Sunday, December 31, 2006

Protest Rally at Caltagirone Office Tuesday

As you have likely heard by now, Democratic Representative Tom Caltagirone of Berks County has announced his intention to support Republican John Perzel for the position of Speaker of the House. His own statement confirms that this is the result of a deal he cut with Perzel.

In the midterms, the voters in Pennsylvania opted for a change in direction, and gave the Democrats a one-vote majority in the state House. Caltagirone is, in the words of State Dem Chair Rooney, a "power-hungry politician", leveraging his deciding vote in order "to feather his own nest by selling out the party".

On Tuesday, the State Democratic Party is planning a protest rally at Caltagirone's office in Reading, at 3 pm. His office is located at 645 Penn Street in Reading. (The timing is curious -- it is after the reconvening of the House on Tuesday, when the vote will take place, and Caltagirone will presumably be in Harrisburg on Tuesday.)

If you cannot attend the rally, (or even if you can) email Caltigrone at tcaltagi@pahouse.net.

Caltagirone, you might recall, was minority leader when Hazleton's Tom Stish switched parties (from D to R) to deprive Caltagirone of the majority leader position. Stish was thrown out of office in the very next election.

His contact info:
Hon. Thomas R. Caltagirone
645 Penn Street, 2nd Floor
Reading, PA 19601
(610) 376-1529
Fax: (610) 378-4406

Hon. Thomas R. Caltagirone
Room 106 Irvis Office Building
PO Box 202127
Harrisburg, PA 17120-2127
(717) 787-3525
Fax: (717) 772-5401

{Ed note: In their rush to get the email out, the State Dems misspelled Caltagirone's name as Caltigirone. I picked up the same error and have now fixed it in my post.}

{UPDATE: Demonstrating the ineptness and sloppiness endemic to the State Democratic Party, and no doubt not a little responsible for the difficulty in holding power, it seems, subsequent to the email that I received from the Party, on which this post was premised, they issued a revised release in which they corrected the spelling of Caltagrinone's name and changed the rally date.

The rally was changed from the original Tuesday to Monday, the 1st.
Unfortunately, the change came too late for me to change the blog entry and misdirect both readers (actually, that particular entry received numerous hits). No doubt thanks in part to the Democratic screw-up in the email notice, the rally attracted only about 50 people (most of whom apparently had been planning the trip for unrelated purposes anyway).

Nice going, TJ.}

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