MainStreetOhio15th

DCCC: Democrats Can't Comprehend Columbus

2010-12-12T08:15:00.004-05:00

The Democrats just don't get it. Only slightly more than a month since taking an electoral thumping of historic proportions the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has gone negative with their first attack (of the 2012 election, that is) against Congressman-Elect Steve Stivers. The attack itself is neither noteworthy nor memorable as it's just more of the same "former bank lobbyist" rubbish that resonated so poorly in the 2010 campaign (the Democrats are fond of repeating failed strategies). This time the old attack is aimed at Congressman-Elect Stivers's assignment to the House Financial Services Committee.

Stivers's assignment to the Financial Services Committee is one of the most logical and intelligent committee assignments that could be made in the 112th Congress. The only thing the Democrats demonstrate by attacking it is how out of touch and totally disconnected from reality they remain.

Stivers has an MBA (that's Master of Business Administration for any Democrat readers), worked as a Vice President for Bank One, worked for the civic-minded investment firm The Ohio Company, and served in the Ohio Senate as Chair of the Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee and Vice Chair of the Finance and Financial Institutions Committee. His professional background is a veritable checklist of desired qualifications for a member of the House Financial Services Committee.

Congressman-Elect Stivers

Where leftist ideologues see a "former bank lobbyist" the American people see someone who understands banking. The Columbus Dispatch explained this very clearly in their endorsement of Stivers: "Kilroy has vilified Stivers for his work in the banking industry, but this background ensures that Stivers understands something that Kilroy does not: that ledgers must balance and that red ink is destructive."

The Democrats don't understand the intelligence of the American people; we're not simple rubes who fall for sound bytes and cynical narratives about all bankers being evil incarnate. If we were, then maybe Stivers wouldn't have dominated incumbent Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy by 13 percentage points and nearly 30,000 votes--actually at that margin, rubes or not rubes, Kilroy was toast!

We voted for Stivers because he understands us. He promised he would view legislation through the lens of our number one issue: jobs. In this district you can't talk about jobs without talking about bank jobs.

The OH-15 is home to almost 60,000 financial and insurance industry jobs. Huntington Bancshares Inc. is headquartered in the district, as are Nationwide Insurance, Grange Insurance, Motorists Insurance, Safe Auto Insurance, and State Auto Insurance. J.P Morgan Chase & Co., which acquired Stivers's former employer Bank One, also maintains a major presence in the district, as do PNC Bank, KeyBank, U.S. Bank, Citigroup, and Fifth Third Bank.

The Ohio 15th District is a major banking and insurance hub, and it is only fitting that our representative should sit on the House Financial Services Committee. Historically, this has been the case with Congressman-Elect Stivers's three most immediate predecessors serving on the Financial Services Committee or its ancestor, the House Banking Committee. That the Democrats would seek to deny us this representation only further demonstrates that they don't understand our needs or share our values.

Of course, after they voted Nancy Pelosi back in as their leader was there really any doubt as to if they shared our values?

Reasserting Our Sovereignty

2010-11-02T07:17:00.003-04:00

Today "We the People" will reassert our sovereignty. It's about time too, because we've been ignored for far too long.

Our number one issue has always been jobs. Not so for Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy and the other Democrats in Congress! Their number one issue has always been whatever House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat, told them it was.

Around this time last year we were all crying out "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" and because our Congresswoman was under the spell of the San Francisco Democrat the topic being debated was Obamacare not jobs. Namely, if the individual mandate is a tax (by the way, now the Administration admits it is). We were desperate for an economic fix, Washington was enraptured by debating the finer points of legislation we didn't ask for--or want.

Over half a wasted year later in March we all were still crying out "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" and the Democrats were still focused on Obamacare. Congresswoman Kilroy refused to hear us. She was too busy listening to Nancy Pelosi.

For his part, Steve Stivers voiced our opposition to the bill. He stated our anger, "It targets taxpayers with new costs in the middle of a terrible recession and it targets the fast-growing Ohio industry of medical-device manufacturing with a new tax that will surely kill jobs."

Speaker Pelosi and Congresswoman Kilroy passed the bill. (They had to so we could find out what was in it, of course.) President Obama signed it into law.

We wanted job creation. We got saddled with new debt.

Obamacare was egregious. What's worse is that it's been just one in a seemingly never-ending series of times we've been ignored:

Cap-and-trade.

The $787 Billion Stimulus.

The Dodd-Frank fiasco.

Raising the national debt limit. Twice.

Congresswoman Kilroy and her ilk haven't listened. Today, we will elect someone who will.

Steve Stivers for U.S. Congress. Vote TODAY.

Union County Believes in Steve

2010-10-29T16:07:00.000-04:00

Steve Stivers is building unstoppable momentum. This week the Marysville Journal-Tribune made the historic decision to endorse him in the race for the Ohio 15th Congressional District seat. I call this decision historic because the Journal-Tribune has never before endorsed a candidate for public office. In its endorsement the paper cited Steve Stivers's lengthy record of dedicated public service and incumbent Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy's unacceptable record of completely ignoring the people of Union County. Said the tribune, "[Kilroy] has done absolutely nothing for the citizens of Union County."

That the Marysville Journal-Tribune has broken with precedent and endorsed a candidate highlights the dire situation our country is in. The move is extraordinary. However, the explanations given for why the Journal-Tribune endorsed Lt. Colonel Stivers over Congresswoman Kilroy are anything but surprising.

The endorsement condemns, "For the past two years, the district's representative, Mary Jo Kilroy, has ignored her constituents." This is painfully obvious in Kilroy's voting record. The Congresswoman has voted in lockstep with Speaker Nancy Pelosi 98% of the time--a voting record that may pleasure the denizens of left coast San Francisco, but it doesn't work for the good folks of the Ohio 15.

She is supposed to represent us faithfully and vote our beliefs and values in Congress. Instead she has shown nothing but disdain and disrespect--and, as evidenced by the Journal-Tribune's rebuke, Kilroy's contempt is directed especially at the more Republican-leaning Union and Madison Counties. It's as though Congresswoman Kilroy shares President Obama's sentiments that we are mere hillbilly bumpkins who cling to our guns or religion or xenophobia and can't comprehend the grand liberal vision.

An examination of Kilroy's constituent outreach initiatives (to call what she's done "constituent outreach" is to expand the term quite liberally) reveals a systemic disregard for the people of this District--and especially for those outside of the Congresswoman's home county, where Kilroy maintains her only district office. By Congresswoman Kilroy's own numbers she visited Union County a meager six times during her first year in office despite a promise to keep a high profile in both Union and Madison Counties.

The Congresswoman's staff has been woefully unavailable to constituents outside of Franklin County. In a smoke-and-mirrors attempt to appear more available to her more geographically distant constituents Kilroy's staff has held "mobile office hours" sessions. Of the two best publicized sessions, the first was a fleeting three hours long and was held a brisk 5.4 miles to the southeast of the Congresswoman's district office (and thus further away from Madison and Union Counties). For the second session Congresswoman Kilroy got bold and ventured as far to the West as Upper Arlington; however, she abbreviated her staff's availability to only two paltry hours--but hey, at least it brought her staff closer to Union and Madison Counties for an ephemeral moment... even if it was only 3.7 miles closer (after all, it's the last two minutes of the 54 minute trek from Richwood that tire a person out).

Congresswoman Kilroy has also demonstrated great disinterest in reaching the citizens of Union County through local media. When the Journal-Tribune, Union County's only daily newspaper, contacted her office for an interview they went through a morass of astounding proportions which resulted in a complete snub of the paper by Kilroy.

It's as though Congresswoman Kilroy has forgotten that the people of this District earn the dollars that pay her $174,000 salary (and, of course, for the $403,981 worth of taxpayer-funded campaign mailings she's franked us with).

It's no small wonder the Marysville Journal-Tribune joined The Columbus Dispatch in endorsing Steve Stivers. As the Journal-Tribune noted Stivers is an "honest and forthright person" who will listen to all the people of the District and be their "true representative".

Positive change is coming.

Mary Jo Kilroy and the Heights of Hypocrisy

2010-10-26T20:36:00.001-04:00

Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy would have you believe that she's the King Richard of anti-Wall Street crusaders. You may have noticed this when she mailed you--at your expense--a brochure titled "Cleaning Up Wall Street's Mess". The reality, however, is (as it always is with Ms. Kilroy) very different. A recent National Review Online article exposes her as "a profiteer from predatory lending and Wall Street speculation". Shocking!

As it turns out, Congresswoman Kilroy's portfolio included shares in Washington Mutual, the largest bank to fail in the crisis and in U.S. history. Luckily for her she sold her shares in 2008 as part of a series of transactions that brought her between $285,000 and $1,050,000 in personal wealth. The Congresswoman's financial disclosure form is mysteriously incomplete (notice the awkward blanks on page 15) leaving it impossible to tell exactly how much the Congresswoman profiteered from the bank her Democratic colleague Senator Carl Levin accuses of building "a conveyor belt that dumped toxic mortgage assets into the markets like a polluter dumping poison into a river."

Kilroy's WaMu involvement in the face of her public Wall Street hate-fest is but one of many instances in which the Congresswoman's rhetoric fails to meet with reality. In a recently produced C-SPAN profile of the Ohio 15th District, Kilroy decries the "poisonous atmosphere of the attack ads". From her statement one might think she is above such tactics. However, the reality is that Congresswoman Kilroy is one of the worst offenders when it comes to creating negatives ads. NBC4 recently slammed Kilroy for running an untrue negative ad that disgracefully alleged that her opponent, a decorated war veteran, is "for sale".

Kilroy has also reached the heights of hypocrisy in accusing Lt. Colonel Stivers of red-baiting in an ad that the Ohio Elections Commission has since found to have accurately portrayed her record of failure. While accusing Stivers of anti-Chinese fear-mongering Congresswoman Kilroy was herself running an ad inciting the same fears. Notice the Chinese characters in the screen capture below:

Kilroy's Red-Baiting Ad

However, while Kilroy has voted for legislation that used our tax dollars to create jobs in China Steve Stivers has not. Kilroy bases her claim that Stivers is pro-corporate tax loopholes and pro-shipping jobs and factories to China on the Americans for Tax Reform pledge below:

I, Steve Stivers, pledge to the taxpayers of the 15th district of the state of Ohio, and to the American people that I will: ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

What magical thinking led Congresswoman Kilroy to read "shipping jobs... and factories to China" out of that is anyone's guess. Congresswoman Kilroy doesn't understand that the people of this district are smart enough to see through her lies. We're not objects to be manipulated.

One more week.

Kilroy Denies Stimulus Shanghai (Another Lie)

2010-10-25T08:57:00.001-04:00

Congresswoman Kilroy seems to be preparing for her post-electoral defeat transition back to trial lawyering (though as a multi-millionaire she may just retire and enjoy her wealth). The Kilroy for Congress campaign has filed a frivolous complaint against Steve Stivers for producing and disseminating an ad that accurately portrays Congresswoman Kilroy's record of supporting the failed stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which created jobs in China.

This is just one more pathetic gasp for attention by Congresswoman Kilroy's desperate campaign. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has walked away from her because they've lost faith that she can win. The people of the OH-15 have long since lost faith in her (the majority of us never had any faith in her to begin with--she won her seat with a mere plurality of the vote). Congresswoman Kilroy knows without a major game-changer her career will end with this election. This complaint is a meritless and cynical stunt to attempt to conjure that game-changer out of thin air, and Kilroy is hoping we'll all be dumb enough to fall for it.

The reality is that Lt. Colonel Stivers's ad contains only true statements. The entirety of Kilroy's complaint hinges on the falsehood that no jobs were created in China as a result of the stimulus. Unfortunately for Kilroy, the stimulus did create jobs in China. It's been widely reported. See the ABC News coverage below:

As reported in The Washington Times last month:

"The Department of Energy estimated that 82,000 [stimulus] jobs have been created and has acknowledged that as much as 80 percent of some green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing tax credits, went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in countries including China, South Korea and Spain, rather than in the United States."

Now I may not be a fancy trial lawyer like Ms. Kilroy, but stimulus money going to "foreign firms" that employ workers "primarily in countries including China... rather than the United States" reads a heck of a lot like stimulus money creating jobs in China. Congresswoman Kilroy may like to ignore this inconvenient truth, but as economist Samuel Sherraden of the progressive think tank New America Foundation said, "We have to recognize that we are funding job-creation programs in Germany, Spain, Japan, and China."

While Kilroy turned a blind eye, other Democratic legislators recognized the problem and were outraged. Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Bob Casey (D-PA), Jon Tester (D-MT), and Ohio's own Sherrod Brown sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Geithner asking him to put a moratorium on the section 1603 grant program responsible for using stimulus money to create jobs in China. In their press release the senators highlighted a project anticipated to create 3,000 jobs in Shenyang, China. The same project's estimated impact in the United States was roughly one tenth the Chinese impact with most U.S. jobs created being only temporary positions.

That's like for every dollar spent we get a dime.

The Treasury Department responded to the senators that it did not have authority to halt the program. Subsequently, Schumer introduced legislation to amend the program to include a "Buy American" requirement. The legislation has not been enacted and thus stimulus funds are still free to flow overseas.

What are we to think when rather than fight to correct legislation that is widely known to benefit China Congresswoman Kilroy turns a blind eye and pretends all is well? Mary Jo Kilroy has been a militant socialist, defended an IRA terrorist on domestic abuse charges, and has received campaign funding from a known front group for HAMAS. Now, she's been exposed as voting in favor of legislation with giveaways for China and is trying to squash the truth about her record by filing a frivolous OEC complaint. Stivers's ad is right to ask, "Whose side is Kilroy on?"

Saving Private Kilroy? Fat Chance!

2010-10-22T10:32:00.000-04:00

I wonder what Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers must think looking over to the opposing camp where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee late last week canceled millions of dollars of advertising and, essentially, cut Congresswoman Kilroy loose to her own devices. In effect, what the Democratic leadership has done is left a comrade behind--something, as a soldier, Stivers has been trained never to do. All four hundred of the troops and contractors he lead during Operation Iraqi Freedom returned home safely.

Congresswoman Kilroy has been the perfect puppet for Speaker Pelosi. In the words of The Columbus Dispatch, she has "marched in virtual lockstep" with the unpopular speaker voting in sync with her 98% of the time. Kilroy voted for Obamacare, the failed $787 billion stimulus plan "that barely made a dent in private-sector unemployment", and supported an energy tax that would have killed over 100,000 Ohio jobs. It's revolting to watch the Democrats abandon her in a bid to hang on to a slim majority after she's blindly supported each and every one of their job-killing measures. Especially after DCCC Chairman Rep. Chris Van Hollen promised her supporters, "I give each of you my word that I am standing with Mary Jo, and that the full strength of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is behind her."

Looks like the Democrat's word isn't worth much.

Congresswoman Kilroy wasn't pressured into wholeheartedly supporting the entirety of the Obama-Pelosi agenda. She is, after all, a Democratic Socialist ideologue and always has been. She's been a poor fit for this politically moderate district. With her votes and actions she has sold us out to special interests time and again. She should have foreseen that her liberal masters would apply a tourniquet to her career in a desperate grasp to hold on to their power. She also should have understood that had she listened to us and faithfully represented us in Washington she could have held on to her own.

But if she had sided with us what would her "old militant friends" have thought?

It's too late for an apology. She chose her side.

She may try to recast herself as an underdog to win sympathy votes. However, a woman who jets around on Air Force One, rolls around with Congress's top dogs, and gets special shout outs from the Speaker of the House of Representatives is no underdog.

Before siding with the agendas of the liberals in Washington over the interests of her constituents Kilroy should have remembered the old adage, "There's no honor among thieves." While she was once a reliable vote in the Pelosi Congress's bid to spend away our country's prosperity and future now she's just a beleaguered comrade who fell behind.

I wonder if she now wishes her Democratic ilk shared Stivers's sense of duty.

Mary Jo Kilroy's Disingenous Astroturf Campaign

2010-09-30T06:54:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-22T09:28:00.001-04:00

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

2010-09-17T19:12:00.001-04:00

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.

Democrats: The "D" Stands for Dishonest

2010-08-17T14:52:00.001-04:00

According to Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez, the Democratic strategy for this fall is to run away from the Democrats' legislative record and try to make the election a choice between political parties. In support of this strategy, President Obama offered up a cutesy little metaphor:

"I do want to point out, when you get in your car, when you go forward, what do you do? You put it in 'D.' When you want to go back, what do you do? You put it in 'R.' We don't want to go into reverse back in the ditch."

Effectively, the strategy is to run against George W. Bush.

"Blame Bush" is hardly a new strategy. One might even say it's a worn-out dogma that has, for far too long, strangled our politics. It's like President Obama's mind is stuck in reverse. And it's because of this brand of childishness that the president's once-soaring popularity has declined, by the way.

Far worse, however, is that it's dishonest. The groundwork for the financial crisis was laid before George W. Bush took office. In the last month of his presidency, President Bill Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted the toxic mortgage-backed securities from government regulation. And before that Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act which allowed the creation of the mega-banks, the banks that were "too big to fail".

So by the time President Bush (43) took office big banks were getting bigger and had been equipped with the financial instruments that Warren Buffett described as "weapons of financial mass destruction". The car was already in overdrive when George W. Bush first sat in the driver's seat.

But blaming President Clinton is overly simplistic; it's the sort of thing the Democrats would do, and I most certainly will not stoop to their level. The global financial crisis was a complex occurrence, and the guilty parties are many. (Besides, the former president has had the decency to admit his error in creating the climate for the collapse.) However, when doling out blame, there are some very guilty people who mustn't escape notice: former Clinton advisers who now, coincidentally, are Obama's advisers.

As it turns out, we can't put the car in reverse because we've already gone backward.

Liberal columnist Paul Krugman asserts, dejectedly, that all of Obama's economic advisers are "proteges of [Clinton Treasury Secretary] Robert Rubin, the apostle of financial deregulation". And Krugman is right to do so. Beyond being mere proteges, Obama's economic advisers were in the room with Rubin as he pushed for the Financial Services Modernization Act before bailing government service for a $15-million-a-year job at Citigroup. (Citigroup itself having been created in a merger made legal by the Financial Services Modernization Act--it's dealings like that which earned Rubin a spot on Market Watch's 10 most unethical people in business.)

Let's take a look at the Rubin proteges who shape Obama's thinking:

Larry Summers, Rubin's Deputy Treasury Secretary and successor, is now Obama's Director of the National Economic Council. Summers pushed Congress to deregulate the derivatives market on the basis that financial institutions are "eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies"--financial speak for "they can police themselves". As it turns out, they couldn't.

Timothy Geithner was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in the Clinton Treasury Department and is now Obama's Secretary of the Treasury. According to a Wall Street Journal bio, Geithner "learned from Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers". As previously reported in this blog, Geithner was in the room with Lehman Brothers as they engaged in fraud, knew it, and failed to take commensurate action. What a stand-up guy.

Gary Gensler's official biography as Obama's Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission states that, as Under Secretary of the Treasury, "Chairman Gensler was the principal advisor to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and later to Secretary Lawrence Summers on all aspects of domestic finance." Ah, so he was Rubin's Rubin. According to The New York Times, Gensler also played a "significant role in shepherding through Congress deregulation measures that led to the explosive growth of the over-the-counter derivatives market."

And, of course, there are more, lower-profile Clinton era (read as: deregulation era) economic advisers surrounding President Obama. Not quite the "Change" we were promised.

President Obama has oft-repeated a line about Republicans driving the country into a ditch. He ought to level with us and mention that the car had faulty steering and brake lines, and that they were installed by his own economic team. That doesn't make for a very rousing stump speech, however.

Sadly, our local trial lawyer won't press our case and demand restitution from the negligent technicians who put us here. Apparently, the Democratic cause has already paid her a hefty retainer for her services.

We can take heart that the tow truck is coming this November.

Since You Asked...The Answer is HELL YES: Mary Jo is Anti-Israel

2010-08-11T14:27:00.004-04:00

In a desperate attempt to convince voters that Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy is not an opponent of the strong, friendly relationship that exists between the United States and Israel the Congresswoman's campaign recently launched a new website, http://ismaryjoantiisrael.com/. The dull and uninspired website, which is un-sourced and provides veritably no useful information to voters, poses a solid white background with the question "Is Mary Jo Anti-Israel?" in black lettering, and then in large, bold-faced type: "NO" with a link to contribute to the Congresswoman's campaign. (However you needn't worry about contributing even if you are so misguided as to support her; she's already supplemented her campaign with your tax dollars.)

Kilroy's denial is very adamant, and I think the lady doth protest too much. An examination of the Congresswoman's record demonstrates that she has not been a "100%" supporter of Israel as she claims. In fact, Mary Jo Kilroy is one of the most anti-Israel Members of Congress. Period.

Congresswoman Kilroy's record of disregard for the U.S.-Israel alliance predates her tenure in the United States Congress. In 2002, during the height of the second Palestinian intifada, then-Franklin County Commissioner Kilroy was the lone vote against a three-part resolution expressing determination to 1) stand behind the efforts of the president in support of the government and the people of Israel in their time of crisis; 2) stand behind the State of Israel in its campaign against terrorism; and 3) support the State of Israel in its efforts to live in peace and security.

It is unclear to which innocuous provision(s) Ms. Kilroy objected: standing behind the president, supporting the people of Israel in a bloody conflict that cost them the lives of 1,063 of their countrymen, or supporting our ally in its quest to live in peace and security. Regardless of from which provision her objections stemmed, in dissenting to any she expressed disdain and disrespect for the people of Israel.

After being elected to Congress, Kilroy continued to exhibit her disdain for Israel. Congresswoman Kilroy was one of only 54 representatives to sign a letter urging President Obama to pressure Israel into easing blockade restrictions on the HAMAS-controlled Gaza Strip. Additionally, Kilroy was one of only six representatives to sign a letter asking Attorney General Eric Holder to hold a meeting with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group the FBI has found to be linked to the terrorist group HAMAS, the primary goal of which is to "obliterate" Israel.

Now, why would Mary Jo take such positions so far out of the mainstream? Gosh, surely this can't possibly be another example of Kilroy being bought and paid for by disreputable characters....

Yep. It's that again. She's sold herself so many times you'd think she was on the other end of the Craigslist scandal.

As it turns out, Mary Jo Kilroy has a long-standing donor/puppet relationship with the Council on American-Islamic Relations. When then-Commissioner Kilroy voted against the resolution supporting Israel in 2002 CAIR was there to praise her for her "responsible stand by abstaining from voting on this very disturbing resolution." And then, in four years time, when Kilroy decided to make her first run for Congress, CAIR National Vice Chairman Ahmad Al-Akhras rewarded Kilroy for her anti-Israel sentiments with the first of many campaign donations.

If Kilroy's collection of bizarre out-of-state and out-of-the-mainstream donors can be likened to a compost heap, Ahmad Al-Akhras might well be the biggest weed growing out of it. Check out the picture of him below pressing the flesh with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's predecessor, Mohammad Khatami.

(Picture originally from CAIR's 2006 Annual Report)

Beyond being the No. 2 man at a front group for HAMAS, Al-Akhras has been known to serve as a character reference for convicted terrorists. Take, for example, Christopher Paul, an Ohio man who was charged and later plead guilty to "conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, namely explosives to be used as bombs" against U.S. citizens and property outside the United States as part of an al-Qaeda plot. Al-Akhras, who claimed to know Paul, said of him: "From the things I know, he is a loving husband and he has a wife and parents in town. They are a good family together." Paul was such a fine family man and father that investigators seized a letter from his apartment instructing his wife to raise "little mujahideen," or holy warriors. (The children are our future--even for jihadis!)

Kilroy donor Al-Akhras vouched for another suspected terrorist when he asserted that Nuradin Abdi, a Somali national accused of plotting to blow up a shopping mall, was "unlike how he [was being] portrayed" by the FBI. Al-Akhras went on to predict a dismissal of the charges, "This may be one of the cases also that may not have enough evidence or there's no evidence at all." Abdi later plead guilty to providing material support to terrorists.

With Congresswoman Kilroy sitting on the House Homeland Security Committee, it's deeply disturbing that she's accepting money from a guy who, at best, associates with terrorists and, more likely, is one.

It's equally disturbing to consider that she's so mentally warped as to make an argument that she supports Israel while palling around with folks who are nothing more than front men for a terrorist organization that's sole purpose is to destroy Israel.

The national Democrats want to make this election a choice, not a referendum on the legislative overhauls passed by the sitting Congress. In the case of Ohio's 15th Congressional District, the choice could not be clearer: Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers, who has worn the uniform of his country in the fight against terrorists, or Mary Jo Kilroy, a politician funded by terrorists.

Mary Jo, Nancy, and The Pimp

2010-08-05T10:00:00.003-04:00

Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy gets her money from some disreputable places. As previously reported in this blog, Kilroy has received money from the man who modernized the prostitution industry, Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark. Yesterday, Third Base Politics highlighted a CNN investigation into the role of Craigslist in the underage sex trade and suggested Congresswoman Kilroy should donate the money she received from Craig Newmark to charity. When you think about the flow of cash used to make this particular donation, it's impossible not to agree.

Craigslist makes nearly one third of its $122 million in revenues from "adult services" ads--that's more than $36 million of revenues earned from what are, essentially, pimping fees. With his company raking in pimping revenues hand over fist, it's safe to say a good chunk of Craig Newmark's net worth came in the form of sweaty, fluid-encrusted cash from the hands of gratified johns.

According to the CNN investigation, "A 20-year-old identified only as 'Jessica' works out of low-rent hotels on Washington's busy Interstate 95 corridor. She posts [Craigslist] ads mid-morning for $10 and says she earns up to $250 from each man who answers and shows up."

$250--that's the exact amount of money Craig Newmark has donated to Congresswoman Kilroy so far this election cycle. It's almost as though the john was paying Kilroy directly. Sleazy. And it's all happening right there in our nation's capital, right under Kilroy's nose.... I thought they were going to drain the swamp?

Over the course of the Congresswoman's career Newmark has basted her with $2,000 in direct donations. Indirectly, Newmark has furnished Kilroy with even more money by donating $15,500 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Barack Obama's Hopefund, Inc., Al Franken's Midwest Values PAC, and Howard Dean's Democracy for America, all of which have given sizable donations to Kilroy over the course of her career as a politician.

I don't know how many sex acts that all translates into, but I'm sure it's more than enough to have crushed the spirits of more than a few young women. The flow of money is sickening:

Sweaty, gratified palms of a john --> involuntary prostitute --> Craigslist/Craig Newmark --> Mary Jo Kilroy

What's particularly disgusting is Mary Jo Kilroy's hypocrisy. The Congresswoman has accepted a lot of money from well-meaning "Women's Issues" groups. She has two daughters; we've seen them in her ads. Congresswoman Kilroy should be out front showing some leadership to stop sex trafficking. Instead, she and her party are all but supporting it by accepting donations from the world's most notorious pimp.

Of course, as in everything, Mary Jo Kilroy is just following the example of her mentor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi has also accepted graft from Newmark. Together they're making a mockery of women's empowerment by abandoning the truly helpless to a cruel fate. Apparently, the Pelosi-Kilroy bond is strengthened by a mutual willingness to be blind to anything so long as it helps them gain the cash they need to stay in power.


Birds of a Feather (Original photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/speakerpelosi/3748460352/in/photostream/)

The issue shows a stark and meaningful contrast between Congresswoman Kilroy and her opponent, Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers. Stivers, while a State Senator, voted to strengthen anti-human trafficking laws by mandating prison terms for persons found guilty of human trafficking and payment of restitution to victims.

Steve Stivers knows what is right, and he does it.

Mary Jo Kilroy doesn't care what is right. She cares about cash for her re-election, and she'll accept it from anyone--even a pimp.

Kilroy Keelhauls Economy with Sweetheart Deal

2010-07-23T10:48:00.018-04:00

As Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy updates her resume for her post-November job hunt she can add a new achievement: causing economic chaos by bringing a $1.4 trillion market to a grinding, painful halt. As the result of a Kilroy-authored provision of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, the world's three largest bond rating agencies said their credit ratings could no longer be used in documentation for new bond sales. Because many types of bonds are required by law to include credit ratings in their official documentation, the bond market was completely shut down with no asset-backed bonds put on sale this week.

I'm not sure how many jobs the collapse of a $1.4 trillion market destroys or fails to save, but I'm sure it's a lot. And beyond the killed jobs, the ramifications for consumer credit will be devastating: Ford Motor Co. has already been forced to scuttle a debt deal to finance auto loans.

[For a good discussion of Kilroy's blunder, watch the video here with Ford Motor Company CEO Alan Mulally. It gets relevant around 4:21.]

Think about it: Nobody can get a loan to buy a car because Congresswoman Kilroy just killed the bond market. If nobody can get financing then there aren't going to be many cars rolling off the lot. If nobody is buying cars, there's no need to make cars (or car parts). If there's no need to make cars or car parts, there's no need for workers to be employed at Honda Marysville (Congratulations to them on cranking out their 10 millionth vehicle earlier this week!). Worthington Industries would likely have to make cutbacks too as the demand for automobile steel tanks. So where does that leave us? Car dealers, car manufacturers, steel workers, the drivers who deliver the cars, the workers who make the car parts, and all the support personnel at all the previously mentioned entities left without work. Of course, you can't turn on the TV without seeing a commercial for a car dealership so there are going to be some cutbacks at the TV stations too from the loss of advertising revenues... but I'm sure, by now, you see the pattern: it's all connected. It's not so much a financial overhaul as an economic keelhaul. No bond sales = no consumer financing = no consumption = no jobs.

And why'd Kilroy do it? To make the financial system more accountable? To right horrific wrongs?

Nope. She did it to excite the erogenous zones of one of her key constituencies: the trial lawyers! This is an election year, and she needs cash.

The Kilroy provision (or Kiljobs provision, if you prefer) renders ratings agencies "expert", and thus, exposes them to a new liability similar to that held by auditors. A major difference, of course, is that auditors are liable for their examination of what is and bond raters are now liable for predictions of what may be. In effect, bond raters now face a level of liability greater than anyone else in all of business: in order to avoid being sued into oblivion bond raters must predict the future accurately every time at bat.

Congresswoman Kilroy knows full well that no one bats a thousand. Just look at her own political party and the "Summer of Recovery".

The impossibility of bond raters getting it right 100% of the time is exactly why Kilroy authored the provision making them legally liable for not having the foresight of Nostradamus: it's food on the table and Benzes in the driveway for her trial lawyer donors.

When they thrive, she thrives.

But we don't:

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Kilroy provision "has done the exact opposite of the bill’s intended efforts at creating more transparency and openness. It is forcing more deals underground, where there will be less access to capital and less opportunity for public scrutiny." Where only people who have the cash and the connections can have access and reap the benefits.

Congresswoman Kilroy has sold us up the river again, pretending to pass Wall Street reform legislation while rewarding her donor base. Let's hold her liable in November.

Kilroy for Congress: Paid for by the U.S. Taxpayer

2010-07-21T07:25:00.006-04:00

What do you do when you're a member of an incredibly unpopular Congress and your big union, big trial lawyer, and Washington insider donors aren't giving you enough money to buy a fighting chance against your vastly more likable combat veteran opponent? The answer for Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy is to subsidize her campaign with your tax dollars.

Congresswoman Kilroy recently hired a communications director for her campaign who will also work part time in her congressional office. As an employee of her congressional office this campaign staffer will draw a federal salary. While Kilroy is hardly the first member of Congress to realize the ability to use tax dollars to pay for a campaign, precedent doesn't make her unprincipled conduct right.

According to the House Ethics Manual congressional staffers are permitted to engage in campaign activities on their "own time" as long as they do not do so in congressional offices or facilities, or otherwise use official resources. (Interestingly, executive branch personnel are subject to much greater restrictions on partisan political activity under the Hatch Act. It would seem the Congress saw fit to exempt itself from ethical standards the rest of the government must follow--part of a pattern of behavior that must be stopped.)

So, in the case of Ms. Kilroy's dual campaign and congressional office staffer, who is policing when he's on his "own time" and when he's on government time? The answer will disturb you.

From the House Ethics Manual:

"What constitutes a staff member's 'own time' is determined by the personnel policies that are in place in the employing office.... [D]ue to the irregular time frames in which the Congress operates, it is unrealistic to impose conventional work hours and rules on congressional employees." (Emphasis added.)

So the only standard for when government time ends and campaign time begins is set by Mary Jo Kilroy, the very woman whose whole future depends on the success of the campaign. Given her history of abusing her authority, I do not find that reassuring.

But surely her tax dollar-subsidized campaign staffer is required to keep a log of how he spends his time, right?

No? Oh, that is bad. One would expect the House of Representatives to, at the very least, have requirements for how congressional staffers who moonlight in their employers' re-election efforts document their time. (Heck, even the lobbying firms Kilroy oh-so-publicly decries have their employees keep time sheets of billable hours!) While the House Ethics Manual states staffers who do campaign work "should" keep records, "[t]here is no set format for maintaining such time records." So we're just supposed to trust Congresswoman Kilroy and her staff. I'd sooner trust Wall Street investment bankers to police themselves.

Between Congresswoman Kilroy's extravagant use of the franking privilege to disseminate what is, essentially, campaign propaganda (It even has the same color scheme.) and this new scandal of putting her campaign communications director on the federal payroll, Mary Jo Kilroy has effectively compelled us into footing the bill for her quenchless ambition. She should be required to change the FEC-mandated disclaimer displayed on all of her official campaign materials from "Paid for by Kilroy for Congress" to "Paid for by You, the U.S. Taxpayer, Sucker!"

Kilroy for Congress: Paid for by the U.S Taxpayer

"$teve $tivers" is Catching On (But Not How Mary Jo Kilroy Intended)

2010-07-20T03:35:00.005-04:00

Just in case you missed the weekend coverage: Steve Stivers's work ethic lead to his second quarter fundraising efforts overwhelming those of slumberous Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy. Stivers raised $532,687 in the three month period preceding June 30--more than double Congresswoman Kilroy's $229,955. According to a press release from his campaign, Stivers enjoyed the support of 1,227 new individual donors this quarter. It would seem the spirit of civic engagement that lead to record voter turnout in 2008 is alive and well--except this time it favors Mr. Stivers.

Stivers also has more cash in the bank than Kilroy with $1.24 million to her $933,626. Now we know why Congresswoman Kilroy's campaign refers to Lt. Colonel Stivers as $teve $tivers: JEALOUSY! (Though it could just be that as a multi-millionaire trial lawyer she sees dollar signs everywhere.)

Stivers's fundraising success and accelerating momentum is exceedingly good news for you and me, the people who live in Ohio's 15th Congressional District. For too long we've lacked a representative who holds our interests in mind. Congresswoman Kilroy has raised only a paltry 63% of her money in-state. She's bought and paid for by Washington special interests and out-of-state liberal activists including George Soros, Susan Sarandon, Barbara Streisand, Carl Reiner, and internet regulation-pushing Craig's List founder Craig Newmark.

Steve Stivers, on the other hand, has raised 91% of his money from inside the State of Ohio. He will represent Ohio's working families because he's not beholden to anyone else. The erosion of our interests in favor of those of the Washington insiders and left coast liberals that has occurred on Kilroy's watch will be turned back by Mr. Stivers.

We'll have our own representative in Washington, D.C. again--just like the Framers of the Constitution intended. Imagine that!

It feels particularly good--particularly patriotic even--that, as Ohioans, we were able to scrape together more money than the Washington insiders and liberal activists to give to our candidate so that he now has more cash in the bank than theirs. It's David beats Goliath. (Though we have to keep throwing stones to keep Goliath down.)

By gosh, I actually pity Mary Jo Kilroy right now. I really do. Her fundraising efforts are faltering (the only method that she understands to get money from Ohio's working families is to tax it away from them), and she has the natural charisma of a doorstop. Without any coattails to ride this is going to be a rough election for her. And if she loses this job... well, you've seen the economy she created. It's rough out there.

Speaker Pelosi Knows So Much That Isn't So

2010-07-02T07:47:00.002-04:00

Well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shoveled some more coal into the engine of the Democrat crazy train yesterday. In a news conference Pelosi claimed federally funded unemployment benefits spur job creation faster than any other initiative. According to Pelosi unemployment benefits inject demand into the economy.

Uh... What? The four-week average for unemployment claims now stands at its highest point since March. By Pelosi logic that means we should be seeing commensurately high levels of job creation--and yet employers are projected to have cut a net total of 110,000 jobs in the month of June. And all that demand being injected into the economy by unemployment benefits? Well, check out the Financial Times article "Fears Mount Over Slowing Global Demand" for the stark reality on that.

Pelosi's absurd pronouncements remind me of Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf--better known as "Comical Ali" or "Baghdad Bob"--the former Iraqi Information Minister who entertained the world with his wacky and undeniably bogus claims about the progress of the American-led coalition forces during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Pelosi is one more sloshed night at a ritzy fundraiser away from putting on a beret and proclaiming “We are at peak employment. There are no Americans without jobs in the United States! There is, in fact, by the grace of Obama a job surplus!”

Just because the Democrats have decided that the laws of the land no longer apply and that they don’t need to pass a budget doesn’t mean the laws of reality no longer apply. Unemployment benefits do not create jobs, and they do not spur economic growth. Our distressed economy is a case in point.

A parting thought on Speaker Pelosi and her toadies in the House like Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy who votes in tandem with Pelosi 98.4% of the time: Who’s more foolish the fool or the fools who follow her?

What Do Mary Jo Kilroy and Tom DeLay Have in Common?

2010-07-01T08:56:00.004-04:00

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently raised the specter of Ken Starr to try to scare her liberal donors into digging a little deeper to prevent a Republican takeover of the House. She wrote in a fundraising letter that a Republican win would "bring back the days of Ken Starr and the politics of personal destruction". Speaker Pelosi ought to know that even if Republicans wanted to bring back "the days of Ken Starr"--and I haven't heard of any of them expressing that they do--it's a legal impossibility. The Independent Counsel law expired over eleven years ago, on June 30, 1999. That bogeyman has left the building.

Besides, between the John Edwards sex tape and Al Gore staining a masseuse's black slacks the American people have had more than enough nauseating Democrat sex scandals for the time being (and by "time being" I mean eternity). If there's anything more lascivious than the Democrats' love affair with Wall Street going on in the government then we don't want to know. Seriously, we're grossed out enough.

Don't want to know

Reading about Pelosi's sentimental journey down memory lane has put me in the mindset to remember the disgraced former Congressman Tom DeLay whose unethical actions are being mirrored today by Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy.

In 2004 Congressman DeLay was admonished by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (commonly known as the Ethics Committee) for participating in and facilitating an energy company fundraiser while energy legislation was pending. This week with financial reform legislation pending Mary Jo Kilroy held a fundraiser (actually fundraisers (plural) if you count the $30,400 per couple gala Kilroy had with Speaker Pelosi this past Saturday) to solicit PAC donations from the financial industry--and she made sure "Member of House Financial Services Committee" was printed in large font on the invitation.

It will be very telling of the ethical standards of the Pelosi Congress if the Ethics Committee fails to admonish Kilroy for her DeLay-like behavior. The good news is that even if Speaker Pelosi abuses her influence to protect Congresswoman Kilroy, her veritable Bobbsey Twin, you and I will have the opportunity to admonish Mary Jo ourselves in the election booth this coming November.

Look lively, Mary Jo! After we fire you maybe you can be on Dancing with the Stars just like your ethical role model Tom DeLay! If you can stay awake, that is....

The "Fix" Is In; No Problems Actually Fixed

2010-05-29T17:24:00.006-04:00

When she voted to make the flawed Obamacare legislation the law of the land Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy promised us it would lower the deficit. Her ridiculous assertion was based on the assumption that Congress would not cancel a programmed cut in the reimbursement rate doctors receive for treating Medicare patients. As we've known from the beginning, Mary Jo was lying through her teeth.

It would have been more believable had the Democrats told us Dennis Kucinich was going to start calling himself Rumpelstiltskin and spin straw into gold, but Congresswoman Kilroy and her ilk are full of crap not creativity so the "doc fix" lie is the best they could come up with.

Yesterday Mary Jo Kilroy voted to cancel the programmed cuts to the medicare reimbursement rate--just as we all knew she was planning to do back when she was making wild claims about how Obamacare would lower the deficit. After all, her ideological twin Nancy Pelosi had stated that the Congressional Democrats were "committed" to doing this.

And now they've done it. Except they didn't solve the long-term problem.

This vote was just another short-term "fix". Congresswoman Kilroy voted us $23 billion deeper into the red and left the problem simmering until January 1, 2012. We needed a solution, and she gave us a "fix".

Let's make sure Congresswoman Kilroy isn't in office two years from now when the Medicare reimbursement rate needs tackled again or it'll never get solved.

Mary Jo Kilroy and The $13 Trillion Hangover

2010-05-25T12:37:00.002-04:00

Within a few short hours the national debt will soar to a new milestone high: $13,000,000,000,000 (that's trillion--with a "t" and if you tried to plug that number into a standard calculator it wouldn't fit). I remember driving to some forgotten high school banquet years ago and watching the odometer on my car change to what seemed like a milestone number. It was exhilarating to watch so many 9's turn into so many 0's in unison. We should feel anything but exhilaration as the debt clock strikes $13,000,000,000,000. We're hitting a staggering new low as we reach that all-time high: a new low in the economic prospects for our future and a new low in the government's ability to keep us safe.

We've been driven to this point by an irresponsible Congress that's addicted to spending. They're like drunks on a bender. Every day Members of Congress are at the bar of special interests buying rounds for every entity in sight--top shelf stuff if the entity has a Wall Street address--and when everyone is good and sloshed Congress points a finger over at the public and tells the bartender (who's a Chinese central banker, by the way) to send us the tab.

Congresswoman Kilroy: On a bender

Like all good alcoholics, Members of Congress tell us self-serving lies to make their relationship with us easier. They set "debt limits" (artificial ceilings on how much the country will borrow) as if to say, "We're just going to have a few drinks. We won't embarrass you--we won't let you down." Sure enough, by the end of the party, there they are: face-down in a puddle without their dignity. Apparently, during the course of the night they saw fit to raise the debt limit. Our Congresswoman Kilroy has already done it twice in her short time in Congress.

During election years they even promise to quit their out-of-control spending. But it's always the same convenient, familiar (and ultimately empty) promise. There's never an actual plan to cut spending, just as Congresswoman Kilroy doesn't have a plan (she's still searching for a clue). Her recent quote in the Columbus Dispatch would be comical if it weren't so sad: "We always wanted to keep a close eye on spending."

Golly, if only she'd been in a position to do just that... like say if she had a seat in Congress! Oh wait....

She's like an alcoholic dad explaining to his kid why she missed his soccer game for the latest in a series of countless absences. "I wanted to be there. It's just...." and then the unspoken I like drinking too much. The Congresswoman likes spending too much. Nobody knows what a $13 trillion hangover feels like, but thanks to Ms. Kilroy we're about to find out together.

It's closing time, Congresswoman. Last call is in November.

"Honest" Mary Jo Kilroy: Truth-teller Extraordinaire

2010-05-19T09:41:00.005-04:00

If Mary Jo Kilroy were Pinocchio her nose would be as long as our national debt is deep. Her distortions and falsehoods are so frequent it might be a good idea to assume everything she says is a lie--convenient, self-serving obfuscations for her own political benefit. She may not be as blatant as Richard Blumenthal, but still, she's pretty good at putting forth realities that never were.

Okay, calling Ms. Kilroy Pinocchio is a bit of a stretch: Pinocchio implies a puerile innocence that the Congresswoman doesn't have. She's more of an "Honest John", the duplicitous conniver who twice dupes Pinocchio into betraying his own interests for the con artist's benefit.

Examine, for example, her behavior in the recent Lehman Brothers hearing. Congresswoman Kilroy did all she could to assert that Ohio's public pension funds lost $480 million. In reality, as calculated by the pension funds themselves the losses were closer to $221 million. Still a very devastating loss. However, the loss should have been reported to the American people accurately; we don't need a Members of Congress sensationalizing and distorting facts for political gain. (It's better for her ally, Governor Ted Strickland, if he can claim the collapse of Lehman Brothers cost Ohio's pension funds "half of a billion dollars" rather than "$221 million".)

The whole hearing, of course, was nothing more than a political scheme constructed by Congresswoman Kilroy in the hopes of embarrassing Republican gubernatorial nominee John Kasich, a former Columbus-based employee of Lehman Brothers. The Congresswoman denies that motive, but her actions betray the truth. As reported by the Columbus Dispatch: "In preparing for the hearings, Kilroy asked the pension funds in March for 'the names of all individuals who acted on behalf of Lehman transactions' from 1999 to 2009."

Um, she wanted names named, but not because she was looking for a specific name? That doesn't make any sense. You don't have a witch hunt unless you're looking for a witch--though Mary Jo is the kind of gal who would burn taxpayer dollars in a hunt knowing full well there was no witch. Mary Jo loves to spend taxpayer dollars.

(By the way, a pension fund spokesman stated Kasich's efforts did not lead to Lehman receiving business--Kilroy didn't find her witch.)

Mary Jo Kilroy has the distinction of spending more taxpayer dollars on franking (junk mail, automated phone calls, and tele-town halls) than any other member of Ohio's House delegation. She is the 7th biggest spender of all 435 Members of Congress with a walloping $377,713!

Ha! And she promised us she would control spending and cut government waste. If Congresswoman Kilroy had any interest in making good on those pledges she should start with her own office. For me, it really adds insult to injury that those badgering phone calls from a recording are paid for by taxpayer dollars. And why the frank do they always come just as I'm sitting down for dinner?

One can't help but wonder if Ms. Kilroy would be more judicious in her spending if it were her own money hemorrhaging out. Perhaps, but perhaps not. As a multi-millionaire she may not have the same sense of frugality displayed by so many of us in Central Ohio. Her net worth is between $1,481,083 and $5,185,998 (84th wealthiest in the House)--though by her rules I should say she's worth $5,185,998. By Kilroy logic you always choose the highest number--it's more sensational that way.

The easy thing about being opposed to her hypocrisy is that there's no need to sensationalize. The facts speak for themselves.

Governor Strickland is a Kilroy Democrat

2010-05-08T12:24:00.001-04:00

Governor Ted Strickland has lately been proving himself a true Kilroy Democrat. The term, as anyone even vaguely familiar with the Congresswoman would surmise, describes a career politician who is epically inept, inexcusably negative, intensely hypocritical, and downright dangerous to the interests of his or her constituents.

Ted Strickland is our state's accidental governor; he's the Jimmy Carter of Ohio. Both men were elected because the people were tired of scandal. For Carter the impetus was Watergate, for Strickland it was Coingate. Candidate Strickland promised us that he would end a culture of corruption in Ohio's state government and create jobs. As everyone knows, Strickland's job creation promise didn't pan out: Ohio has lost 427,300 jobs on his watch. As demonstrated by the recent scandal over a canceled sting operation at the Governor's Residence, Strickland has also proven himself a failure at ending the culture of corruption.

In a recently released report Ohio Inspector General Thomas P. Charles, the state official responsible for investigating allegations of wrongdoing by state agencies and executives, states that both Strickland's Director of Public Safety, Cathy Collins-Taylor, and the commander of his security detail, Lt. Joseph Mannion, lied to investigators in an effort to cover-up the politically motivated decision to cancel a "safe, well-planned and routine" operation in order to protect Governor Strickland from political embarrassment.

The facts in the Inspector General's report paint a disturbing picture that makes it impossible to excuse Director of Public Safety Cathy Collins-Taylor's conduct. In her testimony Collins-Taylor argued that past tense verbs used to describe DPS actions didn't necessarily mean that the actions had already taken place and that the phrase "embarrassment to the boss" didn't mean embarrassment to the governor, it just meant "embarrassment to the administration in general – to the Patrol, to DRC [Department of Rehabilitation and Correction], to DAS [Department of Administrative Services]". Overall, her statements read like they should have been performed by Jon Lovitz and followed up with "Yeah! That's the ticket!" The Inspector General correctly classifies her statements as "absurd".

In addition to her lies, the Department of Public Safety under Collins-Taylor obstructed the Inspector General's investigation by intentionally providing 44,000 pages of meaningless records including "a series of communications labeled 'Girls Night Out'". Good to know the Department of Public Safety takes conserving taxpayer-funded resources seriously.

How did Governor Strickland react? Surely a man who once said "It is important for Democrats to send a very clear message that we will clean our own house" would take a pretty heavy hand against a corrupt subordinate, right? Nope. Strickland rejected the Inspector General's report and said "[Collins-Taylor]'s done nothing wrong." Pretty hypocritical for a guy who campaigned on a promise to clean up corruption.

Fortunately, the Ohio Senate will have the opportunity to hold Collins-Taylor accountable for her misdeeds. As it turns out, Governor Strickland failed to submit Collins-Taylor's nomination to the Senate when he appointed her on September 18. That's right: Governor Strickland is so inept he forgot to submit a cabinet member's nomination to the Senate. Wow.

To change the subject from his administration's shortcomings, Strickland's campaign has released a Kilroy-style negative attack ad against his electoral opponent, John Kasich.

The ad itself is almost an exact copy of a SEIU ad produced in 2008 to promote Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. I imagine Vice President Biden has to be hopping mad about this; when he plagiarized another politician back in 1988 it derailed his presidential aspirations. Strickland's pretty much getting a free pass--not fair! Plagiarism is a big f*cking deal!

The standout takeaway from the ad isn't that it displays political desperation or betrays Team Strickland's banality, the major takeaway is that even Ted Strickland realizes the Pelosi Congress has failed! For months Team Strickland has been trying to peg John Kasich as a Wall Street bigwig (they even had Congresswoman Kilroy hold a hearing in hopes of doing so), but now Strickland's dreamt up a label capable of inspiring even more scorn: "Congressman!"

In the 30 second ad the word "Congressman" is spoken or displayed six times--that's one "Congressman" for every five seconds. At no point does the ad inform viewers that John Kasich hasn't been in Congress for almost ten years. It's a deliberate omission because Strickland wants voters to think Kasich is in league with Nancy Pelosi and Mary Jo Kilroy as they jack up your tax rate and murder jobs like fish in a barrel. The reality, however, is that Strickland is the incumbent. His Kilroy-style politics are going to put him exactly where they're going to put her--and coincidentally where the two of them have put far too many Ohioans--in the unemployment line.

Will the Democrats Claim It's Just a "Wide Stance" Too?

2010-04-30T11:32:00.009-04:00

The Democrats' public professions of enmity towards Wall Street remind me of the anti-gay rhetoric of disgraced former Senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig. In his public life, Senator Craig was very outspoken in his condemnations of homosexuality; in their public life, the Democrats are very outspoken in their condemnations of Wall Street. As we learned after a revealing incident in an airport bathroom, Senator Craig’s public mask and his private face were vastly different. The Democrats are every bit as two-faced as the former Senator, and just like him when they’re out of the public view they’re cruising for under-stall action with the object of their public animosity: Wall Street.

Take Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd, for example: Earlier this week, on the Senate floor, Dodd railed against Goldman Sachs and Magnetar (the hedge fund hijinks of each firm having been previously discussed in this blog here and here, respectively) culminating with the punchline:

"So the problem is not that these executives got rich without contributing to America. The problem is that these executives got rich betting against America."

Watch his indignation:

"Betting against America" is a pretty strong indictment. The Senator must have been so proud of himself for making it in full public view that he forgot to mention that after the investment banks bet against America they shared their winnings with him. From Goldman Dodd received $273,466, and from the relative upstart Magnetar he accepted at least $6,900. Not too shabby. I can't help but wonder if the Senator and his donors ever sing this Magnetar-inspired song to each other:

Bet Against the American Dream from Alexander Hotz on Vimeo.

And Chris Dodd's not the only one having a closeted love affair with Wall Street--not by a long shot! It's widespread: Kirsten Gillibrand, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Charles Schumer, Harry Reid, former House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt is now a Goldman Sachs lobbyist, our Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy has accepted $52,736 from the Securities and Investment industry--and that doesn't even include the Magnetar money laundered to her by Rahm Emanuel--the list goes on and on and on. So many Democrats, so hot for Wall Street cash, but also, so very ashamed to admit their hearts' desire.

Can you imagine the scenes?

--

A flustered and slightly sweaty Rahm Emanuel popping out of a coat closet after an afternoon quickie cell-phone call to Magnetar Capital CEO Alec Litowitz.

--

Senator Chris Dodd getting his war chest stuffed in the back of a Citigroup executive's limousine.

--

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sitting on a bench in a secluded section of a public park smiling coyly at a cute jogger in a Goldman Sachs t-shirt.

"Oh yes! He winked at me! More cash for Harry!" he congratulates himself after the encounter.

--

Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy buttoning up her purse with a freshly cut check from Goldman Sachs Managing Director David P. Solomon inside as she leaves his New York office.

"But Mary Jo, what if your constituents find out?" the breathless banker asks.

Emphatically the Congresswoman replies, "They won't!" And then, unleashing even more of her passion for Wall Street cash, "They could never understand OUR LOVE!"

--

Of course those were dramatizations. In reality, the Democrats surely have a far more sophisticated and organized method of setting up Wall Street bankers with the politicians who love them than the ol' Larry Craig tap-and-whistle. The major difference as I see it, is that Senator Craig is deserving of pity for the tortured life he surely had. The Democrats, however, deserve only contempt for their deception. In stepping out on us to dally with Wall Street bankers the Democrats are inflicting great harm on our country and our future. We should help them come out of the closet by kicking them out of the Congress.

Fish Swim, Birds Fly, & Mary Jo Raises Taxes

2010-04-27T08:17:00.003-04:00

Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy's campaign manager either announced an abrupt shift in Ms. Kilroy's politics this past Thursday or decided Kilroy's policies are so unpalatable to voters that he needed to mask them with a lie. Her campaign manager stated that the Congresswoman is opposed to the idea of a value-added tax and that she has developed an interest "in finding ways to cut taxes and get money back into the hands of the people who need it."

If this were more than election year rhetoric, it'd be shocking. Of course, it's not. Mary Jo Kilroy will always be a pro-tax, anti-growth politician. Throughout her life as a politician Ms. Kilroy has consistently raised taxes. It's what she does. Fish swim, birds fly, and Mary Jo Kilroy raises taxes. Sure as death and... taxes.

As a county commissioner Mary Jo Kilroy voted along party lines to double the sales tax. Five months later, after the county auditor had said the county was collecting more than enough in fees and taxes, Mary Jo Kilroy again voted along party lines to double the conveyance fee for all real estate sales in the county. To make matters worse, Kilroy's abuses of power as county commissioner cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

All told Mary Jo Kilroy raised taxes by more than $200,000,000 as a county commissioner. Apparently, by "get money back into the hands of the people who need it" her campaign manager meant the hands of an ever-expanding government.

Sadly, the $200,000,000 mountain of tax hikes Mary Jo Kilroy buried us under as a county commissioner looks like a molehill compared to the tax hikes she has approved as a congresswoman--and she's just getting started!

Congresswoman Kilroy voted FOR a tax hike with the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, declared by the Wall Street Journal as likely to be "the biggest tax in American history". Estimates have the costs reaching as high as $161,000,000,000 in 2020--that's $1,870 vacuumed right out of a family of four's grocery budget. Even liberal Democratic "Dean of the House" Rep. John Dingell cautioned that the bill Congresswoman Kilroy supported is "a great big" tax.

Congresswoman Kilroy voted FOR a tax hike with Obamacare, the healthcare overhaul which will cost nearly $1 trillion over the next ten years and will raise taxes by $569.2 billion. Additionally, it will hit an estimated 4 million households with further tax penalties for failing to afford insurance (the law mandates all citizens must purchase insurance).

And it gets worse: A primary objective of the healthcare overhaul was to rein in costs. Despite Mary Jo Kilroy's Joe Isuzu logic that Obamacare could achieve that feat, a new report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Chief Actuary states the legislation will increase national healthcare spending by $311 billion.

Job well done, Congresswoman. Thanks to Mary Jo Kilroy we all will have the pleasure of paying more for healthcare. What would we do without her?

For one, we'd pay a whole lot less in taxes. Between the $200,000,000 in tax hikes she brought us as county commissioner and the hundreds of billions she's brought us as a Member of Congress, Mary Jo Kilroy could easily fill a money bin and swim through it a la Scrooge McDuck. The difference, of course, is that when Scrooge McDuck does it he entertains children; when Mary Jo Kilroy does it she's saddling them with a deeper share of the national debt--$41,626 per citizen as of this posting.

Kilroy making it rain--with your tax dollars!

If this is what it looks like when Congresswoman Kilroy is "finding ways to cut taxes and get money back into the hands of the people who need it," God help us when she's out of election-year mode.

In an Awkward Turn of Events: Kilroy Exposes Geithner

2010-04-22T08:02:00.005-04:00

On Tuesday revelations on the depth of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's complicity in disguising the instability of collapsed investment services titan Lehman Brothers were exposed in a hearing held by the House Financial Services Committee. The hearing had been called for by Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy as part of the Ohio Democratic Party's strategy to place blame for Lehman Brothers's collapse on Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Columbus-based Lehman Brothers employee John Kasich. Just as his name was not mentioned in the bankruptcy examiner's report released last month, Mr. Kasich's name was not mentioned in the testimonies delivered before the committee. It would seem that living and working 500 miles away from Lehman Brothers headquarters, Mr. Kasich truly was out of the loop on the questionable accounting practices.

From Congresswoman Kilroy's perspective the hearing may have been a total failure as it neglected to prove once and for all that John Kasich single-handedly--and with malice in his black heart--caused the global financial crisis. However, the hearing provided a great public service by exposing the systemic organizational failures of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) as it existed under the leadership of then-President Timothy Geithner. For once some good has come out of Mary Jo Kilroy's addiction to the lowest brand of negative, deceptive politics.

In his testimony, William K. Black, a distinguished bank regulator and professor of economics and law, found President Geithner and his FRBNY team "knew that Lehman was engaged in fraud" and that Geithner's failure to take commensurate action constituted "an egregious violation of the public trust." According to Black, "The FRBNY, led by President Geithner, had a clear statutory mission -- promote the safety and soundness of the banking system and compliance with the law -- stood by while Lehman deceived the public through a scheme that FRBNY officials likened to a “three card monte routine.” Black went on, "the regulatory perpetrators [Geithner and his team] must be held accountable."

How awkward for Mary Jo! She was looking to smear John Kasich and she ended up exposing Obama's Treasury Secretary as asleep at the wheel. I sure hope this isn't going to cause a rift that would stop White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel from channeling more of his dirty housing market collapse money to her!

Not what she had planned

(Photo available at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/marykilroy#)

Anton Valukas, the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy examiner, describes in his report how the FRBNY administered three consecutively less rigorous stress tests to evaluate Lehman's ability to withstand a run or a potential run on the bank. After Lehman failed all three tests, the FRBNY allowed Lehman to design its own fourth stress test which the firm then passed. Valukas concluded, "It does not appear that any agency required any action of Lehman in response to the results of the stress testing."

So, apparently, now-Treasury Secretary of the United States Timothy Geithner's mantra is "If at first you don't succeed, keep lowering the bar until you do."

How confidence inspiring.

I'll bet Mary Jo Kilroy, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the congressional chupacabra crew wish the American people would adopt that mantra too--it's the only way their job-killing, deficit-deepening policies could ever get a passing grade.

Obama: Looking Tough, Staying Cozy

2010-04-20T02:07:00.000-04:00

On Friday the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit against the investment bank Goldman Sachs for creating and selling a financial instrument secretly designed to capitalize on the collapse of the housing market. According to the SEC complaint, prominent hedge fund manager John Paulson paid Goldman Sachs to structure the instrument in question, known as Abacus 2007-AC1, to fail. Mr. Paulson subsequently earned an estimated $3.7 billion in 2007 by correctly betting on the failure of Abacus and the collapse of the housing market.

The Abacus deal may remind some of you of the Magnetar trade discussed in the April 14 posting of this blog in that they are, essentially, the same: hedge fund managers composed of equal parts savvy and sleaze with a penchant for donating to Democratic politicians shorted the market for massive personal gain and widespread loss to run-of-the-mill investors.

Yes, you read correctly: Just like Magnetar CEO Alec Litowitz who bankrolled White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, John Paulson is a heavy Democratic donor. Mr. Paulson generously shared tens of thousands of dollars of his housing market collapse money with seven cash-needy Democratic United States Senators: Minority Leader Harry Reid ($2,300), Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd ($4,800), Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus ($4,600), Senator Carl Levin ($4,600), Senator Dick Durbin ($4,600), Senator Arlen Specter ($4,600), and Senator Frank Lautenberg ($4,600). And for good measure he also gave a walloping $30,400 of housing collapse money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Given the Democrats’ tired refrain that Republicans are the “party of Wall Street” one might expect to be surprised to find that so many hedge fund moguls are Democratic donors. The fact of the matter is that the Democrats receive 62% of the securities and investment industry’s campaign contributions to the Republicans’ 37%. In the presidential election Barack Obama raised $14,891,735 from the securities and investment industry compared to John McCain’s $8,698,635. The Democrats are shrieking that the Republicans are too well fed by Wall Street, but compared to the Democrats the Republicans are eating off the dollar menu.

Goldman Sachs, the bank charged with defrauding investors over the Abacus deal and the Democrats’ No. 1 business donor in the 2008 election, gave seventy-five percent of its political donations to the Democrats. That’s 3-1 in favor of the Democrats! What overwhelming ratio do the Democrats need to reach before they will freely admit to the plainly obvious fact that they are betrothed to Wall Street?

Oh how their hearts must ache that their love can never see the light of day! The Democrats and their Wall Street backers must keep their love closeted, for President Obama has been losing his grasp on the false narrative that he and his party are working hard to protect the ordinary Americans injured by the economic meltdown.

The Democrats will use the SEC complaint against Goldman Sachs as a springboard for them to “get tough” (read as “look tough”) on Wall Street. What’s coming is a new era of derivatives regulation. This should happen. Derivatives, heretofore widely unregulated, played a critical role in creating the global financial crisis. It’s asinine that with bipartisan support, a supermajority, and the years-old knowledge that derivatives were a major cause of the financial train wreck that the Democrats have waited this long to act—but hey, they haven’t wanted to bite the hand that feeds!

The mainstream media will be unable to resist the desire to credit President Obama and his Democrats for getting “tough” by dragging the derivatives market into the daylight of public trading. He’ll surely have a grand signing ceremony, senators will give big speeches, and they’ll posture as though they’ve ended Wall Street shenanigans forever.

But this will all be done with a wink and a nod to Wall Street. Because both the Democrats and Wall Street know what’s coming: grand new opportunities for Wall Street elites to win big off of the little guys and a rushing new river of campaign donations for the Democrats.

Wall Street will be upset about the loss of their black box derivatives playground, to be sure. However, any despondence they feel will be tapered by an exhilarating new financial boon on their horizon—the coming of cap-and-trade! (Barack Obama is far too skillful of a politician to slap one of his biggest donors in the face without apologizing profusely by offering up a deeply valuable gift.)

Under a cap-and-trade system, the government issues permits which grant companies the right to emit a certain amount of greenhouse gases. Companies that emit more than permitted then must either buy allowances from other companies that have emitted less than their granted limit or purchase carbon offsets, investments in a project that cuts greenhouse gas emissions someplace else (such as a developing country).

As one can infer from the “trade” part of cap-and-trade, there would be a lot of allowances changing hands. And guess where all that allowance trading would be going down. That’s right: Wall Street.

The passage of a climate change bill such as the one soon to be unveiled in the U.S. Senate, which is said to retain the cap-and-trade structure of a bill that cleared the House of Representatives last June, would create a $2 trillion commodities market—“the largest commodity market ever” according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Before its demise Enron executives salivated that cap-and-trade “would do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.” Wall Street bankers also know how much the Obama-approved policy would enrich their bottom line. That’s why they have been employing over one hundred climate change lobbyists to influence their friends in government to create a cap-and-trade system.

Cap-and-trade is a win-win for Obama and Wall Street, but it’ll be a major loss for you and me. The carbon allowances businesses would be required to purchase are nothing more than a tax by another name and that tax will be passed on to us as consumers. Furthermore, the offset provisions encourage businesses to move their operations—and jobs—overseas to countries with laxer emission standards.

So Wall Street gets a $2 trillion market, the Democrats get rewarded by Wall Street campaign donations, and we get increased costs and job destruction. When Barack Obama said he was going to “spread the wealth around” I didn’t realize he meant like that!

This November, let’s cap the Democrats’ political careers and trade them for legislators who will be on our side—not their banker’s.

Mary Jo & Rahm's Dirty Money

2010-04-14T20:59:00.000-04:00

Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy’s ultra-negative 2008 campaign centered around the same tired refrain that Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers, then also a state senator, had, in the past, worked for a bank. The implication was that Stivers had personally wrought the global financial crisis—and from Columbus, Ohio no less. Former banking lobbyist Steve Stivers was one evil dude, Ms. Kilroy would have us believe. We were to pay no heed to his solid legislative record in the Ohio Senate and his military service overseas. With an awkward smile, Mary Jo Kilroy assured us he was a very bad man—and that she was a very nice lady, by the way.

Now, Governor Ted Strickland’s re-election campaign is centered on similar assertions that John Kasich, as a former Columbus-based employee of Lehman Brothers, is also single-handedly responsible for the global financial crisis. It seems if you’re a Republican and at some point in your life you worked at a bank you personally brought on the global financial crisis—at least by Democrat logic. But keep in mind these people believe spending hundreds of billions of dollars we don’t have will lower the deficit.

With the Democrats’ deeply earnest desire to root out the parties responsible for the global financial crisis I am shocked—SHOCKED!—that they have yet to draw attention to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, former managing director of the investment bank Wasserstein Perella and the House of Representatives’s No.1 recipient of campaign contributions from hedge funds.

Beyond being a former investment banker and a recipient of massive amounts of campaign contributions from his friends in the business Mr. Emanuel was the chosen Congressional errand boy of Alec Litowitz, CEO of Magnetar Capital. You’ve probably never heard of Magnetar Capital so let me introduce you: according to financial author Yves Smith, Magnetar Capital is “the single market player most responsible for the severity of the 2008 financial crisis.” (For an overview of how Magnetar contributed to the financial crisis please view: The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going.)

Basically, Magnetar made billions of dollars shorting the market. As his company was contributing to the financial crisis, Mr. Litowitz and his wife, who had never before made significant political contributions, contributed massive amounts of money to Rahm Emanuel (“Friends of Rahm Emanuel”), Rahm Emanuel’s political action committee (Our Shared Values Pac), and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (chaired by Rahm Emanuel). And during that time period Mr. Litowitz and his wife contributed only to Rahm Emanuel and Rahm Emanuel-connected political organizations. Curious.

So a portion of the money made by the misbehavers in the global financial crisis ended up in Rahm Emanuel’s campaign coffers. He’s a Chicago Democrat so that’s hardly shocking. Where’d the money go from there? Surely not to the incorruptible anti-banking crusader Mary Jo Kilroy!

Yep, that’s where it went.

In her 2006 congressional campaign, Mary Jo Kilroy accepted $10,000 from Rahm Emanuel’s Our Common Values PAC and $2,000 from the Friends of Rahm Emanuel.

In her 2008 congressional campaign, Mary Jo Kilroy accepted $10,000 from Rahm Emanuel’s Our Common Values PAC and $4,000 from the Friends of Rahm Emanuel.

And in her 2010 re-election campaign, Mary Jo Kilroy has already accepted $2,000 from the Friends of Rahm Emanuel.

So the money flow chart looks something like this:

People screwed in the financial crisis --> Magnetar/Alec Litowitz --> Rahm Emanuel --> Mary Jo Kilroy

It seems that Congresswoman Kilroy’s moral high ground on all things banking never existed. Don’t worry; I’m sure that won’t stop her from churning out more of those “former banking lobbyist Steve Stivers” campaign ads that kept us all entertained during the 2008 election. And when you’re watching them remember where she got the money to pay for them: out of the pockets of the people who got screwed in the financial crisis.

The President Has Poor Posture

2010-04-13T00:00:00.000-04:00

It’s all fine and good if President Obama wants to have a beer and wax philosophical with his friends about how the world would be a better place without nuclear weapons. The topic would even make for a nice speech at a Miss America pageant. The reality, however, is that nuclear weapons do exist. They’ve been invented—the Pandora’s Box is opened! We can’t uninvent them. They’re here, they’re nuclear, get used to it.

American nuclear policy should reflect reality. Unfortunately, last week President Obama reversed our country’s longstanding nuclear policy which had effectively secured peace for sixty-five years.

The previous policy, supported by every president since Harry Truman, was designed to give potential aggressors pause before attacking the United States or one of our allies. Mess with us, and anything may happen—you might even get nuked. A case study in the effectiveness of this policy is illustrated by former Secretary of State James Baker in his memoir, The Politics of Diplomacy. Baker wrote that in a meeting with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz on the eve of the Gulf War he “purposely left the impression that the use of chemical or biological agents by Iraq could invite tactical nuclear retaliation.” No chemical weapons were confirmed to have been used during the war.

Under the new Obama policy, we’ve lost the “calculated ambiguity” that Secretary Baker credits with preventing the use of chemical weapons in the Gulf War. We’ve put all of our cards on the table. The policy states: “the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations.” So if anyone who’s treaty-compliant and not openly nuclear wants to gas any of our major cities, the official U.S. stance is “That’s okay.” We’ll still respond to be sure, but it’ll be a slower, more tepid, limited response of conventional bombs and bullets. Obama’s new policy sucks the “super” out of “superpower.”

Ohio Congressman Mike Turner, senior Republican on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, has it exactly right:

When it comes to defending the United States against a devastating attack, our message should be clear and simple: If our nation is attacked, we will use all means necessary to defend ourselves. Period. This is the essence of nuclear deterrence: The message should be that the cost of attacking the United States will be greater than the benefit.

Obama’s slumped nuclear posture not only gambles with our safety in the present, it gambles with our nation’s safety in the future as well. Under the new policy, the United States “will not develop new warheads or add military capabilities.” So as China and Russia advance we’ll be staying back in the past. We’ll be fighting with the equivalent of spears and stones as the rest of the world advances. God forbid another war breaks out; we’ll have to change our national anthem to “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

Foreign relations are unpredictable. During World War II, the Russians were our allies. Shortly thereafter we were facing off against them in the Cold War. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. There’s no crystal ball to gaze into to know what dangers we may face. We do know, however, that it’s best to be prepared. In his first annual message to Congress (the “State of the Union” by today’s terms), George Washington advised, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.” Peace through strength. The first forty-three presidents understood that.

Barack Obama promised us change. He’s definitely delivering.

Obama Advisor: Throw the Country Into a VAT

2010-04-08T00:02:00.000-04:00

Our country might be getting pushed into a VAT, the dreaded state of a tax on everything productive. At a New York Historical Society event yesterday Paul Volcker, Chair of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said that the United States should consider a European-style value-added tax (or VAT) to help tackle the soaring government budget deficit.

A value-added tax is basically a tax levied at every level of the manufacturing process on the amount of value added to the product by each additional producer. So if the end product is widgets, one producer is taxed for the “w,” the next producer is taxed for adding the “i,” another for the “d,” and then another, another, and another for the “g,” “e,” and “t,” respectively. And then, at the end of the production cycle, all these taxes are passed on to the end consumer--you, me, and everyone else. However, when a consumer buys goods in a VAT system the true depth of the value-added tax doesn’t show up on the receipt because the bulk of the tax has already been paid by producers.

It’s a particularly appealing tax to big-government politicians because, as Ronald Reagan put it back in 1985, “a value-added tax actually gives a government a chance to blindfold the people and grow in stature and size.” “The Great Communicator” went on to warn of the insidious nature of the tax: “[I]t’s hidden in the price of a product. And that tax can quietly be increased, and all the people know is that the price went up, and they don’t know whether the price went up because somebody got a raise, or whether the company wanted to increase profits, or whether it was government.”

So if the government imposes a VAT system on us, politicians will have a clandestine vehicle for raising taxes. (Yikes!) In a VAT, our economy will be damned to slow growth for decades and every manufacturer in the land will be trapped in a morass of paperwork and government bureaucracy. The European Union’s VAT laws are so complex they had to create an eLearning course to help their citizens and bureaucrats navigate the tax code.

And folks, the VAT isn’t replacing a current tax; it’s just more gasoline being poured onto the fire.

How did it come to this? What happened to the Obamacare deficit reduction? Congresswoman Kilroy promised we were going to spend a bunch of money we don’t have and, as the money rolled out, it would lower the deficit. Hard to believe that line of reasoning, but she said it would be so. The Democrats rolled out their “Mission Accomplished” banner and told us they had deflated the ballooning budget deficits. So why, then, do we need a value-added tax?

Apparently, we were lied to--and by those bastions of trustworthiness in Congress no less. The outrage! The shock! The… total predictability.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi hinted that this was phase II of the Obamacare plan back in October 2009 while appearing on the Charlie Rose program. “[European governments] get a tax off of [a value-added tax] and they use that money to pay the healthcare for their own workers… Somewhere along the way, a value-added tax plays into [American healthcare reform],” and then as an afterthought, “Of course, we want to take down the healthcare cost, that’s one part of it.”

So throwing the taxpayers into a VAT has been the plan all along, apparently. The Democrats certainly weren’t very forthcoming about that.

The new tax burden to pay for Obamacare doesn’t end there, unfortunately. Mr. Volcker also said that it may be necessary to develop a carbon or other energy-related tax.

Hopefully, when Obamacare kicks in it’ll cover backs broken by the tax burden.

Would anyone else rather have a Congress that adds value than a value-added tax? I know I would. Let’s toss the bums out!

What's Not to Like About a Massive Deficit?

2010-04-02T22:55:00.000-04:00

Mary Jo Kilroy is a Democrat and a lawyer. Historically that demographic tends to require clarification for what the definition of “is” is. Even if I parse the definition of “is” it befuddles me to explain what Congresswoman Kilroy meant when she said of Obamacare, “It is paid for and will lower the deficit. What is not to like about that?” Not a single part of her statement is true. Which, I guess, is what's not to like about it.

When will Mary Jo learn that it takes more than a plastered-on smile to pull the wool over our eyes? Claiming Obamacare is paid for is like if I swiped my credit card to buy a luxury yacht and then boasted to my friends, “Yep. That sucker’s bought and paid for… assuming I win the Mega Millions.” Although, in order to pay for Obamacare the U.S. Government would have to win the Mega TRILLIONS.

Unfortunately, no such lottery exists. However, if it did, I’d rather play the odds on winning that than believe that Congress is going to follow through with all the actions its members would have to take in order for Obamacare to actually reduce the deficit.

The other big fib in Congresswoman Kilroy’s statement is that Obamacare will lower the deficit. The entire argument that Obamacare will reduce the deficit is constructed around estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Due to the constraints placed on the CBO by the Congress, these estimates didn’t take into account several major elements of the Democrats’ healthcare reform package.

Despite the previous poor track record of government cost estimates (the actual cost of Medicare was nearly nine times the estimate), for the purpose of this blog entry, we’ll pretend that the CBO estimates are accurate. After making that enormous departure from reason, let’s take a look at what the CBO estimates don’t take into account.

First, the oft-cited CBO estimates do not include a $208 billion increase in reimbursements to physicians for treating Medicare patients. This repayment plan referred to as the “doc fix” was a part of the original House healthcare reform bill but was removed because of its high cost. Speaker Pelosi has stated that the “doc fix” is “very important” to Democrats, and that they “have made a commitment to do this.” If passed, the “doc fix” would, according to the CBO, cost an additional $208 billion for a net increase in the deficit of $59 billion dollars.

Second, the Congress must cut $523 billion from Medicare spending—and keep it cut. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, a non-partisan public policy research organization, thirty-three million people will be at risk of losing Medicare access as a result of the proposed cuts. Senior citizens have the highest voter turnout rates of any demographic. In an election year, I seriously doubt the Democrats are going to want to antagonize thirty-three million senior citizens by eliminating their Medicare; it tends to be an issue very near and dear to their hearts.

Time will tell how deep the Medicare cuts actually go. However, it’s a safe bet the cuts won’t be $523 billion dollars deep. That leaves us in an even deeper deficit than the $59 billion dollar deficit the “doc fix” will have us in.

Congresswoman Kilroy’s statement, “It is paid for and will lower the deficit,” leaves me wondering: How can she really believe we're that gullible? I can't wait to give her a reality check in November.

Henry Waxman is an Economic Chupacabra

2010-03-31T23:03:00.000-04:00

Rep. Henry Waxman reminds me of a chupacabra, the legendary Latin American cryptid that supposedly stalks the night sucking the blood out of farmers’ livestock. Except instead of sucking the life out of farm animals, he sucks the life out of our economy. He also has an insatiable thirst for media attention that he staves off by holding congressional hearings. It seems every time there’s a government witch hunt or proposed government witch hunt, he’s the John Hathorne-wannabe thirsting for blood.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post columnist William Raspberry once likened him to Joseph McCarthy. A quick look over Waxman’s career makes it hard to deny the accuracy of the observation. In 1998, Rep. Waxman created a Special Investigations Division of the House Government Reform Committee to “conduct investigations of any matter” at “any time.” Waxman has used this inquisitorial squad to investigate everything from Valerie Plame to colored contact lenses to Holocaust-era insurance restitution. If you’ve read about it in the paper, heard it on the radio, or seen it on TV there’s a good chance Henry Waxman has thrown your tax dollars at investigating it.

As discussed in this blog’s last posting, the Congressional Chupacabra’s next victims will be CEOs of companies that have lost value as a result of Obamacare. The premise of this latest Henry Waxman hearing was aptly summed up by The Wall Street Journal: “The White House claims CEOs are reducing the value of their companies and returns for shareholders merely out of political pique.” It’s a far-fetched premise, but the Democrats have to grasp for something; the truth is too dangerous for them.

The reality is that if these corporations left the Obamacare writedowns unreported they’d be running afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission. This isn’t some game corporate America is playing because they’re spoilsports. Even the AFL-CIO predicted Obamacare would “impose a dramatic and immediate impact on company financial statements.”

The Democrats hope they can silence reality though. They think a Waxman hearing is the way to go. He’s got a history of browbeating everyone from Roger Clemens to Big Tobacco into submission.

I’m going to make two predictions:

1) Waxman’s hearings are going to backfire. In calling the farmers back to the chupacabra’s lair, Waxman is providing the CEOs a prominent national forum to have their voices heard. With the well-documented truth on their sides, the CEOs are going to eviscerate the Democrats’ ill-conceived, fantasyland arguments over how Obamacare would bring costs down. The Congressional Chupacabra is going to get a pitchfork in his side.

2) If, in a couple of years, Henry Waxman catches wind that any companies failed to report their Obamacare writedowns, he’s going to haul their CEOs in for a hearing to browbeat them for violating SEC disclosure requirements. It’s what he does.

Hopefully someday soon the Congress will get serious and start tackling the issues Americans are truly worried about: our crippled economy and stagnant job growth. Hey! Here’s a thought: why not provide some of our unemployed citizens jobs building a coliseum to house all 3,500 CEOs Henry Waxman’s going to feel compelled to bully for giving the lie on Obamacare.

Obamacare Kills Jobs

2010-03-29T22:01:00.000-04:00

In their desire to make history with a cradle to grave healthcare program the Democrats (Mary Jo Kill-jobs included) have further devastated the economy without even understanding their blunder. It seems in their preoccupation with passing Obamacare, Democrats failed to take a great many factors into account. One of which was the effect raising taxes on businesses would have on job growth. In recent years Democrats seem to have developed a skewed view of corporations as needlessly greedy and self-serving. The Democrats have lost perspective. Corporations have a fiduciary responsibility to make a profit so they can provide a return on investment to their shareholders. Corporations aren’t made up of nameless, faceless suits with sardonic grins; they’re made up of regular people. The executives, shareholders, managers, and employees alike are all human. When the government raises taxes on a corporation, they’re raising taxes on people.

Part of the Democrats’ plan to make Obamacare appear affordable is to close what White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs calls a “loophole” which allowed corporations to deduct the full amount spent on prescription drug benefits for retirees from the corporation’s taxable income. This “loophole” was originally created in 2003 to incentivize employers to provide drug benefits to retirees in order to prevent the public system from being overwhelmed. Now, in the aftermath of the Obamacare legislation’s passage, companies of all kinds are facing an increased tax burden as a result of their decision to provide prescription drug benefits to retirees.

In the long term, this means many companies will terminate their retiree prescription drug benefits programs, leaving their retirees to rely on Obamacare and, thus, creating additional costs not factored into the estimates that claimed Obamacare would reduce the deficit. In the short term, employers are taking the increased tax burden right on the chin. Black-letter financial accounting rules require that corporations must immediately restate the present value of their earnings when a material change has been made. As the increased tax burden of Obamacare constitutes a material change, corporations have been announcing massive writedowns as a result of the Obamacare tax hikes:

AT&T -- $1 billion

Deere & Co. -- $150 million

Caterpillar -- $100 million

AK Steel -- $31 million

3M -- $90 million

Valero Energy -- up to $20 million

And those writedowns are just the tip of the iceberg; the consulting firm Towers Watson estimates that the total number of Obamacare writedowns will reach nearly $14 billion by year end. That’s $14 billion of wealth disappearing from the economy--$14 billion that could’ve been used for job growth: gone. It’s an obvious fact that too many Americans know all too well: when employers are faced with increased costs and economic downturn, they lack the resources to hire new workers. The state of our economy was already dire, now it’s worse.

Are the Democrats concerned? Yes, but not because of the implications for job growth. They’re concerned because in announcing the writedowns, employers have voiced an inconvenient reality the Democrats would prefer be kept silent: Obamacare is a job killer.

Infuriated by the audacity of corporate America in speaking the truth, Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak (D-MI), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, will haul the CEOs of Deere & Co., Caterpillar, AT&T, and Verizon before Congress for a hearing on April 21. Apparently, the Congressional Democrats would prefer for CEOs to cook the books to make their balance sheets appear healthier than they are. The Democrats really ought to think through the aftereffects of using intimidation to bully CEOs into muddying the truth. It could wind up being even worse than that time they forgot to think through the aftereffects of passing a massive, shoddily-contrived healthcare reform bill.

The Side Effects of Obamacare

2010-03-25T22:59:00.000-04:00

Obamacare: Side effects include nausea, anxiety, really horny sexual predators, institutionalized fraud, and disingenuousness in Democrats. Speaker Pelosi told us Congress would have to pass the bill before we would fully find out what was in it. Now that Obamacare (which recently received the endorsement of Cuban strongman Fidel Castro) is the law of the land, a lot of details are coming out about what exactly the Democrats in Congress have thrust upon us.

One of the details we’re now learning about is that the bill will allow for your tax dollars to be converted to Viagra and given to convicted sex offenders. To correct this disturbing development Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), a medical doctor, offered an amendment to the Senate healthcare reconciliation bill which would have criminalized taxpayer-funded Viagra for sex offenders. Seems reasonable, right? A rapist shouldn’t have the opportunity to smile, wink at his victim, and say, “This raping was paid for by your tax dollars.” And yet despite its un-debatable public benefit, Senator Coburn’s amendment was defeated by a Senate vote of 57-42.

Does that mean fifty-seven Democratic United States senators honestly believe taxpayer dollars should be used to subsidize Viagra for convicted child molesters and rapists? Even on my most cynical day I couldn’t believe that. United States senators know right from wrong—a fact which may make the truth even more disgusting: Despite knowing the wrongness of allowing this egregious violation of the public trust to continue, these fifty-seven Democratic senators chose wrong. They voted against Senator Coburn’s amendment because its passage went against their political interests. You see, if Senator Coburn’s amendment had passed it would have required an additional vote in the House of Representatives. Obamacare just barely squeaked through that chamber in a narrow 219-212 vote. Rather than face another explosive political battle in the House, the Democrats are opting to let anything and everything undesirable about the law as it is written stand—even if it means having sexual predators with chemically-enhanced libidos gallivanting around in our neighborhoods.

How shameful.

The Democratic opposition to Senator Coburn’s amendment also revealed a great hypocrisy of the Democratic Party. In addition to its opposition to taxpayer-funded Viagra for rapists, Coburn’s amendment included provision to enact recommendations from the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) for reducing Medicaid fraud.

In September 2009, Democratic Senator Tom Carper called the GAO recommendations “an enormous opportunity to save money” to the tune of “hundreds of millions of dollars.” And yet, Senator Carper and his fellow Democrats are now, apparently, against the recommendations. Their opposition is particularly disingenuous considering that a bulwark of their plan for funding Obamacare is by reducing fraud in Medicare and Medicaid

What inconsistency.

In torpedoing Senator Coburn’s amendment, Democrats also revealed the insincerity of their professed respect for independent non-partisan government agencies. In the run up to the vote on the healthcare reform bill Democrats were “absolutely giddy” to taut the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimates on the costs of Obamacare. They were more than happy to exploit the CBO’s non-partisan reputation when it suited their political agenda. But now that another non-partisan independent agency, the Government Accountability Office (sometimes known as “The Taxpayers' Best Friend”), has made recommendations that go against the Democrats’ agenda suddenly those non-partisan agencies aren’t so hot. If anything, the GAO report should carry greater weight than the CBO estimates. The GAO report analyzed what is, the CBO estimates only guessed what might be. If the Democrats were truly interested in non-partisan analysis, fiscal common sense, and sound public policy, they would not have voted against enacting the GAO recommendations for saving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.

I’m sure a few hundred million dollars seems like chump change to the Congressional Democrats. After all, they just committed to spend over a trillion dollars on Obamacare. To the American people a few hundred million dollars is still a lot of money; most of us will never come close to having that much money. Is it too much to ask for the Democrats to put aside their petty political agendas in favor of being good stewards of the public treasury? Apparently they think so.

Mary Jo & the Politically Motivated Hearing

2010-03-24T11:13:00.000-04:00

Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy may have just bumbled her way into exposing further evidence of the incompetence of Obama Administration Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has granted Congresswoman Kilroy’s request for a hearing into the already-investigated collapse of the former Wall Street banking company Lehman Brothers. Ms. Kilroy’s call for a hearing appears to be politically motivated by a desire to create a forum for attacking Ohio gubernatorial candidate and former Congressman John Kasich, a former employee of Lehman Brothers. Recent polls show Mr. Kasich on course to defeat Kilroy political ally Governor Ted Strickland in the November election.

Congresswoman Kilroy’s ill-conceived plan to discredit Mr. Kasich may backfire, however, as teams overseen by then-Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy Geithner were in the office looking over the shoulders of Lehman Brothers executives as the questionable accounting practices responsible for the institution’s collapse took place. Geithner’s teams were provided desks, phones, computers, and total access to all of Lehman Brother’s books and records. The court-appointed bankruptcy examiner’s report does not indicate that Lehman Brothers kept two sets of books or attempted to hide its accounting practices from regulators. It would appear the questionable accounting was taking place in full view of Timothy Geithner’s team.

In fact, Timothy Geithner’s team appears to have gone to great lengths to give Lehman Brothers’s questionable accounting practices a passing grade. Geithner’s team may have even been complicit in disguising the instability of the institution. On page 1,488 of his report (page 445 of this PDF), the bankruptcy examiner describes how Tim Geithner’s team reduced standards to ensure Lehman Brothers would appear to be in good working order.

If Congresswoman Kilroy is serious about investigating the circumstances that led up to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, she must start with questioning Treasury Secretary Geithner’s ineffective oversight of the organization. If Geithner lacks the capacity to recognize “materially misleading” (the bankruptcy examiner’s words) accounting practices at a single Wall Street banking institution, how can he possibly have the competence to oversee the entire Treasury Department?

However, Ms. Kilroy doubtfully has the courage to ask the tough questions and demand accountability from Secretary Geithner, an Obama appointee. Instead she will undoubtedly use the hearing as an attempt to implicate Mr. Kasich in a scandal by his association as a Columbus-based employee of the collapsed institution.

NEVERMIND that the collapse of Lehman Brothers has already been investigated.

NEVERMIND that John Kasich was over 500 miles away in Columbus, Ohio while Timothy Geithner’s teams were in the room with Lehman Brothers executives as the questionable accounting occurred.

NEVERMIND the facts!

THIS IS POLITICS! By Kilroy’s reckoning, reality only muddies the water. She’s got to deliver for the Ohio Democratic Party so they will deliver for her.

If the Congresswoman were interested in representing her constituents she would devote her time towards fixing the economy and creating jobs, not breaking her knuckles beating a dead horse by reinvestigating a financial institution that collapsed years ago and has already been fully investigated.

Mary Jo in Wonderland

2010-03-22T22:16:00.000-04:00

In the aftermath of a healthcare reform d emonstration held outside her office last week Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy stated, "Hearing the voices of my constituents, and not Washington insiders, is crucial to my decision making process." Congresswoman Kilroy heard our voices. She knew what we wanted her to do. And then… she listened to Nancy Pelosi and went with the Washington insiders.

It’s hardly surprising she’d betray us. Congresswoman Kilroy sides with Nancy Pelosi 99% of the time.

"I'm encourage that by passing [the healthcare bill we'll reduce the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years," said Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy in a statement announcing her vote.

Alice isn’t the only one in Wonderland if Ms. Kilroy actually believes this healthcare bill will reduce the deficit. Democrats—Rep. Kilroy included—base their claims on projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Projections from the CBO. The CBO isn’t infallible. They don’t have a crystal ball to see into the future. The numbers they produce are estimates, and government estimates have been wrong before.

Let’s take a look at the history: In 1966 the cost of Medicare, a massive new government program much like Obamacare, was about $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that it would cost $12 billion (adjusted for inflation) by 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $107 billion—nearly nine times the estimate!

Today’s estimates on the cost of Obamacare are based on the assumption that the Congress will do what it promises. The estimated $100 billion deficit reduction Congresswoman Kilroy is cooing about is based on the belief that Congress will, in the future, cut $523 billion dollars in Medicare spending. If Congress fails to make those cuts, the deficit will go up by $423 billion dollars.

The CBO estimates also assume that nothing drastic happens to the government’s revenue stream. The bill imposes $569.2 billion dollars in new taxes on private citizens as well as $52 billion dollars in new taxes on employers who already can’t afford to provide their employees healthcare. Employment is already hovering near 10% and the economic situation is such that businesses, faced with economic uncertainty, are scared to make new hires. Obamacare will kill job growth in the womb with these new taxes. As job growth is further arrested an increasing number of people will remain unemployed and need government subsidized health care (read as: more costs + less revenue = high deficit).

In the Wonderland Mary Jo Kilroy strolls through saying a massive government spending program will reduce the deficit and raising taxes will creates jobs might make it so. In the real world—the world where all of her constituents reside—a world with an ultra-weak economy, soaring unemployment, and an ever-deepening national debt we know that’s simply not true. In voting for this legislation Mary Jo Kilroy has once again demonstrated her worthiness of the moniker Mary Jo Killjobs.

A Choice for Mary Jo: Bow to Washington Insiders or Represent Her Constituents?

2010-03-15T22:26:00.000-04:00

He promised to be a “transformational president”, but jobless voters are suddenly calling the President “NObama”. The White House bet big on healthcare when the big issue people care about is jobs.

The President has been chasing after healthcare since taking office over a year ago. Despite his party’s overwhelming control of both houses of Congress he still hasn’t gotten it done. With each passing day the President grows more and more desperate for a win.

According to Rasmussen Reports, 57% of Americans believe the health care reform plan now working its way through Congress will hurt the U.S. economy. It’d be a deranged fantasy to believe otherwise: the bill will drag the country billions deeper into the La Brea tar pit of our already massive national deficit—and will raise taxes while doing it.

The simple fact is that the majority of the American people do not want this legislation made law. The people are saying “NO!” to the corrupt bargains that were struck to get this bill through the Senate. The people are saying “NO!” to the Cornhusker kickback, the Lousiana Purchase, and the Florida Flim-Flam.

The Democrats in Congress are faced with a choice: to side with a desperate president who needs this victory to save his political skin or to side with the American people by rejecting a massively unpopular bill which will damage our economy by adding billions to the deficit and raising taxes on working Americans.

According to the Pew Research Center, the American peoples’ top priorities are the “economy” and “jobs”. Healthcare comes in at a very distant 8^th place as a top priority. The takeaway: the people want to see the Congress and the White House focusing on our stagnant economy and on creating jobs.

Unemployment in Ohio is at a 26 year high. Stated another way, unemployment is the highest it’s been since President Obama was a 23-year-old college kid studying political science. The healthcare bill will do nothing to alleviate the staggering level of unemployment in our state. In fact, with the preferential treatment other states receive through the corrupt bargains struck in the Senate, the bill puts Ohio at further disadvantage.

If Congresswoman Kilroy sides with President Obama and Nancy Pelosi on voting for the healthcare bill she will be demonstrating in no uncertain terms where her loyalty lies: with desperately out of touch Washington insiders—not with her constituents in Ohio.

Kilroy Wants it Both Ways in Afghanistan

2010-03-10T21:19:00.000-05:00

On May 14, 2009 Congresswoman Kilroy co-sponsored HR 2404, a resolution in the House of Representatives which, if passed, will order the Obama Administration to develop and execute an exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan, the country which hosted Osama bin Laden as he planned the September 11 attacks on our country. A few months later, in the run up to President Obama’s 30,000 troop surge, Ms. Kilroy stated in the Columbus Dispatch that “Afghanistan should be the central front against terrorism since those that [sic.] wish to do us harm have based their efforts in that part of the world.” The Columbus Dispatch reports today that Ms. Kilroy will vote against a resolution by her liberal ally and HR 2404 co-sponsor Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Democrat, OH-10) using an obscure and likely unconstitutional provision of the War Powers Act of 1973.

So to recap: Kilroy in May: PULL OUT! Kilroy in September: SURGE!

What does Congresswoman Kilroy have to say right now? Apparently nothing. In the Columbus Dispatch’s coverage of the House debate on Kucinich’s resolution most Central Ohio legislators were able to clearly state their positions. However, Ms. Kilroy conspicuously didn’t offer a quote to inform her constituents on her position.

Her silence is but the latest in an ages old political game the Congresswoman and her ilk like to play of trying to have it both ways. Ms. Kilroy is in bed with the anti-defense far-left: She’s sponsored a resolution directing Defense Secretary Gates to outline an exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan. She’s also a fawning devotee to the Obama Administration, and, at present, President Obama wants to stay the course in Afghanistan.

Congresswoman Kilroy is torn. She has backed herself into the unenviable position of needing to appease both her ultra-liberal masters and her allies in the Obama Administration. The conflict has left her ineffective and sinking in a mire of indecision.

The inconsistency of her positions has left those of us in her district unable to fathom how Congresswoman Kilroy genuinely feels about protecting us from the terrorists who wish to do us harm. What the Congresswoman has made perfectly clear is that she lacks resolve and will bend to political pressure on any and every issue—even our nation’s safety and security.

Congresswoman Kilroy is sending the wrong message to the terrorists. Through her actions she is exhibiting that our commitment to winning the war on terror is as fickle as the political winds.

Thankfully, the man challenging Kilroy in the upcoming 2010 election, Lt. Colonel Steve Stivers, has a solid understanding of what the result of cutting and running from the war in Afghanistan would entail. Said Stivers, “As a solider, I’m the first to wish we could end the engagement in Afghanistan, but to do so would embolden our enemies with a victory and move the front line in the war on terror to the United States.”

About That Economic Recovery...

2010-01-12T21:01:00.000-05:00

In March 2009, Congresswoman Kilroy stated in a Columbus Dispatch survey that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the so-called stimulus bill) would "create more than 16,000 jobs in central Ohio". In addition, her press release on the occasion of the Act's passage stated 133,000 jobs would be created in the State of Ohio. A question for the Congresswoman: where are the jobs?

According to recovery.gov, a mere 17,095 jobs have been created in the State of Ohio. That's pretty weak. Assuming none of these jobs were created in the phantom 43233 zip code where the State of Ohio's Office of Budget and Management sent $220 million to improve non-existent infrastructure, the 17,095 jobs created represent not even 13% of the jobs promised. What would happen to you at work if you delivered only 13% of the results you promised? (Assuming you're lucky enough to have work right now, of course. 15.3 million Americans don't.) I'd bet you'd lose your job for delivering barely over a tenth of what you promised--and rightfully so. Should we not then fire our Congresswoman who authorized tossing hundreds of billions of dollars of our money to the wind and failed to deliver the recovery she promised? You bet we should!

Nationally, unemployment remains at 10%. That's 1 in 10 people without jobs. According to the latest from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4 in 10 unemployed Americans (or 6.1 million people) have been unable to find jobs for a period of roughly seven months (27 weeks to be precise). Seven months is a long time to be in professional and financial freefall. Can you imagine the toll that would take on a family?

As you can read in the Columbus Dispatch, the most disturbing finding in the new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the erosion of 1.9 million Americans from the labor force since May 2009. That's 1.9 million Americans who have given up. These are people who want to be working, but they're so beaten down from scrounging for work in the dead economy that they've given up the search. If not for their despair, unemployment would have actually risen 0.4 percent in December.

Now that we've taken a quick look at the dismal national scene let's bring it back to Ohio: Ohio's citizens are among the hardest hit by the massive economic downturn the Democrats have brought us since gaining control of Congress in 2006. According to the latest data from the Ohio Bureau of Labor Market Information, Ohio, at 10.6%, has the 11th highest unemployment rate among the states. 623,000 Ohioans are without work. To add some perspective, the number of unemployed Ohioans is greater than the total population of Vermont. That's a lot of people.

We're in a particularly bad way in Ohio, wouldn't you agree? Last year, Democratic lawmakers promised us recovery, and yet we're still sorely in need. On her official House website, Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy states that the "effective and efficient action" of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act has "already addressed the immediate needs of the crisis". Effective? Efficient? Apparently, Ms. Kilroy needs to invest in a dictionary because the so-called stimulus plan has been anthing but effective and efficient. Far more troubling than her lack of comprehension of the English language is her dispassionate attitude that the immediate needs of her constituency have been addressed. 623,000 Ohioans without work. 10.6% unemployment. I'd say those are some pretty big concerns that need to be addressed. Wouldn't you?

In Better Circumstances There'd Be No Mary Jo

2010-01-11T18:14:00.000-05:00

I've never thought of myself as the type of person who would ever maintain a blog. In better circumstances I wouldn't be starting one. I'm guessing in better circumstances you wouldn't have sought this blog out either. In the better circumstances I imagine we'd have a responsible and limited government not the dangerously out of control statist juggernaut we have today. You and I would be too busy with our families and our well-paying jobs--too busy living the American Dream--to have time to grouse around the internet in our discontent. One of the many great things about America is that by this time next year we can be well on our way to those better circumstances.

The current Congress has demonstrated through its actions that the politicians assembled believe they know better than we do. They believe they don't need to account to us for their actions. They believe we are fools. They are wrong. And we can demonstrate their wrongness to them in no uncertain terms. We can demonstrate it because we, the people, have the power to toss the bums out.

And the bums should be tossed out. The purpose of this blog is to illustrate why. I will focus on a particularly repellent bum you and I can toss out this November: Mary Jo Kilroy. I first became acquainted with Ms. Kilroy during the 2006 election cycle when she made her initial run for Congress against Rep. Deborah Pryce (now retired). I was mortified by how negative Ms. Kilroy is as a candidate and, by accounts, as a person. Her campaign ads were so malicious and mean-spirited they brought to mind a Saturday Night Live spoof of a political ad I had seen years prior which asserted that Mario Cuomo was a chainsaw murderer. I have long thought such negative characters have no place in government. It sets a bad example. It says to everyone in society that it's okay to act outside the bounds of decency. I was very pleased when Ms. Kilroy lost the 2006 race. I was pleased this district was spared the shame and embarrassment of having her styled as our "Representative". To my horror, in the next election she was able to obtain a victory and became Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy, United States Representative for Ohio's 15th Congressional District.

To be clear, Ms. Kilroy didn't earn her victory. She put forth no great vision, no great ideas. She didn't make a vigorous effort to learn the values of the district she sought to represent. Ms. Kilroy did the cynical thing and sat back on her haunches and waited for the Republican Party to lose. She rode a wave of anti-Bush sentiment into office along with many of her far-left peers. It was her good fortune that a charismatic orator headed the Democratic ticket in 2008. Otherwise, she would have had to rely on her own lacking abilities--the same lacking abilities which had a mere two years prior failed to deliver her ambition's object.

In Congresswoman Kilroy, Ohio's 15th Congressional District doesn't have a representative. She doesn't share our vision or our values. Mary Jo Kilroy is a cold and ambitious woman beholden to her out-of-state liberal donors, trial lawyers, labor unions, and national party leadership. Casting votes along party lines 99% of the time, Ms. Kilroy is nothing more than a rubber stamp for Nancy Pelosi, the backroom-dealing, big government-loving Speaker of the House.

As a resident of Ohio’s 15th Congressional District, I'm offended by Ms. Kilroy. As many pundits have noted the OH-15 is the consummate swing district within the consummate swing state. I'm a swing voter. People like me are pretty common in this district. I've cast ballots for Republicans and Democrats, even some unaffiliated candidates. I evaluate candidates on their merits--just like so many of my neighbors in this swing district within this swing state. Because I evaluate candidates on their merits, I didn’t vote for Mary Jo Kilroy in 2006 or 2008, and, as you can likely guess, I won’t be voting for her in 2010. In this blog, I will explore why she’s wrong for our district and our country.