Harrisburg, PA- Upon returning to session last week, Pennsylvania House Democrats caused a legislative debacle surrounding HB300 and HB950 while members of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus continued the fight against the liberal agenda with every legislative ability available to them. HB300, sponsored by Democrat Rep. Malcom Kenyatta, (Philadelphia), would amend state law to create exclusive and special rights for a select few at the expense of the core constitutional freedoms of all people. The special rights created in HB300 are specifically for a protected class of sex based on “gender identity”. The bill is a complete affront to women, as it would force women and girls to give up their rights to women-only sports, shelters, and bathrooms. Additionally, the bill opens the flood gates for legal action to be taken against religious institutions, non-profits, and doctors exercising their rights of conscience.
In "standing with ALL workers", has the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus taken a look, not only at the transcript of Shivaram Rajghopal's 6-June-2023 testimony before the [Federal] "House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs" (published, on-line, under the "Forbes" banner, with the headline "ESG Is A Response To A Broken Reporting Model"...
...but, also, HAS THE PENNSYLVANIA FREEDOM CAUCUS TAKEN A LOOK at the TEXT of the enabling [Montgomery County, Maryland] legislation which established the [former] "Enterprise Zone", in Silver Spring, Maryland (apparently, only in effect until shortly after I started raising a stink, in 2006 or 2007, or so, about the fact that:
a) the law [as I recall] defined a "full-time job", in that "Enterprise Zone" as a "25-hour/week" job, rather than as a "40-hour/week job, with benefits"; and
b) provided tax credits 1spread 10 years?] equal to 80% or so, of the INCREASE in "assessed 'fair-market value'", if a property-owner would renovate, enhance, or build on any commercial-real-estate parcel in that Zone)?
THE REASON IT MATTERS is, that, IF (as Mr. Rajghopal testifies, in the above-mentioned transcript) COMPANIES ONLY HAVE TO REPORT THE NUMBER OF FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES, rather than the wages paid to those employees (or to any other classification of employees or [MetaCapitalism-style] "gig-workers" and "independent contractors"),...
...CAN THE REPORTED STATISTICS BE RELIABLE, if Counties, in States nation-wide, should decide to pass laws that "redefine" part-time work as "full-time", as part of some local, job-creation or "pump-priming" operation or strategy?
What do the Unions have, to say, about 25-hour-per-week jobs being designated "full-time"?
What did the Unions that existed, in Montgomery County, Maryland, 1995 - 2010, actually say, at the time, regarding the Silver Spring Enterprise Zone and its enabling legislation?
...Is there any thought being given, by the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, to the likely outcome of a school-board in the State of Oklahoma, which appears to have been reported to have voted to "establish" a religion (in the sense conveyed by the usage, in the First Amendment [to the US Constitution] of the word "establishment"), by providing for taxpayer funding of a Catholic school?
People DO understand that, to "establish" a religion --in the sense used, in the Constitution's prohibition of the [Federal] Legislature's "establishment" of any religion, in the USA-- refers to the use of Government funds, to provide "material support" [See "Footnote (Material Support)", below] to a "religion", per se, for the reason that the religion IS A RELIGION, whether that "religion" be "organized", in earthly, temporal reality, as a local, national, or global hierarchy, confederation, association, or affiliation,...
...or whether that "religion" consist of a solitary hermit, anchorite, mendicant, priest, god-made-flesh, or supernatural-inhabitant-of-human-form whose religious understanding and convictions are unknown and/or incomprehensible to anyone else who has ever walked upon the face of the earth, from the beginning of Time, unto today,...
...right? RIGHT?
REGARDLESS of the type or structure a religion has, the First Amendment prohibits the Legislature from passing a law that --IF the First Amendment is to have any meaning and effect, at all-- would neither allocate money to a religion, directly, nor allocate money to any Executive-Branch Agency or private-sector contractor [á la "The Federal Reserve"] that would have been empowered and authorized (via legislation) to use that Agency's (or "contractor's") budget appropriation, to "provide material support" to ANY religion or set of religions.
IS THERE A SCHOOL-BOARD, IN THE USA, WHOSE MEMBERS WOULD SEEK TO PROVIDE FUNDING/SUPPORT TO A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL FOR THE REASON THAT THE SCHOOL IS A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL? [See "Footnote: (Primacy of the Constitution and the Rule of WRITTEN Law)", below]
QUESTION#1: Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus understand the Supreme Court's ruling [in a case involving a request for Federal funds to endow a Catholic-school playground] to the effect that a Catholic school should not be denied benefits available to any other K-12 school,...
...to be saying, simply, that:
a) since K-12 education is a "public good" provided at Government behest, in order to achieve a specific, Government-mandated purpose [i.e., "equipping Citizens to be capable of acting as Citizens and performing the civic duty of Citizens, to a reasonable level of competency, by the time those Citizens graduate from high-school"]; and
b) since Federal law prohibits discrimination based on religion (including, but not limited to such laws and Executive Orders as were instituted [and remain "on-the-books"] by the G.W. Bush Administration (2001-2009), as part of the "Faith-Based Initiative" and the "President's Management Agenda of 2001")...
...any religious school which is as capable AND WILLING as any secular school is, to aid in the achievement of the above-mentioned, Government-mandated purpose, AND IS WILLING TO SUBMIT TO EXAMINATION, BY THE GOVERNMENT, OF THE SHOOL AND ITS TEACHINGS, in order to ensure that there is NO effort being made, in ANY school, to incite, foment, cultivate, fuel, inflame, or "develop" either:
...the kinds of sectarian hatreds that have plunged Peoples, neighborhoods, and communities into war with one another, for centuries, over the course of MILLENNIA, or
...ANY kind of intention, on the part of ANY student, to place the precepts of a specific RELIGION "over and above" the "REASONABLE accommodations" that people of good-will, responsible attitude, and thoughtful demeanor decide to make, in order that AMERICANS can live, reasonably happily,cooperatively, and peacefully, together, even side-by-side with persons whose religious convictions differ from one another, even when those various "creeds" have been the focus of bitter and bloody wars, in other places and/or times.
QUESTION#2: Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus understand "QUESTION#1", above, to be asking whether "public-school vouchers for religious schools" are "okay", in the opinion of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, given the interests of the Commonwealth and of the nation, in being accommodating, respectful, and presumptive of INNOCENCE, previous to CONVICTION, thus avoiding conflicts that might be the result of attempting to institute any State or Federal effort to "certify" either a religious school or a "religion", per se (i.e., as "not anti-American")?
===========
1) "Footnote (Material Support)": If I (and some officer of Donald Trump's organization) have to declare the "free rent" we got, while doing work for our respective companies' clients, as "Income", on our taxes, then, the tax-free status of churches is going to have to be called into question, nation-wide, if localities should decide to abandon the agreement to which EACH became signatory, when it entered the Union [i.e., "The Constitution of the United States (of America)"].
2) "Footnote: (Primacy of the Constitution and the Rule of WRITTEN Law)", below] Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus recall what happened, in Mingo County, WV, when practically the ENTIRE GOVERNMENT of that County was found to have merited INDICTMENT on Federal charges of corruption, for repeated, pervasive, and NOTORIOUS, official acts?
Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus remember what happened, when the West Virginia State Legislature was found to be RIFE with vote-selling by elected Legislators, with some individual votes having been "bought" for the price of the rent on the habitations that Legislators were dwelling in?
Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus remember that a certain United States Representative whose constituency included areas of PHILADELPHIA was quoted, in the Philadelphia "Inquirer", as saying (at his own corruption trial) that:
a) he had done a lot of favors for a lot of people; and that
b) the FBI was "criminalizing" that which was "standard practice", in Congress (rather than acknowledging that the FBI was applying the language of existing LAW, AS WRITTEN, to the FBI's understanding of the actions of that Member of Congress, while that Member of Congress was "in office")?
Why wasn't that Member of Congress quoted, by the Philadelphia "Inquirer", as saying, "I did not do the things that the FBI alleges that I did," or that, "I did perform those actions IN IGNORANCE OF THE LAW AND ITS TERMS; and I throw myself on the mercy of the Court and of the People, assuring them, both that my aim was, merely, to provide them with good and faithful service AND that the actions I performed, which I do, now, understand to be illegal, I performed for the reason that I believed myself right --and justified by the laws of Pennsylvania and of the United States (of America)-- in doing so"?
The problem that I see, with the law, as described, is, that there is no mention of anything in the law, that contemplates the idea that someone might "pretend" to be trans, simply in order to "put one over on [the authorities]".
I met someone, when I was in high-school, in the 1970s, just after the Vietnam-era draft had ended, who described, in detail, for us kids, the way he had [falsely] convinced the Military that he was a diabetic, in order that he be able to evade the draft.
(Let's just say that, with a "record" of filled prescriptions for insulin, as evidence, (he said) the Military excused him from service.)
How many other, then-military-age people said they were gay, to get out of the draft?
Meanwhile, how many ACTUALLY gay people, who would have gladly fought with everything they had, to defend this country (and the world), were deemed "4(f)", when "the fact of the matter" became known?
Things are probably not, now, the way they were, "back in the day"; this is 2023, not 1976.
The idea that one person might "try to 'pull a fast one'" isn't the kind of shock, today, that it was, 50 years ago.
And people just don't seem to think the same way, today, that we who were alive, 50 years ago, thought, at that time.
EXAMPLE: The lyrics to Vicki Carr's song "It Must Be Him" caused certain young, female colleagues of mine, at a certain fast-food restaurant, in Philadelphia, to RETCH, in unison, in 2015, when the first verse of that song ended, and the chorus/refrain began.
They had never heard the song, before. Their reaction was spontaneous, sincere, and unrehearsed.
That song was NOT considered to be --AT ALL-- romantic, by "today's youth".
Yet, even in 1976, when Vicki Carr sang that song, in the televised variety show that opened Disney World, in Florida (although the Internet says it was 1971), that song was not just a "hit"; it was a "classic"!
So, really, even if HB300 were to pass both Houses and be signed by the Governor, I would not want to be a boy (nor, even, a girl) who was discovered, by that person's peers, in any high school in the country, to be merely PRETENDING to be trans, just to gain some perceived advantage at the expense of that person's classmates.
I just have no taste for some kinds of adventure.
But, I do hope and pray to God that, IF HB300 passes and gets signed into law, SOMEBODY makes SOME kind of effort to teach kids how to distinguish between someone who is PRETENDING to be trans, and someone who really IS trans.
I've seen enough news stories (and enough real-life events that never even "made the news") to last a life-time.
They're kids. They won't be eligible to vote, until they're 18. May God, their parents, their school system, and their public servants act in concert, to teach them everything they need to know, to be able to handle the responsibility that will settle on their shoulders, if and when they reach that "age of majority".
Who were the 2 traitor Republicans that voted with the Liberal Leftists? This is NOT the
Pennsylvania I remember. The people of Pennsylvania are NOT speaking up and as a result
are being run over. Because, the PA Supreme Court bowed to Fetterman, many votes
should have never been counted for him. He is incapable of doing the job. The other
US Leftists Senators baby him along like he has brains in his head.
In "standing with ALL workers", has the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus taken a look, not only at the transcript of Shivaram Rajghopal's 6-June-2023 testimony before the [Federal] "House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs" (published, on-line, under the "Forbes" banner, with the headline "ESG Is A Response To A Broken Reporting Model"...
...but, also, HAS THE PENNSYLVANIA FREEDOM CAUCUS TAKEN A LOOK at the TEXT of the enabling [Montgomery County, Maryland] legislation which established the [former] "Enterprise Zone", in Silver Spring, Maryland (apparently, only in effect until shortly after I started raising a stink, in 2006 or 2007, or so, about the fact that:
a) the law [as I recall] defined a "full-time job", in that "Enterprise Zone" as a "25-hour/week" job, rather than as a "40-hour/week job, with benefits"; and
b) provided tax credits 1spread 10 years?] equal to 80% or so, of the INCREASE in "assessed 'fair-market value'", if a property-owner would renovate, enhance, or build on any commercial-real-estate parcel in that Zone)?
THE REASON IT MATTERS is, that, IF (as Mr. Rajghopal testifies, in the above-mentioned transcript) COMPANIES ONLY HAVE TO REPORT THE NUMBER OF FULL-TIME EMPLOYEES, rather than the wages paid to those employees (or to any other classification of employees or [MetaCapitalism-style] "gig-workers" and "independent contractors"),...
...CAN THE REPORTED STATISTICS BE RELIABLE, if Counties, in States nation-wide, should decide to pass laws that "redefine" part-time work as "full-time", as part of some local, job-creation or "pump-priming" operation or strategy?
What do the Unions have, to say, about 25-hour-per-week jobs being designated "full-time"?
What did the Unions that existed, in Montgomery County, Maryland, 1995 - 2010, actually say, at the time, regarding the Silver Spring Enterprise Zone and its enabling legislation?
Speaking of "Disregarding the Rules"...
...Is there any thought being given, by the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, to the likely outcome of a school-board in the State of Oklahoma, which appears to have been reported to have voted to "establish" a religion (in the sense conveyed by the usage, in the First Amendment [to the US Constitution] of the word "establishment"), by providing for taxpayer funding of a Catholic school?
People DO understand that, to "establish" a religion --in the sense used, in the Constitution's prohibition of the [Federal] Legislature's "establishment" of any religion, in the USA-- refers to the use of Government funds, to provide "material support" [See "Footnote (Material Support)", below] to a "religion", per se, for the reason that the religion IS A RELIGION, whether that "religion" be "organized", in earthly, temporal reality, as a local, national, or global hierarchy, confederation, association, or affiliation,...
...or whether that "religion" consist of a solitary hermit, anchorite, mendicant, priest, god-made-flesh, or supernatural-inhabitant-of-human-form whose religious understanding and convictions are unknown and/or incomprehensible to anyone else who has ever walked upon the face of the earth, from the beginning of Time, unto today,...
...right? RIGHT?
REGARDLESS of the type or structure a religion has, the First Amendment prohibits the Legislature from passing a law that --IF the First Amendment is to have any meaning and effect, at all-- would neither allocate money to a religion, directly, nor allocate money to any Executive-Branch Agency or private-sector contractor [á la "The Federal Reserve"] that would have been empowered and authorized (via legislation) to use that Agency's (or "contractor's") budget appropriation, to "provide material support" to ANY religion or set of religions.
IS THERE A SCHOOL-BOARD, IN THE USA, WHOSE MEMBERS WOULD SEEK TO PROVIDE FUNDING/SUPPORT TO A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL FOR THE REASON THAT THE SCHOOL IS A RELIGIOUS SCHOOL? [See "Footnote: (Primacy of the Constitution and the Rule of WRITTEN Law)", below]
QUESTION#1: Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus understand the Supreme Court's ruling [in a case involving a request for Federal funds to endow a Catholic-school playground] to the effect that a Catholic school should not be denied benefits available to any other K-12 school,...
...to be saying, simply, that:
a) since K-12 education is a "public good" provided at Government behest, in order to achieve a specific, Government-mandated purpose [i.e., "equipping Citizens to be capable of acting as Citizens and performing the civic duty of Citizens, to a reasonable level of competency, by the time those Citizens graduate from high-school"]; and
b) since Federal law prohibits discrimination based on religion (including, but not limited to such laws and Executive Orders as were instituted [and remain "on-the-books"] by the G.W. Bush Administration (2001-2009), as part of the "Faith-Based Initiative" and the "President's Management Agenda of 2001")...
...any religious school which is as capable AND WILLING as any secular school is, to aid in the achievement of the above-mentioned, Government-mandated purpose, AND IS WILLING TO SUBMIT TO EXAMINATION, BY THE GOVERNMENT, OF THE SHOOL AND ITS TEACHINGS, in order to ensure that there is NO effort being made, in ANY school, to incite, foment, cultivate, fuel, inflame, or "develop" either:
...the kinds of sectarian hatreds that have plunged Peoples, neighborhoods, and communities into war with one another, for centuries, over the course of MILLENNIA, or
...ANY kind of intention, on the part of ANY student, to place the precepts of a specific RELIGION "over and above" the "REASONABLE accommodations" that people of good-will, responsible attitude, and thoughtful demeanor decide to make, in order that AMERICANS can live, reasonably happily,cooperatively, and peacefully, together, even side-by-side with persons whose religious convictions differ from one another, even when those various "creeds" have been the focus of bitter and bloody wars, in other places and/or times.
QUESTION#2: Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus understand "QUESTION#1", above, to be asking whether "public-school vouchers for religious schools" are "okay", in the opinion of the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus, given the interests of the Commonwealth and of the nation, in being accommodating, respectful, and presumptive of INNOCENCE, previous to CONVICTION, thus avoiding conflicts that might be the result of attempting to institute any State or Federal effort to "certify" either a religious school or a "religion", per se (i.e., as "not anti-American")?
===========
1) "Footnote (Material Support)": If I (and some officer of Donald Trump's organization) have to declare the "free rent" we got, while doing work for our respective companies' clients, as "Income", on our taxes, then, the tax-free status of churches is going to have to be called into question, nation-wide, if localities should decide to abandon the agreement to which EACH became signatory, when it entered the Union [i.e., "The Constitution of the United States (of America)"].
2) "Footnote: (Primacy of the Constitution and the Rule of WRITTEN Law)", below] Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus recall what happened, in Mingo County, WV, when practically the ENTIRE GOVERNMENT of that County was found to have merited INDICTMENT on Federal charges of corruption, for repeated, pervasive, and NOTORIOUS, official acts?
Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus remember what happened, when the West Virginia State Legislature was found to be RIFE with vote-selling by elected Legislators, with some individual votes having been "bought" for the price of the rent on the habitations that Legislators were dwelling in?
Does the Pennsylvania Freedom Caucus remember that a certain United States Representative whose constituency included areas of PHILADELPHIA was quoted, in the Philadelphia "Inquirer", as saying (at his own corruption trial) that:
a) he had done a lot of favors for a lot of people; and that
b) the FBI was "criminalizing" that which was "standard practice", in Congress (rather than acknowledging that the FBI was applying the language of existing LAW, AS WRITTEN, to the FBI's understanding of the actions of that Member of Congress, while that Member of Congress was "in office")?
Why wasn't that Member of Congress quoted, by the Philadelphia "Inquirer", as saying, "I did not do the things that the FBI alleges that I did," or that, "I did perform those actions IN IGNORANCE OF THE LAW AND ITS TERMS; and I throw myself on the mercy of the Court and of the People, assuring them, both that my aim was, merely, to provide them with good and faithful service AND that the actions I performed, which I do, now, understand to be illegal, I performed for the reason that I believed myself right --and justified by the laws of Pennsylvania and of the United States (of America)-- in doing so"?
The problem that I see, with the law, as described, is, that there is no mention of anything in the law, that contemplates the idea that someone might "pretend" to be trans, simply in order to "put one over on [the authorities]".
I met someone, when I was in high-school, in the 1970s, just after the Vietnam-era draft had ended, who described, in detail, for us kids, the way he had [falsely] convinced the Military that he was a diabetic, in order that he be able to evade the draft.
(Let's just say that, with a "record" of filled prescriptions for insulin, as evidence, (he said) the Military excused him from service.)
How many other, then-military-age people said they were gay, to get out of the draft?
Meanwhile, how many ACTUALLY gay people, who would have gladly fought with everything they had, to defend this country (and the world), were deemed "4(f)", when "the fact of the matter" became known?
Things are probably not, now, the way they were, "back in the day"; this is 2023, not 1976.
The idea that one person might "try to 'pull a fast one'" isn't the kind of shock, today, that it was, 50 years ago.
And people just don't seem to think the same way, today, that we who were alive, 50 years ago, thought, at that time.
EXAMPLE: The lyrics to Vicki Carr's song "It Must Be Him" caused certain young, female colleagues of mine, at a certain fast-food restaurant, in Philadelphia, to RETCH, in unison, in 2015, when the first verse of that song ended, and the chorus/refrain began.
They had never heard the song, before. Their reaction was spontaneous, sincere, and unrehearsed.
That song was NOT considered to be --AT ALL-- romantic, by "today's youth".
Yet, even in 1976, when Vicki Carr sang that song, in the televised variety show that opened Disney World, in Florida (although the Internet says it was 1971), that song was not just a "hit"; it was a "classic"!
So, really, even if HB300 were to pass both Houses and be signed by the Governor, I would not want to be a boy (nor, even, a girl) who was discovered, by that person's peers, in any high school in the country, to be merely PRETENDING to be trans, just to gain some perceived advantage at the expense of that person's classmates.
I just have no taste for some kinds of adventure.
But, I do hope and pray to God that, IF HB300 passes and gets signed into law, SOMEBODY makes SOME kind of effort to teach kids how to distinguish between someone who is PRETENDING to be trans, and someone who really IS trans.
I've seen enough news stories (and enough real-life events that never even "made the news") to last a life-time.
They're kids. They won't be eligible to vote, until they're 18. May God, their parents, their school system, and their public servants act in concert, to teach them everything they need to know, to be able to handle the responsibility that will settle on their shoulders, if and when they reach that "age of majority".