For once, voter apathy didn’t doom us to be subject to the whims of our lawmakers. Pennsylvania’s legislators, who set the world land speed record for greed several months ago by voting themselves a disgusting pay raise in the middle of the night after cutting funds to education, child care and other programs, finally faced the music and repealed the damn thing. You know why? Because it turns out the voters really did care.
This is a victory that comes about in large part because of the state’s newspapers. From the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and everywhere in between, editorial pages would not let the issue die and the public responded. I applaud the efforts of the media and hope they get the credit they deserve for keeping the issue in the public consciousness.
And now the obvious question: How do we harness this kind of power for more issues?