News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Due to the continued hard economic conditions, Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, 100 S. Penn St., Clifton Heights, Pa. 19018 is having a Spring Food Collection for the needy through Sunday, March 29. 
Those wishing to donate any canned or boxed, non-perishable food items should bring them to the Church on any Sunday before or after the 11 a.m., English Divine Liturgy.
Please help if you can!
William Lawrence Sr Omnibit 3-5-15
Picasso burned his early works. He needed to keep his apartment warm.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tornado Tom Padula says the biggest storm of the season starts at midnight with the snow ending at 5 o’clock tomorrow afternoon, March 5. He says expect about 4 to 8 inches of accumulation with a possibility of 13 inches. Helping him this broadcast are Cyclone Sallie, Lizzie and Erin, Dr. Sanville and Joe the Dog.
Tom is a 9th grader at Unionville High School.
William Lawrence Sr. Omnibit 3-4-15
There are 101 billion dead people.
The purpose of this post is to give you an update on “Paycheck Protection” legislation.
At the end of my post is a story from Penn Live yesterday detailing the vote on this important reform in the PA State Senate.
An amendment was offered yesterday on the floor by Senator John Eichelberger to SB 501.
The amendment offered yesterday would have narrowed the restriction to only ban governments from deducting money that is used for political purposes while still allowing dues collection to support general union operations.
The PA State Senate had a tie vote of 24 to 24 which resulted in the amendment to SB 501 failing to pass.
It was disappointing but not a surprise that five southeast Republican Senators voted no to the amendment.
It was also not a surprise to me that Senator John Rafferty voted no on the amendment – in the ten months I have served in the PA State Senate I have found Senator Rafferty to be the most disingenuous member of the Republican Caucus.
To be honest and direct, I have watched Senator Rafferty repeatedly undermine our new leadership – Senator Rafferty is self-serving and badly wants to be Pennsylvania’s Attorney General.
Senator Dominic Pilleggi is another issue – since losing his leadership post he is a bitter person and will do anything to undermine the PA State Senate’s new leadership – the good news is that Senator Pilleggi is running as a judicial candidate for Common Pleas Court in Delaware County – the sooner that Senator Pileggi is gone from the PA State Senate the better for everyone.
I can assure you that our PA State Senate leadership and conservative members will continue to push to pass this important reform.
To achieve our many goals to move Pennsylvania forward it is critical that we elect additional conservative Republican members to the PA State Senate.
It is my personal goal to add a minimum of four additional conservative Republicans to the PA State Senate in 2016 so that we can advance the right agenda for Pennsylvania.
By Jan Murphy | jmurphy@pennlive.com The Patriot-News
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on March 02, 2015 at 7:05 PM, updated March 03, 2015 at 11:58 AM
http://www.pennlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/bill_restricting_union_dues_co.html
An attempt to pass a controversial amendment to a bill that would restrict union dues collection from state and school employees’ paychecks narrowly failed in the state Senate on Monday.
But most likely, we haven’t seen the last of this amendment to this so-called paycheck protection bill.
The Senate voted 24-24 to defeat the amendment. A short time later, it voted 29-19 to reconsider the amendment at a later time, keeping it alive.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair County, would have made it illegal for government to deduct union dues from state and school employees’ paychecks. The amendment offered on Monday narrowed that restriction to only ban governments from deducting money for unions that is used for political purposes while still allowing dues collection to support for general union operations.
“I think that legislation is not the answer.” Lt. Gov. Mike Stack
The amendment was crucial to winning the support of Republican Sen. Chuck McIlhinney of Bucks County, who indicated last week he would be a no vote without that change.
Every Republican vote the amendment could muster was needed to pass since Democrats voted as a block to oppose the bill along with five Republican senators from the southeastern corner of the state – Sens. John Rafferty of Montgomery County, Stewart Greenleaf of Montgomery County, Tom McGarrigle of Delaware County, Robert “Tommy” Tomlinson of Bucks County, and Dominic Pileggi of Delaware County.
When the vote on the amendment ended in a 24-24 tie, Lt. Gov. Mike Stack cast a vote against the proposal although Senate staff said later that the tie vote had already ensured its defeat.
Afterward, Stack seemed pleased he had the chance to cast a vote against this particular amendment, even though it turns out it wasn’t necessary.
“I just think it’s anti-labor and it’s designed to take away the ability of unions to organize and I’m one of those people who believe we have a middle class here in Pennsylvania because of the worker unions,” he said. “They are not perfect and no organization is perfect but I think that legislation is not the answer.”
*This story was updated to reflect the fact that the tie vote on the amendment resulted in its defeat and Lt. Gov. Mike Stack’s vote didn’t break the tie.