Plates

The Casey administration, which is considering ending the state's ubiquitous "You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania" slogan, announced yesterday that the phrase would no longer be printed on car license plates. Instead, the state will return to plates containing only the words Pennsylvania and Keystone State, as well as the numbers and letters comprising the vehicle registration. Except for the position of the two words and the color combination (from blue lettering on a gold background to gold on blue)

TRENTON - Two state troopers, charged Friday with records tampering, turned a state highway into a "virtual speedway" in March when they gave a caravan of luxury cars a high-speed escort while taping over their own license plates to conceal their involvement, the state attorney general said. "No one is above the law," Jeffrey Chiesa said. "We will not tolerate officers who endanger the public they are sworn to protect. " Administrative charges also were brought against four other members of the state police in connection with a similar high-speed escort of luxury cars in 2010, and a fifth trooper for his handling of a ticket issued to the driver of a Lamborghini clocked at 116 m.p.h., also in 2010.

When eccentric Chicago billionaire John D. MacArthur died in 1978, his son, Roderick, came up with a bright idea for giving away his money. The son created the "genius grants" - large cash awards for people who make extraordinary contributions to society - which are unique and famous in the philanthropic world. But J. Roderick MacArthur had another bright idea that is described in considerably less favorable terms in a class-action lawsuit in Chicago Circuit Court. The lawsuit says the Bradford Exchange Ltd., created by Roderick MacArthur in 1973 to sell decorative "collector plates" to the masses, has been making inflated claims for years about the investment value of its plates.

Like many residents of Colorado's increasingly crowded Front Range, Zoe Hubbard remembers a time before this was one of America's fastest-growing states, before Interstate 25 into Denver was the mirror image of the New Jersey Turnpike, before trophy homes thrust from every mountain ridgeline and before subdivisions crowded out ranches. Every day, on average, 275 newcomers arrive in the state. More people live in just the 10 counties of the Front Range than lived in all of Colorado in 1990.

Eight U.S. Marines have been accused of stealing plates used inside ballistic vests earmarked for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to documents unsealed yesterday in federal court in Philadelphia. Many of the plates were later sold on eBay by a Palm Springs, Calif., woman. The investigation is continuing, and a half-dozen other people, three of them military personnel, remain suspects in the case, officials said. The California woman, Erika Jardine, was sentenced yesterday to six months in prison and six months' house arrest by a federal judge in Philadelphia.

For years, circus people were forced to suffer the indignity of automobile anonymity, but not anymore. Now they can get special state-issued license plates. It's the law. Maybe not a terribly significant or far-reaching law, but the law. The circus statute is among 113 new laws signed onto the books of Pennsylvania by Gov. Casey over the last few weeks, most of them passed in a hailstorm of activity before the legislature left Harrisburg on July 1 for its summer vacation. Much of the legislation was never debated.

The way William T. Reil sees it, he doesn't drive his 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Driving is a commercial activity, Reil says. He travels - and he says that's not his privilege, it's his right. That's why Reil, 55, of East Brandywine Township in Chester County, had a homemade license plate on his metallic-blue car when police stopped him earlier this month in nearby West Pikeland. It wasn't his first run-in with authorities. "When I came to Pennsylvania, like a darn fool, I went through the process," says Reil, a former electrical engineer who devotes his time to studying the law and speaking "the truth.

Dave Mink is getting antsy for that first forsythia of spring. Because the moment the first petal springs to life is the moment "I grab my rod and reel and head for the shore. " The mackerel are running. For years now, Mink's been timing his mackerel fishing with forsythia blossoms. And though he looks forward to it every spring, mackerel really isn't Mink's favorite dish. Oysters are. Oyster plates, too. In fact, oyster plates are the year-round specialty of the house at Mink's Sansom Street Oyster House, one of the city's last old-style oyster houses at 1516 Sansom St. It's a no-frills kind of place.

Status symbols can take many forms. An address on the Main Line. A Jag racing along a California freeway. A dinner reservation at Manhattan's trendiest spot. In the tiny state of Delaware, population 700,000, status is judged by the small wonder found within the borders of the rectangle slapped onto the back of a vehicle. We speak of the state license plate number - not the plate itself, but the digits, all but forgettable by most. People in Delaware have paid fortunes for the right to display a low number.

Policymakers take note: These days, helping Pennsylvania's libraries may become the hot new horse to ride. The sooner you jump on, the better off your state's well-loved but woefully financed libraries will be. Recent developments show this is a moment of opportunity that leaders should seize. Consider: The York (Pa.) Daily Record newspaper has proposed a clever fund-raising idea worth backing: "license plates for libraries. " Just as special license plates benefit the Wild Resource Conservation Fund and the commonwealth's zoos, such plates could raise money for libraries to replace worn books, repair leaky roofs, even install computers.