Category: Politics

I am not going to agree to raise sales taxes to cover a property tax reduction.  Don’t we have a big surplus right now?  Ed Rendell is a tax and spend liberal.  How did this guy ever paint himself as a moderate?  I’ll take a property tax reduction from the surplus, please.

In Philadelphia, where the city takes an additional penny in sales tax, the overall rate would go from 7 percent to 8 percent. That would rival New York City, where state and local sales taxes add up to 8.375 percent.

Rendell’s proposal would bring Pennsylvania in line with New Jersey, which raised its sales tax last year to 7 percent.

Oh yeah, imitating New York and New Jersey.  Where do I sign up?  Because Pennsylvania just really needs higher taxes.  Thank god for term limits, but I have to deal with this crap for another four years!

I’ve taken a few pot shots at Ed Rendell on this blog, and certainly will take many more, but I feel like I should say some good things about him in the tradition of “If you don’t have something nice to say…”, etc. I will say that Ed Rendell passes the douche test. What is the douche test? It’s pretty simple “Would you go out and have a beer with the guy?”. Ed Rendell passes. Who wouldn’t pass? John Kerry, definitely. Joe Biden. Al Gore. Probably Hillary Clinton too, but Bill passes.

Another thing I will say about our Governor, he’s a shrewed politician, and I think could have a shot at being a presidential candidate if he chose to run. He’s managed to successfully paint himself as a moderate despite a pretty liberal record. As governor, he’s kept mostly quiet on issues that could get him in trouble, and I’m happy that on a few issues, he seems to lack the nanny gene that a lot of liberals seem to have expressed in abundance. And while I think his record contains a strong element of luck, he has a lot of accomplishments he can tout.

Plus, I will admit, this is pretty admirable behavior, from his Wiki page:

The mass snowballing of former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson is often attributed to Rendell. As the story goes, Rendell wagered twenty dollars that the person sitting next to him could not hit Johnson in the head with a snowball at an Eagles-Cowboys football game at Veterans Stadium. The incident ‘snowballed’ and resulted in many fans hurling snowballs at Johnson.

OK, so there’s my nice Ed Rendell post. But I really don’t like the guy’s politics, so back to bashing from here on out :)

Ed Rendell’s energy plan is looking great so far:

Gov. Ed Rendell on Thursday proposed a new fee on the sale of electricity in Pennsylvania to help finance an ambitious plan to promote alternative energy sources, increase conservation and blunt expected increases in utility bills.

Yay! New taxes. I always love new taxes. But what will they pay for?

The fund would finance grants to reimburse homeowners and small businesses for half the cost of installing solar panels.

Solar panels are a not a solution to our energy problems, because it takes years for a solar panel to produce as much electricity as went into making it. There are numerous engineering problems with solar energy. This ain’t a solution, Ed.

The largest share of the money would be invested in clean-energy projects that include solar manufacturing, advanced coal technologies and biofuels.

I’m not down with any of this, except for clean coal, because of the practical difficulties. We will not grow our way out of our energy problems. If you do the math, it’s just not going to work. The only reasonable alternatives to petroleum are coal and nuclear power. I might even be OK with Rendell’s plan if it proposed putting more into nuclear power, but that’s really more of a political problem than an engineering one, and one that will likely have to be solved at the federal level.

All in all, it looks like a tax that will transfer money to special interests. No thanks, Ed.

Seriously, the only thing that depressed me more than the PA Senate getting the smoking ban out of committee is the fact that so many Pennsylvanians don’t seem to care about the private property rights of business owners.

I should note that I’m not, nor have I ever been a smoker, but if I’m a bar or restaurant owner, I get to decide.  If you don’t like that choice, then go somewhere else.  Aren’t people kind of getting fed up with the government intruding into so many areas of private concern?  I am, and I worry for the future that so many people turn to government to enforce their own preferences and tastes on everyone else.  Take that to it’s limit, and we don’t live in a free society anymore.

Bruce’s post about Flutiecare in Massachusetts is a big reason why I’m not sanguine about the prospect of Ed Rendell boldly moving Pennsylvania into attempting to outdo all the other states to show how much we care about our citizen’s health care. We need to see how this works out in other states before we try to one up anyone.

I also notice that Rendell’s health plan includes a state-wide public smoking ban. Ed, you can totally kiss my ass. Remember kids, when the government pays for your health care, suddenly your bad health habits become everyone else’s business. No thanks! Call me a wacky libertarian, but government provided health care has always seemed to be to be the short line to the government controlling way too many aspects of life than any reasonable human being should be comfortable with.

I need a refresher course in exactly how it is I need to vote for Democrats because the Republicans are too busy stomping on civil liberties. Maybe it’s just the wacky libertarian talking again, but as far as I’m concerned, both parties seem to be equally good at trying to run my life, and as far as I’m concerned they can both go to hell.