The Courier Times Concocts Nader Nonsense (And More)

I admit that I haven’t had anything to say about the Bucks County Courier Times for awhile, even before we left town. And that is because it has given me very little reason to do so, seeing as how all it does anymore is recycle the same old, less-and-less-relevant freeper agit prop, either from its usual litany of right-wing shills or (mostly) from its reader correspondence.

Today, though, the paper leapt to the defense of perennially losing Democratic presidential nominee Ralph Nader, and it’s going to take a bit of ‘splaining to tell you why.

As the editorial notes, the “Bonusgate” scandal is currently under investigation in our beloved PA commonwealth, highlighted by “grand jury revelations of political work conducted with taxpayers' money,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer here.

More specifically…

The grand jury report, released by Attorney General Tom Corbett (earlier this month), alleges that former House Minority Whip Michael Veon of Beaver County ran a statewide political operation out of his Capitol and district offices involving hundreds of legislative workers on the House Democrats' payroll.

One of the House Democrats' most visible targets was Nader, who in 2004 was seeking to challenge Democrat John Kerry as well as President Bush. As many as 50 Pennsylvania House staff members worked on a challenge to Nader's ballot petition, and more than half received state-funded bonuses, in part for their "Nader efforts," according to the report.

Even though there may be a link between “Bonusgate” (yes, I hate that four-letter suffix also) and Nader’s failed 2004 candidacy, that doesn’t change the following facts as noted by the Inquirer…

A decision by Commonwealth Court, upheld by the state Supreme Court, found that most of the signatures for Nader were invalid.

…

Abe Amoros, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said the grand jury report did not "exclude the fact that Ralph Nader and Carl Romanelli (the Green Party candidate in the 2006 U.S. Senate race won by Bob Casey) falsified their nominating petitions."

"I fail to see how this is the responsibility of the Democratic Party," he said. "They are rehashing their own inadequacies and their own incompetence to get on the ballot."

Exactly.

And the Courier Times tells us in the editorial that “We don't know how many of the signatures Nader collected were no good,” even though they state earlier in their own editorial that “Nearly two-thirds of Nader's signatures were declared invalid.”

It is to laugh, my friends (oops…a little “McBush” sneaked in there).

Also, as long as I’m on the subject of Bucks County’s conservative newspaper of record, I’d like to pose a question: whose bright idea was it to either reduce the point size of the newspaper’s text type or change the leading, thus making the paper harder to read? Are you trying to reduce your own circulation?

Also (again), as long as I’m talking about matters pertinent to Bucks County, I have to point out that, unless he gave a speech or public pronouncement of some type while we were away, I should note that Tom Manion is running the most mysterious campaign for the U.S. Congress that I have ever seen, in an effort to unseat Patrick Murphy that is looking less and less likely to succeed.

I know of no time (except for the kickoff press conference at his house) that this man has spoken in a public forum or addressed a group of individuals on any issue or cause whatsoever. And I don’t think it should be incumbent upon yours truly to do the legwork and seek out his web site absent any coverage in the “traditional” print media. Hell, even Mikey Fitzpatrick wrote Guest Opinions regularly; I know I shot a few of them full of holes, but at least he told us what he believed and what was going on, however bad the information was and/or however wrong he was on the issues.

I know Tom Manion is a brave man, and he certainly isn’t dumb. But when a purported candidate for Congress is reduced to merely naysaying against the Democratic incumbent in response to the most important issues we face (the war and the economy, including the price of gas, among others) then he does a disservice not only to himself, but more importantly, to the voters he would serve in Washington.