From my desk in the county courthouse, it would appear like it is the beginning of a typical Thursday morning. The sun is shining, and there is a dim glow from my computer as I organize my various projects, charts, and reports for the day. However, as I begin to skim over a teamster union contract for negotiations this afternoon, I hear the sound of metal, more specifically ankle shackles clanking as they hit the tile floors. I know in an instance what this means: sentencing day. Thursday in the McKean County courthouse means one thing in the large courtroom upstairs from the County Commissioners office where I work, it means that President Judge John Pavlock will either be accepting pleas of those charged with crimes by the District Attorney, or he will be sentencing those who have been found guilty.
One would imagine that in a county of about 42,000 people, the crime rate would be low, and that sentencing would be sparse this day. However, Judge Pavlock will be busy right until the court closes at 4:30. As I stand by the water cooler at the end of the day, I can see the orange jump suits of the McKean County Prison filing back out the door to be transported back to their cells by the Sheriff’s deputies.
It is hard to imagine that in such a peaceful place in the heart of the Alleghany National Forest there could be so much crime. However, after much reflection and analysis, I have discovered a simple cause: lack of jobs. Unemployment literally encompasses much of the problems with not just McKean County, but rural America in general. Rural America has been hurting for a very long time and it has seemed as though policy makers have either been unable or unwilling to put in place real solutions.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed legislation known as the “war on poverty” and while many of the programs are have helped, they are not achieving results. This pattern continued until 1983 with the Reagan administration, when the United States pursued a radically different policy, the goal of the government was going to be to put people back to work and to push the American people to do what they do best: create, dare, and dream.
These three adjectives are in short what will help kick start not only the ailing rural economy, but the US economy in general (yes, the US economy needs a kick start, our job growth rate has been an anemic 2.3%). The government needs to do everything it can to encourage entrepreneurship, and that entails making a regulatory structure that works with businesses, not against them. This is exactly what we have done in Pennsylvania.
For example in 2013, the PA Department of Environmental Protection decided to enforce regulations on the natural gas industry that it knew full well would kill the small natural gas producers of North Western PA. So a few political leaders like my father, State Rep. Martin Causer, and his colleagues in the PA government rolled up their sleeves and said no. The fight continued for three years but ultimately culminated in Gov. Tom Wolf signing a law undoing the regulations.
The lesson to learn here is that the key to not only restore the economy, but lifting up the millions left in poverty, is to create an environment where business can grow, dare to believe in America’s entrepreneurial spirit, and dream to create new businesses. It is easy to be pessimistic about our chances, that our jails will continue to grow and the unemployment lines will continue to do nothing but swell. But seeing as Americans are the same people that obliterated Nazi Germany, went to the moon, won the cold war, and been a beacon of hope to millions across the globe for generations, I like our odds.
