PA Legislature Should Adopt a Conservative Approach To Problem Solving

The beginning of a new year provides us all with the opportunity to get a fresh start. Along with the resolutions to lose weight, exercise more and stop compulsively watching the Fox News Channel, the onset of 2009 also gives we the people of Penn’s woods a new legislature and yet another chance to change the way state government does business.

You may recall that two years ago a General Assembly was seated that supposedly would end business as usual in Harrisburg. New leadership in the Senate and a historically large class of freshmen in the House gave rise to optimism that state government would indeed be changed for the better. But, when the gavel came down on the 2007-2008 session last November, disappointment hung heavy in the air.

The session was not a complete bust. It did yield the first significant revisions in the state’s Right to Know law in decades. There were some laudable changes in the way the legislature does business. Middle-of-the-night voting was eliminated, and the senate refused to hold a lame duck session after the General Election. The General Assembly, thanks largely to the senate, held the line on taxes. But, legislators of both parties allowed spending to increase more rapidly than the rate of inflation, and added significantly to the state’s debt load.

As the new legislature takes office this week a number of serious issues held over from the last session await action. The most pressing is the state’s growing budget deficit. The national economic slowdown has taken a bite out of state tax revenues. At the half-way point in the fiscal year the commonwealth faces a projected budget deficit of between $1.5 and $3 billion, depending on the optimism (pessimism) level of who is doing the estimating.

It is clear the spending plan adopted last July is unrealistic. Some steps have been taken to curtail spending, but not enough to have any meaningful impact. Governor Ed Rendell is hoping for a bail-out from Washington, and it is likely the new Obama Administration will provide some aid to states. How much is unknown, and with uncertainty surrounding the issue it would be imprudent to count on federal financial assistance at this point in time.

The state’s deepening fiscal crisis will dramatically impact the remaining elements of the governor’s legislative agenda. With the state treasury empty, no big new spending programs for such things as health care and highways are likely to win legislative approval.

That does not change the fact that the commonwealth’s roads and bridges are crumbling, or that a lack of health care for all will continue to be a problem.

Add all this together and what you get is a giant opportunity for adopting conservative, free market solutions which rely on less government spending and more on the private sector rather than expansion of expensive government programs. For example, conservatives have long argued that the state budget is bloated and spending has gotten out of control. Now, the legislature has political cover for cutting unproductive programs and saying no to the spending interests because the dollars just are not there. The situation also provides new impetus for the adoption of the Taxpayer Protection Act, which would constitutionally limit annual spending increases to the rate of inflation plus population growth.

The governor’s big spending plans for health care could be shelved in favor of actually addressing the root causes of the health care crisis, such as the uncapped medical malpractice awards routinely handed out by state juries. As for highways, inefficiencies could be wrung out of the state’s mass transit agencies and federal funding designated for highways actually spent on highways. A new look could be given to privatizing more of the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s operations.

As well, the fiscal crisis should also prompt a complete overhaul of the state’s antiquated tax and regulatory policies which have destroyed our business climate. If Pennsylvania were more competitive in its ability to attract businesses and the jobs they create state revenues would raise dramatically even if tax rates remained the same. In fact, history has proven that cutting tax rates actually increases revenue because lower taxes encourage more economic activity. Therefore, cutting taxes on businesses to encouraging business growth and development would be the foundation upon which a state economic resurgence could be built.

The question now is whether the new General Assembly has the fortitude to move away from the failed policies of the past and move forward with a bold, new approach. Given the situation we now find ourselves in, we have little to lose by trying.

Chris Christie isn’t even a candidate yet, and he has been unable to answer questions about how to curtail the growth of government, answering that at “some point in time I’ll have something to say about it,”but controversy is starting to follow him around already.

An interesting story is floating around that has Assemblyman Richard Merkt pretty upset, he himself an already announced candidate for Governor. Apparently, Passaic County Chairman, and Christie supporter Assemblyman Scott Rumana tried to set up a last minute special meeting with his municipal chairs to get special face time with Chris Christie bagman advanceman Bill Palatucci and a chance to win their support for Christie.

The meeting never happened, because only THREE chairman were in attendance, plus Palatucci apparently canceled his appearance at the last minute, giving Rumana a double dose of embarrassment for the poor attendance and the late cancellation.

Assembly Merkt was NOT amused by Rumana’s actions:

“I am surprised — and frankly more than a little disappointed,” said Merkt, “to learn that Chairman Rumana, who sits directly behind me in the Assembly GOP Caucus, would arrange a private meeting the Passaic County’s municipal chairs to hear from a representative of someone who is not yet even a candidate for Governor, while at the same time excluding three Republican candidates who have already declared their interest in running for the office.”

Merkt stressed that an open and fair nominating process is essential for Republican success in this year’s race for Governor, because the party’s political credibility is at stake.

“We Republicans simply cannot afford a gubernatorial nominee hand-picked behind closed doors by party bosses,” declared Merkt. “This decision belongs to the people of New Jersey, and they will respect and support our nominee only if they see that he is strong enough to win in a fair and open primary contest.”

I don’t blame him one bit for his outrage and this report, coupled with the way other County Chairman and elected officials have been acting, are leading me to believe that the Chris Christie candidacy is going to mimic the Anne Estabrook Andy Unanue John Crowley Dick Zimmer cluster, where he is anointed instead of running and being elected.

Start time: 1:00pm EST

You can watch the debate between the 6 candidates for Chairman of the Republican National Committee by either watching C-SPAN 2 on your cable system or going to www.RNCDEBATE.org and watching the live video stream.

Lights may shine brightly in Atlantic City, but here’s one spotlight the city could do without. According to the American Tort Reform Foundation’s (ATRF) 2008/2009 report on Judicial Hellholes®, AC ranks 4th among the nation’s least fair civil court jurisdictions.

“Atlantic County, New Jersey, and the state known as the ‘nation’s medicine cabinet,’ has become the destination of choice for those suing the pharmaceutical industry,” notes the report’s Executive Summary.

Believe it or not, some of these cases are brought on behalf of people who do not even claim to have been harmed by taking a drug. Instead, lawyers are seeking massive payouts for anyone who merely purchased a drug. Other areas of the state have problems, too, such as particularly large personal injury awards in Monmouth County and an astounding appellate court ruling in a Cape May case holding restaurant and bar owners responsible for accidents caused by drunken patrons, even if those patrons didn’t consume alcohol while at their establishments. Such decisions are certainly bad for small businesses, but lawyers are doing all right: An advisory committee to the New Jersey Supreme Court found that a contingency fee lawyer may in some cases take as much as half of his or her client’s recovery.

The report also cites research by Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics which found “89% of New Jersey businessmen and women surveyed claim that ‘lawsuits are driving up the costs of doing business’ … and that a full ‘25% have considered relocating out of state.’” The Rutgers research also found 93% of those surveyed say New Jersey’s liability laws favor plaintiffs, and “62% are concerned that they will be sued within the next five years.”

The impact of the state’s judicial mess is hardly limited to Atlantic City, and the ATRF report notes, “New Jersey is second-worst in the nation when it comes to how much of the state’s economic activity is spent on tort litigation, and it has the fourth riskiest tort litigation system in the country.”

According to Rutgers Eagleton, a full three-fourths of businessmen and women surveyed believe “that commonsense liability reforms would make it easier to keep businesses from leaving the state.”

Unfortunately, in a state that continues to spend money amid ballooning budgetary shortfalls, is considering giving driving privileges and in-state college tuition to illegal aliens, and somehow interprets a $500,000 income as $1 million for the purpose of collecting a “millionaire’s tax,” “common sense” has increasingly become an oxymoron.

Clinton crony and former DNC Chairman, Terry McAuliffe announced he will be seeking the Democrat nomination for Governor of Virginia next year, replacing term-limited Tim Kaine, who was just announced as the new DNC Chairman, replacing Howard Dean:

Terry McAuliffe on Saturday announced his candidacy for the Virginia governorship, attempting to position himself as the natural successor to Democrats Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. In an e-mail video distributed to supporters, the former Democratic National Committee chairman said he has lived in the commonwealth for almost 20 years and that his campaign would focus on the economy, energy and the records of Warner and Kaine. McAuliffe is a resident of McLean and said he would make a formal announcement on Wednesday.

Certainly no stranger to controversy, some things stand out more then others over the years. For instance, there was the $100,000 investment McAuliffe made in Global Crossing, that netted him a $18 MILLION dollar profit. Global Crossing, which has a history of donating to Democrats, filed for bankruptcy in 2002. (Note: Global Crossing and Enron filed for bankruptcy just months apart, both claimed $25Billion in assets and close to $14Billion each in liabilities. Both destroyed their employees 401k plans with overspending and illegal accounting practices, but which bankruptcy was laid at the door of George W. Bush and the Republican Party while the other was spared. To this day, Enron is still equated to Corporate Greed and Republican party failures while the Democrat friendly Global Crossing is barely mentioned at all.)

McAuliffe also bragged about having a George W. Bush welcome mat outside his DNC office, where he proudly wiped his feet on it, before entering the office. I hope McAuliffe makes a better politician then he does a handicapper, as he wrongly predicted Kerry would defeat Bush in 2004; “America is responding to our message, I am confident in predicting that John Kerry will be the next President of the United States and will send George Bush back home to Crawford, Texas.”

Two years earlier, he was so sure that Jeb Bush would never set foot in the Governor’s mansion in Florida; “Jeb is gone! There won’t be anything as devastating to President Bush as his brother’s losing in Florida.”

That didn’t exactly turn out as Mr. McAuliffe had hoped, and he still wasn’t done: Democratic chairman Terry McAuliffe predicted a sweep back then as well - taking control of the House, holding a majority in the Senate and capturing a majority of the governorships for the first time since the GOP landslide of 1994.

Sorry Terry, the GOP actually INCREASED their lead in the House, and they took control of the Senate, making your then Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle now Senate Minority Leader. How about those Governorships, Terry? Oops, you were wrong on that one too.

Does the slimy snakeskin salesman, Terry McAuliffe, still have what it takes to fool and con enough voters to not only win the primary, but the general election to become the next VA Governor?

In late 2008 and early 2009, Russia has been sending its battleships across the globe to re-assert its status as a superpower. Thanks to the several years of high gas prices, Russia is flush with revenue and is restoring its old military power. Should Americans be worried? I think the answer is the opposite, Americans should be happy.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, America has been the dominant and sole superpower for the better part of two decades now. In those twenty odd years, America has been sloppily enjoying that title and we have become complacent. It seems that over that period of time we have tried to stay in the position we are in rather than attempting to distant ourselves further from the other rising powers.

So here we are, in 2009 and we are realistically no longer the only superpower. This is great news for American people. A country, just like any nationalized program, starts to fall behind when it has no one to compete with. Look at public education, since parents are forced to send their kids to these schools, through taxes, our public education system has begun to crumble.

As we move into this new era, America will feel the heat of competition with these other superpowers and strive hard to achieve even more advances in technology, science and math.

Barack Obama has already said he wants to “fuse NASA’s and the Pentagon’s space efforts” to compete with China, since the disturbing test they completed, knocking a satellite out of space with a missile.

Competition between countries can lead to great developments. So many things developed by NASA, during their race to the moon with the USSR, have become life saving inventions of our time; kidney dialysis machines, medical CAT scanners and water purification machines have saved countless lives.

I welcome this coming competition between nations, America needs to wake up and stop being a reactive country and become a proactive one. Look how unprepared our military was for occupying Iraq and look how many things have come out from that war.

We have new vehicles to protect our troops from modern day weapons, a new generation in protective combat vests and countless new gizmos and gadgets that save the lives of our troops and prevent as many civilian casualties as possible.

Although I do not support this new deal program President-Elect Obama is proposing, I would like to see an overhaul of education in this country. Now don’t get me wrong, we absolutely have to allow kids to grow up into what they want, but just like in the 50s, we need to push for kids to become engineers, mathematicians, chemists and scientists.

America has seen a dramatic decrease in inventions coming out of this country and Microsoft(an Iconic American company) is going to move their HQ to India where computer engineering is as common as being a real estate agent here.

I am hoping the rise of these new superpowers spurs America into the same nationalist competition we had with the USSR; minus all of the proxy wars. Competition always bring new ideas and inventions and this time America needs it badly.

I would like to hear what you think of my presumption, leave a comment; I always love hearing from the readers.

Today at 1:00pm EST, Grover Norquist and the Americans for Tax Reform will host a debate between the 6 candidates for Chairman of the Republican National Committee, which will be decided by the 168 voting members of the RNC on January 30th in Washington.

The debate will be televised live on CSPAN. If you can’t get to a TV, you can watch it on streaming video at www.RNCDEBATE.org

Norquist will moderate the debate, asking questions that were submitted to the RNCDEBATE website.

The candidates are Saul Anuzis, MI GOP Chairman; Ken Blackwell; Katon Dawson, South Carolina GOP Chairman; Mike Duncan, the current RNC Chairman; Chip Saltsman, former TN GOP Chairman and Mike Huckabee’s campaign manager; and Michael Steele.

For a race decided by party insiders, and only 168 of them at that, the race has received a ton of mainstream media and conservative grassroots attention due to some outside issues involving some of the candidates; like Katon Dawson belonging to a “whites-only” Country Club, or Chip Saltsman mailing a CD filled with song parodies to all the voting members that was viewed as offensive, to Michael Steele, who co-founded a Pro-choice organization with former NJ Governor Christine Todd-Whitman and receiving the endorsement of the Log Cabin Republicans.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to interview Grover Norquist and candidates Chip Saltsman and Saul Anuzis. You can listen to that interview by clicking this logo:

Is there any issue that Governor Corzine doesn’t have a ‘Blue Ribbon’ panel for? Every day I seem to read about another one. One day it’s a panel for consolidation of towns. The next it’s gay marriage. And now it’s a panel on illegal immigration. Funny enough, all of these panels seem to have something in common: they all serve as rubber stamps for the Governor’s latest liberal scheme – in this case driver’s ‘privileges’ and in-state tuition rates for illegal immigrants.

According to the Bergen Record:

The governor’s immigration advisory panel this week is expected to consider recommendations that the state allow undocumented immigrants to drive with a special “driver privilege card” and to attend college at in-state tuition rates, two Hispanic leaders say.

The recommendations are among several from subcommittees of Governor Corzine’s Blue Ribbon Panel on Immigrant Policy, which will meet Tuesday in New Brunswick. The Hispanic leaders, who are not panel members, said that New Jersey Public Advocate Ron Chen told them at a meeting last month that the recommendations would be included in the panel’s report to Corzine.

The “driving privilege card” would allow undocumented immigrants, who are forbidden from obtaining driving licenses in New Jersey, to drive legally. But it would not have the same identification function of a standard driver’s license. Many undocumented immigrant students forgo higher education, which often requires them to pay higher, out-of-state tuition.

(One digression here. To my friends at the Bergen Record, it’s ‘illegal’ immigrants not ‘undocumented.’)

While I’m sure none of us would ever want to doubt the vast amount of research done by this no-doubt most erudite panel, if I were an illegal alien why would I suddenly want to walk into my local DMV and tell them I’m not a citizen? Wouldn’t I still be better off just going for the real deal so I can do things like - I don’t know - maybe register to vote as a Democrat in the next election?

Of course, the travails of the ‘undocumented’ in our society are all the fault of those of us who live here and play by the rules. You see, we just abuse these poor immigrants says Anastasia Mann of the Rutgers University Eagleton Institute of Politics:

“New Jersey has been squeezing the labor out of its immigrants without doing anything to integrate them,” said Mann, noting that a recently released Rutgers University report said that immigrants make up 28 percent of the state’s workforce and account for nearly a quarter of all earnings. “Some of that has been left to non-profits and churches.”

Apparently, we just haven’t done enough to this point to “integrat[e] both legal and illegal immigrants into the state’s economy and civic life” – save doing things like paying for their kids to freely attend our public schools and subsidizing their health care. How unfair and unjust, I know.

Frankly, as a conservative I’m not even sure what to do about this issue anymore. We are on the right side of it, but so long as we have liberals like Corzine pandering to the Hispanic community for votes with ‘Blue Ribbon’ panels and essentially allowing the inmates to run the asylum we will continue to have immigration chaos. And, sadly, we will continue to witness an erosion of the fabric of America.

Barack Obama, who campaigned on promising the American people the most ethical, open and transparent Administration ever, if elected, is going to be looking for a new Secretary of Commerce, now that his first choice, Bill Richardson has withdrew his name for the position due to an ongoing investigation:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, tapped in December by President-elect Barack Obama to serve as secretary of Commerce, has withdrawn his name for the position, citing a pending investigation into a company that has done business with his state.

“Let me say unequivocally that I and my Administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact,” he said Sunday in a report by NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell. “But I have concluded that the ongoing investigation also would have forced an untenable delay in the confirmation process.”

A federal grand jury is investigating how a California company that contributed to Richardson’s political activities won a lucrative New Mexico state contract.

I am so happy to see that the 700 BILLION dollars is being put to good use; starting with AIG throwing lavish parties after they received their bailout bucks, to banking friends of useless Secretary Treasurer Henry Paulson getting billions.

The latest travesty of bailout bucks recipients, (that shouldn’t have been given out in the first place), is related to sponsors of the very expensive College Bowl games:

Football fans watching this year’s college bowl games may have noticed that some of the biggest sponsors were also recipients of federal bailout money, including Citigroup Inc., which presented the Rose Bowl game, as well as Capital One Financial Corp. and GMAC LLC.

“Some of the advertising folks at these firms might think it’s important to put their corporate brand on public events, but taxpayers might think they’re being taken for a ride,” said Pete Sepp, vice president for policy and communications at the National Taxpayers Union.

Seeing companies sponsor a major athletic event while holding out a hand out for public money from the $700 billion rescue plan highlights one awkward aspect of the government intervention. Treasury has been reluctant to put restrictions on the funds. Typically, big-game sponsorships can cost millions of dollars.

One such bailout bank is Citigroup, who happens to own the naming rights to the new New York Mets stadium. They have received $50 BILLION dollars in various forms to stay “afloat.”

New Jersey Congressman Scott Garrett, a vocal critic of the bailouts, is questioning why the funds are not going to the consumers in the form of the various lending vehicles they offer as intended, and since they aren’t loaning money asks “so what are they advertising for?”

Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, is correct when he says there’s, “zero sense of shame.” The kicker is that Treasury Department officials have stated that “they didn’t want to impose restrictions for fear of reducing participation in TARP.”

So basically, because the Treasury Department was afraid the benefactor’s of the taxpayer funded bailout bucks would reject the money because there would be restrictions on how the money was spent, they made it a $700 BILLION dollar free for all?