Common Sense Weekly

Welcome to Common Sense Weekly! This is the Commonwealth Foundation's weekly news roundup of policy issues being debated in Harrisburg and across Pennsylvania.



Why 'Shrinkflation' Is Really a Government Spending Problem

President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey deflect blame for high inflation away from the true cause: their own policies. They should be embarrassed by this lame blame game.

“Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon,” said Nobel-winning economist Milton Friedman. Expanding the money supply — or “printing money” — causes inflation. That happened when Biden and congressional Democrats went on a spending binge, ignoring warnings of impending inflation.

The result: Overall consumer prices are up nearly 18% since January 2021.



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Is This the End for Pennsylvania’s Undated Ballots?

Judges in Pennsylvania have been arguing for four years about whether election officials must count undated mail ballots, since some voters always fail to fill in the required date field. The latest answer, issued by a federal appeals court on Wednesday, is no. The good news is that this could help stabilize a wild 2024 election that is now only months away.

Pennsylvania’s election law, upheld by the state Supreme Court, clearly tells mail voters to “fill out, date and sign the declaration.” Last year, though, a federal judge ruled that the date field was effectively optional, citing the Civil Rights Act. That law prohibits states from denying a person the right to vote based on a nonmaterial “error or omission” on paperwork that is “related to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting.”



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Pennsylvania Governor Flirts with Reckless ‘Green’ Initiatives

In efforts to keep the war drums of climate alarmism beating, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro is employing one reckless acronym after another: RGGI, PACER, and PRESS. This alphabet soup of big-government initiatives, however, threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians and the economic vitality of one of the nation’s largest energy-producing states.

Shapiro’s green gambit starts with the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, or “Reggie”). RGGI is a multistate cap-and-tax program that sets strict emission standards on member states and imposes a tax on carbon-emitting power generators. RGGI sycophants refer to these taxes as, in true Orwellian euphemism, “allowances,” creating a “market” for generators to buy and sell units of carbon dioxide.

Shapiro entered the governor’s office with Pennsylvania’s RGGI membership tied up in the courts. RGGI’s legality in the Keystone State was problematic from Day One because of Shapiro’s predecessor, former governor Tom Wolf, and his use of executive power. Wolf leapfrogged the legislature and unilaterally entered Pennsylvania into RGGI via executive order.



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Stop Shapiro's Energy Tax

Governor Shapiro just introduced a new energy tax that will hurt Pennsylvanian businesses and working families. Send a message now: Tell Gov. Shapiro we don't need his energy tax.

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