Category → Government Of the People…
What is in a political “party”?
The Communist Party.
The Democrat Party.
The Republican Party.
What is the difference between these three and many other active political parties?
Their party agenda is what defines them.
Their cause, their unifying principles, their policies and political platforms, these are the things that separate political parties from one another.
All political parties have their own structure, their functionaries, their own bureaucracies, lawyers, and bosses. All have become self-interested organisms, influenced by a constellation of special interest groups. At a certain point, the party exists simply for its own benefit.
But what happens when these parties begin to bleed into one another, when they begin to blend across their boundaries and blur their boundaries? When they lose their distinctive appeal?
When political parties lose their way, do they lose their reason for being?
Although my own Republican Party has pledged overall to serve the taxpayers, plenty of fellow Republicans hold personal and official positions contrary to the interests of taxpayers, voters, and citizens. Their positions are subtle, often only visible in the important background decisions they make.
Many times in recent history, the Republican Party has been used as a weapon to silence voices of political activists who sought to return the brand to its more basic principles and its more elementary purpose, which would naturally be defined as the cause of liberty.
It is my own hope and the hope of many other dedicated citizens that the Republican Party, also known as the establishment, will stay out of any upcoming elections around Central Pennsylvania.
It is one thing for a candidate to ask, say, State Rep. Ron Marsico for his individual support, or to ask individual party committee members for their support. It is entirely another thing for the Dauphin County Republican Committee to endorse a candidate so that the Pennsylvania Republican Party can spend money to challenge a Republican candidate’s nomination ballots, because he (or she) is too independent-minded. Or too “conservative.” Or not enough in the pocket of some party boss.
My experience tells me that this controlling, anti-freedom behavior has happened so often that many political activists are inclined to become political Independents, which means that the Republican base, the most passionate Republican voters, become driven away from the party and become less interested in its success. We saw this with the past election, where former governor Tom Corbett had little street game. The people with the most passion were not going to do door-to-door for Corbett.
Even more worrisome is if the one-time Republican becomes an Independent candidate, or mounts a write-in campaign. Sure, these efforts may hurt the Republican Party’s nominee, but if the party didn’t want that independent-minded candidate in the first place, what right does anyone have to expect him to stay loyal to them?
Put another way, if some political boss doesn’t want a certain candidate to get elected, then what expectation does that political boss have of earning the support of the candidate he opposed?
Put another way, if you don’t want John to get elected, then why would John want you or your ally to get elected?
Do the Democrats have this problem? Sure. But that political party has become overrun with foreign policy extremism and anti-capitalism. Wealth redistribution is completely contrary to American founding principles, but it is nevertheless now a core of the Democrat Party.
That is sad, because at one time, the Democrats just wanted more opportunity for everyone. Now they want to take from one person and give to another person, which is theft.
But I am not a Democrat, so this is not my political problem.
My problem is with so-called Republicans who actually share a lot in common with liberal Democrats, but who stay in the Republican Party.
There are different ways a Republican can share values with a liberal. For example, a Republican staffer who believes in the supremacy of bureaucracy….despite bureaucracy being the enemy of freedom and individual liberty. Working from within the party, these functionaries stamp their own flavor on policy and principle alike, often softening edges and blurring lines, giving the voters fewer choices, more government intervention, and ultimately less liberty.
The same could be said for certain “Republican” lobbyists, whose connections to money, political funding, cause them to promote bad policies such as Common Core, which strikes deep at the heart of liberty. They would rather ally with liberals than support a conservative Republican candidate. People like this have great influence in the Republican Party. They influence its agenda, and the kind of decisions the apparatus supports.
If you stand for everything, you stand for nothing. I myself will stand for liberty, freedom, and opportunity for everyone. If that puts me and others like me at odds with some political party, then that says everything a voter needs to know about that party: It does not have your interests at heart.
I am a Republican because I hold old-fashioned, traditional American values, the kind of values that created America and kept her great for so long. I will vote for and support only those candidates who hold similar values. Regardless of what a party spokeswoman may say, a Republican Party that has no conservativism in it isn’t really a Republican Party any longer, is it?
Don’t howl too loudly, Wolf Pack
If the Tom Corbett administration was marked by poor communications, unaccountable senior staff running amok in the name of their boss, a hands-off management style by the chief executive, and a general lack of charisma, there’s a good indication that the Tom Wolf administration is headed the exact same way for similar reasons.
And they might experience the same one-term result that marked Corbett.
Maybe Katie McGinty will run a right and responsive ship. Maybe John Hanger will avoid sharp conflicts with the Republican legislature. Those will be advantages over the Corbett administration. But the missing outside voices from across the aisle are an indication that an insular culture is already taking place. From insularity springs all kinds of foolish mistakes.
There will be time enough for natural disagreement. But unless the Wolf Administration wants to go down fighting from the beginning, and thus get saddled with a deadly four years of failure, they’d better start thinking hard how to navigate the minefield, to give and to take, to lead.
Bad guys are on the run around Harrisburg
Toldja so.
Last year, several critical essays I wrote about PA AG Kathleen Kane were widely published, long before other people felt safe enough, I guess, to jump on the band wagon.
Kane’s incompetence and corrupt behavior were evident within a few months of her arrival in the PA Attorney General seat. She only got worse and worse, and was on a downhill slide to the point where she has now been indicted by a grand jury. Imagine that.
I feel vindicated. Sadly.
Harrisburg’s top cop may go to jail, or be fined, disbarred, and barred from holding public office. It says a lot about politics, that her Breck Girl smile and slow-motion hair tosses were enough for her to get elected.
For the record, I believe that if Pennsylvania absolutely must have a Democrat AG, then Katie McGinty would be the right person. McGinty is every bit as liberal and political as Kane, but Katie is also way too smart to let it show or implement it so egregiously. So, we’d end up with a partisan professional and not the corrupt political hack we have now. That’d be an improvement.
An even better improvement would be Ed Marsico as AG. Ed Marsico is the stellar DA for Dauphin County, and he is so a-political that the Republican establishment has passed him over in the past. Can you imagine, an AG who simply does the job of prosecuting bad guys? How refreshing that would be.
On to Harrisburg City, my home town and my family’s home since at least 1745. It’s a place I care about a lot. We moved here from Washington, DC, to enjoy the high quality of life, easy commute, and low cost of living. I love living in Harrisburg.
Yes, the city has problems. OK, that is true and I think people are genuinely working to solve them, even as many of the same people have worked to exacerbate them because they stood to make money from them (think: Public Parking). But that is another story.
Here’s a story that is just now unfolding: Harrisburg has decided to hold on to its illegal anti-gun laws. Harrisburg City remains happily and blatantly in violation of two state laws barring any PA municipality from passing gun laws. The city has been served notice that they may get sued over this, a costly loss because the city will have to pay money damages and legal fees to the winner.
And of course, the gun laws they have do zero to punish criminals or limit crime. They are designed to punish law-abiding citizens and turn them into criminals, because the zealot prohibitionist crusaders pushing these laws are against guns per se.
Late last Friday night a deranged man attempted to forcefully enter my home through the front door. He was banging away at it, working over the handle hard, and shouting at us.
My wife and kids cowered on the kitchen floor, with Viv talking with a surly 911 dispatcher (who actually yelled at me over the phone); our guests were in the basement.
I stood with a pistol pointed at the door, waiting for the guy to come barging through. Every warning I shouted to him through the door elicited a curse-filled response and harder efforts to get through.
Even I was scared. Someone trying that hard to break into your home is going to do damage once he gets inside.
Ten minutes later the Harrisburg police arrived and caught him, two doors up the street. They were professional and friendly to us taxpayers, and they used force to capture the crazy man because he was violent. I watched him fight with them and try to kick their police dog, Bo. He had some white powder drugs on him and acted like he was insane. Case in point here: Drugs are bad, m’kay?
Without my gun, immediately accessible, our family was a sitting duck for this guy.
We were lucky that he did not come through a ground floor window. Sure, I would have shot and killed him had he entered our home, but who needs that? And what about the other citizens who are neither armed nor prepared or able to defend themselves effectively against intruders?
Let’s ask the obvious question: What about “when seconds count the police are only minutes away” do you not understand, Mayor Eric Papenfuse?
Why are your illegal, ineffective gun laws more important than the safety of my family?
What makes people on the Left so cocksure about their illegal behavior? It must have something to do with the tradition of Leftist protests always being “right,” a mentality that undergirds everything they do.
We will see you in court, Mayor Papenfuse, because you may not inflict your illegal laws on the safety of my body.
Obama admin flees from Paris free speech rally
Neither Obama nor VP Biden, nor Sec. of State Kerry, nor any other high ranking US figure attended the free speech and anti-terrorism rally in Paris. Over forty heads of state participated.
Why would the Obama administration make no attempt to have high level representation at a historic rally for free speech and against terrorism with America’s oldest ally?
Simply put, for six years Obama has punished America’s allies, he has rewarded our enemies, he does not believe in free speech at home or abroad and instead has done all he can to undermine it (IRS and NSA scandals), and finally, he will not lend his hand to anything that might appear like criticism of Islam.
Obama is not ham-handed or tone deaf about this, as his friends in the US media have complained. Rather, he is utterly opposed to the very things that the people marched for in Paris.
No matter what Obama says, his actions always speak louder, and his actions on the subjects of protecting free speech and stopping terrorism say loud and clear that he is not on the side of America or its allies. Obama identifies with Muslims to such an extent that he cannot bring himself to admit that it is Muslims who are committing atrocity after atrocity. He keeps denying that they are Muslims at all, which is just silly, and if he really were forward-thinking, he would join Egyptian president Al-Sisi, who recently called for Islam to undergo a dramatically needed reformation.
Under Obama, the NSA spied on Americans exercising their basic rights to free speech, and the IRS was weaponized to suppress and even criminalize political free speech with which Obama disagrees. Of course, free speech is a threat to his agenda, so the Obama FEC is now trying to control political speech on the internet, too.
And no matter what someone does in the name of Islam, Obama will permit no official criticism of Islam, a logic he abandons when he blames legally owned guns for criminal behavior (what if the staff at Charlie Hebdo or the police protecting them had had guns to defend themselves? The whole attack could easily have been over in seconds). The civilized world says “Je suis Charlie,” and Obama says “Je suis Muslim.”
How the heck did Obama ever get elected to be anything more than dog catcher in the first place? His values are diametrically opposed to those of all but a very small fringe percentage of the American people. For those who disagree with this statement, just open your eyes and look at the sad facts. Obama should never have been president of the United States. He cannot even pretend to represent our nation any longer, and he is a disgrace. He should resign, or be impeached.
Time to primary challenge Rep. John Boehner
John Boehner used every trick, threat, and bribe possible to hold on to his role as Speaker of the US House. The man is a disaster, policy-wise. He says one thing to appease the people, then does whatever he wants to appease his political chums. That is not leadership, it is corrupt behavior, failed governance, and it is exactly everything that is wrong with politics and Washington, DC, a place I worked for seven years.
It is time that the fight was carried to Boehner directly. It is now time for a challenger to take him on in a primary race in his own district.
Good or bad, the cops have our backs
A society without a professional police force lacks the rule of law. No rule of law? No civilization.
Are there bad cops, violent cops, corrupt cops, abusive cops, escalating cops? Of course. I’ve seen it. Central Pennsylvania Attorney Devon Jacob has seen it, and he’s a former police officer who prosecutes police brutality. Even he says the bad cops are a minuscule fraction of the overall number.
Overall and overwhelmingly, the police across the nation are the best of the citizenry. They sacrifice their safety to bring a certainty to yours. Without police like American police, there’s no America. Not as we’ve come to know it.
That’s what gets me about the anti-police attitude so common now. What, you want anarchy?
Despite the fake and misplaced rage about criminals dying at the hands of the police they attacked, there is truth to the observation that police forces are too militarized. And too many police officers are quick to escalate situations to satiate an ego in need of control. These aren’t secrets and these are issues the left and the right agree on. It’s going to get resolved professionally through the political process.
The blips on the radar screen that get our attention most are momentary deviations from the standard behavior of nearly all police officers. The extremely high standard of care that the police in every community bring to all of us is second to none.
So, how any American identifies the police as the bad guys is beyond me. It’s a sign of deep cultural decay and failure. It’s time that stopped.
Complaining about Obama’s treason makes me aggravated, but what else can you do?
Obama rewards a violent dictator who oppresses his citizens with an iron grip and enriches himself personally at their expense. But he wants to sanction Israel for building homes. This guy is at war with everything that Western Civilization stands for. Sorry, Cuban people.
Tom Wolf & Republican legislature should agree on this, if nothing else
A version of the following essay was published by the Patriot News at the following URL: http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2014/12/if_they_can_agree_on_nothing_e.html#incart_river
Conservation: An Area Where Democrat Tom Wolf and the Republican Legislature Should Agree
By Josh First
Land and water conservation are not luxuries, they are necessities in a world of growing demand for natural resources. As America’s population grows, the natural resources that sustain us, feed, us, cloth us, nurture us, warm us, and yes, even make toilet paper (and who can do without that), must be produced in ever greater supply.
Some of these resources are at static levels, like clean water, while others, like trees, are renewable. All are gifts that God commands us to manage wisely in Genesis.
Pennsylvania is facing some challenges in this regard, however, as the Susquehanna River shows serious signs of strain, and our world-famous forests face a devastating onslaught of invasive pests and diseases.
John Arway, executive director of the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission, has been advocating for officially declaring the Susquehanna River an “impaired waterway” for years. The data Arway draws upon support his concerns: Dissolved oxygen so low that few animals can live in the water, one of three inter-sex (hermaphroditic) smallmouth bass populations in the country, a bass population with insufficient young to keep the species alive, the remaining bass covered in tumors and pfiesteria lesions, invasive rusty crayfish pushing out the tastier native crayfish, among many other factors. Once-abundant mayfly hatches are now non-existent.
Fishermen used to travel to Harrisburg from around the country to fish for smallmouth bass; not any more.
This past September a friend and I hunted geese out in the river, wading in our shorts. We saw none of the usual turtles, water snakes, birds, or fish that once teemed there, and the water smelled…odd. One day later, a small scratch on my leg had became infected with MRSA, and I spent four days hooked up to increasingly stronger antibiotics at Osteopathic Hospital.
In November, we canoed out to islands and hunted ducks flying south. Except that over the past ten years there are fewer and fewer ducks now flying south along the Susquehanna River. We speculate that there is nothing in it for them to feed upon, and migrating ducks must have turned their attention to more sustaining routes.
The river almost seems….dead.
Feeding the waterways are Pennsylvania’s forests, the envy of forest products producers around the world. Our state’s award-winning public lands and their surrounding mature private forestlands sustainably and renewably produce a greater volume of the widest variety of valuable hardwoods than any other state in America.
Our forest economy isn’t just about timber production, however, as hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation themselves represent large economic sectors. Our robust black bear and wild turkey populations draw hunters from around the world, but these popular species depend almost entirely on acorns from oak trees; without acorns, they would hardly exist.
The oak forests at the core of our world-famous hunting and valuable timber were once considered under the gun from overabundant deer herds, but with that problem now resolved they face an adversary that could turn them into the 21st century version of the American chestnut – sudden oak death disease.
Recall that the American chestnut, like the now-extinct passenger pigeon, once carpeted the entire east coast with unimaginably abundant white flowers and nutritious nuts that fed wildlife and humans alike, and its wood was a more available version of cypress – strong, rot-resistant, straight grained, easy to work. And then, like the once unimaginably vast swarms of passenger pigeons that had blackened the day sky until they also suddenly disappeared, the mighty chestnut was wiped out in a few short years, 100 years ago, by an imported disease.
Our oaks, ash trees, and walnut trees seem to be facing a similar doomsday right now.
Thousand cankers, emerald ash borer, lanternfly, ailanthus, mile-a-minute weed, Japanese honeysuckle, Asian bittersweet vine, and many, many other non-native invasive plants, bugs, and diseases now threaten our valuable native forests on a scale unimagined just a few years ago.
Ironically, the edges of our state and federal highways appear to be the greatest means of spreading these pests.
Today, Pennsylvania has a true balance of power between Democrat governor-elect Tom Wolf, and an overwhelmingly Republican legislature. There isn’t much policy that these two equal forces are going to agree on. But if there is one area that they should easily find common ground, it is land and water conservation.
Something is seriously wrong with the Susquehanna River, and something is about to be seriously wrong with our forests.
Whether a crushing regulatory response is the appropriate way to address these issues, or not, let’s hope that Pennsylvania state government can help fix these problems before they become catastrophes future history books write about.
Josh First is a businessman in Harrisburg
Pennsylvania Society: If not then, why now?
Pennsylvania Society: Great idea, wrong time, wrong place
Every year in early December, Pennsylvania’s glitterati and politicos hobnob in Manhattan.
This gathering is known as the Pennsylvania Society, and it’s mostly invitation – only, or you can pay big bucks to throw your own event.
As fun and as useful as this gathering is, and yes, a lot of political sounding boards get twanged, plucked, drummed, and thumped here, it is still at the wrong time and the wrong place.
If you’re a Pennsylvanian, by God, you’re out deer hunting the second week of December. You’ve got no time for more chit-chat in black tie and bow tie inside yet another building (and with due respect to those people who spend their time indoors: Get outside. It’ll do you and everyone else a world of good). You’d prefer to be stalking some steep mountain ledge or sitting overlooking an oak flat, waiting for a deer to jump up or stroll through.
And Manhattan at Christmas time is great. Our family goes every year. Our kids have been raised on Fifth Avenue window shopping and everything that goes with it. Heck, movies have been made about this, it’s so special. It’s a fantastic time for anyone, and if the gathering was fit in to that experience, it’d make sense.
But that best time is at Christmas time. The week before and the week after. Not weeks before. So the Pennsylvania Society is missing the boat there, too, with timing that just doesn’t make sense.
But more to the point, aren’t Philadelphia and Pittsburgh pretty great cities, too? Why can’t we keep the Pennsylvania Society in Pennsylvania? Rotate it around the state, or at least switch between east and west.
I know the folks who really made the Pennsylvania Society take off, and I’m not picking on them. They’re good people, with great ideas. This is just a question of timing, if not venue. And if the venue stays, then change the timing, so our politicians conduct their off-line business in the atmosphere of holiday cheer, giving, forgiveness, and merriment.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Tests of America’s endurance; we shall overcome
Barack Hussein Obama declared a law singlehandedly last night.
Not that it’s legal or constitutional for any president to impose so much change on American citizens by himself.
American checks and balances of power between the three branches of government require debate and approvals across the board to achieve law or the effects of law.
But we have just witnessed our first rogue, imperial president, whose disgust with everything about America means he has no time or respect for its laws, history, and Constitution.
Obama’s unilateral “amnesty” for millions of illegal aliens is a test of our nation’s endurance, just as we have experienced in the past. Say, the Civil War…….
We have overcome all of those tests and we shall overcome this test, too.
America’s dalliance with this false messiah Obama has resulted in an unprecedented assault on individual rights. Using the IRS and other federal agencies to aggressively “investigate” opponents of the Obama Administration has opened the flood gates among the citizens. Sure, a bunch of innocent citizens will go to jail to satisfy this one man’s hunger for power, but the citizenry increasingly takes notice.
Yes, Obama is making an effort to take over the internet, and thereby suppress citizen dissent in that space. He may very well try another unilateral “executive action” that assumes the bureaucracy will go along with him.
“Tyrants beware!” was a common motto among our founding citizenry. That tyrant, King George, also was arrogant and also believed that the iron fist of armed government coercion would put down the rebellion.
This tyrant, Obama, is well down that old path. What disturbs me is that so many Americans would rather see our democracy fail, or be sorely tested, than to be honest about Obama’s failure. What does that say about our neighbors and friends, upon whom we rely for so much and yet who would see the nation descend into chaos and rebellion.
Answers are tough to come by on this stuff. The questions alone are terrifying.