This page was last updated on March 16, 2011.
Obama should run as a Republican; Stephen F. Kislock, III; Beaver County Times; March 16, 2011.
Most of Mr. Kislock’s 60+ letters over the last seven years have been Republican-bashing exercises, though he sometimes goes after Democrats for his pet causes. Sometime during 2009 Mr. Kislock became an in-house commentator for Beaver County Reds. Please follow this link to learn more about Beaver County Reds.
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“Do we, the American worker, want change you can believe in 2012?”
[RWC] Mr. Kislock’s definition of “the American worker” likely isn’t what you think since lefties tend to have a different definition than most of us. In an old comment on the Times website, Mr. Kislock’s Beaver County Reds fellow leader Carl Davidson described his definition of “working-class” thusly: “If someone else [signs your paycheck], you’re in the working class.” I suspect most business owners - large or small - (who pay SS and Medicare taxes just as the rest of us) would be surprised to learn they aren’t “working families.”
“President Barack Obama may want to change parties and run as the Republican that he is.”
[RWC] Does anyone outside of Beaver County Reds take Mr. Kislock seriously? Does Mr. Kislock himself take what he writes seriously?
Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats passed so-called “jobs bills,” Obamacare, cap-and-tax (in the House), took over the student loan industry, et cetera. That he believes Mr. Obama is anything but a strong leftist shows how far left Mr. Kislock and his fellow travelers at Beaver County Reds are. I’m half expecting Mr. Kislock to write a letter entitled “Karl Marx: centrist.”
“Change we have not had since the day after Obama slinked into the Oval Office. We, the believers in change, were shortchanged, badly.”
[RWC] Mr. Kislock doesn’t tell us how he defines the “change” he wants. There’s a reason.
“Progressives, Democrats, liberals, independents: We do not have much time to retake control of the once workers’ dominated Democratic Party.”
[RWC] There’s nothing “progressive” about Progressives and liberals. Since the beginning of humankind some people have always wanted to control the lives of other people. That’s exactly what progressivism is all about.
“I thought I voted for a believer in the Constitution. Yet this former constitutional scholar can only be compared to a loyalist to the crown or, today, the Koch brothers.”
[RWC] Mr. Kislock “thought [he] voted for a believer in the Constitution?” Which constitution, the constitution of the USSR?
If you are for leftism as is Mr. Kislock, you oppose the U.S. Constitution as it now exists. That’s because all leftisms require government power beyond what the Constitution grants. The 10th Amendment states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.” Absent a very creative interpretation ignoring both the actual words and clear intent of the Constitution, the policies/programs required for communism, Marxism, socialism, et cetera are unconstitutional. Though Mr. Kislock routinely writes things like “Long live the Constitution,” he would never vote “for a believer in the [U.S.] Constitution.”
Finally, comparing the ideology of Mr. Obama to that of “the Koch brothers” is like comparing U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to Ronald Reagan.
“White-collar criminals are given a pass by the Obama Department of Justice, but our prisons are full of poor people. Justice?”
[RWC] Mr. Kislock didn’t provide examples, but folks who believe as he tend to refer to their ideological opponents as criminals.
“Today, the workers of America are under a vicious attack from neo-conservatives, and we are one step from servitude.”
[RWC] Apparently having worn out “neo-conservatism,” lefties now seem to prefer “neo-liberalism” as one of their boogeymen. I guess Mr. Kislock didn’t get the memo.
“We need real change this time.”
[RWC] Mr. Kislock still doesn’t define “real change” for us.
“Workers, please vote for your own best interest. Your vote for a Republican is a vote to turn the clock back on all the rights workers now enjoy.”
[RWC] Some lefties define “workers” even more restrictively than I noted above, including only those who work for labor union management. As a reminder, only about 6.9% of private-sector employees belong to a labor union, and that includes employees forced to join a labor union by closed-shop laws.
“The change you see in other states, with workers having no bargaining rights or rights at all, is coming to Pennsylvania soon.”
[RWC] I wonder what Mr. Kislock thinks of FDR and George Meany. FDR (patron saint of lefties) opposed public sector labor unions. In a 1937 letter to Luther C. Steward (President of the National Federation of Federal Employees), FDR wrote, “… meticulous attention should be paid to the special relationships and obligations of public servants to the public itself and to the Government. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.” Likewise, George Meany (first president of the AFL-CIO, 1955-1979) opposed collective bargaining for public sector employees. I’m surprised Mr. Kislock hasn’t tried to convince us Messrs. Meany and Roosevelt were really conservatives.
When politicians negotiate with labor union management, they negotiate with people who will return part of what they win to the politicians via taxpayer-funded campaign contributions. It’s called a conflict of interest. There’s a reason 93% of labor union management PAC contributions to federal candidates (over $62 million) went to Democrat candidates in 2010.
© 2004-2011 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.