Equality

Last night I participated in a Meet the Candidate forum and a reporter from the online newspaper, Patch, was there. This morning I went online to see if there was anything about the session.  There was not, but I did find an article that was of interest which talked about the 10 most LGBT Employment-friendly states.  They are (in order): California (naturally), Connecticut, Iowa (really?), Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.  Now, you might wonder why I, a straight woman, would care about this.

I do care about it and I think everyone should.  America has always touted themselves as the home of the free and we are not free until everyone one of us as the same rights as everyone else.  In Pennsylvania, it is still legal to fire someone because they are gay.  HB300 is a bill that would change all that but it has been languishing in committee and with this current administration probably won't come out this session. If you don't think that is more important than the economy or the environment, you are wrong.  Having an employment friendly state affects our bottom line.  People will come here for jobs.  People will come here to live, and they will spend their money here.  Our economy will be stronger because of it.

Additionally, Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers.  One of the fundamental practices of that religion is acceptance and it is unthinkable that we should not have a commonwealth were acceptance is the norm.  Yes, that was a long time ago, but the standards should remain the same.  If we as a Commonwealth begin to practice the same acceptance, it will benefit us all.

Old Town Norristown

I am reading Michael E. Tolle’s book called What Killed Downtown?  It is a study of how Norristown’s economy was ruined, and is quite thorough in its description.  Mr. Tolle starts at the very beginning.  The very beginning before Norristown was even Norristown and sets up his story with a description of the intention for the town, and as many people know, the town stood up to its intended use for many years.

I suppose the book is interesting to me because I live in the municipality and the businesses he talks about are ones that I have heard about and they were located at addresses I know and have passed many times.  Some of the buildings still exist like the Tone Building, the bank building, and of course the Courthouse, among others.  I am also familiar with the names of many of the people he writes about and the people who he interviewed for the book.  Most interesting to me is his explanation of the workings of municipal and county government because I have been one of the many trying to determine what went wrong and how to fix it.  But probably the most interesting part of the book is the answer, which I won’t go into here lest I spoil it for you.  He comes to a similar conclusion, with a slightly different twist from what I have been saying all along. Even though I have not gotten through all 256 pages of the book I was too excited to find the answer to his query and read a bit of the last chapter. 

I would call this book required reading for anyone who works at the municipality, or the County, or has any dealing with Norristown at all.  It gives a fascinating insight to some issues which are unique to our little struggling burg.  I can’t say that a silver bullet exists to help the situation but knowing from whence we came is always a key in determining where we should go.  History does have a way of repeating itself and some of the actions he talks about in the book bear a striking resemblance to things that have been tried since I have lived there.  I just hope that the history that repeats itself will not come out with the same result and that we can learn from our mistakes and work toward a solution to the problem rather than becoming another one.

Railroaded

If you live near or work in Norristown, you were probably screaming your head off out of frustration driving around this weekend and last few days.  Well, thank you local administration and the Pennsylvania Railroad Commission for your aggravations.  Apparently when they come in to do a job in an area they have the say, and the local municipality is to do what they say.  I suppose since it was a temporary weekend thing it was considered a minor inconvenience. But since we got a freaky snow blizzard in October, it didn't turn out to be a weekend thing. But the question remains, why on earth would they close two major thoroughfares through the town at the same time? 

Because it’s Norristown, that’s why.  Would they do this in Narberth?  NO!!! Why? Because they respect the people over there.  In Norristown they think we are all lowly peasants who don’t work and hang around getting high living on public assistance.  We don’t need to have our houses saved if they catch on fire and the fire company can’t get to the fire because of the road closures, because some wealthy landlord owns them all, and has insurance.  We don’t need to catch criminals because the police can’t get to the scene of the crime because of the traffic that is piled up on the back roads because it's good riddance if one of us gets shot.  It’s just Norristown and they don’t have to be considerate of our feelings because animals don’t have any feelings.

When I was on Council, SEPTA came in and talked to us about expanding the parking lot at Elm and Markley for the Elm Street Station.  Eventually that station is going to be closed down, so I guess they thought they could save some money and instead of paving the lot, they were going to put stone in the lot and actually paint the parking lines on the stones.  My major question to them was would you do this in Narberth?  And if you would not do it in Narberth, you won’t do it in Norristown.  They looked at me like I was crazy.  Maybe if we were treated like we live in Narberth, people might start acting like we lived in Narberth.

Placing Blame

I was distressed to hear about the poor girl who was shot and killed on Green and Basin the other night and have been following the several articles in the news as the investigation continues.  I was reading through the comments from one of the articles on the Times Herald website for that article, and was a  little taken back by one of comments which refered that Council was not doing their job because of the recent spate of crime going on in the municipality. 

My question to that sentiment is how and what can be done by Council to thwart crime?  Council makes the laws in the town and there are fairly stringent laws already on the books about crime both on the local level and the federal level.  No matter how many laws are created, there is frankly nothing that can be done if the law cannot be enforced.  Council can’t find the perpetrator of the crime against Dominique Devlin or anyone else for that matter.  That’s the police job, and they are doing the best they can.  The same people who are arguing about Council not doing their job are probably not talking about the crime if they know anything to help the police find the shooter.  What are new laws going to do? What do these people expect Council to do?

I am sure that there is extreme frustration out there because of the crime and people are frightened.  But more laws on the books are not going to fix the problem.  Council has the power to create the laws, but they don’t have the power to stop those who are breaking the laws.  They have the power to request the police to enforce the laws, but the police can’t enforce them if they can’t find the person or persons who commit the crimes.  Let’s blame the crime on the people who are responsible for the crime, not the governmental body who write the laws.

Codes

The other day I was speaking to a resident about who is running for election this cycle. She said that she would only vote for someone who would do something about illegal immigration.  I am sure her complaint was primarily racially motivated, but moreover it was uneducated as the people running for election this cycle cannot really do anything about immigration. It is a federal law and local municipalities can’t do anything about it.

What local municipalities can do is strengthen their codes and look more closely on the violation trends for the properties.  Falling down homes and broken windows, while very obvious are not the only things that cause community problems.  Too many people living in an apartment or mounds of trash on the street – which is not always caused by immigrants – are not-so-clear signs that there are issues going on in that property and something needs to be done about it.  All of these things affect the quality of life for everyone in the block and degrades the town.

If the codes department is on top of things many kinds of things would get violations which would hurt the landlords that are allowing this kind of behavior go on.  Attack negligent property owners in the community by citing them every time they violate the law and they will eventually close up shop and that problem property will abate itself.  It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.  Once the word gets out that the municipality is not going to accept this kind of property owner and things will slowly turn around.

Gasland

The other day I saw the movie "Gasland" by Johsua Fox. It has taken me a little time to digest this movie. The evening I saw it I was so horrified and frightened about the future of our country and mankind, that I could not verbalize my feelings. If you haven’t seen it and have any questions about the Marcellus Shale issue, I strongly suggest you see the film. After you do, I know you will go to the site and send a letter to your congressman (which you can do through the site) asking them to cosponsor the FRAC Act (S.1215/HR.2766) to help make sure that oil and gas production is carried out in a responsible manner.

All the drilling started because Vice President Dick Cheney arranged it so that the process for gas drilling was exempt from the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Ace and exempts companies from disclosing the chemicals used during hydraulic fracturing, otherwise known as fracking. This is known as the Halliburton Loophole, so named after the company which developed the process. Ultimately it allows the gas companies to deny responsibility for the damage they are doing to the environment and the people who live in proximity to their wells. The natural gas drilling industry is the fastest boom in history and the process is so deadly it is causing permanent damage to our environment and serious health risks. To give you a small idea of the amount of pollution that is being caused by the process, generally 1-8 million gallons of water may be used to frack a well, and a well may be fracked up to 18 times. A gas field can contain multiple wells. Most of that water is never recovered or recycled. During the process, gas is leaked into the aquifers, which supplies our drinking water. In addition, part of the process includes allowing the chemical-laden water to evaporate into the air carrying residuals of the chemicals used into the air we breathe.  That's is just part of the problem.

Various groups are working to fight to have the FRAC Act (Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness to Chemical Act) passed. This House bill is intended to repeal the loophole and require the gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use. Doing so makes them responsible for any damage they cause and compels them to take remedial action to clean up after themselves. Ultimately it should force them to develop a process that could do this drilling in a manner that could lessen the harm they are causing. Of course the GOP is up in arms about this as they say it causes to gas companies to lose money.

My personal opinion is that we work to find alternative sources of energy that are clean and renewable, but in the short run, we need to make sure that the energy source that we do use is retrieved in a way that does not harm human life or cause damage to the earth. In addition, we need to reduce our need for energy, limit our use of things that require energy, and simplify our lives.