Modern Classical Music, like alternative political parties and alternative religions can be seen as a subculture followed by those of us who don’t always trust the dominant traditional cultures.
Most people’s perception of classical music has been both Eurocentric and empire-centric, to say nothing of being male-centric. There should be room for music based on alternative visions of gender, race, and culture, and celebrating peace instead of wars and militarism.
For many, the enjoyment of new modern classical music lies in both the discovery phase and re-listening when possible. Hearing repeated live performances of new works is an extremely rare occurrence, whereas we can hear Bach, Mozart, Puccini, Beethoven and Verdi on an endless loop. Depending on how you get your music, there is usually a very limited choice of other composers presented. Though WRTI, our local classical FM station, tries to be diverse, it is rather limited in its diversity. For example, on March 8, which was International Women’s Day, the all-women-composers playlist included some composers only to be heard on that day, and some of their compositions were only partially played.
The new music performance groups I used to follow were Relache, when I lived in Philly, and Orchestra 2001, when it was at Swarthmore College.
Lately, I have discovered the new music program at Delaware County Community College (DCCC).
The first time I attended one of these programs at DCCC, I was one-third of the audience. Last Thursday night, I was one-tenth of the non-composer section of the audience. I had a challenging and enjoyable evening.
The next concert in the series is 5 p.m., Thursday, March 23,and features the Lang/Rainwater project. General admission is only $10.
IAP Re-Launching In Pennsylvania — The IAP (Independent American Party) is in the process of re-launching in Pennsylvania. They want to be seen as “the solution party”. Their solutions are many and these are some listed in this Utah born Party.
There goals include “To uphold and revere our constitution in the tradition of our Founding Fathers as this land’s only and supreme law” and “To return the control of government back to the people as intended.”
The IAM was founded in 1993, inspired by a speech given by Ezra Taft Benson.
On May 16 1998, a vote was taken for the formation of a national IAP.
Pennsylvanian Will Christensen was one of the original founders of the IAP. See the history section of the IAP website for a bio.
The IAP is anti-one world government and pro life. Their website lists many other positions, including where they stand on the Article 5 Convention, Covid 19 vaccination, the Federal Reserve, the National Popular Vote Compact, and Red Flag Laws, etc.
Lonny Ray Williams, current National Chair, and descendant of Luzerne County Coal Miners sent a lengthy response to my questions
“The difference between the IAP and the Constitution Party is that we embrace the spiritual component of our nation and insist that it is an integral and important component of restoring and protecting the republic,” he said.
He uses Kathy Barnett as an example of a candidate he would support
“Our Plan is to rebuild America into a community of neighbors that love each other and are willing to help each other out through the difficult times in their lived (my ital) not one that relies on government as the arbitrator of kindness,” he said.
The Regional Coordinator of Pennsylvania is Scott Bartlett at Sbartlett@yahoo.com
Let me end with one of his statements “I would encourage everyone out there to stop voting for the lesser of two evils”.
From Coal Mines To Cooperstown, A Baseball Story For Saint Patrick’s Day
By Joe Guzzardi
In 1869, Hughie Jennings became the ninth of 12 children born into a Pittston, Pa., coal mining family. At age 12, Jennings dropped out of school to work as a breaker boy in the mines near Scranton where he picked slate from coal for 90 cents a day. Amid clouds of coal dust and the machinery’s rushing roar, breaker boys worked bent over backless wooden benches to perform their 10-hour-a-day tasks. A 1900 Bureau of Mines report found that colliery accidents killed 411, injured 1,057, and made 230 widows and 524 orphans.
But from those hardscrabble days, Jennings eventually entered the Hall of Fame based on his sterling career as a ball player and manager. The Irish-American also became an admired trial lawyer. In his book “EE-YAH,” Society for American Baseball Research historian Jack Smiles tracked Jennings’ career all the way back to when he was a 90-pound catcher for hometown ball clubs like the Moosic Anthracites. In 1889 Hughie signed for $5 a game with a Lehighton, Pa., semi-pro team, and left the mines behind for good. Jennings always said that what most motivated him throughout his career was to play so skillfully that he’d never return to the pits.
Jennings’ first contract called for $50 monthly, a fortune compared to his miner wages. By 1894, Jennings landed with the old National League Baltimore Orioles where he teamed up with Irish-American players still revered today. Under manager Ned Hanlon’s guidance, John J. McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, Joe Kelley, Dan Brouthers, Wilbert Robinson and Jennings – Hall of Famers all – the Orioles won three straight pennants. Jennings emerged as baseball’s top shortstop, both offensively and defensively.
During the Orioles’ championship years, Jennings had some of the best-ever seasons by a major league shortstop. In 1895, he hit .386, scored 159 runs, collected 204 hits, knocked in 125 runs, and stole 53 bases. In 1896, his performance was even better, as he hit .401, behind Cleveland’s Jesse Burkett’s .405, with 209 hits, 121 RBI and 70 stolen bases. To get on base, the fearless Jennings would do anything. His 1896 hit-by-pitch total, 51, is a still-standing major league record. The Orioles’ winning formula was old-fashioned, inside baseball – the bunt, the hit-and-run, the stolen base and the Baltimore chop. The Orioles cheated, too, like tripping opposing players as they rounded third and headed for home.
After a chaotic period where various teams bid for his services, during autumn 1899, Jennings attended the Cornell Law School in the off-season. Obtaining a law school diploma was a high enough priority that Jennings refused to report to the Brooklyn Superbas until June so that he could complete his spring term. In exchange for his tuition, Jennings coached the Cornell baseball team. Jennings fell two semesters short of graduating from Cornell, but he passed enough classes to take the bar exam, and was admitted to practice in Maryland and in Pennsylvania.
After a four-year stint piloting the Orioles, in 1907, Jennings took over the Detroit Tigers and young Ty Cobb. The Tigers won three straight pennants, but won only one World Series. The firebrand Cobb, however, blossomed. He won 12 batting titles in 13 years and set stolen base records. Jennings stayed with Detroit until 1920, and then took over the New York Giants for parts of 1924 and 1925 seasons.
Sportswriters called the firebrand Jennings “Ee-yah” for his third base coaching box antics, “Hustling Hughie” for his aggressive infield play and “Big Daddy,” not for his 5’8” stature, but because he served as a role model for the 100 other men who followed him from the Northeastern coal mines to the major leagues. In the final three winters of his life, 1925-27, Jennings contracted tuberculosis and meningitis before, at age 58, passing away in 1928 at his Scranton home.
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research and Internet Baseball Writers Association Member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.
From Coal Mines To Cooperstown, A Baseball Story For Saint Patrick’s Day
Mayor Pete, now called the Secretary of Transportation for all of the U.S., a cabinet level position in the Biden regime, visited Kansas City, Mo., recently, enjoying one of the perks of his job. That is, getting to pose in grip and grin photos and take some of the credit for a big transportation project, the new Kansas City airport. Having flown into KCI numerous times over the years, a new airport is a huge, much-needed upgrade for the area. The old airport’s Soviet Bloc look was past due for a revamp. So, great news for Kansas City and for travelers, and kudos to those who made the project happen. As to Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg (BOOT-ə-jəj) …
Kansas City airport
It’s good to celebrate successes, but Buttigieg’s most recent history shows a failure to respond meaningfully to the continuing crisis in East Palestine, Ohio. So that’s where his energy should be focused. Playtime comes after dealing with the tough stuff.
In his two years as transportation secretary, Pothole Pete – his moniker for his lukewarm performance as mayor of South Bend, Ind., because he couldn’t get the streets’ potholes fixed – has delivered the mediocre level of performance that’s the standard for members of Team Biden. In the first year of his transportation gig, Buttigieg was absent for two months on paternity leave during a transportation crisis. He was then criticized for his response to multiple airtravel problems. He called a nationwide flight shutdown a “data point” from which learning could come.
The East Palestine environmental disaster that began in February has been Buttigieg’s most defining event of who the transportation secretary is. While the crisis called for strong, coordinated actions from the government, Buttigieg was a no-show, revealing his lack of commonsense and empathy. He blew an opportunity to take the lead in addressing a horrible situation.
More than a day late and a dollar short, Buttigieg finally visited East Palestine on February 23, 20 days after the Norfolk Southern train derailment, and a day after former President Trump visited. The current president hasn’t traveled to East Palestine, but Biden did fly to one of the world’s most corrupt countries, Ukraine, to deliver more American dollars to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, displaying where the U.S. president’s priorities are – not with Americans enduring an environmental disaster in Ohio. Since the people in the Biden administration appear to walk in lock-step on the worst path, Buttigieg, a good soldier, is perhaps just following orders.
It would be good to see even one Democrat step up and do the right thing. Pete could have done that in Ohio. It should have been crisis communications 101 – if only he could have executed a plan. Presumably, emergency response and crisis communications plans are in place at the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, FEMA, the EPA, NTSB, Norfolk Southern, National Guard, the Secretary’s office and with first responders and state & local officials. Whoever the players are, assemble all relevant parties in a virtual “war room” and go through everything that needs to get done, anticipate questions and needs that will arise, determine the lead organization and spokesperson, etc., etc. Get the people of the community taken care of and get the area cleaned. And overcommunicate to all stakeholders. Communications, communications, communications.
Residents of the community and the American public didn’t see that happen. But things that made no sense to the layperson happened, most strikingly setting fire to all the chemicals in the derailed cars, sending dangerous, toxic material into the air, ultimately to land on ground and water. With animals dying, there was no confidence in the community if residents were safe now or in the future. And as to Pete, he tried to blame former President Trump – the default response among Dems remains: it’s Trump’s fault. (Given Trump has been out of office for more than two years, how long will Democrats try to use him as the catchall answer to anything gone wrong?)
Buttigieg may be “book smart,” but he has a poor sense of the right thing to say and when to show up. In the face of people in Ohio suffering and uncertain as to the health, safety and economic impacts on their lives and those of their families as a result of the environmental disaster in East Palestine, Buttigieg said, “There are roughly 1,000 cases a year of a train derailing,” seemingly minimizing the impact of the February 3 derailment.
One thousand derailments sounds like a lot. Two years into his transportation gig, wouldn’t Buttigieg be “all over this?” Rail transportation is not exactly a new invention. It’s reasonable to think railroads and trains should be operating efficiently and safely. On a priority scale, safe railways and rail transportation that don’t kill or harm people, wildlife and the environment should rank much higher than one of Pete’s favorite topics: ending “racist” roads.
To give Pete some credit, on the mediocrity scale, for example, he is much less mediocre than Vice President Kamala Harris. Perhaps in an effort to bolster her dismal image, Politico recently wrote a puff piece on first gentleman Doug Emhoff. Maybe Pete can follow the example – an image-bolstering interview with Pete’s husband, Chasten James Glezman Buttigieg, telling us what a great husband and dad Pete is.
These types of pieces may reinforce support from the Kool-Aid drinkers, but the rest of us just want to see elected officials do their jobs well. Failing that, resignation would be in order.
On March 1, a train crash in Greece resulted in the deaths of 36 people. The Greek Transportation Minister Kostas Karamanlis resigned, saying he felt it was his duty to step down “as a basic indication of respect for the memory of the people who died so unfairly.” Karamanlis said he had made “every effort” to improve a railway system that had been “in a state that doesn’t befit the 21st century.”
But after the debacle of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, did the “woke” General Mark A. Milley, or any of his Joint Chiefs of Staff brethren, resign out of protest or acceptance of personal responsibility? That would be a “no.” What of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who has overseen the opening of U.S. borders and the mass importation of more than 5 million illegal aliens? No. And certainly not the Secretary of Transportation, Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg.
Officials who don’t fulfill the duties of their jobs will not resign under a Biden regime. They have no sense of honor and duty to the citizens of the country. Their only duty is to protect the power of the collective – the Borg. Protect it, and it protects them.
Sidebar
More than 50 years after another major environmental disaster, Ohio takes a hit again when train cars derail spilling vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate chemicals. The 1969 event was one of multiple fires on the Cuyahoga River that had been contaminated for years with debris, chemicals and oil. A polluted Cuyahoga River, along with a major oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., served as focal points for a developing environmental movement and the first Earth Day in 1970, as well as the creation of the National Environmental Policy Act and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under President Richard Nixon in 1970.
Vehicle remains line the Cuyahoga River shore near Jaite, Ohio, 1968. Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Maria Fotopoulos writes about the connection between overpopulation and biodiversity loss, and from time to time other topics that confound her. On FB @BetheChangeforAnimals.
The Constitution Party is the fifth largest political party in the United States.
It began life as the US Taxpayer Party in 1992. Its chairman is James M. Clymer of Pennsylvania.
As of November, the Constitution Party had 20 members elected to municipal offices throughout the United States. Clymer was its vice-presidential candidate in 2012.
The Constitution Party refuses to take any federal funds for its presidential campaign.
“The mission of the Constitution Party is to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity through the election, at all levels of government, of Constitution Party candidates who will uphold the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights. It is our goal to limit the federal government to its delegated, enumerated, Constitutional functions.”
In an email discussion, Troy Bowman, the Southeast Region Chair for Pennsylvania, stated that the party’s outreach efforts consist largely of mailing flyers, newspaper ads, social media posts, and phone calls.
Speaking of the Constitution Party as a party with a strong Christian backbone, Bowman went on to say, “it is not debatable that this country was founded on Christian principles which are deeply rooted in the Bible.” However, the party welcomes anyone “who believes what the original intent for the Constitution was.”
In Pennsylvania, the party has six elected members in municipal offices and hopes to have more after next November.
Lastly, he added, “what I have learned in the last 14 years is that the Republican Party can not and will not (emphasis mine) ever fix itself or rehabilitate itself.”
Change a word or two, and this could be the Greens talking about the Democrats.
Though I don’t share all the party’s values, I have not hesitated to vote for a Constitution Party candidate when a Green Party candidate was not available.
Hopefully, the Constitution Party will be on a plethora of municipal ballots this election year.
Regardless of how bitter the immigration argument – and the debate routinely sinks to new hostility lows – both enforcement advocates and expansionists should agree that open borders must not be allowed to disrupt public education. If an individual’s station in life prevents him from enrolling his children in private schools, then a solid public education is essential. Without proper education in the basics, the nation’s children will have a long climb toward success in adulthood.
No one can argue persuasively that the border surge, which includes hundreds of thousands of K-12 age youths, will do anything except further drag down the nation’s failing public school system. Everything in America’s public schools reflects crisis mode.
For public schools, the trend is headed in the wrong direction and tumbling freefall-style further into the abyss. Enrollment is down, and chronic absenteeism is up. Shortages abound – teachers, substitutes, bus drivers and maintenance personnel. School board meetings are battle zones that often require security to prevent fisticuffs. For 9-year-olds, math and reading test scores have plummeted to their lowest levels in decades. This is a key age for creating a strong academic foundation. Black and Hispanic students fell further behind white students. Reliance on mental health services has become more common. Violence, including shootings and sexual assaults against teachers, has escalated.
Into this chaotic cauldron, waves of migrant children have entered the U.S. from more than 100 nations, and they speak dozens of different languages and dialects in our K-12 schools. Some have never attended school, and others possess only a rudimentary understanding of how a classroom functions. Enrollments occur on a rolling basis throughout the school year. No matter how disruptive migrant enrollment is to the existing student body and to the teachers, the process is a constitutional imperative.
In June 1982, the Supreme Court issuedPlyler v. Doe, a landmark decision which held that that states cannot constitutionally deny students a free public education based on their illegal immigrant status. By a 5-4 vote, the Court ruled that any fiscal resources which could be saved by excluding illegal immigrant children from public schools were far outweighed by societal harms that might be created from denying an education to unlawfully present children.
The Supreme Court has ruled, but the teachers and school administrators are the ones who must somehow impart a quality education despite the challenges that the migrants represent. And with teachers now coping with the ongoing enrollment of non-English speaking students, citizen children are at a disadvantage. When polled, a plurality of working-class, blue-collar Americans said that illegal immigration has made their local school systems worse off, a new study revealed.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey showed that 40 percent of Americans who earn less than $30,000 felt that illegal immigration made their local schools less effective, while 41 percent of those who earned $30,000 to $50,000 reached the same conclusion.
Among working class, middle class and upper-middle class Americans, less than 10 percent say illegal immigration has made their local schools better, while 34 to 45 percent say there has not been much of an impact. In his House Judiciary Committee testimony earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) stated the obvious: public schools packed with non-English speakers are a disadvantage to citizen children eager to learn and advance. “What the Democrats have never explained is how our schools are made better by packing classrooms with non-English speaking students,” McClintock said.
Nationally, the English language learner (ELL) student population will continue to grow rapidly, the predictable consequence of an open border. The projected number of school-age immigrant children increased from 12.3 million in 2005 to 17.9 million in 2020, a total which accounted for most of the school-age population growth during the period. Most of today’s immigrant children will require ELL services.
During the 1950s, California’s public schools ranked among the nation’s best. But decades later after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, California drifted toward the bottom of the heap. One reason for the steep decline: California’s K-12 ELL enrollment is 1.1 million students. Attending to immigrant children’s special academic needs, including developing language skills, detracts from teacher time that would otherwise be allotted to citizen children. After two years of remote instruction, children need every moment to catch up and shouldn’t be required to share valuable classroom time with illegal immigrants.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) reintroduced legislation to help businesses comply with immigration laws by certifying that their employees are legally authorized to work in the United States. The “Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act” would permanently authorize and expand the E-Verify program, an internet-based program. The bill requires employers to use the program within one year of enactment to determine workers’ eligibility. Employers must terminate workers that E-Verify cannot confirm as legally work-authorized, and those employers are subject to increased penalties.
Grassley said that businesses nationwide use E-Verify to help them comply with our immigration laws, reduce illegal immigration incentives, and provide Americans and other legal workers job safeguards. Expanding the system to every workplace, Grassley added, will improve all businesses’ accountability “and take an important step toward putting American workers first.”
In addition to the most obvious E-Verify advantage – protecting U.S. jobs – the program has countless other indirect benefits. Illegal border crossings and visa overstays would be dramatically reduced or eliminated once unscrupulous employers could no longer hire illegal aliens.
Because E-Verify would eliminate the jobs magnet, Customs and Border Protection agents, as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would be, in large part, relieved of the headaches of asking for identification from non-English speaking foreign nationals. Freed from the tedium of dealing with job seekers, law enforcement personnel could, assuming the White House and the Department of Homeland Security allow them to carry out their duties, including pursuing and arresting cartel criminals and human traffickers. With E-Verify in place at work sites, people who can’t get jobs will move home voluntarily. Family separation would become a thing of the past.
A Carnegie Mellon University study confirmed that Arizona’s mandatory E-Verify law played an important role in self-deportation among illegal immigrants coming from and returning to Mexico. The study noted that, after E-Verify was mandated, the average return migration rate to Mexican states nearly quadrupled over the time period observed. Mexican states like Sonora, where roughly 50 percent of migrants had previously settled in Arizona, experienced 30 percent larger growth in its return migration rate compared to a state with weaker connections to Arizona.
Another E-Verify advantage is that implementing the program would help end identity theft, a huge problem which in 2020 created losses to unsuspecting consumers that totaled $56 billion. Employee information taken from an I-9 form, the paper-based employee eligibility verification form used for all new hires, is compared against existing Social Security Administration and DHS databases. If the data doesn’t match, then the probability is that the SSN doesn’t belong to the applicant. Nancy Berryhill, in 2018 an Acting Commissioner of Social Security, testified to the House Subcommittee on Social Security. She concluded: “Mandatory use of EVerify by employers would help reduce the incidence of fraudulent use of SSNs.”
With the protections that E-Verify offers for American workers, and the deterrent that creates against illegal immigration, the wonder is why past bills, similar in most respects and dating back more than three decades, haven’t received congressional traction. The harsh, but inescapable, truth is that the donor class wants cheap labor, and Congress’ objective is to keep donors happy, U.S. workers be damned.
“I get what they are saying: ‘Hey, I want to stop nuclear war, but not with those people’.” — Jimmy Dore
The Feb. 19 “Rage Against the War Machine” demonstration in Washington, DC, was a unique blend of viewpoints of different speakers, some of whose only shared belief is an anti-war stance. A few of the more well-known speakers were Tulsi Gabbard, Dennis Kucinich, Dr. Ron Paul, Dr. Jill Stein, Chris Hedges, and Roger Waters.
A complete speaker list can be found here and be aware of the subtexts of the speakers.
The Daily Beast covered one of the five total counter-protestors
The Militant, (the Socialist Workers Party), was pro Ukraine and against the rally. Militant editor John Studer went to Kyiv in 2014 and was pro Mauidan.
Amanda Moore of the Turtle Diaries seemed upset that she even had to cover this rally, let alone try to be objective.
The New American included a quote from Dennis Kucinich: “Our country used to lead the world in producing steel, cars and ships. Now we lead the world in making enemies.”
Rainer Shea refers to a time when “the US empire vanishes altogether” and to “a post-American world”.
Cara Castronuova is a co-founder of Citizens Against Political Persecution (CAPP) who lists the 10 demands of the rally. She ends her article with a quote from Philippians 4:13 (“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”).
The Patriotic Socialist Front thought the rally was a “fantastic success”.
Hopefully we’ll create peace in Ukraine as gracefully as we left Afghanistan. That was sarcasm.
The final words are from my friend and fellow Swarthmorean Carol Kennedy, who attended the rally.
“One thing I loved about it was that it brought together people who oppose unnecessary wars and the military-industrial complex despite their other political differences.”
Bit by bit and with considerable assistance from their advocates, illegal aliens are inching their way toward nationwide voting privileges. In 2018, San Francisco began to register illegal immigrants and other noncitizens over age 18 whose children attend K-12 public schools. The noncitizens could then vote in school board elections. Although San Francisco’s bill was struck down in August 2022, similar benefits have been granted in Chicago, as well as some cities in Maryland and Massachusetts.
Vermont, another example, approved noncitizen voting legislation in 2021, and overrode Republican Governor Phil Scott’s veto. Advocates’ arguments, whether in Vermont, San Francisco, Chicago or Maryland, are consistent. The illegal immigrants have students in the school district, and as community members, they may pay taxes. They claim that they therefore have a right to participate in the decisions that affect their children and their lives. The reality that the Vermont constitution expressly states that “every person… who is a citizen of the United States…” shall have the right to vote is, to the state legislature, insignificant.
The highest profile effort to grant noncitizens, including aliens, voting rights is playing out in sanctuary city Washington, D.C. Last fall, the City Council passed a bill that would allow the district’s approximately 42,000 voting age noncitizens the privilege to cast a ballot. The residency requirement was set at a mere 30 days, meaning that potentially anyone can vote, including foreign diplomats, visiting professors, au pairs and summer interns. The bill passed by a 12-1 margin. True to form, Councilmember Charles Allen said that the noncitizens “deserve a right to have a say in their government.”
Unlike the cases in Maryland, Illinois and Vermont, the Constitution grants Congress exclusive control over the district’s city council-passed laws. In other words, D.C. voting laws are valid only to the extent that Congress tolerates them. Showing the common sense that Congress is too often missing, on February 9, the House voted down the district’s proposal 260-162, with 42 Democrats joining Republicans.
Concerns about noncitizen voting are twofold. Specific to D.C., Muriel Bowser won the 2022 Democratic mayoral nomination by 11,000 votes. The Migration Policy Institute found that D.C.’s 2019 illegal alien population was about 24,000, more than enough to have altered the election’s results. Looking ahead and evaluating D.C. dysfunction, citizen voters might not want to elect Bowser to a fourth term; the district has no term limits. Violent and property crimes are up under Bowser, and 98 percent of U.S. cities are safer than D.C. Homelessness is so pervasive in D.C. that National Park Service officers and Washington, D.C.’s police department evicted dozens of people from the District’s largest homeless encampment. Despite the D.C. chaos, noncitizen votes could sway the election toward Bowser, or another similarly minded candidate.
The second and broader concern is that, as Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy said, “These elections can set the laws that cover the White House, Congress and even government agencies. If we set this precedent, other cities will follow, and faith in our elections will plummet.”
History proves McCarthy’s theory that once noncitizen and illegal alien rewards begin, turning back is tough. Consider that driver’s licenses and in-state university tuition, once reserved for citizens, are now readily available to illegal immigrants. Bank accounts, which once required Social Security numbers, can be obtained with a foreign national’s unexpired passport or the easy-to-acquire Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). Licenses, instate tuition for residents and banking relationships have been quietly incorporated into illegal immigrants’ welcome-to-America package.
The stakes in the House effort to preserve constitutional voting rights for citizens alone are high, and the consequences of letting them slip away are dire. The bill requires the Senate’s approval and President Biden’s signature. Since the administration’s goal is D.C. statehood, district-wide voting is a step in that direction.
The last of the Feb 7 special elections held no surprises, except for just how poorly the GOP had done in them. The 35th State House District required a special election after Austin Davis resigned to become the first African-American lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania.
Matthew Gergely earned a whopping 88.6 percent of the vote (3,237 votes) to Republican Donald Nevills , who earned only 11.4 percent% (424 votes). When he ran in the 2022 election, Nevills secured 33.8 percent of the vote.
Gergely served as McKeesport’s city administrator and finance director. He also served as a McKeesport Area School District official. His brother Marc previously served as the House Rep but resigned due to his connections to illegal gambling operations.
Matthew said he will fight for fair funding for the public schools. It should be noted that taxes for Mckeesport School District were raised repeatedly during his tenure as city administrator and finance director.
Nevills served 14 years in the US Navy. He’s been a small businessman in Pittsburgh, running a tattoo parlor, which he says closed due to covid restrictions.
After that happened, Nevills and his wife Paula opened Cotton Candy City in Clairton.
Don has served in many municipal positions, most recently on the Board of Directors of the Clairton Municipal Authority.
His externsive campaign web site lists 10 platform issues, including constitutional rights, covid mandates, infrastucture problems, and worker shortages. I suggest that you try to review this web site before he takes it down.
There are 14 towns in the 35th District, including Duquesne and McKeesport. All the former representatives have been Democrats, with two serving almost 50 years (1979-2017) — namely, Marc Gergeley and Thomas A. Michlovic.
The February 7th election was the last scheduled special election, until the next ones are scheduled under the new State House Speaker Democrat Joanna McClinton.
