The 31st annual gathering this past weekend of Pennsylvania’s leading conservatives (virtual this year) under the umbrella of the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference (PLC) was at its core a public assertion of constitutional rights in the wake of the Wolf Administration’s seizure of those rights through a twisted application of the state’s emergency management law. “Our ...
Pennsylvania’s pro-production voters will decide 2020 election
August 31, 2020
Joe Biden is walking a tightrope in attempts to secure support of the far left of the Democratic Party without alienating moderates. One place that balancing act will cost him dearly is in Pennsylvania, political and policy experts from both sides of the aisle say. Just as Hillary Clinton did four years before, Biden is ...
State Rep. Kerry Benninghoff (R-Centre/Mifflin) took on the responsibilities of the Majority Leader with the preparation time of a lieutenant taking over for a commander just shot from his horse. “Usually you get a couple of months after caucus elections [typically held a week or two after November general elections],” Benninghoff explained in a recent ...
Legislation that would provide urgently needed liability protections for manufacturers of personal protective equipment (PPE), and healthcare practitioners and providers during a declared pandemic emergency is now circulating for co-sponsors in the Senate. The soon-to-be introduced bill, which also extends protections to re-opened businesses adhering to CDC guidelines, combines liability protection plans in legislative proposals ...
The General Assembly has approved a concurrent resolution to revoke Gov. Wolf’s shutdown order signed in March, and extended earlier this month, launching a battle that will be decided in the courts. The governor has threatened to veto the resolution, but lawmakers who backed it insist he has no say over it; their approval alone ...
Governor Wolf Crushing PA’s “Jobs That Pay”
May 26, 2020
Nearly lost in the media’s focus on the Wolf Administration’s autocratic handling of the commonwealth’s coronavirus pandemic response was the recent double-rejection of the governor’s carbon dioxide cap-and-trade proposal, a carbon tax. Wolf’s executive order to initiate a carbon tax to enter Pennsylvania into the Regional Green House Gas Initiative (RGGI) was met with disapproval ...
Over the next month, Governor Tom Wolf’s sixth annual tax-and-spending proposal will undergo the critical review of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. This year’s budget hearings will inevitably resemble past ones: Republicans will make their case for rejecting the litany of new taxes, reallocating misdirected funds, and turning away some of the governor’s ...
Holding China accountable is top priority in evolving trade agreement
December 17, 2019
One of the key provisions in the recently announced “phase one” trade deal with China is the ability for the U.S. to retaliate unilaterally if the dictatorship in Beijing violates any part of it, White House Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy Peter Navarro told Fox News this past Sunday. Those are fighting words from ...
Critics of the U.S. government’s recent economic development push in Africa, “Prosper Africa,” say we are too late to the game; that the competition from our adversaries of China and Russia already staked out a presence that precludes U.S. involvement beyond our historically lukewarm, inconsistent approach. The U.S. might be playing catchup in terms of ...
Everyone who knew Ralph Pontillo, the former president of the Manufacturer & Business Association (MBA) in Erie, was richer for it. And when he died suddenly at only 64 in Florida last week, we are all poorer because of it. “Our friend Ralph Pontillo was tenacious in his advocacy for manufacturing,” said David N. Taylor, President ...