Archive for September, 2020

Report from Louisiana: Cassidy v. Perkins, Senate 2020

Posted: September 28, 2020 by Pat Austin in Uncategorized
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By:  Pat Austin

SHREVEPORT – One of the races people in Louisiana will be watching this fall will be the Senate race; incumbent Bill Cassidy will be challenged by Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins. I will tell you, a lot of people in Shreveport were not surprised when Perkins announced his candidacy; not many people really believe he has true dedication for the betterment of Shreveport.

When Perkins ran for mayor of Shreveport in 2018, he won in a runoff against incumbent Mayor Ollie Tyler. On paper, Perkins looks like a wunderkid: Harvard Law School, Army veteran, recipient of the Bronze Star, young, black, upwardly mobile…it all looks swell.

Looks are deceiving.

From the start Perkins drew controversy and criticism because he really did not live in Shreveport, and people could not figure out why he wanted to be mayor here.  Perkins was raised in Shreveport, graduated high school in Shreveport, but then left Louisiana to serve in the U.S. Army, and then was selected by the Pat Tillman Foundation to be a Tillman scholar; he went to Harvard.  Perkins was absent from Shreveport for fourteen years before he came back in 2017 to prime the pump for his mayoral run.

Perkins never voted in any election until he voted for himself at age 32 for mayor.

Local political pundit Elliot Stonecipher asked a lot of questions about the mysterious Adrian Perkins back in 2018 after Perkins won the election.

Stonecipher was not wrong.  There have been a lot of questions about Perkins and his behavior in the past two years.

For example, one of the first acts as mayor was to change insurance companies for the City. The new plan cost far more for far less coverage. As it turned out, the new plan was awarded to a man named Roddrelle Sykes of Frost Bank Insurance; Sykes is the first cousin of Perkins’s campaign manager.  Perkins did not get City Council authorization for this change which was required, nor did he go through the bid process.

The whole affair was very sketchy and prompted an Internal Audit. Scandal number one.

There was also a scandal, or controversy, about his car allowance; Perkins took both the car assigned to him AND the car allowance, rather than one or the other.

And then there were the rumors of potential drunk driving stops, which the mayor explained away and was never cited.

There have been a series of these unfortunate events that have caused many in Shreveport to question the mayor’s dedication to the city; does he really care about improving life in Shreveport or is this just a stepping stone to higher aspirations?

To that end, Barack Obama endorsed Perkins last week for his Senate bid, apparently only because Perkins is a Democrat rather than for any actual accomplishment he has done for the city.

One of his pet projects is Universal Basic Income which is obviously highly controversial.

In fact, Perkins cares so much for Shreveport, the first thing he did when Hurricane Laura blew threw earlier in the month, leaving thousands without power in Shreveport, Perkins decamped for Lake Charles to volunteer there for photo ops.

Under his tenure, crime in Shreveport has been epidemic with nearly daily shootings. We had this problem before, certainly, but it has gotten no better under Perkins. It seems to have gotten worse. Police officer pay is so low we are some forty officers short; the streets are drag strips and infrastructure is literally crumbling.

It would not be fair to attribute all of the Shreveport woes (and there are many) to Perkins, but as a man who vowed to improve life in Shreveport as part of his campaign, what has he done? Not much. Not much at all.  

I don’t think anyone really expects Perkins to win against Cassidy, but stranger things have happened. Perhaps this is more for exposure, paving the way later on for another bid at something else. He appears to have some fairly savvy handlers.

Suffice to say that many in town thought it was a joke when Perkins announced this run; I thought it was a Babylon Bee article at first, seriously.

But, time will tell.

Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.

Democrats Barrett Dilemma: Approaching but not Crossing the Loony Line

Posted: September 28, 2020 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, elections, News/opinion, politics
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With the formal nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and the knowledge that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump already have the votes to put her on the Supreme Court the Democrats find themselves in one of the worst dilemmas that they need to face.

In a more pragmatic age the Democrats would make a few pro-forma statements ask a few pointed questions and make some fuss in the press and that would be it.

But this is not a normal age, this is an age of lunacy, an age of violent militant leftists and Bernie Bros who might not turn out for candidates who are not suffivently woke and angry.

Even worse for the left these folks are not above violence against their own side as Ted Wheeler can tell you.

If it was up to them the hearings would be the Charge of the Light Brigade with every gun firing and every voice shouting.

This of course is political suicide in an election where you need swing states and most importantly in an election where you have Democrats in the house and candidates for the senate who can’t appear as lunatics right before the voters vote.

So the Democrats need a feint, not so much to spook or fool the “Party of StupidTM (although if the make a mistake dumb enough to derail the nomination they’ll jump at it) but to fool the radical millitant left into thinking they’re ready to charge into the valley of death to stop her.

If it was up to me I’d go with the boycotting of the hearings and having some sort of large rally outside the SCOTUS. That way they can scream and shout and allow their minions to weep and gnash their teeth to their hearts content and throw in some “performance art” without actually doing anything on the record that might cost them votes they will need come election day. The angry/loony left which is their biggest danger tends to be moved by that kind of stuff.

If they are really desperate they can extend this to the actual vote where once the GOP has their 50th vote they can walk out enmasse, again plenty of symbolism without the stupidity.

Either way it’s their problem and I look forward to watching them crash and burn whatever they do

Illinoisans: Vote “No” on the Unfair Tax Amendment

Posted: September 27, 2020 by John Ruberry in elections, News/opinion, politics
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Blogger after navigating another Illinois maze

By John Ruberry

I’ve mentioned this profound sentenced from a 2016 Chicago Tribune editorial several times here before at Da Tech Guy. “As a result, Illinois government,” the newspaper’s editorial board wrote, “is a massive retirement system that, during work hours, also offers some services.”

It’s actually worse than than that. Illinois is a racket where elected politicians, many of them legislators in gerrymandered districts created by longtime party boss Michael Madigan, rewards pals with unionized jobs. Those unions are public-sector unions such as AFSCME and SEIU, which plow campaign contributions from dues money into the coffers of Democratic politicians who protect unaffordable pension plans from any cuts. Okay, I know, in accordance with the state constitution pension benefits cannot be lowered. An amendment to that document to allow pension reform is vehemently opposed by Illinois Democrats. 

Instead the Dems are pushing what they call the Fair Tax Amendment which will allow for a state income tax with graduated rates, currently only a flat rate is prohibited. Eight states, including Florida, Nevada, Texas, and Tennessee, which coincidentally are popular destinations for escapees for Illinoisans, have no state income tax. Most Illinoisans, we are promised by the pols hawking the Fair Tax Amendment, will see a tax cut, albeit one that is a pittance. If what I call the Unfair Tax Amendment passes, the “rich” will pay more but mark my words. Springfield politicians are liars and the tax rates will reach down in a few years to the middle class and the working poor. That’s because the rich will leave and those left behind will get stuck with the bill. Oh, the others will leave too. Don’t forget, Illinois has lost population every year since 2014.

The Fair Tax Amendment is on the ballot for Illinois voters to decide in November.

As I’ve also mentioned here before, Michael Madigan, the state House speaker for 35 of the last 37 years, has had his fingers on every state budget, and every failed pension fix, for decades. Those “fixes” for the most part kinda-sorta solved the pension crisis for five years or so. Which means they solved nothing.

If you trust Madigan to fix Illinois’ pensions and finances then you are a fool. The Prairie State’s second-most powerful politician, another Chicago Democrat, Governor J.B. Pritzker, was arguably put into office by the Madigan machine. Illinois’ lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, first run for public office, a state House seat, was a victorious one. In a very expensive race Stratton defeated another Democrat who dared to cross Boss Madigan. The Boss of Illinois even convinced Barack Obama to go after Stratton’s opponent.

In a conference call on Thursday Stratton threatened Illinois residents with a twenty-percent across the board income tax hike if the Unfair Tax Amendment fails. In 2017 the General Assembly overrode Republican governor Bruce Rauner’s veto to raise income taxes by 32 percent. Still at the end of 2019, Illinois’ unfunded pension liability went up by $3.8 billion to nearly $140 billion. Well, that tax hike didn’t work. Keep in mind Pritzker’s heavy-handed COVID-19 lockdown, which has severely impaired state revenues, promises to provide more financial shocks. 

And I want to be clear, some Republicans, namely governors James Thompson, Jim Edgar, and George Ryan, deserve some of the blame for Illinois’ predicament. Democrat Rod Blagojevich, the recently freed convict who supports Donald Trump for president, was equally irresponsible in fiscal matters during his time as governor. Edgar supports Joe Biden over Trump. Man, oh man, is Illinois a crazy place.

Illinois cannot tax itself out of this human-made disaster. A Fair Pension Amendment, one that protects modest pensioners and Illinois taxpayers, is the best way out. Followed by a Fair Map Amendment. Madigan’s Picasso-like gerrymandering skills in drawing maps puts his lackeys in office in the General Assembly. For the most part the Illinois legislature functions like a private country club, one that allows a few Republican members inside to make it look genuine. Twice in the 2010s hundreds of thousands of Illinois voters signed petitions to put a Fair Map Amendment on the ballot. Twice an attorney with ties to Madigan successfully sued to block it. 

How adept at gerrymandering is Madigan? In 2014, GOPer Rauner won 101 of Illinois 102 counties and defeated the incumbent Democratic governor. But Madigan didn’t lose a single seat in the state House that year and he kept his supermajority in the lower chamber. Yes, I’m aware that the GOP gerrymandered districts in 1991. That’s wrong too.

Illinois government is a failure.

And one party does not have all the right answers. Yes, that includes Republicans. Which is why we need two parties.

The Fair Tax Amendment is really a public-sector worker pension plan bailout where millions of Illinoisans, who don’t have a fixed-benefit pension plan, will pay for ones who do.

As I wrote in my own blog last week, “If Illinois politicians are ever given an unlimited budget–they will exceed it.”

The cure for a heroin addict isn’t a larger dose of heroin.

Illinoisans: Vote “No” on the so-called Fair Tax Amendment. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Six Amy Coney Barrett Thoughts Under My Fedora

Posted: September 27, 2020 by datechguy in abortion, Always look at the bright side of Trump, catholic, News/opinion
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I keep seeing tweets like this from the left:

Now maybe it’s just me but doesn’t the fact that this is a woman who has had a decades long career as a Law Professor and is a current sitting judge logically blow away the whole idea that she is into women being some kind of submissive servants?

“Liberal logic” is an oxymoron.

There also seems to be a lot of worry about how she is going to handle all of these attacks.

Please.

Any woman who can balance a career like hers AND raise seven kids isn’t going to be phased by any of the hysterical nonsense that the Democrat / Media / Liberal left is going to throw at her.

Plus she was also the oldest of seven kids herself. She has a lifetime of dealing with childish brats like Democrats.

From what I’ve heard the Barrett announcement was supposed to be earlier in the day but was moved back several times.

I guess getting seven kids ready for an appearnece with the President while their mother is nominated for SCOTUS might be a bit of a pain.

“Where’s your tie. I just put your tie on the chair a minute ago”

“Dad I can’t wear this all the other girls will think I’m a loser”

“Get that frog out of your sister’s shoe!”

“Ma do I have to stand next to HIM, can’t I stand on the other side?”

“Turn out your pockets we aren’t leaving this house till I KNOW you don’t have that thing with you that makes the farting noise.”

I have a feeling each day sitting on SCOTUS in session will mean several hours of blissful peace and quiet for her by comparison.

Long before anyone knew the good Lord had decided to grant Justice Ginsberg’s wish not to see Donald Trump appoint her replacement to the SCOTUS Franklin Graham, the great Protestant Minister and son of Billy Graham, had scheduled a day of prayer in DC for the 25th of September.

So on the day that Amy Comey Barrett was announced as the President’s pick to fill the open SCOTUS seat flocks of the faithful in the tens of thousands will be on hand to pray for her.

Talk about working in mysterious ways.

There is also one other bit of irony here.

Reverend Graham is likely one of the best if not THE best known protestant ministers in the US if not the English speaking world.

And yesterday he led a huge flock of protestant in prayer while at the same time celebrating the appointment of a faithful Catholic woman to the Supreme Court.

Given the history of America’s founding all the way through today the degree of irony involved in such a thing is off the scale or as I put it on twitter:

While a lot of liberal are tearing their hair out today centuries worth of Anti-Catholic bigots are rolling in their graves.

Never forget that while you might not know what God is doing, he always does.

Speaking of irony, last night I watched two speeches by Amy Coney Barrett one after she was appointed by President Trump to the Federal counts at Hillsdale here. and a 2nd while she was still a law professor that she gave just a week before election 2016 at the Public Policy Institute at Jacksonville University at a time when just about everyone thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. She delivered a line that I found incredibly ironic.

“What would we have in a Trump court? Who knows?” [audience laughs]

Here is the delivery:

The irony overload is huge but it also illustrates why the left is so angry. They thought they were going to secure the court for generations to come.

Let me close with my favorite of all the tweets I saw on the subject yesterday.

https://twitter.com/willscharf/status/1309962107983724545
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