Or at least they should be. Colby Itkowitz gets another one wrong:
To start, Dent is taking the place of former Delaware Rep. Mike Castle (who lost his primary bid for the Senate to “I’m not a witch” Christine O’Donnell) as the lead Republican co-sponsor on legislation to allow federal funding for stem cell medical research. This isn’t going to be very popular with the social conservatives of the 15th district, but the district leans Democrat and Dent has succeeded there by hugging the political center.
Is it true that Charlie Dent has been “hugging the political center”?
That’s what Colby Itkowitz is always telling us, but it just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The more likely reason for Mr. Dent’s popularity is that the Morning Call does a lousy job of holding him accountable for his votes.
Was the vote to end Medicare hugging the political center? How about the vote against the Affordable Care Act? The vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act?
Voting against every single jobs bill that’s been proposed since the financial crisis? Opposing every bill to reregulate Wall Street? Insisting on 100% spending cuts for deficit reduction?
If we’re going by the Congressman’s actual voting record, he’s voting like a loyal rightwinger on all the major issues. Every few months he picks a token minor issue to break with the party on, and the media laps it up.
Rather than using his real voting record to take his measure, Colby is taking Charlie Dent’s brand at face value. That is what makes her such an ineffective journalist.
Rich Wilkins also comments.
More ridiculously shallow stuff. But that's to be expected from the most inane blog in the Valley.
Obama, Reid and Pelosi directed that Medicare be destroyed in order to fund Obamacare. You keep forgetting that part but we don't.
Obamacare is an atrocity that anyone with an ounce of intelligence should have voted against. Voting to repeal it is the honorable thing to do.
There is no such thing as a jobs bill coming out of Washington. There are pork bills, there are union benefit bills. But until Davis Bacon is waived, there won't be anything coming out of Washington that even remotely supports new hiring.
How's Frank/Dodd working out? Seems every day another face of unintended consequences of that disaster comes out. The fact has always been that the only way to get rid of too big/fail out of existence is to require substantially more capital. Funny, that's finally getting attention. As to the consumer protection crap, it's already there – why do we need more bureaucrats instead of holding the ones who were supposed to be doing their jobs accountable for the fact that they're not? And until you recognize the one of the major reasons account disclosures are unreadable is that government bureaucrats dictate that they be that way, you again have no idea what you're talking about.
This area likes and supports Charlie Dent. He does a great job representing the District. So on behalf of the Lehigh Valley, why don't you stay in NYC and "support" Weiner some more?
I went home with the waitress
The way I always do
How was I to know?
She was with the "Indies", too
Ha!
Jon was blogging in Havana
He took a little risk
IPP called out Independent title
George, get Jonny out of this!
Weiner was an innocent bystander
Somehow, he was hacked
By a bunch of no good Rethuglicans
And he was by the Democrats not backed
No!
Weiner was by the Party not backed
Jon is blogging in Honduras
He is a desperate man
Can't campaign on the last three years
Progressive Liberal Democrats — the sh-t has hit the fan!
Yeah!
W. ZEVON
Colby just called my office.
She wants to know what makes YOU such an ineffective journalist.
She thinks it is so much more than just "WEINER NEEDS TO STICK IT OUT"…
Anon 1:48,
You're entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts. No one directed Medicare to be destroyed for "Obamacare," that is pure and 100% fantasy. They repealed $500 billion in subsidies for companies to provide prescription drugs, since they already got to write them off of their taxes.
While we're at it, Dodd/Frank did not create "too big to fail," it ended it. Now companies that require a bailout also get liquidated under that law. As for the consumer protections, please show me the "other bureaucrats" protecting consumers? Yes, you're right that government legislation did create most of the garbage in the system, but not from Dodd/Frank.
By the way, government jobs do count as jobs. Oh wait, are you trying to claim that government paychecks don't count? Good one. In terms of the supply and demand relationship that drives our economy, it makes zero difference whether the public or private sectors pay people.
The reason "this area supports Charlie Dent" is because people don't know what he does. Was there a front page article (of any section) when he voted for RyanCare? How about when he voted against funding the troops in 2009? In fact, were there any articles at all on his actual votes? No. This area votes Democratic for President, Governors, Senators, and everything else, then votes for Dent because we get "he's a moderate" from them, and it's not backed up by an ounce of truth. What's he vote, once a term against his party on something big? The guy couldn't even vote to pay women equally for God's sakes, he's a conservative. If you polled the Valley, less than 40% even have a clue that he voted against Lilly Ledbetter. The information given to the public is garbage.
I heart Obama.
Four more years!
Gimme some of that.
This area needs a Progressive Liberal Democrat who will hand out lots of free stuff.
AMERICAN HERO
Obamacare does in fact decimate Medicare – or the projections for Obamacare are fraudulent – pick one. It counts billions in savings on a crackdown on fraud. The federal government’s track record on fraud crackdowns is nothing short of abysmal – tell me why it will work now? It also dictates implementation of the SGI cuts. When will that happen?
Dodd/Frank does not eliminate too big/fail, it institutionalizes it. Sure it provides a liquidation mechanism (which we didn’t need, run them through bankruptcy). It also provides for regulators to prop up failing institutions at their discretion based on systemic risk, and to bail out counterparties at their discretion as well. Rising, the only thing that addresses too big/fail is cash – either the taxpayers cash through bailouts or increasing capital requirements so the downside protection is on the bank’s balance sheet. I’d much rather it be the bank’s cash protecting their balance sheet instead of mine. Sure that’ll hurt returns in the financial sector. Tough shit, that’s a bank problem, not a taxpayer problem.
Couldn’t disagree more on jobs. Government jobs are not productive and consume wealth created by others. Now I would never argue against the need for a certain level of government. We need a reasonable level of regulation and protections (I’m still ticked that more people, including Wall St. types and Congressmen/Senators, didn’t go to jail over what they pulled over the past 10 years), but we cannot simply load up government payrolls, continue to suck cash out of the economy to pay for it, and kid ourselves into thinking this is good. The balance of public vs. private sector jobs makes a huge difference in how our economy will perform over the long term. What we need is a massive public works program focusing on building roads and bridges, with Davis Bacon waived so we can get the most people possible back on payrolls. What we don’t need is high speed rail from Tampa to Orlando. I mean WTF?????
Charlie Dent is one of the most visible Congressmen we’ve ever had. He grew up here, holds town meetings damn near every time he’s back in town, and attends event after event in his district. Anyone who does not know what he believes and how he's voting is too damn lazy to care. People in this area know him well, and he represents their views.
You bring up the Ledbetter Act – well intentioned legislation that went too far by eliminating the statute of limitations for claims. How can a company defend itself against claims regarding actions that might have taken place 30 years ago, witnesses dead, records long gone, etc.? This Act went through because Democrats do whatever the trial lawyers dictate, it had nothing to do with Women’s rights and everything to do with rewarding attorneys.
Sorry, didn't title it – the previous post is my response to Rising Sun's criticisms of my post.
Rising Sun is right. Dent's votes are super low profile. The Morning Call does not consistently have an "area lawmakers' recent votes" feature.
The point here is not whether you think these policies are good. You're a Dent voter and could never be persuaded to vote for a Democrat.
Most LV voters are Democrats, and if they were getting regular updates from the papers on his votes, they'd be more inclined to vote against him.
I'm not saying the Morning Call needs to do partisan reporting. I'm saying they need to report on all his votes, try to get him on the record with his position before the vote, and then provide more contextual analysis by talking to local stakeholders and economists about how his votes will affect the Valley, clarifying the choices. We need more and better information.
Jon, believe it or not I voted for Ed Rendell twice. I held my nose when I did it but the Republican party put up such poor candidates (I mean, Lynn Swann???) that Rendell, as bad as he was, was the better candidate.
And right now I'd consider Andrew Cuomo a viable Presidential candidate. Nothing to do with gay marriage (which I support), more to do with the job he's doing on the financial/operational side of the state. Right now he's a poster child for the 3rd party I want – fiscal conservative/human rights liberal, with an ability to fix what's wrong. It's still early in his 1st term, but so far so good – New York needed him in the worst way, you're lucky to have him there.
I don't fit in that nice little box you think I'm in. I don't believe in voting straight ticket, I believe in learning what a person stands for and voting for who I believe in. I put character first in a politician (even though I'm usually disappointed in their lack of it). I don't believe in just looking at the title of legislation and deciding if it's good, I believe in reading the legislation and seeing what's in it, and what else is in it. I am totally against riders to legislation, tacking on crap for political reasons.
A good example of where I go much further than you – Dodd/Frank. Why in the world you don't advocate increasing capital levels is beyond me. I'm a fervent capitalist and conservative, and know what impact increasing capital levels will have and why banks are against it. But it's the right thing to do, and it places the risk of too big/fail where it should be – with the institutions themselves.
You and Rising don't like this, but the fact is this area knows Charlie Dent well and has supported him for a long time. His votes are in line with the beliefs of his constituency.
I agree that Dodd/Frank didn't go nearly far enough. I wanted to see some of the blunter instruments, like capital requirements, limits on bank size, a tiny financial transactions tax, or a return to Glass-Steagall. But it's important to understand the politics here. Maybe the Democratic Party is guilty of not passing the sort of blunt left-wing reforms you favor, but the Republican Party was saying all along that they think the Dodd/Frank legislation went too far. If this was your issue in 2008, you were better off voting for Democrats, and backing left-wing primary challenges to incumbent Democrats.
I don't think Dodd/Frank went too far, I think it spun off the rails. It will add tremendous compliance costs to financial institutions without a corresponding benefit, is driving financial industry jobs offshore (e.g., Goldman is hiring 1,000 employees in the Far East while laying off 240 in Manhattan), will probably be the nail in the coffin for community/regional banks who are crucial to their communities but who won't be able to afford the compliance costs, and did not address the most important issue we have which remains too big/fail.
It's just crappy legislation all around.
Oh, and requiring more capital is not a leftist position, it's the financial responsible one and the ONLY one that will solve too big/fail. All the regulation in the world won't work.
Please learn, labels don't work with me.
Here's all you need to know about Jon Geeting and this blog:
Extreme liberal Jon Geeting lives in New York.
Geeting is paid by extreme liberal George Soros, a shady billionaire financier, to write a blog about how to "fix" the Lehigh Valley, where New Yorker Geeting, does not reside.
Geeting does this so that those of us who actually live in the Valley can enjoy a workers' paradise, while singing the praises of Geeting's curreny manipulating boss or whichever politico Soros currently favors with support.
Geeting calls his blog "Lehigh Valley Independent," even though there's not a single non-Democrat talking point to be found within his postings.
If you're over 40, Geeting thinks you should just shut up and die because no one wants to hire you anyway and you're just harshing Leader Obama's economic recovery buzz — dude.
The only use that New Yorker Geeting can see for the elderly is that they serve as handy props in the Medicare argument against Republicans. In spite of the fact that the leftists he supports in Congress are totally down with letting Medicare crap out in 2020 or whenever.
Once you know these few key points about Queens, Bronx, Brooklyn, Yonkers, Staten Island, Long Island, or wherever resident, Jon Geeting and his blog, you'll realize that he's managed to put out more trash than a New York garbage scow could carry.
Anon,
Apparently you either don't read, or read selectively, your choice. Yes, "Obamacare" as you call it did cut the amount of spending on Medicare. It cut the corporate subsidy part. That doesn't have anything at all to do with care. It makes zero sense to anyone but corporatists to both give a subsidy and a tax break to a company for the same act. You give one or the other, at most. Trying to claim that kills Medicare is nothing but a lie. Turning Medicare into a voucher program is killing the program, period. The voucher doesn't keep up with the spending, and it's a false promise. You can spin it as you like, but it's just that, spin.
Dodd/Frank provides that creditors and investors get paid, and the company gets liquidated. That is not "institutionalizing" too big to fail. Would I have went further?? Sure, I'd go pre-1998, when none of this stuff was possible, or even more so, pre-1981, when we actually regulated in this country.
You're wrong on jobs too. The jobs are paying a human being money for their labor, allowing them to take part in the market. That is a real job. There are certain things the private sector simply cannot do. The government has to do those. The government woefully underfunded those jobs the last 8 years. No we shouldn't put everyone on a government job, but there's absolutely no problem with both putting people back to work within the government, and allowing the government to do things like regulate and build. Of course, I suppose you'd be fine with private sector cops and troops and stuff?
You're using companies whining about lawsuits to defend pay discrimination? Sorry, that's bush league, plain and simple. Equal pay should be the law in all sectors, all jobs, all the time.
You're full of donkey loaf on Dent. Go ask the average Dent voter about his votes in Congress. I'm not asking YOU, who's commenting on a political blog about Dent's votes. I'm asking the average Obama-Dent, Rendell-Casey-Dent voter, if they know how Dent voted. They don't. They don't because one paper doesn't report on his votes and has had an editorial staff in the past that loved him (I'm talking about the Call and Glenn Kranzley), and the other paper used to employ his Press Secretary. What you're saying is, the voters knowingly vote stupid, and vote for a Congressman who works against the executive branch people they vote for. I'm saying they simply don't know. Dent certainly doesn't talk about his votes much, just about his opponent's brother-in-law.