Letters to the Editor
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@ShawnWM
You wrote:
"Bots read this again and again and again and again until you get it. Older people remember the Clinton years and that's why they support her. You can try to rewrite history and say it was crappy for Pennsylvania in those years, but everyone who lived it knows otherwise and won't buy it."
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Total Bullcrap. You don't live in PA and are lying about the record. I lived until 2 yrs ago in Philadelphia. Almost 4 decades. I am also an educator who worked in the Philly school system and I know about PA. This state has suffered for decades. People in big cities like Philly suffered with rampant crime, corruption and a poorly funded educational system. Bill and Hillary did not do anything to change that.
Ed Rendell, whom I voted for twice made a critical shift in the Police Dept. and there were some dramatic improvements. He also worked hard to build Phila. as a destination city (which it is now.) What he, former Gov Ridge and the Clinton admin as well as the Bush admin totally failed to address, like every other politican in Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Capitol Hill, was the embarrassment that is the PA educational system. It's poorly run and under-funded in most areas of the state, STILL in Philadelphia despite an array of changes. The suburbs, with their high tax base have some truly excellent school districts: see Abington, Council Rock and Lower Merion. But did you know that kindergarten is STILL not mandatory in PA? This state is educationally in the Dark Ages.
As for PA, the big cities, rural and poor small town areas have poor performing schools. That's the bottom line. There has been no economic resurgence either during the Clinton years or the Bush years. If you have a grain of common sense, you know why then that the schools haven't changed dramatically over decades. The base of school funding is property taxes and the economy in many areas of PA has been sinking for several decades. There never has been nor is there now any economic turnaround.
The Clinton yrs heralded in Welfare-to-Work. You know that platform: poor and poorly uneducated people are put in low wage jobs that still leave them below the poverty line. How did that help struggling families? Poor people in rural, small town PA still struggle with an economy where most well-paid factory and steel jobs have left long ago. Nothing has replaced it and no one has attempted a fix, until now. Both Clinton and Obama are talking about job re-training and guaranteeing green jobs to replace ones that have left and will never return. Now that's a great idea but long overdue.
Please show me where Bill Clinton achieved great things for poor or working class people. He heralded in Welfare to work, NAFTA, which accelerated job loss, and failed totally on revamping healthcare or schools. These are my big problems with the Clintons. They had 8 yrs to forward an agenda for poor and working class people, to create a more equitable system, and did none of those things.
People like me and my family, are different. My husband did very well with the DotCom bubble in the '90's and has done very well for our family for the last 15 yrs. We are solidly middle class people with a nice home, an inground pool, a decent school district for our son and have significant savings. Yes, we did well. But then, we are educated, professional people. We have options. This is not the reality for most people in PA who do not have our education and skills. They have been suffering and they still are.
ShawnWM, you don't know PA, you don't know the issues in PA.