Repping Harrisburg and repping it hard.

LINKED IN: The fastest-growing industries include renewables (+49.2%), internet (+24.6%), online publishing (+24.3%), and e-learning (+15.9%). Fastest-shrinking industries were newspapers (-28.4%), retail (-15.5%), building materials (-14.2%), and automotive (-12.8%). Instead of the growth in percentage terms, we also examined the volume of job gain / loss by industry, as indicated by the largest bubbles in the figure above. Our data show that even through the recession, the industries with the largest volume of employment growth (the largest circles on the figure above) were internet, hospitals & healthcare, health, wellness & fitness, oil & energy, IT and renewables. On the other […]

So much for ‘so shines a good deed in a weary world.’ [h/t Scot Dantzer]

A large coalition of public interest, government reform, consumer, labor, grassroots and progressive organizations today announced a major national campaign to target corporations that use corporate treasury funds to affect the outcome of the fall election, especially contributing to shadowy Super PACs or to 501c4s that run ads but are not legally obligated to disclose their donors.  Groups include: Common Cause, Public Citizen, Coalition for Accountability in Political Spending (CAPS), Service Employees International Union, MoveOn.org, Americans United for Change, Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), Public Campaign Action Fund, Campaign for America’s Future,National People’s Action, Progress NOW, Every Child Matters, Health Care for America […]

This is actually pretty accurate.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: A U.S. service member walked out of his base in southern Afghanistan before dawn Sunday and started shooting Afghan civilians, Afghan and NATOofficials said. An Associated Press photographer reported seeing 15 bodies of Afghans allegedly killed in the shooting. The photographer saw the bodies — some of them burned and some covered with blankets — in the villages of Alkozai and Balandi in Kandahar province’s Panjwai district. The villages are about 500 yards from a U.S. base. People were killed in the shooting spree in Kandahar province, Gov. Tooryalai Wesa said, though he did not provide numbers. “The […]

In my high school English class, we spent a couple of weeks on the Romantic poets who pretty much coined the term ‘waxing poetic.’ Shakespeare was in there, and the whole section was almost as bad as algebra… until we came to Stephen Dunn’s The Flea. The Flea is a playful little ditty in which a young man attempts to convince his ‘love’ to let him take her virginity. Impishly, he points out that a flea, by biting them both, has already played metaphorical priest and mixed their bloods together (in its swollen stomach). Don’t buy it? She doesn’t either. […]

WASHINGTON TIMES: The Treasury Department’s counterterrorism arm is investigating speaking fees paid to a long-time Democratic Party leader who is among the most vocal advocates of an Iranian opposition group designated as a terrorist group by the State Department. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell told The Washington Times that Treasury investigators last week subpoenaed records related to payments he has accepted in exchange for public speaking engagements. Mr. Rendell is among a bipartisan group of prominent former officials – including Cabinet-level Republicans – who have accepted payment in exchange for speeches calling for the removal of the Mujahideen-e Khalq […]

This week’s City Paper cover feature is a must-see photo essay on the gritty art of the hustle at a dive vs. dive Kenzo pool league. Like Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, Neal Santos’ photos speak volumes without uttering a word. Daniel Denvir’s text reveals the uneasy intersections of race and class in neighborhoods perched somewhere between comfort of decline and the shock of renewal. Somewhere Charles Bukowski is smiling.