Posts Tagged ‘Stestak’
PA GOP News Brief – 7.30.10
July 30th, 2010 | 
Author: PA GOP News Brief – 7.30.10
1. Rasmussen Reports: Election 2010: Pennsylvania Senate
3. Altoona Mirror: Tax hikes hurt job creation
4. The Wall Street Journal: The Rangel Dispensation
5. Town Hall: “Bipartisan” Dems Go on the Attack
1. Rasmussen Reports: Election 2010: Pennsylvania Senate
Republican Pat Toomey continues to hold a small lead over Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Pennsylvania Voters shows Toomey earning 45% support, while Sestak picks up 39% of the vote. Six percent (6%) prefer another candidate in the race, and 10% are undecided.
That’s little changed from two weeks ago.
Sixty-six percent (66%) of Pennsylvania voters regard Toomey as politically conservative, and 42% place his views in the mainstream. Twenty-seven percent (27%) see him as an extremist, with 31% undecided.
Forty-five percent (45%) feel that Sestak is politically liberal, while 27% characterize him as a moderate. But 39% regard his views an extreme, while nearly as many (37%) think his views are in the mainstream. But roughly one-in-four voters (23%) aren’t sure.
Republican Party of Pennsylvania Spokesman Mike Barley released the following statement calling on Joe Sestak and fellow Democratic members of Congress Paul Kanjorski, Kathy Dahlkemper, Jason Altmire, Chris Carney, Tim Holden, Mark Critz, Allyson Schwartz, Mike Doyle, Chaka Fattah and Bob Brady continued refusal to call for Charlie Rangel’s resignation.
“What will it take for Joe Sestak and his fellow Democratic members of Congress to finally take a stand and call for the ethically challenged Congressman Charlie Rangel to resign,” Barley said. “It’s been months since allegations surrounding Charlie Rangel’s unethical behavior first came to light, and yet Joe Sestak and nearly all of his Democratic colleagues have remained silent on this issue as Charlie Rangel continues to serve as a United States Congressman.”
3. Altoona Mirror: Tax hikes hurt job creation
With the nation’s unemployment rate still troubling at 9.5 percent, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner believes it is time to kill more of the country’s job-creation ability.
Geithner did not put it that way, of course. He and his boss, President Barack Obama, continue to insist their actions are lifting the United States out of recession.
While some economic indicators have trended upwards, the unemployment rate remains unacceptably high. In some states, it exceeds the national rate. Ohio, for example, is suffering from 10.5 percent unemployment.
Economists warn the recovery is a very fragile one. Missteps could plunge us back into a more severe downturn. Geithner, Obama and other policy makers do not seem to understand that. On Sunday, the treasury secretary suggested tax increases may be a good idea.
4. The Wall Street Journal: The Rangel Dispensation
As we went to press last night, it wasn’t clear if Charlie Rangel would cut a plea deal with the House ethics committee to avoid a public trial. Still, the rap sheet of 13 alleged violations the committee released yesterday after a two-year investigation of the New York Democrat’s conduct in office are an object lesson in the reasons the public holds Congress in contempt. They reveal in detail the culture of entitlement and self-dealing that typifies modern Washington.
***
The most pungent allegations concern the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York and suggest that he used his Chairmanship of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee to lure corporate donations in return for the expectation or hope of favorable tax treatment. The vanity project in Mr. Rangel’s Harlem district was akin to a Presidential library to “preserve the work of my public life,” as he put it in a 2004 letter, and it used several taxpayer earmarks as seed money, including a $1.9 million appropriation in 2007.
5. Town Hall: “Bipartisan” Dems Go on the Attack
With their poll numbers plunging in a jobless recovery, skyrocketing budget deficits, an unpopular health care plan, and their majority teetering on the edge of defeat, Democrats have switched to a novel election strategy: attack the Republicans.
In a campaign strategy that comes directly from the White House high command, Democrats are ditching President Obama’s 2008 campaign promise of political reconciliation and attempting to smear the GOP by tying it to the tea party movement.
The decision, announced Wednesday by Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine, has failure and desperation written all over it.
The tea party movement, which is not a party and has no central organization, was born in the fiery debate over the health care bill in the summer of 2009 as thousands of dissident voters showed up at town hall meetings to express their opposition. It grew over time as Obama’s budget deficits grew to $1.4 trillion last year, then to $1.5 trillion this year. Their common sense response: Enough is enough!
PA GOP News Brief 6.22.2010
PA GOP News Brief 6.22.2010
1) pa2010.com: Gleason right to demand Jobgate answers
2) Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Recent rash of Pennsylvania scandals reminiscent of the 1970s
3) Washington Times: Stimulus aid to states seen delaying ‘day of reckoning’
4) Rolling Stone Politics: The Runaway General
5) pa2010.com: Barletta calls out Kanjo for not holding town halls
6) Allentown Morning Call: RNC creates new reality TV station
1) pa2010.com: Gleason right to demand Jobgate answers
President Obama and his Chicago-style network of cronies have in fact lowered the transparency bar in Washington instead of raising it. Not only has it undermined the Obama presidency, it also continues to undermine politicians like Joe Sestak who pretend to battle the establishment when in fact they’ve been serving as its first line of defense.
It seems as though every day we learn something new about how ethically challenged this White House truly is. From the Cornhusker Kickback and other crooked deals used to pass ObamaCare, to the more recent scandals over White House job offers to political candidates, each new ethical lapse discredits President Obama’s empty campaign rhetoric about “changing” Washington.
According to the National Journal, recent polling suggests that a majority of Americans think the job offer to Congressman Sestak was either unethical or illegal and “a wide majority of both GOP voters (76&) and independents (58%) said they believe there should be an independent investigation into jobs discussions.”
Pennsylvanians, like most Americans, want answers on Mr. Sestak’s dealings with the White House and discrepancies over exactly how many times they reached out to him during his campaign. If nothing illegal happened, there is no reason not to allow an independent investigation to answer these questions.
2) Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: Recent rash of Pennsylvania scandals reminiscent of the 1970s
HARRISBURG — Not since the scandals of the late Democratic Gov. Milton Shapp’s administration in the 1970s has Pennsylvania experienced such a spate of corruption charges at the state and local levels, political and government analysts said yesterday.
Over the past two years, the state Attorney General’s Office, federal prosecutors and the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office combined to charge 28 former and current members and staffers of the General Assembly. In addition, more than two dozen local and judicial officials have been charged in an FBI investigation in Luzerne County that started with the so-called kids-for-cash bribery scandal.
At about the same time Friday that former House Democratic Whip Mike Veon was sentenced to six to 14 years in prison for theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest, the FBI was raiding the home and office of Senate Minority Leader Robert Mellow, D-Lackawanna County. Authorities have not disclosed the focus of that investigation. In April, the FBI searched the home of Sen. Raphael Musto, D-Pittston.
Attorney General Tom Corbett, the Republican candidate for governor, noted that his office started the investigations against the Legislature. He would not discuss any possible overlap between the state and federal investigations. “I can’t speak for the others,” he said. “The other investigations, the other agencies all have to rise and fall on their own merit.”
3) Washington Times: Stimulus aid to states seen delaying ‘day of reckoning’
A debate is raging over whether stimulus funds are actually helping states weather the recession or simply enabling them to postpone matching a record drop in tax revenues since 2007 with badly needed spending reforms and cuts.
Congress so far has balked at extending such a generous state aid package. It appears in trouble in the Senate, where legislators are increasingly concerned about the federal government’s own severe budget problems.
But 30 states have adopted budgets that depend on Congress approving at least $24 billion in extended funding for Medicaid, the low-income health care program, which ballooned in size during the recession as many jobless people became eligible for the free medical care.
“It’s the day of reckoning,” said Bob Williams, co-founder of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation and former auditor at the Government Accountability Office. With few exceptions, the states got used to rapid growth in both revenues and spending during the economic boom and now must relearn how to live within their means, he said.
4) Rolling Stone Politics: The Runaway General (contains strong language)
Stanley McChrystal, Obama’s top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.
Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as “shortsighted,” saying it would lead to a state of “Chaos-istan.” The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One.
Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better.
5) pa2010.com: Barletta calls out Kanjo for not holding town halls
With members of Congress throughout the country notably avoiding the usual summer slate of town hall meetings, Republican Lou Barletta is being particularly dogged in going after Congressman Paul Kanjorski (D-11) over the issue.
Barletta, the Hazleton mayor who is trying to unseat Kanjorski for the third time in eight years, launched his first attack last week, saying Kanjorski is “hiding from the people.” He kept up the assault this week, noting that Kanjorski found time to schedule an appearance next month before the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, an industry-funded regulator.
“Kanjorski is refusing to meet with the people and answer their questions in the open format a town hall meeting would provide, but he is all too willing to appear with his Wall Street buddies in a controlled environment where he won’t have to face the tough questions,” Barletta said in a statement Monday. “This is a slap in the face at the people he claims to represent.”
The latest shots from Barletta underscore that the third matchup between the two candidates will likely be as bitter as the first two. They also show that while Kanjorski is hoping to make his role in crafting financial reform legislation a key political selling point, Barletta will try to make it a liability.
6) Allentown Morning Call: RNC creates new reality TV station
Ok, you gotta give it to them. This is pretty good. The Republican National Committee launched a new web site today creating a lineup of would-be reality TV shows to air on OCN (Obama Chicago Network).
Among them is “Job or No Job” — a play on game show “Deal or No Deal.” The teaser: Joe Sestak, Bill Clinton, a hand shake and a briefcase.
Click here to see the video.
Posted in Briefs, Election, National | 
Tags: 1970's, Afghanistan, Biden, Clinton, General McChrysal, Kanjorski, Stestak | 
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