Posts Tagged → republican
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.
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…
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.
You call that a scandal? I’ll show you a scandal
New Jersey governor Chris Christie is rightly under fire for shutting down eastbound traffic lanes across the George Washington Bridge into NYC.
Emails, texts, and other sources used by Christie’s senior staff paint an unflattering picture of a guy using every means possible to punish politicians, and citizens, who don’t do what he wants. Like endorse him for reelection. It’s criminal behavior on its face and also because at least one person died due to traffic backups and slow ambulance service.
Amazing now how the American media is buzzing with this scandal, but the deadly Benghazi scandal (abandonment of US personnel and subsequent coverup of their cruel deaths) and the criminal IRS political scandal (destruction of elementary Constitutional principles in government behavior) are nearly off the media’s radar. Where’s the buzz about these huge scandals? Where are the public demands for justice, the mocking, the sneers, the tongue-clucking among network news anchors that they now employ against Christie?
On one hand, we have a scandal about traffic. On the other hand, we have multiple scandals about earth-shaking abuse of power, criminal negligence, undermining of the Constitution that holds America together and guarantees citizen rights. It’s impossible to justify reporting on the bridge, but not on Benghazi, IRS, US Dept. of Justice malfeasance, etc.
I regularly listen to NPR radio, and this double standard was especially strong there, as would be expected.
This double standard, or political activism masquerading as journalism, is just one more example of how the national media have abandoned their watchdog role and are now partisan cheerleaders.
According to the establishment media, Obama can’t do anything wrong; Republicans can’t do anything right. It’s shameful and all the more reason for new, additional fair and balanced news outlets. It’s why citizen reporters are the real journalists.
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
Harrisburg Mayor’s race gets negative – by the Golden Child
Mayoral candidate Eric Papenfuse is loading tons of utter nonsense into mailboxes across Harrisburg. His literature says that candidate Dan Miller is a Republican, which he is not. Miller remains a Democrat who won the Republican nomination. Papenfuse’s mailers are full of heavy handed negativity. Wasn’t Eric Papenfuse the Golden Child? The brainy product of Yale University, unwilling to stoop low to conquer?
Well, that’s just it.
A Yale education is probably a liability these days, as that and many other Ivy League schools teach politically correct talking points, and leave out the actual ideas debate for ‘stupid’ people who just do not know better.
Eric Papenfuse, you sold yourself as being above it all, but in fact you are deep down in the gutter. I just knew you would be.
You did, after all, invite domestic terrorist Bill Ayers to your bookstore. That always said it all for me.
Leadership is about leading, right? Right?
Somehow Republican leaders managed to lose on every count in their checks-and-balances disagreement with the 0bama administration. It’s an incredible display of weakness and failure of leadership. Checks and balances is the way of American government. If you abandon that, then the government fails. Today, America is saddled with more bureaucracy, more big government, more invasive government than in our history. It’s a huge failure.
It’s incredible to me. Obviously the Republican Party must be re-built from the ground up. If we do not have leaders who can stand up for basic government functions like required annual budgets and stopping disastrous, unpopular programs like 0bamaCare, then what’s the party’s purpose? As a rubber stamp for the Marxists?
Yes, the mainstream (Democrat) media went to war with phony polls and nakedly partisan “reporters” against the Republican Party. But if all we do is fear criticism, then are we leading? No.
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….