My father (the earthly one) left me many great points of legacy. He is and will always be my hero, such that three years after his passing, I still miss him regu­larly. But one legacy point I would like to trade away came through the genetic gene pool – that being his, and now my, life­long battle of the bulge! So I continue to give up things and try to get to the gym – some­times doing better than at other times. (Now is not a good time to ask!) But the one post re-election treat I do allow myself is a large size Jamocha Shake from Arbys. I usually wait a few days. But then, magi­cally, and without cere­mony, my car makes it to the drive-thru window. Thank you, voters of Eastern Lancaster County for the honor of serving for two more years! Here’s to you!

Well, the people are on the edge of speaking, and the topic is govern­ment debt and spending. Thank­fully! As you look across the nation, it is easy to iden­tify the states that are doing the best at weath­ering this period of economic stag­na­tion. They are the states with gover­nors who made the hard choices up front. Penn­syl­vania has been led by a chief exec­u­tive who is a man of huge appetites – both personal and govern­mental. “If one cheese steak is good, three must be great! If the Common­wealth is taking in $25 Billion in taxes, let’s use up all the reserves and spend $28 Billion.” Dealing with the short­fall will hit after the Big Man leaves town. As our departing governor has said repeat­edly, he looks forward to reading about how we fix his prob­lems “while he sits on a beach some­where!” And so, thanks Big Ed… We’ll be cleaning up after you for a long time to come!

It’s just days until the General Elec­tion and the world is a place of stress and uncer­tainty. The news analysts grow philo­soph­ical about our peri­odic exer­cise in repre­sen­ta­tive self-government, and in better moments, I can go there. But also in the mix are real people, people who I know and rub shoul­ders with, and who, for the most part, I like. Regard­less of party, they are people who are on the same journey I travel. They have fami­lies, car prob­lems, aging parents, polit­ical friends and detrac­tors, yards to mow, and they answer to over 60,000 citi­zens back home. In less than one week, some of them will wake up to find they have been rejected by the people they pass in the grocery store aisle. It is a hard thing when one loses a job. Losing an elec­tion is a much greater personal chal­lenge because it is so very public. It smacks you in the face every time you go into the public square. And so, as my party looks to do very well on November 2^nd, I do pause on occa­sion to think about those who will no longer drive to Harris­burg and pass me in the halls of the capitol. May God bless them as He calls them to their next, albeit unex­pected new chapter in life!

A few days back, I was walking from a lunch haunt into the capitol. The southern end of the Capitol grounds is a bit torn up these days. PA’s House and Senate complex does reside on a hill and the retaining walls are currently under recon­struc­tion. One rela­tively minor act of vandalism applied to on a newly laid granite wall caught my atten­tion and it’s been rolling around in the mind ever since. Someone had taken a red spray can and added some flair to the stone with the phrase, “Capi­talism is Slavery.” It all left me wondering what inputs the vandal had received that caused him (or her) to believe that they were being oppressed by the best economic system yet devised. Was it the ‘educa­tional’ drum­beat of a public high school teacher or college professor, intent on destroying youthful initia­tive through the confer­ring of victim­hood? Or perhaps it was some outlet of the leftist media that made an impres­sion­able mind believe that idea of personal advance­ment through honest labor were beneath his dignity. Sadly, the spray-can artist will prob­ably live out a life of discarded economic oppor­tu­nity, even as he gives another the chance to succeed — through being paid to clean graf­fiti off of stone walls!