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fortuneandglory:

Tom Corbett, governor of Pennsylvania, announced today that he will once again be pushing forward his agenda aimed at hindering the lower and middle class citizens of his state.

It is class warfare.

I’m not being provocative. That’s not an extreme statement used by the left to ignite fear as…

Tom Corbett is the absolute worst.

Anything is appreciated. Feel free to write something in my ask box, too. Or if you have a LOT to say, then I could always give you my email.

Sorry if this is a DUMB question. Thanks in advance!

thenewhotness:

thatmeganswagger:

you should totally head over to SaveStudentLoans.com and check out and sign the petition to Governor Corbett.

Also, just so we’re all on the same page, Corbett is a total jagoff.

Reblogging this from someone who reblogged my roommate and THIS IS IMPORTANT.

loladelphia:

What I’m about to speak of has been happening in Philadelphia for many years now, and with these tough economic times it is likely happening in other cities too. Everything I write is relative to Philadelphia because it is what I know and what I’m associated with.

I took a drive down Cecil B. Moore Avenue in North Philadelphia this morning, past Temple University. Once you get past 17th and Cecil B Moore the neighborhood gets a little sketchy. By the time you get to Ridge Avenue and Cecil B Moore, things definitely go from bad to worse. As I’m driving, I see a library not open, a little further down on my travels at 26th and Jefferson I see a recreation center with no one at it, and as I get to 28th and Girard I see three kids standing on the corner spitting on cars. Spitting on cars on a day where it’s already drizzling slightly seems kind of silly, but it got me to thinking about the kind of society that the city of Philadelphia is creating for the citizens of tomorrow.

We’re in a tough economic situation right now. Everyone is, and I understand that there are costs that have to be cut and difficult sacrifices to be made. However, the policymakers in Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania need to seriously consider what impact this is having on our kids. By cutting the hours of libraries and recreation centers, as well as closing schools, laying off teachers, and cutting educational funding, we are setting our children up for one thing: failure. Children in the urban environment are different from kids in rural or suburban settings in that being a child in the city poses many more difficult challenges to overcome. Because of poor tax spending among other things, often it is these kids that need the most help that receive the least.

When Governor Corbett unleashed his “Doomsday Budget”, he made an already dire situation in Philadelphia much worse. The irony of Corbett’s budget was that he cut funding for schools, while increasing funding to prisons. Prisons are a business that can generate some money for the state, where as schools aren’t, but the whole idea of using money this way is contradictory, especially in Philadelphia. Our public schools currently possess a 52% dropout rate, they’re already critically understaffed and over-populated, many kids avoid school completely because of violence in their neighborhood or at the school itself, while there are some bad teachers out there, there are also many more dedicated and caring teachers who are unable to stimulate the minds of an inpatient classroom of juveniles through media technology because the school just simply cannot afford it. Should the child be lucky enough to attend a private or charter school, there are still outside influences such as kids from the neighborhood that can make life difficult for parents. With these factors to consider, is it any surprise that Philadelphia’s prison system is overpopulated? Our government and our policies are set up for failure, pretty much guaranteeing a spot in the penal system. 

How is a child in the urban environment supposed to succeed when he/she believes that no one truly cares about what they do? There’s a reason why kids in suburban public high schools like Central Bucks East and Lower Merion achieve more success, because the suburbs were never given up on. When big business started moving all their offices to the suburbs, jobs and tax dollars left the city. Kids at Lower Merion High School receive school issued laptops, listen to a great jazz band play at school events, and eat good school lunches. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, kids are lucky if their school has working computers, they have hardly any after-school activities to keep them off the streets, and occasionally they are given expired milk and lunches that don’t have to be heated up. These suburban schools already have enough money coming into them from property taxes, so why can’t some of that money go towards helping out our city schools?

While I don’t condone the recent violent teen mobs in Philadelphia, the underlying aspect of them is relevant. Philadelphia’s kids are bored, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. Resorting to violence is never the answer, but many of these kids have been set up for failure their whole lives. Many come from broken families, attend schools where not much learning takes place, they’re exposed to violence, rampant drug use and poverty, and when they look to the people in charge on the local and state level for help, they shake their head and indirectly tell them they’re a lost cause and not worth the time.

As kids in the suburbs spend their high school years looking forward to prom, a senior trip, and attending college, many kids in Philadelphia are hoping just to make it to their senior year of high school without dropping out. As kids in the suburbs are learning how to build spreadsheets and Power Points while taking driver’s ed courses at night, kids in the city are still relying on SEPTA to take them to a job somewhere far from their neighborhood so they can help support their family and not learning any skills needed to be competitive in this tough job market. Politicians wonder why kids turn to dealing drugs as a source of income and throw around indirect racist terminology to describe the situation when really it’s not that difficult to understand. Why work a difficult, low-paying job for 50 hours a week and get treated like crap when drug-dealing will net lots more money for less work and be respected by many in the neighborhood who do the same thing? Drugs and drug-dealing often lead to more serious and violent crimes, but this is the society we are sending our kids into: a society where making a quick buck doing something dangerous and illegal is more lucrative and respected than working hard and staying in school.

As we look to the future, things appear bleak. It’s hard to say where things go because every time we hit rock bottom, we soon find out there is much further down to go. I give credit to the sports teams in Philadelphia for being friendly to the city’s youth building playgrounds, giving free eye-exams, etc., but those are only a temporary fix to a much deeper, more serious issue. The birth to prison pipeline that is currently in place among urban youth is expanding, and unless a solution is found to get money back into the schools and into city services that benefit the kids, we are just going to see our beloved Philadelphia experience more crime and more poverty for many years to come.

Questions? Comments?

Well, gee, thank YOU United States’ Congress.

I didn’t need that money or anything.

• This weekend I’ll be involved with Insomnia Theater once again. It’ll probably be a smaller group working on the show, but lovely all the same. I’m not sure if I’ll be writing or directing but either way, it’s gonna be awesome.
• Turned in the W-9 form to get the $100 I won from this beauty (and grit.)
• In a few weeks I’ll be acting in a couple of skits from the SNL-ish show, Temple Smash. They (obviously) film it and if I don’t hate how I look on camera, I’ll share that with more of the internet.
• Today I witnessed a rally of city unions and professional educators outside of Liacouras Center on N. Broad by campus. It was inspiring to listen to the some of the speakers and see all those workers demonstrate together chanting, “We are one!” to fight the budget cuts among education in Philadelphia. One sign especially hit home: “Tax dollars are for education! Not for open ended contracts, special interests, consultants.”
• April 29th I’ll get to watch que[e]ry again for the Equality Forum summit! Anyone in the Philly area should DEFINITELY go see it. The show is fantastic, and 20+ students from Temple University put it together, including some amigos of mine.
• An updated curriculum for a more focused and new Communications Studies major at Temple has just been announced. You guys……I think I found my major. There’s a Policy, Regulation and Advocacy track that sounds a-m-a-z-i-n-g to me. It’s like the kind of Communications/Poli-sci cross that I’ve been trying to figure out. I think I might still try to minor or double major in Political Science. We shall see! Oh, and the classes I’ve been taking actually count toward this major already so it’s not like I completely wasted the last semester.
• THE WEATHER IS BEAUTIFUL AND EVERYTHING IS STARTING TO FEEL BETTER AND LESS STRESSFUL, THANK MOTHER NATURE. (Why must it rain tomorrow?)