We ran this post when we first started out. We have a lot more readers now, so we’re running it again, with some updates. Voters need to be reminded of the past record of incumbents seeking re-election. We don’t know what kind of a congressman Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta would make if he defeats Paul Kanjorski on his third try.
What we do know is that Kanjorski has a checkered past, and voters need to take that into consideration before voting on Nov. 2.
Kanjorski seems to think he’s too big to fail, that we need to keep him in Washington because of his seniority. We’d agree with that except for the fact that he forgets whom he represents, going along with the tax and spend pack led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama. We didn’t want ObamaCare. Kanjorski didn’t care. He refused two years in a row to hold any public town hall meetings to hear our concerns. Maybe it’s our turn to tune him out.
Kanjorski, who is seeking his 14th term, and so many other career politicians are so full of themselves, they actually believe the nation might crumble without them.
“We must avoid the shock of having no legislator with clout,” Kanjorski, a Democrat from Nanticoke, told The Times Leader’s editorial board earlier this year. Shock? Please!
Kanjorski said he has made many “useful” friends in Congress and at the White House during his 26 years in Washington. He failed to mention the buddies he made at Fannie Mae, who not only contributed generously to his campaign coffers, but also played a big role in the nation’s’ housing market plunge. Fannie Mae, by the way, is exempt from the “too big to fail” House reforms Congressman Kanjorski brags about, measures which would rein in financial entities whose collapse could trigger an economic free fall.
Kanjorski told the newspaper board that if he’s no longer a member of Congress those reforms could fail, demonstrating his trademark humility.
And speaking of failures, the newspaper asked the congressman about the $10-million earmark he steered years ago to Cornerstone Technologies, a family-owned business which went bankrupt. He said nothing came of that.
“Don’t you think with a Republican president and administration that I was checked out thoroughly? And they found nothing wrong,” Kanjo reassured the newspaper. Well, there you go, a mere $10-million of taxpayers’ money down the drain. So what’s the problem?
Apparently nothing, as far as Kanjorski and all the other pork-barrel spenders in Washington are concerned. After all, it is “free money,” as Kanjorski called federal tax dollars on national television last year.
So keep that in mind next April when you prepare to send a chunk of your hard-earned wages to the U.S. Treasury.
Hope you don’t mind that some of your money pays for the glossy mailings that Kanjorski and other members of Congress send to you to tout their achievements, especially around election time. The self-promotions are stamped: “prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense.” But don’t worry about it. They’re free.
Kanjorski warned that electing anyone but him and his seniority could be not only detrimental to the national economy but also to the area.
Like we said earlier. They’re so full of themselves.
- PureBunkum
