Category: Wing Nuts

Governor Tom Corbett’s Classy Staff

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Phone call this morning…

Me: Hi, I’m calling ask the governor veto SB 732. Kermit Gosnell’s crimes didn’t occur because of safety standards, but because the state wasn’t doing its job to begin with. Rape and domestic violence victims will be harmed.

Corbett staff member: I’ll let the governor know of your support for the abortion industry. CLICK.

I called back immediately, furious. The people who answer the phones in a politician’s office are interns: they are not empowered to speak for the politician. This is the same in every office, in every state whether it’s arch-conservative Tom Corbett or far-left Dennis Kucinich. Their job is to answer the phone, take comments, and pass the comments along. That’s it.

But there was no answer, so I called back a third time, a different voice answered the phone.

After explaining angrily what had just happened, I said “I want to know the name of the young man who just hung up on me.”

“We don’t have that info, sir,” the kid on the other end said.
“Then transfer me to the chief of staff.” There was a brief silence as I was put on hold, and then the kid came back saying “he’s in a meeting.”

“Voicemail, please.”

“Umm… he doesn’t have voicemail.” That was bullshit obviously, so I left my name and number, with a request for a call back.

So i called back a few more times over the course of the day. I want this little snot reprimanded or fired, because he can’t be trusted to do his job. With an attitude like that -uncalled for dismissive back talk to a constituent- I cannot assume that he passed my comment along to the Governor. He demonstrated his political bias, and in doing so left me feeling disenfranchised.

Corbett’s Director of Correspondence is Mike Downing. I’m waiting for him to call me back.

Super-lame defense of tax cuts for the rich

~ odd man out ~ 1 Comment

I’m not sure what the prerequisites were for inclusion on the congressional supercommittee, but it looks like brainpower wasn’t one of them. Rep. Fred Upton purports to believe that taxing the rich discourages job creation. However, Upton drew a blank when asked by Al Hunt of Bloomberg News to explain why the employment picture was better under Bill Clinton than under George W. Bush, who pushed through generous tax cuts for the rich:

HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know –

HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can – I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job – we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.

Right. This guy’s handlers should know better than to allow him to speak without a teleprompter.