Tom Corbett blames high unemployment on his shiftless, drugged-up constituents

[pbrower2a]

Yes, leftists screeched the same nonsense 3 years ago. Then Corbett administered a big thrashing.

He was new in 2010. He is now known all too well. You hire a charmer in February and by May money is missing (but he has plenty of excuses) and before you know it you have a sexual-harassment lawsuit because he chases anything wearing a skirt except a display mannequin. 

But doesn't Corbett miss something? People clean up their acts to get work, they get the jobs and the steady paychecks, and they then so hate their jobs that they have to use drugs to make the drudgery tolerable.  I can't tell you what it would take to make  retail sales tolerable... after all one can't live only for a week's vacation, which is about all that one can expect.

In 2010 we on the left side of the political spectrum failed to recognize how effective the Hard Right could be in playing mass resentments into political gains right under our noses. The only way in which the Hard Right makes net gains over the next two even-year general elections is if it is capable of allowing employers to direct the votes of their employees, in which case democracy is as doomed in America as it was in Italy in the late 1920s.

The Hard Right tried its formula of success of 2010 in 2012 -- and did badly. 

[pbrower2a]

Yes, leftists screeched the same nonsense 3 years ago. Then Corbett administered a big thrashing.

He was new in 2010. He is now known all too well. You hire a charmer in February and by May money is missing (but he has plenty of excuses) and before you know it you have a sexual-harassment lawsuit because he chases anything wearing a skirt except a display mannequin. 

But doesn't Corbett miss something? People clean up their acts to get work, they get the jobs and the steady paychecks, and they then so hate their jobs that they have to use drugs to make the drudgery tolerable.  I can't tell you what it would take to make  retail sales tolerable... after all one can't live only for a week's vacation, which is about all that one can expect.

In 2010 we on the left side of the political spectrum failed to recognize how effective the Hard Right could be in playing mass resentments into political gains right under our noses. The only way in which the Hard Right makes net gains over the next two even-year general elections is if it is capable of allowing employers to direct the votes of their employees, in which case democracy is as doomed in America as it was in Italy in the late 1920s.

The Hard Right tried its formula of success of 2010 in 2012 -- and did badly. 

Any non governor is different from the governorship. Mr. Corbett was less new than his opponent and less new than most non incumbents, and certainly far less new than some dude from Erie County named Tom Ridge back in 1994.

In any case, describing Mr. Corbett as a charmer is quite interesting. The man sounds like a drone. And in any case, the current legislation was elected under a grossly malapportioned map that gives the leftists extra districts. The Republicans will make gains.

The analogy is to the poseur with a resume showing him overqualified for the modest position for which he applies -- and wins by undercutting every other applicant and because an industry that practically fosters one of the hallmarks of sociopathic behavior (charm) falls for it readily  . One finds out quickly enough why he was available so cheaply -- maybe because his "degrees" come from diploma mills, because he is desperate for the money, and because there are plenty of pretty girls the age of his daughter who doesn't speak to him. I'm not saying that he is that bad. I've seen much of it in the industry that I stumbled into soon after graduating from college after being out of work long enough to consider the minimum wage a fair deal if I got opportunity for advancement. The best opportunity for advancement implied quitting once I amassed a good wardrobe for business.

I'm not saying that Governor Corbett is quite that bad; he may scrupulously keep his hands off public assets and the (vulgar pun avoided) of pretty girls, so far as I know. He is apparently awful for very different reasons. The polls show clearly that someone who squeaked by in a great year for right-wing Republicans as stealth candidates who hid their agendas are not so popular after they show themselves experimenting with daring right-wing solutions that people would reject if they knew (trying to give away the public sector to a monopolistic profiteer, eviscerating the rights of workers, and shifting taxes from the rich to the poor). Any one of those can be wildly unpopular.

Tom Ridge, by most accounts, was a fine Governor. 

...Leftists? The best contributors to radical leftist ideologies are those right-wingers who deliver luxury to themselves and their cronies but hardship to everyone else. 
 

[pbrower2a]

Tom Corbett has been proposing turning the Keystone Shortway (I-80) into a toll road part of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and then leasing it all to a monopolistic profiteer for a pittance. 

[pbrower2a]

You're telling me. Unless I drive on a tollroad it takes me half an hour to get to work.

The only benefit to putting a toll on a highway for drivers is that a toll keeps people from driving on it when they have alternatives. Example: free Interstate 94 in Michigan has much heavier traffic than the Indiana Toll Road forty miles away. (Of course, Interstate 94 has more entrances and exits and more local traffic. Tolls used to be a triviality until states and concessionaires found a gold mine.