THE VOTER ID LAW IS A CONSERVATIVE HYPOCRACY

The Pennsylvania voter’s ID controversy is getting more ironic by the day.  The conservative establishment who thought up this affront to our most basic of liberties must now explain the economic burden of this unfunded new legislation.  Not only is the cost born by county taxpayers, it is significant.

An action filed in Allegheny County, not by representatives of the elderly, poor, or minorities, was brought by the fiscal watchdog, the County Controller. It turns out that the unfunded mandate for the state’s new voter ID law will cost Pennsylvania’s local governments about $11 million to implement. New procedures must be drawn up, poll workers must be trained, and those impossible to comprehend provisional ballots brought out of the dusty closets.

Only the most jaded of conservatives could justify this additional financial burden on the counties, when education and social services are being slashed to the bone.  No sane elected official can possibly believe that protecting our citizens from phantom voter fraud is more pressing than education, mental health or the environment.  I am waiting to see how the Corbett gang and its followers will philosophically explain deregulating our air, water, and ground resources to save money on the one hand while regulating our poorest citizen’s right to vote and mandating local government to spend tax payer dollars on the other.

POLITICAL THOUGHTS

Does Governor Corbett really believe that no one will notice (or care) when he places his ineffective crony on the Allegheny Court of Common Pleas, a position that court administrators agree should be left open to save public dollars, at the same time that he is cutting education and social services to the bone?

Donald Trump will use his “birther” expertise during the Miss Pennsylvania controversy and determine she was born in New Jersey.

When the majority of Americans come to understand that social democracy looks like

Roosevelt’s “New Deal” and Johnson’s “Great Society” and not a communist five year plan, the political discourse will gain a more rational footing.

Governor Walker’s victory in Wisconsin was more a vote against the misuse of recall elections than an affirmation for tea party positions.

Why do the newscasters on Fox News remind me of the Orie sisters?  Is there an ongoing natural evolution of obnoxious blond conservative women, perhaps nurtured by too much Rush Limbaugh during their impressionable youth?

Over the months leading up to the election independent voters will come to understand that Barack Obama has been a mainstream President with positions a little bit right of John Kerry and a little bit left of Bill Clinton.

Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have been great assets to the President and the American People.  Try and name two republican primary contenders who could offer the same support to a President Romney.

John Edwards will remain a stain on the Democratic Party until a women is nominated by the party for the presidency, hopefully in 2016.  Nothing else will wash away the horror of this narcissistic cad who fooled so many people for so long and let his libido almost destroy the election process.

If one or two Washington County Commissioners are elected to higher office in November, the deliberations of the Board of Judges to name their replacements will be the local political story of the year, maybe of the decade.