Sick and Tired Workers: An Epidemic of Corporate Greed

by Walter Brasch

      Snaking its way through the Pennsylvania legislature is a bill that will block local governments from requiring companies to provide sick leave, even if unpaid, that is more than required by state or federal regulations.

      There are no Pennsylvania or federal regulations requiring companies to provide sick leave. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 39 percent of all employees, and 79 percent of all employees in food service and hotel industries, have no sick leave. Unlike the United States, about 130 countries require employers to provide at least one week of sick leave per employee.

      The Republican-controlled state Senate passed the bill, 37–12; the Republican-controlled House will now discuss it—and probably follow the Senate’s wishes.

      Gov. Tom Wolf opposes this legislation, will probably veto it, and then have to deal with a Senate that has enough votes to override that veto.

      The proposed legislation is in response to Philadelphia’s recent directive that requires companies with at least 10 employees to provide mandatory sick leave for its workers. Several metropolitan U.S. cities, as well as California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, already require companies to provide sick leave to employees.

      Republicans are hypocritically philosophically conflicted on the legislation. Their party believes in limited government regulation, and this bill would keep government out of private enterprise’s believed-right to treat workers as serfs. However, Republicans also believe that, if necessary, government should be at the lowest political level, and municipal government is about as low as it can get. Thus, cities should be able to impose rules and requirements in the absence of state and federal law.

      Most legislators don’t understand political philosophy. What they understand is political donations. In this case, the business community opposes sick leave policies, believing corporate executives know better than workers or governments what’s best for the workers. As is the case for their opposition to raising minimum wage, it is because sick leave, somehow in their warped minds, reduces profits, shareholder dividends, and executive bonuses, benefits, and compensations.

      The pretend-savings to preserve corporate greed, however, is a false economy. By not providing a decent sick leave policy, companies risk employees coming to work sick in order not to lose a day’s pay—or be fired.

      This can lead to increased accidents because workers may be too ill to perform their jobs adequately.

     The absence of a sick leave program can also lead a worker with a communicable disease to spread it to other workers and to the public. About 68 percent of all employees report they came to work with a stomach virus and other communicable diseases, according to a poll conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

     About 30 percent of all workers said they became ill because of communicable diseases spread by fellow workers, according to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

      Not having adequate sick leave also can result in workers not staying home to care for sick children who, without anyone to care for them, go to school sick, and cause illnesses in other students, staff, and teachers.

      The absence of adequate sick leave can also contribute to low worker morale, less productivity, and higher turnover—all of which affect a corporation’s profit margin.

      There is, of course, sick leave abuse—a worker who calls in sick and then spends the day golfing, or shopping, or is just plain hung over from last night’s party. Just as companies don’t have sick leave, they also don’t have personal days, which can be used for those days when an employee has an important family issue or just doesn’t feel like coming to work. The lack of personal days can significantly decrease worker productivity on the days they would rather be somewhere else than the office or factory line.

      In contrast to the lack of sick leave and personal days, many corporations give upper management unlimited sick days and allow personal days for when a compelling social engagement, such as that golf outing with fellow business executives, seems to be “appropriate.”

      None of this matters to Pennsylvania’s Republicans. Their issue is to give bosses full control over workers; they want to give bosses the right to issue benefits, sick leave, and personal days if they want to do so, or to exclude those benefits if they also want to do so. That’s what they believe is right.

      And they are wrong.

     [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist, and author of 20 books. His latest book is the critically-acclaimed Fracking Pennsylvania.]

Campaign Contributions May Have Influenced Animal Cruelty Vote in Pennsylvania

by WALTER BRASCH

Spectrum Features Syndicate

HARRISBURG—Three days before he blocked proposed animal cruelty legislation, Rep. Mike Turzai (R-McCandless), chair of Rules Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, received a $3,000 campaign donation from the Flyers Victory Fund.  

The Fund is the lobbying and campaign contributions arm of the Pennsylvania Flyers Association (PFA). The PFA, according to its website, was “established by a group of shooting enthusiasts committed to promoting and protecting bird shooting for future generations.” Its primary mission, however, is to promote pigeon shoots.

While delivering $3,000 to Turzai, who is also House Majority leader and unopposed for re-election, it also delivered $1,000 to each of the 17 other Republican committee members, including House Speaker Samuel H. Smith (R-Punxsutawney). The Fund gave no campaign contributions to any of the 14 Democrats on the Committee, according to records filed by the Fund with the Pennsylvania Department of State. The Fund also made three donations totaling $1,150 to Republicans not on the Rules Committee.

The PFA delivered the campaign funds on Friday, Oct. 17. The vote to ban slaughtering and eating domestic dogs and cats, and to ban pigeon shoots, was scheduled for Monday, Oct. 20.

Pennsylvania is the only state where pigeon shoots, which hunters do not consider to be “fair chase hunting,” are common. At pigeon shoots, the birds are launched from cages and shot from 30 yards away. About 70 percent of the birds are wounded, according to the Humane Society of the United States. The birds, if they fall onto the shooting fields, are then strangled, stuffed alive into barrels, or have their heads cut off by “trapper boys” in their teens. Birds who manage to fly outside the fields are left to die long and lingering deaths. The bill addresses animal cruelty and not what the shooters mistake for “sport.” The NRA opposed the bill, claiming that to ban pigeon shoots would lead to a “slippery slope” to banning hunting and all guns.

Two days before receiving the funds, Turzai told former state Sen. Roy Afflerbach and retired Humane Society police officer Johnna Seeton he planned to bring the bill to the Rules Committee for an up-or-down vote. The Senate had previously passed the bill, 36–12. Gov. Tom Corbett (R) had said if the bill came to him, he would sign it.

However, Turzai did not bring up the bill in the first of two scheduled Rules Committee meetings. Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Pittsburgh), a member of the committee and Democratic caucus chair, says when HB 1750 didn’t come up, the committee members “believed it would come up in the second committee meeting,” especially since it had been on the agenda. However, Turzai cancelled that second meeting, effectively blocking the bill from being discussed and voted upon in both Committee and on the House floor on the last day of a two-year session.

In addition to Turzai and Smith, receiving funds before the vote in the Rules Committee were Republican representatives William F. Adolph (Springfield), Matthew E. Baker (Wellsboro), Jim Christiana (Monaca), Brian L. Ellis (Lyndora), Mauree Gingrich (Cleona), Robert W. Godshall (Hatfield), Seth M. Grove (York), Thomas H. Killion (Newtown Square), Ron Marisco (Harrisburg), Kurt A. Masser (Danville), Mark Mustio (Moon Twp.), Tina Pickett (Towanda), Mike Reese (Mount Pleasant), Stan Saylor (Red Lion), Mario M. Scavello (Tannersville), and Katherine M. Watson (Warrington).

Turzai had previously received three donations, totaling $1,600 from the Fund, according to the Department of State. Other members of the Rules committee who received Fund donations prior to 2014 were Reps. Baker (1 for $1,000), Christiana (2 for $450), Ellis (4 for $1,450), Godshall (2 for $3,460), Grove (1 for $250), Marisco (4 donations totaling $1,150), Masser (1 for $250), Reese (1 for $100), and Smith (1 for $500). Marisco was the only member of the Committee who received Flyers funding in 2012. The Flyers contributions in 2012, according to the Department of State, were $6,400. However, in the month directly preceding the pigeon shoot vote, the Fund tripled its entire 2012 contributions, donating $21,150, according to forms filed with the Department of State.

     

Cowardice Plagues Pa. House of Representatives

  

by Walter Brasch

      The Institute for Legislative Action of the National Rifle Association (NRA-ILA) gives politicians Defender of Freedom awards. The award, accompanied by a glowing press release, has little to do with freedom; it has everything to do with legislators advancing the NRA agenda.

      Usually, the award goes to someone who managed, sometimes against great odds, to ramrod legislation that advances gun rights. However, for 2014 the award should go to someone who not only prostrated himself before the NRA lobby, but in a “two-fer” single-handedly blocked an animal cruelty bill.

      Pennsylvania State Rep. Mike Turzai is the House Republican majority leader and chair of the Rules Committee. Both the House and Senate are Republican-controlled; Gov. Tom Corbett is a Republican.

    The bill (HB1750) had two parts. The first part would have forbidden slaughtering, butchering, and eating dogs and cats. The second part would have banned pigeon shoots. Pennsylvania is the only state where pigeon shoots are common. Organizers of this blood sport place the birds into cages, and place people with shotguns only about 30 yards away. The spring-loaded cages open, and the pretend sportsmen open fire. The pigeons, many of them stunned, often having been nearly starved, are then blown apart. But first they suffer. More than 70 percent of all birds are wounded, according to data compiled by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). If they fall onto the shooting range, teenagers take the birds, wring their necks or use scissors to cut their heads off, and stuff them into barrels. Even if the birds survive strangulation, they will die from their wounds and from suffocation. If the wounded birds manage to fly outside the shooting range, most will die a lingering and painful death. The juveniles-disguised-as-adults consider the birds litter, and don’t pick them up if they fall outside the shooting range.

    Most hunters agree pigeon shoots are animal cruelty and not fair chase hunting. The International Olympic Committee in 1900 called them animal cruelty, declared they weren’t a sport, and banned it from all future Olympics. In 1998, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court called pigeon shoots cruel and “moronic,” and gave Humane Society police officers authority to investigate and cite organizers and participants for animal cruelty. The Hegins Labor Day Committee, which had previously rejected all assistance from the Humane Society to raise funds from alternative events, closed down the nation’s most notorious shoot, and did not appeal the decision. Its actions left the issue of animal cruelty in limbo. With certain politicized DAs not allowing police officers to pursue animal cruelty charges, and leaders of the House and Senate blocking all attempts to bring legislation to the floor, their actions effectively allowed pigeon shoots to continue. Until this month.

    Enter the NRA and a few other gun-rights organizations. Passing this bill, they claimed, in an increasing and unjustified paranoid concern, would lead to a “slippery slope” to banning guns. The opposition to pigeon shoots, they claimed, came from radical outside organizations. But, the only radical outside opposition appeared to be from the lunatic fringe of the NRA leadership, which mounted one of its fiercest lobbying campaigns in state history.

      On Oct. 15, against fierce NRA opposition, the Republican-led state senate voted, 36–12, to ban pigeon shoots. That threw the bill back to the House.

      Re-enter Mike Turzai, one of the most conservative House members. He opposed the bill, and all previous attempts to ban pigeon shoots. On that day, however, at the bottom of the escalator near the House cafeteria, he told former Sen. Roy Afflerbach and retired Humane Society police officer Johnna Seeton the bill would get an up-or-down vote in the rules committee. “He said he couldn’t promise we’d win,” says Seeton, “but we’d get a vote on the bill.” Gov. Corbett had already said if the bill passed the House, he would sign it. But that was not to be.

      On Monday, Oct. 20, the last voting day of the session, Turzai didn’t bring the bill to a vote in the Rules Committee. His official spokesman, Steve Miskin, claims nobody called for it, that it wasn’t on the agenda, and that’s why Turzai didn’t call for a vote. However, Rep. Sandra J. Major, Republican caucus chair, had sent a memo to fellow Republicans informing them that bill and several others was on the House agenda. A tweet that day also indicated the bill would come up for a vote.

      In the Republican caucus, Rep. John Maher, who had authored the bill and agreed to the amendment on pigeon bans, strongly argued the bill had absolutely no relation to any NRA concerns; it was solely a bill to prevent animal cruelty, Maher argued.

      In the subsequent Rules Committee meeting, Turzai announced four bills would be voted upon. He didn’t present HB1750. Miskin falsely claims any representative could have asked for that bill to be voted upon, but none did. Rep. Dan Frankel, a member of the committee and Democratic caucus chair, says Turzai didn’t allow the bill to be discussed in committee. In his 16 years in the Legislature, Frankel said it was common and acceptable practice for committee chairs to determine what did and did not come before the committee for discussion and a vote, and that individual members could not bring a bill for a vote. Some members who wished to vote on HB 1750 may not have pushed Turzai for the vote because they feared he would exercise the Legislature’s dictatorial powers to block their own subsequent legislation. But it was irrelevant; Turzai controlled the calendar.

      When HB 1750 didn’t come up, Frankel says the committee members “believed it would come up in the second committee meeting” scheduled later that day, especially since it was on the agenda. However, Turzai cancelled that second meeting, blocking the bill from being discussed and voted upon in both Committee and on the House floor.

      “I expected it to come up, and expected it would pass,” says Frankel. If so, there was a strong possibility the full House would have passed the bill. “A solid majority of Democrats supported it,” Frankel says; there were enough Republican votes to give the bill at least a slim victory.

      Steve Miskin, when pressed, insisted Turzai wasn’t going to run a bill “that was not vetted,” even though the bill was discussed extensively inside and outside of Republican caucus meetings. Miskin also claimed Turzai never discussed with his staff the bill or why he blocked members from voting on it.

      “Decent and compassionate legislators who wanted to do the right thing didn’t even get a chance to vote on this bill,” says Heidi Prescott, HSUS senior vice-president. For 25 years, Prescott has led the fight against pigeon shoots. It is a fight joined by the Federated Humane Societies of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association, the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, and numerous other groups. 

      The last free-standing vote in the House to ban pigeon shoots occurred in 1994. Although the vote was 99–93 to ban the shoots, a majority of 102 votes was required. Later bills were scuttled, usually by leadership of both political parties, most of them afraid of the suspected wrath of the NRA.

       Turzai, by his action, says Prescott, “proves he continues to support barbaric practices and not humane legislation.”

      Turzai refuses to say why he didn’t bring the bill for a vote. There are some possibilities.

      Speaker of the House Sam Smith had written a constituent he had “heard from many across the state [who felt] that the amendment on pigeon shoots could be used as a gateway to ban all forms of hunting.” This, of course, is the NRA voice that Smith heard. More than three-fourths of all Pennsylvanians want to see an end to pigeon shoots, according to a statewide survey by the independent Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Co. About four-fifths of all residents say the practice is animal cruelty.

      Turzai, Smith, and certain members of the House probably didn’t want to see the bill come up for a vote because if the Rules Committee and the House agreed with the NRA and voted against the bill, with its two parts, they could be accused of voting for continued animal cruelty. If they voted for the bill, they would receive retribution from the gun-rights lobby two weeks before the election. Turzai has no fear of losing the election. For the second consecutive election he is running unopposed. However, for Turzai and many others, not voting on the bill wasn’t a matter of conscience but a reality of trying to maintain an “A” rating from the NRA.

      Smith had said a vote on the bill “is not likely to be acted on before the end of the current legislative session.” Thus, even if Turzai wanted to bring the bill to a vote in the Rules Committee, Smith, with almost absolute power in the House, would have kept it from being voted upon by the full House.

      The Rules committee and the House had no problem approving at least one controversial bill. HB 80 was originally a bill that would penalize those who steal secondary metals (including copper) from construction sites. Late in the last day of the session, the House approved vague language in the amended bill to allow the NRA and any other organization to sue local municipalities that enact ordinances that establish greater restrictions upon firearms background checks and ownership than that of the state. The new law also restricts local municipalities from creating and enforcing ordinances that require residents to report lost or stolen firearms.

      The day after HB 1750 didn’t come up for a vote, Turzai apparently recanted. In his office, Seeton says he now told her and Sen. Afflerbach he never promised it would get a vote, but that “I’ll help you to get the vote to the House floor.” The House reconvenes for one day, Nov. 12; it’s the last day of the two-year session; no votes are expected.

      Turzai is one of the Republican leaders who during the 2012 election year pushed for Voter ID in Pennsylvania. He forcefully declared several times there was significant voter fraud  and that the new rules would prevent voter fraud. In court, however, Republican state officials reluctantly denied there was a history of voter fraud or that the absence of voter ID would allow fraud to occur. An additional truth came out at a Republican State Committee meeting, Turzai had said that Voter ID requirements would “allow Gov. [Mitt] Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania,” thus acknowledging that the strict requirements would disenfranchise primarily the poor and some minorities, who typically vote for Democrats, and the elderly, giving Romney an edge in the presidential election and Corbett an edge in the gubernatorial election. Commonwealth Court judge Robert Simpson, in his ruling against forced Voter ID,  called Turzai's comments ”disturbing” and partisan.

       Turzai boasts an “A+” rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund, and high ratings from numerous far-right conservative organizations. His record on the environment, social justice, and human rights has earned him grades of “F.” His report card should also show grades of “F” for truth, credibility, courage, and ability to recognize and prevent animal cruelty. But at least he’ll be qualified to get the NRA-ILA award for defending animal cruelty.

      [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning social issues journalist who has covered politics and government more than 40 years. He is a former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor; multimedia writer-producer, and author of 20 books. His current book is Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster.]

Pennsylvania’s Politics of Virtue

by Walter Brasch

      The Pennsylvania Senate, possibly for the first time in its history, stood up against the NRA leadership and extreme gun-rights groups, and voted to ban pigeon shoots. The senators correctly called the ban a matter not of gun rights but of eliminating animal cruelty.

      The International Olympic Committee in 1900 banned pigeon shoots because of their cruelty and never again listed it as a sport. Most hunters and the state’s Fish and Game Commission says that pigeon shoots are not “fair chase hunting.” Pennsylvania is the only state where there are active pigeon shoots.

      The vote in the Senate was 36–12. Voting for the bill were 21 Democrats and 15 Republicans. Before the Senate could vote on the bill, it had to vote down two NRA-sponsored “compromise” amendments to legislate pigeon shoots and place them under the jurisdiction of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

      The bill had originated in the House, sponsored by John Maher (R-Upper St. Clair), where it had unanimous approval as a ban upon slaughtering, selling, and eating cat and dog meat. Sen. Richard Alloway (R-Chambersburg), an avid hunter, amended the bill in the Senate to include pigeon shoots, and received the backing of Sens. Stuart Greenleaf (R-Willow Grove), chair of the judiciary committee; and Dominic Pileggi (R-Glen Mills), the majority leader.

      That bill, with the amendment, was approved in the Judiciary Committee, 10–4, on June 26. In the next two days, it passed two of the required three readings in the full Senate, but was tabled, July 8, when the Senate recessed for more than two months. The bill was finally placed on the calendar for a third vote, which occurred late at night, Oct. 15, the day before the Senate would again recess until a week after the November election. 

      The Senate passed the bill only after an intense lobbying effort by the Institute for Legislative Action, NRA’s lobbying arm, which sent several “alerts” to its members. Allied with the ILA-NRA is the Pennsylvania Flyers Association (PAFA), a political gun-rights group, which, like the ILA-NRA, has a PAC that contributes campaign funds to members of the state legislature. PAFA had boasted it was responsible for keeping the bill off the Senate calendar. Both groups argue banning pigeon shoots is the first step to a “slippery slope” to banning guns, both have threatened members of the legislature with retribution if they voted to ban the bill, both claim support for banning pigeon shoots comes from radical “outside activists.”

      Those radical “outside activists” are the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the Pennsylvania Federation of Humane Societies, the ASCPA, the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association, the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, and the Pennsylvania Bar Association.

      SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness), which has video-documented the brutality of the pigeon shoots, often in secret, for several years, blanketed major market TV the past month with commercials featuring narration by Bob Barker and video of animal cruelty. The HSUS has maintained a 25-year activist campaign, which included intensive discussions with members of the legislature, numerous information packets, a strong social media campaign that organized supporters, and thousands Pennsylvanians calling their representatives and senators.

      The last free-standing vote in the House to ban pigeon shoots occurred in 1994. Although the vote was 99–93 to ban the shoots, a majority of 102 votes was required. Later bills were scuttled, usually by leadership of both political parties, most of them afraid of the suspected wrath of the NRA.

      Four years after the House failed to pass legislation to ban pigeon shoots, the state Supreme Court ruled the Hegins Pigeon Shoot, the most notorious of the shoots, and one which drew national attention to the state, was not only cruel “but moronic.” The organizers grudgingly disbanded the annual Labor Day event, held from 1934 to 1998. The Hegins shoot was held on public land; the Court’s opinion did not extend to shoots at private clubs, all of which draw many of the participants and spectators from New Jersey, and are held in secret. The passage of HB 1750 will end pigeon shoots at private clubs.

       The House reconvenes for one day, Monday, Oct. 20, before it again recesses, its members returning for only one day, Nov. 12, before the session ends.  

      Heidi Prescott, HSUS senior vice-president, spent many years on the shooting fields rescuing wounded birds, while leading protests and education campaigns. Exhausted from consecutive 15-hour days of intense discussions with legislators—and more than two decades of hope and disappointment—she mixes the joy of the present with tears of remembrance when she recalls why she first committed to eliminating what has become known as “Pennsylvania’s Disgrace”: “This is a day I personally looked forward to for many years, from the day I first held an injured pigeon in my hands and watched her die—all for no reason other than someone wanted to use her for target practice.”

      If the House passes the bill, and Gov. Tom Corbett signs it, Prescott, who was born in Pennsylvania and received her B.A. and MFA from the state-owned Edinboro University, will no longer have to drive a four-hour round trip almost every Tuesday when the Legislature is in session from her office in Maryland to explain to legislators why animal cruelty never was and never will be protected by the Second Amendment, and why the courage to stand up for what is right may be the greatest virtue.

      [Dr. Brasch has been covering pigeon shoots and state legislation for more than two decades. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an overall look at the health, environmental, and economic effects, and the fusion of corporate greed and politics in the state.]

Pennsylvania's Politics of Animal Cruelty

by Walter Brasch

      Pennsylvanians can still butcher, braise, and broil their pet cats and dogs because a murky mixture of politics has left a critical bill on the table in the state senate.

      Residents may also continue to use cats, dogs, and other animals as targets for what some erroneously call “sporting events.”

      Although there are no documented cases of cats and dogs being thrown into the air at these shoots, there is a long history in Pennsylvania of pigeon shoots. Pennsylvania is the only state where such shoots occur legally. The remaining shoots are in the southeastern part of the state, in Berks and Bucks counties near Philadelphia. However, this past week, an undercover investigator for SHARK, an animal rights group, documented a pigeon shoot in Oklahoma to provide campaign funds for Sen. James Inhofe (R). About 1,000 pigeons, according to SHARK, were thrown into the air a few yards from the shooters.

In Pennsylvania, scared and undernourished birds are placed into cages, and then launched about 30 yards in front of people with 12-gauge shotguns. Most birds, as many as 5,000 at an all-day shoot, are hit standing on their cages, on the ground, or flying erratically just a few feet from the people who pretend to be sportsmen. About 70 percent of all birds are wounded, according to Heidi Prescott, senior vice-president of the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), who for 25 years has been documenting and leading the effort to pass legislation to end pigeon shoots in Pennsylvania. If the birds are wounded on the killing fields, trapper boys and girls, most in their early teens, some of them younger, grab the birds, wring their necks, stomp on their bodies, or throw them live into barrels to suffocate. Birds that fall outside the shooting club’s property are left to die long and horrible deaths. There is no food or commercial value of a pigeon killed at one of the shoots.

      The Pennsylvania Fish and Game Commission says pigeon shoots are not “fair chase hunting.” The International Olympic Committee declared pigeon shoots aren’t a sport, and banned it after the 1900 Olympics because of its cruelty to animals.

But, the Pennsylvania Senate still hasn’t taken HB1750 off the table for discussion. Any senator may request the Senate to suspend the rules to allow a bill come off the table; none have.

      The House passed the original bill, sponsored by Rep. John Maher (R), 201–0, in November 2013.

      It was amended in the Senate, with Maher’s approval, to ban pigeon shoots under Title 18, which includes animal cruelty statutes.  Although butchering and selling cats and dogs would be a first degree misdemeanor, carrying a fine of $1,000–$10,000 and a maximum prison term of five years, pigeon shoot violations would be only a summary offense, carrying a maximum $300 fine and/or three months jail sentence, and only for those operating the shoot. That bill was approved in the Republican-led Judiciary Committee, 10–4, on June 26. In the next two days, it passed two of the required three readings in the full Senate, but was tabled, July 8, when the Senate recessed for more than two months. The bill was not placed on the voting calendar when the Senate reconvened for five days between Sept. 15 and Sept. 24. The Senate is again in recess and will reconvene for two to four days, beginning Oct. 6 before going on recess until after the Nov. 4 election.

      One of the four who voted against the bill in the judiciary committee was Joseph B. Scarnati III (R), the Senate president pro tempore. In his past two elections, Scranati received $5,275 from the NRA PAC, and $1,000 from the Flyers Victory Fund; the Victory Fund was established to support pigeon shoots. However, Scarnati didn’t influence if the bill was to be voted upon by the full Senate, says Kate Eckhart, Scarnati’s communications and legislative affairs assistant. The senator who does influence what bills go on the calendar is Dominic Pileggi (R), the majority leader. Pileggi had voted for the bill when it was in Judiciary Committee. However, Pileggi doesn’t put a bill on the calendar until the Republican caucus discusses it.

      Republican caucus leader is Sen. John Gordner (R), who also voted against the bill in committee. However, Gorder says he voted against the bill on procedural grounds. The amendment, says Todd Roup, Gordner’s chief of staff, “was slipped onto the committee’s calendar at the last minute without required notice.”

      Gregg Warner, the Judiciary Committee’s legal counsel, disagrees. “We notify members of the committee what bills will be on the agenda on Thursdays or Fridays the week before [a Tuesday meeting],” says Warner, “and then distribute summaries of the bills a day before.” Amendments are often distributed on Mondays before scheduled Tuesday meetings.

      “Once there is enough support in the caucus,” says Roup, the bill will go back to Pileggi. The person responsible for counting votes is Sen. Patrick Browne, Republican minority whip. Because caucus discussions are secret, neither Browne nor Gordner will reveal if the bill was discussed. Gordner, however, will vote for the bill if it gets to the floor for a third reading, says Roup.

      Josh Funk, deputy general counsel of the Senate Republican caucus, says there are two tests as to whether a bill is placed onto the calendar to be voted upon by the full Senate. The first test is if a majority in the caucus wants it. The second test, says Funk, is that, “It is not Sen. Pileggi’s policy to put bills up for a vote if the end result will be that they fail to receive 26 votes,” a Senate majority.” However, in the final two days before the Senate recessed this past week, Pileggi did place two bills onto the calendar that failed, by wide margins, to get 26 votes. Nevertheless, a policy that severely restricts open debate, with most discussions and decisions made in secret, significantly reduces the rights of the public to learn how their elected representatives think about a particular issue; the policy could violate Section 702 of the state’s Sunshine Act that declares, “The General Assembly finds that the right  of the public to be present at all meetings of agencies and to witness the deliberation, policy formulation and decision making of agencies is vital to the enhancement and proper functioning of the democratic process and that secrecy in public affairs undermines the faith of the public in government and the public's effectiveness in fulfilling its role in a democratic society.”

      Although there may not be enough votes in the Republican caucus, there are more than enough votes to pass the bill in the Senate. In addition to 24 co-sponsors, an informal tally shows at least a half-dozen other senators will support the bill.

This is also bill the public supports. A statewide survey by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research a year ago revealed not only do more than three-fourths of all Pennsylvanians want to see legislation to ban live pigeon shoots, only 16 percent of Pennsylvanians oppose such a ban. More than four-fifths of all Pennsylvanians say live pigeon shoots are animal cruelty. The bill is supported by the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Council of Churches, the Pennsylvania Veterinary Medical Association, the ASPCA, and the Pennsylvania Federation of Humane Societies. Most Pennsylvania newspapers have editorialized against pigeon shoots.

      So, why wasn’t the bill brought up for a third reading before the Senate adjourned in July? And why is it still on the table?

      The answer is enmeshed in a web of politics. Fearing an NRA backlash, and perhaps not wishing to alienate any voters less than six weeks before an election, the Senate may have stalled the vote because of an intense lobbying effort by the NRA. On the day before the Judiciary Committee was scheduled to hear the bill for the first time, the Institute for Legislative Action, NRA’s lobbying arm, sent urgent alerts to Pennsylvania members and the legislature. The NRA leadership opposes bans on pigeon shoots, believing that to ban animal cruelty is the “slippery slope” to banning guns.

      “That’s completely nonsense,” says Roy Afflerbach, a lifelong hunter, and former state senator and Allentown mayor.

      Many in the Legislature cower in fear at receiving less than an “A+” rating from the NRA. In the Senate Judiciary committee, Sen. Richard Alloway (R), a long-time hunter and a vigorous gun-rights advocate, called pigeon shooting a “blood sport.” After an attack by the NRA, he said, “I find it laughable that my friends [at the NRA] would somehow label me anti-Second Amendment.” Sen. Daylin Leach (D), vice-chair of the judiciary committee, doesn’t worry about the NRA rating. “Pigeon shoots, says Leach, “are a barbaric relic of a long-ago past. Hunters are ashamed of it, and it’s time to stop the gratuitous cruelty that pigeon shoots represent.”

      The NRA alert called pigeon shooters “law-abiding, ethical shooting enthusiasts.” However, undercover investigators have observed a large part of the lure of pigeon shoots is illegal gambling on how many birds each shooter will wound or kill. The alert also told legislators that opposition “does not come from within the Commonwealth, but from the outside,” targeting the Humane Society of the United States as the leader of the “animal ‘rights’ extremist groups.” However, the NRA is as much an “outside organization as HSUS; its headquarters is in Fairfax, Va.. Both NRA and HSUS have Pennsylvania field offices. All Pennsylvania humane organizations support HB1750. Humane PA PAC, which opposes the pigeon shoot, has 32,000 members, most of them Pennsylvanians.

      There is another political land mine for the bill. Even if the Senate passes the bill, the House of Representatives, which had passed the bill without the pigeon shoot amendment, is a far more conservative body, and could likely hold up passage of the bill.

      The last free-standing vote in the House occurred in 1994. Although the vote was 99–93 to ban the shoots, a majority of 102 votes was required. Later bills were scuttled, usually by leadership of both political parties.

      Four years after the House failed to pass legislation to ban pigeon shoots, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Hegins Pigeon Shoot, held on public property, was not only cruel “but moronic.” The organizers grudgingly disbanded the annual Labor Day event, held from 1934 to 1998. The Court’s opinion did not extend to shoots at private clubs, all of which draw many of the participants and spectators from New Jersey, and are held in secret.

      “The tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who have contacted their legislators, year after year, for decades, deserve a vote,” says Heidi Prescott. If the bill is brought to a vote, “it will pass,” she says.

      [Dr. Brasch, an award-winning journalist, has been covering Pennsylvania pigeon shoots for more than 20 years. He is a former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and the author of 20 books. His current book is Fracking Pennsylvania, an overall look at the politics and economics behind fracking, and its impact on health, agriculture, and the environment. The book also investigates fracking’s effects upon animals.]

AIDS Advances May be Compromised by Legislative Inaction

  by Walter Brasch

      Researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia may have found an entry-way to the cure for AIDS.

      Once the HIV virus enters the body it can lie dormant for years. It can also evolve into AIDS.  But, until now, it could never be removed. 

      It’s far too early to claim an AIDS cure—there still has to be several years of clinical trials— but this may be as close to a solution as scientists have come.

      There can be a lot of politics in medical science, but the researchers at least have the wisdom to know they must work together and focus upon the people not the politics.

      Even if there is a cure for AIDS, even if there are significant advances in the treatment and cure of other communicable diseases, it may not mean much if patients can’t get the medical treatment they need because obstructionists are doing their best to separate the people from the solution.

      Two hours west of Philadelphia is Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania state capital. This is where Gov. Tom Corbett and his well-oiled legislature shut down 15 of 60 public health clinics, have plans to shut down nine more to “save” about $3 million a year, and laid off 73 nurses and support staff. In July, the state Supreme Court issued an emergency injunction to prevent the state from shutting down more health clinics, and is reviewing a petition to force the administration to reopen the other clinics. Under the Corbett administration, Pennsylvania ranks 43rd of 50 states in per capita public health spending, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The governor also vetoed a budget item to spend $2 million a year from tax revenue generated by oil and gas companies to do research about the effects of fracking upon the people’s health, to provide health care information, to treat those who may have been affected by air and water pollution from fracking, and to establish a health care registry that would help identify problems. But he was more than willing to give all kinds of tax breaks to oil and gas companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, a foreign corporation, which he handed a $1.7 billion tax credit. If the state taxed gas extraction companies at a rate at least that of other states, there would be at least another $500 million a year that could be used to help protect the people’s health and their environment.

      More than 50 times, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has tried to wipe the Affordable Care Act (ACA) off the books. This quixotic mission will continue to fail for two reasons. First, the Supreme Court of the United States, which has a majority of conservatives, ruled the Act is constitutional. Second, all evidence shows the Act has led to better health care and at least 2.3 million Americans covered who couldn’t get insurance prior to the passage of the ACA. More than eight million Americans have already signed up for ACA coverage, and are now receiving better health care at lower insurance rates. Further, because of the ACA, more than 5.5 million senior citizens and disabled have saved about $4.5 billion on prescription drugs in the past three years, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Fourteen “red” states have chosen not to be a part of the ACA, their legislatures adamantly refusing to agree to anything that President Obama has proposed, even if it means the people suffer. The impartial Rand Corp. estimates these states will spend about $1 billion more taxpayer funds than if they expanded Medicaid under ACA provisions. Because of their refusal to agree to the ACA, almost four million residents of their states will continue to be uninsured, forcing the state and hospitals to pay for emergency medical care for low-income individuals. (In Pennsylvania, with a Republican governor and legislature, if the state agreed to implement the ACA, the savings would be about $600 million the first year.) However, the rabid Right Wing has continued to sling a barrage of lies and half-truths, usually picked up, channeled, and reported by the mass media. The time and money devoted to this political gesturing by Right Wing politicians could better be spent on funding research to find cures for Ebola, multiple sclerosis, numerous forms of cancers, and dozens of other life-threatening diseases.

      This is the same Congress that had blocked funding to improve the VA system, while spending $3 million this year alone to investigate what they have created as the Benghazi Scandal. It’s already been investigated and re-investigated. Senior military commanders and impartial diplomats have already told the truth, but the House still wants to throw out its chest and throw a junior-high tantrum. Think of what that $3 million can do to help the nation’s homeless, about one-fourth of them veterans.

      Members of Congress believe they have to travel all over the world on what they call “fact-finding tours.” These tours often find facts in tropical island nations.  And now, thanks to a decision by the apparently misnamed House Ethics Committee, members of Congress don’t even have to report if their trips were funded by lobbyists. Think of what several million more dollars can do to help improve the health of the impoverished rather than help members of Congress get sun tans.

      It’s just politics. But, how many more will suffer and die from our misguided priorities.

      [Dr. Brasch’s latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania, which looks at the health, environmental, economic, and political effects from fracking.]

Jumping Aboard Fracking’s Fossil Fuel Carousel

by Walter Brasch

    Two Pennsylvania legislators who have taken money from—and enthusiastically supported—the natural gas industry have teamed up to now praise coal.

    State Sen. Gene Yaw (R-Williamsport), chair of the Environmental Resource and Energy Committee, and Rep. Tim Solobay (D-Canonsburg, Pa.) are co-chairs of the newly-established Coal Caucus.

    It’s a strange move on their part, since both have praised natural gas as the economic future of Pennsylvania.

Sunshine Still Blocked at Penn State

PENN STATE / OLD MAIN, ADMINISTRATION BUILDING

by Walter Brasch

STATE COLLEGE, Pa.--The Penn State Board of Trustees, still sanctimonious in its public moral outrage, continues to violate state law.    The Board held a private three hour meeting, Wednesday evening [July 25] to discuss the NCAA sanctions and the role university president Dr. Rodney Erickson played in accepting the sanctions.

Pennsylvania Politics Continues to Override Humane Actions

by Walter Brasch

        

                         The deal was worked out with Sean Corr, attorney for the PGC. Corr, says Steve Hindi of SHARK, “was one of the biggest individual donors to the Bucks County Republican Committee [which had] heavily funded Heckler’s election campaign.” Heckler had been a state representative and senator and then a judge of the Bucks County Common Pleas Court. Corr, who was shooting pigeons at the PGC in December 2009, was convicted of harassment for shoving a camera into Hindi’s face; Hindi was not on PGC property at the time of the incident, according to the Doylestown Intelligencer. Corr is currently a part-time solicitor for the county.