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Why I am no longer a Democrat reason # 1,329: John Fetterman’s mean bully tattoo

I mention that I am no longer a registered member of the Democrat Party so that readers understand that I am not a partisan person. To me most partisan people appear to reflexively and carelessly cheer on “their team,” regardless of how little that team may reflect their values or what the team once stood for. The same can be said for the Republican Party, which has way too many corrupt and MIA mild mannered elected officials to stand for much. Recall that the Republican Party was formed as the party of abolition of slavery, and that the Democrat Party was the party of “These are our damned African slaves, they are not yours to set free.”

The Democrat Party has not changed one bit since 1859, and the Republican Party is nowhere near what it stood for in 1859, either.

But right now, especially in a state like Pennsylvania where we have only closed primaries, voters are forced to make a choice. Often that choice is about the lesser lame of two lame-os. But like I say, right now, Americans who believe in a fair America that rewards hard work and risk taking, they have only one political party choice: The Republican Party.

Not that the GOP is my “team” or yours, but it for sure is NOT the team of child rapists, open border fentanyl and drug cartel smuggling, annually resulting in thousands of drug overdoses across America. This pathetic list of unbelievable failure belongs proudly to the Democrat Party. Their own candidates actually run on these issues! As if destroying America and Americans is the right and good thing to do. And one of those candidates is running here in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman.

I left this Democrat Party for the reasons listed above, and for many more. I have to make a stand somewhere on the political playing field, and one of my reasons for leaving that failed political party is well represented in a tattoo that US Senate candidate John Fetterman has on his forearm. His tattoo says “I WILL MAKE YOU HURT.”

Now, who the heck cares if this is a line from a song by Johnny Cash that is often replayed by Nine Inch Nails? That is irrelevant. It is meaningless. It would be a childish excuse. Fetterman could have just as easily chosen a Johnny Cash or Nine Inch Nails line about God, or love, or relationships, and he didn’t. Fetterman carefully chose this specific line for a prominent tattoo on his body for a specific reason.

The adult question is Why the heck would someone go through the trouble to have this mean bully statement permanently tattooed onto his forearm, where everyone can see it?

What angry message or direct personal threat against people around him and the public he encounters is John Fetterman trying to send with this tattoo? It is like someone having a Nazi Swastika tattooed on their body, but then later on trying to lamely explain it away as “something artistic I just happened to like at the time.” No way, John Fetterman. Oh no you don’t, you fake art appreciator.

Fetterman had this mean, nasty, aggressive, threatening tattoo permanently inked into his flesh because it represents his mindset, and he wants everyone to know he is a mean, threatening bully. He wants to intimidate people with it.

Fetterman’s approach to politics and individual people is, I will hurt you into submission to my ideas and my demands. Why does this guy call himself a “Democrat” when he so obviously despises the democratic process of open debate, clean and transparent elections, and checks and balances?

Oh, the irony that John Fetterman is actually a rich playboy whose parents 100% financially supported him up until he got his first real adult job as a mayor of a tiny destroyed town in western PA in his forties. Fetterman further destroyed that small town in just a few years, watching crime there skyrocket under his watch as mayor, who rarely showed up at city council meetings. His destructive personality is no surprise to anyone who follows Fetterman’s soft-on-criminals history on the Pennsylvania Parole Board, or his stated public policies on crime: Fetterman says he would quickly release up to 30% of hardened, violent criminals from jail, if he could.

Yes, John Fetterman is a poser, a fake blue collar wannabe, a liar, and he will make us all hurt if he holds another elected office. He will unleash tens of thousands of violent criminals into American communities, as part of the “defund the police” thing. Don’t ask me why John Fetterman is a violent, mean, bully anarchist at heart. It is probably a result of his having had his mommy and daddy financially support him and his wife until he was in his forties, and he grew up into an inexperienced man-child believing in violent fantasies about “remaking America” by “any means necessary.”

No one ever told John Fetterman “No” as a kid or as an adult, and as a result he is a huge threat to our families and our children. But you voters can tell him “No” on Election Day just a month away. I will tell him No, because I am not mindlessly attached to just one political party, regardless of how bad its candidates are.

Interesting how Google has suddenly blurred out the photo of Fetterman’s “I WILL MAKE YOU HURT” tattoo. Big Tech is no friend of the truth or accuracy

Turns out that the voting public neither understands nor likes Fetterman’s I WILL MAKE YOU HURT tattoo, so he recently had it covered up. But the mean spirited bully is still inside that mean bully face of his.

John Fetterman is one of these people, who believe in letting violent criminals run amok in your neighborhood, victimize you and your family members, no police. Fetterman the lazy mayor proudly led a disastrous spike in crime in his own western PA town. Are you really going to vote for someone like this, this bad?

 

Election Day now and a year later

A year ago today I was working a poll in Paxtang, I think. Handing out Trump for President literature (Trump won, everyone knows it), and some US Congressman Scott Perry lit, kibbitzing with other poll workers, chatting up voters and asking for their vote. One thing that really hammered home to me the difference between the Trump supporters and the regular county GOP committee members is the energy level we brought.

I was high energy and on my feet for hours, walking up to voters and asking for their vote, explaining the differences in the candidates. The GOP committeeman was lounging in a folding chair most of the time, occasionally standing, handing out literature for PA rep. Sue Helm if voters walked by close enough to take it from his hand.

When I engaged in discussion with the Democrat Party poll watcher, a woman attorney from northern Maryland, it became clear that she was an unapologetic communist. After she flew into a rage over some “Proud Boys” Latinos who showed up in their Trump socks, Trump pants, Trump hats, Trump shirts, and Trump underwear, I asked her why she was a communist. And at that point the Dauphin County GOP committeeman sprang into action, consoling the Democrat Party poll watcher with giggling assurances that I was a lone kook, my own special kind of far-right lunatic, and not at all representative of the Republican Party.

Yes, the GOP committeeman had more in common with the communist poll watcher than with me, the President Donald Trump advocate and poll watcher. Think about that. I still haven’t shaken it. For a long time I wanted to write a letter to this Dauphin County Republican Party committeeman, and among other things ask him if I was wrong in asking her (the lady poll watcher) why she was a communist. Turns out I was correct, that the Democrat Party is now an open and unapologetic communist movement. Do GOP hacks ever admit they were wrong?

Today is Election Day once again, and we have more of a local race to look at now. Our spring primary election yielded an unusual outcome in Harrisburg, a black woman winning the Democrat Party nomination for mayor of Harrisburg City. Usually the white liberals have it all locked up by mesmerizing and lying to their modern-day slaves to vote for the white liberal candidate. But after decades of white liberal mayors failing to do a single thing to improve the lives of black people in Harrisburg City, black voters here decided to try something different. They voted for a black candidate.

Talk about a step on the road to recovery! Congratulations to my fellow Harrisburg citizens for shaking off their white liberal slave masters!

Eric Papenfuse is the sitting white liberal mayor who was ousted in the spring primary by Wanda Williams, a forever member of the Harrisburg City Council. Eric Papenfuse touted his long list of policy and financial failures and concluded with a communist pledge of a guaranteed minimum income for certain city residents. Yep, the white liberal promised yet more government dependency for a community that is drowning and dying in white liberal dependency. If you ever wondered why urban decay is filled with drug addiction, consider where that addiction started: White liberal crack aka public dependency programs that made black people dependent on white liberal handouts.

Wanda’s election signs proclaim her a “lifelong Democrat,” which is hardly anything to brag about. I mean, look at where the Democrat Party has gotten urban black people across America – generations of failed churches, failed schools, failed families, but by God, they reliably vote for continued Democrat Party failure like good slaves!

Despite Papenfuse’s desperate write-in effort, Wanda is likely to win today. I hope that she grows into the Mayor job with an epiphany that causes her to shrug off the built-in failures of the political past she has lived and worked in.

Dear Wanda, please forgo political parties. Forgo political payback or pay-off of any sort. Please help our city citizens climb out of the poverty and failure that white liberals like Eric Papenfuse deliberately put them in. There are a million creative solutions to the mess here in Harrisburg City, and none of them are loyal to any political party or derivative thereof, such as teacher’s unions.

What have we got to lose by trying something new? We already know all of the current players bring nothing but failure and misery. Break free; break the bonds of injustice, Wanda!

A year from now, at the 2022 Election Day, I hope to write a different retrospective than “Yep, the new mayor immediately embraced all of the failed policies handed to her by the outgoing administration and made them her very own.”

And goodbye Eric Papenfuse. I won’t miss you and your cozy cronyism one bit. You did absolutely nothing but hurt Harrisburg even more than it was hurting when you took office eight years ago. Your mayoral Skid Row proved once again that graduating from Yale (and any other Ivy League school) is a damning millstone hung around the necks of the puffed up unfortunates who brag up these worse-then-useless diplomas. You couldn’t think yourself out of a wet paper bag if an entire city depended upon you for it.

Dave Schankweiler for Harrisburg Mayor

All politics is local, and while it is easy to talk about and pay attention most to the biggest political issues that play out on a national scale, the fact is, at the end of the day, much of our political life is determined by local government.

Therefore, David Schankweiler should be Harrisburg’s next mayor.

Because he is a successful entrepreneur with a fresh approach to solving Harrisburg’s seemingly intractable problems, Dave deserves a shot at contributing to Harrisburg’s seemingly endless recovery. Recovery from what, you ask?

Well, for many years Harrisburg has been dominated by just one political party that has implemented a disproven, debunked, and obviously failed set of ideas and practices. This nonstop assault on the citizens of Harrisburg has driven it deeper into financial and social failure, driven the best wage earners out of the high tax city, and made corruption a way of life among the political elites.

When Eric Papenfuse was a candidate, I asked him at a forum if he would get the $100 million criminal Harrisburg incinerator situation sorted out legally, and he said Yes, People Will Go To Jail for that. And then eight years later….Papenfuse failed to deliver. He did and said nothing. Nothing happened, there was no accountability. Why? Because Papenfuse craves to be part of the Harrisburg inner circle that pulled off that illegal scam heist in the first place. Papenfuse is not a reformer, or an agent for change, or an agent for the rule of law. He is a paid lackey, a hired gun, an enabler of criminal insider dealing.

Papenfuse has been questioned about some of his own real estate investments since he was elected mayor. Like using his office to damage local businesses so, it appears, he can buy up their property for cheap. He did the same thing with Mike Brenner, who leased a property to the City of Harrisburg Public Works Department. In that case, Papenfuse was over two years behind in rent, and then he refused to pay any rent, and then he tried to steal Brenner’s property through eminent domain. But a county judge stopped him in court. A mayor who doesn’t believe in the rule of law, who uses his mayor’s office for personal gain…this is not what elected office is about.

Frankly, Papenfuse is a crooked thug whose greatest claims to fame are reducing the number of road lanes for daily commuters into the city, so that bicyclists have their own lane….Right next to a pre-existing bike lane that was also in dis-use for lack of regular bicyclists. This has caused more car accidents and greater daily commuting delays, but Papenfuse has mindlessly punched that politically correct “green” box on his hit list against the citizens of Harrisburg.

While Harrisburg’s school district remains a national disgrace and catastrophe, there is not a whole lot that any mayor can do about it. The citizens and parents of that school district have to want it to be better, and they have to force the issue. A good mayor can help rally those parents and families of school children, but why would Papenfuse do that? He is in lockstep with the white liberal-run unions that have repeatedly burned the city’s school district to the ground for decades.

Schankweiler represents a breath of fresh air, a positive and professional face, voice, and an experienced hand. He is not an incumbent, he has no history of being owned by the various power brokers in the city, and being mayor of Harrisburg is not a lifetime appointment. Harrisburg needs a change for the better, and Schankweiler is it.

Please vote for Dave Schankweiler in the upcoming primary election.

on Mayor Steve Reed

Steve Reed was the long-time Democrat mayor of Harrisburg City, and he died last week. I knew Mayor Reed and I feel compelled to say some things about him.

My uber-Republican grandparents Ed and Jane introduced me to Steve back in the early 1990s, when he was first running for mayor of Harrisburg. When I queried how such ardent partisans as they could support a Democrat, the response they gave was a life-changing truism that is worth everyone remembering:

“Support the best candidate who will do the best for The People, regardless of political party.”

And besides, the Republican Party had long since abandoned Harrisburg City, as the GOPe has chicken-out abandoned all other urban areas across America. So there was no real Republican to challenge Reed.

The truth is that Steve Reed really did have the best interest of The People, the citizens of Harrisburg City, at heart. Like a lot of gay men his age, he felt that his opportunity for personal companionship was self-limited, and so he had nothing else to live for than his citizens, the people he viewed as being under his care. And he did dutifully care for all of us to his best ability.

When a bad vehicle accident would occur in the city in the very dead of night, or a homicide, Steve would show up in coat and tie, maybe fuzzy slippers on his feet, to find out exactly what happened so that he could try to fix the cause. Or at least communicate to the city’s citizens what had happened, so that there was the least mystery possible. He was always on the job. The guy cared about his job in a way that hardly anyone ever cares about public service jobs any more. Reed was truly a public servant in every good sense of the phrase.

Long ago I joked with Mayor Reed that when he died, I was going to embalm his body, dress him up in one of his dowdy suits, put a cigarette in his hand, and prop him up in the window in his old office, so that the citizens below could look up and see Steve, The Mayor, still on the job, still doing his best for us, and that knowing all was well, they would all be consoled of all concerns and go on with their lives, happier and more confident. A perpetually stable Harrisburg.

He always smiled at that joke.

His attempt to build the nation’s premier cowboy / Western museum was a great idea, like his successful idea to build an incredible civil war museum. But that Wild West Museum did not happen only because it lost momentum, despite having a veritable mountain of wonderful bona fide Western frontier artifacts to show. When the museum lost momentum, questions began to arise about how all those wonderful artifacts had been obtained with scarce public funds, and where were they kept, etc. And once those questions were asked, it was the beginning of the end of Steve’s reign. Such was the public’s trust in Mayor Reed that he could really do no wrong, and when he demonstrated that even great people have weaknesses, the public mostly abandoned him.

The last I saw Steve was at a home in Uptown Harrisburg, down the street from where we live. It was a gathering of a political who-is-who in the area that I rudely barged into uninvited, and the hostess, Peggy, cheerfully greeted me with hugs and a hot drink nonetheless. The three of us, Peggy, myself, and Mayor Reed, were all back in a corner chatting while eating fresh fruit. Steve looked happy, and Peggy was her usual 100 MPH self. Until Steve asked me “Josh, you don’t support Trump, right?”

“Of course I do, mayor, I absolutely do support President Trump. He is doing a great job for America, and I think you of all people should appreciate how hard that is to do,” I responded.

Peggy exploded, poor thing. She was standing elbow to elbow with me, and her unhappy response was broadcast in bits and pieces across the side of my sweater and cheek. She was nearly foaming at the mouth with anger, indignation, her eyes were crossed, and a garble of unintelligible words poured forth from her mouth that I did not have to actually understand in their particular to understand in their overall gist.

Peggy disliked (still does) President Trump, and was ummm…frustrated that I would support him.

“Ignore him, Peggy,” said Mayor Reed. “He is just saying that to get a rise out of you.”

Mayor Reed looked at me, smiled, popped a grape in his mouth and walked off into the bigger party. He was politic to the end.

In our hunting camp there hangs a large moose head above the living room. It is named “Stephen” after Mayor Steve Reed, because it was purchased from the eventual auction of the Harrisburg Wild West Museum contents. When I picked up the enormous wooden crate with the moose head inside, I couldn’t wait, and I opened it up right away in the bed of the pick up truck. Inside was all the original documentation going back to the original purchase of the moose by Steve Reed, years before. He had acquired it from an old frontier saloon in southwest Minnesota, and apparently many cowboys had hung their hats on it over the decades. It was a real, bona fide emblem of the wild west; at least as the Western frontier was known in Minnesota.

Steve the Moose now looms over all our comings and goings at camp, provoking small children to squeal with delight and with fright, and grown men to pose all manly-like. No question the moose head is a symbol of the Big Woods and all that is wild in America, a proper companion to other real cabin furnishings like beaver pelts and traps. But to me, Steve the Moose symbolizes Steve Reed the mayor, the all-knowing bull moose, watching over his sanctuary, his people, his charges.

It is comforting to me.

Bye, Steve, you are gone but not forgotten. Here, let me dust off your ears for you. And have a light.

Mayor Steve Reed looks at one of the Remington bronzes he purchased for his Wild West Museum. The bronze was among the gazillion other real wild west artifacts sold at auction. Denver Post photo credit

Ammin Perry cartoon symbolizing about $7 million city dollars up in smoke, and Mayor Reed did like to smoke

Steve Reed the moose still oversees all

Liberals own every shooting in America

A dear old friend wrote me “You need to come down from your mountain and see the craziness that is taking over America!”

Hon, I am living on my mountain because of all the craziness that liberals have unleashed upon American society and Western Civilization. Liberals have just about ruined the best, freest, most incredible country in human history. Only in little remote pockets can we find peace of mind, peace and quiet, freedom and liberty, the ability to do as we need without having some government bureaucrat prying into our private lives or threatening us for growing a garden.

For decades liberals have been removing the wheels from the American car, and now that they have the wheels off, they demand that we voters turn over the car keys to them because they say the car is too dangerous for us to drive…

Professional criminal Maurice Hill’s shoot out in Philly yesterday left six officers injured. Maurice Hill had already committed a laundry list of violent crimes using firearms, and any one of those should have put him behind bars for decades.

But no, that did not happen despite many bites at the apple.  Instead, liberal judges, liberal mayors, liberal  prosecutors, liberal activists, liberal lawyers at the American Bar Association and the Pennsylvania Bar Association, liberal doctors at the American Medical Association, and so on, liberals everywhere have done their utmost to turn criminals like Hill into “victims,” who deserve our empathy and gentlest caresses, instead of being held accountable for their actions. Liberals blame society, not criminals, for the destructive behavior of criminals like Hill.

And now, having practically destroyed America’s criminal justice system and having unleashed a tidal wave of violent criminals like Hill upon us taxpayers, liberals stamp their feet and pout and yell and cry and do other forms of angry child behavior to shame Americans into giving up our firearms.

Ban guns? No way!

America needs to ban liberalism and ban the destructive liberals who purvey, force and sneak liberalism upon the normal people who keep America functioning. Liberals ought to pay a special federal tax for being liberal, to help defray the huge costs they impose on American society.

Brown Shirts on the march…Who will meet them face to face?

Across America, especially at tech giants like Google and Facebook, and at university campuses, the brown shirts are on the march.

The original Brown Shirts were the early street thugs used by the Nazis to take control of German society in the 1920s and 1930s, from the streets to the families who walked on the streets, all the way to the top of the government.

Once in power, the Nazis imposed draconian speech and behavior codes, cowing the citizenry into obeying even the most horrendous, cruel laws that followed. Do we need to delve any deeper into the history of Nazism, and their mirror image, the Stalinists of Russia, to understand what is actually happening here in the Land of the Free?

Well, yes, you might take the time to read up on that history, because it is repeating itself here in America, with these “speech codes” at Google, Facebook, and college campuses.

These speech codes are often nebulous, hard to define, and aimed at eliminating the mere questioning of an extreme political and cultural perspective. Speech codes are purely political in purpose.

Both Facebook and Google have been in the news recently for summarily firing employees who even dare to question the politically correct beliefs at each company, who merely question the brown shirts values and behavior.

Another example is Ms. Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers in Washington State. Because she politely declined to make a custom floral arrangement for a same-sex marriage. She did this because of her religious faith. Agree or disagree with her, this is her right, but the ACLU and the State of Washington are using lawfare to drive this nice grandma into poverty. These two lawsuits against her, both commercial and personal lawsuits, one private the other “official,” are designed to crush this woman’s right to free speech and religious faith.

You would think Grandma Stutzman is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, but to the brown shirts at the ACLU and those running Washington State’s government, they don’t care. What they care about is driving Grandma into submission, and gaining control of America through intimidation and threats of lawsuits that can bankrupt people for living a Christian life.

And you say there oughtta be a law! Well right there is a good example of where America needs a law, to stop these kinds of punitive, fake lawsuits.

Maybe the best example of the worst speech code is the assertion of “white privilege,” the single most racist statement you will encounter in a full year of your life. This ugly example of racism sums up all of the other, gentler version of speech control, and you can go find videos of people physically assaulting “white” people because of the color of their skin, because that skin color is inherently evil, and bad, and…racist.

Yes, the irony of beating people with the wrong skin color is lost on the people who are doing it, those being the racist members of racist groups like “Black Lives Matter.”

Even if you are not physically beaten, if you do not obey the speech code, then you are shamed, bullied, fired, expelled, and personally destroyed. Or at least people will try.

Recall that about six years ago here in Harrisburg, a non-profit “environmental” organization called PennFuture tried to get a local meteorologist fired from his news station, because he had the audacity to disagree with PennFuture’s assertion about climate change (well, back then it was “global warming”).

This is thuggery, pure and simple.

And just like the Brown Shirts did on Kristallnacht, American brown shirts go on violent, destructive rampages from Missouri to New York to Berkeley, California. This is also thuggery.

On the flip side, try to imagine a large group of conservative Americans similarly forming up to express their political views through the use of street violence, and public shaming, and firing, lawsuits, and personal destruction. This group would be roughly the size of the existing organized speech code groups like BLM and its friends, about 30,000-50,000 active activists.

This conservative group would be highly coordinated, highly organized, with well-implemented transportation anywhere in the country, ready to go where needed pretty quickly.  Just like the BLM, Code Pink, Occupy and other paid activists groups.

Just think about that, and ask yourself how such a group would be portrayed in the media. It wouldn’t be positive, that’s for sure!

And yet we do in fact have a highly organized, increasingly armed, well funded leftist militia engaged in controlling speech and behavior across America, working hand-in-hand with the media. Right now they are pretty much unimpeded.

The Brown Shirts are truly on the march, right here, right now.

Question is, what are we going to do about it?

Who is going to go meet them face to face, nose to nose, to defend our Constitutional republic?

UPDATE August 11, 2017: Last night, while reading a positive Washington Post article about violent anarchists, it occurred to me that something is in the air here. If a little-known blogger in Central PA is writing about it, and then the Washington Post is promoting it, then this is a timely subject. The Washington Post article was full of beautifully staged photos of the black-clothed anarchists, obviously trying to make them more personable, more understandable. In this article, everyone on the streets who is not an anarchist is repeatedly described as “right wing,” though none of the leftists, liberals, etc are ever described as left wing, though the Washington Post needs no analysis to uncover its hard-left bias and purpose. Legba Carrefour is photographed with a wooden baseball bat over his shoulder, posing like a badass tough guy. Whether he is or is not (I say he is not) a true tough guy, or if he only pretends to be a tough guy when he is surrounded by hundreds of rampaging violent packs of fellow fools, it is not important. What is important is that America has a growing problem with violent Brown Shirts clad in black, and their enablers all the way up to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Barack Obama, all of whom say nothing negative about these violent thugs, but actually seem to encourage them. Meanwhile, on the other side, we have RINO Republicans everywhere at every level engaged in influence peddling, using government to enrich themselves, and essentially blocking patriots from safeguarding America.  Something has to give way.

UPDATE August 13th: If the awful violence in Virginia is any indication, the crazy, violent left has managed to provoke the right wing crazies, who for decades have been an embarrassing and irrelevant speck of dust on our national political stage. They are the other side of the Black Lives Matter coin- racist, ignorant, and spoiling for a fight. Until now, no one bothered with them, because they were meaningless. Intriguingly, Virginia governor Terry McCauliffe refuses to rebuke or condemn BLM or any of the other violent leftists who attacked police, peaceful protestors, and white bystanders long before the biggest violence broke out. McCauliffe is only condemning the two dozen Nazi flag waving idiots and the murderous guy who drove his car into the communist flag waving idiots who attacked his car. To Governor McCauliffe, violence is only bad when it’s not his people doing it. It’s just fine when his people do it.  President Trump correctly identifies all racism and all bigotry and all violence as unacceptable. And so we see what force is behind most of the political violence in America now: radical anarchists and their sore loser Democrat enablers. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are just as responsible for this violence as the goons in the street, because they could easily call for it to end. Although now I’m starting to wonder if they could reel it back in, even if they wanted to. They’ve set a forest fire decades in the making. Can anyone put it out….?

UPDATE August 15, 2017: As the actual facts begin to trickle out, mostly in the form of video of the march and the violence, and review of official Charlottesville city documents, one thing is clear: The mayor created the conditions for the violence to happen. The mayor knew exactly what he was doing when he arranged to have the previously permitted kook right march moved from Emancipation Park (formerly Robert E. Lee Park) to an open area, so that the kook left would surround the marchers on all sides. Also, the city police were instructed to contain the kook right marchers and only allow them to exit by walking through the violent throng of Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA thugs surrounding them. This meant that no matter what, physical contact between the two sides was guaranteed. On top of this, the city police were instructed to not make arrests. So the net result is a city administration that coordinates with street thugs and its own police force to bring terrible violence upon peaceful protestors. The neo-NAZI marchers may be morons, but they have a right to march peacefully, which they were doing until they were attacked by the moron leftists. The mayor is an accessory to the murder of the woman, and the US Justice Department should bring charges against the mayor for his direct role in guaranteeing violence and the suppression of the permitted marchers’ civil rights.

And even more to the point, the mainstream media has continued to act as a partisan political arm of one political party. I saw a screen shot of CNN actually writing “Trump defends racist marchers,” which is a complete and total lie. At a certain point these attacks on Trump are an attack on the political process, because these are undocumented political contributions to a political party. The Federal Elections Commission needs to start documenting these political contributions by political organizations formerly known as “media” and “the press.”

And even more to the point, where on earth are Obama, Clinton, and Sanders? Why are they not denouncing the leftist violence? Do they really want street battles reminiscent of Weimar Germany, when the kook left Communists and the kook right NAZIs battled each other across the country? Do we really want that kind of political instability? Dear liberal friends: You really do not want this kind of instability.

Harrisburg’s Mayoral Race: Not Even One Lesser of Many Evils

Here in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, we are cursed with the single-party dominance that is the bane of nearly every other American city.

The lack of political competition means that voters and citizens are offered few choices, and a very narrow band of philosophical differences to choose from.

Like most other American cities, Harrisburg is dysfunctional, broke, mostly black, and run by the Democrat Party. American blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and the corrupt special interest groups that hover about them, like the teacher’s unions.

Until American blacks start asking themselves why they keep voting for the failure and poverty that the Democrat Party has afflicted them with since the days of Southern slavery and Jim Crow, these cities will remain in their broken status.

Even state capital cities like Harrisburg. Our city’s school district is the worst in Pennsylvania, because it is dominated by the teacher’s unions. With bad schools, would-be taxpayers flee to school districts where they get something positive for their property taxes. And where their kids are more likely to get a decent education.

And to be fair, while you are more likely see better financial success in a conservative-run city, the fact is that cities dominated by a single party of any sort become playgrounds for careerists and corruption.

So here we are, with Eric Papenfuse as our current mayor.

Eric’s big claim to fame is that he graduated from Yale University. Seriously, I am not joking. Eric uses that assertion as if it is the beginning and dramatic ending of any policy discussion. It is as if he is stating “I am simply smarter than you, because I went to Yale, so discussion is over.”

Yale is like all the other Ivy league schools: Utterly worthless. Yale’s Politically Correct indoctrination has dumbed down students, not made them smarter. The liberal Borg mentality brooks no questioning, no competition.

As a human, if you do not question, then you do not develop critical thinking skills. Simply being “right” on a long list of leftist talking points does not make a person smart. It makes them intellectually inferior, even disabled. I believe this is why so many liberals get crazy mad when they are debated – they simply lack the ability to logically, calmly debate.

I will always give credit where it is due, however, and even sweaty faced Papenfuse has some achievements under his belt.

By withholding expenditures, the city now has some money. And some departments are actually functioning for the first time in a long time, like trash pickup and public street sewers.

Eric’s main political ally, Alex Hartzler, has felt comfortable enough to continue to make risky, low-yield redevelopment investments in bombed out ghettos. This generates new home sales and a new tax base, a sense of security and community. The private market can work, if allowed to work.

Laugh at these small accomplishments if you will, Harrisburg was on a trajectory to become another Detroit.

And to be fair, being the Harrisburg mayor is probably an unwinnable job, regardless of party or of personal charisma. It just may be one of those roles that in the current environment cannot be done well by anyone. The constraints are tight, the flexibility is low, and the wildcard variables are numerous.

A fractious and unimpressive city council does not help, either.

So it makes sense to make no predictions or endorsements in this race.

Even with six or seven mayoral candidates to choose from, it doesn’t appear that we even have a lesser-of-two-evils to choose from. They are all disasters.

Papenfuse has his hands full with city council member Gloria Martin, who may win simply because of  identity politics. If she wins, we may go forward, we may go backwards.

It is doubtful anyone could tell the difference.

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May 11, 2017 UPDATE: Jennie Jenkins has been recommended as a strong mayoral candidate by someone whom I and many other Harrisburg City voters look to for guidance and leadership.


May 14th UPDATE:  I learned Jennie Jenkins is a former city police officer. Great! Who was apparently fired or dismissed or who voluntarily left the police force because she was accused of stealing $350 from a police benevolent association fund. She’s suing various city leaders over this and says all charges were dropped. Patriot News reporters say almost all the charges were dropped, except one light misdemeanor that included no admission of guilt, repayment of whatever sum got misplaced, and ARD. Like I said above, the list of mayoral candidates is not super strong.


May 14th UPDATE: Mayoral candidate Anthony Harrell describes himself as a patriotic Iraq war veteran (thank you for your service, Anthony) who supports Second Amendment rights. His writeup in the recent print version of the Patriot News is the first I’ve heard of him. Definitely the kind of candidate Harrisburg needs. But no one knows he’s a candidate, except him.


May 14th UPDATE: After previously waging jihad against and attempting a political suicide attack on the Harrisburg Civil War Museum that caused city residents to shake our heads in mystified disbelief, Eric Papenfuse now says the place he wanted to bomb into rubble is actually “a valuable city resource.”  Uhhhhh, OK. Like we all know, the list of Harrisburg mayoral candidates is pretty weak. This is the best we’ve got….

 

 

Eric Papenfuse, you owe Robert Ford an apology

The following story is found at http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/06/harrisburg_artsfest_veteran_st.html#incart_m-rpt-2.

The other day, a Harrisburg Police officer aggressively harassed an old Marine dressed in his uniform, accusing him of stolen valor.  That is where people wear military uniforms and medals they are not entitled to wear.  They do it to make themselves appear better, cooler, tougher.  Turns out, the old Marine, Robert Ford, was in fact honorably discharged from the US Marines a long time ago, and the uniform he proudly wore was given to him by the US Government.  He had just finished performing “Taps” at a Memorial Day ceremony and decided to walk over to ArtsFest along Front Street and the Susquehanna River.

American citizens cannot be expected to put up with this kind of over-reach and abuse of power.  It is official malfeasance, which is actionable. Harrisburg City has real crime problems.  This is Bad Government, Exhibit A. My God, what is happening here?

Questions about this videotaped and photographed event abound:

a) Will Detective (!) John O’Connor offer an apology to Ford?

b) Will Detective (!) O’Connor be demoted or terminated for his wildly unprofessional, threatening, bullying behavior of a free citizen?

c) Will Mayor Papenfuse have anything to say? Will he do anything?

d) Will Harrisburg police Captain Deric Moody also apologize, or be demoted? Moody’s behavior is almost worse than O’Connor’s, because he compounded the initial antagonistic behavior and then tried to cover it up.

Folks, Harrisburg is in trouble, deep trouble, and unless elected officials are quick to get these kinds of situations under control, a festering culture develops.  Recently I discovered that yet another city agency is once again making bad decisions in a vacuum.

Mayor Papenfuse, an apology from your police officers is Job #1.  Other elected officials should chime in, too.

 

Harrisburg City makes legal mistake after legal mistake

I am a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Mayor Eric Papenfuse and Harrisburg City, over his unwillingness to comply with longstanding state law and remove anti-gun ordinances from the city laws.

Papenfuse is a 1960s-1970s-style liberal, for whom ignoring the law, subverting the law, abandoning the law, undermining the law all represent some vague “Yeah, man!” hippie stand against laws he personally believes are wrong.

The problem with this approach is that once elected to office, a mayor cannot pick and choose which laws to follow or ignore.  The rule of law requires that all laws be upheld equally, or changed through the political process.

Being an elected leader means that you accept the legal and law-making process.  But then again, Papenfuse is an adoring fan of Obama, who also believes that he is a Government of One, able to do whatever he wants, rule by fiat, contrary to democratic norms.

Under Papenfuse’s hippie-fist-in-the-air don’t-have-a-care approach, Harrisburg City is making huge legal mistakes right and left in this lawsuit.

Two days ago, our attorney, Josh Prince, scored a default judgment against the city for $21,000 plus additional costs.  The city lawyers failed to file the correct paper work, failed to correctly fill out the paper work they did file, and missed key deadlines, and so the city failed on many counts to respond in court to legal documents presented to them.

While Papenfuse struts and preens to prove some undemocratic point, the city taxpayers are on the hook for ever increasing amounts of legal fees and judgments.  Eric fails, and the taxpayers here pay for his arrogant attitude.

If this is not failed government, then nothing is.

The day after

The day after Netanyahu’s historic speech before the US Congress, people who care about real things, for good or for bad, are doing 180-degree analyses of its impact, the merits of the policy he advocated, the audiences he addressed, the politics behind, surrounding, and in front of him, and implications of a nuclear Iran for America.

Shocking was the news blackout by the major TV networks and NPR/PBS.

While Netanyahu was speaking, I dialed into WITF, the local NPR affiliate here in Harrisburg.  Instead of listening to Netanyahu speak, as any listener would normally expect if any other head of state were addressing Congress, I was treated to a sarcastic discussion about health care by advocates for ObamaCare.

NPR is already an especially egregious mis-use of taxpayer money, and this one latest example serves to illustrate how corrupt and intellectually bankrupt NPR, PBS, and their affiliate stations are, despite couching themselves as sources of real debate and substance.

NPR’s news blackout of Netanyahu is done for one reason: To serve the interests of the Obama Administration, which itself not only did not attend the speech, but also issued empty, juvenile statements immediately after Netanyahu finished.

If you are NPR and you are blacking out Netanyahu’s speech, then you are not a real news organization.  Rather, you are a political activist, an advocate, far from some kind of fair-minded arbiter of plain fact that you represent yourself to be.

Likewise, here in Harrisburg, the staff of the Patriot News has fallen all over themselves to protect Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse from the legal fallout of his decision to hold onto illegal anti-gun ordinances.

I am a plaintiff in a suit against the city over these illegal ordinances.  Yesterday our attorney Josh Prince scored a default judgment against Harrisburg City.

When people like Mayor Papenfuse engage in official lawless behavior, it’s not some sort of hip civil disobedience, it’s tyranny.  Government must absolutely live by its laws.  Papenfuse believes he is above the law, and that deserves a broadside by newspapers everywhere.  But like NPR and the mainstream media’s blackout treatment of Netanyahu, the Patriot News serves a different master – liberals at war with the foundations of Western Civilization. So Papenfuse gets away with legal murder.  Iran readies to commit nuclear genocide.

That is a hell of a thing to confront first thing in the day.