Things to ponder, July 29
From the windmill of my mind … I’m beginning to wonder if Fayette County will ever lose its distinction as a pocket of intractable poverty. This battle has been going on since the 1950s, which makes it a half-century-old endeavor. And when you’re second from the bottom among 67 counties in median income, besting only the big city of Philadelphia, it’s hard to believe anyone who says, “But things would be worse if we hadn’t done what we did.”
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Bob Casey Jr. is firing back against incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Santorum with some pretty hard-hitting radio advertisements on illegal immigration, which is a virtual necessity to neutralize all the gun-slinging Santorum has already done on that issue. It’s an important issue, but I still want to hear more
Saw the mayor of Hazleton, Pa., on PCN the other day, giving testimony before a state House committee about his efforts regarding illegal immigration. He made lots of sense, but nothing he said was more true than this: People who are here illegally have already broken the law. And addressing one negative ramification to society, the mayor said that if an illegal driving a car with no insurance causes an accident that damages you or your vehicle, you’re stuck.
According to a recent article in Newsweek magazine, about 300 federal agents operating in 52 Fugitive Operations teams are seeking to round up 590,000 illegal immigrants who’ve been designated “fugitive aliens.” That means they are foreign nationals who’ve “either failed to appear for a scheduled immigration hearing or ignored an Immigration judge’s orders to leave the country.” The feds estimate that 50,000 to 75,000 of them are also “criminal aliens” convicted of local, state or county offenses, according to Newsweek. So much for the oft-quoted spiel about how they just want to come here to be law-abiding, tax-paying citizens.
Facts can be funny things – especially when they fly in the face of conventional wisdom. So here’s one of them: Fayette and Greene counties have each lost population from 2000 to 2005, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates of March 16. (They’re available on Newsweek’s Web site, if you want to check it out.) Fayette’s population has dropped by 2,502, from 148,644 to 146,142. Greene’s has dipped by 864, from 40,672 to 39,808. (But the downward trend isn’t unanimous. Washington County’s population has increased by 3,509, from 202,897 to 206,406.) Make sure to ask your favorite official about this the next time he or she tells you how we’re “turning the corner.”
If losing 2,502 people in the last five years is evidence of “Fayette Forward” or any other jingoism, someone’s using a transmission with transposed gears.
Would the last person left in Fayette County please turn off the lights? On second thought, he or she might be better used as a tourist attraction, to help turn things around.