Posts Tagged → democrat
Perry County gets an eyeful of cr@p from anti-gun schemers
In what must be a warm-up for the 2016 state senate race in Perry County (in which I hope to be the Republican nominee), gun control schemers have drummed up a ridiculous problem. The Perry County Auditors are now suing Sheriff Nace for personal gun owner records, to which they have no legal access nor any expectation of access.
It is a political stunt. It is an effort to undermine gun owner rights and put gun owners on the defensive, in order to make easier the state senator’s re-election there.
Given that the newly incumbent and very liberal state senator there is far in the minority in Perry County, where even the Democrats are fiercely pro-Second Amendment, this is undoubtedly a politically fostered, carefully coordinated effort between the senator’s political party and anti-gun activists.
Corbett’s Ten Percent challenge
Looking at the statewide vote results (votes Corbett received compared to votes Jim Cawley received) and at counties where Bob Guzzardi appeared on the ballot opposite governor Tom Corbett, it appears there’s about ten percent of Republican voters who are seriously disaffected with Corbett.
These are the voters who could not bring themselves to vote for Corbett, even while voting for other Republicans, or who actively wrote in alternative names. York County has a surprisingly high number of about 25%.
Are these the angry Penn Staters, whose murky ghost has been hovering in Corbett’s background since the fictional Louis Freeh report sank the beloved institution known as Joe Paterno, and took down his creation (PSU), too? Corbett seemed to join in the blaming of Paterno for the predations of Jerry Sandusky, or at least his actions and statements left many Penn Staters wondering if he did.
Or are these voters associated with some of Corbett’s better known “Oopsy” moments, like personally standing at a lectern, reading glasses and pencil in hand, roll-call strong arming the Republican State Committee into reluctantly endorsing Steve Welch for US Senate. Republican voters later overwhelmingly rejected the very urban, effete Welch, and embraced muddy boots, down to earth coal miner Tom Smith.
Maybe these are voters affiliated with people who were once close to Corbett, but who did not see ‘promises kept’ at the personal level.
It’s impossible now to know exactly who these voters are, and whether or not they can be brought back into the Republican fold in time for November’s general election. Plenty of polls, voter surveys, and canvassing are going to occur in the coming weeks, in search of the necessary mix of voters to get Corbett into his second term.
One thing is for sure: In Democrat-heavy Pennsylvania, Corbett wins only with a fully unified Republican party behind him. Right now, he’s got real work to do to achieve that.
Voter Access, Public Funding of Private Elections…
I so totally agree with the gist of this opinion piece by our local newspaper of record, the Patriot News:
By Matt Zencey, May 15, 2014
Tuesday is Primary Election Day, and every year when it rolls around, I’m reminded of this unpleasant fact: Tax-paying Pennsylvanians who don’t belong to a political party are forced to help pay for an election in which they are not allowed vote.
You can’t vote for candidates Tuesday unless you are a registered member of a political party that has candidates on the ballot.
I wrote a column last year complaining about this injustice that is inflicted on politically independent Pennsylvanians. It’s a system that isn’t going to change anytime soon, because the power-brokers who make the rules are the same people who benefit from taxpayer subsidies of their party’s candidate selection process.
In last year’s column, I wondered whether this arrangement violates Pennsylvania constitution’s requirement of “free and equal” elections. What’s “equal” about an election, funded by tax dollars, where a duly registered voter has no say in which candidate wins?
Now it’s true, as I wrote back then, that the U.S. Supreme Court clearly says political parties have a First Amendment right to determine who may vote in “their” political primaries.
The question is whether political parties [THAT ARE PRIVATE ENTITIES] have a First Amendment right to force you [THE PUBLIC] to pay for their candidate selection process.
I don’t think so.
If you are going to participate in a primary election that you help pay for, you are forced to affiliate with a political party. That violates your First Amendment rights.
Pennsylvania’s closed primary election delivers a tax-subsidized government benefit to two preferred political organizations – the Democratic and Republican parties.
All of us are paying so they can pick their candidate who will enjoy a huge government privilege – one of two guaranteed spots on the general election ballot. (Pennsylvania law also makes it extraordinarily difficult for a third-party to get its candidates on the ballot.)
It doesn’t have to be this way.
California recently adopted a much fairer primary election system by voter initiative.
All candidates of all parties appear on a ballot available to all registered voters within the relevant district. The top two vote getters move on to the general election in the fall. The winners could be two Republicans, or two Democrats, one of each party. A so-called minor party candidate might even win a spot on the fall ballot.
This way, taxpayers are not forced to subsidize a process that’s stacked in favor of two political parties. And it’s clearly constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly saidthat a non-partisan primary that is open to all voters and allocates spots on the general election ballot falls squarely within the First Amendment.
But good luck getting such a system here in Pennsylvania. Unlike in California, the poo-bahs who hold political power in Pennsylvania have denied voters the power to pass their own laws by statewide initiative.
On this one, we have to try to persuade legislators and the governor to do the right thing and reform a system that has put them in power and keeps them there.
I’m not holding my breath.
Matt Zencey is Deputy Opinion Editor of Pennlive and The Patriot-News. Email mzencey@pennlive.com and on Twitter @MattZencey.
http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/05/is_pennsylvania_closed_primary.html
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.
Historic win in York, Pa
Tonight, candidate Scott Wagner beat all the odds and won a contrived special election by write-in. The Pa-28th state senate district is in his hands.
As I’ve experienced myself, when your own party decides you’ve served enough of a purpose, or not enough, the people you were loyal to can try to dump you overboard. Such happened to Scott.
But tonight, Scott bested both the Democrats and the Republican establishment. It’s a historic win by any standard, especially by write-in. Congratulations to Scott Wagner and to his campaign manager Ryan Shafik.
Freedom of opportunity reigns.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kane actually drops investigation against her political buddies
An overwhelming number and percentage of Pennsylvanians voted for a new PA Attorney General in 2012, to the point where a record spread was achieved.
Democrat Kane beat Republican Freed by 15%, an unheard of, unimaginable number.
The primary reason that so many Republican voters voted for Kane was that she was seen as clean, fresh, a new antidote to the deeply insider Freed and the same-old-gang of Good Ol’ Boy Republicans who had controlled that office since its creation in the early 1980s. The Penn State – Sandusky scandal really hurt the Republicans in so many ways, and Kane was seen as the snake oil potion that would solve all of the problems, aches, worries, unfairness, baldness, and gout that was then plaguing Pennsylvania and Penn State.
Enter Kane the politician. Wow. If you had any questions about her political abilities and inclinations, wonder no more. She has proven herself to be as adaptable as a chameleon, and as trusty as a rake left tines-up in the grass.
Last Friday (never a strong day for media, so always a strong day for government news releases seeking minimal coverage of their actions), Kane officially terminated a three-year-long investigation of a bunch of obviously corrupt elected officials in Philadelphia. Caught on tape and camera taking bribes, these officials set the gold standard for how to make a great city fall to pieces.
But only days after she announced an indictment against a black state senator from the Philly area, Kane determined that there are “too many African Americans” involved in this sting, and that it is therefore racially biased. No kidding. Obviously, any future mob take-downs will be thrown out because too many white guys are involved, right? This is both an embarrassing example of the bad government caused by Political Corrrectness, and an embarrassing example of the corruption of AG Kane.
Look, lady, either someone behaves legally, or not. Either someone breaks the law, or not. Skin color has zero to do with it. And if skin color becomes the new standard for applying laws, then the country is going down the tubes, quick, because there’s a lot more Caucasian people overall, and more crime committed by Caucasians, than anyone else. Allowing all that crime to move forward because we want to apply some vague, bizarre notion of “fairness” will allow crime to take over. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Kane has proven herself to be just as political, just as capable of bad decisions as anyone else could have been in the AG seat. That honeymoon was short.
Huffington Post: No democracy for you!
A Huffington Post headline reads “Congress Inaction Prompts Obama to Act Alone.”
American civics class 101 teaches citizens that the executive branch cannot act alone, not really. If Congress is inactive, the president can only enforce laws that are on the books. He cannot create new laws. That would be dictatorial.
Ah-hah. There’s the point. Obama fans LOVE his dictatorship. Unashamedly.
Just remind us of that love when we have a new president from the other party, surrounded by angry citizens demanding retroactive corrections to the Obama years. You’ll learn to love it then, friends.
and then there is that political aftermath…
Well, ya win some and ya lose some, right?
My hope is that Harrisburg mayor-elect Eric Papenfuse will deliver on his promises, although the gun control stuff is a waste of time. I am no fan of Harrisburg losing its assets and still not being out of debt. My opinion is that Harrisburg’s investors made a bad investment, they were sold a bill of goods by the bondsmen, and the accountability for rectifying that goes back to the guys who issued the bad bonds. Taxpayers should not be on the hook for the municipal debt debacle. This race was marked by the impact of tons of cash, artificial legal shenanigans, and the purposeful delay of justice so that the one candidate standing in Eric’s way could not get his footing, until just weeks before Election Day.
That’s not good for democracy.
In Susquehanna Township, one again hopes that outcomes will not be as bad as they appear to be. Voters who vote against their interests intrigue me. The township school district appears headed toward even worse infighting and more losses of good staff. Property values correlate with public schools, so….. Good luck!
And finally, congratulations to judge-elect Bill Tully, a highly qualified, hard working, earnest man who will be an outstanding judge for all citizens of Dauphin County.
Vic Stabile won his seat on the PA Superior Court, congratulations!
And I am so pleased that the election season is now behind us, so I can get out and do some more hunting and fishing.
–Josh
Nevin Mindlin Endorses Dan Miller for Mayor of Harrisburg
Yesterday, one-time Independent candidate for Harrisburg City mayor, Nevin Mindlin, endorsed one-time Democratic candidate Dan Miller.
Miller is now running as the Republican-endorsed candidate, because he collected over 300 Republican signatures for that position on the ballot. Just in case.
Miller is a strong threat to the Papenfuse campaign that was literally measuring the draperies and assigning executive positions a day after winning the four-way Democratic primary, assuming they had de facto won the general election.
This race is a rare toss-up. What role the elected mayor has vis-a-vis the state-appointed Harrisburg Receiver (Gen. Lynch) is unclear, but at least it is a bully pulpit. The mayor can call for criminal investigations into the Harrisburg Debt Debacle, or he can not do so. Dan is likely to call for investigations, Papenfuse is disinclined.
With just weeks to go until Election Day, it is hard to know how this will end. One thing for sure I do know, and that is how politics makes for strange bedfellows….
Was today’s MLK event in DC a sham and partisan pep rally?
How odd that none of the following black leaders were invited or present to speak at today’s MLK event on the DC Mall: Clarence Thomas (US Supreme Court), Condoleeza Rice (US NSA), Dr. Ben Carson, Professor Thomas Sowell, Congressman Allen West, Alan Keyes, or sitting US Senator Tim Scott, the only black US Senator…among many other candidates who might have had something to say about MLK and civil rights.
Partisan activist Donna Brazile coordinated the event, but exclaimed surprise that no Republicans spoke much less attended.
Wonder if today’s event was really just a partisan pep rally?
On the other hand, THIS was a genuine human rights rally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEqnnklfYs