Wait! The Kanosians told me it was a Republican Communist plot

VOX: The lead poisoning crisis in Flint, Michigan, was a surprise, an emergency that occurred after the city switched to a new, cheaper water source.

But there are at least six cities in the United States where we should, in theory, have really good data on lead exposure. In fiscal year 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent almost $2 million as part of a three-year funding commitment to help some of the biggest cities in the country monitor lead exposure.

I spent the past week looking at these cities, and came away with three main findings. The first is that the rate of lead exposure in Pennsylvania is incredibly alarming. Nearly 10 percent of the more than 140,000 kids tested had levels of 5 or more micrograms per deciliter of lead in the blood (5 µg/dL) — this is the threshold the government uses toidentify children with dangerously elevated blood lead levels. One percent tested positive for blood lead levels greater than 10 µg/dL.

Compare that to Flint, where state data shows the rate of lead exposure for 5 µg/dL from 2014 to 2015 as 3.21 percent. (Flint started pumping water from the Flint River in April 2014). Other researchers have found that specific areas of the city have exposure rates as high as 6.3 percent. That's alarming, but still a lower rate than 18 of the 20 cities in Pennsylvania

How is the public sector crisis in Pennsylvania?

PSBA: Rapidly escalating pension costs continue to wreak havoc on state and local school district budgets. In the coming fiscal year, both the state and school officials must figure out how to pay pension obligations that continue to mount, with the total employer contributions for 2015-16 projected by the Public School Employees Retirement System (PSERS) at $3.4 billion. Beginning in July, the annual employer contribution rate that must be paid by the state and school districts will jump to 25.84%, up from 21.40% in 2014-15, and from the 2013-14 rate of 16.93%. This year’s hike marks the fifth year of planned increases in the employer contribution rate under Act 120 of 2010 which are needed to raise the rate to the actuarially required level. The contribution will continue to climb over the next few years to a staggering 32.2% by 2019-20, and will not significantly decrease until 2036-37. 

So, here we have it, Kanosians are poisoning children and blaming it on Republicans.