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Columnist Joe 'The Nerd' Ferraro takes an in-depth look at our area's political landscape. From Joe "The Nerd" Ferraro's blog on The Huffington Post: This is a contrary view, but Rick Santorum wins the GOP nomination. You can make an analogy that Rick Santorum, the Pittsburgh Penguin, scored a hat trick last week with victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri. Seeing pictures of both the Linux Penguin and the former junior senator from Pennsylvania (never got to the senior prom) has convinced me if they were not separated at birth – there are genetic components in play. But I think that giving him the name Pittsburgh Stealer may be a more proper description. (God, I hope the…
For the last two-plus years we have been subjected to the steady drumbeat of the insanity generated by the Tea Party. Those who weren’t yelling like idiots with tri-corner hats and snake flags were relegated to the sidelines. The battle is starting to turn. Montgomery County Commissioners Joe Hoeffel and Bruce Castor took the logic of the Tea Party to its outer limit. They went public with a Tea Party-style budget that cut spending with no tax increases. Then they allowed the public to comment on it. From about 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesday the commissioners held a hearing where sane …
If the election were held today, Pennsylvania would use its block of 20 electoral votes at once. We move our stack of chips on the table and we can have some real sway with it. Presidential candidates know it and focus their campaigns here on us. Those 20 votes always make Pennsylvania a gamble worth making. Pennsylvania is about to give up a good chunk of the gamble with Tom Corbett’s proposal to gerrymander our little corner of the Electoral College. He has set up this scheme that would take the 18 congressional districts and make those individual fights for an electoral vote. Then he …
Tuesday night Rep. Mike Vereb (R-150), used the Pope John Paul II High School auditorium to present on the topic of 422 tolling. I am glad that there were no striking teachers outside. I would not have attended the meeting if I had to cross a picket line. With Vereb were GOP representatives, most from districts that border this roadway: Warren Kampf (R-157), Tom Quigley (R-146) and Marcy Toepel (R-147). Also attending were Democratic County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel, the Executive Director of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission Barry Seymour (I think he has to be politically …
Montgomery County has experienced explosive growth in the past 10 years. Cornfields have been turned into McMansion Farms in the western part of the county and I don’t think the Democratic Party in Montgomery County is paying attention to this shift in demographics. The management of the current county-wide commissioner’s race has placed an inordinately large amount of its resources in the eastern end of the county. The resources that have been placed in the western end of the county reside in the urban centers of Pottstown and Norristown. Lansdale’s office is too far to be of service to a …
