Beaver County Reds Management

This page was last updated on December 9, 2014.

Below is the current management of ~~Communist~~Progressive Democrats of America – PA 12th (old 4th) Congressional District Chapter [aka Beaver County Blue (Facebook version), aka Beaver County Reds]. BCR was PDA – PA 4th CD before redistricting in 2012. BCR leadership also appears to lead Beaver County Peace Links (Facebook version) and some or all are involved with at least two Marcellus Shale-related opposition groups [Marcellus Shale Organizing Committee of Beaver County (Facebook version) (MSOCBC) and Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Committee (BCMAC)] and Can We Afford It? (CWAI). The Marcellus Shale groups appear to share the same Facebook page and describe themselves as follows: “Group of concerned citizens organizing against the current lawless development of the Marcellus shale. Our group is deicated [sic] to providing public awareness, protecting our constitutional rights, and preserving our current way of life.” There may be other groups under the BCR umbrella I don’t know about.

Keep in mind “progressive” is leftyspeak for “regressive.” Since the beginning of humankind some people have always wanted to control the lives of other people. The history of man is tyranny. That’s exactly what leftism is all about. Using the real-world definitions of progressive and regressive, today’s “progressives” are “radically regressive.” Though the terminology has varied over the years, the “left” has been at war with the rest of us since at least the beginning of recorded history. The people who run groups like BCR are the real “one percenters.”

When in a critique I referred to BCPL as a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of BCR, Carl Davidson (see below) commented, “Not quite. The two groups overlap, but they are not the same. The bank accounts are also separate and independent.” Accepting Mr. Davidson’s assertion, “interlocking directorate” may be a better way to describe the relationships of the BCR-related groups.

BCR doesn’t appear to publish the names of its management team except for its chairman/president. What I know of the rest of BCR management I learned from their postings on the Internet. All of the BCR managers I know about are white, college educated, heterosexual, not exactly spring chickens (currently ranging in age from mid-50s to 70s), and four of the five are male. They all live in lily-white communities, ranging from 84% white to 98.1% white according to 2010 census data. For whatever reason, one of the gang, who lives two municipalities away, refers to Aliquippa (57.6% white and a black mayor) as “my home town” (here and here) and the Aliquippa mayor as “our mayor.” For readers outside of this area, an Aliquippa address isn’t necessarily in the City of Aliquippa. An Aliquippa mailing address also includes all or parts of Center, Hopewell, Independence, and Raccoon townships. All of these municipalities are independent of Aliquippa. In fairness, there are some forums where this person concedes he doesn’t actually live in Aliquippa and never did. [In the interest of disclosure, I lived in Aliquippa (Plan 12 - Sheffield) for six years and attended St. Titus grade school downtown on Franklin Avenue for another eight years (1958-1966). Tack on another five years for my brothers.] I found no place where the BCR manager referred to the previous mayor (Anthony Battalini – 2003-2011, also a Democrat) as “our mayor.” To wrap this up, the Beaver County property database indicates the mortgage of the property’s previous owner was foreclosed upon by Fannie Mae (a government-sponsored enterprise) then purchased several months later in the name of the BCR manager’s life partner.

A child of two BCR leaders was “awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program scholarship” in 2013. According to the Fulbright Program website as of 11/14/13, “The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the United States Congress to the Department of State. … The Congressional appropriation for the Fulbright Program in fiscal year 2010 was $253.8 million.” The program is named for J. William Fulbright (D-AR). From 1943 through 1974, Mr. Fulbright represented Arkansas first as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1943-1945) and then as a U.S. senator. Mr. Fulbright was a racist all the way through the civil rights movement. Among Mr. Fulbright’s “accomplishments:”

· Signed the Southern Manifesto in 1956, a document supporting government-directed racial segregation. The document was in response to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education (separate is not equal).

· Filibustered and voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act

· Filibustered and voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act

· Voted against the 1965 Voting Rights Act

· Voted against the 1968 Open Housing Act

· Voted against statehood for Hawaii (1959) – first state with majority non-white voting population

Despite all of this, the two BCR leaders expressed their pride and received congratulations from fellow leftist activists. Ignoring the propriety of the federal government having a program like the Fulbright Program, just about everyone should recognize naming government programs for racists is objectionable.

I mentioned the above only because the left – including BCR – is obsessed with “diversity” (sex, sexual orientation, skin color, etc.) but BCR management is anything but diverse using the leftist definition. They also seem to have no problem with taking advantage of another’s misfortune. Let’s hope they aren’t mistaken for greedy, racist, and sexist homophobes due to honest oversights. <g>

Chairman/President – Tina Shannon

· Facebook

· a member (or at least was in 1991) of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA)

· member of the national coordinating committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), originally a splinter group of CPUSA. You can learn more about CCDS at KeyWiki, though I can’t vouch for the accuracy.

· a leader of the apparently-defunct Beaver County Coalition for Social Justice (BCCSJ)

· on her Facebook wall wrote, “I always try to be kind, though, even while bringing the necessary fight” (4/6/12). Though it’s been awhile since I exchanged comments with Mrs. Shannon, my own experience is she engages in personal attacks, not kindness. Back in 2005 while discussing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the BCCSJ website, Mrs. Shannon told me I was callous, didn’t care about dying babies and the people in New Orleans, et cetera, simply because I disagreed with her positions and explained my positions using facts, history, and logic.

· believes Democracy Now! is a source of “real news … sadly lacking in the mainstream media”

· believes “Resources of the earth should be publicly owned & managed. For profit extraction is not working out for us or the planet.” Since everything can be classified as a “resource of the earth,” this position means the end of personal property.

· since 2004, wrote two letters-to-the-editor to the Beaver County Times (BCT)

· owns/operates Shannon’s Brown Bear Daycare & Preschool, partially funded by taxpayers via subsidies to her customers (County workers, others protest state budget impasse; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; September 1, 2009). Mrs. Shannon lobbying for her customers to receive subsidies is like what Al Gore does when he operates businesses designed to benefit from manmade-global-warming legislation he promotes.

· wife of Randy Shannon (see below)

Vice President – Robert Schmetzer

· Facebook

· Democrat party local town chair for South Heights

· Since 2004, the BCT published at least 26 letters from Mr. Schmetzer. You can find my critiques of some of those letters here: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2004.

· according to his Facebook info, a retired “Business Representitive [sic]” for IBEW Local 712

· According to his Facebook wall, Mr. Schmetzer appears to sign quite a few lefty online petitions.

· refers to Catholic priests as “70 year old virgin men who wear dresses to work”

· His postings are so “colorful” (I’m trying to be tactful.) I occasionally wonder if he actually believes what he writes or if he just does it to fire up his fellow travelers. It would be interesting to see how he deals with opponents in person.

Treasurer – Randy Shannon

· Facebook

· a member (or at least was in 1991) of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA)

· a leader of the apparently-defunct Beaver County Coalition for Social Justice

· From 2004 to 2008, the BCT published at least 17 letters from Mr. Shannon. I found none since 2008. You can find my critiques of those letters here: 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.

· works as Laboratory Manager for an evil corporation (Pittsburgh Mineral & Environmental Technology, Inc.)

· husband of Tina Shannon (see above)

Secretary – Peter Deutsch

· Facebook

· According to his Facebook wall, Mr. Deutsch is associated with the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), originally a splinter group of CPUSA. You can learn more about CCDS at KeyWiki, though I can’t vouch for the accuracy.

· Since 2004, the BCT published at least nine letters from Mr. Deutsch, though none since mid-2010. You can find my critiques of those letters here: 2010, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.

· father of the Deutsch Doctrine

· a former (retired in 2013) Associate Professor of Physics at Penn State - Beaver. Though I took three physics courses at Penn State – Beaver, it was long before the Deutsch era.

Webmaster and perhaps unofficial leader – Carl Davidson

· Facebook

· a self-described Marxist who once “tr[ied] to create a new communist party”

· co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), originally a splinter group of CPUSA. You can learn more about CCDS at KeyWiki, though I can’t vouch for the accuracy.

· was a leader of the now-defunct Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)

· was Vice President and later Inter-organizational Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the mid- to late-1960s. Some members of the SDS gave birth to the violent Weather Underground.

· According to the bio on a piece he wrote for the United Steelworkers of America (USW), “[Carl Davidson] worked on President Barack Obama’s first political campaign in Illinois, on his campaign for the U.S. Senate and for the presidency.” Mr. Davidson also ran the ~~Communists~~Progressives for Obama website. Despite all of this effort on Mr. Obama’s behalf, Mr. Davidson didn’t/doesn’t like being called an Obama supporter. In 2008, Mr. Davidson wrote, “Today I run ‘Progressives for Obama’, a web site completely independent of him. We distance ourselves from him, and he can do likewise. Technically, we don’t even endorse him; we simply say he’s our ‘best option.’” ~~Communists~~Progressives for Obama changed its name to ~~Communist~~Progressive America Rising. From what I can tell from the policies they support, Messrs. Davidson and Obama agree on their ultimate goal, differing only on the path. They differ on the path because Mr. Obama actually has to get the policies implemented but Mr. Davidson does not. Using a football analogy, Mr. Davidson is the guy in front of the TV who always screams to “go for it” on fourth down while Mr. Obama is the coach actually charged with winning the game. Perhaps a quote from Van Jones (former Obama “green czar”) better describes the situation: “I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.”

· Since early-2010, the BCT published at least four letters from Mr. Davidson. You can find my critiques of those letters here, here, here, and here.

· “a retired computer technician” according to one of his websites

· a full-time local, national, and international leftster activist

· His two daughters are full-time, professional leftist activists. One (an op-ed writer) is paid by an evil corporation and the other by labor union management, presumably using dues members are forced to pay, usually as a condition of employment.