Posts Tagged → gene yaw
The GOP is the moderate wing of the Democrat Party
If there is one clear message resulting from all of the activity and inactivity surrounding the stolen 2020 election, it is that the Republican Party, on the whole, is filled with individual people who see themselves more as the moderate wing of the Democrat Party than as a separate political party that either exists to advance a core set of values, or, in the alternative, to at least seriously oppose the Democrat Party’s communist takeover of America.
Recall that the GOP was established as the abolitionist party to fight Democrat Party slavery. That is some pretty tough stuff, because America ended up fighting a bloody civil war over the issue. But somewhere after that, the GOP stopped standing for anything except early golf games, short hair, crisp blue blazers, and money…lots and lots of money. To the point where the GOP culture is so weak that few of its members will even stand and fight the other political party over their theft of the national election in 2020, the theft of the presidency, the theft of America.
In essence, the Grand Ol’ Party Republican Party is really just the moderate wing of the Democrat Party. The two political parties are two sides of the same coin, there really is that little difference between them. The GOP sees itself as existing to mouth a few different-sounding ideas than the other guys, and then leave their offices for the fundraisers and cocktail parties that make holding elected office or their staffer positions worthwhile.
Despite having deep GOP establishment roots, for many years now, my own involvement in Pennsylvania Republican Party politics has been as the self-imposed outsider. Like some other activists still working hard today for change that benefits We, The People, by late 2008 I was disgusted with the GOP’s shallow fawning and or weak cowering before the great impostor, Barack Hussein Obama. In 2009 into 2010 I ran in a Republican congressional primary to challenge then-congressman Tim Holden. At that point, the grass roots reaction to what has become known as the DC Swamp was informally called the Tea Party. As a so-called Tea Party candidate, at our many debates and public meetings I honed my own message: “We grass roots Republican voters want a bar-room brawl with the Democrats, while the GOP establishment wants at most a gentlemanly duel with them and chummy drinks together afterwards. Dear GOP, lead, follow, or get out of our way.”
Last month I had the great enjoyment to personally participate in the public political dismemberment of one of Pennsylvania’s great RINOs, State Senator Gene Yaw. Yaw represents everything that is wrong with the GOP. At a public meeting in Montoursville attended by a hundred impassioned voters, Yaw demonstrated his absolute lack of care for the citizenry, his contempt for his voters, his disgust with patriots and constitutionalists, and his serious resistance to actually rolling up his sleeves and doing the work needed to save America from pending doom. Full of weak excuses and a laughable reliance on “We held fourteen hearings,” Yaw was the equivalent of a defiant and lazy teenage boy who just won’t get his damned family chores done.
After an hour of increasing catcalls, hisses, boos, jeers, and earnest questions from the audience, newly re-elected Senator Yaw stood up, collected his things, and without a word stalked out of the meeting with his toadies in tow behind him. Gene Yaw is the state of the Pennsylvania GOP, which is the state of the nationwide GOP – weak, shallow, zero fight for his constituents, zero push-back against openly communist activists in his Lycoming County district, unremarkable, uncharismatic, boring, low-T, egocentric, and unrepentantly an enabler of Democrat Party treason and insurrection.
Yaw is, in effect, a perfectly representative member of the moderate wing of the Democrat Party.
So, here we are, two more political campaigns that I ran in and eleven or twelve years later after the Tea Party revolution of 2008 – 2009, which is an eternity in politics, and the GOP STILL will not lead, follow, or get out of the way of the grass roots American voters. It is difficult to tell which political party is more resistant to a transparent 2020 election, the Democrats or the Republicans. Some call them the uniparty, and why not; the two political parties are obviously joined deeply together in common interests that clearly exclude the best interests of the American people.
But it is probably more accurate to call the GOP what it behaves like, which is the moderate wing of the Democrat Party. No fight, no spirit, no guts, no passion, no opposition, just some feel-good mouthing of platitudes and then go home early. Let the Democrats do whatever they want, what me worry (Alfred E. Newman’s famous line from Mad Magazine).
What kind of patriotic pro-America voter wants this kind of bad performance from their chosen political party and its elected members?
Today’s GOP Republican Party mascot – Alfred E. Newman, late of Mad Magazine. “What me worry?”
SB 619 captures tug of war between big government and the citizenry
SB 619 is PA state senator Gene Yaw’s fix to a problem that should not even exist. And yet, this bill is being greeted by so-called environmental advocates as some sort of “attack” on environmental quality and environmental protection.
Senate Bill 619 is about one simple thing: Making Pennsylvania state government regulators spell out exactly what is, and what is not, an environmental spill that is so bad that it contaminates waterways and is a violation of our state “clean streams” law.
You would think that in late 2019, 243 years after the founding of America, all state governments would be run by responsible adults who are committed to the wellbeing of their fellow citizens first and foremost. A commitment like that would first and foremost be to the rule of law and the due process rights that undergird and frame everything that is American representative government. Simply put, the government cannot willy nilly decide for itself, based on ambiguous, general, opaque, undefined, arbitrary standards, what is an environmental contamination, and what is not an environmental contamination.
In representative government, We, The People are entitled to know our boundaries, where the borders are to our behavior, and where the government gets to step in and correct us. This understanding keeps us from making decisions in good faith that end up getting us entangled with government enforcers who hit us with fines and penalties for making an incorrect decision.
Presently, and unbelievably, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has no clearly defined standards for what qualifies as a reportable spill and contamination into a waterway. PA DEP’s entire standard is, get this, for real: “We will know it when we see it.”
Folks, I am not exaggerating, I am not making this up. This is how much infinite latitude the state government has now and wants to maintain. This means that literally every time something – a cup of coffee, a can of paint, a bucket of mine sludge, or any miniscule part thereof – falls from its original container into the environment, and into or next to a waterway, it must be reported to PA DEP. And PA DEP reserves the right to fine whoever is responsible, irrespective of whether or not that spill involved anything dangerous, toxic, or at such a small dilution that it is de minimus in its effect.
In practice, this means that PA DEP both chases its tail going after ridiculously unimportant “spills” that pose no threat to anything, which underserves the citizenry who underwrite PA DEP’s budget, and that the agency also holds a huge arbitrary hammer over the head of every single citizen, contractor, and industrial or commercial operator in or passing through the Commonwealth. While being arbitrary is bad enough, reports from the field – you know, the little people who actually work outside getting stuff done for the rest of us consumers – is that plenty of PA DEP staff use that arbitrary standard in capricious ways. These PA DEP staff are, simply put, empowered to be vindictive and petty little tyrants whenever they want to be.
To their shame, the opponents of SB 619 are acting as if the bill is some sort of assault on environmental quality, when it is not, not even close. The PA Fish & Boat Commission is actually on record opposing SB 619 because it allows for “interpretation” in the law. This is embarrassingly bad government to say things like this. Needless to say, the private sector opponents of SB 619 say even worse and less accurate things than the PFBC has written.
Can you imagine something so horrid as there being two sides to a story, some “interpretation” about what happened, and not having just one omnipotent government agency position, take it or take it, because you can’t leave it, because the government agency has 100% of the say in what happened, and you can’t figure it out until some government employee tells you? Is it really so terrible to rein in our government agencies and require them to live by defined standards like the rest of us have to live? Like our Federal and State Constitutions require? Like a whole bunch of other states already have?
SB 619 simply asks PA DEP to establish criteria and standards so that the citizenry and the industries they work in can know when they are following the law, and when they are not. It asks government employees to live by the rules everyone else must live by. It asks government to not engage in arbitrary and capricious behavior, which undermines everything our Republic and our Commonwealth are about. You know, that liberty and freedom stuff that seems so insignificant to the self-appointed guardians of environmental quality. One thing is clear: My fellow environmental professionals may care about the environment, but they do not care about democracy or good government.
This bill is not about environmental quality, it is about democracy, the role of government, good government, government transparency and accountability, and limits on government power. It represents the tug of war going on nationwide between people who want unfettered big government power, and those of us who want government to live within the Constitutional boundaries everyone else lives in.
SB 619 needs to be implemented now.
(c) 2006 Bonnie Jacobs