Columnist: Parting gift for Specter a farce

From a terrific new column by Eric Heyl in The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review about Gov. Ed Rendell's desire to blow millions of tax dollars to build the Arlen Specter Library.

Summon the seamstress.

Whoever took in Gov. Ed Rendell's trousers when he lost all that weight should return to Harrisburg to start stitching scarlet H's onto his shirts and sweaters.

Rendell should wear that letter for his remaining months as governor as a constant reminder of the hypocrisy he displayed Tuesday when he signed into law Pennsylvania's $28 billion, 2010-11 budget.

The spending plan's revenue estimates are so far removed from reality that they would send any Accounting 101 student running into the night, screaming as if he or she were chased by a flesh-devouring character from a George Romero movie.

But that's not the reason Rendell should accessorize his wardrobe with a convenient literary device writers routinely have employed since Nathaniel Hawthorne conceived it 160 years ago as a rudimentary label, with a scarlet A for adulteress. Sort of like Polo, if that well-known brand came with a severe social stigma.

Rendell should wear the letter because referencing allegedly painful spending cuts while borrowing $10 million to prop up the deflated ego of one of his old friends is an exercise in extreme hypocrisy.

The $10 million will go toward construction of a library on the Philadelphia University campus named for Arlen Specter. The soon-to-be ex-senator lost in the Democratic primary after he switched parties because he was convinced he could not win renomination as a Republican.

Reminder: Rendell signed a budget that is costing 1,000 state employees their jobs.

Read the full column, "Parting gift for Specter a farce," at the newspaper's website.