Posts Tagged → Pennsylvania
Today’s Public Service Announcement: Headlights
Pennsylvania law and common sense require headlights to be ON when the car’s windshield wipers are working. This is not so the driver of the car in question can see better, but rather so other drivers can see the car more easily. Seeing the car more easily means safer driving conditions, fewer accidents.
While we are on the subject of highway safety, another reminder is in order: Left lanes are for passing, not cruising.
Pennsylvania law (gees, what’s with all these laws?! Other states have the same law, too) requires motorists to get out of the Left Lane (AKA Passing Lane) as soon as possible, as soon as they have passed the vehicle(s) in the right lane. Few acts create road rage faster than a driver determined to camp out in the Passing Lane, thereby keeping faster traffic bottled up behind them. Drivers do not play the role of traffic cop; it is not the role of drivers to slow down other drivers they think are driving too fast. That just leads to conflict.
Participated in 2nd Amendment Rally; where was NRA?
Just in from the field.
PA Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, Kim Stolfer of Firearm Owners Against Crime, and Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America organized and led a wonderful pro-freedom rally just now at the Pennsylvania Capitol steps in Harrisburg. Dozens of state and local elected officials, from both parties, Democrat and Republican, stood in the rain to show their appreciation and support. State Senator Tim Solobay (D), an ass-kicking big guy and the senate’s official “Walking Refrigerator,” proudly wore his Western PA gun rights hat. State Senator Scott Hutchinson (R), stood tall in the rain and cheered on the speakers.
Constitutional rights should not be a partisan issue. Sadly, too many Democrats make gun ownership an issue, when it has zero to do with crime control.
Missing from action was the NRA. No official presence, no speaking role, no unofficial presence. What is going on here with my favorite organization? Organizational snafu? Too much pride?
Citizen, activist, and elected official speakers alike championed America’s unique freedoms, quoting often from their own life experiences and from America’s founding fathers. Each speaker pointed out the hypocrisy of anti-freedom gun-grabbers, who are more comfortable in a feudal hierarchy than in the free Republic we have fought so hard to keep from tyranny.
Standing at the top of the steps, looking out over the sea of rain-soaked citizens, with their American flags, Don’t Tread on Me banners and similar hand-held signs, I was choked up with emotion. As every past year, I feel honored and fired up to have participated in this year’s annual PA Second Amendment Rally.
April 29th 2nd Amendment rally at PA Capitol steps
April 29th Second Amendment rally at PA State capitol front steps, 10:00 AM, rain or shine. PA Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, Kim Stolfer of FOAC, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, and many other speakers will be there. PRIZE is a Smith & Wesson Shield in 9mm or .40 S&W, courtesy of S&W and Ace Sporting Goods. All participants will be given a free ticket to win. See you there! — Josh
Thank You to PA Leadership Conference
A big Thank You to the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference organizers, its speakers and moderators, and the hundreds of attendees who are taking time out of their days, livelihoods, and family commitments to gather together and work on rebuilding American and Pennsylvanian liberties.
I got a lot out of it today. Big Thank You to PA state senator Mike Folmer, whose passionate advocacy for individual liberties inspires so many other citizens to work twice as hard. Even those who disagree with the traditionalist movement respect the commitment we have to protecting EVERYONE’S rights, the opposite of the Left, which is constantly undermining civil liberties.
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.
Take a kid fishing
Tomorrow marks the beginning of trout season in Pennsylvania. It’s a big deal. Half the population is associated with it, either fishing, eating the fish, or cheering on the mighty hunters who bring home the bacon.
Our next generation needs a helping hand. Too many gadgets, electronics, virtual nothingness and digital pretend friends are separating kids from the beautiful reality surrounding them. They might grow up to think that water comes from the tap, heat from the wall thingy, and food from the grocery store. Fishing teaches crucial lessons about being a real human being, not the least of which is self reliance, a trait once quintessentially American and now considered quaint.
Fishing also teaches the importance of conserving natural resources for the future kids.
So take a kid fishing. You’ll be doing everyone a big favor, now and later.
Is our intraparty war “Mars vs. Earth”?
Scott Wagner’s crushing defeat of PA State Rep. Ron Miller (a very nice man, for those who do not know him) last week is just one more political race in a string of races over the past few years that have seen the Republican grass roots increasingly stand up to or defeat Republican establishment insiders armed with faux endorsements and tons of party cash (that should be used to defeat liberalism, not defeat conservative Republican candidates).
Here is an article from this week, in which Josh First is quoted about this sad phenomenon:
(Although I am conservative, I don’t know how I became a “hardline conservative,” but in the context of the grass roots vs. the GOP establishment, I’ll take it, as I am passionate about politics being an open, accountable, and transparent process)
This present situation (hopefully to be ended soon) reminds me of this scene from the movie Mars Attacks!, where Jack Nicholson is the grass roots activist and the Martians are the GOP establishment insiders…
Relishing the win over GOP machine politics
Four years ago, I ran in the US Congressional Republican primary for the Congressional seat held by then congressman Tim Holden. It was a four-way race, between me, state senator Dave Argall, Frank Ryan, and Baptist Pastor Bob Griffiths. From the get-go, different Republican leaders tried to get me to bow out. Dave himself met with me at GOP headquarters and asked me to step out (Ah, the irony…I had asked him to chair my campaign). Lots of heartache along the campaign trail as GOP insiders tried again and again to give Dave an artificial boost, an unfair advantage, and unequal opportunity. Lebanon County GOP tried to endorse him, and the committee disintegrated as a result of the infighting that ensued. Schuylkill County GOP did endorse him, and immediately afterwards lost its chairman and underwent radical changes.
It was a great race, we did very well (26% overall in a four-way race, with about $20,000 spent, and the highlight being the 51% we got in rural Perry County, which has my kind of people), and we got kudos all around for the excellent pick-up campaign we ran. Dave went on to win that primary by a few hundred votes, and then he got crushed by Tim Holden. All of the smart GOP consultants and insiders who told me that Dave would win, and that I should get out, well, they never called me to acknowledge they were wrong. Apparently losing races is OK so long as it is a GOP insider, but the consultancy insider class is terribly afraid of grass roots candidates losing.
In 2012, I ran in the GOP primary for the PA 15th state senate district, but only after I had cleared a bunch of artificial hurdles the GOP set up to keep me out of that race. First, the new district was not released until very late in 2011, and only then after former state senator Jeff Piccola had retired one week into the one-year residency requirement period (imagine that!), so that I could not get an apartment over the new district line just a mile from my house and thereby qualify as a resident of the district.
In January 2012, the PA state supreme court threw out the GOP redistricting plan, calling it unconstitutional and deeply flawed, and I found myself back in the old district. But even then, we were several days into the ballot petition process, with no volunteers, no committee, no paperwork, no money, up against two establishment candidates, one of whom was hand picked by the party, John McNally, our Dauphin County GOP chairman.
We got 850 signatures, got on the ballot, and started campaigning, grass roots style. Within weeks, the GOP-controlled PA senate had developed a new redistricting map and presented it to the court. Not surprisingly, I was once again outside the senate district. Making things worse, the GOP establishment staff began telling voters that I might win, but then be outside the district, and therefore unable to serve the people who had voted for me. Thankfully, the PA supreme court rejected the map as just as flawed as the first one, and the GOP had to live with my candidacy, which proved to be incredibly popular.
In other words, I know exactly what senator-elect Scott Wagner went through until this week.
What was refreshing to me as I worked Wagner’s district’s largest poll (Manchester 5 & 7) was the voter sentiment that came pouring out as they poured in to the polling place to write in Wagner’s name on the ballot. Voters were vociferously rejecting the contrived hurdles that the GOP had arranged to stop Wagner, they rejected the artificial support the GOP had thrown behind milquetoast career politician Ron Miller, and they strongly opposed the $700,000 in negative ads run against Wagner. That was $700,000 that the GOP could have spent, should have spent, to beat liberalism.
I do intend to run for the 15th state senate district again in two years. And I guess I will be facing a GOP hand-picked cookie cutter empty suit of a candidate, someone the party expects to be a rubber stamp, who will not pursue right-to-work legislation. And folks, I intend to win this one. Hope to see you there with me at the barricades.
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.