Category: Senate Race 2010

The Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police, today, endorsed  Republican and former Congressman Pat Toomey, who represented the 15th District,  for U.S. Senate over Democrat Congressman Joe Sestak who represents the 7th District.

The state FOP, representing 41,000 active and retired law enforcement officers, is the largest law enforcement advocacy organization in Pennsylvania. It endorsed Republican Rick Santorum in his unsuccessful Senate race in 2006.

The FOP Philadelphia’s chapter is not bound by the state organization’s action and is expected to make an independent endorsement.

Sestak screws up. OK, that’s one of those phrases that you could copy to a clipboard from which to paste into a story for convenience sake but yesterday Pennsylvania’s 7th District Congressman and Democrat nominee for U.S senate has admitted to doing so, which makes it a bit more newsworthy than normal.

Joe Sestak has announced that he erred in seeking to  send $350,000 in taxpayer money to the Thomas Paine Foundation, which is an organization owned  by Drew Devitt aimed at promoting the cause of atheism, to design a new kind of windmill which would be built by New Way Energy of Chester Township, Pa, which is an organization owned by the same Drew Devitt and aimed at promoting the cause of increasing his bank account.

Now, why would Congressman Sestak think it a good idea to give $350,000 of taxpayer money to an atheist group to build windmills? I have no idea. Why do people do these sorts of things?

Anyway, Joe is really not someone we want writing our laws.

Congressman Joe Sestak who represents Pennsylvania’s 7th District and is the Democrat’s nominee for the senate race in that state  appears to have funneled a $350,000 earmark to a for-profit business. Beside such a thing being hypocritical and a violation of honest government etc, it also now violates House rules.

Sestak got the money for the Thomas Paine Foundation, a non-profit organization that advocates keeping religion out of government. It was to be used for developing an offshore wind turbine.  What does the Thomas Paine Foundation have to do with wind energy? Why nothing. It’s owner, however, is Drew Devitt,  who also owns New Way Energy LLC,  and that has quite a bit to do with wind energy.

New Wave Energy is in Chester Township, Delaware County, which is actually in the 1st District represented by Bob Brady, also a Democrat, and who requested $1 million for the same project.

Devitt has admitted the money will go to him according to the Allentown Morning Call, — his home address is listed on the earmark request — and could be used for commercial application.

Sestak, btw, is now saying his office did due diligence to make sure the money was going to a non-profit. That’s right, Joe. The perfect criteria for getting tax dough to build a windmill is being able to throw a hissy fit over a Nativity scene. And why would you be shoving tax dollars to a common scold like the Thomas Paine Foundation, in the first place?

Hat tip to PoliticsPa.Com .

Joe Sestak appeared at a CAIR fundraiser in 2007 and you could chalk it up to ignorance and Kumbaya-naivete that he didn’t know that the group had been connected to Islamic extremism and terrorism by the FBI.

Ignorance and naivete are not traits you’d hope to see in your congressman but they don’t mean that he particularly wants to see any particular nation get wiped off of the map.

Last week , Sestak brought in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to endorse him. Bloomberg, a Tea-Party-hating Republican, has been unwavering in his support for Feisal Abdul Rauf’s Victory Mosque near the 9/11 Ground Zero site.

Rauf is someone who sympathizes with Hamas and thinks the United States is an “accessory” to the 9/11 attacks. But Bloomberg is a Jew and no Jew would want to empower a group that would seek to wipe Israel off the map so that makes it OK and beside religious tolerance is a good thing especially when one is trying to open a sharia-based banking center in Dubai to access Islamic banking and monetary systems

Yesterday, however, Sestak brought from Nebraska former Senator Chuck Hagel to campaign for him. Hagel, also a Tea-Party-hating Republican, was one of just four senators who refused to sign a letter in support of Israel in 2000; one of 27 senators to refuse to sign a letter asking President Bush to pressure the Palestinian Authority to ban terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections in 2005 and just one of 12 who refused to ask the European Union to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, among other things.

So Joe, who’s coming next week? Mel Gibson?

The latest Rasmussen poll still shows Republican Pat Toomey ahead of Democrat Congressman Joe Sestak in the race to replace Snarlin’ Arlen Specter as senator from Pennsylvania.

The 45-39 percent breakdown is unchanged from two weeks ago. Ten percent are undecided and 6 percent prefer someone else.

This has not been a very good month for Sestak who says he loves Jews because he served in the U.S. Navy. TV stations ultimately ignored his demands to remove opposition political advertising; he was caught in shameless hypocrisy when he was found accepting campaign dough from those for whom he did favors despite a pointed promise that he would not do such things; and the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a guest piece defending his cozy ties to the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) written by the executive director of CAIR’s Philadelphia office side-by-side with an article pointing out CAIR’s numerous terrorist connections written by Benyamin Korn who is director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin and former editor of the Jewish Exponent, an influential Philadelphia-area weekly.

Admiral Joe started this race leading the mild-mannered  Toomey in the polls.

GOP senate nominee Pat Toomey has sent a letter to Dem opponent Congressman Joe Sestak (D-Pa7) asking he return $119,650 in campaign contributions. Why? The donor has  received  federal earmarks through Sestak’s office and Sestak says “If an organization or individual has made a request for an appropriations project, and has made a contribution to his campaign, he returns that contribution”

That earmarks were being steered to Sestak donors came to light in this July 15 Philadelphia Inquirer article by Thomas Fitzgerald .

“According to your website, this pledge was made as part of your ‘effort to restore faith in government,'” Toomey said. “This is a noble goal and I fully agree with the sentiment. It is apart of the reason I have long opposed the corrupt Washington earmarking system that results in the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars and shady backroom deals.”

Toomey counts corporate CEOs who have given the individual maximum and “at least one who even hosted a fundraiser” for Sestak as among the beneficiaries of the crony capitalism.

Here’s the complete text of Toomey’s letter.

Hat tip to GrassrootsPa.com

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ads pointing out Congressman Joe Sestak’s support for job-killing economics and his lock-step voting record with San Francisco limousine liberal and crony-capitalist Nancy Pelosi are back on WPGH and WPMY in Pittsburgh after station management investigated the complaints by Sestak and found them unfounded.

Sestak, who represents Pennsylvania’s 7th District, is the Democrat nominee to replace Arlen Specter in the U.S. Senate.

He had objected to the ads because they claimed he voted with Pelosi “100 percent”  and he had voted against an amendment on the DISCLOSE Act, a bill which would impose restrictions on campaign financing.

Bill Miller, the Chamber’s senior vice president of political affairs, noted that Sestak voted entirely with Pelosi on every bill of substance including the final version of the DISCLOSE Act .

If you want to be technical the Washington Post says Sestak has voted with Pelosi 97.8 percent of the time.

Joe Sestak not helping raise money for CAIR at a 2007 $50-per-ticket CAIR fundraiser.

Joe Sestak, a Springfield native and the Democrat’s hope to replace Arlen Specter as Pennsylvania senator, has filed complaints regarding two ads being run against him and has threatened to take the broadcasters to the FCC if they continued being shown.

The ad produced by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce takes Joe to task for supporting bizarre anti-consumer policies and claims Sestak voted with House Speaker and San Francisco leftist Nancy Pelosi 100-percent of the time.

Not true, says Sestak. It was only 97 percent of the time.

Anyway WPGH and WPMY of the Pittsburgh area which were among  the 14 television stations airing this ad succumbed to Sestak’s threats and pulled it.

Update: It was reported today, July 17, that WPGH and WPMY have rescinded their surrender and have restored the ads.

Meanwhile the Emergency Committee for Israel has produced an ad highlighting the criticism in which Sestak has joined regarding attempts by Israel to keep the Gaza strip from being used as base for Islamic terror attacks, and Sestak’s 2007 appearance at a fundraiser for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which the FBI has determined to be a front-group for Hamas, an Islamic terror group that seeks to replace Israel with an Islamic state.

Sestak’s response is basically hey, the FBI didn’t say it was a terror front-man at the time and I really wasn’t raising funds at the fundraiser.

The naivete alone should disqualify Sestak from any position of responsibility but when one wonders why CAIR was throwing its significant Philadelphia influence behind him, the implications are frightening.

Here’s the Emergency Committee for Israel ad.