DCCC: Democrats Can't Comprehend Columbus

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?

Saving Private Kilroy? Fat Chance!

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, Nancy, and The Pimp

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.

Speaker Pelosi Knows So Much That Isn't So

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?

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....

Governor Strickland is a Kilroy Democrat

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.

In an Awkward Turn of Events: Kilroy Exposes Geithner

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 Advisor: Throw the Country Into a VAT

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!