Scott Wagner Resigns From Senate — Scott Wagner has announced that he is resigning from the Pennsylvania State Senate to focus his attention on this fall’s gubernatorial race.
Wagner won the Republican nomination to take on Tom Wolf, May 15.
Wagner represents the 28th District. His resignation takes affect June 4.
Francisco Macias Nguema was a very bad man. He was the first leader of Equatorial Guinea after it obtained independence from Spain in 1968. On Christmas Eve 1975, he had 150 opponents killed in a soccer stadium by soldiers dressed as Santa Claus while playing the Mary Hopkin’s song “Those Were the Days”.
He was overthrown and executed in 1979.
Nguema used hallucinogenic drugs and was quite insane. He murdered the director of his Central Bank and buried the entire national treasury under his bed which was in a bamboo hut in the village of his birth.
Francisco Macias Nguema William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 5-30-18
Imagine driving down the PA Turnpike when suddenly, … a State Trooper pulls you over and issues you a ticket The speeding ticket, even though it’s only a little bit over the limit, is hundreds of dollars… your day is absolutely ruined!
Now, imagine if this scenario played itself out every day, on every street in the Commonwealth, with the same efficiency as the highway patrol. Instead, a local Law Enforcement Officer has pulled you over, not because you posed a threat to public safety, but to meet a quota, for the purpose of balancing the local municipal budget.
The General Assembly in Harrisburg is trying to make this nightmare a reality. Senate Bill 251 has already passed in the Senate and just passed 22-2 in the House Transportation Committee. If this bill passes, it would grant new powers to local police, so that every local police department would be able to use RADAR guns to determine vehicle speed. With SB251 Harrisburg is authorizing a 20% across-the-board municipal regressive tax increase, one that disproportionately affects those least able to afford it poor and middle class families with little disposable income.
This is not the way we should be funding our local communities, and we still have time to stop this. We need to contact every State Representative to demand they withdraw their support of this bill, and vote NO on SB251. Stopping this bill is vital to protecting families from a new and dangerous form of taxation on PA citizens. This is worse than GAS TAX vote which helped defeat Senator Randy Vulakovich in the May primary
Further, SB 251 gives municipalities a big incentive to support this new taxation tool, because it allows for up to 20% of their budget to come from RADAR and LIDAR tickets. To be clear, Harrisburg is authorizing a 20% across-the-board municipal tax increase! They know that local leaders are being confronted with rising municipal costs, and are being forced to either raise property taxes or make due with less. They want to pass this bill to give those leaders a new way to raise money, without the stigma of raising their existing property or income taxes. Unfortunately, the tax they are attempting to create with SB 251 is a regressive tax, one that disproportionately affects those least able to afford it: poor and middle class families with little disposable income.
SB 251 will force our LEOs to serve as tax collectors; establishing and meeting budget quotas,putting themselves in harm’s way to execute needless traffic stops, and collecting taxes at the point of a gun. Anger and violence will inevitably be directed at individual officers due to this practice, but the reality is that they have little to no accountability directly to citizens, as local police work for the municipalities in PA, and are not elected like our County Sheriffs.
This is not the way we should be funding our local communities, and luckily, we still have time to stop this. We need to contact our State Representatives to demand they withdraw their support of this bill, and vote NO on SB 251. Stopping this bill is vital to protecting families, individual citizens and LEOs, and stopping a new and dangerous form of taxation on PA citizens.
For those living in Pennsylvania’s 38th Senate District make sure to vote for Jeremy Shaffer on Nov. 6. No negative ads just positive solutions. www.jeremyshaffer.com
Greater honor William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 5-29-18
Rirel cngu unf n chqqyr.
Wbua Dhvtt
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I’ve done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?
Douglas MacArthur
The last American killed in action in World War II was Sgt. Anthony J. Marchione of Pottstown on Aug. 18, 1945. He was part of a crew of a B-32 Dominator bomber flying a reconnaissance mission over Japan which had surrendered three days earlier. His plane was attacked by rouge Japanese fighter pilots. At least one of the Japanese attackers was shot down by the bomber’s gunners.
Only 118 B-32s were built. They flew from Jan. 27 to Aug. 30, 1945.
Last American killed in action William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 5-28-18
The article was originally published Oct. 17, 2009. Russell Boyko passed away in December 2013.
Sgt. Russell Boyko thought the smoke over Berlin was from anti-aircraft shells at first. It was his 17th mission and would have been his seventh over the burning Nazi capital. At 30,000 feet the smoke was near the ceiling of his B-17.
Boyko, who now lives in Upper Darby and attends Saints Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church in Clifton Heights, was a waist gunner manning a 50-caliber machine gun. His plane was at the front of the formation. As they neared the city, the aircraft began to shake. Water had mixed with the anti-freeze causing an engine to lockup. With just three engines left his pilot chose to forgo the bombing run, break formation and return to Great Ashfield, England, the ETO base of the 548th Squadron of the 385th Bomber Group.
“Not very safe,” said Boyko.
A lone B-17 was extremely vulnerable to enemy fighters.Bomber formations were organized in a way to allow guns from many planes to be concentrated on an attacker. American fighter escorts, of course, would stick with the formation for as long as the gas in their tanks allowed.
“We came close to Bremen. I remember seeing a body of water. I don’t know if it was the North Sea or the Channel. I remember starting to have hope.”
He then saw a German plane with two engines in the distance. It would not have been a front-line fighter and did not attack. It did apparently report the bomber’s position. Nazi fighters soon arrived.
“I don’t know if they were Fock-Wolfes or Messerschmitts,” Boyko said. “They attacked our plane. Our plane went down in a dive.”
The pilot had given a pre-flight order to bail if such an event should happen, which the crew did. The other waist-gunner, Carter, was hesitating at the escape hatch. Boyko gave him a nudge and then followed him out at about20,000 feet.
Boyko said the directions they were given for a bailout were that a count of three before pulling the ripcord would allow them to clear the plane while a count of 10 would make it harder for the enemy to follow his path to the ground to capture him.
He said both he and the other gunner counted to 10 albeit it made little difference. About a half-dozen German militia and civilians managed to get a bearing on them. Boyko said his chute was blossomed on the ground and he had trouble unstrapping it. He heard a gunshot and heard a bullet whistle past his ear. There was a bit of woods a few yards away and he ran into it.
“The Germans kept the woods nice and clean,” he said.
He said a small girl saw him and started screaming. He found himself surrounded and surrendered. He didn’t have a gun and had no intention of resisting.
It was May 8, 1944.
The Germans fed them after surrendering.
“They gave us pea soup,” he said. “It was delicious. The lady was polite. I guess she worked for the Luftwaffe. I looked in her eyes. They were green like pea soup.”
Boyko’s next stop was a prison camp.
He said the camp had four “lagers”, or sections, with 10 barracks to a lager and 300 men to a barracks.
He isn’t sure where the camp was although it was near the North Sea.
“I remember the North Sea during a thunder storm. The lighting would come straight down. It wouldn’t fork like we are used to”.
Camp life was not like Hogan’s Heroes. Each barracks had only two doors at the front and the back. To get to roll call, men would try to beat the crowd by climbing out the large windows. The Nazis gave an order forbidding this. “One or two” who ignored it were shot, he said.
After six months, they heard Russian artillery. The Germans piled the prisoners into boxcars and sent them west. After a few weeks they heard the artillery again. This time the Germans didn’t use boxcars but had them walk.
During one meal break he saw a familiar face. It was Albert Goodman with whom he attended Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia.
“He was in the chow line ahead of me,” Boyko said. The meal was chicken. “He came back in the line. Is aid ‘Albert you are looking good’ and he was. He was in the ground forces not the air forces.”
Goodman was Jewish. Boyko asked if he said any prayers like the Our Father. Boyko said Goodman told him he said something like it.
Boyko said that during the walk he saw a large group of young girls in Ukrainian costumes but didn’t get a chance to talk to them. He said a few prisoners stole chickens for food. He said in April1945 they were told President Franklin Roosevelt had died. The prisoners went to attention out of respect.
Russell Boyko was freed on May 8. He was promoted to staff sergeant during his time in the camp. He lived in Southwest Philadelphia for 50 years attending Protector BVM, a church his mother was instrumental in starting, before it was combined with Saints Peter and Paul.
He would eventually work at the Philadelphia Navy Yard from which he would retire.
Dear brothers William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 5-28-18
U egbbaeq, uz m imk, ftue tme nqoayq bmdf ar yk eagx. Uf ue m ekynax ar yk xurq. Itmfqhqd U tmhq pazq ftmf dqmxxk ymffqde, U’hq pazq iqmduzs uf. Itqz ftq fuyq oayqe, uf iuxx nq uz ftue ftmf U vagdzqk radft. Itmf sdqmfqd tazad oagxp oayq fa mz Myqduomz, mzp m eaxpuqd?
Pagsxme YmoMdftgd
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry
James