Pennsylvania

It seems that the talking heads on the teevee have seen Hillary’s victory in the early vote counts and exit polling, so congratulations seem to be in order.

I think the sound I heard coming from the southwest was of Pennsylvanians breathing a collective sigh of relief of getting their state back

Meanwhile, the big question of the night remains as to how much of the delegate deficit she erodes.

That the race goes on, to Indiana at least, and likely all the way to Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana…perhaps even to Denver.   But that’s not a surprise.

It’s not fair! 

There are so many things I’d like to blog about, but I have several piles of work (which I’m taking a lunchtime mental health break from) preventing me from doing much more than issuing a round of congratulations:

• Congratulations to folo and Rossmiller for so vigorously discussing the second person plural pronoun, “y’all”.  Having grown up in Memphis and also having spent time in L.A. (Lower Alabama), I feel perfectly comfortable observing: All y’all yankees seem to have a hard time with simple grammar.
   
• Congratulations to John McCain for clinching the GOP nomination to run for President.   And, Congratulations to Huckabee for finally acknowledging the inevitable, doing so very graciously without damaging his prospects to campaign for a kinder, gentler theocracy in the future.
   
• Congratulations to Hillary for winning the Rhode Island, Ohio, and Texas primaries.
   
• Congratulations to Obama for winning the Vermont primary, for likely winning the Texas caucuses, and for having emerged from yesterday’s contests without having lost too much of his lead in the delegate count.
   
• Congratulations or condolences are in order for Pennsylvanians, who will now be rewarded for their stalwart refusal to jump on the bandwagon for ever-earlier primaries.  They will likely receive the brunt of Hillary’s, Obama’s, and the media’s attention from now until their primary on 22 April.
   
• Condolences for Americans; considering word of irregularities in Ohio and Texas, it seems we still don’t know how to hold an election.
   
• Congratulations to the vast right-wing conspiracy for so effectively keeping the Dems’ battling over their nominee likely until the convention this summer.
   
• And finally, congratulations to Maine, Montana, New Hampshire and South Carolina, for sticking to their guns so far, and resisting the unfunded mandated privacy intrusion of Real ID.

Seen at TollRoadsNews:

USDOT have told Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) and DOT that their application to toll I-80 does not meet the requirements for even conditional approval. And they have posed four pages of questions they say must be answered by state authorities if they wish to continue with the application. The questions are sharply worded, suggesting the feds consider the state application to be a shoddy piece of work.

TollRoadsNews has a nice summary of what those questions are…and the entire tone of the response reminds me of some insurance rate filings I’ve worked through with uncooperative state regulators.

My favorite passage of the response (again quoting TRN):

A legal requirement to demonstrate how present funding is inadequate to maintain I-80 provokes sharp questions by the feds about the low priority Pennsylvania has been giving to interstate maintenance:

- asking why US interstate maintenance funds have been transferred for other purposes

While I’m not opposed to tolling highways to fund their construction and maintenance (assuming that that is what the tolls are going for), I do appreciate it when someone points out hypocrisy by a state agency.