon blasting and men bleeding happening on Pennsylvania soil (and again at Gettysburg in the Civil War…hmmmmm… this Keystone State thing just keeps raising its head).
I could go on and on about Pennsylvania history in the founding and development of America, but you should get the point here. Pennsylvania got the nickname “Keystone State” for a lot of good reasons, worthy reasons, hard-won reasons.
So, Pennsylvania, having played such a huge role in the founding and early development of America, should naturally be well represented in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington, DC, right? Right? RIGHT?
Ummmm, nope. PA governor Josh Shapiro very recently stated to the press that his administration was unable to locate any PA businesses who wanted to participate in the National State Fair, or who could afford to participate in it.
Apparently, I was not alone in learning this new information, as both of our US senators, John Fetterman and Dave McCormick, have in the past 72 hours leapt to action, together, to find both interested businesses and the private funding to get them situated at the National State Fair.
Their bi-partisan action to save the day for Pennsylvania on the national stage is news in and of itself, because just finding a Democrat who wants to be caught dead anywhere near a Republican, much less work with one towards some common shared goal, like, say, a National State Fair in Washington, DC, is harder than raising Lazarus from the grave.
So bravo! to senators McCormick and Fetterman, who say that they have received an outpouring of interest from all of the associated and related and even distantly related associations, groups, and individuals and businesses. PA -based manufacturers and inventors are especially keen to showcase their wares at the event, and have now publicly said so.
Which brings me back to the lurking elephant in the room (it is more of a big donkey than an elephant): Why is Governor Shapiro not out in front of this, leading the charge down to the National Mall? Why did he just kind of low-T diss this event and downplay it, as if it is no big deal for PA to be AWOL on something so important as the national celebration of America’s 250th birthday?
Does Governor Shapiro really, truly, sadly suffer from an affliction of TDS so terribly fatal that he became grossly partisan and petty about something so important?
What a big missed opportunity this is for a man who has represented himself as a political centrist, a uniter and not a divider. Governor Shapiro has aspirations of being re-elected this Fall, and of possibly running for President of America in 2028. As a former Democrat myself, I find myself shaking meself’s old head, once again, at the sad turn the Democrat Party has not just taken once or twice, but which now continues to take even farther off and over a steep cliff.
That someone of Governor Shapiro’s caliber is sulking and boycotting America’s national 250th birthday celebration is a baaaaaad sign. Bad for our body politic and bad for Governor Shapiro’s larger political aspirations.
Past PA governor Ed Rendell was as partisan a politician as you could find anywhere. Rendell was a huge and tireless champion for the Democrat Party. And yet, Rendell also took every opportunity to work cooperatively with his political opponents when those opportunities were given. Rendell understood that it is better to bask in the spotlight of national appreciation with political opponents, than it is to sulk alone in some partisan silo, holding one’s ball close to the body and vowing to never play with those kids ever again. That behavior is bad for everyone.
Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro likely has better things to do than read this blog, but if he does, I would (and do) ask that he hightail it down to the National Mall, and share the spotlight with the two US senators from Pennsylvania, McCormick (R) and Fetterman (D).
Promoting Pennsylvania is Job #1 for elected officials from Pennsylvania, and doing that with a smile on one’s face makes everyone involved look like emotionally healthy adults. And it makes all Americans feel like there are still some sane, normal people involved in retail politics. People we can look to for leadership. People who care about all of America, and not just about their own little slice of the electorate, off in some corner, away from everyone else American.
Now, please excuse me while I go hang my Happy 250th America flag on my front porch.
PA Game Commission changing leadership
Kind of a wildlife management wild ride here in the Keystone State, though it is tough to tell if anyone really noticed or if anyone really cared. I care. People who care about animals should care.
In just a few weeks the Pennsylvania Game Commission has gone from from a very traditional conservation leadership style and background to a new style and background we have not seen in over a hundred years. I think this is a good thing, though I am sad about how it happened.
Recall that several months ago, attorney Steve Smith was promoted from director of the PGC’s Bureau of Information to deputy director of the agency, second in command to executive director Bryan Burhans. A good choice, as Smith is the very image of the dutiful, honest, earnest, hard working, straight shooting, unemotional, careful, procedurally diligent government employee. While PGC is a long way from the colorful Wild West frontier culture it once had, it still has a shadow of a bunker mentality and insular culture that do not serve the agency, its employees, or the public, and Steve is not representative of that.
Where Bryan Burhans had worked at the American Chestnut Foundation and other iconic conservation and wildlife management groups, with direct personal contacts in the nonprofit and foundation world, Steve Smith is an attorney who just happens to hunt, fish, and trap, and of course share the wildlife and habitat conservation ethos that animates hunters, trappers, and “fisherpeople” everywhere.
A devoted family man, Smith worked in private legal practice before joining PGC’s legal staff about 16 years ago. Where Burhans carried the mail for nonprofit advocacy groups both out of PGC and in it, which is the traditional model for wildlife management agency leaders across America, Smith has been long focused on public agency nuts and bolts. Dotting I’s and crossing T’s in the shadow of big speeches and public policy debates.
There is a gigantic world of difference between these two men, Bryan and Steve; their backgrounds, personalities, and outlooks could not be more different. Again, we are going from strength to strength with the change.
Bryan Burhans gets tons and tons of credit for gently, sometimes assertively molding the PGC into a more publicly accessible, publicly responsive public agency. Unlike most of his predecessors, Bryan was not a former Game Warden. And so from his own get-go seven years ago he was less insular, less committed to the law enforcement view of all things wildlife.
Yes, if you read some news reports about Bryan’s departure a couple weeks ago, you will then read about some state lawmakers griping that the agency is still not as accessible or responsive as the PA Fish & Boat Commission. I am sure that is true, and for good reasons. But compared to where the once insular and bunker-mentality PGC was, say, ten years ago, or especially twenty-five years ago, it is light years better now. Much improved. And, gasp if you must, the PGC actually now employs women in senior positions. This may be not big news to most people, but it is a fact that wildlife agencies are notoriously hide-bound and ultra traditional, the PGC having rung the bell in this regard for a long time. Celebrated wildlife biologists like Mary Jo Casalena may work for PGC, but it is as rare as hen turkey teeth that they also then get into senior management positions.
What is interesting about Steve Smith’s elevation to executive director upon Bryan’s departure is that we are actually seeing Pennsylvania wildlife management style return back to the days of Kolbfus and Pinchot – Americans without the supposedly key wildlife science “credentials” who simply care very much about wildlife, environmental quality, and habitat, and who have the intellectual capacity and personal management skills to implement the necessary policies.
PGC’s executive director is going from an outspoken advocate (albeit occasionally for things unrelated to wildlife management) to a quiet, humble, careful, almost reticent thinker. I am lamenting Bryan’s good-bye, because he did an outsanding job, and I am also really welcoming Steve’s hello. I believe that the many passionate watchers and stakeholders of PGC will be happy with Steve’s leadership there. Of course, those hunters who demand more deer than the landscape or society can sustain will never be satisfied, and I feel sorry for those people.
Update: Long and interesting interview with new ED Steve Smith is here.
Putin murdered Navalny and is no saint, and you are your own leader
Political candidate, longtime Putin critic, and political prisoner Alexei Navalny (aged 47) was murdered in a Russian prison last week. Like the murder of Jeffrey Epstein in a supposedly heavily guarded and monitored prison in America, Navalny’s murder was also done to send a signal about who is in charge, this time in Russia.
The person in charge of Russia is Vladimir Putin, president for life and de facto dictator. Putin is known for poisoning his critics (Navalny was previously poisoned while abroad, and survived to bravely return home to challenge Putin in rigged elections, and was then jailed), having them thrown out of windows (too many examples to count), having them brutally murdered in the streets, and having them encounter impossible “accidents” like when the airplane they are on just mysteriously blows up in the middle of the sky without any warning.
I know that a lot of Americans are justifiably frustrated by the lack of leadership in America. While the Democrat Party is busy blowing up and setting America on fire, and illegally importing a veritable army of military-age illegal alien men, which is a dereliction of duty and outright treason, the Republican Party and almost all of its elected officials from coast to coast are spineless, flaccid, weak kneed, limp wristed, whiny, two faced girly men (first reference to GOPers as girly men was here on this blog months ago, and then used by Wayne Root, for which we are honored) who can’t do anything, not a damned single thing, to oppose or resist the Democrats.
These Republicans were elected on the basis of their campaigns, where they promised to be leaders, and lead on issues their voters care about. But they get into office and just don’t do anything. We have seen the same empty campaign promises here in Pennsylvania, where the vast majority of elected Republicans just can’t or just won’t say anything about election integrity.
In October and November 2020, the overwhelmingly Republican-dominated Pennsylvania legislature could have easily impeached and removed those PA Supreme Court justices who unconstitutionally turned PA law and constitution alike on their heads to make way for the theft of the 2020 election from President Donald Trump in favor of the non-campaigning basement dwelling zero-charisma plagiarist and serial liar Joe Biden.
But the PA GOP did nothing, absolutely nothing. Zero. And even now, asking people like state senator John Disanto to publicly say something meaningful about election integrity is like questioning the law of gravity. And as a result, elections are stolen and America is going up in flames.
So yes, there is a huge failure in leadership everywhere around us, at every level, and so yes, Americans are desperate for leadership anywhere they can find it. And so up steps Vladimir Putin to both attack the globalist swamp in Ukraine and to also stand firmly for his own country (imagine that) and for his church and history (doubly imagine that). And all of a sudden a void is filled, and Vladimir Putin becomes the embodiment of leadership to many Americans.
Stop it, people. Putin is not any kind of leader that any kind of traditional freedom-loving American can relate to or support. He is a cruel, evil, murderous tyrant who brooks zero opposition or even questioning. Yes, he has some good qualities, no, those qualities do not outweigh the terrible things he is doing to his political rivals or to Ukrainian civilians, much less to the American Dollar.
Forty-seven-year-old Alexei Navalny was just murdered in cold blood in a dark and cold jail cell, in the middle of Russia, alone without his wife or friends to hold his hand and comfort him, for the simple reason that he posed a threat to Putin’s illegal grip on absolute power.
We Americans are witnessing the same exact thing happening here in America, where absolutely innocent and peaceful protestors from January 6th 2021 are still being rounded up by gangs of federal Gestapo thugs and held in solitary confinement, without medical care, with inadequate food and water, under terribly unsanitary conditions, for the simple reason that they represent a We, The People response to the stolen election dictatorship of Joe Biden and his posse of lawless and violent federal employees.
So if you oppose what Joe Biden is doing here in America, you must oppose what Vladimir Putin is doing in Russia and in Ukraine. Standing up for freedom and for The People’s political opposition like Navalny and Trump doesn’t mean you automatically have to whole-hog embrace everything about Putin, or anyone else for that matter.
And I will bet that if you ask Russians, they will have mixed opinions about Putin. I will bet they admire and appreciate his strength and passion for Russia, but also reject his lawless violence and unnatural grip on absolute power.
When dictators in Russia or America resort to jailing their opponents, and killing them, they are illegitimate, and The People can and should rise up and take back what belongs to them. We, The People are the leaders we have been longing for.
Americans awaken from stupor, kick butt
Nationally, Tuesday night was a day to remember for many years.
The American people awakened from a stupor.
Obama was rejected by the voters, as one might expect. He has been an utter catastrophe.
Normal people are running Congress now.
My choice for presidential candidates in 2016 are Dr. Ben Carson and Col. Allen West. Look for them. Support them; they’re awesome, real, authentic Americans.
Here in Pennsylvania, a decent man with generally good policies but with the interpersonal skills of a walrus went down to defeat. It goes to show that communication is the heart of politics and government.
While Tom Corbett may ultimately be responsible for his own loss, it was the kids, the kids!, running the Governor’s office who really dragged him down. Jen, Patrick, Luke. Nan. The list of ordained, arrogant, know-it-all but failed insiders is as long as my arm. Please, people, go get jobs in the private sector. Please stop driving our party over a cliff.
The Pennsylvania Republican Party needs a major overhaul. New leadership. Obviously. So let’s get that done, pronto, and get back in the game with a winning team.
Thank You to PA Leadership Conference
A big Thank You to the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference organizers, its speakers and moderators, and the hundreds of attendees who are taking time out of their days, livelihoods, and family commitments to gather together and work on rebuilding American and Pennsylvanian liberties.
I got a lot out of it today. Big Thank You to PA state senator Mike Folmer, whose passionate advocacy for individual liberties inspires so many other citizens to work twice as hard. Even those who disagree with the traditionalist movement respect the commitment we have to protecting EVERYONE’S rights, the opposite of the Left, which is constantly undermining civil liberties.
Leadership is about leading, right? Right?
Somehow Republican leaders managed to lose on every count in their checks-and-balances disagreement with the 0bama administration. It’s an incredible display of weakness and failure of leadership. Checks and balances is the way of American government. If you abandon that, then the government fails. Today, America is saddled with more bureaucracy, more big government, more invasive government than in our history. It’s a huge failure.
It’s incredible to me. Obviously the Republican Party must be re-built from the ground up. If we do not have leaders who can stand up for basic government functions like required annual budgets and stopping disastrous, unpopular programs like 0bamaCare, then what’s the party’s purpose? As a rubber stamp for the Marxists?
Yes, the mainstream (Democrat) media went to war with phony polls and nakedly partisan “reporters” against the Republican Party. But if all we do is fear criticism, then are we leading? No.