Category Archives: Taxes

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What The Philadelphia Inquirer told us . . . and what they didn’t.

We have pointed out, several times, that it is illegal to work in the United States unless you are a citizen or have the appropriate legal documents. In the last linked article, referencing a Philadelphia Inquirer sob story about an illegal immigrant identified only by her surname Guzman we pointed out:

Miss Guzman doesn’t have a husband or boyfriend living with her, so there’s (probably) no real, legal financial support there. That leaves four possibilities:

  1. Miss Guzman presented forged documents saying she was eligible to work in the United States, which is a felony;
  2. Miss Guzman’s employer hired her knowing that she did not have the proper documents, which would be a felony by both Miss Guzman and the employer;
  3. Miss Guzman is living off welfare, for which she is ineligible, and would have had to have presented forged documents to the social workers, a felony; or
  4. Miss Guzman has been working for cash, which means she is evading income and Social Security taxes, which is a felony.

Saturday’s Inquirer noted that a lot of the illegals in the City of Brotherly Love are probably engaging in a least some of the time in option number four:

Philly’s gig economy runs on immigrant workers. Now that labor pool is shrinking amid tougher ICE enforcement.

A new analysis by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia says the city’s gig economy faces a reckoning.

by Jeff Gammage | Saturday, March 28, 2026 | 5:01 AM EDT

Are you waiting longer for the rideshare driver to show up? Or for that burger and fries to be delivered to your door? Does it all cost more?

Here’s part of the reason: stricter immigration enforcement. And not just the arrest and deportation of workers who lack official permission to be in the country, but the fear that those arrests have engendered among others, dissuading them from taking similar gig jobs. That as legal pathways into the country for other immigrant workers have been curtailed.

A new analysis by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia says the city’s gig economy faces a reckoning. It runs on immigrant workers, but the Trump administration’s effort to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history is shrinking the labor pool.

“The demand [for gig services] is not going away,” said Jeff Hornstein, executive director of the Economy League. “The fact that we have so many foreign-born workers in this country, and so many of them are under threat, it’s inevitably going to drive costs up or services down.”

There’s more at the original.

So, what is the “gig economy”?

(T)he gig economy is a labor market made up of freelance or part-time workers who work a “gig” to supplement their income or simply work as they wish.

It’s easy to join this labor market because jobs or tasks are usually accepted through an online app or platform.

In the US, the gig economy has provided millions of people with the ability to work independently and is projected to increase in years to come.

Translation: these are people working without regular employment, people paid either in cash (less probably) or by a check, but without deductions withheld for taxes. If paid by check, an employer is supposed to issue them a Form 1099, if the “individual contractor” has been paid more than $600 over the year, showing the amount paid to the individual, but if an individual has six “gigs”, there is no particular reason he could choose to report only three or four. If the individual has not provided a legitimate Social Security or Tax ID number, the government might not be able to track him. Gig jobs like the delivery job Mr Gammage used as an example frequently get tips in cash rather than as part of their bill.

It’s easy to see why an “independent contractor” would under-report. The Social Security/Medicare tax rate in 7.65% for both the employer and employee, but a gig worker who was just paid what he earned is responsible for both, a 15.3% tax on all income received. How many people can pony up 15.3% of their total earnings once a year, in the spring? For every $10.00 they can under-report results in $1.53 in taxes they don’t have to send the Infernal Revenue Service.

For every $1000.00 they can underreport, that’s $153.00 they avoid sending the government. For someone delivering for Door Dash or some other service, $153.00 is probably real money, and that’s an encouragement to cheat.

ICE does not release local figures, but nationally, arrests of immigrants are surging. Those arrests, detentions, and deportations, and the fear among immigrant workers that they could be next, is subtracting people from the labor force. That and the reduction of humanitarian-entry programs and new limits on work sponsorship mean there are simply fewer workers available, as the national, foreign-born labor force has declined by an estimated 750,000 people since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025.

Hmmm. I would have hoped that number would have been higher. As we have previously reported, the Inquirer has reported an illegal immigrant population of between 47,000 and 76,000 people just in Philly.

Mr Gammage’s story was intended to convey to readers that immigration enforcement is pushing up inflation; he might not have intended to point out that the gig workers, which even he pointed out that “Gig platforms are among the last accessible labor markets for undocumented workers, because the E-Verify system generally does not apply there,” might be evading taxes. All it takes is reading his story closely, to see what he told readers, and what he didn’t.

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Welfare for the well-to-do

On Boxing Day of 2023, I noted an article in The Wall Street Journal concerning investors souring on electric vehicle charging companies. In plug in electric vehicles are the wave of the future, why would investors not be moving into, rather than out of, such companies? Note that the original article was from December of 2023, when Joe Biden was securely in the Oval Office, and Donald Trump appeared to be headed for the big house far more probably than the White House.

The Journal included a photo that I am reproducing under Fair Use rules, because it illustrates something I’ve said before. I have seen, at the Wawa at the junction of Interstate 78 and Pennsylvania Route 61, six very new looking Tesla charging stations, none of which were in use, while what looked like twelve gasoline pump alleys were full, with other cars lined up to refuel when the vehicles ahead of them in line pulled out. The Journal photo shows twelve Tesla chargers, with only one in use.

The particular station I’ve mentioned is along busy I-78, and is roughly halfway between Allentown and the state capital of Harrisburg, but the specific area isn’t in a city of any size, making it easy in, easy out.

Plus, it’s at a Wawa, which means great coffee! 🙂 And you’ll need that great coffee if your car’s battery is down too much, and you have to spend an hour recharging.

So now we come to Chester County. The Philadelphia Inquirer noted that electric vehicles are expensive, but that Chester County has the highest median income in the Commonwealth, so it is unsurprising that there are a lot of people there who have purchased such automobiles. But it also seems that the wealthy people there want welfare for the well-to-do:

Chester County has more than 9,000 EVs. Now it wants to build more public electric vehicle charging stations

Through a federal grant program, the county wants to address day-to-day charging needs.

by Brooke Schultz | Saturday, March 7, 2026 | 5:01 AM EST

Chester County, home to one of the largest numbers of electric vehicles in the state, hopes to grow its footprint of public charging stations.

Through the federally funded National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program, administered through the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, the county is looking to build up its community-based public EV charging stations for people who have or want an electric vehicle but do not have a charging station installed at home.

Funding from the program flows directly to municipalities or other applicants for EV chargers. PennDot expects to fund more than 100 projects through the grant.

It builds on an initial federally funded project under the same program, which sought to place charging stations every 50 miles along the major travel corridors to address long drives across the state. Through that program, Chester County projects received $3.2 million.

So, more of our tax dollars going to, as we previously reported, private companies to build for-profit public car charging stations. Those were not even government loans, but outright grants.

Chester County’s proposal would increase the number of public chargers speckled around the county, from workplaces to businesses, giving drivers a place to charge their cars as part of their day-to-day routines.

Chester County, which has both densely packed development and rolling agricultural pockets, saw its rates of EV ownership double between 2022 and 2024, with more than 9,000 EVs registered in the county in the state’s most recent data. The county is behind only Montgomery in overall EV registrations in the southeastern part of the state.

Really? More than 9,000 plug-in electric vehicles? The latest Census Bureau figures, July 1, 20245, show Chester County with a population of 560,745 souls, so 9,000 would be 1.61% of the county’s total population.

The math indicates another problem. Most EV owners recharge their cars overnight in their garages, something most Chester County EV owners would already have. With more than 9,000 EVs registered in the county, and most charged overnight at home, how many actual customers would a public EV charging station actually see in a day there?

“Things are pretty spread out, and with the infrastructure that we have in place right now, other modes of transportation that are carbon-free or less carbon intensive than single-occupancy vehicles are not as viable here as they are in other places that are more dense,” said Rachael Griffith, sustainability director for the Chester County Planning Commission. “If we’re looking at a lower carbon future for our transportation network, EVs are really a great option for that here in our land-use setting. Building out the network of EV chargers is really the way that we incentivize that.”

So, one well-paid government employee wants to direct taxpayer dollars to directly benefit the more well-to-do people of her county. Got it!

I have no objection to people buying plug-in electric vehicles, and no objection to private businesses investing in and building public car chargers for profit, but I have to ask: why should the government, at any level, be subsidizing the building of private businesses? Tesla (TSLA) built thousands of public chargers for their vehicles as part of their sales pitch, and helped make Elon Musk the wealthiest man in the world; as of this publication, Mr Musk has an estimated net worth of $834.8 billion, 3.38 times the net worth of Google founder Larry Page, the second wealthiest man. If it helped make Mr Musk that wealthy, it ought to do the same for other investors.

The policy of sending federal tax dollars to states, to give to private companies to build for-profit EV charging stations was an idea under President Biden, and, as usual, his ideas and policies — or those promulgated by his young staffers — were bad ones. If there is a demand for public EV charging stations, private investors will fill it. If there is insufficient demand for such, then there’s no reason to waste our tax dollars on it.

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right

My good friend and occasional blog pinch hitter William Teach noted that Luke Broadwater of The New York Times was apoplectic over the hardball that President Donald Trump played during the Government shutdown:

The government shutdown is already the longest in American history. But it’s also perhaps the most punishing, in part because President Trump has taken actions no previous administration ever took during a shutdown.

Over the past six weeks, the Trump administration cut food stamps for millions of low-income Americans. It tried to fire thousands of government workers and withhold back pay from others, while freezing or canceling money for projects in Democratic-led states. . . . .

But for now, the tactics appear to have worked, after a group of Democrats agreed to support a bill to end the shutdown and drop the concessions their party had demanded.

“Standing up to Donald Trump didn’t work,” Senator Angus King, independent of Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, said on MSNBC Monday. “It actually gave him more power.”

We previously reported on how columnist Will Bunch and the liberal denizens of Bluesky were just spittle-flecking mad that the Democrats in the Senate finally caved agreed to end the filibuster, and allow the continuing resolution to fund the government come to a vote.

Well, it wasn’t just Mr Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer, but their Editorial Board as well:

Democrats caved on shutdown as Trump’s indifference to Americans suffering proved stronger | Editorial

The shutdown underscored clear policy differences between the two political parties: Trump and the Republicans do not care about everyday Americans.

by The Editorial Board | Veterans’ Day, November 11, 2025 | 5:01 AM EST

It is easy to say the Democrats blinked and got nothing in return for agreeing to end the historic government shutdown.

On its face, that is true. But Sen. John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who was one of the eight senators who caved, is wrong to claim the shutdown was a failure.

It’s a bit disingenuous to say that Senator Fetterman “caved,” given that he was a vote to end the filibuster the entire time. However, to my friends at the Inky, any Democrat who does not hate President Trump with a plasma-hot passion is a filthy traitor and despicable human being.

The Democrats were right to make a stand to preserve the Affordable Care Act subsidies to stave off steep increases in health insurance premiums. By refusing to negotiate, President Donald Trump and the Republicans under his thumb showed they do not care about average Americans.

Would it not be just as true that the filibustering Democrats were showing that they do not care about average Americans? Yes, they eventually gave up, but only after forty days and forty nights.

Trump remained unengaged throughout the longest government shutdown ever. Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) abdicated any leadership as he sent the Republican House members home.

LOL! The editorial writer assumes that it was abdication, but it was a smart move. The Speaker largely kept the Representatives out of it, having already done their part by passing and sending the continuing resolution to the Senate. President Trump “remained unengaged,” which gave strength to Senate Republicans to hold firm, and, of course, the President had other jobs to do at the time.

For more than 40 days, Americans were largely left on their own as the government remained closed. The pain rippled across the country, as more than 600,000 federal workers were furloughed, 42 million low-income Americans lost food assistance, and chaos ensued at airports.

Also read: Robert Stacy McCain, “Senate Ends Filibuster; Democrats Immediately Form Circular Firing Squad“

The last link notes flight cancellations, but hardly describes “chaos.” As for 600,000+ federal workers being furloughed, that’s a good thing, because we have a roster of 600,000+ federal workers whose positions were not considered essential enough to require them to work on an emergency basis. If they were not essential to work for the past forty days, then their positions are not essential enough to retain at all. With hundreds of thousands, and perhaps two million illegal immigrants having left the country, and their jobs, there ought to be plenty of jobs available for the non-essential federal workers.

There’s a lot more at the original, and almost every paragraph is worthy of challenge, but the reader is supposed to believe that President Trump is an [insert slang term for the anus here], because he doesn’t want to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on welfare. For those of us not on welfare, Mr Trump and the Republicans want to spend less of our taxpayer dollars on the less productive and the welfare malingerers. People who have worked hard all of their lives really do not like being taxed to support people who will not work.

Those of us who voted for Mr Trump knew he is an [insert slang term for the anus here], and, more importantly, we wanted him to be an [insert slang term for the anus here], because being all kind and sweetness and light is a very large part of what has gotten us into this mess in the first place.

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Are you tired of winning yet?

The White House had threatened mass layoffs of federal government employees if Senate Democrats didn’t end their filibuster of the continuing resolution to fund the government, and many of us were wondering when, or if, it was going to happen. From The Wall Street Journal:

White House Starts Mass Layoffs of Government Workers

Many department receive notices, and an official says cuts will affect ‘thousands of federal workers’

By Natalie Andrews and Ken Thomas | Friday, October 10, 2025 | 2:24 PM EDT

WASHINGTON—The White House said Friday that it is conducting mass layoffs of federal employees in response to the government shutdown, an unprecedented step that follows through on weeks of threats meant to increase pressure on Democrats.

“The RIFs have begun,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted on X, using an abbreviation for reductions in force. An OMB official characterized the retrenchment as “substantial,” and a White House official said it would affect “thousands of federal workers.”

Vought briefed President Trump on the layoffs by phone Friday morning, according to a White House aide.

Department of Health and Human Services employees across several divisions received reduction-in-force notices on Friday, said Andrew Nixon, a spokesman for HHS. Some of the people who lost their jobs were deemed “at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda,” he said.

An Education Department spokeswoman said some agency employees would be among those receiving the layoff notices Friday, and a government official said there were layoffs at the Commerce Department.

Other Departments, including Commerce, Fatherland Homeland Security, and the Environmental Protection Agency, saw layoff notices.

Democrats were obviously aghast:

Reductions in force “are not a new power these bozos get in a shutdown,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, on social media. “We can’t be intimidated by these crooks.”

Having lived and worked in once-reliably Republican Virginia, I have been appalled that Virginia is now a “blue” state where presidential elections are concerned, and that’s entirely due to the huge number of federal government workers living in the Washington outskirts of the Old Dominion. Reducing the federal workforce eventually leads to better government, as it strengthens Republicans and weakens Democrats.

Republican leaders have been lukewarm on firing federal workers. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) and other senior GOP lawmakers had quietly advised the White House not to move forward with mass layoffs and sharp cuts to government assistance programs, citing people familiar with the matter.

But leaders have also expressed exasperation with the lack of progress as the shutdown heads into its second weekend.

Republican ‘leaders’ may have been lukewarm on firing federal workers, but do you know who aren’t lukewarm about it? Republican voters are not lukewarm about reducing the overpaid federal workforce, Republican voters want to see fewer people being supported by their tax dollars and more people working in real jobs in the private sector. We want tax payers, not tax consumers!

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Now this I can support! Let the counties served by SEPTA pay for SEPTA

While there are all sorts of reports on movement in the Pennsylvania General Assembly on additional funding for the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), at least as of this Friday morning writing, no funding agreement has been reached. Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins has paid forward some of the city’s $135 million subsidy, to keep city bus service for schools, but that’s only a stopgap for the system’s projected $213 deficit.

But this story from The Philadelphia Inquirer is at least a little bit better than the notion that the taxpayers throughout the Commonwealth should pay for SEPTA:

Philly’s collar counties are only authorized to tax property. Could SEPTA’s budget crisis change that?

County officials have long sought broader taxing authority. Some say the debate over transit funding could force the issue.

by Katie Bernard | Friday, August 29, 2025 | 5:00 AM EDT

Officials in Philadelphia’s collar counties are hopeful that the monthslong impasse over funding for SEPTA may push lawmakers to consider a change to state tax law they have sought for years.

With many of their residents dependent on SEPTA for daily work commutes and other trips into Philadelphia, officials across the suburban counties — Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester — say they are committed to its success, and they contributed more than $30 million to it last year. But the state’s laws, which allow counties to tax only property, prevent them from doing more to support the agency without raising property taxes.

Officials have long asked state lawmakers to grant them the authority to tax wages, sales, or property transfers. Some wonder if the current debate over the beleaguered transit authority may finally push the issue.

“They’re holding up public transit funding for the entire commonwealth,” said Monica Taylor, a Democrat who chairs the Delaware County Council. “All of these things are piling up and coming together, and they haven’t passed a budget. … This is hopefully pushing for the opportunity for people to come back to the table and start talking.”

There’s much more at the original, but you get the drift: the counties want to be able to wring more and more money out of their people.

My position is simple: the people who use SEPTA should be the ones who pay for SEPTA, through a reasonable fare increase of 75¢.[1]Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the … Continue reading

But, if the government leaders want to keep treating SEPTA not as a public transit system but a welfare agency, frequently welfare for the well-to-do, at least if Montgomery, Delaware, Bucks, and Chester counties start taxing their own residents for a system that is available to them, then the people of Carbon, Cameron, and McKean counties, which do not have access to SEPTA, will not.

Chester, Bucks, Montgomery, and Delaware counties are, respectively, the four wealthiest counties in the Commonwealth.

If those heavily Democrat counties — Philadelphia, Chester, Montgomery, and Delaware counties all voted heavily for then Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, while President Trump carried Bucks County by the slimmest of margins, 291 votes out of 402,349 total votes cast — want to tax their people more heavily to pay for SEPTA, let them!

The fairest system is for SEPTA riders to pay for SEPTA, but what I have suggested is at least the second most fair system.

References

References
↑1 Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total. With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.
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From where will all of this money come?

The biggest issue in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia at the moment is more state funding for the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, the mass transit agency which run buses, trains, trollies, and subways in the metropolitan area. SEPTA has a projected $213 million deficit, and has instituted significant service cuts to try to keep the operating expenses in line with projected revenues without the aid from Harrisburg for which they’ve been begging. My good friend Daniel Pearson and the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer have been adamant that the Commonwealth must come through with money, or utter disaster will strike. Note how the elevated train comes to destroyed tracks in a tweet from the newspaper!

We noted here that the solution is actually simple: a 75¢ fare hike completely closes SEPTA’s projected deficit.[1]Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the … Continue reading The newspaper in general, and Mr Pearson specifically, are opposed to further fare increases, pointing out that the base fare has jumped from $2.00 to just under $3.00 since 2018.

But, as the city is desperately looking for money from SEPTA, what else is the Inquirer presenting to readers?

Everywhere you look in the newspaper you’ll find stories of more and more money being spent, and more and more money being demanded, and no one seems willing to ask: from where will all of this money come?

The Transportation Workers Union Local 234 approved a new contract in November of 2024, which included “a 5% pay raise and safety improvements including bulletproof enclosures on buses to protect Bus Operators, upgrades to radios, and fixes to allow uninterrupted communication in tunnels.” That contract expires on November 7th of this year, which means the union will be going back to ask for more money again. From where will this money come?

I get it: the inflation of the Biden economy hit everyone hard, and though inflation started coming down during Mr Biden’s final year in office, the inflated prices never went away. As much as President Trump tries, inflation could come under control, but prices almost never go back down. Everyone is still trying to catch up, but when it’s government spending that is trying to catch up, the taxpayers are the ones who have to shell out. Pennsylvania’s state income tax rate is fairly low, just 3.07%, but the Commonwealth and the localities make up for that by trying to nickel-and-dime people to death on everything else.

Would you believe that the Borough of Jim Thorpe actually requires people to buy a permit, for the price of $5.00, to move into or out of any place in the borough, and that no public or private moving company shall enable such without verifying the moving permit? Violation of such can bring a fine of $600 and possible jail time. $5.00 might not seem like much, but this is an example of the petty ways in which the governments keep trying to stick their grubby hands into people’s pockets.

Philadelphia doesn’t require a move in permit, but charges $25.00 — $50.00 in Center City and University City — for a permit to occupy two street parking spaces for your moving truck.

Someone who looks a lot like me snowblowing in my old neighborhood, December 29, 2012. Does my neighborhood look wealthy to you? Click to enlarge.

Is it any wonder that the Republicans who control the state Senate are reticent to just give and give and give the taxpayers’ dollars to SEPTA and to Philly? Every dollar they give just means the more dollars that will be demanded in the next budget, and while Republicans are reasonably strong throughout the Commonwealth, Philly is as close to a “No Republican” zone as it can get. Do my former neighbors in relatively low-cost, conservative Jim Thorpe[2]Voters in Carbon County gave 66.90% of their votes to Donald Trump, while the voters in Philadelphia and Delaware counties gave 78.57% and 61.15% of their votes, respectively, to Kamala Harris … Continue reading really want to send more of their hard-earned tax dollars to subsidize wealthy inhabitants of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Lower Merion to take the train to Center City?

When Mr Pearson wrote “Harrisburg can’t let regional factionalism keep them from finding common ground on SEPTA: The stalemate over the state budget has entered a new, fractious phase, pitting lawmakers who represent predominantly rural areas against their counterparts from the commonwealth’s larger cities,” he was noting just how different Philly is from the “predominantly rural areas,” as though that’s a surprise, but his goal was a victory for SEPTA and the “commonwealth’s larger cities” over the rural areas. The people of those predominantly rural areas have expressed their differences at the voting booth, and they expect their elected representatives to vote their interests, not Philadelphia’s, yet the stories listed above show us, show the people of those predominantly rural areas how the commonwealth’s larger cities want to spend and spend and spend. Is it really any surprise that the Republican-controlled state Senate is reluctant to throw more and more and more money to Philly?

References

References
↑1 Here’s the math! SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total. With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.
↑2 Voters in Carbon County gave 66.90% of their votes to Donald Trump, while the voters in Philadelphia and Delaware counties gave 78.57% and 61.15% of their votes, respectively, to Kamala Harris Emhoff. Both the state Representative, Doyle Heffley, and state Senator, David Argall, for Jim Thorpe, are Republicans.
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The solution to SEPTA’s woes is simple I did something ridiculously simple: I did the math!

I lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, for fifteen years, from 2002 into 2017, a long enough time to get pretty familiar with the place. So, when Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) decided to tweet that “Mass transit is a lifeline for the people across all 67 counties who rely on it every day to attend school, get to work, and power our economy,” I had to think about it: had I ever seen a bus, other than a school bus, in Carbon County?

The answer, of course, was no, I never had, never in fifteen years noticed a public transportation bus.

Jim Thorpe is a small, very ‘walkable’ town, and I spent many of my days off doing just that, walking through town. Here’s one of the photo albums I took, on October 12, 2013, and you can see just why I walked through the picturesque town.

Mass transit in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Photo by D R Pico. Free for use with appropriate credit. Click to enlarge.

The latest outrage in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia isn’t crime, isn’t murder, but the fact that the Republican-controlled state Senate has been unwilling to pass a huge, additional appropriation for the Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, or SEPTA, and my good friends at The Philadelphia Inquirer have waxed apoplectic about the whole thing.

Philly lawyer George Bochetto hired to sue SEPTA to stop service cuts

Bochetto said that a suit would challenge the service cuts on the grounds of a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged communities.

by Thomas Fitzgerald | Monday, August 25, 2025 | 8:39 AM EDT

Philadelphia lawyer George Bochetto demanded SEPTA halt service cuts and said he has been hired by a group of riders to sue the transit agency, in an email sent Sunday night.

“SEPTA’s planned service reductions are draconian in nature and will have a severe impact on racial and ethnic minorities and low-income citizens in Southeastern Pennsylvania without any legitimate basis,” Bochetto wrote in the notice, which was first reported by Big Trial on Substack.

Consumer advocate Lance Haver is among those involved in the action to block SEPTA’s service cuts, according to the Substack post. The action comes as Harrisburg has failed to approve new state funding for mass transit. The first round of service cuts began on Sunday.

“SEPTA’s legal counsel is reviewing the letter and intends to contact George Bochetto today,” said Andrew Busch, a spokesperson for the transit agency.

SEPTA had been living on post-COVID funds from the Federal government, but those ended. In 2024, Governor Shapiro redirected $153 million in federal highway funds to SEPTA, because, horror of horrors, the Governor didn’t want SEPTA’s customers to have to pay more to use their services:

Earlier this month, SEPTA moved to enact a 29% across-the-board fare increase followed by deep service cuts next summer, as the agency grapples with what officials call an “unprecedented” post-pandemic financial crisis. It faces a recurring deficit of $240 million annually.

While Shapiro’s efforts have paused the 21.5% fare increase expected for Jan. 1, riders will still face an increase of 7.5% beginning Dec. 1. Shapiro said the federal cash infusion would limit service cuts, but did not provide further detail.

So, it wasn’t just Pennsylvanians in the small towns and counties throughout the central part of the Commonwealth who were being taxed to provide cheaper bus and subway rides for Philadelphians, but taxpayers in Montana and Wyoming and Missouri who were having to dig deeper into their pockets as well.

Back to the first cited article:

Bochetto said in an interview Monday that a suit would challenge the service cuts on the grounds of a disproportionate impact on disadvantaged communities. SEPTA completed an equity analysis before adopting the cuts.

Oh, so now SEPTA isn’t a public transit service, but a welfare program? Got it! But that’s not an argument which will play well with Republicans.

“They’re committing a fraud on the public,” Bochetto said, noting SEPTA has $390 million in a reserve fund. “There is no reason why these cuts are necessary.”

Haver will be a plaintiff in the action, Bochetto confirmed. He declined to discuss other groups or individuals who may join.

The group plans to seek a judge’s injunction to stop the cuts, Bochetto said in the email, addressed to SEPTA General Counsel Gino Bendetti. That likely would require SEPTA to draw from its service stabilization fund instead of cutting bus routes and reducing trips across all modes of transit.

Pretty typical these days: the lawsuit seeks to have a judge usurp the executive decision on how SEPTA’s funds are to be spent. This is the kind of bovine feces which needs to be slapped down, hard. I don’t care what you believe SEPTA should be doing; that’s for the agency’s leadership to decide, not judges.

SEPTA’s average daily ridership was approximately 768,291 unlinked passenger trips in May 2025, representing a 7% increase from May 2024. The bus system accounts for the largest portion of daily ridership, with 354,820 unlinked trips, or 50% of the total.

So, let’s do the math! With 768,291 unlinked passenger trips every day, and a projected operating deficit of $213 million, how much would fares have to increase to cover the deficit? 768,291 x 365 = 280,426,215 trips per year. A $213,000,000 deficit ÷ 280,426,215 daily trips = 75.96¢ per trip which would need to be collected to completely eliminate the projected deficit. Call it a 75¢ per trip added to the fares, just to male collections simpler, and the budget can be brought under control.

As we previously noted, the Inquirer reported that SEPTA was losing roughly $50 million a year from fare jumpers, much of it by people who could easily pay:

Transit Police Chief Charles Lawson said the agency has learned so far that the majority of fare evaders are everyday working residents — nurses, lawyers, even city employees with free passes, who, in a rush to catch the train, or out of habit after not paying in recent years, step over the turnstiles.

In a city like Philadelphia, nurses can make up to $100,000 a year. Attorneys? Normally they make pretty good money as well. City employees with free passes? When they use their passes, the city pays their fares. SEPTA has been trying to make turnstile jumping more difficult, but needs to install more barriers to do so. More, the system needs point out to those who skip fares they could easily pay just how much they are damaging the entire system.

The entire SEPTA crisis is caused by the cockamamie concept that the people who use SEPTA should not have to pay for the benefit they receive. Just raise the fares to what they need to be to operate the system!

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Beware the Ides of March!

Happy St Valentine’s Day!

I awoke this morning to a tweet from Libs of TikTok, noting that yet another federal judge has tried to block President Trump’s ‘pause’ in foreign aid spending.

Judge orders Trump administration to temporarily allow funds for foreign aid

by the Associated Press | Thursday, February 13, 2025 | 11:53 PM EST

WASHINGTON — A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift a three-week funding freeze that has shut down U.S. aid and development programs worldwide.

Judge Amir Ali issued the order Thursday in U.S. district court in Washington in a lawsuit brought by two health organizations that receive U.S. funding for programs abroad.

Newsweek noted that Judge Ali was one of President Joe Biden’s last judicial appointees, confirmed by the then Democrat-controlled Senate after the election. Continue reading →

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President Trump cancels the left’s electric vehicle policies

I have always held that if someone wants to buy a plug-in electric vehicle, if he can afford one, he has every right to do so. Alas, Our Betters in the former Biden Administration — and I do so love referring to it as the former Biden Administration! — thought that no, it ought not to be a matter of personal choice or preference, but that people should eventually be required to buy a plug-in electric vehicle. Our American left are pro-choice on exactly one thing.

Trump ended the EV mandate. Here’s what it means for the auto industry.

The transition to electric vehicles is a years-long process that is already underway and faces fierce competition from abroad.

Continue reading →