The entire front page is an editorial. It stands up for the thousands of Penn State alumni and supporters who live in Central Pennsylvania. It stands up for the rule of law. And it stands up for children who are the victims of sexual crimes.

To the editorial board of the Patriot-News, bravo.

Highlight sentences:

The most famous coach in college football history must be held to a higher standard.

…

A man who has spoken with such affection for 46 years about “his kids” failed real kids when they needed him most.

…

It might always be honor with an asterisk, admiration with a shake of the head. Joe will have to live with that.

The Patriot-News wasn’t alone. The newspapers of Central Pennsylvania stepped up today. They put their communities, and their responsibilities to them, first. They collectively mounted the kind of pressure necessary to oust an iconic figure who long ago aged past his ability to control his organization, his staff, and his team.

The York Daily Record reminds us all that whenever anyone even suspects that a child is being abused, “…the first call, the most important call, must be to the authorities.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer wants Paterno to step down at the end of this season, too, saying his “oft-discussed retirement would be timelier than ever – even though leaving amid this scandal will provide a sad coda to an otherwise stellar career for the man who, until now, served as the reassuring public face of Penn State.”

The Williamsport Sun-Gazette underscores that no one did the right thing: “It’s clear no one at the university acted aggressively enough as they were being informed of these allegations. There was one call to be made when they were informed. Immediately. To state police.”

The Scranton Times-Tribune echoed the point that “Penn State’s obligation hardly ends with the legal process.”

There are a couple exceptions to this set of newspapers who stepped up and addressed our state’s highest and mightiest public university, though—as of this writing, there’s not a peep about PSU amongst the editorials in the Lancaster or Reading newspapers.

If you so much as suspect that a Pennsylvania child is being abused, call ChildLine at 800-932-0313.

More about Penn State football on LancasterPaBlog.com:
In the Middle of College Football Season, Injustices of the NCAA Revealed

• The other week I spent a buck something on a fountain soda at a Turkey Hill Minit Market. The plastic cup I chose sported the Penn State Nittany Lion logo and the football team’s season schedule. From that purchase, a few cents went to Penn State University in the way of a licensing fee.
• Yesterday I watched the Penn State vs. Temple football game on ESPN 3, via XBox LIVE at my house and then on cable at a friend’s house. I watched most of the commercials. ESPN paid the NCAA big money for the right to broadcast that game. Corporations, in turn, paid big money to target me with those advertisements.

In the end, none of that money went to the people who actually earned it—the athletes on the field who make the very idea of Penn State football so exciting, and the event of a Penn State football game so much fun.

There is no doubt in my mind that Lancaster County residents easily put more than $1 million in the coffers of Penn State University and the NCAA each year. Factor in Pitt, Temple, Villanova, and the other Division 1 schools in Pennsylvania, and that number climbs. Factor in schools outside of Pennsylvania (there’s more than one Notre Dame fan in Lancaster County), and the number becomes absurd.

Stop for a second and take a guess—how much profit does Penn State football generate each year? Several hundred thousand? A couple million? Try tens of millions—“in between $40 million and $80 million in profits a year,” as reported in a scathing indictment of the NCAA and participating universities in the current issue of The Atlantic.

The article is compelling reading, long and full of detail and varying perspectives. It makes one conclusion abundantly clear, though: Given where college sports are today, the ideal of the amateur student-athlete is in many cases fairy tale mumbo-jumbo used to justify universities’ practice of treating adults (college students who are mostly black and mostly poor) as free labor to generate billions of dollars of revenue annually.

Here are several highlights from the article.

Three independent commissions have been assembled to review problems within the NCAA structure and make recommendations to the organization and its member schools. At one of the hearings, there was testimony from a man who has spent the last few decades negotiating hugely profitable deals between college athletics departments and multinational corporations. Here’s how part of the exchange went down:

“Why,” asked Bryce Jordan, the president emeritus of Penn State, “should a university be an advertising medium for your industry?”

[Sonny] Vaccaro did not blink. “They shouldn’t, sir,” he replied. “You sold your souls, and you’re going to continue selling them. You can be very moral and righteous in asking me that question, sir,” Vaccaro added with irrepressible good cheer, “but there’s not one of you in this room that’s going to turn down any of our money. You’re going to take it. I can only offer it.”

William Friday, a former president of North Carolina’s university system, still winces at the memory. “Boy, the silence that fell in that room,” he recalled recently. “I never will forget it.”

When we think of scandal in college athletics, we think of scandals involving the players (or their parents) taking payments that are against the rules. Consider this, though:

For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—“amateurism” and the “student-athlete”—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes. The tragedy at the heart of college sports is not that some college athletes are getting paid, but that more of them are not.

NCAA schools refuse to recognize their athletes as employees, but why do we let them fool us? Who makes more money for the universities—student workers in the library, or athletes on the field? Are the athletes volunteers? (Not in Division 1 schools, where scholarships are an expectation.) Do the athletes get to choose where and when to work, what to wear, and how to perform their tasks, as independent contractors do? (Of course not.) And yet by refusing to recognize athletes as employees, schools and the NCAA avoid workers comp claims when one of them is permanently injured on the field. Take an example:

Using the “student-athlete” defense, colleges have compiled a string of victories in liability cases. On the afternoon of October 26, 1974, the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs were playing the Alabama Crimson Tide in Birmingham, Alabama. Kent Waldrep, a TCU running back, carried the ball on a “Red Right 28” sweep toward the Crimson Tide’s sideline, where he was met by a swarm of tacklers. When Waldrep regained consciousness, Bear Bryant, the storied Crimson Tide coach, was standing over his hospital bed. “It was like talking to God, if you’re a young football player,” Waldrep recalled.

Waldrep was paralyzed: he had lost all movement and feeling below his neck. After nine months of paying his medical bills, Texas Christian refused to pay any more, so the Waldrep family coped for years on dwindling charity.

Through the 1990s, from his wheelchair, Waldrep pressed a lawsuit for workers’ compensation. (He also, through heroic rehabilitation efforts, recovered feeling in his arms, and eventually learned to drive a specially rigged van. “I can brush my teeth,” he told me last year, “but I still need help to bathe and dress.”) His attorneys haggled with TCU and the state worker-compensation fund over what constituted employment. Clearly, TCU had provided football players with equipment for the job, as a typical employer would—but did the university pay wages, withhold income taxes on his financial aid, or control work conditions and performance? The appeals court finally rejected Waldrep’s claim in June of 2000, ruling that he was not an employee because he had not paid taxes on financial aid that he could have kept even if he quit football. (Waldrep told me school officials “said they recruited me as a student, not an athlete,” which he says was absurd.)

It’s not just physical injuries we’re talking about. The very idea that athletic scholarships are a way for young adults to pay for college has only a flimsy basis in reality.

“When you dream about playing in college,” Joseph Agnew told me not long ago, “you don’t ever think about being in a lawsuit.” Agnew, a student at Rice University in Houston, had been cut from the football team and had his scholarship revoked by Rice before his senior year, meaning that he faced at least $35,000 in tuition and other bills if he wanted to complete his degree in sociology. … Agnew was struck by … scholarship data on players from top Division I basketball teams, which showed that 22 percent were not renewed from 2008 to 2009—the same fate he had suffered. … The NCAA contended that an athletic scholarship was a “merit award” that should be reviewed annually, presumably because the degree of “merit” could change. … The one-year rule effectively allows colleges to cut underperforming “student-athletes,” just as pro sports teams cut their players. “Plenty of them don’t stay in school,” said one of Agnew’s lawyers, Stuart Paynter. “They’re just gone. You might as well shoot them in the head.” … [Agnew's story makes] a sham of the NCAA’s claim that its highest priority is protecting education.

Thankfully, there are students and alumni beginning to seriously stand up for themselves, and the NCAA is facing large threats in the courtroom and from its member schools.

Naturally, as they have become more of a profit center for the NCAA, some of the vaunted “student-athletes” have begun to clamor that they deserve a share of those profits. You “see everybody getting richer and richer,” Desmond Howard, who won the 1991 Heisman Trophy while playing for the Michigan Wolverines, told USA Today recently. “And you walk around and you can’t put gas in your car? You can’t even fly home to see your parents?”

When you look at the rules and how they are being applied, it’s ridiculous. Two examples:

At the start of the 2010 football season, A. J. Green, a wide receiver at Georgia, confessed that he’d sold his own jersey from the Independence Bowl the year before, to raise cash for a spring-break vacation. The NCAA sentenced Green to a four-game suspension for violating his amateur status with the illicit profit generated by selling the shirt off his own back. While he served the suspension, the Georgia Bulldogs store continued legally selling replicas of Green’s No. 8 jersey for $39.95 and up.

A different NCAA committee promulgated a rule banning symbols and messages in players’ eyeblack—reportedly aimed at Pryor’s controversial gesture of support for the pro quarterback Michael Vick, and at Bible verses inscribed in the eyeblack of the former Florida quarterback Tim Tebow.

The moral logic is hard to fathom: the NCAA bans personal messages on the bodies of the players, and penalizes players for trading their celebrity status for discounted tattoos—but it codifies precisely how and where commercial insignia from multinational corporations can be displayed on college players, for the financial benefit of the colleges. Last season, while the NCAA investigated him and his father for the recruiting fees they’d allegedly sought, Cam Newton compliantly wore at least 15 corporate logos—one on his jersey, four on his helmet visor, one on each wristband, one on his pants, six on his shoes, and one on the headband he wears under his helmet—as part of Auburn’s $10.6 million deal with Under Armour.

Scandal, corruption, injustice… it’s all here. And warm-and-fuzzy sentiment hardens us to it.

Related reading: Your Study Guide To The Atlantic’s Massive, Withering Story About The Wretchedness Of The NCAA on Deadspin

Still, incredible things are happening in the Middle East, and here we are, most of us unable to leave Lancaster to hang out in Egypt for a while. It looks as if I may have to be content acting locally after all, even as my thoughts are elsewhere.

So where should our minds be at this historic moment? How should we be acting in response? Here are my initial thoughts.

This is something to get excited about, not to fear

The popular uprisings in the Middle East are massively important and of lasting significance. In Egypt, the military (which is in control until elections are held, months from now) will be unable to wrest real power from the people. The people are too energized, informed, and coordinated. So far, the indications are that the military realizes this. They’ve already convened a panel to rewrite the constitution.

Across the entire region, the zeitgeist has changed radically. Tunisia inspired Egypt, which is inspiring Yemen and Bahrain. Iranian supporters of the popular opposition in Tunsia and Egypt gathered yesterday to celebrate those countries’ victories, but when as many as 350,000 people turned out, they couldn’t help but revive their aspirations for a free Iran.

We need to get on “the right side of history,” as many are saying. Here’s what we mean by that: People are meant to be free. Each of us is born with inherent worth and rights. Totalitarian rule, communism, and fascism ignore that worth and deny those rights. Self-governance is the only viable option for guarding those rights and making room for all individuals, families, and communities to reach their full potential. When the natural order of things is constantly steering history toward freedom and democracy, oppression is an uphill battle, always doomed to eventually fail.

Whatever Glenn Beck might say, the new societies we’re watching emerge aren’t some kind of Islamist caliphate. Instead, they’re secular democracies. As reported in the New York Times:

The Muslim Brotherhood, the outlawed Islamist movement that until 18 days ago was considered Egypt’s only viable opposition, said it was merely a supporting player in the revolt.

“We participated with everyone else and did not lead this or raise Islamic slogans so that it can be the revolution of everyone,” said Mohamed Saad el-Katatni, a spokesman for the Brotherhood. “This is a revolution for all Egyptians; there is no room for a single group’s slogans, not the Brotherhood’s or anybody else.”

The Brotherhood, which was slow to follow the lead of its own youth wing into the streets, has said it will not field a candidate for president or seek a parliamentary majority in the expected elections.

The Muslim Brotherhood will be a political party, not a ruling oligarchy.

I’m with Tom Friedman (who has been in Cairo throughout the events) in being convinced that Islamism is not the future, but rather something that has now been toppled in Egypt:

The message coming out of Cairo will be: We tried Nasserism; we tried Islamism; and now we’re trying democracy. But not democracy imported from Britain or delivered by America — democracy conceived, gestated and born in Tahrir Square.

Even the very conservative Weekly Standard declares, “Fears of a Muslim Brotherhood Takeover are Overblown”:

The chance that Islamists will capture the Arab uprisings is slim unless anti-democratic, oil rich Arab dynasties like the Saudi and other Gulf monarchs, or their Iranian rivals, are allowed to pour billions of dollars into the coffers of their respective proxies, as they did in Gaza, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The West can prevent this from happening, but even if it does happen, whoever seizes power in the countries in revolt will be forced to remember the fate of the ousted rulers they replaced.

On the question of whether we’re looking at lasting change, my favorite insight so far comes in the form of a letter to the editor of the New York Times:

To the Editor:

Judging by the images of Egyptians cleaning up after their uprising, I think it’s fair to conclude that they are ready for democracy.

Glenn Alan Cheney
Hanover, Conn., Feb. 13, 2011

Technology is a huge piece of what’s going on

My belief that we’re looking at permanent change in the Middle East is due in large part to my understanding of technology.

To understand modern life, it’s requisite to grasp the concept that technology is not morally neutral. Different technologies are predisposed to certain uses. Broadcast television is predisposed to addressing the least common denominator—on TV, success is easier and greater if you’re dumbing things down than if you’re trying to raise the level of intelligent discourse. Automobiles are predisposed to increasing individualism and isolation—with a car, you’re far more independent and can live further from the people who know you.

In this way, technology in the form of television and automobiles is not neutral. It’s not just “what we make of it,” because different technologies lend themselves to certain uses.

In the same way, the Internet and mobile networks, along with the social technologies that are built on them, are not simply “whatever people make of them.” Saying that it’s up to people to decide whether or not they’ll use Facebook and Twitter to  organize revolutions is like saying it’s up to people to decide whether or not they’ll use a hammer to drive in nails. Facilitating discourse is what social techologies want to do, in the same way that driving nails is what hammers want to do.

Facebook, Twitter, e-mail groups, and text messaging systems want to be used to facilitate discourse among empowered citizens. The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and Iran have a lot to talk about—specifically, decades of frustrations and aspirations they’ve been unable to express or pursue.

I dare you: arm an entire nation with hammers and try to keep them from hammering stuff. Arm an entire nation with social technologies and try to keep them from talking about freedom, organizing protests, and establishing self-governance. Just try.

The imperiled despots in the Middle East are rushing to block these networks and communication platforms. That tactic won’t work—people will be infuriated, and a complete shutoff is impossible.

The U.S. may the greatest threat to the success of these democratic revolutions

Again, Tom Friedman:

In some ways, President Barack Obama did the Egyptian revolution a great favor by never fully endorsing it and never even getting his act together for how to deal with it. This meant in the end that Egyptians know they did this for themselves by themselves – with nothing but their own willpower, unity and creativity.

The United States’ Middle East policy has, for generations, been preoccupied with “stability” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Yemen, etc. In The American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias writes:

The first problem with the U.S.’ foreign-policy approach with these states is that you can’t just count on unpopular regimes staying in power forever. And the second problem is that the longer the U.S. government stays in bed with kleptocrats, the more severe popular discontent against the United States becomes. It’s an untenable and counterproductive posture, and obviously so.

So what should our foreign policy be? I think there’s only one real option right now: Our role is to stay out of these countries’ business except when it comes to helping citizens establish democratic governments that we will acknowledge as legitimate and sovereign.

That’s crudely put, I know. We’ll never completely stay out of anyone’s business, because the business of all Middle East nations is intimately tied to our business. But still, it’s the essence that’s important. Egypt doesn’t need our help toppling an oppressive regime. They need our help with matters of diplomacy. We can help facilitate the process by which they will form their own government. We have the muscle to keep would-be despots at bay—telling Egypt’s military to back off, if it comes to that. We also have the expertise and third-party standpoint necessary to aid diverse groups as they create a new government, whatever help they may need. And then, at the end, we can lead the world in recognizing the new Egypt and other new democracies as sovereign nation-states.

The other thing we can do? Help to spread unhindered access to the Internet and to mobile networks in these countries. The only agenda we would be pursuing is empowering people to gather information and share it freely.

So what we can do in Lancaster?

I’m not entirely sure, but here’s what’s on my list right now:

• Get inspired to fight for our own democracy, which is in peril (see Bob Herbert’s column on this subject)
• Encourage elected officials to pursue a sensible policy that favors the people of the Middle East above all else
• Follow the evolving story intelligently, and let the people of the Middle East know they have the support of the American people
• Learn Arabic

How do you think we should be reacting to the news from the Middle East? What’s the appropriate response from our community here in the U.S.?

What’s this paywall, and who will it affect? It’s a $20/year charge to out-of-towners who read Lancaster obituaries like they’re going out of style.

As reported by Bill Mitchell of the Pointer Institute:

Monday morning, the website for a midsized paper in southeastern Pennsylvania became the first to go public with the paid content system of Journalism Online, the startup engineered by Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and others.

LancasterOnline, which serves the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, began informing people who live outside Lancaster County and read its online obituary listings that visiting the obits page will cost $1.99 a month after they’ve viewed seven pages each month. Annual subscriptions cost $19.99.

Screenshot of the notice all obituary readers now see when they visit LancasterOnline.com

Media analysts seem to think this is one of the most ridiculous ideas they’ve heard when it comes to online revenue models. For instance, Mark Potts writes:

Are they serious? Are there really that many people people visiting the Lancaster site to read obits? Really?

The folks in Lancaster claim to have done the math that proves there’s a substantial out of town audience for obits, though it’s based on a lot of guesswork (and probably proves, once again, that journalists really aren’t that good at math). Notably, Lancaster seems to base its projections on traffic numbers from the not-so-reliable Google Analytics rather than on data from the site’s internal logs, which would be much more precise. That seems odd.

According to Mitchell’s story, LancasterOnline estimates that 100,000 out-of-market visitors to the site read obits each year. And the site reckons that more than 10 percent of them do it—yes, read obits—several times a week. Okaaaay. Taking the math further, Lancaster estimates that nearly 90,000 visitors to the site read the obits at least once a week, and 17,692 visitors read the obits four times a week.

These numbers are preposterous. Remember, this is little LancasterOnline, not NewYorkTimes.com or WashingtonPost.com. I find it hard to believe that Lancaster has that sort of constant, repeat traffic to its obits—or else it’s got an audience with a truly obsessive fascination with grazing news about local deaths.

He’s joined by Steve Buttry, who writes:

If I were seeking to kill off newspapers (I’m not), I would try to persuade them to charge people to read obituaries online. Apparently that’s the plan of Journalism Online, a profiteer seeking to cash in not only on newspapers’ death wish but on the deaths of their readers.

Journalism Online’s sucker in this fantasy-based paywall experiment is the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era (oh, the irony in that name; I will call it the Old Era for purposes of this blog).

David Brauer joins in:

Laugh if you want — and I’ll admit, I’m tittering — but any small-town newspaper publisher will tell you obits are a pretty big deal for readers. In this case, LancasterOnline is making money coming and going (if you’ll pardon the pun): they charge survivors to place death notices, and now they’ll charge out-of-towners to read them.

(When the younger generations start dying, we’ll just inform everyone via social networks.)

This sure sounds like a low-revenue road test to me, but Lancaster Online’s editor thinks they can squeeze $100,000 out of the oldster demographic that keeps up regularly with far-flung deaths.

All I have to say is that the people who came up with this scheme are nothing like the cultural creatives who are engineering Lancaster’s future. This is preservationist, reactionary, and, I suspect, based on data that is (excuse the pun) dead wrong.

Just seventeen years ago, in 1993, a majority of U.S. citizens opposed gays serving in the military, Mark Shields recently pointed out in his recent appearance on the PBS NewsHour. Today, there is a three-to-one margin supporting gays openly serving—75% of Americans. Among women, the support is 80%.

Certainly that kind of sea change in America and in our cultural thought is gigantic and something we don’t often see. It’s positive and profound.

Much of the credit goes to the small but very determined efforts of a lot of individuals and groups on the local and personal level. The courage of many individuals who do not stay in the closet but instead come out and say who they are and that they have just as many rights as any other person does has earned the respect of their neighbors. Also groups like Lancaster Pride and their annual festivals have made an impact by going far beyond saying, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” have instead sent a message of unity and love and acceptance. Their message has been that it’s important that we learn to live and work together and not just tolerate each other but love each other and respect each other.

I hope that some of us straights, including straight Christians like me, have had some small and humble role in this shift. I was, for instance, deeply touched by the scenes of an Evangelical Christian man confessing the sins of the church to gay men and women at a pride festival in the excellent documentary Lord, Deliver Us From Your Followers.

This kind of cultural change does not come easily and is not to be taken lightly. The cultural impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in the 1950s to overturn the segregation of public schools was gigantic by simply allowing and in fact forcing children to interact with one another. Just as the military has been a force in a similar way, creating brothers out of blacks and whites who served together, I think we’ll see a similar impact of gays and straights who serve together, and see a breakdown of this idea that manliness and homosexuality are opposing forces.

One Lancaster resident whose efforts on this front I would like to single out and celebrate is Mark Stoner, who was recently recognized in the Central Penn Business Journal‘s twenty-fifth anniversary issue as one of the most influential minorities from the midstate from the past twenty-five years.

Digging for fossil fuel is never safe. It’s never safe for humans, and it’s never safe for the wild areas in which we humans allow the digging. The inconceivably massive oil spill we are witnessing on the Gulf Coast should remind us of that. BP, world champion of corporate green-washing, is responsible.

The corporations who dig up fossil fuel need to be watched closely by competent regulators. Regulation costs money. The corporations that make money by digging up fossil fuel should cover the cost of the outside regulators.

That’s why I voted a strong “yes” in the Central Penn Business Journal’s current Question of the Week, “Should Pennsylvania impose taxes on drilling in Marcellus Shale?”

It’s never clean. It’s never safe. It’s always risky.

Pennsylvania needs regulators to protect the most basic interests of society from sloppiness of the corporations that dig up the fossil fuel here in our state. We should mandate the corporations to foot the bill for those regulators themselves.

I agree with Emanuel. Looking at the economy as it stands (and is forecasted to play out), it’s hard not to.

The problem is that on the whole, senior managers of established businesses do not like big, serious changes. Stability and predictability is almost invariably in their best interest. When they do get behind big, serious changes, it is often because the change will lead to more stability and predictability.

I would like to suggest two things for the consideration of my fellow Lancaster County citizens:

1. Our county’s economy does indeed need some major changes, and
2. Allowing unions to form through a “card check” system may be a good such change.

Yes, Lancaster is doing better than many other areas of the country. Forbes named the county one of the ten best places to weather out the recession, and then Kiplinger’s said our city is one of the nation’s  “six real estate safe havens.”

For a long time, a remarkably low unemployment rate in the county has, to an extent, offset concerns that median household income is just as remarkably low. A lot of people aren’t working for much, but hey, at least they’re working. That has now changed. Even our unemployment numbers are beginning to rot: in October unemployment shot up to 4.7% in the county, meaning we have 12,800 people actively but unsuccessfully looking for work. That’s more than the entire population of Elizabethtown.

We need to change directions. This state of affairs cannot continue. Unions may not the the idea change agents, but at least they are change agents. Unions of middle-class workers have given us enhanced social security, medicare, and a minimum wage. Unions make sure workers can take care of themselves and their families, and that the people who produce gains in productivity receive the rewards of productivity. Importantly, middle- and working-class union members spend their income.

Unions are not that big of a deal

We all too often make a goblin out of unionization. Right now no more than twelve percent of American workers are in unions (those workers include Lancaster County educators, and local employees of Armstrong, Kellogg, car shops, construction companies, manufacturing plants, and service firms).  That twelve percent is down from a historic high of thirty-three percent. Not exactly a cause for alarm today.

What’s more, the number of unionized workers sits at twelve percent today in significant part due to illegal practices by employers. In 1969, there were one thousand infractions of the laws protecting the formation of unions. In 2005, that number was more than thirty thousand.

Ben Eisler makes a big deal of this on his blog at The New Republic. He suggests that one solution is to increase the penalties for these crimes and ramp up enforcement, which is currently lax. But, he says, the cheaper solution is the so-called card check.

The idea is this: Right now workers have to tell their company’s senior managers if they are going to try to form a union. It’s like having to announce, “Hey! We’ve been trying to work with you to get a fair shake here, and you’re not giving it to us or listening to our input on how our company can do better. We’re going to try to start a union! You’d better get moving if you want to stop us!” Under the card-check system being worked on in the U.S. Senate,  employees can sign a legal document (a “card”) to indicate that they want to form a union. If a majority of employees sign it, the union is considered a legal entity that the employer has to work with.

Imagine it like this: If we’re in a company of one thousand employees, there may easily be six hundred or more of us who think that our bosses are mismanaging things. Their leadership skills are wanting, they don’t listen to input from those of us on the ground, and they don’t share profits in a fair way. We all want to address it with the directors, but we don’t have any ability to insist on even two of us meeting with them at the same time. They can say, “Sure, we want to hear from you, but we want to meet with you six-on-one. And if we don’t like what you have to say, we reserve the right to let you go.”

There is a lot of baggage that goes along with unionization today, but at their hear the only thing that unions inherently do is allow for employees to have a collective voice in discussions with upper management.  Employees today fin it nearly impossible to form new unions. (Employees at Wal-Mart know first-hand the most agreesive anti-unions efforts found inside any company.) There are a number of decent ideas of how to remedy this situation, but allowing employees to band together into an official group by signing a petition is the least expensive and most efficient.

Best of all, it is middle- and working-class people who, increasinlgy, have the least to lose when the economy is already bad. That means we are willing to take risks and push our companies to take risks. I think we ought to consider giving those change agents just a little bit of assistance, for the sake of our economy.

From the press release: “Arts and culture non-profit organizations play a significant economic development role in Lancaster County, contributing $28 million to the community and creating 800 full time jobs. The Community Foundation is committed to bolstering the economic impact of arts organizations and arts-related businesses by encouraging their sustainability and growth.”

2008 COMPETITIVE GRANT AWARD RECIPIENTS

• Water Street Rescue Mission – $27,000
  To create a Client Management Database, which will enhance homeless data collection for Lancaster County. Funding provided by the Margaret R. Eppihimer Fund.
  I have no doubt that we are going to see nonprofits evolving greater capacity as “think tanks.” In a knowledge economy, the collection and intelligent interpretation of information will become both possible and necessary to improve services and to achieve community goals. People solving problems need information and good ideas.
• Lancaster Investment in a Vibrant Economy (L.I.V.E.) – $27,104
  To help organizations implement environmentally preferable practices through The Green Facilities Partnership between LIVE Green, the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce and Green Seal Inc. Funding provided by the Lancaster Environmental Fund.
  We’re all interested to see to what degree businesses de-prioritize greening their operations, given the current economic climate. Many are already putting short-term survival over solving longer-term problems.
• Lancaster Symphony Orchestra – $22,000
  For the Music Discovery Experience in the City of Lancaster. The program includes 3 performances at McCaskey High School, 20 instrument petting zoos, and the Symphony’s instrument loan program in the fall. Funding provided by the Sam & Verda Taylor Fund for the Performing Arts.
  I will be watching this program with interest. When funds are limited for education and the arts, I wonder what is a better approach—a “shotgun” attempt to expose lots of kids in a shallow way, or a highly-focused attempt to give talented kids a huge boost (e.g., sponsoring intense private lessons).
• Fulton Opera House Foundation – $11,600
  Will support and expand the theatre’s Audio Described, American Sign Language (ASL) Interpreted, and Spanish Interpreted performance programs. Funding provided by the Sam & Verda Taylor Fund for the Performing Arts.
  One question is, will this actually help people, or just make Fulton patrons feel better about themselves?
• SouthEast Lancaster Health Services – $33,890
  SELHS’ Healthy Start Program is designed to improve children’s health from age 0-5 through a comprehensive approach including prenatal care, parent/child education and pediatric care. Funding provided by the Better Lancaster Fund.
  From everything I hear, SELHS sounds like one of the best charitable operations going in the county.

MANAGEMENT & ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT GRANTS

• Demuth Foundation & Museum – $20,000
  To implement new graphic and web identities to align the museum’s public image with its mission and programs, and generate local and national interest, membership, and sustainability.
  It’s unfortunate that while this museum is important, it’s not great. It should be great. I wonder if projected-image enhancement is the best use of $20,000.
• Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse – $20,000
  To bring expert guidance to their current transformation from a program-focused to a community and relationship focused organization.
  I like the sound of that.
• Lancaster Day Care Center – $14,790
  To hire a consultant to prepare a comprehensive Strategic Plan. Critical issues to be addressed include a plan for succession, facility improvements and fundraising analysis.
  I’d much rather see funds going to training women who already provide informal child care, so they can run legitimate, safe child care operations.
• Southern End Community Association – $20,000
  To hire a professional consultant to develop a new strategic plan. This will give the agency a redirected focus and strengthen its ability to better serve the community.
  This is only one of six grants that were given to help organizations with strategic plans. The Obama campaign didn’t have a strategic plan, and did not emphasize formal strategy. I think we’re going to see “strategic planning” go out of vogue, and I say good riddance.
• Lancaster County Conservancy – $20,000
  To conduct a feasibility study for new headquarters integrated with an innovative Environmental Center on an urban forest nature preserve.
  Sounds cool to me.

BUILDING COMMUNITY THROUGH THE ARTS AWARD RECIPIENTS

• Franklin & Marshall College – $249,992
  To create “Poetry Paths” across Lancaster City to introduce poetry by eminent and local writers into the daily lives of Lancaster’s residents and guests. Stands and pavers will be used to permanently display the poems.
  Hmm. I want to learn more. I’m a poet, and I’m far from sold based on this description.
• City of Lancaster – $200,000
  To develop a public art department. The department head will manage city public art projects, coordinate with other community public art efforts, develop public art policies and infrastructure, and function as an information clearinghouse for public art information in the community.
  Two hundred thousand dollars for an arts bureaucracy? Again, I’m far from sold, especially based on that whole thing about how good art is created bottom-up rather than top-down, and how art is everyone’s business, not something that can be sequestered off.
• Fulton Opera House – $120,000
  To expand the arts education staff at the Fulton, and enable their historic theatre to better serve and engage the Lancaster community. An Education Department will allow the Fulton to maintain and solidify this programming, while increasing capacity and effectiveness.
  I think we should match students with the real excitement in the arts world. I hesitate to endorse the idea that that excitement is to be found in an institution that runs mass-audience Broadways standards.
• Pennsylvania College of Art and Design – $150,000
  Funding will develop three programs: 1) Mosaic Engagement, a series of three exhibitions that will connect audiences from the county with vibrant art by successful artists; 2) Mosaic Middle School and High School Programming, providing 150 School District of Lancaster and Pequea Valley middle and high school students with unique educational opportunities; 3) Mosaic After Program, providing further art education and resources for these same students.
  Remember what I just wrote about matching students with the real excitement? This sounds much closer to the target to me.

All in all, I think the Community Foundation is doing awesome work. I can’t wait to see more innovative organizations springing up to go the extra mile and take greater risks toward making “extraordinary community,” which is the Foundation’s goal. What are your thoughts on these grants? If you had money to give, what would you want it to go toward? Do you have an idea you’d love to have funded one day?

Together, they spell trouble for Republicans here in Lancaster County, PA, which has for decades been a dependable stronghold for the GOP. The graphics represent, in order, the outcome of the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections.

• Dark red indicates the Republican received better than 60% of the vote.
• Light red indicates the Republican won, but his challenger received more than 40% of the vote.
• Dark blue indicates the Democrat received better than 60% of the vote.
• Light blue indicates the Democrat won, but his challenger received more than 40% of the vote.

While McCain/Palin still won Lancaster County last week by a comfortable 55/43 split (Ralph Nader got half a percent; Ron Paul got two-tenths of a percent as a write-in), the numbers indicate a changing electorate within our county. I was actually astonished to compare for myself the decisive break from voting patterns in the 2000 and 2004 elections. (Forgive the poor graphics quality; I did these myself.)

Here are a few ways of breaking down the numbers.

City vs. County

Lancaster City landslided for Obama, 76% to McCain’s 23%. The city represented 21,975 votes, or 10% of county voters. Compare this to much slimmer margins in 2004, where Kerry beat Bush 62 to 38, and 2008, where Gore beat Bush 57 to 39.

Once you subtract the city’s votes, Lancaster County favored McCain, less overwhelmingly, 59 to 40. Non-city residents cast 202,816 votes, making up the other 90% of voters. A margin of 19 points is gigantic, but a shocking change from 2004, when Bush carried 69 to Kerry’s 31, and 2000, when Bush also received 69% of the vote and Gore eked out 29.

Urban vs. Suburban/Exurban/Rural

That breakdown, however, ignores the important fact that there are urban dwellers living in other municipalities beside Lancaster City. Perhaps it is more fair to compare all the county’s “urban” voters against the rest. I ran the numbers comparing city and borough precincts against township precincts (including the urbanized Lancaster Township with the boroughs).

In urbania county-wide, Obama beat McCain 56–43, with 73,366 voters weighing in (33% of voters). In 2000 and 2004, Bush carried the county’s urban areas 56-43 and 57-40, respectively.

Away from urban districts, McCain beat Obama 61-37, with 151,425 voters. Again, this looks decisive until compared with Bush’s victories in 2004 and 200: 70-30 and 70-28.

Stack the Deck

What if we stack the deck? Just for fun, I picked out out all the municipalities in Lancaster County that went for Obama, and pitted them against the rest of the county. Here’s how it looks:

Select Municipalities: Obama 68, McCain 31.  Eighteen percent of the Lancaster County electorate, or 40,319 voters, currently live in areas where a majority of their neighbors currently lean Democratic. In 2004, those same municipalities on the whole went for Kerry by 61-38, and for Gore by just 57-39.

The Rest of Municipalities: McCain 61, Obama 38. Even in the most Republican areas of the county, Democratic voters should have no trouble finding many neighbors who share their political viewpoint. In these municipalities, Bush carried 2004 by 69-30, and 2000 by 69-28.

Perhaps most interesting is the list of municipalities who voted for Obama:

• Columbia Borough
• Christiana Borough (by a single vote)
• Mountville
• Marietta
• Millersville
• Lancaster City
• Lancaster Township

Columbia borough voted Democratic in 2000 but not in 2004. Lancaster City, Lancaster Township, and part of Millersville borough voted Democratic in both 2000 and 2004. Christiana and Mountville’s votes came out of the blue; Marietta has for some time been on the Democrats’ wishlist as a municipality to pick up.

If you’d like to look at the raw data for yourself, the County has a list of polling locations, which you can use to decipher the election results for the past eight years.

I will be voting “yes.” I encourage you to vote yes—but most of all, I encourage you to think and decide for yourself.

Here are the reasons I will be voting YES for a Lancaster County Home Rule Charter.

1. For my neighbor’s child: It controls debt.

At left, take a look at Lancaster County’s debt over the past 12 years. It’s skyrocketing. Our county debt has exploded more than 500% in the last seven years. My good friends who live down the street from me are expecting a baby around Christmas. If we keep racking up debt like this, by the time he’s a young man the taxes we pay won’t cover anything except paying interest on our county debt.

That means Lancaster County will be a worse place than it is today. Yes, we have grown at a responsible, measured pace as a community. But we have also paid for a lot of projects by incurring debt. The Home Rule Charter will allow us citizens to stop the runaway debt.

The state government imposes a cap on the amount of debt that counties can incur at “four hundred percent of its borrowing base” (Local Government Unit Debt Act). Right now we are at 62% of that debt limit. The Home Rule Charter allows the citizens to have a ballot referendum to stop the addition of any debt above 80% of that limit.

2. For My Community: It controls spending
Taxes should be kept as low as possible. The county government has raised taxes by more than 7% over each of the past three years. The home rule charter requires a super-majority of the board of commissioners (4 out of 5) in order to pass a tax increase of 4% or more. (Inflation adjustments are typically under 3%.) If they opt to raise taxes by 7% or more, we citizens can stop it via a ballot referendum.

Again, debt is controlled as well as taxes. The commissioners will not be able to fund projects through debt rather than taxes, because we citizens can exercise our ability to stop both. That means our government will be forced into long-term sustainability (a good thing).

3. Because Harrisburg Is Whack
Dennis Stuckey became a county commissioner in January of this year. When he did so, he vacated his role as county controller—essentially the county’s fiscal watchdog. The position still has not been filled, because we are waiting for Governor Rendell to appoint a replacement.

Why are we waiting for the governor to appoint a replacement controller? Because without home rule we are at the mercy of the state for such things. Make no mistake about it: In very key ways, we do not currently control our own county government. Harrisburg does. And Harrisburg is whack. The state government is in need of major overhaul. We should trust ourselves over bureaucrats in Harrisburg.

4. Other Reasons

• The Lancaster County Home Rule Charter requires the leaders of the dozens of municipalities within our county to get together once a year and talk to each other, enhancing cooperation between my city and your township, your township and the nearby borough, etc.
• One county commissioner per 100,000 people is totally reasonable. Right now we have 3 commissioners for half a million people. The Home Rule Charter gives us 5.
• Part-time commissioners are better than full-time. They can focus on long-term strategy and listen to real people. Or, if they are OK with $55,000 a year, they can do it full-time.
• Commissioners shouldn’t be professional politicians. The Home Rule Charter caps terms of office at 8 years. This makes sure we have citizen-leaders.
• Under the Home Rule Charter, the controller has to be a CPA or have a degree in finance or accounting. The coroner has to be a licensed physician. This makes sense, but isn’t currently required.
• The commissioners have to focus on the long term when drafting budgets, and the budget process has to be open for citizen review and input. Right now the process of developing a budget can take place in secret, and the budget can be available for citizen review only a very short period of time before being adopted. That’s bad for our county.
• We currently elect Jury Commissioners, whose jobs have been replaced by computers. This charter eliminates the spending waste of paying for these positions. (We cannot remove these positions without a home rule charter.)
• The three roles of prothonotary, clerk of courts, and register of wills is combined into a single elected position: the clerk of courts. That’s smaller, more efficient government.
• The Government Study Commission, a nonpartisan group elected in November 2006, has done an outstanding job of first listening to a ton of input and then writing a fair charter. They have served our county well.

5. Most Importantly: We can change things!
Enacting a home rule charter is a once-in-a-generation opportunity, because of a waiting period required by law and because of the immense work involved. We will not simply be able to wait for another, better charter to come around on our ballots.

Yes, this Home Rule Charter is imperfect, but it is good. It is a deeply American act of self-governance. We can tweak it over time. If something doesn’t work well, we can change it. Without this charter, however, we cannot change a single thing in our county government structure. Not one thing. With this charter, though, we’re in control.

It’s still not to late to read the charter (pdf) for yourself. There is no “no” vote on this issue. You are either voting for the Lancaster County Home Rule Charter (28 pages) or for the existing state-mandated, one-size-fits-all Pennsylvania County Code (400+ pages). Please join me in voting “yes” tomorrow.