In case you’re wondering.
$64,000 of Bob Casey’s cash came via John Kerry’s website.
And over half a million came from John Kerry fundraisers. As a matter of fact, John Kerry has raised more for Bobby Casey than anyone else.
No wonder Bobby isn’t in a hurry to ditch him.
Lowman Henry says the issue of Pennsylvania investing in companies doing business with terror supporting nations is not a new one.
Perhaps Casey hasn’t spent enough time in his office to know whether or not he is investing our tax dollars in companies that do business with terrorist-sponsoring nations. If so, he might want to log onto the Center for Security Policy’s web site and find out.
The Treasurer, Bob Casey has for too long been stalling on releasing the names of the companies that the state invests in.
Now we know why.
For Pete’s Sake, Pete Stark is a Socialist
The scary thing is that he doesn’t seem to understand financial freedom very well.
Let Americans put money away for something serious — health care or retirement security — and Stark thinks we’ll be all thumbs. How else to explain the panic in his OpEd newspaper column last week?
I saw this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review story last week on Tax Free HSAs and I was hoping somebody somewhere would comment on it before I did. So somebody at the Tribune-Review has not partnered with the Socialist Democrats and said some things that are true. Pete the powerful Democrat said last Sunday:
So the Tribune-Review fires back:
Business got the message. It’s switching employees wherever possible to 401(k) plans (which overextended local governments such as Pittsburgh ought to be doing, too).
No question but that 401(k) and HSA plans are designed to head off broken promises in retirement and chronic inflation in health care. So how are they “empty accounts?” This is pure demagoguery, to spook the voters away from solutions that don’t require Big Brother.
A health savings account makes you, the individual or family head, set aside your own money for medical costs up to a certain ceiling. Above that, high-deductible insurance kicks in. You’re protected against financial wipeout by a health disaster but have to pay smallish expenses such as office visits yourself — with a sweetener, however, a tax-sheltered savings account. You use pretax dollars, but since they’re your dollars, you’ll tend to be a more cost-conscious health shopper.
Stark’s big objection: HSAs so far are attracting mostly upper-income insureds. But why not? They’ve got the financial smarts. Lower-income workers should follow their example. It’s a matter of education, Congressman. Schools could teach it. Instead, he dismisses it as a tax break for “the rich.”
Likewise, the 401(k) account. A worker pays into it, tax-deferred, all through a career, augmented at best by matching funds from employers. The growing nest egg moves with the individual — it’s “portable” to retirement. True, the average worker is not an investing genius. An array of conservatively managed mutual funds would pay off nicely over the years, however, and ordinary folks could understand that, too.
But to Congressman Stark, such freedoms of choice “undermine the security on which millions of working families depend.” On which they’ve been conditioned to defend, he should say, by their “friends” in government.
Retired business editor Jack Markowitz writes Sundays and Wednesdays. E-mail him at jmarkowitz@tribweb.com.
I would have said it differently but the Pittsburgh paper did a fine job.
Vote straight Republican because powerful Democrats are too scary!
Cross-Posted at Swannblog
Pocono Record Letter to the Editor
Casey supports:
Obstructionist tactics that prevent qualified judges from getting up or down votes in the Senate, partial-birth abortion, judges imposing gay marriage on states, and giving amnesty to illegal aliens.
Casey is against: building a wall to protect our borders, and acting now to save Social Security resulting in automatic benefit cuts by law.
On Nov. 7 ask yourself, do I want to support Bobby Casey who goes along with the crowd and signed the checks for an illegal pay raise, or do I want a true leader in Senator Rick Santorum, who has been fighting for Pennsylvanians on all these issues?
Do we Pennsylvanians want to trade number 2 in the majority for number 48 in the minority?
Vermont has some interesting “Numbers” for any of you that are not so dumbed down that you can still think. Vermont has eliminated competition to Blue Cross and the Blues is taking advantage of the taxpayers to pay for 3,800 government employees.
$45,000,000 for 3,800 employees is $11,842/per year, per employee. The monthly cost is $987/per month, per employee going to Blue Cross. If ½ of the employees are single and ½ of the employees have families, the cost for this Blue Cross coverage would be $500/per month for single coverage and $1,500/per month for family coverage.
In contrast, in Pittsburg HSA insurance cost for a 30-year-old single male is $66 a month and for a 30-year-old couple and 2 children the cost is $199/per month.
With HSA insurance the government then deposits $225 per month in the single employees’ tax free HSA and double, or $450 per month in the Families’ HSA. From the employees’ point of view, if they get sick or hurt they have a ZERO deductible that pays 100%. If the employees don’t get sick they get to keep the HSA balance plus tax free interest.
The total cost for taxpayers, if employees pay nothing, is $66 plus $225, or $291/per month for single coverage and $199 plus $450/per month, or $649/per month for family coverage.
With HSA insurance the taxpayer money goes to the employees and not to Blue Cross.
Isn’t it TIME to stop the media and politicians from pandering to Blue Cross and scamming the citizens?
Stop the Socialists / Vote Swann and Santorum
Cross-Posted at Swannblog
AARP is a Non-Taxed Insurance Sales Corporation.
AARP sells United Health Care.
AARP wants Ed Rendell to win.
Say no to non-taxed Sales Corporations / Vote Republican
Santorum Press Release
During the October 12th debate on KDKA-TV, Bob Casey Jr. demonstrated blatant hypocrisy on the issue of outsourcing. Casey openly acknowledged that he supports the outsourcing of Pennsylvania jobs, because he sits on the Pennsylvania Public School Employee Retirement System’s (PSERS) Board and the State Employee Retirement System’s (SERS) Board. Together, more than $10 billion of these pension funds are invested in companies that send jobs overseas.
And when asked by Senator Santorum at the debate if Casey knew just how much of the pensions that were invested in outsourcing companies, he was clueless. His answer verbatim was, “I don’t know that number.” These are the very companies that are on both the AFL-CIO and Lou Dobbs’ list of the most notorious outsourcers, yet Casey didn’t know about them.
Casey, Jr. talks tough on outsourcing even going so far by saying that he’ll ‘oppose any trade law that sends American jobs overseas’ in a recent campaign commercial,’ but how can that be when he supports investing in companies that promote the very concept that he is campaigning against?
“Plain and simple, this is an issue of hypocrisy, because Bob Casey Jr. says one thing and does another. If Casey thinks that outsourcing jobs overseas is so terrible, then why would he actively support the investment of pension funds in these very companies? Maybe if Bob Casey showed up for work more, he would know this,” said Pat Toomey, former Lehigh Valley Congressman. “If Bob Casey is asleep at the switch at his current job, how can we expect him to fight for Pennsylvania as a U.S. Senator?”
“What’s more is that Bob Casey is now stalling to release where the Pennsylvania Treasury invests its money. Surely the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a third quarter report that details their investments — stocks and bonds - that is readily available. Even a mutual fund details this information. There is a reason Casey is hiding the information, because the very agency that he oversees is investing our taxpayer dollars in companies that send jobs overseas. Casey needs to come clean and release this information,” said Senator Rick Santorum.
Click here to view correspondence between Vince Galko, campaign manager for Santorum 2006 and Treasury Department: www.RickSantorum.com/Media/PDF/Press/2006-10-18.pdf. The letter dated October 18 details that they are stalling on releasing the Treasury Department’s holdings.
As a PA Taxpayer, I’d like to know where that money’s at. Nevermind the political implications.
At their debate in Philadelphia Monday, Mr. Casey challenged Mr. Santorum to release the tax data. Mr. Santorum immediately agreed. He noted that it might take some time to assemble the paperwork but placed no conditions on the promised disclosure at the time.
His campaign press secretary, Virginia Davis, said yesterday that the tax returns were now ready for release. She offered to allow reporters to examine them privately, but insisted that the tax data would not be released for publication until Mr. Casey agreed to disclose his public schedule for the last year.
The stealth candidate has the guts to ask what Rick Santorum is hiding.
“As to our public schedule, he can read the newspapers,'’ Mr. Smar added. “By definition, public schedule is public.”
Let’s ask John Micek, who’s in the papers all the time.
Our Rick may be all worried about The Eye of Mordor, but the Cloak of Invisibility that Casey borrowed from Harry Potter makes it awfully hard for beat reporters to cover his movements.
The Sentintel wonders why the RNC is holding back money.
Party officials say the decision not to spend more on Santorum’s behalf is an indication of their confidence that the senator can continue to raise cash on his own and doesn’t need their help. Santorum’s own people predict that he will finish strong.
Could it be that the anti-incumbent voter climate in Pennsylvania is giving the RNC pause? Or has the party leadership lost its focus, stunned by the unexpected loss of momentum in the wake of recent scandals and President Bush’s crash in the approval polls?
In either case, the longer the party waits to throw Santorum a lifeline, the more likely it is the effort will be wasted.
Casey and Santorum are about evenly matched on money, and I think at this point the RNC is running the GOTV campaigns at full steam.
If their internal polling shows it within reach, GOTV is going to be the key to Santorum victory.
Particularly if their internal undecideds are drawing sub 5% as in the recent Rasmussen and Zogby polls.
That and the Diebold voting machines.
Joseph Cella, President of Fidelis commented, “The fact is that Bob Casey’s largest contributors include the anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic groups MoveOn.org and the Human Rights Campaign. It is despicable that Casey is accepting money from the same type of radicals who in 1992 sold buttons of his father depicting him as the Pope, and is refusing to return their campaign contributions and denounce their hateful bigotry.”
“Bob Casey, Jr. recently returned a $2,100 contribution from a syndicated sex columnist because of his raunchy reputation, and recently returned a $5,000 contribution after learning the group’s director of political giving bashed Israel and called President Bush a fascist. Why does Casey have a double standard when it comes to MoveOn.org and the Human Rights Campaign?” Cella stated.