William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-5-15
Picasso burned his early works. He needed to keep his apartment warm.
Day: March 5, 2015
Pension Crisis Ignored By Wolf
Governor Wolf unveiled his 2015 – 2016 budget on March 3. 
The governor is proposing to give the public school system an additional $1 Billion dollars in his budget.
I agree that our public school system needs to be a major focus.
Getting a good education is the foundation for success.
I am a firm believer that our public school system needs to “reinvent itself” to meet the needs to compete in a world economy and also to meet the needs of the ever- changing workforce required for manufacturing and the various skilled labor sectors.
Everyone knows that Pennsylvania has a pension crisis and it must be fixed immediately.
School teachers and administrators who will be retiring in the future are part of the pension system that has to be changed so that Pennsylvanians are not continuing to throw money at a problem that will continue to be a problem and will require more money in the future.
Governor Wolf is in the process of throwing money at the education problem.
Money will not solve the problem – the problem needs to be fixed first.
In the business world, this concept is called throwing money down a black hole with no results.
There are also plenty of solutions on the spending side that should be implemented which would free up money to actually impact our children’s education.
In addition to pension reform, eliminating prevailing wage mandates on all school district capital and maintenance projects, updating the funding formula would all alleviate some of the financial burden our school districts face.
Pension Crisis Ignored By Wolf
Start Walking Joe (And Don’t Let The Door Hit Your Ass)
Democrat Joe Sestak is going to wrap himself up in an old military jacket and walk across Pennsylvania in “military grade” boots in an attempt to unseat our excellent incumbent senator Pat Toomey.
Joanne Yurchak points out that among the former admiral’s many deeds that made life worse for us was being in the vanguard of those insisting that one would not lose one’s current health care plan if Obamacare should pass.
This is for you Joe. Here are the relevant lyrics:
You keep lying, when you oughta be truthin’
and you keep losin’ when you oughta not bet.
You keep samin’ when you oughta be changin’.
Now what’s right is right, but you ain’t been right yet.
Start Walking Joe (And Don’t Let The Door Hit Your Ass) would be a great title for a country song.
Tornado Tom Calls It
Tornado Tom Padula predicted yesterday, March 4, that the Philadelphia area would get its biggest snowstorm of the season today.
It looks like he was right. Tom said the snow would stop at about 5 p.m. and that he expects 4 to 8 inches with the likelihood of it being closer to the low end.
Tom is a 9th grader at Unionville High School.
We will see how it turns out.
Tornado Tom Calls It
Anti-Vaxxer Not Here
By Bill Lawrence
To eliminate all confusion, I’ll spell it out that I’m not an anti-vaxxer. 
I think vaccinations are a good thing. I have been vaccinated up the kazoo all my life. I’ve never worried about polio or smallpox or the whooping cough. If I cut myself on a rusty car part, I hope my tetanus shot is up to date.
Anti-vaxxers, mull this around: What’s preferable, a foreign substance entering your body via the broken end of a rusty muffler or via a sterile needle?
Just the same, if a family wants to live a vaccine-free lifestyle, I support and defend their right to do so. The catch is that I also support and defend the rights of organizations to require vaccinations to participate in them. In fact, I think public schools should require vaccinations. Certain businesses such as medical facilities where contact with at-risk populations is to be expected should require vaccinations.
The way to make everybody happy is to provide alternatives to those who want independent lifestyles. Examples would be cyber-schools and subsidized homeschooling for anti-vaxxer families.
Regarding conspiracies, I live in Lyme disease ground zero. A while back, I asked my doctor for the since-discontinued vaccine. He talked me out of it saying he was only recommending it for those doing outdoor labor. In other words, the risk/benefit health issues was being taken seriously by the professionals. There was no push to get me to take this substance. There is no conspiracy.
Anti-Vaxxer Not Here
Sexual Violence Guide For Judges
Adam Kuklikowski of Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape informs us that the third edition of Benchbook on Crimes of Sexual Violence in Pennsylvania by Superior Court Judge Jack Panella is available and can be found online here. 
The book is a guide for judges in handling crimes of sexual violence and addresses the steps of sex offense cases. It also includes detailed information regarding preliminary arraignments and hearings, standards of proof and the setting of bail and bail conditions to ensure the safety of victims and witnesses.
The guidelines are reasonable and the Commonwealth can take pride in its rape laws.
There are some issues, though, namely in Chapter 1 “The Dynamics of Sexual Violence Crimes.” For instance Section 5 “False Reporting” has the subhead “Reality: Statistically, very few people lie about being raped”. Why would that pointless yet prejudicial phrase be in a benchbook for judges? How about “Reality: Statistically, very few people lie about being robbed”? Or “Reality: Statistically, very few people lie about being beaten to where they can’t walk for a month”?
We suspect that the reality is that “statistically” there are more people who lie about being raped than being victims of other crimes. There are female sociopaths out there as well as male ones, after all, and we don’t want to throw out the presumption of innocence.
The subhead for Section 6 is Realty: “The overwhelming majority of sexual assaults are perpetrated against women.” The section then goes on to say “It is difficult to determine the number of male victims of sexual violence for a variety of reasons.” So, how do you know what the reality is Judge Panella? The words in the subhead say “perpetrated against” not “reported by”. That particular bit is sloppy writing and sloppy thinking. And, again, what is the point of even mentioning it?
Otherwise — and we confess that we did not read all 742 pdf pages — it seems a useful and valuable tool.