He’s got the black hoodie. He talks about “fighting” in Washington. He claims he’s a blue collar guy. He’s supported by Bernie Sanders. He has the same media consultants as Bernie, Fetterman, and Zohran. He’d like you to call him Brooksy. He stiffed his mother-in-law though, so on here we call him “Crooksy.”
Crooksy went on the Upper Lehigh Dems podcast/zoom to talk about his campaign. I needed to watch the leaves fall off trees in my neighborhood though, so I was too busy to listen to this guy lie about what a champion for the little guy he is. He is only the champion for some little guys, I think. I’m not going to listen to him lie when everything we need to know about him was litigated in public. A friend of the blog did watch though, a very skilled friend, and they had some thoughts.
Gotta tell ya, he is just not political material. I cannot imagine him going toe to toe with Rs in Congress or even some of his D colleagues.
Yep.
DC people pushed him and his head got big
Even more yep. He’s not at all of the caliber to do this. He’s not even someone who has shown us he can win anything. If we nominated this guy, one of two things will happen. It’s most likely that everything I received on him, and probably worse, is used against him, and Ryan Mackenzie wins another term. Under the unlikely scenario where this guy wins, he goes to Washington and is the next John Fetterman. Look, I was for Conor Lamb, so I don’t want to watch the rest of you get duped again. Send Crooksy off to the retirement he earned and give someone real a chance.
I haven’t seen any full reports yet, but apparently we’re in for a bit of a surprise. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks definitely didn’t “rake in the cash,” only so far saying he beat $300k. That’s definitely not the $400k the DCCC rumor mill pushed. Despite touting his backing from a bunch of people from out of town and the non-endorsement that is supposed to be an endorsement from Governor Shapiro, Crooksy isn’t keeping pace with what his handlers are saying about him.
Meanwhile the word was that Ryan Crosswell was going to underwhelm. Well it doesn’t matter if it’s crushing Coors Light in DC or raising cash, he’s apparently keeping a serious pace. His campaign says they’ve raised $700k so far in two quarters. That would mean he raised $380k this past quarter. He probably beat Crooksy pretty badly.
Both of these guys have awful negatives and I think are very vulnerable. I think Crooksy probably has insurmountable negatives, no one likes a guy who stiffs his mother-in-law. Neither is a Democrat really, so I guess they both have primary problems. Crooksy was already $320k behind Union Busting Ryan to begin with, now it’s probably like $350k. Nobody knows who Crooksy is out there, it’s so bad that Mackenzie just left him out of his poll this week. Of course, earlier polling showed people didn’t really love Crooksy even when they were read a positive bio, so that’s probably for the best. Neither of these two are well known, but Crosswell will at least have money to try and cover up his bad behavior. If Crooksy keeps spending away his campaign money and missing his goals, he’ll be lucky to finish fourth in this primary. He should never have ran.
California gubernatorial hopeful Katie Porter snapped and tried to storm out of an interview after being asked a simple question about President Trump. pic.twitter.com/4AiV9qnmCl
I was never a fan of Katie Porter and her white board. Or her reading a book during the State of the Union. I was never impressed when she just yelled at witnesses during House Oversight Committee Hearings (I’m not impressed with the existence of the Oversight Committee, it serves zero purpose for the general public and writes no laws.). She was just not my cup of tea. She generally votes right and was fine as a Congresswoman, but I was disappointed when she gave up her swing seat to run a quixotic campaign against Adam Schiff for Senate, when literally the entire Democratic Party wanted him. I’m not much of a fan.
The shame when a party wins a wave election is that it drags in some good and some bad candidates. You have people that win in tough swing districts because they’re good candidates, and others who do so because they’re lucky. Then you also have people drug in through the tide who win very safe seats that have no broader appeal to the national electorate, but the Squad is a discussion for another day. The shame of course is when the good candidates in tough districts eventually lose their seats, a lot of activists and donors think *those* are the weaker candidates, and people like Porter are somehow a real future star. That’s how we end up where we are.
So in Porter’s case, the question was absolutely stupid. Why would she need the 40% of voters in California who voted for the losing candidate to help her win? Why not just win over most of the 60% who voted for the winning candidate? If you want to ask if she has any intentions of being bipartisan, go ahead, but don’t act like you can’t do math. Porter’s reaction was also amateur hour. Just give the standard bullshit “I’m working for every vote,” or go with the partisan “I’m concentrating on the Californians who share our vision for the future,” or some shit. Why storm out, it’s not like the reporter called you an asshole? This interview was below the public discourse in 2025, and well, that’s a major achievement.
People like Porter just don’t go away though. A few candidates meet an archetype that is popular with an activist crowd, and it’s a disease that takes a long time to get out of your blood. Amy McGrath is begging you to light your money on fire for her again in Kentucky, where she wants to lose for Mitch McConnell’s seat and raise $100 million again. It’s honestly not going to happen, just go fail up and run for President at this point. Mikie Sherrill might pull out the win in New Jersey, but that’s only because it’s New Jersey. Her campaign of a noun+a verb+fighter pilot+Trump+an inaudible sound is about as inspiring as week old bread, which is just fine as long as she wins, but does give people watching a few skipped heart beats that aren’t necessary. Then there’s James Talarico in Texas and Graham Platner in Maine, both running for Senate seats they are grossly unqualified for on the genius notion that the Democratic Party sucks, and if only we nominate the “working class white guy savior,” we’ll be fine. All of these rising stars, created by a combination of insular DC Democratic operatives, rich out of touch donors, and activists. Could it be that we lose elections because we nominate bad candidates? Could it be that we nominate bad candidates because we look for them in all the wrong places?
There is the whole matter though of how Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is raising $300k in the first place though. In multiple calls with local party leaders this week, they all remarked how he’s late for events and leaves before they’re over. At least two of these leaders made the remark to me though, “he does have the state party helping him.” Really? I’m not shocked that he has the Bernie grifters helping him raise money, and for that matter the same people who created Fetterman. The state party though? That’s fascinating. This is a Democratic Primary, almost all of the other candidates are definitely Democrats. The state committee, the elected body that governs the staff at the party, has not voted to endorse in this or any other Congressional Primary in years. No county party in the district has voted to endorse Crooksy. In fact, no elected official in this district is backing Crooksy. So under what authority are the new chairman and his staff helping this guy? Seems crooked as hell.
By now though everyone knows what’s going on here. Brooksy has no shot in hell against Ryan Mackenzie, they’ll drown him just with the fact that he stiffed his mother-in-law for $55k, let alone all the other stupid things. That was a temporary distraction though. No one has shown they are the certain nominee in this district, and Crooksy is good for the good ole’ boys in Harrisburg’s bottom line. Senator Fetterman’s mouthpieces get paid. The out-of-district legislators endorsing him get to come back to the IAFF later and remind them how they supported their guy. The Governor can say to IAFF leadership in his gubernatorial run, and his future Presidential run, that he has been a loyal soldier with them. Here’s the thing- that’s all true. The folks at the DCCC got to push some work to consultants they like too. Absolutely none of this does anything to win this seat and give the Democrats a majority in PA-7. We actually run the risk of nominating a dude who will be way over his head and get mugged by the GOP money machine in November. It’s a political dead end, and worse yet, even if I’m wrong and he does win, the guy is just another John Fetterman. Wasn’t it enough for the good ole’ boys in Harrisburg to push one massive mistake on us all? Do we need to do that again?
Does one district decide everything? No. This one is as close as you can get though. Nominating this guy and either losing or getting a shit Congressman will hurt people who need government to work. No one benefits from that. We need to sink this guy, and sink him fast. He’s a nightmare in waiting.
With the brief exception of right before the election, Donald Trump has been historically unpopular for ten years now. Most Presidents have a period of time in which they are very popular with the public, at a minimum after their inauguration. Trump never got there. He’s the first and only President to win twice and lose the popular vote twice, and not hit 50% in any of three runs. Many Democratic policy positions are reasonably popular, and even now they are winning on most issue polling. Most ballot initiatives, from expanding health insurance to protecting abortion rights, to funding schools, to protecting the environment, to legalizing weed, and so on, pass even in red states. Democrats may even win in both New Jersey and Virginia, not to mention the NYC Mayoral race and Pennsylvania Supreme Court retentions this Fall. There are a lot of reasons to think that Democrats could have a very good midterm, and Republicans could have a very bad one. And yet, there’s a lot of reasons to not think that too.
Anecdotal evidence on the ground here in Pennsylvania shows GOP gains in the turnout battle for 2025. There have been weak polls and anecdotal evidence in New Jersey of similar sluggishness in the Democratic Party. Talk to most professionals and they’ll tell you online fundraising has not picked back up since the 2024 Election. The enthusiasm isn’t great. It’s not a sure sign of defeat. It’s problematic though.
Polling on the Democratic Party, rather than their positions, suggests that just about everyone reviles this party right now. Conservatives and Republicans hate the Democratic Party, obviously. Leftists and Democratic Socialists hate the party too, for not radicalizing. Centrist and moderate Democrats generally think the party has lost it’s mind and doesn’t know how to win. Most of the major national figures in the Democratic Party are at least partially controversial to the Democratic base, if not the whole country. Many of the key national policy fights right now, such as “law and order,” immigration, trans-rights, and Gaza are fights that divide Democrats and tend to poll favorably for the GOP. This is astounding given the deep cuts to health care, the environment, student loans, and education that were just carried out in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” but Trump is managing to push these issues to the forefront through over-the-top actions.
A lot of people in the Democratic tent want to take this time to argue about ideology and “the Overton Window,” and all kinds of largely academic fights that don’t mean anything and won’t change our fortunes right now. Tweaking our position on student loans or health care really isn’t going to change matters very much. Democrats have two main macro-sized problems that are going to drown out any nuance anyway.
Voters don’t like who they think we are. This is sort of self-explanatory. Conservatives think Democrats are a bunch of wimpy nerds who want to make them eat kale, listen to some scientist tell them every decision to make in their lives, and want them to believe that terrorists, criminals, and illegal immigrants are the good guys, but the cops in their town are the bad guys. Leftists and Democratic Socialists think Democrats are a bunch of wimps who will either roll over and play dead in any policy fight, or are bought already and will sell out, or worse yet, are just a bunch of rich privileged kids that want to stay important. Then there’s the rank and file Democratic voter, who generally thinks we’re concerned with matters that don’t matter enough to people’s lives, and are losing elections because we attach ourselves to niche cause we can.
Voters are unenthusiastic at best about the product we’re selling them. We have spent a lot of time fighting about whether we should have more or less identity in our politics, more or less economic ideology in our politics, or that we’re just packaging both wrong. Here’s the reality- a guy who is not popular with the overall public continues to grow his vote share in each election. We can argue about whether it was dislike directly toward Hillary and Kamala, or dislike with our policies, or something else, but voters do not like what we are offering them. I hear a lot of activists saying we can’t morally re-consider even what positions we talk about, much less moderate on them, but the reality is that what we’re doing now doesn’t work. The guy who was perceived as the most moderate candidate beat the crap out of 20 or so Democratic primary candidates and then won a majority to defeat Trump. Once he was seen as feeble and compromised to the party, we have had nothing. Clearly re-running the last decade isn’t going to work.
It is entirely possible that the Democrats can win in 2025 and 2026 without really changing anything. They almost certainly won’t win the Senate, as Democrats hold exactly zero seats right now in states Trump won all three times, and they would need to claw back seats in places like Iowa, Ohio, and Florida, which maybe they do once, but not across the board. In the House though it’s close, and most of the GOP members did take a vote to gut Medicaid. The Republicans were deeply unpopular in 2010 and won over 60 seats. Of course, they lost two years later. It wasn’t until they found a standard bearer that motivated voters and was “different” than the Bush Era GOP that they took back the whole government.
This is really unpopular with some of the most motivated Democrats, but here’s the reality- Democrats should run fairly normal (to regular people, not us), frankly successful people for office, and they should run on things that voters care about and agree with us on. No, I’m not saying you have to change your position on protecting trans kids from bullying, nor do I think you should. I am saying campaigning on broad amnesty for illegal immigrants or defunding the police is stupid and will lose us elections. Saying the War in Gaza should end is fairly easy and mostly agreeable, but don’t defend Hamas or say “Globalize the Intifada.” It’s a loser position. Raising the minimum wage, fixing the student loan system, making more people eligible for overtime, funding schools, building more affordable housing, legalizing marijuana- these are things that most people can support. If it sounds like I’m avoiding some of the bigger social fights, I’m not necessarily. I think we can win running on abortion rights and really most fights that involve protecting the rights of an individual to live how they chose. I think lecturing America about every social ailment it has though has gone piss poor for us, and has backed us into a political corner. So yes, I would try to run a product that people might relate to or even want. If that means talking a little differently to voters, I think the evidence is pretty clear we need to do that.
I was invited to tonight’s Lehigh Valley 4 All meeting to ask Bob “Crooksy” Brooks questions about the things I’ve written about him. I’m going to decline at this time. I’m sure his team would say that vindicates him, that it shows I’m throwing baseless accusations at him from behind a computer screen and won’t defend them. If I were him, that’s what I’d say too. I’m going to proceed to tell you why that’s a pile of shit.
I’ve been at an event with Crooksy and Crosswell since I started writing about them. If they were truly mad and felt they had a legitimate beef with what I wrote, they could have addressed it then. Neither of them did. I have no reason to give either one a chance to prepare answers for an audience. One’s a bartender and one’s a lawyer, two professions that know how to talk their way around anything. In both cases, I have laid out unassailable facts, not opinions or presentations, about them. I posted the Superior Court’s opinion on the matter of Crooksy stiffing his ex-mother-in-law, which clearly shows he didn’t pay her back for 14 years, meaning no, it wasn’t just part of a messy divorce like he claims. Why would I give him equal footing with me to lie about that for an audience? I posted the actual screenshots of his social media where he says he thinks we need more guns and prayer in schools, and where he talks about hating Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem. Did I add on my opinions? Sure. But what I gave you out front was the documentation of this man’s views and actions. I am not going to literally debate if they happened with him. If he wants to accuse the Superior Court of Pennsylvania of lying, he can do that himself. Bob Brooks did everything I said. If you want to decide those things don’t matter to you, you can do that on your own.
I’m going to say the same for Ryan Crosswell, who no one is asking me to give a forum to at this point. Again, I’ve laid out the facts here. Crosswell is not from here and is a lifelong Republican until a few months ago. Voter registration is a public record, and it shows him repeatedly registering as, and voting as, a Republican in such far off places as Louisiana and Washington, D.C. There’s not much to argue there. I showed you Crosswell’s LinkedIn, which talks about his work at an infamous union busting law firm, and in which he talks about his work to screw workers. Crosswell filed a finance report in July that showed almost all of the money he is raising is from out of town, with just one donor in the district. Again, these things aren’t really up for debate.
There are five candidates in this race. I’m not going to debate all five of them about their life stories. I’m not attacking three of them, all of whom are long time Democrats who have lived in the Lehigh Valley for years. I’m attacking two guys who really shouldn’t be running in a Democratic Primary in the Lehigh Valley. The response both have given so far is to tell people that I’m attacking them on the behalf of Lamont McClure. That’s a load of shit. Go check McClure’s campaign finance reports, I do not work for him. I will not be working for him in this primary either, including in the future. I like Lamont enough, but he’s not paying me a check to do anything for him. I have not worked for a political candidate since May of 2024, most of my work is now for independent expenditures, and will be remaining as such. I’m not going to debate these kinds of lies for an audience, where how one presents themselves can sway the crowd on who they are going to believe, these guys are both trained talkers. I am laying out the facts on these individuals in black and white letters. This shouldn’t be a matter of interpretation, it should be a matter of facts. If Crooksy wants to debate if he’s a deadbeat or not, he can send mailers to the voters telling them he’s not. I sure as hell am not going to give him a platform to do so.
The primary voters in 2026 can decide what they think of the facts, but I’m not going to debate what the facts are with people that would screw family members or working people. If primary voters choose one of these guys, we’ll see how the full electorate reacts. My guess is not very well.
So I was in a room with Bob “Crooksy” Brooks this morning. No, there wasn’t a fist fight. I was too busy guzzling coffee to cause a scene. I did meet his manager though. Nice young lady, we have some common friends. I hope she enjoys her stay here in the Lehigh Valley. Well, most of it.
Friday a local activist leader let me know she really liked Crooksy when she met him. I’m not shocked, the guy tends bar at the Holy Family Club in Nazareth, that takes people skills. I mean, gotta talk for them tips, you know? Anyway, she said she asked him about my allegation that he took $55k from his mother-in-law, and he answered it satisfactorily for her. His answer? It was all part of a messy divorce.
You know what, I get why that makes sense. Divorces are inherently messy, right? If this was a question of when the suit itself was filed, or why, that might be satisfactory. The problem is, the actual issue happened years, and years before the legal proceeding. The case was decided in the Superior Court in 2021. The initial trial was in 2020. The actual case took place between 2004 and 2008. From the Superior Court opinion:
In June 2004, Michael Wiley transferred title to a residential building lot to his future daughter and son-in-law, Jennifer and Robert Brooks (Defendants).2Prior to the transfer, Michael Wiley funded the subdivision of the land, and Defendants agreed to pay him $55,500 for the cost of subdividing and the value of the lot. However, Defendants never paid Michael Wiley.
In 2008, at the request of Michael Wiley, Carol Wiley had a promissory note drafted which memorialized Defendants’ debt, and provided that Defendants were jointly and severally liable to pay CarolWiley $55,500 at 6.5% interest, in 120monthly payments of $630.19, beginning July 1, 2008. On July 12, 2008, Wiley and Defendants executed the promissory note in the presence of a notary. Defendants never made any of the payments prescribed in the promissory note.
On August 27, 2018, Wiley filed the underlying breach of contract action against Defendants. Brooks filed a reply and new matter on October 25, 2018 raising several affirmative defenses, including the statute of limitations, statute of frauds, and lack of consideration. On October 31, 2018, the trial court entered default judgment against Jennifer Brooks after she failed to respond to the complaint. Wiley filed a response to Brooks’ new matter on November 13, 2018.
The court held abench trial on August 11, 2020. At the close of Wiley’s case, Brooks moved for compulsory nonsuit, asserting that the action was barred by the four year statute of limitations governing contracts, and that no consideration was given for the debt because Wiley did not own the real estate and did not advance funds. The court denied Brooks’ motion, but ordered the parties to file post-trial briefs addressing the statute of limitations and statute of frauds. After reviewing the briefs, the court on September 11, 2020 entered a verdict in favor of Wiley and awarded damages of $130,386.36.
Let me break that down as simply as possible. In 2004, Mr. Wiley funded a subdivision of a property to Brooksy and his soon-to-be wife, to the tune of $55k, and they agreed to pay him back. They didn’t pay a red cent back. In 2008, FOUR YEARS LATER, Mr. Wiley was concerned enough that they would never pay him back that he and his wife made Brooksy and their daughter sign in front of a notary that they would pay them back, on a schedule, with interest. They never made one payment. Not a dollar. TEN YEARS LATER, Mrs. Wiley sued him and their daughter. The daughter didn’t even bother to contest the case. He did. TWO YEARS later, it went to trial. Brooks did not contest that he signed the note, or that he didn’t pay them back. He basically said they waited too long to sue him and Mrs. Wiley wasn’t the actual person who gave him the money, so she couldn’t sue. The court rejected that argument.
I’m not a lawyer. I also know that divorces are messy. I’m not here to comment on the legal questions raised. Here’s what I know- this dude got a loan from his father and mother-in-law in 2004 and paid back not one cent for 14 years before it went to court. He doesn’t even contest that he stiffed them for 14 years. He basically tried to say they’re shit out of luck for waiting to hold him accountable.
This is not an issue of an ugly divorce. This is just basic dishonesty.
The DCCC rumor mill is loud these days. As they try to prop up candidates they like and penalize candidates they don’t, they tell folks things in hope that they put it out there. I’m more than happy to oblige. In PA-7, they want you to back Bob “Crooksy” Brooks, a deadbeat who stiffed his mother-in-law, and will be torn to shreds over it by Ryan Mackenzie and the GOP. The guy is DOA in the general election, and probably wouldn’t be good if he did win, but he makes money for their chosen consultants, who happen to also be Senator Fetterman’s team, and he’s the head of a union. Sure, he’s a bad candidate, but he furthers some folks careers. So they want you to know that “Crooksy” is going to blow away the other four Democrats in fundraising, as this guy did last reporting period. They are telling people that Bob “Crooksy” Brooks will raise $400k in the third quarter.
Crooksy’s number, if he actually reaches it (a month ago they were saying $200k, so read into it what you will), is pretty decent. It’s not shocking though, nor is it a number that makes him a prohibitive favorite. “Crooksy” Brooks hired folks who helped build Bernie Sanders and John Fetterman’s mythological campaigns, and also raised a bunch of money when people believed they were working class heroes. In Fetterman’s case he raised a bunch of money online and basically drowned his primary opponents, before going on to basically vote with the Republican Party in the United States Senate. Crooksy is just their new grift to get paid. With three full quarters of fundraising, and reasonable depreciation built into it after his launch, Crooksy would be on pace to reasonably raise about $1 million for this race. The problem for Crooksy is he starts way behind, and people don’t really like him more once they’re told about him. He’ll need to spend most of his million introducing himself and making people like him, and that’s assuming no one comes in and tells the voters he’s a gun nut racist, who stiffs his mother-in-law, to the cost of a few hundred thousand dollars. He’ll need a lot more.
Then there’s Union-Busting Ryan Crosswell, who was at one point the darling of the Washington types, but then the DCCC got some flack for running a Republican and backed away. The truth is that they’d still be fine with Crosswell as their nominee, but they know they can’t say that out loud, and now they got some static from the district, so they have to pretend they don’t like him. The truth? He’s probably actually better than Crooksy, provided that you don’t care at all what your Congressman actually believes, or if they actually have any grassroots support in the district they aren’t even from, or really if you just don’t care about anything. Since they know Crosswell is a bad look, they have to at least go through the motions of shitting on him. They are putting out there that he will not hit his $300k goal for the third quarter, as donors back away from him as they learn more. If Crooksy wasn’t better for business for the Beltway types, I’d predict him getting this same treatment next quarter.
Then there’s poor Carol Obando-Derstine, an actual Democrat from the Lehigh Valley who doesn’t hate Colin Kaepernick. Sure, Carol’s pretty corporate in her career choices, but she at least has business running in this race. So of course, the Beltway crowd wanted her to drop out, thereby pushing any women candidates out of the race. Then, when she got endorsements from some Latino Groups and Emily’s List, Bernie’s DSA goons made sure to deny her the SEIU endorsement that the local members wanted to give her. Crooksy needed that endorsement, stealing from his mother-in-law wasn’t going to finance this campaign on it’s own! Honestly, this kind of treatment of a former Democratic staffer is a really bad look, but she’s in the way of the fat cats getting paid. The Beltway elites want you to know that her entire campaign staff is fleeing her in droves, and she’s refusing to raise money. They’re predicting she’ll raise “under $100k.” She might. They want you to know that though so you back their chosen candidate though.
Then there’s Lamont McClure, Northampton County’s two-term Executive, who isn’t raising cash fast enough for their liking. To hear these Beltway warlords tell it, McClure might not report any money at all this quarter. Dude can’t even rub together two nickels for heat. What’s the guy even doing in the race? We know he gave himself $200k this quarter, so I assume he’ll raise that much at least. They assume though that the one candidate to win a major local office in this race is dead at this point. In fact, that’s their excuse for why the Governor didn’t tell him to drop out. To date, my math says he’s raised at least $430k for this race, which is less than Crosswell for sure, and maybe Crooksy, but probably enough for him to stay in. Basically though, the Beltway Chieftains want you to know that while local voters, elected officials, and unions always like him, he’s dead.
Then there’s Mark Pinsley. The rumor here is he’s still on Planet Earth. Poor Dude won a couple of elections and these folks act like he doesn’t even exist. They didn’t even take time to shit on him in their rumors. Hell, they didn’t even let lunatic Bernie endorse him, and he’s trying to run like him. I guess they hope he just goes off and runs for State Senate, again.
Part of the reason the Democratic Party loses is voters see right through our astroturf narratives. Republicans put up authentic lunatics, we put up Crooksy. It seems that in the case of PA-7, the Beltway Elites are desperate to find literally anyone to be their candidate besides a Democrat from the Lehigh Valley. I’m sure voters will love that.
In theory, the law is that the General Assembly shall pass a budget, and the Governor shall sign it by June 30th. That almost never happens cleanly. Usually though, the legislature stays in session and at least pretends they’re working/negotiating. Like you at least have some level of shame when you don’t do your job, right? That’s natural. In 2025, that’s no longer a thing. The State Senate left town in June and just decided to not come back to work ever again, basically.
Now, I’m going to be fair for a second. I actually agreed with them back in May and June- how the hell do you pass a budget when you have no idea how much the Federal Government is going to give you? Between DOGE and the “Big Beautiful Bill” it was fair to say there was too much uncertainty. Based on the lack of actual partisan noise at the time, I think even the House Democratic Majority realized this. It was close to impossible to plan a year’s worth of spending when there was so much chaos. Granted, most of the State Senate Republican Majority were vocal supporters of Trump, so their complaints here are ironic. Just because they were hypocrites didn’t make them wrong though.
That time has passed. Governor Shapiro gave everyone time to figure out what was going on. Republicans passed their “Big Beautiful” pile of shit in Washington. Sure, some things can change at the margins going forward, but not so badly that you don’t move forward. Given that we’re now a quarter of the way into the budget year, the legislature could fund the last nine months with basic certainty. They just won’t.
So here’s the thing, the Governor and local officials of both parties did a nice job across Pennsylvania preventing the pain from hitting the general public. Schools opened, road projects continued, the hospitals received their Medicaid money, and so on. Counties continued providing services. You can only bleed so much blood from a stone. If you only have $100, all the magic tricks in the world don’t turn that into $110. The Feds are sending less money to counties, schools, and municipalities. The state is running out of legal authority to send any money to them either, because there’s no budget. Why should you give a shit? Safe Harbor in Easton, who cares for a large chunk of our local homeless population, announced the county is out of money to provide them to provide the services. Northampton County announced they would furlough human services employees at the end of the month. They’re out of money. If that doesn’t hit home enough for you, I think Bernie O’Hare explained it fairly plainly:
NorCo’s Human Services Department investigates allegations of abuse and neglect aimed at our children and elderly, the most vulnerable members of society. It provides a wide variety of services to individuals who have mental health issues. It provides services, usually through vendors, aimed at the prevention and treatment of alcohol and drug abuse. It also helps veterans and their dependents.
The state funds between 80-90% of the salaries of these workers. But since the state budget impasse on June 30, the county has been paying these salaries on its own. McClure estimates that the county has spent $8-12 million so far and estimates that figure might be as high as $20 million by the end of October.
So basically, everybody who desperately needs help will stop getting it. Kids, old people, and mentally unhealthy people will be left to fend for themselves. The State Senate’s response? Take a long Summer vacation. This is serious stuff, but they’re treating it like nothing. Meanwhile, their ally running for Lehigh County Executive just thinks he’ll “get his money,” but honestly he’s just too stupid to handle this stuff. We’re heading towards a societal disaster in Pennsylvania. I realize some people like to say they’d rather live in Mississippi or Iowa than California, but are you really ready to put that to practice?
It’s time to punch back. This irresponsibility is going to cost lives. As someone who now lives about a half step from ruin, this hits home to me. People often ask what Democrats do for them- this is a good time to show them. I actually think he went a bit mild here, but McClure did get this right:
“Republicans in the State Senate have failed the people of Pennsylvania by refusing to pass a budget,” said McClure. “For three months, their dysfunction has left counties like Northampton footing the bill, costing us millions of dollars just to keep essential services going. … This is unacceptable. They must do their job, pass a budget, and stop punishing taxpayers and seniors alike.”
While I appreciate McClure and any other Democrat making this case, let’s be honest, County Executives and Congressional candidates are not the loudest voices in the room. All they can do is make their case the best they can. Those voices would be Governor Shapiro and Senator Fetterman, and we already know Senator Fetterman will let us down. Governor Shapiro is doing a great job running the government of Pennsylvania and deserves to be re-elected for that. We now need him to raise his voice though and maybe take an unsafe political stand. Him barnstorming the state and even national media and making the case that the State Senate Republicans are literally going to get people killed to have their extra long vacation would put the pressure needed in the very small number of swing districts left in the Senate. People who want to be national politicians need to know how to fight when it’s time. For Governor Shapiro, it is time. He has certainly made the case against the Senate GOP so far, but he needs to scorch the earth. The time has come.
So yeah, watch your wallet. Crooksy needs your money in a bad way. If 877-338-2472 shows up on your phone, mark it spam and junk. It’s a waste of your time.
Apocalypse Vibes 