Problem: Dan Onorato Lies

I'm not responsible for this video, but I wish I was.  Anyone know how to put these things together?

Ya think?

From today's Tribune Review:

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato, the Democrats' nominee for governor, says it "probably" was wrong when Community College of Allegheny County initially required a coming construction project to use 90 percent union labor.

Probably?  PROBABLY?  If you haven't followed it, our boy Dan has been behind $21 million construction project for the local community college.  The bids for this job were recently cancelled after a lawsuit challenged the process as unfair to regular business.

Hey, it's unfair to us taxpayers also, on two levels.  First, the building costs us more because rather than using the lowest qualified bidder we have pay higher rates for union wages.   Second, when we are trying to put people back to work, rewarding your buddies first is the worst kind of nepotism.  The AFL-CIO and other unions just "unanimously" endorsed Dan's run for governor, because they know who puts the butter on their bread.  They know an Onorato administration means they get the prime pick of state and federal projects.

This sort of thinking is nothing new - Rendell has been bragging about the number of jobs the stimulus created, every single one of them a road construction job staffed by union labor.  President Obama recently boasted about the jobs saved by taking over GM.  Again, union labor.  We need hundreds of millions more for schools (to pay for union teacher salaries and pensions).  We need millions more for public transit (to cover the pensions of union drivers).

Dan Onorato and his friends care about you, and care about getting Pennsylvanians back to work. 

... well, Pennsylvanians with union cards.

Dan Plays Dirty

Welcome Back.  Last time I wrote about Dan Onorato's truth allergy and his imaginary poll.  Why does he need to pretend he has better poll numbers than he does?  Because his numbers are terrible.  No one has Dan even close to winning this thing.

So what do you do when the chips are down and the odds are stacked against you?  Most people would say "buckle down, work hard and do your best".  But most people are not a Pittsburgh politician, and that is today's reason why Dan Onorato sucks:

Dan Onorato put a Tea Party candidate on the ballot.

According to the reports, Dan's campaign staff and supporters circulated petitions for John Krupa who listed himself as a Tea Party candidate. 

 "Members of unions that endorsed Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, as well as one of his campaign workers, helped get Tea Party candidate John Krupa onto Pennsylvania's gubernatorial ballot for November's election, state records show."

Now I wouldn't consider Dan a friend to progressives like me even on a good day -  his pro-gun, pro-life, anti-gay agenda will be a topic for a later date - so to see him trying to prop up these gun-toting law-ignoring Palin-loving idiots makes me cringe.  There is only one reason to do this - to pull votes away from your opponent.  And yes, both parties do this, but that doesn't mean you should get lazy about it, otherwise you get editorials like this one:

"Dan Onorato must think Pennsylvania voters were born last night. Why else would his failing gubernatorial campaign deny culpability in a political stunt as old as the hills?"

"Smell a political rat? Or should we say an OnoRATo?"

The Tribune Review tends to be GOP friendly, but if Democrats want to get the country back on track we need to have a strong message, and giving these people any credibility is not going to help at all.  And if you are going to play sloppy tricks, at least be subtle about it.  Here are three reasons why this was completely retarded:

1. Krupa is not a member of the Tea Party, he is from the Constitution Party.  And the GOP and the Tea Party is suing to get him off the ballot.  So good job Dan, you just wasted thousands of dollars and made yourself look stupid for someone over someone who will probably get booted from the ballot.
2. The Tea Party may be crazy but they are not dumb. And they hate unions, so when they find out it was union labor that put Krupa on the ballot, don't you think they will be a little pissed off?  Again, good job - you just convinced people who might have otherwise stayed home to go out and vote against you.
3. It is cheap and dirty politics at its very ugliest.  We condemn politics as usual, but who will take us seriously if we don't walk the walk?  Stupid stunts like this just give Republicans more talking points in a year where we are already hurting.  Now not only does the GOP have good ammunition for the governors race, they can use this against Sestak, Altmire, Lentz, Dahlkemper... you get the idea.

So in summary, way to go douchebag.  With Wagner we had a chance of winning the governor's mansion.  With Onorato, we risk losing control of the state.

Poll Dancing

Apparently Dan has been bragging about the latest poll in which he is only down by 5%, with 40% of people undecided.  Just one problem - that poll doesn't exist.

[W]e think Onorato is making it up (unless it’s one of his campaign’s internal polls, in which case his pollsters are making it up). We checked out RealClearPolitics, whose average of all polling shows Corbett up 9.3 percent and not a single poll showing Onorato anywhere near “five points down.”


...

Onorato also claimed 40 percent of voters are still undecided. Except. The latest poll, by Rasmussen, says that number’s more like 8 percent.

Now, for those of us who live in Allegheny County, this is nothing new.  Dan habitually pulls numbers either out of thin air, and those numbers are always on his side.  Whether it be the $390 million subway tunnel (actual cost: $529 million), the Port Authority-saving 10% drink tax (we have a surplus?  Make it a 7% drink tax! Oops... Port Authority is broke again.  Maybe a sales tax?)  or the "hundreds of thousands" of Shale jobs that total in Dan's own later statement is just 80,000, Dan sells policy like he would sell a used car.  There is always a catch, and often that catch is "bad numbers".

Should we be surprised that his next fundraiser is with Bill Clinton and Ed Rendell, two men whose relationship with the truth can politely be described as "rocky"?

The Company One Keeps

Dan Onorato has a fundraiser next week, and he is trotting out the big guns.

Bill Clinton AND Ed Rendell?  I would say that Dan is the meat in a bullsh** sandwich, except that calling those to greaseballs the bread is an insult to bakers.  This is more like the KFC Double Down "Sandwich" - a cheese covered slice of soggy bacon mashed between two giant greaseballs, virtually guaranteed to give you heartburn, indigestion, and buyers remorse.

Yum!

Dan's Horrible Gas Problem, Part II

Dan Onorato believes that Marcellus Shale will save us.  The industry is looking at Pennsylvania, and considering moving in and setting up shop.  His plan to tax the bejeezus out of them may not be the most sound economic policy, and his plan to fund the DEP watchdogs makes environmentalists wonder if he ever heard of the Department of Minerals Management Services, but his plan for using the drilling industry to improve Pennsylvania's unemployment problem is a tried and true method with a good track record of success:

Extortion.

"Department of Environmental Protection, how may I direct your call?"

Onorato's website has lauded Marcellus Shale as a "powerful economic engine" that will "lead to extraordinary job creation".  In fact, he expects it will create "hundreds of thousands of jobs".  And last week he finally released his plan for spurring job growth:

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Dan Onorato says he’d pressure natural gas drilling companies to hire Pennsylvania residents by threatening to withhold state drilling permits...

Onorato says he’d be justified to use permits as leverage, arguing, “I think all governors apply pressure on every industry.

The soundbite Onorato gave to Scott Detrow is even more direct (you can find it here):

"The one piece of leverage that the governor has over the industry is the permitting for drilling.  The industry wants to be able to drill.  I'm prepared to give them permits to drill, but I want one thing in return:  the 80,000 that the study from Penn State predicted - they have to hire Pennsylvanians."  

Three things bother me about this statement:

1. 80,000 jobs is not "hundreds of thousands" of jobs.  It is 120,000 positions shy of the smallest possible number that can be considered "hundreds of thousands".  (That's 200,000, for all you Dan Fans out there).  Onorato either thinks the industry will create 1.5 support jobs for each person in the industry, or he has embellished his numbers a bit.  Or his staff can't count.
2. I hope we hire some people who have actual experience in doing this, and doing it safely.  I care more about their qualifications than I do about which state is on their driver's license.  I don't mind some outside expertise, seeing as our wells keep leaking and blowing up.
3. IT IS TOTALLY ILLEGAL.

It is absolutely inappropriate to grant or withold permitting based upon anything except the qualifications of the applicant, the confines of the law, and the safety of the public.  It is futher inappropriate for a governor to determine which permits are issued (that's why he has departments) because direct issuance from the executive is ripe for fraud and corruption.  And it is wildly discriminatory to do so based upon state residency, to the order of probably being a constitutional violation of the commerce clause!

Even Governor Rendell and DEP secretary John Hanger agree:

“It’s not what we do,” says Governor Rendell. “And you might be able to do that, but you’d probably have to change some regulations or get some legislation.” Department of Environmental Protection Secretary John Hanger, who oversees well permitting, agrees. “That’s not one of the grounds for rejecting a permit in the Oil and Gas Act,” he explains, adding he worries a measure mandating companies hire Pennsylvanians would run afoul of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause.

Onorato is saying "commerce works the way I tell it to work" and the rich history of PA and US law say "no it doesn't".     At best, he doesn't understand why it is illegal.  At worst, he doesn't care.
 
Try this - read Dan's statment again, but this time imagine that this guy is saying it:

"The one piece of leverage that the governor has over the industry is the permitting... I'm prepared to give them permits to drill, but I want one thing in return"

1. Dan's Horrible Gas Problem

I thought about starting off with some background, but decided rather than talk about how Dan Onorato has already screwed up Allegheny County - drink taxes, PAT shutdowns, unfunded pension funds, gold-plated subway tunnels - I would instead lead off with an issue that would affect all Pennsylvanians - Dan's little problem with "natural gas".

If you have not seen the documentary "Gasland" yet, go see it.  (And then go see if you can light your sink on fire, because although you may not want to drink it, it looks like it would be awesome to see in person.)  Seen it?  Great.  Now you have a background on the Marcellus Shale issue.  Our fair commonwealth apparently sits on top of one of the largest collections of dinosaur farts in the country, and the companies that specialize in extracting these farts are interested in setting up shop here. 

A reasonable person might suspect that, running as a Democrat and seeing a documentary about pyrotechnic plumbing, Dan would take the strong environmental approach and oppose it.   That person would be wrong.  Those of us in Allegheny County know, Dan Onorato never passes up an opportunity to pass a new tax.

Marcellus Shale has become the golden-egg laying goose for Dan.  He wants to use it to fund everything from college educations to art museums.  He even wants to use it to fund the DEP, the organization responsible for regulating and overseeing the environmental performance of this industry itself.

Does this sound a little too cozy for anyone?  Would you voluntarily pull the plug on the industry that pays your bills?  If you watch the film, you see our esteemed DEP Secretary John Hanger, who already appears to be too close for comfort with an industry that has two dinosaur fart well explosions in the state just in the last 2 months. 

Can we really expect Dan Onorato to replace Mr. Hanger?