Joel Mathis

A few years back, Thomas Frank's " What's The Matter With Kansas? " made a big splash nationally. His basic thesis was this: Republicans won votes by promising to concentrate on issues, like abortion, dear to social conservatives—but once in office focused mostly on an economic agenda of helping big corporations and giving the poor the shaft. Maybe that was true a decade ago, but now? Republicans won a lot of elections at the state and Congressional elections in 2010 largely because people were so frustrated with the economy and wanted something done . Instead of economic turnarounds, though, we've been given... action on abortion . That certainly seems to be the case in Pennsylvania, where the Legislature is working on a bill that would compel doctors to show women ultrasounds of their fetuses before performing an abortion. What has the Legislature—or Gov. Tom Corbett—done to advance the economy here? Beats me. I'm not one to belittle culture war issue

If you saw my blog last week, you already know what I think about GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett's ongoing "unemployed people are lazy" meme. I expand those thoughts in today's Philadelphia Daily News -- and even add a little research to show just how bad the jobs situation is in Pennsylvania right now: Between June 2009 and June 2010, this is what happened: * The state lost roughly 9,000 professional and technical jobs that had a prevailing annual wage of $73,808. * Another 10,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in a sector that typically pays $51,529 a year. * And the construction industry - which pays on average $51,928 a year - cut another 5,000 jobs. So where did the state's job growth come from? * The biggest growth was in "administrative and waste services" - 23,000 new jobs. But they paid just $30,887 a year. * Pennsylvania added another 15,000 "leisure and hospitality" jobs, with prevailing wages ranging from $14,

Looks like Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett has decided to double-down on the " unemployed people are lazy " theme in fairly cowardly fashion : Speaking to reporters after a campaign stop in Delaware County, the Republican nominee for governor noted that newspapers across the state are carrying line after line of help-wanted ads. "Are there jobs out there? . . . How would you interpret that?" he asked. Corbett reported seeing one newspaper page that he said promised thousands of jobs listings in print and online. "You guys asked me if there are jobs out there," he said to a pair of reporters. "If I am a common citizen, the average citizen, and I look at a newspaper . . . and I see jobs - what's the answer to that question." Asked if he was implying that the unemployed were not taking advantage of these listings, he said no-adamantly no-he wasn't saying that. But he clearly is saying that. And he's being a pun