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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Thousands Converge on Capitol for "Responsible Budget" Rally

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Tuesday, May 3, 2011   

HARRISBURG, Pa. - The steps of the State Capitol in Harrisburg will be packed today with union members and others who say that despite an estimated $4 billion deficit, Pennsylvania needs to make investments in key programs in its next state budget.

Mike Crossey is vice president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), representing almost 200,000 public school employees. He says Governor Tom Corbett can't use the budget axe alone to balance the books.

"A 'cuts-only' budget is not a responsible way to set the budget for the state of Pennsylvania."

Crossey says PSEA has a number of revenue-raising options in mind that could help spare budget cuts. They include a tax on companies drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation, boosting taxes on big corporations doing business in the state, and taxing cigars and chewing tobacco, among other things.

Crossey says the revenues raised through the taxes they're talking about add up. He says there are huge numbers of dollars lying just under the surface in Pennsylvania.

"If we tax the extraction of this natural gas, just at the same level as, say, West Virginia and Texas - which are two other big states that play in this natural gas area - this would bring in 200 million dollars, in the first year."

Crossey thinks another target should be corporations that pay no income tax. In many cases, he says, while they operate in Pennsylvania, they're incorporated just over the border, in the tax-haven state of Delaware.

"Here in Pennsylvania, a family making in the mid-thirty-thousands, pays more taxes than 80-some-percent of the corporations."

PSEA says Governor Corbett has proposed cutting $1.2 billion from the K-through-12 public school budget.

The Rally for a Responsible Budget is from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Tueday, May 3, at the State Capitol in Harrisburg.





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