Bird’s-Eye View

 
When I was 16 years old, I played soccer briefly in Europe, and one day, my team of Americans rode a charter bus across the German border, around the Bodensee and into the Alps. Dude … you think mountains are big when you read about ‘em or see ‘em in photos, but you just can’t […]

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R.B. Swift of the Scranton Times pens an article that continues the conversation about how Gov. Ed Rendell’s first round of spending cuts - $300 million in total - means costs are passed onto county governments. And those county governments need to raise revenue in the form of higher property taxes to pay for state […]

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Just not from the state. State Lt. Gov./Senate President Pro Tem Joe Scarnati, a Republican, has said he doesn’t think the state’s projected billion dollar shortfall will require a tax increase (hint: spending cuts!) and Gov. Ed Rendell said he wants to try and not raise taxes but hasn’t ruled them out.
But as Politickerpa.com rightly points […]

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 Saw last week WGAL interviewed U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr., and Ron Martin asked if Casey is likely to serve in an Obama administration as a cabinet appointment or in some other capacity. Casey said no.
Smart move.
Casey would be a loyal, hardworking soldier in the Obama cabinet, and having a much higher profile than the […]

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The 13th state Senatorial District is kind of like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich with the rural townships the PB and Lancaster city the jelly (on a personal note, all you grape jelly fans can go home; Bird’s-Eye View only endorses the use of strawberry jam). The condiments when slathered between two slices of bread are delicious, […]

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First of all, this has to be the funniest photo on the AP Wire today:

That would be Eagles running back Brian Westbrook being tackled by his jock strap during today’s game with the Baltimore Ravens. I’d love to hear some creative captions about this one.
Now, onto more relevant topics. Lancaster city Mayor Rick Gray is […]

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John Baer of the Philadelphia Daily News says state Attorney General Tom Corbett’s dominating win over his Democratic challenger makes him a likely frontrunner for the 2010 GOP gubernatorial nomination. Corbett won a second four-year term by defeating Democratic John Morganelli by 390,000 and won 61 of 67 counties in a year when Democrats had just […]

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You can usually count on the state Senate to remain drama free as oppose to that unruly, Animal House-type chamber across the state Capitol. Today’s leadership elections were no exception. The only major change is that Sen. Jay Corman, a Bellefonte Republican, will replace Sen. Gib Armstrong as the Majority Appropriations Committee chairman, the third […]

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A little bailout is bouncing toward central Pennsylvania.
The Associated Press reported today that Gov. Ed Rendell and the state have secured $35 million in federal loans to keep Boscov’s afloat:
Rendell said Thursday the loans would be financed through a program that allows governments to guarantee loans for economic development with federal community development block grants.
{snip}
Rendell […]

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So says writer Melissa Kashner in her profile of G. Terry Madonna in the current issue of Lancaster, a monthly locally published magazine. Chalk of up things I should have known about Madonna prior to reading this article: He loves baseball and the ratings of his Sunday morning program, Pennsylvania Newsmakers, often “trumps the likes […]

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