“Pat’s position on issues seem to shift depending on the election in which he is running,” said Luksik. “I think he owes it to Pennsylvania Republican voters to clarify where he stands on such critical issues as abortion, the Second Amendment, earmarks and other important matters.”Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t support either Luksik or Toomey regardless, but I still thought this was stuff to ponder (and to help “No Corporate Tax” Pat’s opponent, click here).
“Pat claims to be pro-life, but as the Chairman of the Club for Growth he supported pro-choice candidates, including Jim Kolbe in Arizona, about whom Pat said, …’he’s pro-choice, but he has a great record supporting Social Security reform and free trade.’ He claims to be a defender of the Second Amendment, but he’s the only Pennsylvania Republican that voted for background checks at gun shows. He claims to oppose earmarks, but has stood up and accepted credit for them in his district.”
Well, here is what happens when you click on the link in the story; you end up at the Andrew Breitbart “Big Government” hacktacular site (here).It turns out that someone named Kyle Olson got a hold of a correspondence from MoveOn polling members asking where they thought the group should concentrate its resources and on behalf of which candidates, and to Breitbart and company, that automatically means that MoveOn is in “trouble” somehow (and for good measure, he tells us of the thousands of dollars labor has contributed to Democrats, which, last I checked, was perfectly legal).
Also in the matter of corporate donations, Olson tells us that President Obama “received the most campaign cash from British Petroleum and its employees.”
Uh, no – as noted here…
Its most generous corporate contributions -- totaling about $4 million -- have gone to two Republican-aligned political action groups working to defeat state ballot initiatives in California and Colorado that could have raised oil and gas industry taxes, according to an analysis of state campaign reports by the Center for Political Accountability. On the national scene, BP spent about $112,000 in corporate money to boost the coffers of Democratic and Republican organizations seeking to elect candidates to higher office, primarily the Democratic Governors Association and the Republican State Leadership Committee.Also from Olson…
…who can forget that the biggest recipient of Goldman Sachs contributions were Democrats.(Nice punctuation, by the way…)
Well, that may be then, but this is now; as noted here…
For the first time since 2004, the biggest Wall Street firms are now giving most of their campaign donations to Republicans.And one more thing: here is a link to MoveOn’s site. I’ll leave it to you, dear reader, to go there and learn more about how they’re supposedly in “panic mode” (and nice graphic of the person’s hair on fire from Breitbart, by the way – too funny).
A Wall Street Journal analysis of 12 large financial services companies, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. shows that they have collectively made $1.4 million in political donations, with 52% going to Republicans so far this year. That’s a reversal from last year, according to the most recent round of fund-raising reports covering January, February and March. [...]
The change of allegiance comes as Congress closes in on legislation that would overhaul financial services regulations. Democrats back an aggressive bill that has been so far blocked in the Senate by Republicans.
…Christie offered three sensible remedies: 1) increasing public employees' contribution from 3 percent of salary to 8.5 percent; 2) raising the retirement age from 62 to 65; 3) rolling back a 9 percent increase in pension benefits granted to employees in 2001.Spoken like true conservative shills.
Makes sense to us. Also sensible is Christie's proposal to raise public employee contributions toward health insurance from the current 8 percent to 30 percent, which is along the lines of what most folks working in the private sector pay.
Way to go, Governor. We hope Pennsylvania lawmakers, the governor and all candidates for state office are paying attention.
I might take all of this supposed fiscal rectitude from Christie seriously if it weren’t for the fact that, as Ryan McNeely tells us here, “he puts the interests of multi-millionaires ahead of the well-being of low-income seniors”…
Democrats want to re-impose a one-year tax on millionaires that has been vetoed by Republican Governor Chris Christie. The 10.75 percent tax on income above $1 million would hit 16,000 people, some of them likely to work as financial professionals just across the Hudson River in New York.Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Chris Christie – deficit peacock.
According to the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, a retired couple living on a fixed income of $40,000 would see an increase of $1,320 in taxes under the governor’s plan while a family making $1.2 million would receive a tax cut of $11,598.
This article provides much greater depth on New Jersey’s public pension crisis, noting that the whole thing really started with the tax increase in 1990 by former Gov. Jim Florio and the outcry that ensued. So, in response, governors of both parties started messing around with that state’s pension calculations, with Repug Governor Christie Todd Whitman “adopt(ing) another pension ‘reform’ act that allowed her to reduce state and local contributions to the plan by nearly $1.5 billion in 1994 and 1995, according to the task force report,” passed at her insistence by the NJ “lege.”
And, as always, this didn’t matter much when times were good. But when times became not so good, former governors McGreevey and Corzine had to come up with some kind of resolution, which didn’t happen for a number of reasons. So now it is left up to Christie (and by the way, this scenario is playing out in states across the nation, including PA).
Yes, I know something has to be done. But let me ask anyone who supports this the following question – if you were an employee of the state of New Jersey and you were a year or two away from retirement, would any of these options look even remotely sensible to you?
Last May in their rush to judgment, Speaker Pelosi and her liberal allies brushed aside the potential concerns of our troops and their families and decided to go ahead with the repeal of the Defense Department’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy before hearing their input. Now we hear that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to follow Speaker Pelosi’s lead and do the same.Gosh, I’m shocked that Rogers didn’t say the “Democrat-controlled Congress.” He needs to brush up on the Karl Rove playbook (nice job on that, actually).
Let’s be clear: I oppose repeal of the policy and have voted that way in the House. But at a minimum, before the Democratic-controlled Congress launches their latest social policy experiment, we should wait to hear the opinions of our military and their families. That is what the Secretary of Defense and our top military leaders have requested, and we owe it to them to see the process through.
More to the matter of repealing DADT, I give you the following (here)…
The (2011 Defense Authorization) bill includes a legislative repeal of the DADT policy, with the ultimate repeal resulting after completion of a Pentagon study on implementing the changes, as well as sign-off by the President, the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. All three of those individuals publicly support repealing the policy.And as noted here from February, “opposition to gays serving openly in the military has ‘declined sharply’ among service members.”
A couple points here. First of all, the decision to take up the defense bill certainly was helped along by Judge Virginia Phillips’ ruling of DADT as unconstitutional. Gay rights advocates used the ruling to put added pressure on Congress to find their way out with a legislative solution, and many supporters of repeal in Congress joined them. The threat of a protracted legal battle could also spur the principals to definitively repeal the policy by the beginning of next year, though the Obama Administration could make repeal the law of the land simply through the Justice Department opting not to appeal the ruling out of US District Court.
There’s really not much else to think about on this issue, people (as an astute Hill commenter noted “thank God President Truman didn’t ask for studies when he desegregated the military”).
To help out Congressman Murphy, click here.Fitzpatrick Votes Against Jobs, Now Complains About Economy
Former Commissioner refused to support job creating initiative not once, but twice
(Fairless Hills, PA) – Mike Fitzpatrick refused to support workers and manufacturers despite having not one, but two chances to provide tax incentives for industrial development in Lower Bucks County. First he voted no, then he didn’t vote at all.
On Friday, fellow former County Commissioner Sandy Miller (joined) Patrick Murphy and workers on Friday to remind Bucks County voters of Fitzpatrick’s refusal to support job-growth measures like the business tax incentives. In spite of Fitzpatrick’s opposition to the proposal, the state designated a site in Fairless Hills as a Keystone Opportunity Industrial Zone (KOIZ), helping the county attract major employers and create thousands of jobs.
One of those employees will be in attendance on Friday. Jim Bauer, from Levittown, lost his job at U.S. Steel after 25 years as a crane operator. These days, Jim is back to work at the same site, except now he’s constructing wind turbines for the clean energy company Gamesa Corp. Fitzpatrick didn’t stand up for working families like Jim then and he won’t now.
Update: Here is more on the press event noted above (a bit of repetition, I'll admit)...
Fellow former County Commissioner Sandy Miller joined Patrick Murphy and workers on Friday to remind Bucks County voters of Fitzpatrick’s refusal to support job-growth measures like the business tax incentives. In spite of Fitzpatrick’s opposition to the proposal, the state designated a site in Fairless Hills as a Keystone Opportunity Industrial Zone (KOIZ), helping the county attract major employers and create thousands of jobs.Also, lookee here - it seems that those zany Bucks County teabaggers are all going to put on their brown shirts and have a little party at Shady Brook Farm next Friday (including Mikey, Daryl Metcalfe, Self-Ciervo and Simon Campbell...I'll try to rev up the video camera for the occasion; hopefully the event will yield some You Tube moments).
Miller was in office alongside Fitzpatrick during the discussions. “Fitzpatrick had his chance to stand up for Bucks County workers and help create jobs,” she said. “Instead, he turned his back on them.”
Jim Bauer, from Levittown, said that Fitzpatrick turned his back on working families like his own. Jim worked at U.S. Steel as a crane operator for 25 years before it shut down and he found himself without a way to support his family or use the skills he’d spent years building. Today, Jim is back at the old U.S. Steel site except now he’s constructing wind turbines for the clean energy company Gamesa Corp., which was recruited to the site with the tax incentives Fitzpatrick opposed.
“If Fitzpatrick had his way, the former U.S. Steel site would still be an economic and environmental brownfield instead of a growing hub for manufacturing and green energy companies,” Murphy said.
Miller also debunked Fitzpatrick’s previous claims that he refused to take the second vote due to a sudden “conflict of interest.”
“Fitzpatrick was the lead negotiator on the deal for a year and had already taken votes on the tax incentive proposal before just days earlier,” Miller said. “Fitzpatrick can make excuses, but the bottom line is that he voted against jobs for Bucks County.”
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