Equal Time For Tom Manion

Here's my response to the comment left by KW Smith of the Tom Manion campaign here.

As a supporter of Tom Manion, I find your comments out of line. I read the guest opinion too. First of all, it was only about education. He has another one on energy posted on his website.

I cannot find his Guest Opinion on energy at the Tom Manion web site (which had good ideas, actually, that haven’t been supported by the Repugs in Congress, as I noted here).

Scondly, he does describe the 21st century skills in the paragraph after the one you criticize.

I don’t have the hardcopy at the moment, and I cannot find it at phillyburbs.com (no surprise). I also cannot find it at Manion’s web site (??), so I have no point of reference at the moment.

Next, you say you would like to hear why Tom Manion would be better for us than Patrick Murphy. Perhaps the liberal press, like this website, are failing to notice some of Murphy's failings but I will point them out. Perhaps the liberal press are the problem, and not Tom Manion. But I digress.

Oh, stop your damn whining about “the liberal press” and make your point, OK?

Murpy (sic) co-sponsored the SAVE Act for the e-verify system and then would not sign the discharge petition to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.

Co-sponsoring this bill was pretty dumb, but you can chalk this up to some “Rahm-Emanuel-Blue-Dog-let’s-look-tough-on-immigration-so-the-Repugs-don’t-beat-us-up-politically” connivance; at least Patrick ended up doing the right thing by refusing to sign the discharge petition.

Problems? Well, as noted here, it concentrated more power in the Department of Homeland Security (does it make YOU happy to give that kind of clout to Mike “City of Louisiana” Chertoff?), it violated confidentiality of tax and Social Security information by dumping all reported anomalies such as multiple use of a Social Security number (SSN) and mismatches into a DHS database while providing few if any protections against misuse of such information, it expanded the scope of activity that can be prosecuted as “alien smuggling” (while doing nothing to combat the long-documented abuse of aliens in facilities where they’re held) and narrowed the protections from such prosecution enjoyed by religious workers, it punished immigrants here legally whose work visas expire…need I go on?

Lesson learned? Never trust ANYTHING from Heath Shuler.

Murphy co-sponsored the comprehensive Peterson-Abercrombie energy bill on July 31, and six weeks later voted for Pelosi's sham energy bill.

This post from Above Average Jane tells us of the press conference held last October with Patrick Murphy, Bob Casey and Pelosi following the energy package that passed with the federal renewable energy standard, providing more information. I do not know exactly why the latter bill was an improvement over the former; I’ll assign myself the task of trying to find out more information.

Murphy voted against measures that would open up our domestic energy supply seven times.

I’m not going to bother researching that because “drill, drill, drill” won’t do a damn thing to lower the price of gas and will only increase our addiction to oil primarily (but not exclusively) from the Middle East.

Murphy voted against funding the troops five times.

Since there are no citations on roll call votes, I’m not going to do the research that the Manion team should have done before they made that claim. However, this press release dated August 1st of this year tells us that Patrick passed the 21st Century Service Members Protection Act, modernizing the existing SCRA for the financial obligations faced by today’s troops – specifically to cover service contracts such as cellular phone service, car insurance, utilities, cable television, or internet access. Patrick also cut off funding for the VA’s misguided program of not allowing our veterans to register to vote, and he also voted to expand access to and strengthen the quality of veterans’ health care for 5.8 million patients, including 333,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Murphy voted to take away a union employee's right to a secret ballot.

That’s Republican code language meaning that Patrick supports the Employee Free Choice Act (here’s a fact sheet on that).

Murphy claims to be a fiscal conservative but his record has been given a failing grade by two citizens watch dog groups. Failing as in 15 out of 100.

You know what? I’m not going to go crazy over what kind of rating a politician gets from Taxpayers For Common Sense or any of these outfits. An elected representative could be spending money wisely as far as I’m concerned by providing funding for schools, public parks, job retraining, law enforcement or libraries and get a lousy rating, whereas someone could vote No to everything (think Joe Pitts) and be celebrated for “leading the cause of tax reform.”

Speaking for myself, I vote for these people because I trust them to spend my money wisely, not because I trust them not to spend it at all. And I trust Patrick to do the right thing, and nine times out of ten at least, he does.

Murphy says porkbarrelers like Murtha and corrupt men like Rangel or his "heros." Then Murphy voted to grant Rangel a $2 million dollar earmark for Rangel's private library and office.

As I noted here, a $2 million earmark is actually “chump change” in the scheme of things; I have no problem with earmarks as long as they’re disclosed. And as I also noted, how funny is it to hear a Repug sympathizer complain about $2 million for Rangel (who’s a lightning rod of sorts at the moment, I realize) when former Speaker Denny Hastert inserted a $207 million earmark for his little Prarie Parkway deal?

Murphy's voted with Pelosi 93% of the time. Murphy's new commercial features the Gamesa company which received a fine for emissions infractions and is being sued for age discrimination by workers who allege they were replaced by younger workers from Spain.

By the way, Gamesa is “the wind energy leader in Spain,” a good company to be partnering with at the moment. And as we know, only Democrats sully themselves by dealing with corporate wrongdoers.

By the way (again), I wonder what’s going on with that lawsuit Worth and company faces with the state of PA over approximately $142,000 in wages that company employees allege have yet to be paid on government projects (including Quakertown, PA Middle School) in violation of PA’s prevailing wage law (Worth is where all Repug candidates visiting this area go to pay homage for fundraising).

Just last week (Murphy) voted for a $60 billion dollar spending bill with nearly $7 billion in earmarks. In the middle of a fiscal crisis. Good Move.

Any particulars on that? (Earmarks are good if they’re disclosed…this is a recording…).

Today he voted to stick taxpayers with a $700 billion credit card bill.

I don’t like the bailout package either, but it’s what we’ve got at the moment, and we have to get credit moving again in this country or else jobs won’t be created (though that hasn’t happened much anyway under Bushco, as we know), houses won’t be built, freight won’t be transported, and on and on. Besides, “Man Tan” Boehner shot the package down supposedly because he was upset by a speech Nancy Pelosi gave, or something; uh…this is just a bit bigger than partisan political games, Mr. House Minority Leader.

There's a record I'd be proud of. And of course Congressman Murphy has plenty of money from his two years in office, and of course at this point you are hearing more from him.

I have a rough idea of what Patrick’s salary is, and he’s hardly a millionaire. Besides, what does that have to do with anything other than pure spite?

So, hang on and I am sure you will be hearing more from Tom Manion before Nov. 4. Or maybe you could just open your eyes and see what is in front of your face, as I got all this information from the internet. Right ____ now.

Oh, golly – color me embarrassed, especially since (as I noted in my comment), I’ve heard nary a word of this from the candidate himself.

And I know there’s probably a lot more that could be said about all of this, but I think this will suffice for now.

(By the way, I posted recently at the Wordpress site here - and to help Patrick Murphy, click here.)