Important Issues for the Campaign

By Linda E. Small

Small businesses create jobs. Pennsylvania must allow small businesses to compete on a level playing field. I favor cutting the Corporate Net Income Tax while eliminating the Delaware loophole that 75% of Pennsylvania corporations use to avoid paying any tax. Then small businesses will have an even playing field to compete in a true free market, and more money invest in new jobs.

Pennsylvania's roads and bridge are crumbling. Meeting our responsibility to maintain safe roads will save us money over time, and it will bring back jobs and help the economy.

RESTORE SCHOOL FUNDING- LOWER PROPERTY TAXES How can we do both? As the state lowers the total contribution of state money to local schools, the local school systems must raise property taxes, cut teachers and services, or both. This race to the bottom hurts students, and it really hurts homeowners.

Taxes should be fair and low. The relentless rise in property taxes strains property owners budgets and must be stopped. If the state would go back to funding 50% of school costs as it did before, the property tax problem in York County would end.

Properly funding schools also sustains good jobs, for teachers, school support workers, and others that the teachers and support workers buy from.

END CORPORATE MONEY CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT You shouldn't have to own your own lobbyist to have your voice heard in the halls of government. Over 70% of Pennsylvanians want to have a fair Marcellus Shale severance tax. We don't have it due to Marcellus money lining politician's pockets. Governor Corbett alone has taken over $1.6 million in campaign contributions. http://marcellusmoney.org/

I will not take money for this campaign. My special interests are groups I contribute to, not the other way around.

GIVE A DAMN ABOUT OUR CHILDREN 97% of scientists say humans are causing global warming. A companion problem, ocean acidification, is threatening life in the ocean. Yet we, who say we care about our children more than anything, are doing very little to stop the damage.

Global warming and ocean acidification are not only happening, but they are happening more quickly than forecast, and they follow the WORST CASE SCENARIO. Global warming isn't just warmer temperatures. Global warming is a new Amercan dustbowl in just 40 years, and it's starting in Texas right now. Global warming is flooding rains at times, like York County and Glen Rock saw last year. Global warming will make it harder to grow food. Global warming makes the economy more uncertain, as we have to recover from more extreme weather disasters.

Getting our energy from renewable sources like wind and solar creates good jobs. Conservation and energy efficiency measures put money back in consumers pockets, and creates jobs. Cutting our energy use and using renewable energy keeps our money in America, and keeps our money out of countries which want to harm us. It is good for national security as well as economic security. Getting our energy from renewable sources and cutting energy use keeps pollutants like mercury and soot out of the air, which makes for healthier babies and fewer deaths and illnesses.

America needs a 21st century plan to fight global warming, and Pennsylvania can help. America needs to cast off the oil company deniers and move to clean energy today. Pennsylvania emits more carbon than 101 other countries combined, and is only behind Texas and California in US emissions. Pennsylvania's energy policy matters a great deal to our children's future.

Here is important information on the impacts of global warming. http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/28/330109/science-of-global-warming-impacts/

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY Fiscal responsibility includes the idea that the state must meet its obligations. PA has a revenue problem due to years of giving special favors to corporations. The Marcellus Shale severance tax should have been in place years ago. The Delaware Loophole allowing corporations to avoid paying any Corporate Net Income Tax has been around even longer. PA refuses to tax smokeless tobacco, as all other states do.

Politicians should always be on the lookout to do things more efficiently, and to cut programs that are no longer needed and aren't working.

But we are cutting programs in a penny-wise, pound-foolish manner. The cuts of today will cost us more money in the future. By cutting money to maintain roads and bridges, we are making sure it will cost us more to fix them in the future. In addition, by not spending the money now when we should, we are costing construction companies and workers jobs, and hurting our economy and tax revenues. We create a downward spiral.

PA has cut thousands of teachers and education workers. State police are facing cuts. We must fund them.

I propose cutting all state elected officials pay by 10%, and eliminated their annual, automatic cost of living pay raise. If PA can't afford to fund our police, we certainly shouldn't be paying big salaries to the politicians who can't or won't fix the problem.

Pennsylvania must be fiscally responsible, pay for its roads, bridges and education, and sustain the jobs that go with them.

RESPECT WOMEN AND THE RIGHT TO A MEDICALLY SAFE ABORTION The Pennsylvania legislature and Governor Corbett enacted a law which will stop a woman from access to a medically safe abortion. The law creates unnecessary regulatory requirements to increase the size of clinics that have been operating safely for years. It is a clear use of regulation to stop abortion and let the PA legislature control what happens to women. The law should be repealed. http://blogs.philadelphiaweekly.com/phillynow/2011/12/23/corbett-signs-sb732-called-“back-door-ban”-on-abortion-in-pa/

PROTECT CLEAN AIR AND WATER, PUT A MORATORIUM ON HORIZONTAL FRACKING The horizontal fracking gas rush has polluted homeowner's water and fouled streams and rivers. In other states, air pollution from compressor stations has caused smog worse than Los Angeles. Pennsylvania must put a moratorium on new horizontal fracking wells and make the mult-national corporate gas drillers demonstrate that they can drill safely. Pennsylvania's constitution states: "The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people." The Marcellus Shale drillers and the state are trampling that right.

Conventional gas drilling has not caused the problems that horizontal fracking has, and should continue to be a source for our fuels.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE Pennsylvania must recognize the right of same-sex marriage. There are many legal protections that only marriage provides to couples. It is past time to extend those protections to Pennsylvania's same-sex couples.