Poverty Rose In Pennsylvania and More Job Losses In February

In response to a post praising Phyllis Mundy SOP wants to highlight two articles over the last few days that speak otherwise. The Pennsylvania Independent writes a post that 16,000 jobs were lost in Pennsylvania for the month of February.

"This is an example of how Pennsylvania is always late into a recession and slow to come out of it," said Matt Brouillette, president and CEO of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based free market think tank. "If Gov. Rendell's economic policies were working and the stimulus money was doing its job, we wouldn't be seeing these kinds of job losses."

The Citizen's Voice ran an article about the increase in poverty in Pennsylvania on March 26, 2010.

About 14 percent of Luzerne County residents were living in poverty in 2008, up from about 11 percent in 2000, according to the Census Bureau. A family of four was considered impoverished in 2008 if their income fell below $22,025, according to U.S. Census Bureau guidelines.

The Citizen's Voice story described the jobs summit last Thursday at the Luzerne County Community College.

State Reps. Todd A. Eachus, Phyllis Mundy, Eddie Day Pashinski, Jim Wasacz and John Yudichak, who represent the Luzerne County House Delegation, attended the jobs summit. With the unemployment rate in Northeastern Pennsylvania hovering just below 10 percent, they all echoed concerns about residents struggling to find jobs.

Mundy said they will take the issues raised at the summit to Harrisburg and will work together to find solutions for job creation, get the unemployed back to work and improve the local economy. Pashinski called the event a "shining example of civility."

"Collaboration is so critical," Pashinski said. "The country needs all of us working together across party lines. It's a critical time in the history of mankind. We are in a very dangerous time."

They had the federal government pump millions into Pennsylvania and we are still losing jobs. According to this data 12,000+ jobs were created by the stimulus yet will still lost 16,000 jobs. But they are going back to Harrisburg to see what they can do???

And what about that healthcare that won Mundy some praise from a local blogger. Back in 2007 Todd Eachus, then chairman of the House Policy Committee issued this press release concerning the health crisis in Pennsylvania.

“Right now there are nearly 800,000 people without health coverage, and millions more struggling with access to quality, affordable health care,” Eachus said.

Speed the tape up to today and one will see that figure has risen to 1.3 million.

Now that is one helluva job Eachus and Mundy are doing in Harrisburg for health coverage and jobs creation. SOP won't sell you a bridge but there was this fantasy cargo airport that was going to bring in hundreds of thousands of jobs.