Mary Jo Kilroy's Disingenous Astroturf Campaign

Watching the CBS Evening News on Tuesday night I caught incumbent Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy delivering what may be the most ironic quote of the political season. Speaking of the latest CBS News/New York Times poll Kilroy offered, "And as far as this GOP energy, I think a lot of it is 'astro-turf.' That means it's not real grassroots. It's these phony grassroots."

Yes, "It's these phony grassroots", indeed. Let's take a sentimental journey down Kilroy's faulty logic path: The poll is real. The results are real; they say more than three in four Ohio residents described themselves as either angry or dissatisfied with the federal government--with Kilroy's failed policies. So if the poll and the results are real then in order for it to be "these phony grassroots" the citizens must be fake. So she's saying more than three in four Ohio residents are fake Republican interlopers from out-of-state... What?!? That kind of lunacy is even harder to follow than Kilroy's magical thinking that spending money we don't have will lower the deficit! Kilroy's looking more like Norma Desmond every day.

Let's explore a more likely reality: the Congresswoman made a Freudian slip.

Several sources have already reported on Congresswoman Kilroy's fliers seeking $10/hour "paid volunteers" who would, ostensibly, devotedly campaign for Kilroy out of their deeply held belief in... needing cash.

This could be a cultural difference between the values of the the Ohio 15th District and the "values" of Washington, D.C. where they have to declare "Prostitution Free Zones" in order to keep pay-for-play at bay, but here in the OH-15 we don't call it love if you have to pay for it.

And looking over Federal Election Commission filings it gets worse: Kilroy's astroturfing campaign receives assistance from twenty-two additional mercenary campaigners from Working America, the independent expenditure arm of the AFL-CIO. (For the record, Working America pays better than Kilroy for Congress.) A review of the Working America astroturfers' addresses as filed with the FEC reveals nearly half of them don't even live in the 15th District.

So, in review, Kilroy's "volunteers" are:

1) Compensated for their pro-Kilroy opinion.
2) Bused in from outside the voting district.

That is the very definition of astroturf campaigning! And it's pathetic.

This is what REAL grassroots looks like:

Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers with actual volunteers

And within the ranks of Congresswoman Kilroy's astroturfer/"these phony grassroots" mercenary army there are some accompanying hypocrisies:

1) In the wake of the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission ruling, which expanded the rights of unions and corporations to make independent expenditures in federal elections, Congresswoman Kilroy made a big show of signing a pledge opposing independent expenditures. If she were truly principled about the issue she would have refused the aid of Working America but, apparently, she was only putting on a show for media benefit. Changing her opinions based on who she thinks is watching makes Mary Jo Kilroy a sleazy flip-flopper.

2) The rental vans used to haul around Kilroy's mercenary Working America crew filled up with BP gas. Twice. One would expect that after all the Congresswoman's carping about how "BP must pay" and after she signed the bpmakesmesick.com petition that her campaign staff wouldn't patronize the company. As it turns out, all that rhetoric was just for show.

Mary Jo Kilroy is disingenuousness personified.

Mary Jo Kilroy is Addicted to Lying

Mary Jo Kilroy is what's wrong with politics. She knowingly lies, distorts, and obfuscates in an attempt to confuse busy voters without the time and energy to factcheck her every false statement. She does it because it's her nature and her only hope. If voters decide this election based on the issues--jobs (or the present lack thereof) and the Pelosi Congress's ruinous spending--Mary Jo Kilroy is toast. Defeated. Over. Unemployed.

Congresswoman Kilroy's latest attack ad is no exception to her past record of deception. In her first ad she told us she voted against a bill that was voted on before she took office. Then she tried to imply she was anti-lobbyist when she's been an active part of a Congress that has created a "golden age" for lobbyists. Now she's running an ad (link forthcoming) with a completely false claim that Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers wants to create a 23% national sales tax.

Kilroy's ad cites a Union County & Galloway 912 Project Federal Candidate Questionnaire as her source for the bogus claim. The specific question the Congresswoman bases her misleading assumption on (below) was a multifaceted question inquiring as to how Lt. Colonel Stivers would vote on legislation to eliminate the progressive income tax. Because Stivers supports "a flatter, more simple tax system with less loopholes"--a more equitable system--he answered, correctly and honestly, that he would vote for eliminating the complicated progressive income tax (which most likely would be done without tampering with the 16th Amendment).

We've seen in the past that when in desperate situations Democrats tend to forget the definition of basic words like "is". In Kilroy's desperate struggle to hold on to her job she must have forgotten the definition of the word "or". In checking "Support" Stivers was not endorsing BOTH a flat tax AND a national sales tax, he was endorsing elimination of the complex progressive income tax structure that we are all burdened by right now. Because he has publicly stated his preference for "a flatter, more simple tax system with less loopholes" and is on record against a national sales tax, using Midwestern common sense (which Congresswoman Kilroy apparently lacks) we can draw the logical conclusion that Stivers supports a flatter, simpler tax system with less loopholes and not a national sales tax.

As an aside, I imagine Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would agree with Steve Stivers that the tax code needs simplified. After all, Secretary Geithner's confirmation hearings proved a testament to the complexity of the tax code.

Furthermore--and this is in very stark contrast with the claims made in Kilroy's deceitful ad--Stivers has been quoted very recently by The Columbus Dispatch stating his adamant opinion that, "Now is not the time to raise taxes on anybody." Conversely, Mary Jo Kilroy wants to raise taxes by ending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. According to a CNN Money survey 60% of economists agree with Stivers's position. Some prominent Democrats agree with Stivers too.

Once again Mary Jo Kilroy is out on a limb and out of touch. And once again she's trying to cover it up with another shamelessly dishonest ad. Politics as usual for Mary Jo.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and Mary Jo Kilroy's gotta lie.

Kilroy's K Street Love

The most predictable act of the OH-15 congressional race has taken place: incumbent Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy has attacked Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers with a negative TV ad. With her past history of running negative campaigns, the fact that she aired a negative ad isn't itself worth discussing, but the hypocrisy of the message contained in the ad is well worth highlighting.

The ad decries the number of lobbyists in Washington, D.C., but fails to mention that under the Obama Administration and the Pelosi Congress lobbyists are thriving like never before. The Weekly Standard calls the current Democrat-created environment in Washington a "golden age" for lobbyists. And they're correct in doing so: 2009 set a record as the most profitable year ever for the lobbying industry with a walloping $3.47 billion dollars being spent on lobbying the federal government. And they couldn't have done it without Mary Jo Kilroy and her liberal ilk in Congress.

"Lobbyists love it ... when you've got an activist agenda like this," said James Thurber, the director of American University's Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, of the Obama-Pelosi agenda. And the lobbyists who are thriving aren't Republicans either--they're Democrats. The much-decried "army of lobbyists" President Obama and Congresswoman Kilroy carp about include many faces friendly and familiar to them: former Obama administration officials, prominent Democratic donors, former lawmakers, and former staff members of the current Congressional Democrats. People like Obama's failed Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee and tax-dodger Tom Daschle; Obama transition team co-chair John Podesta's BP lobbyist brother Tony and sister-in-law Heather; Goldman Sachs's Michael Paese, formerly an aide to House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (as in Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act).

Kilroy's Army

What's worse is that the anti-lobbyist rhetoric of Kilroy and Obama is pushing lobbying into a black market. The Huffington Post brands the new trend "influence laundering". To get around the scorn and disclosure requirements of being publicly known as a lobbyist many Washington influence peddlers are deregistering themselves. Effectively, this sends much of the lobbying industry underground to a world free of transparency and accountability for both lobbyists and Kilroy lawmakers alike. (Remember when Congresswoman Kilroy inserted a provision into the financial reform bill that sent bond deals underground? --It's like she's got an ax to grind with the very ideas of transparency and accountability.) For his part, President Obama has found his own clever way around the transparency requirements he instated.

In truth the only way to curb the influence of the "army of lobbyists" is to cut the size of government; if the beast starves it will die. President Obama and Congresswoman Kilroy have kept the beast well-fed with Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank "reform" bill, and cap-and-trade. It's time for the lobbyists' "golden age" to end!

Mary Jo Kilroy did get one line right in her attack ad: With big lobbyist enablers like her in Washington, it is no wonder our voices never get heard.