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The Keystone State - ratified Constitution 12 Dec 1787

Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The state is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north and New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, and the 6th-most populous state according to the last official U.S. Census count in 2010.

Geographical type: Territory

Latitude: 41° N — Longitude: 77.5° W

Area: 119,283 km²

ISO 3166-2 code: US-PA

Notable Places

Birthplace of

Gary Becker, Gary Stanley Becker, in Pottsville, on 2 Dec 1930
Thomas DiLorenzo, Thomas James DiLorenzo, on 8 Aug 1954
John Taylor Gatto, in Monongahela, on 15 Dec 1935
Jane Jacobs, Jane Butzner, in Scranton, on 4 May 1916
Felix Morley, Felix Muskett Morley, in Haverford, on 6 Jan 1894
Albert Jay Nock, in Scranton, on 13 Oct 1870
Ron Paul, Ronald Ernest Paul, in Pittsburgh, on 20 Aug 1935
Lawrence Reed, Lawrence W. Reed, on 29 Sep 1953
Jacob Sullum, Jacob Z. Sullum, in Wilkes-Barre, on 5 Sep 1965

Home To

Grove City College, Grove City
Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg

Deathplace of

Paul L. Poirot, in Lewisburg, on 17 Feb 2006
Hans Sennholz, in Grove City, on 27 Jun 2007

Measures of Freedom

Freedom in the 50 States 2015-2016 | Pennsylvania | Cato Institute
2014: Overall rank: 26, fiscal policy rank: 13, regulatory policy rank: 37, personal freedom rank: 23, economic freedom rank: 30
LP State-by-State Membership Numbers [PDF], Libertarian Party News, Apr 2006
31 Dec 2005: Number of Members: 756

Articles

Benjamin Franklin: The Man Who Invented the American Dream, by Jim Powell, The Freeman, Apr 1997
Lengthy biographical essay, including a section on the posthumous publication and reaction to Franklin's Autobiography
Franklin thought college education should be available to people in Pennsylvania ... He ... wrote a pamphlet, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania ... In 1749, Franklin was elected the first president of this new Academy, helping to recruit trustees, raise money, rent a house, and hire teachers. The Academy prospered and went on to become the University of Pennsylvania ... By the time Franklin had become famous for his experiments on electricity, he was in the thick of Pennsylvania politics. He was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly in August 1751.
Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States, by Murray N. Rothbard, The Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1995
Historical examination of the evolution of the United States Civil Service and attempts to reform it, from its beginnings through the early 20th century
[The] Pennsylvania Constitution was scarcely a program for democratic despotism ... all local officials were to be elected by their communities, and not appointed by the state ... a comprehensive bill of rights was established in the state constitution to limit the government's power over the people ... in a fascinating provision unique to Pennsylvania, a council of censors was supposed to meet every seven years to review the actions of the state government in the preceding years and to see whether and where it had exceeded its constitutional powers, from which a new ... convention to correct these excesses might be chosen.
"Free-Speech Zone", by James Bovard, The American Conservative, 15 Dec 2003
Provides various examples of "free speech zone" incidents as well as reactions in the U.S. and overseas
When Bush came to the Pittsburgh area ... retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a [protest] sign ... The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field ... a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech ... Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested ... Pennsylvania district judge Shirley Rowe Trkula threw out the disorderly conduct charge against Neel, declaring, "I believe this is America. Whatever happened to 'I don't agree with you, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it'?"
The think tank boom, by Peter Orvetti, Libertarian Party News, Feb 2000
Discusses the proliferation of state-level "libertarian/conservative think tanks" between 1985-2000, the activities in pursuit of their goals and various examples and quotes from some of the public policy organizations
In Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives is working to "put the 'public' back in public policy," said President Sean Duffy. [It] was founded in 1988 "to generate new ideas and policy changes that encourage a reliance upon private initiative and democratic citizenship," he said ... Commonwealth ... "will continue to grow in size, scope, and effectiveness," Duffy said. It "will be on the cutting edge of the policy debate in Pennsylvania" by taking on new issues like technology and e-commerce regulation in addition to taxation issues, education policy, and the environment.

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Pennsylvania" as of 6 Nov 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.