Herb Riede's Blog

After careful consideration of President Bush’s State of the Union address and his subsequent speeches on the matter, I humbly submit a response from the Democratic youth who may someday come to rely upon the program he, and other anti-Social Security Republicans like Senator Santorum, threaten with these dangerous changes. First off, I actually agree with Senator Santorum, who said about one of the President’s speeches, "I think it was an attempt to reassure younger as well as older workers that his plan was safe." The President's words, in fact, serve as no reassurance to this younger worker. The Republican leadership is counting on younger workers not to listen to everything being said, and to only hear the false, but attractive, "keep your own money" mantra. The initial concern among many of us critics was that those who gained in our investments by our retirement would end up needing to support those who lost in their investments, and that only those involv...

UFCW Talking to Wal-Mart Workers I support the Democratic Party taking up the national effort to Unionize WalMart workers as described in the link above.

Herb's Al Gore '08 Blog - I will be posting live from DC special and exclusive to AlGore-08.com over the weekend from the DNC and YDA events.

mcall.com - Siptroth wins special election for 189th District state House seat A Smithfield Township supervisor defeated a business owner by 209 votes in a special election Tuesday to fill the vacant 189th District state House seat. According to unofficial results, Democrat John J. Siptroth received 3,452 votes, or 51 percent, and Republican Diane L. Hannan got 3,243 votes, or 48 percent. About 6,695 votes were tabulated in the district, which includes parts of Monroe and Pike counties. The seat became vacant when Kelly Lewis resigned Dec. 6 to head the nonprofit Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania. Also see: http://www.pahdcc.com http://www.votesiptroth.com This is an upset pickup of a formerly Republican state house seat in Pennsylvania. Congratulations John!

McS'town looks at rental unit inspections I viewed photos passed among council showing the mold infestation mentioned at the link above during the meeting, prompting my comments. I vowed to look into what is possible for McSherrystown and here is an example of what Chambersburg has gone through with their regular rental unit inspections: Meeting Minutes, Chambersburg Borough 1/16/2002: http://www.borough.chambersburg.pa.us/minutes/2002/january_16__2002_meeting_minutes.html And the resulting Chambersburg Borough Rental Unit Inspection Ordinance: http://gcp.esub.net/cgi-bin/om_isapi.dll?clientID=182555&depth=3&hitsperheading=on&infobase=chambers.nfo&record={1FF578E}&softpage=Document42 What was left out of the Evening Sun article was that council quickly came to a general consensus that any proposed inspections would be on tenant turnover - that is, when someone moves out, the unit would need inspected between tenants. This was thought to mi...

House Bill 25 would replace Property Taxes with a 3% increase in Sales Taxes and a 1.5% increase in Income Taxes. Sales and Income taxes are collected by the state, and sure enough, just like the Business Gross Receipts Tax Scam, this bill is nothing but a monkey wrench just waiting to be thrown into the system. "Distributions to school districts shall be based on the amount of real property tax collected by each school district during the base year..." So what's a base year? "Base year." The first fiscal year of a school district, municipality or county beginning after June 30, 2005. So the calculations of the share of state money will depend on the snapshot of where your school district is at - THIS YEAR. If it's growing, too bad. If it's shrinking, more power to ya! This bill is incomplete compared to the Gross Receipts bill in it's detail - but basically is the same as last year's bill only in your face and on your bill. ...