Long absence. Sorry, my day job called (please remember I am but a volunteer)…
Here’s the latest communication (via the State Party e-mail control/filtering system) from Todd Weiler, Utah Republican Party Vice Chair:
Utah Democratic Party Chair Wayne Holland has recently authored an Op-Ed endorsing the so-called “stimulus” package and defending Rep. Jim Matheson’s vote for the bill. He first argues that the bill is necessary because the nation’s infrastructure is crumbling, but fails to mention that less than five percent of the stimulus money is dedicated to that cause. He next alleges that Utah school children would benefit from new schools and computers. But the final version of bill eliminated $20 billion in school construction projects.
Mr. Holland asserts that the spending will result in 25,000 new jobs in Utah. But this is not a job creation bill; it is a 1,400 page spending bill. The government isn’t creating jobs – it is just funding short-term projects. It is a temporary fix; not a long term solution.
Mr. Holland criticizes Republican congressmen for failing to support the bill. But Republicans are justified in voting down a fatally flawed bill that they had no hand in crafting. In regards to bipartisanship, Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, “We won the election; we wrote the bill.” Republicans have been lobbying for legislation that will create stable, long-term jobs instead of merely spending for the sake of spending. Congress has options at its disposal that would immediately increase the flow of money in these difficult times: cutting FICA taxes for employees and employers, reducing the capital gains tax (like Ireland did), or cutting the corporate tax rate.
Democrats claim that 35 percent of the bill is dedicated to “tax cuts”. But they have adopted a Clintonian definition of tax cuts to include welfare and unemployment compensation.
Pork barrel spending is not the answer. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) acknowledged last week that “We need to eliminate the wasteful spending and the silly stuff.” But Sen. Chuck Shumer (D., NY) disagreed, and arrogantly declared last Tuesday that “the American people really don’t care.” At some point, America is going to wake up and care. It will discover that the Democrats have used this recession as a pretext to merely push through the projects they have wanted all along.
Viewed as a whole, Congress has simply passed an omnibus spending package that resembles a Democratic Congresses’ Christmas list. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is already touting an $8 billion provision that will build a high speed rail line through his own state. The bill sets aside $2 billion for a FutureGen power plant in Obama’s home state of Illinois. Many of the provisions are carefully crafted for special interests, such as an insurance exemption for companies that work on recreational boats longer than 65 feet, a lift of Medicare regulation for only three specific hospitals, and government order of 100,000 uniforms from U.S. apparel companies. Many of the tax credits will result in a windfall for the people who were already planning to purchase a home or car.
The American people are looking for stable, long-term jobs that will provide for their families. The Democrats’ bill fails miserably in this regard. As it turns out, the promised “change” amounts to nothing more than increased deficit spending and a huge expansion of government.
Providing false hope under the guise of spending for job creation is disingenuous. The Greatest Generation sacrificed themselves for their children’s future. With this bill, however, the Democrats have mortgaged the economic future of our nation’s children to buy a little short-term job relief and a whole lot of pork.
I have great concerns about the details of the soon-to-be Stimulus Law and laud Vice Chair Weiler’s efforts at pointing out its deficiencies, I’d sure welcome the opportunity to discuss those concerns with the Party Leadership and see what we can do as a Party to create a lively, conservative vision of the future for the electorate to gravitate towards, Vice Chair Weiler’s contact information is nowhere to be found (nor anyone of the elected Party leadership for that matter) on the Official Party Website.
I even went to the Party’s Leadership that Delivers Blog hoping to find some information about the Party Leadership, but alas…
And I have to say I don’t count the fact that Weiler is Twittering on behalf of the Utah GOP a replacement for an e-mail address.
Our State Party Leadership seems to be a bit of an Orwellian Dinosaur…
Dinosaur-like as they seem to be living under the false hope for a return to a highly controlled past life/message, while unwilling to accept the realities of the twenty-first century digital landscape. (My heavens, you’re elected by the Party members, make yourself available!)
Orewellian-like as they seem willing to assert “Big Brother”-like control by using select portions of the technology to control who hears/reads/forwards messages from the Party.
But you’ve already heard my “catch the fire and imagination of the upcoming generation” speech before. I wish the Party would think a bit more about that…
The Democrats sure are.
Kip:
I am so pleased to see that someone else has noticed that it is impossible to find contact information for party officers on the utgop.org web site.
As you may or may not know, these deficiencies are part of a longstanding and creeping dismantling of that web site.
Whereas, it was once possible to get a complete listing of all of the party officers of all of Utah’s County Republican Parties, that information has been systematically stripped from the site in recent years.
It was also possible, at one point, to get a complete listing of the members of the state central committee, by county, with phone numbers and addresses, so that we could lobby our representatives on what is, by the Bylaws, the governing body of the Utah Republican Party.
That listing, too, has been gone for years, now.
You get the drift.
The party wants your money. If you give enough of it, they will see to it that it gets transferred to Senator Curt Bramble’s PAC. (Kip, your county party illicitly transferred $54,000 dollars to exactly that PAC in the last election cycle, all to be given out like candy to the Republican incumbents who, too often, eat out of the hand of Utah’s own “Blago from Chicago,” Senator Bramble.)
What they don’t want is for you to pester them with phone calls asking hard questions about why the ethical slide in the Utah Republican Party continues with their smiling acquiescence.
If I were you, and I wanted a more vibrant, grassroots-friendly party, with better accountability, and a better flow of information, I would think long and hard before giving any public support — or my vote — to the man who thinks he has the state party chair in the bag at this point, current GOP Vice Chair, Todd Weiler.
Stan Lockhart has groomed him well.
And I can tell you from personal experience–that’s not a good thing.
The link to the article about Senator Bramble’s PAC, on which, coincidentally, Utah County Republican Party Chair, Marian Monnahan is listed as a principal, along with Stan Lockhart’s wife, Becky is [Utah Senate] Leaders’ PAC fell short on [converting cash] favors [to votes], by Bob Bernick, Jr. and Lee Davidson of the Deseret News..
Be ready for a brain cramp by the time you make your way to the end of the densest news articles you’re likely to read for a long time.