Posts Tagged → republican
Josh’s Veteran’s Day presentation in Catawissa
Hello. My name is Josh First.
I am a political activist and small business owner from Harrisburg, and a dad and husband.
What an honor it is for me to stand with you today, recognizing our past and present military Veterans.
Thank you for your service!
Thank you to Jared Valeski and the other volunteers for all of your hard work on the field gun dedication, and for the invitation to be here with you today.
If you go to Ironmen Arms here in town, Jared and Tom might sell you a French army gun from World War One. It is in great shape, because it has never been fired and was only dropped once.
Hey, don’t forget the French army knife, either.
We all know what a Swiss Army knife looks like, right?
Lots and lots of tools in it, lots of uses.
You can fix your car with a Swiss Army Knife.
Well, maybe you’ve seen the French Army knife.
It has just two tools: A corkscrew, and a little white flag that flips up.
Hey, we can pick on the French a little bit, because American military veterans have been saving their behinds time after time, right?
Lots of ultimate sacrifice by our boys for the French, and for the other Europeans, to be free.
American military veterans are beacons of freedom and hope, each and every one of you, and the world knows it.
Who does the world call when freedom is on the line?
You. Each one of you.
We are going to talk about one of your fellow military veterans today, a young man named Herb McCarty, who defended the French from being turned into Germans back in World War One.
The question is: Will America be able to produce in the future more patriots like you, more heroes like McCarty?
A big thank you to Steve Campbell of the Catawissa Valley Historical Study Group.
Steve did the historical research on Herb McCarty, a real local American hero, and one of America’s best known combat veterans.
History is critical to civilization’s success, because without understanding history, we are doomed to repeat past mistakes.
Civilization only progresses if people learn from their successes and mistakes.
McCarty was a farm boy born here in Catawissa, in 1893, and like many Americans who loved liberty, he dutifully, almost happily went off to fight the Kaiser’s army in Europe in World War One, which threatened the cradle of Western civilization, that being France and western Europe.
During 1918, the end of World War One and also the year when most Americans fought and died then, McCarty covered a lot of territory over there, notably at the Argonne Forest front, where over 26,000 American patriots died for freedom in a matter of just days.
The Western Front there has been memorialized in many films, because the fighting was especially fierce, the weather was especially cold, the conditions were awful, and many wonderful young men did not come home to their families.
McCarty’s heroism there included leading men in an up-the-middle charge into entrenched German positions, after their captain fell, right into the teeth of thick furious fire, deadly combat, and
–carrying his wounded comrades off the field of battle while under intense fire, and
–being shot multiple times from a strafing German airplane, and
–then blown up by an artillery round, and
–then being merely wounded badly by another shell, and
–then he was left for dead on the zero-degree ground for 46 hours, before he was carried off.
All of this just three days before Germany surrendered and the armistice was signed.
But McCarty’s will to live was powerful, and while recuperating in Europe and during the following four years back home, he underwent just shy of fifty, yes fifty surgeries, 16 of which were done without any anesthesia at all, none, but involved young Herb simply lying there and screaming into a clenched wooden dowel while the surgeons sliced away at his wounds to heal his body for hours at a time.
In just one surgery, four bullets were removed from various parts of his body. Two bullets eventually became attached to his jugular vein with scar tissue, and McCarty took them to his grave.
Shrapnel was constantly being found throughout his body, and removed.
Some wounds just would not heal, and required frequent invasive attention, and that is what eventually killed him, four years after the war ended.
This is why McCarty is known as “America’s Most Wounded Veteran.”
92 years ago, at McCarty’s July 1st, 1922 funeral here in Catawissa, the Reverend Doctor Ulysses Myers said “This army never had a better or a braver man…We give thanks to God for him and feel that now he has been promoted.”
Reverend Lau said “For McCarty to live was God, country, and justice to all, and it was for this cause that he finally gave his life.”
McCarty’s incredible strength of will to survive, his powerful character, his grace and ability to bear such tremendous pain, are representative of Central Pennsylvania’s good people, long ago and still today.
And McCarty was motivated by much bigger ideas than just himself. He wanted everyone to be free.
I was thinking, if Catawissa meant “pure waters” in either Shawnee or Delaware Indian back in the early 1700s, then to its native boys in 1918, it must have meant “pure spirit,” because that is what McCarty represented to the world, pure American spirit.
For his many acts of heroism on the field of battle McCarty was awarded many medals, most notably the American Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, and the Croix d’Guerre (that’s the War Cross in English) by the French government.
You know, it’s amazing the French didn’t make McCarty their prime minister!
Take note that Columbia County also produced other World War One combat heroes, two of whom were also Distinguished Service Cross recipients: a young Mister Monahan, and Michael Chyko, who fought in McCarty’s unit and who was one of his pall bearers.
For those who may be wondering, the Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest military award that can be given to a member of the United States Army, for extreme gallantry and risk of life in actual combat with an armed enemy force.
Only the Medal of Honor outranks it.
You know, if the first European settlers of the Catawissa Valley were English Quakers, opposed to warfare, then I am here today, as a former Quaker myself, to say that in these modern times we still need the Private Herb McCarty’s.
We need them in our own generation.
We need to absorb McCarty’s strong character, his gallantry, his willingness to take the ultimate risk, and apply it here, at home. His quintessential American spirit.
Without that attitude, America fails.
There are some who claim the American spirit is bad, that we are a bad nation. They claim that we are too war-like.
Of course, they say nothing of the people who started wars with us in the first place, so you have to wonder whose side they are really on, and what they are doing here in America…
But we are gathered here today to honor long-dead heroes like Herb McCarty because they still inspire us so many years later, and we want them to inspire future generations, too.
As we are not presently at war abroad, we must ask, To what present purpose are we inspired by heroes like McCarty and their patriotic sacrifice?
More succinctly, what relevance do Herb McCarty’s actions from 1918 through 1922 have for our own actions today, 92 years later, or even as recently as this past Election Day?
We have been hovering about this question and it is time we took a shot at answering it.
Although there is certainly a serious conflict looming ahead of us between Islam and Western civilization, our biggest war right now is at home, here in America, not abroad, and we must recognize that we are fighting on our own home front.
This is a war not of bullets and bombs, but of ballots, hearts, and minds.
To that end, we must draw inspiration from Herb McCarty’s dedication to the American principles he passionately believed in, the American flag, our Constitution, and each of us must become a warrior-in-spirit for our nation on the home front, wielding a pen, a vote, not a sword….yet.
A majority of Americans and certainly most Veterans are awakening to the reality that our own federal government is presently at war with the very citizens who lend the central government its legitimacy.
Using federal agencies like the IRS, ICE, Homeland Security, NSA and others, our individual liberties, our free speech rights, our Second Amendment rights, our rights of assembly and petitioning our government, our privacy rights, our voting rights, our religious rights have all been “transformed” for the past six years in an unprecedented assault on the core of American democracy.
There is today in Washington a man who believes he is a “government of one,” a man who believes that Congress either rubber stamps his policies and his anti-America nominees, or it gets the hell out of his way so he can do whatever he wants.
There is a man in Washington whose tyrannical actions are greater in number, scope, and gravity than those in our Declaration of Independence’s list of grievances against King George in 1776.
No, his behavior is not democratic, and Yes, that man was soundly and absolutely repudiated by the American people last week at the voting booth.
That still feels pretty good, doesn’t it?
The citizens of our Constitutional Republic spoke out against his usurpation of power.
He has been repudiated in historic terms.
But the problem we face in recapturing the America of liberty, equality, and opportunity as it was founded, is that our votes only matter to those who believe in the American system.
We can vote, win at the ballot box, and go home feeling like we succeeded.
But we may still be defeated in the long run, if we forget to recapture our traditional culture and values, the qualities that made us Americans to begin with, the values that motivated Herb McCarty.
We risk becoming slaves to an all-knowing, all-seeing, all-doing central government.
And the problem with that is, The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
In America, we are all about the citizen, not the government.
This is the real battle, the real war: To maintain our freedom at home, not on European battlefields.
This is a culture war, a contest either for an America as it was founded, or an America that looks like the old Soviet State, with no liberty, our Constitution rendered meaningless.
Like McCarty’s long battle to stay alive, this is not going to be settled with a single decisive battle.
Rather, it is a long-running war from which there is no retreat and no easy resolution.
It is not just about that one man in Washington.
It is about the anti-America movement that put him in Washington.
Our politically correct opponents’ tentacles have penetrated every fiber of our nation, every major institution, including churches, academia, charitable foundations, the Boy Scouts, the military, the media…you name it.
Sorry. Digression here, I just need to ask a simple question – with all due respect to the professional journalists with us today, may we ask if you are truly an objective, dispassionate arbiter of facts and accuracy, or are you an agenda-driven political activist hiding behind a false mask of fairness, like so many journalists appear to be?
Back to today. Today we face politically correct opponents not on an active combat battlefield like those on which Herb McCarty fought.
Rather, we are battling with ideas, information, and taxpayer-funded giveaways of great wealth.
Our opponents are not necessarily swayed by elections, nor dissuaded by individual electoral defeats.
They view these as merely temporary set-backs, individual lost battles while the bigger war continues behind the scenes, where McCarty’s strength of character and a sense of duty – YOUR strength of character and sense of duty — can be quietly erased from entire generations of Americans through control of groups like the Boy Scouts and educational institutions.
The very next day after an electoral defeat, our opponents return to the same battlefield with wing-nut activist Federal judges whose hatred for a Constitutional America is exceeded only by their pursuit of Socialism and big government micromanagement of We, the Peons.
They have Dumb and Dumber educational programs like Common Core.
Our opponents want to take America, the world’s most vibrant economy, and turn it into another French socialist democracy, at the least.
And that is why France has not fared so well in my presentation.
Because let’s be honest: France stinks. It is a mess in every way.
France hasn’t produced any Herb McCartys in a long time, and if America becomes like France, then we won’t produce many more quintessential American heroes, either.
The result of France’s socialism is that everyone with money and potential is fleeing the country.
Demographically, culturally, France will never be the same as it was 92 years ago.
But that’s where the politically correct Left wants to take us, despite history telling us that experiments in socialism and multiculturalism always fail.
And mind you, the France that Herb McCarty fought for had a military that invented Poudre B, or Powder B, the precursor to modern smokeless gunpowder used by all modern militaries.
That was a different France then.
But now, in France and their allies here in America, advocates of Big Government have spawned the rise of the entrenched, unelected, unaccountable, demanding Big Government bureaucrat.
The bureaucrat and his enormous pension have deeply eroded our individual freedoms.
The bureaucrat is a huge threat to liberty not anticipated by our otherwise brilliant Founding Fathers, who envisioned a limited government, not a big government.
But the bureaucrat outlives all elections. His ever-bigger government makes citizens ever smaller.
He is not balanced by the other branches of government.
We must elect politicians who are brave and strong enough to tackle this tough challenge.
So, if we are to follow in the footsteps of Herb McCarty, and if we are to translate his actions into actions today, and similarly serve our nation personally 92 years later, without necessarily fighting abroad or at home in a military combat unit, and if we are to be inspired to live for America the way Herb did, then here are four specific suggestions for winning the political fight for our traditional liberties and values here at home:
1) Be as politically active as possible. Go door-to-door, make phone calls, etc. for causes and candidates.
Support and work for good political candidates every year, in primaries and general elections.
America runs on political activity like a heart needs blood. Without you, the process is run by people who do not have your interests at heart.
2) Elect only those public servants who will voluntarily term-limit out, who do not seek a career in elected office, and who rely first and foremost on the Federal and State Constitutions for limited government.
Tell candidates that you will only vote for them if they pledge to voluntarily term-limit out.
And for state house and senate seats, elect people who will stick to the Pennsylvania Constitution and take only a salary and mileage as compensation.
That is what Article 2, Section 8 says is allowed, not the laundry list of taxpayer-funded benefits, like a pension, health care, car and per-diem costs.
Elected officials who term limit themselves are more able and willing to take risks and make sacrifices than those career politicians who will sell their soul just to stay in office.
Representative government, politics, should be about service, not self-enrichment.
And if there is a theme today, if Herb McCarty means anything today, it is about taking risks and making sacrifices in the service of our fellow citizens.
3) Bypass the political parties, and donate directly to political candidates and organizations like Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, the NRA, and others.
Recognize that political parties are self-interested. Individual citizens do not interest them.
The political parties are full of bureaucrats and self-important functionaries who are modeled on government bureaucrats and functionaries.
Political parties were supposed to be vehicles for ideas, but nationally and especially in states like Pennsylvania, they are privately run business enterprises, whose goal is self-perpetuation.
They rarely serve the forgotten taxpayer, citizen, and voter. Rather, they simply re-divide the political spoils between each other every two to four years.
And do not fool yourself that “your” political party is better than the other.
I am a Republican because I am a conservative, traditional American, but believe me, the Republican Party establishment fights activists like me harder than they fight the Democrats.
Why? Because establishment Republicans know how to deal with the liberal Democrats: They each get a slice of the taxpayer pie; sometimes it’s less, sometimes it’s more, but they always get a slice.
Both parties agree on that, even though how big their slice of pie is may change year to year.
But good government activists can’t be bought, we stand on principle, and we want the taxpayers to eat their own pie, not politicians, and not the bureaucrats.
So we pose a greater threat to the bipartisan exploitation of government than if the parties merely temporarily lose to one another.
Our good government movement needs your support. Look for our candidates, like Scott Wagner in York County, who became a state senator on a write-in vote against his own party this year.
And finally, number 4) Reassemble the militias, out of love for our nation, Constitution, and our individual liberties, not out of hate for anyone.
Organized militias with muster rolls meet the “well regulated” clause in the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
Militias formed the basis of our nation, the basis of our military, and they are as American as apple pie, so long as they are focused on protecting communities and the Constitution.
And yes, that can include protecting American citizens from their own federal government, which is not some kooky idea from out of the blue, but in fact was a long discussion among our Founding Fathers and is the basis of the Second Amendment.
Even the French once knew the danger of big government, except they didn’t have the militia.
Instead, they used mobs and the guillotine.
Americans are just a wee bit more civilized than that, right?
It’s like Europe was the imperfect prototype, and America is the finely finished product.
It’s like Europe was the cradle of democracy, and America is the kid that got up out of the cradle and walked away, and grew up into an independent, strong young man.
That’s why young men like Herb McCarty have had to return several times to save the Europeans from themselves, and demonstrate each time how great we Americans are, at great cost.
Americans are exceptional, we have always been exceptional, not because we simply think we are better than everyone else.
It is because we humbly demonstrate our greatness time after time.
We get the toughest jobs done, because we are asked to.
High-falutin’ Europeans pretend they are exceptional by living hedonistic lifestyles and tossing their traditional values out the window.
Let’s not follow Europe’s lead, and let’s not allow young Herb McCarty and the many other vets buried here to have died in vain.
Let us learn from history, and let’s not make mistakes we know can end our civilization.
Last week’s election results were a small step in the right direction, and the real work is just beginning to re-create a traditional American culture.
Please be part of that movement.
In conclusion, thank you very much for having me here with you today, and…
Again, a big Thank You to our military Veterans here: Each and every one of you sacrificed and contributed toward my own personal liberties, like my ability to speak honestly with you here.
I would like to thank our audience for listening so patiently.
In Herb McCarty’s memory, I want to thank God the All-Mighty for having founded America on the Bible, the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, so that law, justice, fortitude, service, mercy, charity, liberty and love forever inspire and bind us together in American brotherhood.
Thank you!
The morning after the morning after
One cannot help but wonder how liberals continue on with their destructive policies after such a thorough rejection by the voters of their icon and patron saint, Barack Hussein Obama.
I mean, my God, if JFK returned from the dead today he’d be a right-wing Republican on every count, on every policy.
JFK would not recognize his Democrat Party.
Where did this leftist madness come from?
I have some answers, but insufficient time to write about them, now. If you are politically interested enough to be reading this, then you are probably literate enough to imagine what any patriot might say.
Two words help us make this succinct: Marx, Utopia.
The psychology behind utopianism walks a fine line between religiously-inspired fervor and a self-destructive insanity that sees no reality in front of its face.
The idea of giving away gifts of free stuff to everyone who is some sort of a victim is psychologically gratifying. There are few bigger thrills than being generous to those in need. You just know it’s the right thing to do.
But government’s coercive theft of taxpayer money and redistributive policies are not charity.
And when those goals become entangled with a political party’s hunger for power, my goodness, the next thing you know a nation’s national security is thrown out the window so that millions of takers can walk in and vote themselves more gifts from the makers.
That is unsustainable insanity, and it will lead to a civil war and the end of our incredible nation.
So now that it is the morning after the morning after, and sane people, however deluded by a quest for power they may be, are wondering aloud about how this political earthquake happened, may I make a small request?
Ask this: What would JFK do?
It is likely that you will come to the conclusion that JFK would have done nothing that Obama has done, nor Harry Reid nor Nancy Pelosi. JFK would not have recognized these deceitful characters as Americans. And you shouldn’t either.
Their destructive, power-mad binge has damaged the Democrat label more than helped it, never mind what it has done to America.
Please come home, my dear Democrat friends. Please return to America, as it was founded, not as the “transformed” utopia you would have it be.
Americans awaken from stupor, kick butt
Nationally, Tuesday night was a day to remember for many years.
The American people awakened from a stupor.
Obama was rejected by the voters, as one might expect. He has been an utter catastrophe.
Normal people are running Congress now.
My choice for presidential candidates in 2016 are Dr. Ben Carson and Col. Allen West. Look for them. Support them; they’re awesome, real, authentic Americans.
Here in Pennsylvania, a decent man with generally good policies but with the interpersonal skills of a walrus went down to defeat. It goes to show that communication is the heart of politics and government.
While Tom Corbett may ultimately be responsible for his own loss, it was the kids, the kids!, running the Governor’s office who really dragged him down. Jen, Patrick, Luke. Nan. The list of ordained, arrogant, know-it-all but failed insiders is as long as my arm. Please, people, go get jobs in the private sector. Please stop driving our party over a cliff.
The Pennsylvania Republican Party needs a major overhaul. New leadership. Obviously. So let’s get that done, pronto, and get back in the game with a winning team.
If you want freedom, you are going to have to fight for it
Nevada senator Harry Reid changed the US Senate rules last year, which may not sound like a big deal. But those rules had been in place for about 215 years, a significant portion of America’s existence.
The former senate rules ensured that a slim majority of senators could not win important votes by a slim majority of votes. Important votes like confirming federal judges, whose stamp on the nation’s character lasts for decades. Some federal judge nominees are extremists, nakedly partisan political activists who only wear the black robes for effect, not because they are truly dignified and above the political fray. The former rules prevented those extremists from being confirmed to the bench unless a super-majority of US senators agreed.
Harry Reid’s rule changes allowed his party to ramrod through a whole freak show of kooks, anti-American anarchists, and other assorted wing nuts. These are not people dedicated to serving American citizens; these people are at war with the America we grew up with. They think that Communism only failed because the Soviets didn’t implement it correctly, not that Marxism is a bad idea.
Last week I sat about ten feet away from where US Senator Pat Toomey was speaking at the Perry County Republican Committee Fall Dinner (kudos to county chairman Don McClure for getting Toomey to speak to us). Sure, Toomey said a lot of good stuff. But then he dropped a bombshell, even worse than his ill-fated anti-gun legislation last year: If the Republicans regain the US Senate in two weeks, they will return the Senate rules back to the old set.
Toomey said that this would be done to “prove” that Republicans are “better” than Democrats.
Well, what the hell, Patrick? The liberals are playing to win, to win everything, to win all the power, to take over the entire nation, and the Republican party establishment is engaged in a game of checkers.
In Houston we got to see what Liberals-Gone-Wild really looks like, as the new mayor there served subpoenas on many of the pastors in the city, who had dared to exercise their First Amendment rights and oppose the mayor’s policies. In other words, the only free speech under liberals is speech that they approve of, using the full force of government coercion to achieve their goal. In other words, we are in a fight for survival, for the basic core of American democracy. We have to win this fight, because if people like the Houston mayor win, if people like Barack Hussein Obama win, every citizen loses.
Here’s the thing that people like US Senator Pat Toomey just do not understand, that they will never understand: A gentlemanly duel with the liberals will not succeed.
Instead, a bar room brawl is what is needed, and frankly, it is what is desired by the disaffected grass roots activists who otherwise fuel the Republican party.
If you want to hold onto your freedoms, you’d better fight like hell to hold onto them, fight at least as hard as your opponent, if not harder. That means letting the people who changed the US Senate rules learn to live with that change under Republican administration. The Republicans should run the US Senate for at least one year, maybe two years, under Harry Reid’s new rules.
Any Republican senator who cannot support this stance is not really committed to winning back the America that the liberals have dramatically damaged over the past six years. Republican senators who are only committed to the meaningless game of checkers, to the effete gentlemanly duel, what are they doing there?
Step aside, Patrick. The rest of us are rolling up our sleeves and grabbing something solid and heavy to set this situation right. That’s right, that heavy lifting is always left to the grass roots activists, isn’t it….
What Would Nixon Do, or Do Americans really want to recover from this?
Obama’s “re-set” with Russia empowered Putin to become Stalin II. Russia is expanding un-checked in all directions as it re-creates the totalitarian Soviet Union, sacrificing airliners full of civilians along the way, with impunity.
Obama’s apology tour in the Middle East empowered Muslim imperialists to go to war against everyone, including the very European nations that have increasingly hosted them.
The Middle East is breaking apart everywhere and along every ideological fault line possible. The West’s sole outpost there, Israel, is surrounded by enemies, desperately conducting a non-war of non-defense, under circumstances where the World War II Allies carpet bombed and incinerated hundreds of thousands of their enemies in a single day, in battles fought day after day.
At home, Obama illegally trucks in hundreds of thousands of sick, diseased, poor illegal aliens to help bolster his political party, in economically depressed areas already loaded with broken communities.
If Richard Nixon resigned because of a failed nonviolent office break-in to get psychological files on an American traitor, then what should Obama do?
What will the Republican Party do to protect America from its enemies, foreign and domestic?
Is anyone paying attention? Do more than a handful of Americans really give a damn what happens to America and its representative government of checks and balances?
Do Americans want to recover to the great nation we were before, or are they satisfied to watch Western Civilization crumble around them, come what may?
Harrisburg politics as usual from someone we should not expect it from
“Politics as usual.”
That is a statement, a curse, a wry observation, an accusation, a vexation to the free citizen, and most surely, it is a threat to good government.
Wherever there is “politics as usual,” we find double standards, empty promises, hypocrisy, a lack of forethought, an absence of careful or diligent thought, and an act of putting political gain ahead of citizen gain. And please don’t kid yourself that only “their” political party does it. Both main political parties engage in politics as usual, and even some of the fringe political parties are awash in it, because for their single issue cause to succeed they must overlook tons of contrary evidence to keep selling their purist issue.
This past week saw a classic example of politics as usual, and it disappointed me, because the person who engaged in it ought to know better. I certainly believe that he is better than that, and that he has a capacity to act bigger than his silly politicized statement.
What happened was that Governor Tom Corbett line-item-vetoed some “legislative” funding (that is taxpayer dollars used by the legislature for their office coffee, cars, walking-around-money, and parking on Capitol Hill), and state senator Rob Teplitz claimed that it would damage Harrisburg’s recovery plan.
Nothing could be farther from the truth, because that money vetoed out of the budget belongs to taxpayers and has zero to do with Harrisburg’s recovery. Only an overly creative imagination can find some vague link between the loss of cheap cash for legislators and the loss of economic advance for Harrisburg City.
Making it worse is that Senator Teplitz voted against the state budget to begin with. If he votes against something, how can he then claim that someone else shouldn’t vote against it, too?
The simple reason that Teplitz said this is for cheap political gain, a lame attempt to damage Corbett among voters in Harrisburg City. This qualifies as politics as usual, and it is destructive of the political process because it cheapens the political process. It dumbs it down. Instead of talking about Big Important Issues, we end up talking about nonsense that has nothing to do with anything material or substantial, and voters walk away from it.
When voters walk away from the political process, America is damaged. Maximum voter participation is needed for the nation to function properly.
Teplitz should know better than to do this. He is a bright guy, and I think he is a good guy. Although principled, he is overwhelmingly partisan, and that is why this kind of silly waste of time came naturally to him. Like all other partisans, Democrat and Republican, Teplitz only really cares about the party enterprise. He forgets about the citizens, their Constitutional rights, their personal money they remove from their pockets and place in the state coffers.
It is no secret I hope to be the Republican nominee in 2016 for the 15th PA senate district. If he runs for re-election then, Teplitz will be my opponent. I have no problem publicly singing his praises where he has earned them, and I can attest to several good things he has done for me and other people in the district. If Teplitz has had one strength so far, that I have seen, one truly laudable characteristic, it has been his willingness to wade into bad government, force a meeting or two, confront recalcitrant bureaucrats, and represent well a constituent’s interests. That is a real skill, and we should all recognize it.
That is why Teplitz disappoints so badly with his spurious attack on Corbett. I just know he can be bigger and better than this politics as usual.
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
PA GOP squashes buzzing gnat candidate with atomic bomb
Governor Tom Corbett’s campaign had nothing to fear from primary opponent Bob Guzzardi, a political activist, commentator, business owner, gadfly, and apparently super annoying buzzing gnat, too.
Running on a minimalist platform of leaner and more transparent government, Guzzardi succinctly represents the “Tea Party” damn-the-torpedoes attitude in his $400.00 (yes, that was his campaign war chest) run up the middle against a hulking incumbent’s campaign. Guzzardi had racked up just one Big Media interview that I know of. He struggled for traction in political circles. The likelihood of Guzzardi actually denting Corbett’s armor, much less beating him, was as high as your likelihood of winning the big jackpot lottery – zip.
But that did not stop the incumbent governor’s campaign from doing all it could to get Guzzardi removed from the primary ballot, using PA’s awful election laws. The first attempt failed, as perhaps the only merciful judge on Commonwealth Court held weeks ago that Guzzardi’s purported bureaucratic red tape filing misdeed was de minimus, and that he would remain on the ballot.
Courts are statutorily directed to try to keep candidates on the ballot, because democracy is best served by voters having choices. Disqualifying candidates should be a significant hurdle. Well, as has been increasingly seen in Pennsylvania, knocking candidates from ballots is very easy, too easy.
Today the PA Supreme Court voted Guzzardi off the ballot in what sure looks like a politicized decision that relies on the de minimus crap the lower court did not take seriously. For those who think Pennsylvania has truly independent courts, stop deluding yourself.
Critics of Guzzardi’s nomination papers mishap need to acquaint themselves personally with this deliberately arcane and completely politicized PA process. PA’s election laws are a black hole spider web designed to keep people out of the political process. Look no further than Harrisburg mayoral candidate Nevin Mindlin last year, whose entire candidacy was tossed on the most ridiculous, manufactured, and picayune of excuses.
Mindlin was an independent -minded Republican who had the audacity to buck bi-partisan parasitic politics, and thus was ensnared in faux Red Tape, as anyone in his role was bound to be under the current election laws.
I don’t know Guzzardi. But I do think he’s entitled to run if he wants, and many other states make it much easier to run for elected office, which is good for democracy.
Pennsylvania’s bipartisan establishment deliberately makes independents/ outcasts/ gadflies/ charismatics getting on the ballot either legally impossible or impossibly expensive (the high cost of successfully defending an otherwise legally sound filing).
What Pennsylvanians have now seen is that no matter what a “threatening” candidate does when filing – following the written rules or following the directives of the local elections staff – he is bound to be challenged by his party, and he will probably be DQ’d. Worse, there’s no disincentive for this behavior (for example, challengers who lose, could be required to pay the candidate’s legal fees).
Ballot challenges delay fundraising, delay volunteers, delay interviews, and cast a shadow over a candidate, irrespective of how cheesy the challenge is. This is bad for the citizens, bad for democracy, and frankly, it is un-American. It is, however, good for insulated party establishments that have turned politics into a self-serving financial enterprise. This has to change.
If I am elected to the state senate in two years, better election law will be a priority. There – that just earned me a 2016 ballot challenge! 
Bring it, boys! We will be ready and waiting for ya….
p.s. I do not know Bob Guzzardi, despite trying to meet him. I do know people who know him, or who have met him. Some say he is a valuable muckraker who elevates key issues into the public square. Others say he is a bored troublemaker who vents his personal dissatisfactions into the political arena. Either way, I say politics should be “Bring All Comers, and may the best candidate win.” Guzzardi should have stayed on the ballot; he was no threat to Gov. Tom Corbett.