New Blog – www.courageofconviction.org

It’s finally ready – my new blog – www.courageofconviction.org.  I decided to get my act together and get a unique web address and make my blog look more professional.  It’ll still be the same great blogging, but a nicer looking site. 

If I’m on your blogroll, please change my blog address to the new www.courageofconviction.org.  I will be adding blogs to my blog list, I have a regular survey to get yoru comments and thoughts on the issues of the day, and will be playing with all sorts of bells and whistles that wordpress offers. 

None of the Above

A group calling themselves NOTA-PA (which stands for None of the Above) has dropped a couple of e-mails into my inbox announcing the formation of the group and a press release urging people to write-in “None of the Above,” if you are dissatisfied with the candidates on the ballot. 

 I like the idea for the simple reason that I really don’t like too many of the candidates on the ballot this year.  I’m not one to vote for someone because they are the better of two bad candidates.  In that case, I usually find that you do more damage to the conservative cause because the better of the two idiots makes one small change in your favor, but refuses to go any further – how does that help you.  I want people in who are going to make changes, not throw one bone at me and tell me that I have to keep supporting the incumbent or we’ll end up with something worse.  Maybe we should just get rid of the incumbent, take the worse of the two in order to get a candidate who will make some real changes once in office.  It’s kind of the one step back, in order to go two steps forward mentality. 

This may be the first election I can think of where I’m actually not looking forward to voting.  That’s sad, considering I am a self-proclaimed political junkie.  As you well know, I am looking forward to voting for Sen. Santorum – he’s the one bright spot on the ballot I can think of.   But the others are less than thrilling for the most part. 

The rest of this week, I’ll take a look at all the races I can vote in and see if the NOTA fits.  This should be a fun week of blogging.

Lowman Henry is Right

Lowman Henry is dead on right.  Click here to read his latest article. 

As I’ve been saying for some time now, the pay raise fiasco wasn’t so much about the arrogance that surrounded the pay raise and how it was passed – although it was a huge act of arrogance.  What lawmakers, or in this case, arrogant little despots, didn’t get was that they had broken a vow with the people.  They lost our trust.  And as a result, they deserve to suffer the consequences in order to clean up the mess they created. 

Do I think Republicans will lose the House and Senate at both the State and Federal level?  No one really knows right now, it’s still to far away from election day.  The one thing Republicans have going for them is that they are up against the Democrats – which have no clue what they stand for, except for the fact that they aren’t Republicans. 

Regardless, many Republicans don’t deserve to be returned to office.  I for one am hard pressed to find too many that I can honestly and openly support this year.  The one Republican that I do support openly is Sen. Santorum.  He, unlike many other Republicans running for office this year, is different.  He hasn’t forgotten his conservative roots.  He hasn’t participated in arrogant legislative processes.  That’s what he hasn’t done.  What he has done is even better - he has stayed true to what got him elected in the first place – He understand who he is, what he stands for, and why. 

Too bad other Republicans can’t find their backbone like Sen. Santorum.  It would be a breath of fresh air in a land of political smog. 

Legislative Reform

An article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (here) talks about about legislation to reduce the size of the legislature.  As I’ve mentioned before, I think this is a terrible idea.  The quote from the article that sums up my idea is this:

“Preston cautioned not to take changing the Constitution lightly, saying state leaders set up the Legislature as it is to protect the people and prevent power from being centralized. “

With the current legislature and the legislative leadership in place, this one reason alone should be enough reason for everyone to oppose reducing the size of the legislature.  Perzel already has too much power in his hands, why make it easier for him? 

It’s been my belief all along that the legislature shouldn’t be more efficient – we saw efficiency on July 5th, 2005.  We don’t need a smaller legislature – we need a legislature that is in session less often.  We don’t need a more professional class of legislators, we need more regular working men and woman who are in touch with the people they represent and who have a real job. 

Interesting Republican Developments

This relates to Rob Gleason as Chairman and Lynn Swann as candidate.  These are not any tips I got, or anything of that nature, more just about my thoughts on recent events. 

First Gleason – The PA Republican Assembly is getting some press for their call to kick Mr. Gleason out of the role of Chairman of the PA Republican Party.  The only point I want to make here is that they are not the first ones. If you recall, there were a group of PA bloggers, myself included that opposed Mr. Gleason’s ascent to the Chairmanship.  You can read the open letter we wrote “A Vote of No Confidence” here.   We released this open letter online on June 2nd of this year.  We called on the State Committee, or atleast one lone Committeeperson to take a stand – but none did.  I’m glad to see that others are starting see why we opposed Mr. Gleason in the first place. 

On to Swann.  I’m told that Swann did a fantastic job during the recent debate.  I didn’t see – mostly because I didn’t even know there was a debate until after is was over.  I concider myself a political junkie, I’m in touch with the issues, I visit news sites, etc.  How did I miss this?  I don’t honestly know. 

My own comments on the Swann campaign are this – it’s not good when the talk about the governor’s race is not about your candidate winning the debate, but about who should replace the head of the ticket to give the party a chance to win – click here.  

Cable Competition

I saw an article off of GrassrootsPA on cable competition – click here to read it.  I’m amused by the whole thing. 

You have to understand a few things about me though in order to understand my amuzement. 

First off, I don’t have cable.  I never grew up with it in our house as a child.  I didn’t have it in College.  We did have it in the house I lived in DC, only because the three other people in the house couldn’t live without it.  I can’t say I watched much TV.  My wife and I don’t have cable.  She never had it growing up either.  (So much for the arguement that only children are spoiled – both she and I are only children)  We just don’t watch that much TV.  Let’s be honest, is there really that much on TV that’s worth paying for?  I watch Lost and the Amazing Race.  And Football of course.  That’s it.  That’s my entire viewing habits. 

Let me get back to the article.  First off, why isn’t there competition for cable?  Cable isn’t a necessary function of life, why is government even involved in the first place.  Let the cable companies have at each other I say.  It reminds me of the telephone deregulation.  Why was government regulating telephones?

The other amusing thing I saw in the article was in the first paragraph -

“State Sen. Gibson Armstrong said he probably gets more complaints about ever-rising cable rates than anything else.”

Is this for real?  Who are these people?  Let’s see, there are hot issues out there like immigration, national security, taxes, property taxes, abortion, gay marriage, etc.  and people are complaining about their cable bills????  WOW.  When you think about it, it’s kind of comforting to know that were really not in that bad a situation as everyone tells us we are in.  How else could cable bill complaints make it to the top of the list.

Gabig’s Total Recall

PA State Rep. Will Gabig, R-199th, announced that he was introducing a bill to allow recall of elected officials in PA.  Here’s the PR from his site.

Here’s why I think this is a bad idea.  First of all, it doesn’t deal with the real issue at hand – we need to reform how government works, which means stop allowing the legislators to bypass the Constitution whenever it is convenient for them.  If you fix that, you don’t need recall. 

Second reason, the initial recall movement in the 19th and 20th centuries was pushed by progressives and communists as a way to change government in their favor.  Who knew Gabig though progressives and communists had good ideas.

Third reason, and this is fundamental to elective democracy – people deserve who they vote for.  We have one election for an office ever 2, 4 or 6 years.  If you don’t like the guy, then too damn bad – work harder next time to get the voters to agree with you.  It’s the same reason I don’t like term limits.  We already have term limits – they are called elections.  If people voted in someone they like, why should they be forced to pick someone else.  If they keep picking bad politicians, then they also deserve those politicians and the scorn that others have for them for making that decision. 

In our current state of politics there would be a committee to recall so-and-so in ever single district, every year.  This would get to be a circus and no one would take it seriously anymore. 

Hugo Chavez, Oy Vey!!!

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezula has been railing against President Bush for two days now – today he called Bush the devil.  I’ll give him this much, at least he has the courage to do it here in the US.  That’s about all I’ll give him though. 

There’s an old adage that I like – You can’t prove another man is an idiot, you have to let him do it for you. 

I think that sage advice is sound here as well.  Although I’d like to add an additional question to Mr. Chavez – How well are you sleeping Hugo?  It must be pretty difficult to get a good night’s sleep with your head shoved so far up your own ass.

Our Supreme Court

Our wonderful PA Supreme Court never ceases to amaze me.  Of course i am referring to the recent decision to overturn the Legislature’s pay raise repeal. 

The Court decided that the nonseverability clause was inconvenient and ignored it. 

I think was we are witnessing is a power struggle within the state.  You have the Court giving the Legislature the middle finger as payback for the repeal.  If I wasn’t mistaken, I can actually see the Court laughing their way to the bank.  The Court’s new goal must be to make as many of the legislature lose in November as possible – why else flare up the pay raise disease that has ravaged the state?

Of course part of the reason also has to do with how out of touch the Court is with regular, normal people.  Here’s a good quote from the Patriot-News article to show that -

Justice Ronald D. Castille, who wrote last week’s opinion and also attended the Chamber breakfast, said he was making $155,000 when he left private practice in the early 1990s and now makes $151,000.

Gee Justice, if serving the public is such a hardship, maybe you should go back to private practice. 

I’m Back!!!

I’m back after a well deserved rest. 

I ran in the Rochester, NY half-marathon.  While I didn’t finish as fast as I wanted to, I also didn’t do as bad as I have in the past.  I finished in two hours five minutes and a few seconds.  it was a great experience though – my legs were healthy, finally.  My legs held up great, but I still have to work on the mind games with myself.  I ended up walking a few times at the end of the race, which I wasn’t happy with.  But overall, it was a good learning experience and training run as I prepare for Chicago next month. 

On to politics – What in the world happened while I was away – too much to write about here. The PA Judiciary keeping the pay raise alive and well, McCain acting crazy, coups in Thailand, etc.  All sorts of crazy stuff.  I’ll be back to my regular routine of blogging, now that I am back. 

And as promised, I’ll have a brand new blog project to reveal very soon (within a week).  I’m just putting a few finishing touches on it to make it look pretty.  I’ll let you know when I’m ready.