Nothing longwinded or deep today. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported me and my running mates — especially those in the Chester County Democratic Party who worked so hard. We didn’t get the result we hoped for, but the fight goes on.

We will be back. I will be back. Count on it.

And expect to hear from me in the coming weeks, both in terms of politics and a new Chester County media outlet that I expect to have a role with.

Posted under Politics and PA

President Barack Obama. Val DiGiorgio says the budget deficit and the bad economy is all his fault, as if Bush was never president.

It was a pleasant enough night at Tel Hei, up in Honey Brook. The audience was reasonably receptive in what was to be the final forum for county-wide candidates.

It was, though, at times a bit like falling through Alice’s looking glass. First, only Val DiGiorgio and Mimi Sack showed up for the GOP, while all five Democrats attended. Sack, of whom virtually no one has anything unpleasant to say was her usual polite, civil self.

DiGiorgio — clearly rattled by mailers sent out by his opponent, Jim Reilly, went on the attack, trying to defend the both his lack of fiscal training and experience as well as the county’s giant debt load. That was to be expected. But then DiGiorgio dropped this bombshell:

All of our current economic problems have been caused by President Obama and the Democrats. When he said that, I really began wondering whether it was Val who took a shot to the head Monday night instead of Brian Westbrook. Read More…

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One week to go.

You may not know that Election Day is one week away and it is understandable. It’s not like there’s been a lot of coverage in the media; more on that later. But these are tough times and frankly, an election might be the last thing crossing people’s minds right now.

Recently, I saw a government estimate that roughly 21 percent of working age people are either unemployed or working just part time while wanting a full-time job. That’s one in five people in our country. And with Pennsylvania lagging the rest of the country in terms of economic recovery, that number could be worse here. Read More…

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I guess you could call it a fundamental lack of respect. Not for me, mind you, but for the voters of Chester County.

I was delighted to spend a half hour on the air with Mike Pincus of WCHE the other day — as will be the case with my running mates Kipp Stone and Jim Reilly over the next couple of Wednesdays. The Republicans? Suddenly, they have scheduling conflicts.

Scheduling conflicts? Why not claim that they had to wash their hair? I mean, come on. While there’s been some suggestion that the Chester County GOP is mad because some at WCHE have been critical of Chester County’s own would-be Lt. Governor, Carol Aichele. I’m skeptical myself.

I think it has a lot more to do with the same reason my opponent doesn’t have his own Web site: the GOP apparently thinks the less you know about him — or any of their candidates — the more likely you’ll be to vote for them. That’s along the same lines as the sudden disappearance of the Chester County ACTION Website — only for it to be replaced by a sanitized, less scary version (thanks to Wayback Machine, however, the original scary content is saved for all to see ).
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Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. 1932-2009.

“The dream shall never die.” But the man behind the dream passed away today after a valiant battle against cancer, Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy.

For my entire life, “Ted” Kennedy was the senator from Massachusetts and a true lion of the senate and for many of us called to public service, both an example and an inspiration. As the icon of a legendary and tragic Irish-American family, Kennedy fascinated me from an early age.

His death this morning, although expected for some time now, hit me hard and in a deeply personal way.

Make no mistake, Kennedy was a flawed man — although few of us could live through what he lived through without losing touch with reality — it is his public life that we celebrate today.

When someone asks any of us why we are Democrats, invariably, it is because of the issues that Kennedy often spotlighted and championed — including more than 30 years of fighting for affordable and universal health care coverage for Americans. He fought for those who had little voice and little power, the average person struggling to get by. In the end, he fought for us.

He fought for voting rights — something still under attack here in Chester County, as we saw in Lower Oxford Township in 2008 — he fought for civil rights, workers rights. education reform and immigration reform and issue after issue that matter to all of us and he strove tirelessly to improve the lives of average people. Read More…

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“The United States is in no sense founded upon the Christian religion.”

–George Washington.

Back during World War II, the brilliant director Frank Capra created a series of films — Why We Fight — to educate Americans about why they were fighting the war — and the perils that Fascism represented to America.

And maybe in politics, we tend to forget why we fight for the things that matter, being caught up in the heat of the moment.

What really are the things that matter? Home, family, friends and our way of life. And each of us define those things slightly differently. That sort of diversity of opinion is what makes America great.

Unfortunately, there is a small but noisy minority of Americans who want to tell you what to think, how to act and expect you to live within a narrow, rigid framework of their sense of right and wrong. There is no room for debate, discussion or moderation: you agree with them or you are evil. Read More…

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It’s funny, you know?

I’m running for Chester County Clerk of Courts and it seems like every other question I get from a prospective voter is about health care or abortion, which strikes me as a bit odd.

I’m all ready to talk about what I’d like to do with the office, improve processes and find ways to make it run more cheaply and efficiently and then I find myself caught in the middle of this debate. Thankfully, the abortion discussions are very short — and if people are making their county row office decisions based on that issue, there’s not a lot I can say or do to change their minds.

But the health care thing is a lot stickier. Already, it’s personal, as my wife is a dentist and lives on the front lines of the current health care crisis. It got more personal this past week when one of her older relatives started spouting some of the propaganda talking points of the anti-reform group and when he started talking about swastikas, I knew it was going to get ugly, quick. And it did. Read More…

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Steve Stetler, Pa. Secretary of Revenue. Implicated in growing HDCC scandal.

It can be a difficult transition from journalist to politician, although John F. Kennedy and Albert Gore managed it pretty well, I guess. The problem, though, is two-fold: you feel the need to tell stories and shed light on things and there’s this nasty problem with telling people exactly what you think and feel.

The latter has turned me into a pinata model for most of the Chester County Democratic Party. (I joke about that, actually. People have been really great, but I know I tend to get on people’s nerves with my inability to be diplomatic at times).

The former keeps my campaign manager up at night, worried what I’ll write next. I’ve written a ton of stuff lately, but none of it has seen the light of day, because to be frank, it’s a little controversial. Okay, really controversial.

I wrote a lengthy piece about our pals at the Daily Local News. My campaign manager read it. Once he was able to use a defibrillator to restart his heart, we were able to have a sensible conversation about it. It’s still in my archives, probably destined for the book, The Cool Kids’ Table, I’m writing about this race and where politics and the media have sunk. I wrote a second column about abortion which I spiked myself, figuring sending the piece to my manager might cause him to start performing an autopsy. On himself. Read More…

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I’d like to express my thanks and appreciation both to the voters of Chester County and the folks within the Democratic Party who made this week’s primary win possible.

In the same way so many of you helped to get me on the ballot back in the early spring, you helped get the word out about me and why this race matters. Both in my travels Tuesday and earlier this week, I can’t tell you how gratified I was to see one of my signs tucked into a quiet corner of the county and knowing it was placed there by a hard-working Democrat.
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I think virtually everyone in the middle class or lower who pays taxes agrees on one thing: taxes seem to be too high. And in a real sense, they are, but not for the reason that most people think: excessive government.

And yes, we could argue all day about the things local, county, state and the federal government spends money on and some of it is just plain foolish. But that really isn’t what seems to be plaguing us these days — in fact government has always spent kind of badly, it is part of the meatgrinder of politics that leads to anything meaningful getting done. But this chart, from data from the National Taxpayers Union formatted by those amazing guys at FiveThirtyEight.com (as part of a worthy piece on extending the progressive tax into higher incomes) stumbles upon proof of the danger of concentration of wealth:

Top income tax rates were slashed in the 1920s and what happened? The Great Depression. Top income rates have been slowly eroded over the last 30 years and what happened? Sluggish economies with one recession followed by a job-growth-free recovery after another (a rare exception to this: when Clinton raised the top income tax rate and a boom happened in the 90s). Where are we now after eight years of such tax cuts? In the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Coincidence? Not likely. Read More…

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