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PubliusCommentary and analysis about city, state and regional issuesStrike One
By Tom Ferrick Jr. They say that baseball is the sport that most resembles life, but baseball also resembles political campaigns. They are both games played over long seasons; both involve big plays and big money; in each errors can...
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Mayor Muddle
By Tom Ferrick Jr. For any group willing to try it out, I think I have found a method to get money and support from the Nutter administration. Here is my plan: Arrange for a meeting with the mayor and...
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Run Away! Run Away!
By Tom Ferrick Jr. The big news about the state budget this year was that it wasn't big news. Unlike last year, when we went 101 days before it finally, mercifully passed, this year the legislature met the June 30th...
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The Missing Piece
By Tom Ferrick Jr. Many years ago, I was interviewing John Kromer, a bright and able public servant who was then head of the Office of Housing and Community Development. As I recall, he was showing me a map of...
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Talking About Schools
By Tom Ferrick Jr. We need a new vocabulary for discussing basic education in Philadelphia because there is a huge gap between how educators and parents talk and think about schools. That gap is made clear in a report...
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A Hollywood Moment
By G. Terry Madonna & Michael L. Young If the Pat Toomey-Joe Sestak Pennsylvania Senate race was a movie, it would be a cinch for an Academy Award nomination. It's an electoral show that has everything: two controversial, compelling opponents;...
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An Outbreak of Candor
By Tom Ferrick Jr. There was a sudden and unexpected outbreak of candor in the gubernatorial race the other day. Attorney General Tom Corbett, the Republican candidate for governor, ambled down to Lebanon last Friday (June 11) to talk to...
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Kill the Kitty
By Tom Ferrick Jr. When I covered government on a regular basis, I loved to write about the process of passing a budget. That sounds sick, I know. In the news business, budget stories are known as MEGO's, as in...
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Waterfront Dreams
By Jacob Lambert On a recent sunny weekday, I came up with a novel idea: I'd take my son to Penn's Landing. He's 14 months old, and the thought of what he'd see there for the first time--boats, gulls, the...
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Transactional Democracy
By Tom Ferrick Jr. In the 1970's, the people of Emmaus, Pa., in their collective wisdom, decided to send a man named Joe Zeller to represent them in the Pennsylvania Legislature. Zeller was a Democrat of a conservative stripe who...
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Arlen Specter's Last Campaign
By Tom Ferrick Jr. Arlen Specter was lucky it rained all day on primary Election Day. Otherwise, he would have lost to Joe Sestak by 10 or 12 points, instead of the official eight-point spread. But it did rain...
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An Election Day Message
To: All Wards Leaders From: Chairman Bob Re: Today's Election Today is Election Day, my friends, and it is time to rev up the much vaunted Philadelphia Democratic party machinery to work for our favored candidates. One pointer: bring an...
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The Case Against Specter
By Craig Dimitri With just over two weeks remaining, the most intriguing race remains the contest for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. The incumbent is Arlen Specter, who has won five terms as a Republican, starting in 1980, but...
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Notes on an Election
By Tom Ferrick Jr. Four items about the upcoming May 18th primary election. One. Maybe we shouldn't be surprised that the Specter-Sestak campaign has devolved into minutiae, with Specter slapping around his challenger over small matters. That's because when it...
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Sizing Up the Big Sale
By Rick Edmunds Unless I'm missing something, Angelo, Gordon & Co. and fellow distressed asset specialists had an ace up their sleeve in Wednesday's (April 28) auction for Philadelphia Media Holdings. As they upped the bid to win the bankruptcy...
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