Posts Tagged → Kathleen Kane
Who, Me? No, You!
America has been in the grip of moral relativism since the 1960s, and nowhere is this corrosive belief system more evident than among Politicians-Gone-Wild who get caught.
Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane was just found guilty on all counts, including perjury, and her answer (she has been consistent on this from the beginning of her investigation) is something like “it is not my fault, I am the victim, everyone is out to get me, it’s not fair, and everyone does bad things so my bad actions are no worse than anyone else’s so I am therefore not guilty.”
This “Everybody does it, so I am not guilty” mindset has now filtered down from guilty politicians to nearly everyone in America. Seems to be almost a lifestyle, where people take whatever they want or think they can get away with, and then cry foul when they are caught and held accountable in even small ways.
Basic examples found daily in the news include shoplifters who then destructively run amok in the store they are caught in, decrying their “unfair” treatment by causing thousands of dollars in damage to prove their aggrieved status.
The most egregious example of this is the Black Lives Matter movement, where mostly hardened crooks are elevated to innocent hero status in the effort to attack civilization and the citizens who undergird it, our wonderful police officers.
More common is the trespassing for firewood theft and recreation that I frequently experience on properties we own or manage.
One guy had his teenaged children riding their ATVs on our property, and when I finally begged him to make them stop, his response was “I can’t control them.” Never mind that he had put up so many No Trespassing signs on our common boundary, and quite a few were way over that boundary deep into our land, that you could not look through the woods without seeing a sea of yellow marring the scenic beauty. In other words, he zealously guards against anyone trespassing on his land, but he casually lets his people trespass on our land, and makes no real effort to stop it.
Recently I received a brutal call from an angry local man I do not know, who really chewed me out, calling me every bad name imaginable. He ended his tirade with “A lot of people out here in the valley hate you.”
Despite efforts to have a lucid conversation with the man and inject actual facts to rebut his wild accusations, he denounced me one more time and then hung up the phone. Sitting there contemplating this strange call, I began recounting the run-ins we have had with his trespassing and thieving neighbors. Indeed, a great many of his neighbors had attempted to steal some of our land, or were serial trespassers after recreation and deer, or were thieves stealing commercial quantities of firewood and mountain stone.
Yes, we have had run-ins with people around him, and when I investigated with one of the confessed trespassers, he informed me that the caller was one of the people we had inadvertently netted in our anti-trespassing efforts.
Ah hah! went my brain. Here we have a man who has been trespassing on our land for years, stealing from us firewood and mountain stone for business purposes, and he is mad as hell that his free gravy train has come to an end.
And in fact, this guy was not alone in his angry denunciation of his imaginary oppressor.
One of the other trespassing locals we caught stealing red-handed two and a half years ago was so mad, he began denouncing me to anyone he met. I guess this is a customary defense mechanism, where guilty people try to pre-empt any negative information about themselves, but it is remarkably brazen nonetheless. We declined to press charges against him, because he probably would have lost his job as a result. And his partner in crime, a local attorney, could have lost his law license.
None of our largesse was appreciated or rewarded by these criminals. In fact, they took it as a sign of weakness and lack of resolve, and they went on the offensive, personally maligning the person who they blamed for their misfortune. That being “caught.” No taking responsibility, no admitting guilt, no owning up to doing something wrong, but instead blaming others for their moral failures.
One of the things I dislike about one of the presidential candidates is that she has zero morals, no ethics, no moral compass. She refuses to take responsibility for her many failed policies and legal failures as a senior American official.
One of the things I like about her opponent is that he stands for basic decency, defined by weak 2016 standards, mind you, not the 1940s Norman Rockwell ways by which we used to run this country, and which I grew up with and miss very, very much.
Americans must elect political leaders who set a basic standard for good behavior, who represent a return to basic good values, and who help us get away from corrosive moral relativism, a culture eating away the foundations of human relationships.
Power can corrupt, but some people worship power before they ever get it
“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” goes one famous observation.
Here in Pennsylvania we’ve had one long going example of power-mad officials using their office to attack symbols of their political opponents, and we’ve had one recent example of a nudnik mayor whose goal in life was to finally acquire power, and who then flubbed it publicly.
Long-term: Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane dropped a bomb of false accusations and police with guns on Brian Bolus, his wife, his little boy. Bolus had the temerity to be cited by then governor Tom Corbett as a classic example of bootstrap capitalism, an all American kid who did well.
Corbett- Republican, Kane, Democrat. So Kane uses the power of her office to attack Corbett by proxy.
Years later, the AG has nothing, zero, to prosecute Bolus. Brian’s personal effects and titles to his paid-for home and vehicles are not in his possession, and the home video surveillance footage of the day the Gestapo visited his house is somehow missing.
Now why would criminal investigators “lose” the security video footage of their violent, over-the-top raid on a peaceful family? Could it be damning? Ummmm, you know it.
The Bolus attack is an obvious abuse of power by an AG drunk on influence and deep corruption, as if hiring her own sister into a sensitive public service job wasn’t bad enough.
Another reason for Kane to begone. And give back the Bolus family their personal things before ya hit the road, lady.
Short-term: Harrisburg cops terrorize, bully, threaten, harass, intimidate and falsely accused a 75-year-old Marine named Robert Ford on Memorial Day.
Ford’s crime? Wearing his fifty-year-old US Government issue Marine Corps uniform in public, where he had earlier performed Taps at a Memorial Day event. In other words, no crime.
Public outrage against the two Harrisburg keystone kops has grown ever since, with the story hitting media and blogs coast to coast. Officers Moody and O’Connor will not apologize for their unprofessional behavior, but making things worse…neither will Mayor Eric Papenfuse.
Papenfuse has excused the police officers and said they did nothing wrong.
This, from a man who hung around and lauded former anti-police terrorists. This from a man purveying his Yale undergrad degree as proof of his superiority. Apparently Yale doesn’t teach Morality 101, or Papenfuse was just so smart, too smart to take such a course.
So here we have an inexperienced used bookstore owner who used to accuse the police of being criminals, now wallowing in his newfound power, high on power, unable to break out of its grip and just do the right thing.
Yep, power corrupts. Let’s hope our citizenry corrects it.
Un-Citizen Kane. Time to go
Nothing is tougher to accept than a corrupt public official, and the higher the office the harder it is to accept. So it is with Kathleen Kane, PA’s Attorney General.
Now the Philly Inquirer has published a significant investigative report on AG Kathleen Kane and her constant intercessions on behalf of known, convicted, and or suspected crooks from the moment she took office.
The first one the public learned about was Kane’s shielding of ultra corrupt politicians from the Philadelphia area. Philly DA Seth Williams took issue with Kane’s dropping of cases against the bad guys, and he battled her for control of the cases. Williams resurrected the charges and successfully implemented his n her job: People paid big fines, went to jail etc.
Now it turns out that Kane has been using her position to drop or stop investigations right and left across the Pennsylvania landscape. Again, these cases were against wealthy, politically connected people. Her staff at the AG’s office strongly disagreed with her. Some left their careers there because of Kane’s ….questionable….decisions.
Last week Kane lost a case at the PA Supreme Court, which allowed a special prosecutor to continue investigating Kane for her obviously corrupt and illegal behavior on OTHER issues.
In the totality, Kane is surrounded by her own bad judgment, bad decisions, illegal decisions, stupid decisions, corruption, really, over which she will now be charged, in addition to lots of petty politics like hiring her own sister into the AG’s office.
It is time for this catastrophe of a human being to do us taxpayers a favor, and resign. Save her and us from even more shame and pain and public expenditure to follow through on the obvious need for justice. Kane is corrupt. Please leave public life, Un-Citizen Kane.
Is it time for civil disobedience and ignoring kook judicial holdings?
Civil disobedience, non-resistance obstructionism, and peaceful protests against clearly unfair laws and violent government agents is time-honored in America.
Civil disobedience works because it appeals to the higher mind, it appeals to the best, highest conscience in Western Civilization. You have to have an open mind to have civil disobedience work on your political views so that you vote for change from the status quo.
It won’t work in a Muslim country, where civil disobedience will just get you locked up and tortured, or summarily killed.
It did work for Ghandi in India because the 1940s British empire valued democracy and voting rights, and the public cry at home over images of British soldiers shooting peaceful protestors in Delhi’s public streets threatened to up-end political control at home.
Americans have successfully employed civil disobedience since the 1920s: Segregation laws, no voting rights for women, a lack of equal rights or opportunity across so many sectors of society… the causes were real and political changes were needed for America to live up to its promise.
And ain’t America an amazing place that it is designed to change and heal old wounds, to become a better place?
Because the original use of civil disobedience was so righteous, because so many of the laws being protested in the 1920s through the 1960s were so outrageously unjust, the behavior eventually took on a connotation of being above the law and always justified. In fact, over time even violence became justified in the name of Marxist versions of “justice,” and pro-violence slogans like “No Justice, No Peace” evolved.
Today, violent, fake civil disobedience has been employed by the “Occupy Wall Street” thugs, and by the violent criminals in Ferguson, Missouri. These events always start off as a routine, rote, formula civil disobedience act, and then they quickly devolve into destruction, arson, violence, beatings, attacks on bystanders….all in the name of some Marxist version of “justice.”
Inevitably, politically allied elected officials have begun to implement their jobs in a similar fashion. No matter what the law says, they ignore it, and make a big public deal about subverting the law. As if they are justified. They actually take pride in failing to implement the law as they are supposed to.
Examples of elected officials ignoring and subverting the law are a county clerk of courts issuing same-sex marriage licenses, despite Pennsylvania law saying it is illegal. Or Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane refusing to defend state laws, because she personally disagrees with them. Or California banning state judges from belonging to the Boy Scouts. Or the Obama administration willfully failing to implement immigration law. Or Harrisburg City mayor Eric Papenfuse refusing to rescind city ordinances that are plainly illegal under state preemption law, because Papenfuse holds certain personal views about guns.
This lawlessness by the very people entrusted with safeguarding and implementing the law is dangerous. These wayward officials stand on quicksand, because the basis of our republican form of democracy is the rule of law – equal application of the law, irrespective of what one personally believes.
If government officials begin ignoring laws they disagree with, and implementing law that was not voted into being by the consent of the voters, then the rule of law is over, it has ended. The glue that holds America together is corroded, and the whole edifice can come down.
But let’s ask why only one side of the political debate does this. We know they get away with this because the mainstream media protects them, but the MSM veil has been pierced by the Internet, so the flow of information is no longer completely bottled up by fellow travelers.
Put another way, why don’t other people, say people like American traditionalists, “conservatives,” engage in the same behavior?
Here is an example of what could be done: Last week a federal judge ruled that Arizona must issue drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. Never mind that these people are in America ILLEGALLY, the claims they make for their applications could be and often are fraudulent, and the cost of these services is unfairly covered by taxpayers.
Why don’t the good officials of Arizona simply ignore that judge’s insane ruling? That judge has no ability to actually make Arizona issue drivers licenses, and if I worked in Arizona government, or if I still worked in federal government and had something to do with allowing illegal immigrants in, I would simply ignore that judge’s crazy ruling, or the illegal commands of the occupant of the White House.
There, folks, how do you like the taste of that medicine now?
Think of the many kook, nakedly political judicial decisions that are handed down, contrary to law and policy. Why reward these dictatorial jurists by following their dictates? Why not simply ignore them? God knows, they are earning it.
Civil disobedience and official lawlessness is a game that everyone can play, and at some point the people who have been acting like adults will recognize they only stand to lose by following the rule of law while their opponents exploit their fidelity, and only by fighting fire with fire will they make it clear that everyone must follow and implement the law, no matter what their personal views are, or everyone loses.
Or, people can do it the old fashioned way, and work to get the law changed one vote at a time.
PA AG Kane: The Breck Girl
Pennsylvania’s attorney general is Kathleen Kane.
Pennsylvania citizens deserve much better than Kane. We deserve more than what she brings to her public job.
Kane acts like the silky models who showed off their long hair with pirouettes and head tosses for Breck Shampoo. One is reminded of the song “I’m Too Sexy.”
Based on her carefully groomed public appearances that coincide with an honest-to-goodness inability to grasp or articulate the issues of her office and the public, she is henceforth dubbed “The Breck Girl.”
Kane’s flippant, vacuous approach to serious public policy and legal issues, emphasized by a physical appearance crutch, complete with slow-motion hair tosses and giraffe-like Cheshire Cat radioactive radiant grins, have earned her this nickname.
Breck Girl, you are not up to the job. You are incompetent. If Pennsylvania had a recall provision in our constitution, you’d be recalled by now.
Hopefully, you will be impeached soon. If Pennsylvania must have a Democrat as AG, I personally know several men and women attorneys in that party who would qualify much better than you, Breck Girl.
AG Kane exonerates Corbett with backhanded, ironic report
PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane “exonerated” Governor Tom Corbett with the most back-handed investigative report seen in a long time.
While acknowledging that Corbett, previously as AG himself, investigating Jerry Sandusky, did not politicize the Sandusky investigation, Kane still called Corbett’s choices in that investigation “inexcusable” and “inexplicable.”
Without question Penn Staters like me, who have followed the Sandusky debacle from beginning to end, we tend to feel like Penn State’s reputation never was considered by anyone involved. Well, it was the paramount consideration by former PSU president Graham Spanier, at a time when the school’s reputation should not have mattered at all, and the kid victims’s interests should have been advanced immediately and at any cost.
So, too little, too late for Penn State by everyone, including a majority of the PSU trustees, Louis Freeh, and state officials everywhere. If Corbett was guilty of failing to jump to Penn State’s defense, he was in damned good company. Pissed at Corbett? OK, then be pissed at many of the sitting trustees.
But what irks me is to see the most politicized AG in Pennsylvania’s history use the words “inexcusable” and “inexplicable.”
Kane’s behavior in the AG office has been both of those words and much much more.
My favorite misdeed is how she refused to pursue the unethical PA Liquor Control Board members, whose financial misdeeds have been widely reported.
What has not been reported is how her family, Kane Trucking, holds PLCB contracts worth millions of dollars. Kane’s failure to apply the law here could be due to a large financial incentive for her to not rock the PLCB gravy boat. Is anyone investigating THAT?
No. In fact, the establishment media has circled the wagons around Kane, with not one word yet mentioned in print about this ethical lapse of hers. In fact, a fawning, fluffy, cheerful, supportive interview with Kane was posted by the Patriot News two weeks ago, and worse yet, by reporter Charles Thompson, a writer I have long considered one of the last real investigative reporters in Harrisburg. Thompson made no mention of any of Kane’s lapses, or of her pending impeachment, in that unpaid advertising piece run by the Patriot News. She was even photographed laughing away, her head held high, her artificially white teeth flashing for the camera.
While people are still asking if Kane’s report on Corbett’s role as AG has any salience for the governor’s race, what informed citizens want to know, is: Why does it appear that Kathleen Kane is protecting Kane Trucking’s PLCB contracts? Now that is a real public policy question worth asking.
Un-Citizen Kane, going down in flames
PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane was voted in with a huge amount of Republican voter support. Her promise of cleaning up what appeared to be a political mess at Penn State and the AG’s office brought cheer to the sad hearts of PSU alumni and good government advocates alike.
Once in office, her mask was removed and the political animal now known as Un-Citizen Kane took control. Promise de damned. Promises be damned. Her growing war with Philly DA Seth Williams over her politically motivated ending of a AG investigation of corrupt politicians is getting worse. Kane challenged Williams to bring his own charges on the case, but when he asked Kane to provide the records, she says No. Un-Citizen Kane looks politically motivated in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons.
If anything, Kane is digging her own grave hole, and making Williams look like a worthy challenger to her AG role in a couple years.
Is it time to recall PA AG Kane?
In 2012, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane campaigned on being fresh, new, unconnected to party politics. She challenged the ultimate Republican insider, and crushed him by a good 15%. Kane became Pennsylvania’s first Democrat AG only because so many Republican voters defected from the GOP and voted for Kane.
Within six months into her four-year tenure, signs were evident that she was not this politically dispassionate, politically disconnected professional and fair-minded arbiter she represented herself to be.
Rather, it became clear that she was politically correct (dogmatically liberal) and willing to use the AG office to score partisan political points, going so far as to choose not to enforce or defend state laws with which she personally disagrees. That right there is pretty much the end of democratic government, when elected officials stop enforcing laws they personally disagree with. Democracy only works if everyone agrees that whatever the law is, it is, and it is the law of the land until it is changed.
Kane’s icing on the cake was to cold-stop an investigation of four Democrat elected officials in the Philadelphia area. Kane does not deny that the four had been caught on tape or video taking bribes. One of the officials can be heard saying “Well, happy birthday to [me]!” as he pockets a wad of illegal cash.
In what stinks of political favoritism, Kane simply made up a lame excuse and stopped the ongoing investigation of obvious official corruption.
When Kane was called out about it by the Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper unused to criticizing Democrats, she showed up to a meeting with the paper’s board with her libel lawyer in tow. A subsequent show of legal force and more open threats of a lawsuit against her critics, by Kane, has only made things worse for her. But she is not backing down. Mind you, the Inquirer merely reported the facts; the paper did not ascribe motive or allege that Kane herself was part of the cash scandal. So it is hard to see what kind of libel suit this elected official thought she was going to actually win. Intimidation was her first and last approach, however, which tells you all you need to know about her very low quality as an elected official.
Additionally, Philadelphia City DA Seth Williams, a Democrat, has criticized Kane for ending the investigation. Seth and I were close friends while students at Penn State, and yes, he is an active Democrat, and he is also a straight shooter.
Now, Kane says she supports another newspaper’s open records effort to get the documents about the terminated investigation. Well, actually, after opposing it, Kane only now supports releasing “certain” documents; you know, the documents that support her position. The investigation’s documents that will cast her political activism in a bad light, well, they should remain sealed, she says.
Governor Tom Corbett may well be a one-term governor, which presently it appears is his sad destiny, if the polling data is even close to accurate. Well, folks, let’s make this Kathleen Kane a half-term AG. She is incompetent, she is politicizing Pennsylvania’s established laws, and she is using blunt force legal intimidation to blunt honest criticism of her official job performance. Let’s start a recall of AG Kane, and get someone in that office who is a plain vanilla enforcer of The Law, as that role is supposed to be.
In an ideal world, party affiliation should not matter in the AG office. I myself am partial to the potential AG candidacy of Ed Marsico, Dauphin County’s present District Attorney. Marsico is an honest guy, a hard working guy, and has shown few partisan inclinations in his day to day work of making Dauphin County a safe place to live and work. Marsico would be a big enough improvement over Kane to warrant a recall effort against her. Surely there are other professional-grade DAs out there, too, who also would qualify to fill out the remainder Kane’s term.
Let’s get that recall effort started and Pennsylvania’s law enforcement back on track.
UPDATE: How on earth could I forget? Kane is having some difficulty investigating the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, where cash gifts and other toxic ethics violations have occurred recently. Now….why would Kane have such a tough time bringing to bear her full weight on such obviously corrupt violations of Pennsylvania laws? Why, it would not perhaps happen to be the presence of KANE TRUCKING contracts with the PLCB, right? The KANE TRUCKING contracts with the PLCB are worth millions of dollars to Kathleen Kane, personally. Got it. Fox guarding the henhouse here. Good old fashioned corruption, at least on the face of it. Time to end this sick experiment, and send Mrs. Moneybags Kane home.