You want a really really great example of GOP priorities? You will absolutely love this very brief note from the Philly News: especially when you compare it with another Corbett administration decision, detailed below the fold.
The Corbett administration has allocated $5 million in this year's state budget to pay expenses tied to the new voter-ID requirements.
Now remember, the Voter ID law in Pennsylvania, in the words of its own backers, is based on absolutely NO evidence of voter fraud in the state. None. When preparing to argue the merits of the law in Pennsylvania courts, the backers
filed a stipulation which included the following statements among others:
The parties are not aware of any incidents of in-person voter fraud in Pennsylvania and do not have direct personal knowledge of in person voter fraud elsewhere.
Respondents will not offer any evidence or argument that in person voter fraud is likely to occur in November 2012 in absence of the Photo ID Law.
So, the Corbett administration could not cite a single instance of voter ID fraud, but felt the need to pass a law requiring Voter ID for all PA citizens. And, Governor Corbett found $5 million to pay for it, despite repeated claims that he had to cut budgets for health care, environmental protection (a big issue in polluted and fracking rich PA), education and transportation) His repeated statement..."We haven't got the money."
But while Corbett DID find $5 million to support a bill which has no demonstrated justification (and about a half million of that goes to pay a PR agency staffed by GOP hacks with ties to the Bush and Corbett administrations), he still is setting forth GOP Priorities....details below the little Orange Screwdriver
Also from philly.com comes this amazing piece of news:
The Corbett administration has cut funding for a Philadelphia program nationally lauded as the "gold standard" for helping disabled homeless people get federal benefits.
So, Corbett doesn't have the money for basic state services, but he DOES have the money for a totally unnecessary Voter ID Law, but he does NOT have the money for this....and how much are we talking? $722,000
On May 31, the state's Department of Public Welfare gave Philadelphia's Homeless Advocacy Project one month's notice that it was eliminating $722,000 used to help obtain Supplemental Security Income (SSI) money for homeless or near-homeless people who had exceeded their five-year limit for welfare benefits. Many of the people don't have the mental capacity to work. SSI provides disability income and benefits.
The Department of Public Welfare made the cut because the state is "reprioritizing" funding toward programs that emphasize work, DPW spokeswoman Carey Miller said. By taking money from the Homeless Advocacy Project, "we will be able to focus better on job placement and retention," Miller said.
Upset with the decision, Sister Mary Scullion, Philadelphia's nationally known homelessness expert, said cutting the program offers "a short-term gain for the state to save money."
"But there'll be long-term pain," she said, "as more people wind up in shelters, resorting to crime to get money for food, then winding up in prisons, now the largest mental hospitals in the United States."
Scullion said she did not understand why the state was eliminating a chance for people to access federal dollars that would be spent in the region, aiding the local economy. "It's counterproductive," she said.
There is not much else I can add to this. The cold bloodedness of these people is truly frightening.