PITTSBURGH — Make them stop! In their latest two shots at
turning Pennsylvania around, our Jerks-R-Us political establishment
is proposing that the waitress bunnies at our upcoming casinos be
wrapped in some heavy-duty red tape and the state’s judges are
suing to get their illegal and repealed pay raises reinstated.
With the casinos, the central planners are saying the players in
Pittsburgh’s new stand-alone slots parlor will be permitted to
receive only one free drink per day. My question: Who from the
central committee is going to check if some cute honey in an
undersized bunny outfit gives me a free Jack Daniel’s at the Joker
Poker machine at 10 p.m. and a free double Beam at the Carnival
Casino slots at midnight?
Regarding the no-debate, no-notice 16 percent to 54 percent pay
hike that was tiptoed through the state House and Senate in the wee
hours of July 7, Judge John Herron in Philadelphia is saying he
still wants the money because the state Constitution prohibits the
pay of judges from being cut unless pay cuts are applied to all
salaried officers of the state. He’s suing to reinstate the pay
grab solely for the judges, not for executive branch officials or
state lawmakers.
Going a step further, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Albert
Sheppard Jr. also is suing, asking that the state Supreme Court
bring back the entire pay boost for all legislators, the 1,000-plus
judges in the state and the state’s executive officials.
One can effectively argue, rather easily, that the paychecks of
Herron and Sheppard haven’t been cut because their July pay
increase wasn’t legal in the first place. Most blatantly, the pay
raise legislation was unconstitutional because it flashed a green
light to a tricky procedure that allowed lawmakers to pocket their
new money immediately by way of so-called “unvouchered expenses,”
i.e., fake expenses, thereby circumventing clear constitutional
language that prohibits politicians from giving themselves mid-term
pay raises.
Additionally, Herron and Sheppard didn’t get a legal salary
increase in July because the shifty behind-the-curtain shenanigans
involved in the pay hike unconstitutionally violated the basic and
clear requirements for public notice.
For Messrs. Herron and Sheppard to now file lawsuits to
recapture their ill-gotten gains, to be crying because they can’t
continue to pocket their unconstitutional pay grab, is analogous to
Willie Sutton bellyaching because the banks want their bags of
money back.
In the end, the state’s judges will decide on whether the
no-debate, no-wait, no-notice pay hike, including their own, was
legal, which is not unlike letting Al Capone decide if hookers and
bootlegging are legit.
As far as Christmas goes, I didn’t buy any strings of Chinese
lights this year, which means there’s no blinking Rudolph in the
front yard from some 50-cents-per-hour slave shop in Shanghai, for
two reasons: (a) it was just five months ago that the dean of
China’s National Defense University, Gen. Zhu Chenghu, said China
could well nuke hundreds of American cities if Washington made any
slip-ups regarding Taiwan, and (b) it’s not true that when one
light goes out the others stay lit.
With 1.3 billion people to play with, here’s how a cocky Gen.
Zhu put it: “If the Americans are determined to interfere, then we
will be determined to respond. If the Americans draw their missiles
and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China’s
territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons. We
will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east
of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that
hundreds of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.”
As Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Or as Rodney King
put it, “Why can’t we all just get along?” Similarly, as Jimmy
Durante said, “Why can’t everyone leave everybody else the hell
alone?”
Or as I say, open the friggin fortune cookie. It says, “Wise man
doesn’t send millions for Chinese Christmas lights to a bunch of
high-IQ whiz-kid commies who talk about nuking every U.S. city
bigger than Topeka.”
In other holiday news, Bill O’Reilly has proclaimed that
“corporate America should get down on its knees and thank God that
the baby Jesus was born,” the American Family Association is
reporting that Staples, Best Buy and Office Max are discriminating
against Christians by not mentioning Christmas in their advertising
stuffers, and Luke reported that Jesus didn’t care at all about
retail.
