November 25, 2007
Nov 25 09:14 It's Time For A Housecleaning Nov 25 14:32 The Defeat of the Defeatists Nov 25 17:24 Shifting Momentum?
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct
Prior Years: 2006
It's Time For A Housecleaning
When I read the opening paragraphs of this article , I wasn't a happy camper. Government has become the problem once again. To be specific, some smarmy bureaucrats are the problem. Here's how the article opened:
Giving Pennsylvanians the widest possible access to the official records of its government agencies? Some would call it priceless.Enough's enough. Agencies shouldn't have the option of arguing against records requests.
But it may prove too expensive for most people.
Advocates for greater openness in government say pending legislation that would overhaul Pennsylvania's open records law should do more to stack the deck against government agencies that choose to fight such requests.
Specifically, they argue that agencies that lose open records lawsuits should have to pay the requester's legal fees, particularly because such lawsuits can cost tens of thousands of dollars to pursue and take years to resolve. With taxpayer dollars at their fingertips, government agencies are far better prepared to withstand an expensive court battle.
So far, legislators have rebuffed the idea.
It's the people's information.
Any open records legislation shouldn't prohibit the agency's ability to say no.
It's the people's information.
This shows how warped the legislators' & bureaucrats' thinking is. If it's going to be called open records, all records, whether they're interoffice memos or emails, should be open. The only exception I can think that's possibly justified would be something pertaining to homeland security.
For now, the bills say a court can force a government agency to pay a person's legal fees only if it finds that the agency "willfully or with wanton disregard" refused access to a public record, acted in bad faith or argued for an unreasonable interpretation of the law.That provision must be done away with.
It's the people's information.
That language represents an improvement over current law because it gives judges more leeway to award attorneys' fees in open-records cases, said Erik Arneson, a spokesman for the bill's sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware.I don't want an improvement. The open records organizations shouldn't have to settle for an improvement. They should be rewarded with legislation that forces people to do the right thing 100 percent of the time. PERIOD.
It's the people's information.
If legislators stand in the way of opening up that information, their reward should be forced into an involuntary retirement next November. That should consistently be the 'reward' for people that won't do the will of We The People.
It's time that people everywhere stood up & said that We The People isn't just a quaint phrase in an old document. It's time we told politicians that We The People is a group that shouldn't be argued against.
Here are some examples of how badly broken the system is:
- Beverly J. Schenck has waged a $10,000, four-year battle against her Butler County municipality, Centre Township, to see invoices submitted by the town solicitor. She is awaiting a Supreme Court decision after losing in county court and in a state appellate court.
- An 18-month court fight all the way to Supreme Court cost $64,000 to force Pennsylvania's college-loan agency to disclose how much it spent on retreats at five-star resorts for its board members, staff and guests, Staudenmaier said.
After all, it's the people's information.
Posted Sunday, November 25, 2007 9:15 AM
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The Defeat of the Defeatists
Noemie Emery's article in the Weekly Standard is a written indictment against Harry Reid, John Murtha, Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich and the rest of the defeatist Democrats. Here's how she skewers them:
"Nobody I know in a rational condition believes that the United States is going to have any kind of a military victory," Mark Shields said in August. "So the idea is going to be, 'We were on the cusp of victory and the rug was pulled out from under us by these willy-nilly, weak-kneed, nervous Nellies back home.'~"I wouldn't call the people that Mark Shields knows as being "in a rational condition." They're the same bunch that were befuddled in 1972 when Nixon won in a landslide. One Manhattan liberal even said "I don't know how we lost. Everyone I know voted for McGovern."
The problem with this is (1) that we may really win, and have no failure to blame upon anyone, and (2) that the nervous Nellies really did try to keep us from winning, indeed fought fang and claw to derail our best efforts.
Democrats bet that President Bush wouldn't change course, which would drive his ratings into the basement. Instead, President Bush hired David Petraeus to change course in Iraq. He also had a 'Come to Jesus' meeting with al-Maliki in which he emphatically told Maliki that American troops would pursue terrorists and insurgent whether an Iraqi politician tried providing sanctuary or not. President Bush also changed the rules of engagement, which took the shackles off the soldiers fighting door-to-door.
Meanwhile, Democrats tried passing nonbinding resolutions against the war. House Republicans couldn't prevent the Pelosi/Murtha steamroller but that wasn't the case in the Senate, where Mitch McConnell ran rings around Harry Reid, defeating the defeatist resolutions through filibusters.
Meanwhile, the surge troops flowing into Iraq were having success. Undaunted, Harry Reid's attempted to legislate defeat. His attempt failed miserably :
In the Senate, after weeks of skirmishing, Republicans easily turned back Democratic legislation requiring a troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days. The measure set no fixed deadline for completion of the redeployment, but set a goal of March 31, 2008. The vote was 50-48 against the measure, 12 short of the 60 needed for passage.Here's Emery's next shot at Democrats' powers of prediction:
When our tale opens, it is the last month of 2006, Democrats have just scored a blowout in Congress, Iraq is in shambles, and the country is calling for Bush to change course. He does. But he changes course in the other direction, radically revising his Iraq strategy, adopting aggressive new rules of engagement, and sending in 30,000 more troops. Even before the plan was announced to the public on January 10, 2007, Democrats launched their assault. Senator Christopher Dodd declared the plan useless: "A 'surge' of American troops will do nothing." Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrats in the new Congress, released an open letter to Bush on January 5, decrying his redoubled effort as futile: "Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried, and that has already failed." The surge was "a sad, ominous echo of something we've lived through in this country," according to Illinois senator Richard Durbin. "I'm confident it will not work," said John Kerry at a Senate hearing, a sentiment echoed by Barack Obama. "Verdict first, trial afterwards," said the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, unaware of her future as a role model for America's congressional Democrats. And then it really got strange.Democrats thought that they could repeat their 2006 victories by telling people that things weren't improving. That talking point is all but dead thanks to articles in the Chicago Tribune and even in the NY Times .
Despite the information, Democrats continued peddling a dismissed storyline:
Others piled on. "The surge was supposed to bring stability...It hasn't and it won't," Ted Kennedy said on May 1. "The evidence is clear it is not happening and it will not happen," Dodd said May 15 of a potential American victory. Durbin said the day after: "This Senate knows that the administration's policy in Iraq has failed." Senator Joseph Biden agreed. "The surge has not worked and will not work," he said on June 1. And in a joint letter to the president on June 13, Reid and Pelosi said, "As many had foreseen, the escalation has failed to produce the intended results."At some point, voters will have to choose whether they want pessimists who refuse to consider verifiable evidence running the war effort or if they want optimists who support the current mission running it. If you're basing your opinion on facts, the choice is clear.
Let's not forget the NY Times op-ed that Kenneth Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon wrote . That op-ed was the first hard hit that Democrats took. Unfortunately for them, it wasn't the last. In fact, the trend lately has been tow rite upbeat articles about Iraq.
The simple recount shows that President Bush's surge succeeded and that the Democrats' surge failed miserably. That's become so clear that even the NY Times has to admit it. That's proof that it's a gray day for Democrats.
Posted Sunday, November 25, 2007 2:33 PM
Comment 1 by Stephen R. Maloney at 27-Nov-07 04:24 PM
Gary, thanks for bringing The Weekly Standard piece to everyone's attention. I've been sending the following out today: You can help defeat John Murtha by signing up for "Bloggers 4 Russell." We hope to get at least 300 such bloggers, and as you can see at my site, we're well on our way. If you'd like to sign up do so either at my site: http://camp2008victorya.blogspot.com or by e-mailing me at: TalkTop65@aol.com. Thanks for your consideration.
steve maloney
ambridge, pa
Shifting Momentum?
This NY Times article asks if the facts on the ground in Iraq is changing the momentum of Next November's elections. Here's how they word it:
But the changing situation suggests for the first time that the politics of the war could shift in the general election next year, particularly if the gains continue. While the Democratic candidates are continuing to assail the war, a popular position with many of the party's primary voters, they run the risk that Republicans will use those critiques to attack the party's nominee in the election as defeatist and lacking faith in the American military.The fact that the NY Times is even talking about Iraq in such terms is news by itself. the fact that they're talking about the changes in Iraq changing the political landscape is stunning.
If security continues to improve, President Bush could become less of a drag on his party, too, and Republicans may have an easier time zeroing in on other issues, such as how the Democrats have proposed raising taxes in difficult economic times.
"The politics of Iraq are going to change dramatically in the general election, assuming Iraq continues to show some hopefulness," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who is a supporter of Mrs. Clinton's and a proponent of the military buildup. "If Iraq looks at least partly salvageable, it will be important to explain as a candidate how you would salvage it, how you would get our troops out and not lose the war. The Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in."
They're right, though, in opining that President Bush is less of a drag on GOP candidates than he was in 2006. In short, it isn't 2006 anymore is reality, not just a cliche.
It's still much too early to make a prediction on next year's elections but it isn't too early to say that this isn't good news for Democrats. Hillary spent the last eighteen months trying to sound hawkish while pandering to the MoveOn.org types. Her statement that "If President Bush won't end the war, I will" will return to bite her in the backside.
Michael O'Hanlon offers some good advice when he says that "Democrats need to be very careful with what they say and not hem themselves in." Unfortunately, it's advice they needed a year ago. It's too late now because people have heard the endless drumbeat of anti-war diatribes since the start of the year. They won't forget those rants either. They won't forget Harry Reid's and John Murtha's disastrous predictions. They won't forget how they wanted to stop the surge right when the Anbar Awakening was getting its legs. They won't forget the dramatic drop in casualties, both amongst the Iraqi civilians and our troops.
They won't forget because that's my job. The byword in the Clinton administration was that "Americans have a 10 second span." That's why I'm thankful for blogs because now I can remind people every 11 seconds or so.
Despite all the positive things that they wrote in this article, they couldn't resist this help for the Democrats:
At the same time, there is no assurance that the ebbing of violence is more than a respite or represents a real trend that could lead to lasting political stability or coax those who have fled the capital to return to their homes. Past military successes have faded with new rounds of car bombings and kidnappings, like the market bombing that killed at least eight on Friday in Baghdad.The trend is set. Violence has dropped precipitously for 6 straight months. What constitutes a trend with the NY Times? A year? Two years? A month if a Democrat is president?
One thing's for certain: They wouldn't be the NY Times without them being Democrat apologists. If they keep writing articles like this, though, I won't have any complaints.
Posted Sunday, November 25, 2007 5:26 PM
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