Podcast appearances and mentions of Edward G Rendell

John Kromer’s "Philadelphia Battlefields" considers key local campaigns undertaken from 1951 to 2019 that were extraordinarily successful despite the opposition of the city’s political establishment. Kromer draws on election data and data-mapping tools that explain these upset elections as well as the social, economic, and demographic trends that influenced them to tell the story of why these campaign strategies were successful. He analyzes urban political dynamics through case studies of newcomer Rebecca Rhynhart’s landslide victory over a veteran incumbent for Philadelphia City Controller; activist Chaka Fattah’s effective use of grassroots organizing skills to win a seat in Congress; and Maria Quiñones-Sánchez’s hard-fought struggle to become the first Hispanic woman to win a City Council seat, among others. "Philadelphia Battlefields" shows how these candidates’ efforts to increase civic engagement, improve municipal governance, and become part of a new generation of political leadership at the local and state level were critical to their successes. John Kromer is a planning and development consultant, an instructor in urban development policy at the University of Pennsylvania, former Director of Housing for the city of Philadelphia under Mayor Edward G. Rendell, and a participant in local political campaigns and elections. He is the author of "Fixing Broken Cities: The Implementation of Urban Development Strategies" and has written extensively on downtown and neighborhood development issues. Description courtesy of Temple University Press.

Edward G. Rendell, the Democratic former governor of Pennsylvania and Bill Shuster, a Republican former member of Congress from Pennsylvania, join host Gil Gross for a fascinating discussion on We The States, the official podcast of the National Governors Association, about how bipartisan efforts at the state level have successfully brought about meaningful investments in the nation’s infrastructure.Gov. Rendell recalls attending the first Transportation Committee hearing chaired by Rep. Shuster: “The members spoke. And literally every member, whether they were Tea Party or progressive Democrat, they stood up and said, ‘I believe we’ve got to do something about infrastructure.’”“Everybody wants to do something about infrastructure but nobody wants to pay for it.” Their comments are timely as the Democratic-led House of Representatives and the Trump administration explore a bipartisan infrastructure bill that both sides say they want. The National Governors Association has been advocating for action on a bill that would invest in the nation’s long-term future through a partnership on roads, bridges, broadband and other physical assets.Both Rep. Shuster and Gov. Rendell pointed to how states have led the charge to raising funds for infrastructure improvement with increases to the gas tax in 31 states. Gov. Rendell observed, “60 percent of our governors have put their money where their mouth is.” Gov. Rendell also recalled how two leaders from across the political aisle worked together, “My successor Tom Corbett did something I tried to do but I couldn’t get the legislature to do it. And that was to raise the state gas tax. I came up and testified standing next to (Republican) Governor Corbett for the gas tax increase. I got the Democrats to vote for it, he got Republicans to vote for it.” Gov. Rendell added a message about infrastructure to politicians everywhere: “That November ... every single incumbent who voted for it won.” Listen to success stories of bipartisanship in state government that can serve as a model for leaders in Washington.

Lance Simmens has published about 180 articles in the Huffington Post, but his most recent article, Why our Children Should Hate us, was censored and pulled from this publication. Lance Simmens is currently the President of the Malibu Adamson House Foundation, he also serves as Second Vice-President of the Malibu Democratic Club, is a board member of the Southern California chapter of the Americans for Democratic Action, and is on the Board of Advisors for Vote Riders, a national organization which promotes more fair and equitable voter identification laws. He has spent nearly four decades involved in public service at all levels of government:  Federal, State and local.  In the process he has devoted his professional career to a search for the most effective and efficient public policies, programs, and processes to benefit the society at large.  He most served as the California State Director for Gasland Grassroots, an organization devoted to public education on the issue of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and promotion of the current HBO documentary Gasland 2, and was California State Director for the Citizens’ Trade Campaign, organizing efforts to defeat the Trans Pacific Partnership. He served CA Governor Jerry Brown as Deputy Director of Communications for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, the largest public works program in the history of the U.S.  In this position he helped to steer the program forward with a business plan that has largely been hailed as realistic during a most difficult economic period.  In addition he served as the chief spokesman for the project, doing innumerable interviews, both on and off camera, oversaw placement of opinion-editorials in all major newspapers in the State, and appeared in dozens of public for a to advance this visionary transportation option for future generations. Mr. Simmens has spent fifteen years in Federal service, largely serving in senior intergovernmental affairs positions for four Cabinet Secretaries, six years as Assistant Executive Director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, where he staffed the powerful Urban Economic Policy Committee charged with setting national economic and budgetary priorities for the nation’s largest cities, six years as Senior Economic Counsel to U.S. Senator James Sasser on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, and for nearly eight years served Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell as Special Assistant for Intergovernmental Affairs. In this capacity he received the most distinguished non-member awards for public service by the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania State Association of Township Supervisors, and is the only person to have ever received the Pennsylvania League of Cities and Municipalities’ Public Service Citation twice.  He also served as the Chairman of the Governor’s panels on development of both wind and solar energy and engineered groundbreaking model ordinances that have been emulated nationwide. In 1999 Mr. Simmens served as senior advisor on the President’s Council on Y2K Conversion and was responsible for preparation and publication of a government-wide Scenario Policy document on the issue at a Cabinet-level meeting held at Blair House that Fall. In 1993 Mr. Simmens was appointed by President Clinton to help establish the Federal government’s first Office of Sustainable Development in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. Department of Commerce.  Over the next four years he was instrumental in developing and implementing programs, policies and regulations for sustainable fisheries that would earn him the highest award from the Department of Commerce, the Gold Medal Award, as leader of a team of government officials who pioneered sustainable initiatives off the coast of New England, the Pacific Northwest, and the Gulf of Mexico. As Assistant Executive Director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors from 1987-1993 he was responsible for economic and budgetary resolutions and policies on key issues facing urban America, including NAFTA, the Census undercount, targeted fiscal assistance, and reordering Federal budget priorities to capture the “peace dividend” afforded by the end of the Cold War.  In 1991 he led a delegation of Mayors to Moscow to participate in a conference on Federalism to help with the transition of government under the collapse of the Soviet Union.  In 1992 he organized an historic meeting of Russian and American Mayors at the United Nations where they heard testimony from major world leaders including Carl Sagan. During the 1980’s Mr. Simmens served as Legislative Director for U.S. Senator James Sasser and his Senior Economic Counsel on the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.  He directed his energies to fighting to preserve domestic discretionary spending against the ravages of the Reagan supply-side spending cuts. Over the years he has written extensively, drafting statements for the Congressional Record and Committee publications, op-ed articles, and speeches.  He has published over 400 articles under his own name, and is a regular contributing writer for Huffington Post. In 2006 he was chosen by former Vice-President Al Gore to be one of the first class of individuals to be trained to deliver presentations on the implications of climate change.  As a climate change messenger he has delivered over 100 presentations worldwide during that time, including an invitation to present at the London School of Economics. He has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Temple University and completed courses for a doctorate from George Washington University, served as an Executive for five years at the Iacocca Institute at Lehigh University, has taught public policy at Santa Monica College, and completed Executive programs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Institute for International Development at Harvard University and the U.S. Army War College. In his spare time he is a voracious reader and he has written a screenplay, a novel, which is expected to be published soon that touches on the perils of drilling for natural gas, a book of political and personal stories, and The Evolution of a Revolution: An Attack upon Reason, Compromise and the Constitution, has appeared in several political documentaries including 14 Women, Electile Dysfunction, and Gasland 2.  He is the author of “The Evolution of a Revolution: An Attack Upon Reason, Compromise and the Constitution” and “Fracktured”, the definitive anti-fracking novel.