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Posts Tagged → functionary

Why Court Candidate Josh Prince Must Win

Josh Prince is a candidate for Commonwealth Court here in Pennsylvania, and his day of reckoning is coming up fast: May 16th is Primary Day, where registered Republicans vote for Republican Party candidates and registered Democrats vote for Democrat Party candidates. This form of selecting partisan candidates to then square off against each other in the Fall general election may be imperfect, but it is far superior to ranked voting. And Spring time primary elections are actually as important as Fall general elections.

Josh Prince has to win this election because, like much of America, Pennsylvania is turning into a lawless single-party uniparty state where political party does not matter, nor does the rule of law. We citizens need strong people of high character to resist this evil tide. Josh Prince’s legal mind and his ironclad principles are needed now more than they have been since the 1850s, and I hope you will vote for him. I have known Josh Prince for many years, and I respect him very highly. I am excited to be able to vote for him.

Both the Republican Party establishment and the Democrat Party establishment have much more in common with each other than they do with their respective voting bases, although it is crucial to point out that the Democrat Party is also completely responsive to and loyal to its voters, while the PAGOP doesn’t care much about its voters. The Pennsylvania Republican Party only cares about its voters a little bit, and briefly, when it needs them in the Fall election. And even then it is a dismissive kind of caring; they take Republican voters for granted…

…because the PAGOP business model and culture is to be perfectly happy with minority status, so long as the pre-selected and party boss-anointed Republican Party insiders are in the existing official slots and holding power, protecting their small inner circle’s narrow interests. As soon as someone from “the outside” (like Josh Prince) tries to take up one of those slots, the entire PAGOP goes into action, defending their castle from the marauding barbarian.

Prince is running against Megan Martin, who was endorsed by the PAGOP (this is hardly a vote of confidence for the average citizen!), and who has never stepped foot in a courtroom – not a trial court nor an appellate court. Rather, lawyer Megan Martin has spent around 30 years in the government as a functionary, a bureaucrat, a politician’s lawyer. Nothing necessarily wrong with this history, but is this what you want sitting in judgment of you?

Megan Martin has a legally unimpressive resume that she now wants to bring to the Commonwealth Court, where we citizens can rest assured she will look to what Republican Party bosses want most. As opposed to attorney Josh Prince, who has quintessential, unbending, uncorruptible, traditional American principles, as well as an incredible and fearless track record in court, including representing me and Firearms Owners Against Crime against brazenly illegal and unconstitutional anti-gun ordinances here in Harrisburg.

Josh Prince is not the political establishment’s pick because he will only uphold the law as it is written, and he will only uphold the US and PA constitutions as they were originally intended. Josh is not and will not be a judicial activist who uses the court as a private legislature. And of course, that’s not what the PAGOP wants…they want people like Megan Martin, who will be all bendy and malleable like Gumby and do the bidding of the party bosses, as they quietly horse trade for private financial benefit with America’s sworn enemies.

You and I need a judge like Josh Prince on the Commonwealth Court. You and I cannot afford another spineless jellyfish PAGOP RINO insider political hack who has been hand-picked and endorsed by political bosses.

Please vote for Josh Prince for Commonwealth Court on May 16th, and please pass this around, so that other loyal, patriotic, America-loving Pennsylvania voters know that they have a great candidate they can be happy voting for.

 

PA Office of Open Records – the battle for control

Erik Arneson is never going to win awards for public relations savvy, but he does deserve to hold on to the job of director of the Office of Open Records he was appointed to by outgoing governor Tom Corbett back in December, 2014.

Incoming governor Tom Wolf immediately “fired” Arneson and sought to put someone else in his role.

Arneson and the PA senate Republicans sued Wolf, claiming that the job holds a six-year term and that’s it.  It is not a political appointment to serve at the whim of whichever governor is in office at the time.  To do so would place the office squarely in the middle of politics it is supposed to be above.

Showing up to his January lawsuit press event in a Green Bay Packers-marked ski cap and satin jacket, Arneson alienated every Steelers and Eagles fan around, not to mention us PSU Nittany Lions fanatics.  Plus, he did not look real professional, either, dressed up like he was going to a November football game, and not into a high stakes legal battle.

Maybe his rumpled look and out-of-synch team clothing choice represent a kind of idiot-savant mentality, which I would find refreshing.  You know, a guy who is so focused on doing his job so utterly professionally that he walks around with his zipper open, his hair touseled, his head involved in important things, not mundanities.

More likely is that Arneson has spent so long in the ultra-insulated world of the professional party functionary system (Republicans and Democrats alike have this alternate dimension), that he is unaware that his appearance in public matters to the public.   He may not even care.  Accountability in that party functionary world is non-existent, and professionalism is not always what taxpayers would or should expect from the people they pay.

But the fact is that Arneson was duly appointed to a six-year term, which itself strongly indicates an independent position above the whims of politics, such as incoming new governors wishing to make government in their image.

Nearly all of Pennsylvania’s commissions and boards involve six or even eight year terms; some are four years, but they tend to be the ones where the governor alone makes the selection.  At least that is my sense of things, having been involved in the selection process for the PA Game Commission and the PA Fish & Boat Commission.  Both of those commissions had eight-year terms until last year, when they were changed to six years, which is still sufficient time for a board member to ride out political changes that might corrupt their otherwise professional and detached judgment.

For those people complaining about Arneson’s politically partisan credentials, ahem, we did not hear your voice when the first occupant of the office was selected, Terri Mutchler.

Terri Mutchler is a very nice person whom I knew a bit when we were students at Penn State, way back in the 1980s.  She was professional and diligent, way back then, and again during her tenure as the first director of the Office of Open Records.  And in that new role she feuded just enough with then-Governor Rendell to lend credibility to her claim of being above partisanship.

But recently Mutchler has come forward and admitted that she was a tool, literally, for partisan politics in past jobs, even in one of her most sensitive jobs as a senior reporter and news editor.  [those of us already long ago jaded by the mainstream media are unsurprised by her admission; we just wish current political activists posing as news reporters at NBC CBS ABC NPR NYT etc. would be as honest]

In other words, Mutchler was a nakedly partisan Democrat, perhaps like Arneson would be a partisan Republican.

But if you don’t like Arneson for this reason now, where were you for the same reason back then, when Mutchler was appointed?  Critics of Arneson cannot have it both ways – happy to have Mutchler’s partisan role back then, but opposed to Arneson’s presumed partisan role now.  That is inconsistent, and therefore undeserving of respect.

Inconsistency is the hobgoblin of good government,and if there are two words that define what Americans expect from their government, it is good government: Professional, a-political, non-partisan.

So, Arneson must stay on, despite his frumpy appearance, his poor taste in football teams, his deafness to Lion Country’s football preferences, and despite the nakedly partisan calls for him to step aside for a Wolf Administration selection.

But I will say this: His beard, that damned scraggly beard, it looks incredibly unprofessional and unkempt; if he keeps that for one more day, then he does deserve to be fired immediately.  And tie your shoes, Erik, dammit.