Part-Time Pundit

Wictory Wednesday Presents Sen. Jim Talent

This week Wictory Wednesday presents Jim Talent for re-election to the United States Senate.

Control of the Senate will come down to three races, Missouri, Tennesse, and Virginia. Jim Talent is fighting the hard fight in Missiouri and he’s a solid conservative. It’s one thing to lose a seat because the sitting Republican has no conservative credentials, defending a solid conservative however is a must.

Immigration is a hot issue with conservatives wondering why no one in the government seems to recognize a problem with an open border. Sure, many people come here to work and do contribute to the economy and their communities, however with an insecure border, even terrorists and criminals can walk in with complete ease. The current system also all but ensures that illegal immigrants are exiled to the fringe of society and left to be abused by human traffikers and malicious employers. The border needs to be shut so we can control who comes in and let in only those who are here for a better life.

Energy independence is another hot issue, and Jim Talent believes there are only a few ways to get that done. Either we need to research alternative fuels (which Talent supports) or drill for oil in land we control like ANWR (which Talent also supports). This race is also overshadowed by the ballot proposition on stem cell research and cloning, which was so disgustingly politicized by Michael J. Fox.

Please consider donating or assisting Jim Talent’s campaign.

This has been a production of the Wictory Wednesday blogburst. If you would like to join Wictory Wednesday, please see this post or contact John Bambenek at jcb (dot) blog [at] gmail {dot} com. The following sites are members of the Wictory Wednesday team:

October 25th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Elections, Politics, Wictory Wednesday | one comment

The New Jersey Supreme Court just Gave a Boost to the Republicans

The New Jersey ruling opening the door to gay marriage in the state is a last minute boon to Republicans. While Democrats will say that Republicans are using the politics of division (as they supposedly did in 2004) to get votes in November, the reality is, it was never Republicans putting gay marriage on the agenda, it was the Democrats. And here again, they shoot themselves in the foot.

Nothing gets the evangelical groups up in arms like gay marriage. I’m against it, but I am not all that fired up on the issue. However, that group who was tuning out just got a wake up call. A Democratic House and a Democratic Senate means no defense against judicial activists (I doubt any federalists or strict constructionists will make it past a Democratic Senate) and certainly no laws stopping this behavior will be pondered on a House agenda driven by San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi.

The result is, the before the stakes could be rationalized as low by some voters and that idea got put to death. Now the stakes are high to the evangelical vote (and others who don’t want to see gay marriage rammed down the throat of the American public without so much as a simple consultation) and there is a tangible issue that they don’t want to lose that’s now on the line.

The Foley story is old news and few people but the party faithful read all the hit piece books that come out in October. People see this ruling and their paying attention. It just gave the Republican faithful another big reason to come out and vote in 2 weeks.

October 25th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Elections, Law / Legal Issues, Politics | 7 comments

Big.Small.All. Liveblog

12:05pm - Final comments

The biggest items that got support aren’t big surprises, they were adequate funding for public schools and comprehensive health care available for all. The documents given at the assembly weren’t identical to the actual vision available on Big.Small.All.’s website. The reason this is important is because the objective that talks about fully funding public schools is mapped to the action item that reads “Calculate property tax less to school districts in the county due to the University of Illinois and other institutional property holdings and negotiate and annual compensation plan.” This is patently absurd as I’ve said before. I’m quite certain that once you calculate those property tax losses and then compare them to all the revenue the University brings in, you’ll find the benefits are at least one order of magnitude (probably 2) larger than what their property tax bill would be. What this action item says is that they want to charge property tax to the University without calling it property tax. If Herman goes for this, he’s monumentally stupid.

This skips past the fact that I doubt the problems in the schools have anything to do with funding. Mahomet schools are great, for instance. Champaign Unit 4 Schools (and for that matter, the Urbana schools which fly under the radar) have problems that have little to do with not having enough money. If the county wants to have a superior education system, it’s time for school choice and vouchers.

As far as comprehensive health care (including dental, eye, mental, so on) is concerned, it’s a nice pipe dream but it is impossible to enact on the county level. Heck, Europe is moving away from the single-payer model because it doesn’t work for them. We have free/low-cost health clinics in town, and any visit by a poor person to an ER doesn’t need to be paid for by that poor person, so I’m not quite so sure how they justify a health care crisis in Champaign. If Champaign wants to be a premier business-friendly environment, there is no way they can take on the tax burden required to even begin to fund the kind of health care system they are contemplating.

However, when I went to this assembly, I went with a decidedly cynical attitude and I left thinking it wasn’t bad. Sure there were things I disagreed with, but the discussion was intelligent and reasoned. I don’t quite have the pessimistic view that I came in with. I don’t think much in the way of bias was over-represented, certainly because the health care and education concerns are widely held. The objectives were worded in a such a way to imply a certain “right answer”, but that’s to be expected. Conservatives in general need to get the word out more on their objections over those concerns, and more importantly, get out there with an alternative and solution.

11:39am - Meeting adjourned, will have comments later that I’ll post here when I get somewhere else.

11:28am - Ballot results (I’ll backfill what the objective numbers mean)

High Priorities (top 11):

#4 - 41 votes (intergovernmental cooperation)
#5 - 42 votes (remove duplicative government services)
#6 - 40 votes (national reputation for favorable business environment)
#15 - 46 votes (technology infrastructure will make us leader in nation)
#20 - 39 votes (new development will be more compact and either inside current areas or contiguious to them)
#27 - 39 votes (protect groundwater)
#33 - 49 votes (per capita land rate conversion will be reduced by promoting infill development)
#42 - 58 votes (affordable housing for all)
#53 - 46 votes (county will be center fo arts and entertainment)
#59 - 124 votes (schools will be fully funded with less dependence on property taxes)
#65 - 65 votes (everyone will have comprehensive access to health care)

Objectionable Items (top 5):
#17 - 63 votes (no more than 10,000 acres of farmland will be converted)
#18 - 36 votes (number of farms will be at least as large as it is today)
#20 (yes again) - 27 votes (compact development, contiguous development, infill development)
#47 - 21 votes (new interstate highway access points as needed)
#48 - 20 votes (Willard Airport will be premier central Illinois air terminal)

11:23am - It seems the earlier planning meetings were much more contentious than this one. My small group is agriculture and development, so my views my be skewed as to what the other groups have going on. In a bit they’ll summarize the ballot results, we’ll see how it falls.

11:15am - Small group and participants in general seem to be more reasonable than those that lobbied their suggestions. For instance, no one seemed to support the 10,000 farmland conversion cap.

9:31am - Ballot time… be back in a few…

9:30am - Speaking to criticism, plan is not “anti-business”… says the vision is a market study of what customer’s want. “Don’t get hung up in the words”. What if the study is based on a non-representative sampling? They said they had a problem getting small business involvement.

9:22am - They’re reading all the action items, it’s quite boring. I don’t think they know what “sustainable” means… usually when regressives use it they mean reverse development. They want to minimize sprawl which tends to have the effecs of:

1) minimizing home ownership (the absolute key to financial independence, or at the very least, financial security).
2) causing a huge increase in property values which further make it difficult if not impossible for those with more modest incomes to get housing and certainly own their own homes.
3) diminishing the right of private property. Places that enact policies like that also tend to engage in massive regulation of what you do in your own home, or what you do with your own home.

9:12am - Final vision will be presented in early 2007.

9:07am - They will be lobbying to implement their action items (a phrase that ought to be stricken from our collective memory) once this meeting is complete. My bad, 2 more workshops after this.

9:05am - “APC” consulting giving a presentation on how this beast came to be. Barb Wysocki is stiing at my small group table, that’ll be fun.

9:03am - Is it possible to use any *more* buzzwords… I haven’t heard this much since I left consulting.

9:01am - Herman is done. Format is “assembly” presentation and voting and then small group discussion facilitated by some trained facilitator. Insist that this is a non-profit, non-governmental, even though as I understand government started it. The project members (not the community) is supposedly representative of all segments of society.

8:56am - Orchand Downs is being torn down… didn’t know that. They want to make it an “intergenerational retirement community.” Heh… he plugged the YouTube guys as a story of success who are back in town.

8:50am - Chancellor Herman is giving keynote. As expected, he’s talking up the University. What do you know, Herman is a conservative, talking about standing on the shoulders of giants and the legacy of the past… A quick count is about 350-400 attendees… I’ll work on a better count later. University added a goal of community economic development, faculty resistance, but an odd but probably good goal for a University.

8:46am - Up and running… they’re showing a movie plugging their suggestions. A crying girl at the side of the road gets a teen to stop on his bike and as he result he gets kicked in the nuts and his bike gets stolen. It was cute, even it a plug for the MTD. One of the complaints is that there is no where in town for teens to go to hang out… I’m not sure I buy this.

October 25th, 2006 Posted by John Bambenek | Chambana, Politics | one comment