Posts Tagged → policy
Farewell Senate Campaign Page, Hello ol’ Blog!
With the Pennsylvania Primary election just eleven days away, the time has arrived to go back to the blog and leave the campaign policies and pledges to candidates Andrew Lewis and John DiSanto.
The last blog post was in June 2015. How surprising it was back then to see the amount of traffic the blog received, and from all corners of the world. Most of our readers were from Harrisburg and Washington, DC, two government hot spots and centers for policy development. Wonks galore in those two locations. But then there were the places like Washington STATE, Louisiana, Upstate New York, and California, where many fewer dedicated policy weenies reside. Even recently a bearded Democrat said he missed this blog, “Even though I don’t agree with you a lot of the time, you are a good writer and you have interesting subjects.”
So we begin again. However, with the election just days away, you can expect some politicking to occur here. Welcome back, dear reader.
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.
9-11 happened 13 years ago; are we any wiser?
America’s toughest enemies attacked us September 11, 2001.
It appears that the subsequent 13 years have been spent trying to cover up who those enemies were, and pretend they are actually peaceful, despite that they remain to this very moment committed to the destruction of America and Western civilization.
No American policy, foreign or domestic, can change the mind of someone who has been raised, nurtured, and trained all his life to want to kill you. The problem is on his side, not on ours.
America’s president says that no religion condones the killing of innocents. Wrong again. This particular totalitarian ideology poses as a religion, and it is all about death and destruction. Submit (‘Islam’), or die. We see it over and over again.
Perhaps why our Apologist In Chief keeps saying “ISIS is not Islam” is that, as the world’s greatest promoter and defender of Islam, he realizes the images of Steve Sotloff and James Foley having their heads sawed off, helpless on their knees, have had a profound impact on the Western psyche. So Obama needs to challenge ISIS now, in a country he lost after America won it, before the cat is fully out of the bag and people see the truth we are facing.
Let’s wise up, recognize our own greatness, and stop beating up on ourselves for things we do not do and did not do. Otherwise, the victims of the 9-11 attacks died in vain, and the huge memorials in Shanksville, New York, and Virginia will not be signifying 9-11, but America’s willful blindness, instead.
See more with her amazing speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MwqVmoXPbc
And if you REALLY want to watch her kick ass, watch her respond powerfully to foolish propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry3NzkAOo3s
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.
Court testimony proves criticism of Corbett natural gas policy is partisan, unfair
If you have been following the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Fund lawsuit against the Commonwealth, over its natural gas policies on public lands, then you’ve no doubt been reading the testimony of former political appointees from the Pa Gov. Ed Rendell administration.
The lawsuit is being ably reported in the Patriot News.
Former DCNR secretaries DiBerardinis and Quigley have testified that their boss, Governor Ed Rendell, was the one who dropped the natural gas extraction bomb on the State Forests in his gluttonous rush to gain as much money as he could to fund his wild history-making over-spending.
I won’t bother to repeat their testimony here, but it is not pleasant. They are not covering up for their former boss. Instead, they are laying it all out there, describing how the public interest was subverted by greed and political malfeasance. These are two good men, devoted to the public interest. Kudos to them.
Here’s the thing: Rendell is a Democrat.
Here’s the thing: Then, and now, Rendell was not roundly criticized for his public land gas drilling policies by the very environmental groups who represent themselves to the public to be non-partisan, fair-minded, honest brokers on environmental policy and issues.
Instead, in extreme contrast, since even before his first day in office, Governor Tom Corbett has been vilified, excoriated, badmouthed, cussed, maligned, and blamed for everything that is wrong, and right, with the public policies he inherited from the Rendell Administration.
And this gets to the point here: A lot of the heat that is created around environmental policy issues is accompanied by very little light. That is because most environmental issues are innately politicized, and partisan, before a valuable discussion about their merits can be had, in the public interest.
In other words, the by-now old narrative goes like this: Republicans always stink on green issues, and Democrats are always blameless little innocent blinking-eyed babes on environmental issues, even when they are wearing the red devil suit and sticking Satan’s trident deep into the public’s back.
In the interest of good policy, this partisanship must end. The mainstream media, run by liberals, is only too happy to carry on this unfair, inaccurate narrative. But conservatives can overcome that if only they will cease ceding the battlefield to the partisan groups who roam it at will.
Instead of cavalierly writing off everyone who cares about environmental quality as an “environmental whacko,” which is the standard conservative reaction, and it is wrong, recognize that environmental quality is important, but what is also important is how one goes about achieving that goal. This critical policy nuance seems to be lost on most conservatives.
Also, call out the Statists/ Socialists who mis-use environmental policy as a means to achieve their larger Marxist goals of wealth redistribution. These people are not ‘environmental whackos’, they are anti-American socialists who have hijacked an important issue and commandeered it to suit their larger purposes.
Want to win? Want good government? Want fair coverage of political issues? Then fight back! Meet these folks on their own battlefield, and defeat them using good policy that is grounded in science and public-interest goals. The Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Fund lawsuit court room testimony is an excellent place to begin this fight. It is loaded with ammunition in the interest of honesty, accuracy, and fairness.
BLM giving open land a black eye
The Bureau of Land Management was established as a temporary holding entity, dealing more with water management than common natural resources and the plants and animals living on the land under its care.
Now, BLM has become the poster child of Big Government Gone Wild, using armed force and the threat of lethal force, let alone more prosaic forms of terrifying government coercion, to achieve dubious policy goals. Many of these policy goals grate on the public, who perceive them as being at best ancillary to BLM’s mission, if not at odds with the multiple-use land management models the agency is supposed to implement.
Citizens, who own their American government, chafe at official signs that say “No Trespassing – BLM Property,” as though the very taxpayers underwriting BLM are alien invaders upon that government-managed ground.
Job #1 would be to actually communicate with the citizenry about the agency’s policy goals, the underpinnings and purpose of its policies, the reasons for protecting some landscapes from vehicles. Certainly, BLM can achieve better ways to manage environmentally sensitive land, and perhaps asking the citizenry for ideas would take the agency into new, good places. Many users of federally-managed lands are actually savvy about Leave No Trace, and most others at least care, even if they do not yet know how to minimally impact an area.
BLM’s heavy hand in the supposed name of environmental quality is giving all open land a black eye. As a result of BLM’s foolish behavior, all kinds of questions are being asked about public land, not just about how it is managed, but why it even exists. Perhaps it is a good discussion to have, and I certainly stand on the side of having those public spaces, but so far the BLM is just pouring gasoline on the fire, which threatens to overtake all public lands.
Part of any discussion should include What Next about BLM. The agency has clearly outlived its established purpose. My instinctive thinking is to divide up its lands among the agencies best suited to manage each piece – National Park Service for this heavily used area, National Forest for this timbered area, and so on. And no, conveying some of these lands to states is not a bad thing, so long as the deeds carry perpetual stipulations that the lands cannot be sold to private owners or converted to some other use. Mining, timbering, preservation of historic artifacts, water management, passive and active recreation, scenic beauty, ecological purposes…states can do many of these as well as a federal agency, and all without having snipers in fatigues pointing guns at citizens.
If nothing else, getting rid of BLM to get rid of its ridiculous snipers and armed thug culture is a worthy step. Not only is that insane behavior unworthy of a representative government, it is unrelated to the purpose of protecting open land in the first place.
Tom Wolf, you confuse me
Tom Wolf is a candidate for Pennsylvania governor.
He appears to be the front-runner in his party’s primary race. For a number of reasons, he has the greatest amount of voter name recognition and support.
Why candidate Katie McGinty is not taking off, I don’t know. Katie is charismatic, maintains a million-dollar smile, and knows how to effectively communicate with people. She is both infuriatingly liberal and also, in my direct experience, surprisingly capable of being pragmatic and non-ideological. McGinty’s A-rating from the anti-freedom group CeaseFirePA hurts her; Wolf got a C from them, which helps in freedom-friendly Pennsylvania. Why he didn’t get a D, and then really strut his individual liberty credentials, is confusing.
Wolf lacks charisma, but seems to make up for it with his honest-to-goodness aw-shucks folksy way.
Here’s what really confuses me about Wolf: He is a business man who advocates for policies that are bad for business, like an additional tax on over-taxed natural gas.
Tom Wolf, you will probably challenge Tom Corbett for governor. I am a small business owner and I want to see more from you that is business friendly. Otherwise, I remain confused by you.
No “severance tax,” unless
A “severance tax” on deep shale gas would be on top of, in addition to, the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax, an astronomical Corporate Net Income Tax, and the Act 13 Impact Fee that is collected from wells and distributed to hosting counties.
Adding an additional tax, no matter what you call it, is stupid. It’s bad public policy, it’s bad government. Tax-and-spend officials always like spending other people’s money. That’s the worst sort of government.
A severance tax could make sense if one or all of the other taxes and fees were eliminated. Then there’d be balance. That’s good public policy, good government.
If you want higher prices in your own house for many food items, grill gas, heating gas, etc. and you want to open up your own wallet, take out more money than you need to pay, and just donate it, OK. But don’t demand that everyone else also dig deeper into their wallets for their money to cover your bad ideas. The severance tax will be passed on to the public with higher costs for lots of things.
Just leave it alone.