Brews & Views

Lenny McAllister is a name well known in Pennsylvania and beyond. As the new CEO of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools, Lenny joins Commonwealth Partners President and CEO Matt Brouillette to talk about his passion for expanding educational opportunity for children across Pennsylvania and how his organization is doing just that.

From fighting overseas as a Captain in the United States Army to fighting in Harrisburg so kids can get a better education, Pennsylvania State Senator Ryan Aument traveled a unique path to the Legislature.

In this conversation with Commonwealth Partners President and CEO Matt Brouillette, Sen. Aument shares how he became interested in public service and how he’s currently working to expand educational opportunity in Pennsylvania.

As the economy slowly reopens, businesses small and large are under significant threat of COVID related lawsuits, even when they do everything right. Curt Schroder, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform, talks with Commonwealth Partners President and CEO Matt Brouillette about how lawmakers can protect businesses that are acting responsibly and following health and safety guidelines against potential ruin at the hands of trial attorneys looking to take advantage of the COVID crisis.

Pennsylvania has not had a Republican Auditor General in decades. Tim DeFoor wants to change that. With 25 years of experience in fraud investigations and auditing, Tim is passionate about bringing transparency to government. In this conversation with Commonwealth Partners President and CEO Matt Brouillette, Tim talks about how he chose his career path and what he would do as Pennsylvania's next Auditor General.

PA GOP Chair and election attorney Lawrence Tabas joins Commonwealth Partners President and CEO Matt Brouillette to talk about mail-in voting in this key swing state, and why election results may not be known until well after Election Day.

Capitalism has been accused of many ills over the years, but is it guilty as charged? In this episode, Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs President and CEO Matt Brouillette talks about lessons learned from the Jamestown settlement's economic experience. He shares how capitalism has proven to be the best antidote to poverty and explains why capitalism works--and capit'O'lism doesn't.

Have we forgotten the true purpose of public education? As the COVID-19 pandemic has upended the educational landscape, more and more parents are considering options other than traditional brick-and-mortar public schools for their children. Now more than ever, we should revisit the original purpose of public education—and reclaim our education system for that purpose. In this episode, Commonwealth Partners President and CEO Matt Brouillette, a former middle school and high school history teacher, shares an audio version of a piece he wrote several years ago called "Reclaiming Public Education."

It’s not every lawmaker who can say his district includes the Grand Canyon—Pennsylvania’s Grand Canyon, that is. But Rep. Clint Owlett (Tioga, Bradford, & Potter counties) can make that claim. In this conversation with Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs president and CEO Matt Brouillette, Rep. Owlett shares why he considers himself an entrepreneur at heart and discusses his proposed “Back on Track” legislation, which would use a portion of Pennsylvania’s federal CARES Act Funding to create education scholarship accounts for students whose education was disrupted by the COVID pandemic.

In late June, 2020, PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro issued a scathing Grand Jury report taking aim at Pennsylvania's natural gas industry. But the report was more anti-natural gas politics than fact. Marcellus Shale Coalition President Dave Spigelmyer joins Commonwealth Partners President & CEO Matt Brouillette to set the record straight and correct some of the more egregious falsities in the report.

Pennsylvania's newly elected House Speaker Bryan Cutler discusses his path from Majority Whip to Majority Leader to Speaker of the House. He also shares his thoughts on how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the state Legislature’s priorities and why some of those who supported him for Speaker actually wanted him to remain Majority Leader. For a more personal conversation in which Speaker Cutler describes his background and how he persevered after tragically losing both his parents at a young age, listen to Brews & Views Episode 7.