This issue takes me back to my old days with the Raise the Minimum Wage Coalition. I still keep an eye on labor issues and I've always been a big fan of the immigrant population in this country. That's why I'm so disturbed by the jingoistic movements happening around government databases designed more to fire first and check the facts later than to verify that people are legal to work in U.S.

Rep. Galloway is is moving two bills to advance the e-verify system here in Pennsylvania, HB 1502 and HB 1503, both of which pertain to construction companies. If you aren't familiar with e-verify, it's a federally run system that supposedly checks workers legal status by running the social security numbers they gave through a database.

Below is a press release from my organization today on the passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act through committee. We've been working on this legislation for 7 years and it's exciting to see it finally move, if only through one committee. The best part is that Sen. Specter voted for it. We put in a lot of work to convince him to, and he did. Notably, Sen. Casey has been silent on the bill. We hope this convinces him to come out in favor of it, as thousands of voters have already personally asked him to.

Clean Water Action Applauds Senate Move to Protect America’s Waters

Clean Water Restoration Act is key to safeguarding water resources for millions of Americans

Today, Clean Water Action applauds passage of the Clean Water Restoration Act in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by a vote of 12 – 7.

“This vote is a strong rejection of the Bush Administration’s “No Protection Policy” that threatened the drinking water sources for at least 110 million people,” said Clean Water Action President John DeCock.”

Beginning in early 2003, special interests pressured the Bush Administration to put policies in place that confused and delayed permits under the Clean Water Act and limited enforcement of the Act’s programs. These policies, coupled with misinterpretations of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, brought enforcement of the Clean Water Act to a virtual halt and left America’s water supplies and public health safeguards at risk.

Click "Read more" for more on this issue!

A lot has been going on to make the Commonwealth and our city either more or less friendly to the planet and livable. Here's a few highlights:

1. There's a move afoot to create a plastic bag fee in the city. The dialog around the issue misses the point of what the actual impact of the legislation would be, in my humble opinion. The idea is that every plastic bag you receive at a Philadelphia store would cost you 25-cents.

I think that the debate over whether or not folks can afford that extra 25-cents is misplaced. The truth is, you can probably just expect all stores to switch to paper, should it go through. Which is good. It's silly to use a non-renewable resource (oil) to make a product that's used for 15 minutes and then becomes litter that won't ever go away.

It's a good idea. Let's get behind it. This city is covered in junk and a good bit of is it is plastic bags.

2. My organization, Clean Water Action, has been working every day to make sure that the new Natural Gas Drilling industry doesn't wreck most of our state. Carol Collier, the Executive Director of the Delaware River Basin Commission, announced this week that any natural gas extraction in the Delaware River Basin's Special Protection Waters drainage areas will be subject to approval by her organization. This is good news.

For more on this and three other items, click "read more."

I think it was Donna Shalala who said, "50% of all YPP readers are thinking of running for office, and the other half lie about it." I know someone reading this right now is thinking about taking up the mantle of someone somewhere and running for something in 2010. So here's my idea for you and your first press conference: tonight, get Philly Car Share pick-up truck and take all the yard signs you can get your hands on.

Have you looked around this city? It's absolutely blanketed with lawn signs, as it is every election, and as far as I know there isn't a campaign out there who takes responsibility for picking them up (well, okay, in '06 we would tear our opponents's signs down all campaign long, but that was a different set of motivations). But you could pick them up. You could be the candidate that thinks ahead and fills up your garage with OTHER campaigns' unneeded lawn signs.

Then, before your announcement party, get big stickers printed up, stickers the size of a lawn sign. Put them over the top of the old candidates' names and logos on all the lawnsigns you stole. You'll save a lot of plastic and metal that way, and you will use less energy in your printing process.

When you have your announcement party, you can say that you were the green candidate for reusing all those lawn signs. You'll probably save your campaign a ton of money, too, since you won't have to pay for those wiggy metal stakes or the labor of putting the lawn signs on them.

Don't thank me. Don't even credit me. Just steal this idea and save the city some space in the landfill. Every election is a litter fest, after all, but you could take the lead in making it a little cleaner!

Deep Shale Natural Gas Drilling is underway in our state. I went up to Dimock, PA, a town Northwest (sort of) of Wilkes-Barre, where dozens of wells have already been drilled and are operating. I interviewed this woman who has leased part of her land to drillers, believing that it would be a low-level extraction, and now is worried about whether she and her husband will even be able to use the water on their land in the future. A Manager at GE called Marcellus wastewater the "worst water on Earth." Watch the video and get a sense for what these drilling operations look like. Keep in mind, this is happening in our state's most pristine areas, and right now the state isn't getting much of anything for it.

We need to tax the millions of dollars that drilling operations are making of the gas they extract here, and the money needs to pay, in part, for the inspection and enforcement around the areas the drillers operate in. You'll hear this talked about as "Marcellus Shale," referring to the deep underground geological formation the gas is coming from. Right now, the discussion around Marcellus drilling relates to whether or not we should tax the extraction. The next question is, what would we use the tax money for.

Right now, Pennsylvania does not tax any natural resources taken from our land, because of the power of the coal industry. Presently, their are four different constituencies on the question of taxing Marcellus Shale. Click read more to read the description of each.

(Philadelphia) – More towns in Pennsylvania are protecting their streams and drinking water by requiring vegetated and tree-lined area along waterways. Clean Water Action released a report today that found more and more towns protecting buffers of natural vegetation in thirteen counties across the Commonwealth.

To see the full report, go to: http://www.cleanwateraction.org/publication/buffers-100-taking-positive-...

The report, “Buffers 100: Taking a positive trend statewide,” surveyed municipalities in more than a dozen counties across Pennsylvania and found that 192 municipalities had a riparian buffer ordinance and over 30% of those ordinances required 100 foot or greater buffers on at least some streams in the municipality.

For those of you who appreciate efforts by churches to practice what they preach a bit more, Broad Street Ministry (the congregation I participate in) is having an anti-death penalty event on Good Friday.

Here's the official description:

"EXECUTE ART, NOT PEOPLE" is a unique way to remember the death of Jesus on the cross at the hands of his government. BSM will gather Philadelphia to hear from two former death row inmates, Shujaa Graham and Darby Tillis who were exonerated by DNA evidence, will be speaking about their personal stories and reflections on the penal system/death penalty. There will be music, art, conversation, and ways to get involved in this issue that makes our society more brutal and less just.

315 South Broad Street b/t Spruce and Pine
6:00pm -8:00pm

The event is a collaboration of Pennsylvanians Against the Death Penalty (PADP), Broadstreet Ministry (BSM), and Witness to Innocence (WTI).

We want different artists to showcase their vision for a different society, a different world, beginning in Philadelphia.

While the workers who will get jobs at the new convention center stand to benefit, even more workers would benefit if North Broad ever came back from the dead. You can absolutely guarantee that nothing will happen with North Broad if that Convention Center blocks everything.

Otherwise, the Convention Center is only good for the bankers getting fees off the financing.

Here's what Rep. Jim Wansacz has to say about it in the Inqy this morning:

A Pennsylvania lawmaker plans to introduce legislation as early as Monday to strip Philadelphia of up to $64 million annually in economic development funds for failing to have its two casinos up and running.

...

"The two casinos and Mayor Nutter have to reach agreements and have permits in place and have these casinos built and up and operational," said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Jim Wansacz, a Northeastern Pa. Democrat and member of the House Gaming Oversight Committee. "If no progress is made, then the rest of the state could use that $64 million to create jobs and stimulate the economy."

Jim! I'm with you! Block it! Stop it! We'd be better off with an empty patch of grass there than we would with a Convention Center!

From this morning's Inqy, by Jeff Shields:

Robert Gamburg, one of three lawyers at 121 S. Broad St. who owe the city a total of $348,000 in business privilege taxes, didn't like that Nutter chose to shame him with a news conference outside his building.

Nutter called the conference for 2 p.m. yesterday to show the measures he would take to embarrass delinquent taxpayers.

Nutter held a similar news conference in November, when he told those who owed more than $50,000 that he would be coming after them. Nutter said the city has collected $2.5 million in delinquent taxes in that effort.

Is it just me, or is it sorta like hizzoner is doing direct actions?

I have to say: pretty sweet. High-five, Mayor Nutter! I wish more politicians with the bully pulpit would take the fight straight to offenders.

OK, for your next trick, go stand in front of Jim Gerlach's office and tell him to get behind Obama's plan to give healthcare to everyone.

Credit where credit is due: someone needed to yell at the Eagles for failure to pay their piece of taxes, and ACORN did it (from CLOUT):

THERE'S NOTHING like a good old-fashioned tailgate party during the offseason. In Wynnewood.

About 50 people passed around grilled hot dogs - chanting "Pay, Eagles, Pay" to the tune of the team's fight song - in front of team owner Jeffrey Lurie's Llanfair Road mansion yesterday to urge him to fork over the millions of dollars that the team owes the city.

Before leaving, participants propped up against Lurie's padlocked fence a large "Past Due" notice for $8 million, which cops later took down.

ACORN, an advocate for low-income families, set up camp there in an effort to retrieve the money to help keep city health centers open. Closing up to three health centers is among the options to help plug a massive gap in the budget.

I wrote a lot about the health centers on here once upon a time. They are, on balance, a revenue generator for the city. They would be even less expensive if the city cancelled a ton of their contract work with the hospitals and health systems and just hired employees outright.

Rendell gave his second-to-last budget address yesterday (that's right, right?) to a packed room in Harrisburg. I semi-listened to most of it at my desk here in Philadelphia on CBS3's website.

This is one of the most important pieces of news of our year. Philadelphia relies so much on income from the State and the Feds. Additionally, we do have something of a symbiotic relationship with the Commonwealth that reluctantly calls us home. It's worth exploring this a little. T>he Governor has a budget in brief PDF (that runs to 40 pages). I recommend the pie charts on page 4, the lists of increases on page 5 thru 7 and his cute bar graph on page 10 that shows how much more efficient he's made his administration.

Here's the story at the Inqy, by Mario Cattabiani and Amy Worden:

"We must act now to adopt a budget that recognizes the pain we all must share, provides critically needed emergency relief, and continues to make the strategic investments that can spell the difference between productivity and panic for Pennsylvanians," Rendell told a standing-room-only crowd in the House chamber.

The 2009-10 fiscal blueprint - 2.5 percent larger than last year's budget - was crafted against the backdrop of a weakening economy that has contributed to a $2.3 billion deficit for the state in the current fiscal year.

Still, Rendell's proposed budget includes no broadbased tax hikes, but does seek a 10-cent per pack increase in the cigarette tax and new levies on smokeless tobacco and natural gas reserves.

Click "Read More!" for some highlights.

As some of you may know, I made the transition this year from working in the Poor People's Movement to working in the Green Movement. This was a long time coming for me. The truth is, I got politicized in 1990, watching Earth Day Specials on Cable TV back home in Pittsburg, Kansas, America. I always wanted to go Green, but it didn't happen, professionally, until I joined Clean Water Action here in Pennsylvania.

Other writers on here probably can do a better job of summing up areas of Green Progress and Green Problems in the last year, but I'll do my best to highlight some of what I have seen during my time here.

1) Recycling. We've come a long way, baby. In 2008, we could, finally, throw it all in one bin. I still kind of feel weird doing it that way. My recycling bin feels more like a garbage can that way, but what the heck? It's way easier.

Then, last week, recycling went weekly. You don't need to remember if you lived in a Blue or Green Zone. Whatever your trash day is, you can also put out your recycling. Hopefully, making it so much easier will lead to larger and larger participation. I'm stunned when I look at the difference between my trash and other people's on my block. Of course, they have families and I'm solo, but still.

The Recycling Alliance, though, is pushing a vision of Zero Waste. Cities like San Francisco have a public composting program, for example. Why can't we?

2. Stormwater. Maybe you didn't realize it, but we all pay a fee for the City to manage stormwater. Every inch of concrete creates a problem during any sort of rain. Water used to go into the ground, but there's not enough ground for it to go into here in cities. Our streets would all turn into rivers if it wasn't for our stormwater management systems. Plus, all that water gathers up the spilled oil, gas and many other pollutants that we leave on the concrete, and it adds up.

We all pay for stormwater management in our water bills, but it's getting really expensive. Starting soon, commercial water customers will pay more if they have lots of paved space. More paving equals a higher stormwater charge. If you mitigate it with porous pavement, digging some up or other tactics that slow the stormwater from getting into the system, then you pay less. In other words, those who create the biggest Stormwater problems are charged the most.

Among those freaking out about the change, longtime Eco-Buddy, Sunoco, has realized that it has an unbelievable amount of impervious surface out there and is creating an unbelievable problem (which will lead to an unbelievably larger bill - let's all shed our tears now. Okay, we're done.).

3. Transit. There's probably nothing we can do about the fact that we have a transit system that assumes that you'd rather live in the suburbs and that Center City is the only place anyone would really want to go to, but I can say this: kudos to SEPTA for finally figuring out that gas prices might actually persuade people to give regional rail and subways a try. The PR campaign finally got started last year. The silence was deafening from SEPTA during the last gas price shock, in 2005, but this time they got their act together and it seems to have made a difference. Hopefully, some people will have gotten accustomed to getting some trashy novel time in on the trains and won't go back to their cars, even now that prices have dropped again.

Areas where we need work:

Trash. This is the trashiest big city in America. It's gross. People don't understand that the trash isn't just unsightly, it's outright unhealthy. The trash we leave around ends up in our stormwater system which ends up in our waterways. In some ways, that means it ends up in our drinking water supply. Gross, gross, gross.

Baltimore has made a difference on trash and pet waste with an aggressive public education campaign. Philadelphia needs to go further. I suggest trash cops with power to shoot on sight. Okay, maybe not shoot on sight, but ticketing would be a good start.

Parking. I hate the PPA. I just had to mention it. If there were some way that paying more for parking financed alternatives to driving, I'd like it. Hell, I'd like it if paying more for parking paid for ANYTHING, but I guess I'm just whistling Dixie.

Natural Gas Drilling. We are all doomed. Have I mentioned that? We are totally doomed. There's an industry coming into our state that has the potential to trash waterways from here to Ohio, and the overwhelming majority of those they are going to trash flow, ultimately, nastily, through Philadelphia.

My organizations motto that "we all live downstream." That's true. And Philadelphians live really, really downstream. This industry is moving like a freight train loaded with gold. It's the best opportunity for new business our state is going to see for a while, which would be awesome if it wasn't just so very, very nasty.

Natural Gas Drilling is coming and it probably wouldn't be wise to stop it, but we could set some good parameters on it so that the land and water won't be totally wrecked.

Philadelphia should exercise its legislative and economic clout to make sure we aren't all drinking saltwater mixed with who-knows-what.

The Metro's Reformer's Roundtable asked three questions this week, and I really liked the responses this network administrator Adam Lang gave. Here's my favorite, his answer to the first question:

What's the one thing you would have done differently in the city this year if you were in a position of power?

Adam Lang: I would have reorganized how Philadelphia handles vacant properties it seizes. Creating a land bank to allow land to be sold off at low rates to anyone prepared to use it. At the same time, removing Councilmembers' heavy handedness of the process. City Hall sitting on land is in the way of neighborhood regrowth.

The other questions were:

What's one of the biggest mistakes made in the city in 2008 and how can it be fixed in 2009?

What's the best thing that the city government did this year?

How would YPP folks answer these questions? It would be great to see your responses below.

Times are tough and the economy is hurting. Areas of our state, such as the northern and central parts, have been suffering a longterm economic malaise. In recent years, technology and commodity prices have harmoniously met to create would could be a gigantic economic boon for our state: natural gas.

It turns out that Pennsylvania is sitting on some gigantic reserves in natural gas trapped inside a huge geological system known as The Marcellus Shale. Shale gas has been too expensive and too difficult to tap profitably for years. That seems to be changing, unfortunately, harvesting that gas could be devastating for our streams, rivers and air quality.

I'm not using the word devastating lightly. To get it, companies will have to tear down a lot of trees, run thousands and thousands of diesel trucks, use millions of gallons of water, polluting it horribly and leave mountains of petroleum products sitting and fuming in the sun for who knows how long. It won't be pretty.

Recently, organizations under the umbrella of the Campaign for Clean Water wrote to the Action Secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection about this issue in hopes that they could find a way for us to harvest the resource right. These are just a few of the problems we could see in our first look at the issue.

PENNSYLVANIA CAMPAIGN FOR CLEAN WATER
215-545-0250

December 18, 2008

John Hanger
Acting Secretary
Department of Environmental Protection
Rachel Carson State Office Building
Harrisburg, PA 17105

Dear Secretary Hanger:

Thank you for convening the briefing for the environmental community by DEP officials, the Susquehanna & Delaware River Basin Commissions on October 9th. We appreciated the opportunity to hear what the agencies are doing to address the challenges presented by the many new gas drilling projects proposed and underway in the Marcellus shale fields.

We understand that natural gas drilling could potentially be a major new source of revenue and business development in Pennsylvania. At the same time, however, the undersigned organizations are concerned that this drilling must be done in a manner that does not damage our state’s natural resources, particularly our water resources and the plants and animals that they support. If the rush to drill is allowed to go forward without adequate permit conditions and oversight, it could irreparably and unnecessarily harm habitat and water sources, de-watering streams, damaging water and air quality, fragmenting forests and impacting threatened and endangered species in some of the most pristine parts of our state.

Hey everyone,
remember when Ray challenged us to come up with a use for the old Budd Plant, where Philadelphia once built trains?
Ray's idea was that we oughtta build trains there.
Anyway, looks like the Salvation Army has found a bunch of money to turn it into a massive recreation/health/senior center.

WHYY reported on it this morning.

Philadelphia's Nicetown neighborhoods sees bright future for Budd Factory site
August 19, 2008