CONSERVATIVES DEFAULTING ON CITIZENSHIP OBLIGATIONS?
The following is part of a discussion I've been having with Cindy at The Pink Flamingo about SOME people who call themselves "conservatives." Being racist, sexist, or homophobic does NOT qualify one as a conservative. As a Christian, my obligation is not to bash people who are different from me, but rather to love them.
Cindy, at some point I'll start writing again about what's going on with "conservatives." I do not support "conservatives" who are anti-Mexican, anti-Black, anti-professional women, or anti-gay.
On the critical issue of dealing with crime: I have been making the point lately that Rudy-Bratton-Kerik (and also Bloomberg) have been central in reducing NYC's murder rate from 2500 pre-Giuliani (2494, actually) to fewer than 500. This is a major "pro-life" achievement. It is a major libertarian accomplishment, because liberty has no meaning if people are afraid to open their front doors.
There are too many murders, especially gun murders, in America. If the American people ask what we're going to do about it, we need to provide a coherent answer. We already have 5-10 times as many people in jail as other developed countries, so building more and more jails is NOT the answer. Murder and crime generally are problems, and our political obligation is to SOLVE problems, not to pretend they don't exist.
Many people who call themselves conservatives have defaulted on their obligations as citizens.
There are major, major problems with campaign finance, and it does need to be reformed. Right now, campaign finance as it is will lead to a permanent Democratic majority. Thus, the condemnations of McCain are absurd.
Go to opensecrets.org and see how your least-favorite candidates (Pelosi, Murtha, and Obey) are doing in getting "donations." They're getting so much money that there is no earthly way a Republican candidate could defeat them. The Democrats' national congressional committee has raised TWICE as much money as its Republican counterpart. So, good luck to us on regaining control of Congress.
As for the "Gang of 14," it consisted of some of the best people in the Senate, patriotic Americans who were trying to turn the Senate into something other than an ideological hate machine. They should be commended, not condemned. An imperfect solution to a real problem trumps no solution at all.
Additional part of dialogue with Cindy is below:
Cindy, the situation with self-styled "conservatives" (some of them racists and various haters) is bad -- very bad. However, there's a healthy re-sorting going on in American politics, and that's probably necessary.
I cite one episode where Hillary Clinton was asked if English should be the "official language" in America. She replied, "It should be the national language but not the official language." Right now, she's better on that issue than Republicans. She handled it without ticking off a single Hispanic.
All the Republicans, except McCain, reply that English should be the "official" language. Does that win them any votes? The point of running for office is to take positions acceptable to a majority of voters. Writing off the Hispanic vote will be a disaster, and right now conservatives seem unable to avoid disasters. Appealing only to the "base," about 20% of American voters, is a great way to lose 45-plus states.
This is a government "of, by, and for the people," which includes people who disagree with us. If a majority disagrees with us, it's our problem, not theirs.
Little-Known Political Fact: Without votes from gays and lesbians in the 2000 election, George W. Bush would have lost Florida -- and thus the election. The "inconvenient truth" is that Al Gore would have won that election and probably would still be President. Bush got tens of thousands of gay and lesbian votes in FL, an essential element in his tiny margin of victory (fewer than 600 votes).
Exit polls showed that Bush got about one-quarter of the ballots cast by FL homosexuals. In most surveys, about one-third of gays and lesbians describe their political philosophy as conservative. About the same number define their religious belief as Christian. Those who hate G/L are generally defined as non-Christians, because they violate completely The Second Great Commandment.
In the case of sin, it's critical that we concentrate on our own. We do not know others well enough -- their beliefs, intentions, and actions -- to stand in any sort of judgment of them. If we do otherwise, we are in complete violation of the teachings of Jesus Christ. An individual's sins are between him or her and God.
Showing posts with label Campaign Finance Reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Campaign Finance Reform. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Sunday, December 30, 2007
MURTHA IN ORANGE JUMP SUIT?
The following three paragraphs are from an e-mail I wrote to a friend. I will expand on these comments in Monday's column.
Most conservatives are against Campaign Finance Reform (CFR), but frankly, something has to be done -- otherwise our congressional elections will continue to look more like coronations. Any suggestions?
Right now, the congressional candidate who has the most money wins 94% of the time. Is that really what the Founding Fathers had in mind?
In my blog, I write regularly about John Murtha's financing, which is basically bribery money. In 2004, when he had NO opponent (he got 100% of the votes cast), he spent nearly $1.6 million on his "campaign."
Can any of my readers figure out how he "spent" $1.6 million in a race with NO OPPONENT? (Hint: It's going to pay off supporters for their votes and donations. Yeah, I'm saying he's transferring back money that orginally came about as earmarks. Yikes.)
Apparently, he has spent nearly $1,000,000 in 2007 (for a race in 2008). Think your very worst thoughts about where that money is going. The exact figures should be out in approximately 10 days on http://www.opensecrets.org/.
The best way you can do something about this situation is to send a contribution to William Russell.
James H. said the following in the Comments section:
Let ME say this about Campaign Finance reform. I think the key to reform is not limiting money but it being very transparent!!!
If I wish to spend my money promoting political cause x I think that is sacred. I think that should be protected.
As to Murtha. I guess after last year and his weird comments on troop deployments I can never understand why people would vote him in. I suppose as Tip O'Neil said All politics is local and he must have an angle there that I am not seeing a thousand miles away.
The following is my response:
James: I hope there is a debate about campaign finance. Some of the donations (so-called) are transparent. In Murtha's case, they are from people (UPMC, PMA Group, CTC) who have benefited from huge handouts (earmarks) and are paying Murtha back for them.
If Murtha accepts a bag-full of money from the PMA Lobbying Group, it's illegal. If it comes in the form of checks, it's legal. The Democratic Left (George Soros and friends) is winning the fund-raising battle.
As long as that happens, "democracy" becomes something of a sham, a process designed to re-elect incumbents unto something approaching eternity. We will have the "right" to go out and vote for candidates who don't have a chance of winning. (We will win the race against Murtha, but it won't be because we outspent him.)
All that said, I hope you'll contribute to William Russell, which you can do by going to: http://williamrussellforcongress.com/. He's an outstanding candidate.
My Fellow Conservatives, Please Grow Up!
Like my fellow conservative Cindy, at The Pink Flamingo, I must be part of a declining breed: i.e., someone who'd rather win an election with a good candidate than lose one with an ideologically pure individual. On one board, someone was writing about how Republican presidential candidates had to be more conservative. I wrote the following:
My response is that the candidates seem to be running for President of the United States not the President of Alabama and Mississippi. I've just been reading the wonderful Almanac of American Politics about the election of 2006. All the Democrats in the House (more than two-thirds of them) who voted against the border fence got re-elected -- not most of them, all of them.
Many of the Republicans who voted for it (and all but six did) lost. That scenario is of course the opposite of what some people are assuring us will happen in 2008, though there's no poll evidence to suggest they're right. Do we really need to make ourselves into a permanent minority? We're very much headed in that direction.
Look at it this way: in 2006, many Republican conservatives (in the upper house, Sen. George Allen, Sen. Jim Tallent, Sen. Mike DeWine, Tom Kean, and Sen. Rick Santorum) lost. Who won against them? Oh, a bunch of Democratic liberals. Anyone who ignores that development has nothing to say on the political situation.
Most conservatives are against Campaign Finance Reform (CFR), but frankly, something has to be done -- otherwise our congressional elections will continue to look more like coronations. Any suggestions?
Right now, the congressional candidate who has the most money wins 94% of the time. Is that really what the Founding Fathers had in mind?
In my blog, I write regularly about John Murtha's financing, which is basically bribery money. In 2004, when he had NO opponent (he got 100% of the votes cast), he spent nearly $1.6 million on his "campaign."
Can any of my readers figure out how he "spent" $1.6 million in a race with NO OPPONENT? (Hint: It's going to pay off supporters for their votes and donations. Yeah, I'm saying he's transferring back money that orginally came about as earmarks. Yikes.)
Apparently, he has spent nearly $1,000,000 in 2007 (for a race in 2008). Think your very worst thoughts about where that money is going. The exact figures should be out in approximately 10 days on http://www.opensecrets.org/.
The best way you can do something about this situation is to send a contribution to William Russell.
James H. said the following in the Comments section:
Let ME say this about Campaign Finance reform. I think the key to reform is not limiting money but it being very transparent!!!
If I wish to spend my money promoting political cause x I think that is sacred. I think that should be protected.
As to Murtha. I guess after last year and his weird comments on troop deployments I can never understand why people would vote him in. I suppose as Tip O'Neil said All politics is local and he must have an angle there that I am not seeing a thousand miles away.
The following is my response:
James: I hope there is a debate about campaign finance. Some of the donations (so-called) are transparent. In Murtha's case, they are from people (UPMC, PMA Group, CTC) who have benefited from huge handouts (earmarks) and are paying Murtha back for them.
If Murtha accepts a bag-full of money from the PMA Lobbying Group, it's illegal. If it comes in the form of checks, it's legal. The Democratic Left (George Soros and friends) is winning the fund-raising battle.
As long as that happens, "democracy" becomes something of a sham, a process designed to re-elect incumbents unto something approaching eternity. We will have the "right" to go out and vote for candidates who don't have a chance of winning. (We will win the race against Murtha, but it won't be because we outspent him.)
All that said, I hope you'll contribute to William Russell, which you can do by going to: http://williamrussellforcongress.com/. He's an outstanding candidate.
My Fellow Conservatives, Please Grow Up!
Like my fellow conservative Cindy, at The Pink Flamingo, I must be part of a declining breed: i.e., someone who'd rather win an election with a good candidate than lose one with an ideologically pure individual. On one board, someone was writing about how Republican presidential candidates had to be more conservative. I wrote the following:
My response is that the candidates seem to be running for President of the United States not the President of Alabama and Mississippi. I've just been reading the wonderful Almanac of American Politics about the election of 2006. All the Democrats in the House (more than two-thirds of them) who voted against the border fence got re-elected -- not most of them, all of them.
Many of the Republicans who voted for it (and all but six did) lost. That scenario is of course the opposite of what some people are assuring us will happen in 2008, though there's no poll evidence to suggest they're right. Do we really need to make ourselves into a permanent minority? We're very much headed in that direction.
Look at it this way: in 2006, many Republican conservatives (in the upper house, Sen. George Allen, Sen. Jim Tallent, Sen. Mike DeWine, Tom Kean, and Sen. Rick Santorum) lost. Who won against them? Oh, a bunch of Democratic liberals. Anyone who ignores that development has nothing to say on the political situation.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Campaign Finances: Government Of, By, and For the Rich
"Money is the mother's milk of politics." -- Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, former Speaker of the House
Scott Fitzgerald (supposedly): "The rich are different from you and me." Ernest Hemingway (supposedly): "Yes, they have more money."
Unless something important comes up -- and it usually does -- I want to write some this week about one of my favorite subjects: money in politics. I'm inspired in this direction because of discussions I've had with several Mike Huckabee supporters, most of whom are also supporting Gov. Sarah Palin.
In the second quarter of the year, Mike Huckabee raised three-quarters-of-a-million dollars. He's said he has enough money to get him through the Ames (Iowa) Straw Poll, which takes place in late August. Mike believes if he places second at Ames -- Mitt Romney will be the winner -- he will be more attractive to donors and will raise more money.
He needs it. Unfortunately, $750,000 (give or take a few bucks) is a drop-in-the-bucket. Barack Obama raised $32 million; Hillary Clinton raised $27 million; Rudy Giuliani raised nearly $18 million; and Mitt Romney raised about $14 million -- after surprising everyone by raising $21 million in the first quarter.
How does a guy like Mitt Romney raise so much more than an attractive conservative (and super guy) like Mike Huckabee. There are two explanation: as a former head of Bain Capital, Romney knows a lot of very rich people. Second, he got major contributions from a relatively untapped group, Mormons (Latter-Day-Saints).
One Provo, Utah man and his wife had never before contributed to a presidential candidate gave Romney the maximum allowable, a combined total of $4,600. They were not unique among Latter-Day-Saints, especially those in Utah and California.
Mike Huckabee has served as a Southern Baptist preacher and is a former governor of Arkansas. On average, Baptists and other evangelicals are not nearly as well-heeled as Mormons. Also, Arkansas is NOT a big-money state, unlike Romney's Massachusetts (where he was governor) and Michigan (where he was born and where he headquarters his campaign).
I'm rather intimately acquainted with the problems Mike faces. In 2006, I was extremely active in Diana Lynn Irey's campaign against the odious John Murtha in Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District (an area mainly in southwestern Pennsylvan, including Johnstown (Murtha's home) and Washington (Diana's home.
In that campaign -- you can find most of this information at opensecrets.org link on the blogroll -- Murtha raised $3.5 million, most of it from political action committees (PACS) and big donors. Diana, with an heroic fundraising campaign, raised nearly $900,000.
At one point, Murtha accused Diana of being financed by "out-of-state" sources, which was -- let me put it politely -- a lie. Nearly four-of-every-five dollars Diana raised came from Pennsylvania, some of it from my wife and me, as well as from friends we solicited for contributions.
Murtha got most of his money from the DC suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, where million-dollar-mansions are a dime-a-dozen. Who lives there? The LOBBYISTS -- the people benefitted by appropriations from John Murtha's activities and "earmarks" -- live there. They weren't handing Murtha thousands -- and tens of thousands -- of dollars for his work in solidifying good government.
Well, since Murtha raised four times as much money as Diana, he must have had a lot more contributors, right? No, WRONG. He had a total of 6,500 contributors. Diana had 7,000, with contributions from all 50 states, including some from Hawaii and Alaska.
(Someday, when I'm in a really nasty mood, I'll tell you how Murtha spent that money. He uses an approach that my wife, who's half-Italian describes as, "You sratcha my back, and I scratcha you back." It's basically a transfer of funds, where a vendor of services contributes to Murtha, and the congressman "contributes" back to the vendor. . Gee, why don't the local newspapers expose this scam? The owner of one important newspaper -- Richard Mellon Scaife -- has lunch regulary with Murtha. The owner of the other paper has ensured that periodical endorses Murtha every two-years.)
In short, Diana and I know how Mike Huckabee feels. In politics, the rich not only get richer, but also get elected -- and re-elected. Murtha has now been in Congress for 33 years, and he'll be carried out of that august institution feet first.
Diana, my friend and political ally, is the perfect conservative candidate -- not just a Sarah-Palin lookalike but a Sarah-Palin act-alike. And she had and has no chance of defeating Murtha, singled out by one independent group as one of the 25-most-corrupt congressman.
When I hear Republicans snarling against campaign finance reform and using "McCain-Feingold" as almost a curse term, I get driven almost to tears. This is NOT a good system. It rewards the rich and those who do political favors for the rich. It leads to "government of, by, and for the rich." And it stinks.
Stephen R. Maloney
P.S. If you want to know what Diana Irey is up to these days, look on my blogroll and click on her link. She's running for re-election as Washington County Commissioner. She's also serving as a fundraiser for one of the Republican presidential candidates. She'd very much like to meet Sarah Heath Palin, and she will.
Scott Fitzgerald (supposedly): "The rich are different from you and me." Ernest Hemingway (supposedly): "Yes, they have more money."
Unless something important comes up -- and it usually does -- I want to write some this week about one of my favorite subjects: money in politics. I'm inspired in this direction because of discussions I've had with several Mike Huckabee supporters, most of whom are also supporting Gov. Sarah Palin.
In the second quarter of the year, Mike Huckabee raised three-quarters-of-a-million dollars. He's said he has enough money to get him through the Ames (Iowa) Straw Poll, which takes place in late August. Mike believes if he places second at Ames -- Mitt Romney will be the winner -- he will be more attractive to donors and will raise more money.
He needs it. Unfortunately, $750,000 (give or take a few bucks) is a drop-in-the-bucket. Barack Obama raised $32 million; Hillary Clinton raised $27 million; Rudy Giuliani raised nearly $18 million; and Mitt Romney raised about $14 million -- after surprising everyone by raising $21 million in the first quarter.
How does a guy like Mitt Romney raise so much more than an attractive conservative (and super guy) like Mike Huckabee. There are two explanation: as a former head of Bain Capital, Romney knows a lot of very rich people. Second, he got major contributions from a relatively untapped group, Mormons (Latter-Day-Saints).
One Provo, Utah man and his wife had never before contributed to a presidential candidate gave Romney the maximum allowable, a combined total of $4,600. They were not unique among Latter-Day-Saints, especially those in Utah and California.
Mike Huckabee has served as a Southern Baptist preacher and is a former governor of Arkansas. On average, Baptists and other evangelicals are not nearly as well-heeled as Mormons. Also, Arkansas is NOT a big-money state, unlike Romney's Massachusetts (where he was governor) and Michigan (where he was born and where he headquarters his campaign).
I'm rather intimately acquainted with the problems Mike faces. In 2006, I was extremely active in Diana Lynn Irey's campaign against the odious John Murtha in Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District (an area mainly in southwestern Pennsylvan, including Johnstown (Murtha's home) and Washington (Diana's home.
In that campaign -- you can find most of this information at opensecrets.org link on the blogroll -- Murtha raised $3.5 million, most of it from political action committees (PACS) and big donors. Diana, with an heroic fundraising campaign, raised nearly $900,000.
At one point, Murtha accused Diana of being financed by "out-of-state" sources, which was -- let me put it politely -- a lie. Nearly four-of-every-five dollars Diana raised came from Pennsylvania, some of it from my wife and me, as well as from friends we solicited for contributions.
Murtha got most of his money from the DC suburbs of Maryland and Virginia, where million-dollar-mansions are a dime-a-dozen. Who lives there? The LOBBYISTS -- the people benefitted by appropriations from John Murtha's activities and "earmarks" -- live there. They weren't handing Murtha thousands -- and tens of thousands -- of dollars for his work in solidifying good government.
Well, since Murtha raised four times as much money as Diana, he must have had a lot more contributors, right? No, WRONG. He had a total of 6,500 contributors. Diana had 7,000, with contributions from all 50 states, including some from Hawaii and Alaska.
(Someday, when I'm in a really nasty mood, I'll tell you how Murtha spent that money. He uses an approach that my wife, who's half-Italian describes as, "You sratcha my back, and I scratcha you back." It's basically a transfer of funds, where a vendor of services contributes to Murtha, and the congressman "contributes" back to the vendor. . Gee, why don't the local newspapers expose this scam? The owner of one important newspaper -- Richard Mellon Scaife -- has lunch regulary with Murtha. The owner of the other paper has ensured that periodical endorses Murtha every two-years.)
In short, Diana and I know how Mike Huckabee feels. In politics, the rich not only get richer, but also get elected -- and re-elected. Murtha has now been in Congress for 33 years, and he'll be carried out of that august institution feet first.
Diana, my friend and political ally, is the perfect conservative candidate -- not just a Sarah-Palin lookalike but a Sarah-Palin act-alike. And she had and has no chance of defeating Murtha, singled out by one independent group as one of the 25-most-corrupt congressman.
When I hear Republicans snarling against campaign finance reform and using "McCain-Feingold" as almost a curse term, I get driven almost to tears. This is NOT a good system. It rewards the rich and those who do political favors for the rich. It leads to "government of, by, and for the rich." And it stinks.
Stephen R. Maloney
P.S. If you want to know what Diana Irey is up to these days, look on my blogroll and click on her link. She's running for re-election as Washington County Commissioner. She's also serving as a fundraiser for one of the Republican presidential candidates. She'd very much like to meet Sarah Heath Palin, and she will.
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