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.

The "Fix" Is In; No Problems Actually Fixed

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.

Fish Swim, Birds Fly, & Mary Jo Raises Taxes

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.

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!

What's Not to Like About a Massive Deficit?

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

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

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

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 in Wonderland

In the aftermath of a healthcare reform demonstration 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.