Happy Thanksgiving

(Repost)

Thanksgiving is the closest we come to having a national religious holiday.  No matter what religion you follow in your lives, we all celebrate.Thanksgiving.  My own family is made up of Lutherans, Jews, Presbyterians, atheists and probably a few other denominations I forgot.  The celebration of Thanksgiving, and its meaning is something we all have in common.

During the eating, parades, more eating, football, drinking, and even more eating, please take time out to give thanks.

Jason Altmire is Correct

Congressman Altmire has taken a lot of heat lately from the left for not backing Nancy Pelosi for House Minority Leader.  This posting from Crooks and Liars is an example.  The interview with Chris Matthews is worth seeing.

Much of  the criticism is coming from people who know nothing about our district.  Altmire is a lone Democrat and voice of reason in an area represented mostly by right wingers:

• My Republican State Representative is Mike Turzai who is Tommey-like in his beliefs.
• My Republican State Senator, Jane Orie, is under indictment and still easily won re-election.  Unlike Christine O'Donnell, she looks like and may actually be a witch.  She at least believes in the occult, and may have cast a spell on her voters for all we know.
• My Republican McCandless town councilman told me that it is too bad that we can't open North Park up for commercial development when I mentioned to him that I was surprised at how big McCandless Crossings is.  This was after Jason Altmire fought for the much needed renovations to North Park Lake after years of neglect.
• Just north of us is Cranberry, the home of State Representative Daryl Metcalfe, who makes Sharon Angle sound rational.
• Altmire's district went overwhelmingly for John McCain and probably supported Toomey over Sestak as well.
• Altmire's far right-wing opponent, Keith Rothfus, ran commercials that criticized Altmire simply for voting for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.  

The House and Senate Democrats need new leadership and a fresh start.  This is not to take away from their accomplishments which I posted about before.  I look at it similar to how a coaching change can turn around a team by bringing in a new perspective.  The Penguins won the Stanley Cup after bringing in Dan Bylsma.  New Democratic leadership in the House and Senate could bring about a similar change.

We need fresh new leaders in these positions that can inspire not only the Democratic Party, but the American people.  I think the House and Senate Democrats need to look beyond the normal seniority-based leadership structure to people that can inspire us that we may not have even heard of yet.

Looking back at the election

The primary reason why the Democrats lost was because they allowed the Republicans to define them:

• Health care reform is based on open market concepts that Republicans have favored for years.  However, the Republicans morphed it into the dreaded Obamacare complete with death panels.  There is no government takeover.  A government takeover would be publicly run health care like the Medicare program that seniors have depended upon for 45 years.

• The stimulus package which is the textbook method for restarting the economy was vilified as a waste of money.  The stimulus is kind of like pulling the cord to start your lawn mower.  Once the engine is started, you just let it run.  The problem really is, as Joe Sestak correctly said, that it wasn't big enough.  The engine that President Bush left President Obama with was so cold that they really needed to give it a good pull.  What happens when you don't give it a strong enough pull is that the engine sputters.  That is exactly what is happening.   This isn't politics, but a simple economic fact.

• A significant part of the stimulus was a tax cut. Instead of wasting taxpayer money sending out checks with President Obama's name on them like President Bush did, they simply had more money taken out of our paychecks.  The Republicans convinced many that not only did President Obama not cut taxes, but he increased them instead.

• The other problem with the stimulus was that it followed the bank bailout enacted by President Bush, and was followed by the auto bailout.  The Republicans were so good at tying President Obama to the bank bailout, that I forgot for a while that it was done under President Bush.  Both bailouts will end up costing the government relatively little in the end, but that message is getting lost as well.

• The Republicans were very effective at making President Obama seem foreign, illegitimate, and "Socialist".  Vote Republican to stop Obama!

•  I still don't understand why the Democrats didn't extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone making under $250,000 before the election.  That made no sense to me.  I equally don't understand why we need to extend the tax cuts for everyone.  The Republicans claim that it will hurt small business.  The truth is that this is a 4 percent increase on the net profits above $250,000.  How that will hurt a small business is beyond me.  Again, basic economics will tell you this will not stimulate the economy at all.

Jane Orie raised your taxes 420%!!!!!!

Unless you live in Ross Township.

According to Orie logic, Ross Township Commissioner Dan DeMarco voted to raise taxes 150%.  Thanks to North Pittsburgh Politics, this was the occupation tax.

Using Orie logic, she voted to raise this tax 420% for just about all of us as most municipalities couldn't wait to raise this tax.  This includes the Republican McCandless Town Council where both she and I live.

The tax increase was originally intended to help the City of Pittsburgh, but instead of just applying it to Pittsburgh, Jane Orie voted to increase the tax state wide.  My wife and I do not work in Pittsburgh, and yet she raised our tax 420%.

Dan DeMarco could have taken the full $52 as well in Ross Township, but they only took what they felt they needed and left $27 on the table.  Would it be a stretch of Orie logic to claim that  Dan DeMarco actually cut the tax by 52% from $52 to $25?

Keith Rothfus wants to defund Supreme Court decisions he disagrees with

In case you had not heard...

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/10/21/rothfus-defund-scotus/

Add this to the current list:

• Wants to repeal health care reform rather than fix it.  This means that we all lose out on the benefits that some are already enjoying.
• Doesn't believe global warning is real.
• Criticized the stimulus bill, because it should have cut taxes instead.  I guess he didn't realize that a significant portion of the stimulus bill was a tax cut.

The list of wackiness is starting to grow.  I can't imagine what else he is hiding.

North Pittsburgh Politics: Jane Orie/Dan DeMarco mail wars

North Pittsburgh Politics wrote a great series of posts on Jane Orie's mailings that have been cluttering our mail boxes since September along with Dan DeMarco's responses:

Sen. Jane Orie's shameful mailing
Jane Orie's Fantasy World
Will these mailers convince you that Jane Orie didn't abuse tax payer's money?
Dan DeMarco Mailers
Rest of Jane Orie mailers so far
Why did Jane Orie get indicted? Hmmm
Dan DeMarco Mailers

You can certainly see a pattern in Jane Orie's mailers.  As time goes on, she goes further and further off the deep end.  I can't wait to check my mail for the next one.  The Zapalla's are out to get her!  She is fighting the "Good Old Boy" network!  Never mind that you don't get to be Senate Majority Whip unless you are one of those "Good Old Boys" that you are allegedly fighting against.

The only reason that Zapalla brought the charges is because, unlike Attorney General Corbett, he was doing his job.  The whistle blower went to Corbett's office first and his office blew her off.  It also wasn't like Zapalla did it on his own.  He convened two Grand Juries that brought the charges to her and her family (Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin may be getting indicted as well.).  I guess the Grand Juries are out to get Orie as well.

I have met Dan DeMarco and he is everything in person that his mailers show.  He is very personable and sincere.  He will be a fine State Senator.

The choice on November 2nd between Dan DeMarco's sincerity and Jane Orie's insanity is a pretty easy one.

Post-Gazette Endorses Jason Altmire

4th U.S. House: Altmire is the better choice for Congress

It is a pretty normal endorsement, but a few things stood out to me:

• "He favors repeal of the federal health insurance law, calling it unconstitutional and unprecedented in expanding government power."  Jason Altmire didn't vote for the law as well, but is taking the common sense approach that we need to fix what is wrong with it rather than just repeal it and replace it with nothing.  If Rothfus had said something similar rather than just parroting the Republican talking point, I might have taken him seriously.  Rothfus is also forgetting to mention that the health care law was based more on Republican ideas and proposals than "Government Run Healthcare" that progressives would have preferred.  As with many, many Republican ideas like Cap and Trade, if Obama supports it, it is suddenly socialist and evil.

• "He called the $787 billion stimulus "an abject failure" and said Congress should have cut taxes to stimulate growth." A large portion of the stimulus was a tax cut that we all enjoyed. Keith Rothfus didn't know this?  The problem with the tax cut was that we got it through reduced withholding taxes rather than wasting our tax dollars like Bush did by sending out physical checks, so no one noticed.  Most economics also agree that the stimulus also prevented a depression.

• "Mr. Rothfus is not convinced that human activity is causing climate change." So he is a climate change denier as well. He is probably also in support of global warming as well, because it is opening up shipping lanes through the Arctic Circle.

I met Mr. Rothfus and he is a nice enough person.  The problem is that he is nice, and will simply be John Boehner's lap dog (I picture him as a little white terrier.).  He will be a reliable 100% yes vote for the Republican agenda with little ability to make a difference.  His campaign is a boilerplate Republican campaign that Melissa Hart used twice and lost.  He brings nothing new to the table, and simply echos the Republican talking points.  Has he said anything original?

If you want someone who will vote 100% of the time for the Republican agenda even if his district is against the Republican policies that will increase the deficit by trillions of dollars go ahead and vote for Keith Rothfus.

Thank you Supreme Court

I was just watching the late night news. There were over the top commercials from the Club For Growth and two from the US Chamber of Commerce. These were funded by god knows who from god knows where.

Send a message to these organizations that your vote can not be bought and do not support their candidates!

A thought about campaign finance reform

What do you think about this very simple idea? You (person, company, organization, whatever) can only donate to candidates that you can actually vote for.

Who the heck are Americans for Job Security?

It seemed that all of a sudden we are seeing these anti-Altmire ads from American's for Job Security like this one:



I was curious who the heck they were, so I did a little digging and found this New York Times article about them: Under a Tax-Exempt Cloak, Political Dollars Flow. The weirdest thing about the article is that it starts out talking about them pouring $1.6 million dollars into a referendum to restrict the development of a mine in Alaska.

Rather than some kind of grassroots organization they are simply another well financed group pretending to be out for out best interests. The reality is that the only jobs they want to secure are their own and the people that are really paying for it. They share offices with Crossroads Media, a Republican consulting firm. In Alaska, they were fronting a wealthy Alaskan who was really paying for the advertising.

The people of our district are pretty smart, and have gotten to know Congressman Altmire and his long list of accomplishments for our district over these last two terms. We have seen boilerplate commercials like this about him for just as long. Those commercials haven't worked here before and they won't work now.

Democrats Need To Show Some Guts

While the Republican's fear and smear campaign has riled up their base, it has also intimidated Democrats. The Democrats have been on the defensive it seems since Obama took office. However, there is a lot that the administration has accomplished that we can be proud of.

President Obama and the Democrats accomplished a great deal in the less than two years since he took office:

• Stabilized the economy through a stimulus package whose benefits are all around you if you just take a look.
• The same stimulus package included a tax cut.
• Saved the American auto industry. In the long run the tax payers may actually make a profit before it goes back to the private sector.
• Passed health care reform that we will start the see the benefits of on Thursday.
• Passed credit card reform.
• Moved most of the combat troop out of Iraq.
• Actively working on a peace plan for Israel and Palestine.

And this is just off the top of my head. There is probably more that I didn't think of.

The economy is still a work in progress, and there is a lot to be done.

President Obama has accomplished more in less than two years in office than in President Bush's two terms. Why would we ever want to go back?

North Allegheny Revises Early Admission Policy

No. Allegheny revises early admission policy

I have an elementary school age child in the NA school district. My birthday and his are a day apart in November, but he started school one year older than I did. This was because of the change in age requirements between then and now.

Because I had a late birthday, the age difference between kids in my class and I continued through college. I was one of the last of my friends to be able to get a driver's license, and I was still 17 when I started college.

If you try and get your child into school early, remember that he or she will always be younger than the rest of their classmates. Are you doing it for the benefit of the child, or are you trying to get him or her out of the house a year sooner?

Schools and their expectations changed so much since I was his age. It seems to me that what was first grade when I was growing up is kindergarten now. Children need to be ready for the expectations emotionally.

Including social and emotional age is very important, and I am surprised it took so long. I also coach sports for my son and his friends. At their age, the difference socially and emotionally from one year to the next is huge.

Tom Corbett and Dan Onorato

I have mixed emotions about the Governor's race. I really liked Tom Corbett, and voted for him in the past. I met his wife at previous elections and she is a wonderful lady. I was excited when I thought he was going to run for Governor. However, it seems like in recent years he was attracted to the dark side of politics. Over the last several months:

• His office ignored the intern that blew the whistle on Jane Orie. I guess if she were a Democrat, he would have handled the case himself.
• Filed a politically motivated law suit against the health care bill.
• Subpoenaed the twitter accounts of two people that criticized he and his office. He was eventually forced to withdraw the subpoena.

I consider these issues to be an abuse of his power as Attorney General for his personal benefit. What will he do as governor?

I have never been a huge fan of Dan Onorato as well:

• His handling of property assessments have been awful. They need to be fair, and they are anything but. He has done all he could to stand in the way of correcting the issue.
• I don't have a problem with the drink tax. However, when it was clear that the tax was generating significantly more revenue than was needed, he refused to cut it. Instead, he wanted to keep the excess for other purposes.
• He often seems very abrasive, and his attitude is often "It's my way or else." County Council rarely got in his way. However, that attitude will not work with a State House and Senate that would tell him to get lost.

While Toomey was betting against the US dollar, Sestak was defending the country.

The above quote was from a Huffington Post article and sums up the race in my mind. The entire article describes the race a lot better than I ever could, so I highly suggest you read it.

Pat Toomey represents all the greed there is on Wall Street. He actually helped write the legislation that contributed to the collapse of the financial markets in 2008. I can not imagine how he will have any interest in representing the needs of the people of Pennsylvania after spending most of his career selling his soul (along with some derivatives) to Wall Street.

Primary Thoughts

I worked at my local poll after work Tuesday. There were two people that I noticed voters were genuinely excited about. On the Republican side was Keith Rothfus who easily dispatched Mary Beth Buchanan. I was really hoping Buchanan would win, because it would be fun watching her blow her top on a regular basis. Too bad we will miss out on that.

"Experts" are already dismissing him and practically giving Altmire his seat back. The rationale is that he isn't the fundraiser Buchanan was. I think it will be a hard fought campaign with Rothfus running a low budget campaign working mostly on the ground and Altmire mostly on the air, because that is where their strengths currently lie. No one should forget that Altmire won a similar low budget ground campaign 4 years ago against a well financed Melissa Hart.

The person on the Democratic side that people seemed to be excited about was Dan DeMarco. Maybe they were just excited about another write-in opportunity on the voting machines. There were 4578 write-in votes for the Democratic nomination to the State Senate. We won't know the results for some time, but I have a hard time believing that a majority of those write-ins voted for Jane Orie.

DeMarco will also have to run a strong ground game, but will have the benefit of Jane Orie's indictment and her overall disposition which lately has not been very positive. Just looking at their campaign fliers, he looked warm and friendly, and she looked like she was going to bite my head off. I think DeMarco will be well served to maintain the positive vibes against Orie's negative vibes.

Later, I'll post on the Governor's race where John Corbett seems to be losing it (I hope I don't get subpoenaed for saying this.), and the Senate race where I think the more you find out about the real Pat Toomey the less you will like him.

The last very local race is for State House which will pit career politician Mike Turzai against Dr. Sharon Brown. She got 4166 votes in the Democratic primary which is significantly higher than any other nominee for Turzai's seat in the last 10 years. If you add in the votes Turzai received, she got 37% of the overall vote. That is a pretty good starting point considering that in the general election, the closest a Democrat got was 28%.

She will also need a strong ground game as well and might be well served to work with Dan DeMarco. The two of them working together against the pair of Mike Turzai and Jane Orie might be a good tactic.

They could tie Turzai in with Orie's troubles and also benefit from the anti-incumbency mood. No one that we will vote for in the fall has been in office longer than Turzai and Orie. Both are career politicians just like the kind that people hate. The only other incumbent that we will vote for is Jason Altmire, and he has only held an office of any kind for 4 years. That is hardly a career.

Tired of Jane Orie Junk Mail; Supporting Dan DeMarco!

I just received yet another post card from Jane Orie trying to fool me into writing her name in as a Democrat. I actually lost count, but this may be the fifth one I received.

I am so annoyed at receiving her junk mail day after day after day that I will be working the polls in support of Dan DeMarco. If she is so scared of this man then he must be a great candidate!

Indicted Jane Orie running for the Democratic nomination?

She is mounting a write in campaign for the Democratic nomination so she won't have to worry about having an opponent in November. I got two post cards from her already. Missing from both cards is the fact that she is a Republican. Mike Turzai never admits to being a Republican either. I have always wondered if they are both embarrassed to be Republicans.

Anyway, the real Democrat running for the nomination is Dan DeMarco of Ross. His credentials are impressive and he deserves you support.

Could Mike Turzai be vulnerable?

Republican Mike Turzai has had a Democratic opponent in the past few elections, which he has flicked away like an annoying mosquito.  Why would he not only waste his time by challenging the signatures of his next Democratic victim, Dr. Sharon Brown, but enlist one of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s buddies to do it? 

This information comes from Timothy McNulty in the Post-Gazette Early Returns  (http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/earlyreturns/archive/2010/03/19/ravenstahl-supporter-aids-turzai-effort.aspx).  He got it from Infinonymous that Dave Malone, one of Mayor Luke’s biggest fundraisers, is challenging Dr. Sharon Brown’s signatures.  I am not even sure why someone like Dave Malone would bother getting involved in this.  None of the people involved seem to have anything to gain.

The challenge will also give Dr. Brown some much-needed publicity that she would have never gotten otherwise.  Now she can claim that Mike Turzai is so scared of her that he felt the need to get a prominent Democrat to challenge her signatures.

The whole challenge makes little sense unless…

Could Mike Turzai be vulnerable this time around?  Here are a few reasons why I am wondering:

1. There is a huge anti-incumbency feeling out there.
2. He is a career politician that could be a poster-boy for term limits. 
3. He is Pennsylvania’s version of a “Just say No” Republican at a time when a backlash from “Just say No” might be starting.
4. Many disillusioned Jason Altmire supporters will have some time on their hands, and would love to help knock Mike Turzai off with a grassroots effort that knocked off Melissa Hart twice.

I have met his Democratic opponent, Dr. Sharon Brown.  She is everything he is not.  She is very likeable, intelligent, hard working and honest.  She has little interest in a career in politics.

Four years ago, no one heard of Jason Altmire as he set out to defeat a Melissa Hart that thought she was unbeatable and acted like it.  Could it happen to Mike Turzai this year?

Jason Altmire says No

Jason Altmire Press Release

Jason Altmire has been pretty consistent that the changes need to be bigger than just the financing as he says in his third paragraph:

""Simply moving money around within the existing system, rather than enacting real delivery system reform, might change who pays the bill, but it does not improve the quality of care or reduce costs for families, small businesses, or the federal government. It creates a system of winners and losers, rather than reforming the system in a way that lets everyone win."

I think that he didn't make a strong enough push to get his concerns into the bill until late in the game.  Maybe he was working behind the scenes, but it is not apparent to most of us.  The changes go well beyond what most people would have been comfortable with anyway.  This isn't just the public option, but changing the entire fee for service process that this health care bill will not change.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich had a similar decision to make that the bill didn't go far enough.  Unlike Congressman Altmire, he reasoned that something is better than nothing.  On the other hand, people weren't standing outside Kucinich's office with pitchforks either.

Politically, it will do him more harm than good unless he can do some serious damage control with his supporters.  He is going to lose many more supporters than he will gain.  How many of the tea partiers protesting outside his office would vote for him under any circumstances?  Probably not many.

His opponent will likely be Mary Beth Buchanan who seems to me to be eerily similar to Melissa Hart.  It certainly helps that the Republicans seem determined to put up candidates that turn off most of the voters.