Barletta has said: “I am willing to take a pause and give this a try because without this agreement, the city will die a sudden death by the end of the year. This agreement is the city life support.” — Lou Barletta, Standard Speaker, 6-14-10. Sure sounds like bankruptcy to me.

Ed Mitchell
Campaign spokesman
Kanjorski for Congress

Kanjorski will lose simply because his campaign and campaign manager are too cheap to do the proper advertising. There should already be a campaign underway to show how Barletta has destroyed Hazleton, yet the general public has seen nothing of the sort up to this point. A sky high unemployment rate in Hazleton does no good when nobody knows about it. The same can be said of the 70% increase in taxes under Barletta. Hazleton is FULL of blight, so how about you start showing it.

Over a million dollars in the bank and yet the campaign refuses to even take out high traffic billboards or even to print up information for volunteers to hand deliver.

Mr Mitchell, you got lucky Obama was on the ballot last time. This time you are actually going to have to spend the war chest in order to even be competitive. If you want to win you had better start spending now and for god’s sake, get some information printed up for canvassers to hand out.

Its time for Kanjorski to go. 2012 Corey O’Brien can come in and run.

I love how the libs automatically insert “immigration” in place of “illegal immigration.” Barletta’s restrictions was not against the immigrants who follow the law, wait their turn,, pay taxes, and become real Americans. It was against the people who BREAK the law!! What part of illegal is so hard to understand? If you break the law you (are supposed to) get punished.

Please name one other country where illegal immigrants are welcomed, employed, educated, and nursed back to health, all for free, all with no questions asked. Even Mexico has tougher immigration laws than the US, and the hypocritical Mexican president knows that; he is just hoping to capitalize on gringo guilt to pass amnesty.

I hope Kanjorski keeps bringing up Hazelton; it will bite him in the rear. Obviously the people of that city seem to like and he is doing something right, as he got re-elected a couple times.

And what kind of a campaign manager has time to write snarky comments on a blog? Shouldn’t he have more important things to do? Not very professional……..

Here we have Barletta’s spokesman directly stating that, “the city’s [Hazelton] Hispanic population continues to rise each and every year.” If Barletta is tough on immigration than why has Hazelton’s Hispanic population grown each year?

Republican’s like Shelly don’t want immmigrants in this country whether they are here legally or illegally. But they do want cheap labor that can’t organize to keep the cost of running their beloved small businesses down. Republicans are sick and confused creatures.

I like what Shawn Kelly said “spending our money and sending us new tax bills.” But, the conservative media didn’t ask Kelly to explain what federal “tax bills” have been sent our way? I don’t think federal tax rates have been increased in awhile, but I do understand that it’s the standard Republican dumbing-down sound bite. Didn’t Republicans control the Congress from 1994-2006 and the White House from 2001-2009?

You’re all missing the big story: Barletta’s ahead of Kanjo in the polls, and Kanjo’s twiddling his thumbs in response. As a former pollster, I’m extremely suspicious of these “leaked” polls, particularly because AAPOR’s ethics rules require full disclosure once there’s been a partial leak. That said, Kanjo’s silence tells you that these polls are pretty darn accurate, but Kanjo’s doing virtually nothing to change the race. (Only a true insider would even have heard of his attacks on Barletta, which is odd because Kanjo has enough money to bury Barletta in negative ads.) I don’t know if Barletta is lucky or good, but he’s outmaneuvering Kanjo, he’s got a lead, and time’s running out. Like I said before, Kanjo’s going out with a whimper; the question is why?

Things must be pretty bad when the campaign manager has to post on a blog that might be read by a couple of hundred people in that district.

He is gone, period. Reminds of Roth in DE and Santorum. Sometimes you just know when a poltican’s expiration date has arrived.

Has Barletta’s former challenger come back from oblivion as a surrogate for the Republican economic agenda that makes folks like him richer and the rest of us poorer?

@ MD Senator Roth lost in 2000 because he fell off of a stage at a campaign event at Rodney Square in Wilmington, DE due to senility. After that the people of Delaware kne whe was older than dirt and needed to step down. Sorry, I know you’d love to see Kanjo take a spill but it isn’t going to happen quite yet. He is still pretty spry.

Hey TB, sorry to spoil you Lib Talking Points rant, but guess what? My husband is an immigrant! Yep, that’s right, he came right off the boat in 1992, from the Middle East, no less. Good try though.

And maaaaybeeee the Hispanic population went up in Hazelton from LEGAL immigration? Should we really assume that when the Hipanic population of a city goes up those new residents are here illegally? That in itself seem racist to me.

Oh and one more thing, I have only been a Republican for less than 3 months, just to vote in the primary. I have been an Independent for over 20 years.

PS. Did you seriously use “cheap labor” and “organize” (as in unions) in the same sentence? And you think I’M confused? ROFLMAO

Do you really believe that nonsense? Obama promised us that unemployment would never go above 8% if we passed his stimulus bill; well, how’s that working out? Obama championed TARP, which stole billions from working people to give it to Obama’s friends at the banks. (He didn’t get all that money from Wall Street for nothing!) Then he signed a financial reform bill that guarantees we’ll have many more bailouts in the future. Sure, if you’re a government employee or in one of his favored unions, then Obama’s for you, but if you’re anyone else, he’s nothing, but higher taxes, lower growth & permanently lower employment. (Obama’s top advisors have argued unemployment will never fall below 8% again, so you can forget about wage growth.)

If you understood economics, then you’d realize that his policies are designed to lower personal income in exchange for greater “equality.” There’s simply NO economist who believes that Obamanomics leads to higher personal incomes. At best, some economists believe that the benefits of “equality” outweigh the costs of lower personal income.

@ Shelly Yes. I used cheap labor, as in the labor of illegal immigrants that is used by small business, and the word organize in the same sentence. The reason illegal immigrant labor is so cheap and popular among small businesses is because illegal immigrant laborers can’t organize to gain salaries and benefits they deserve for their hard work. They also lack the training and experience that unionized workers possess. So when you use illegal immigrant labor to cut costs you also cut the quality of the final product.

@ Paige You are just another nouveau riche Republican that made all of your money during the years wild financial growth from the tech boom as well financial deregulation brought about by Gramm-Leach-Bliley. One common trait among the nouveau rich Republicans of your ilk is that you have no sense of noblesse oblige to go along with your millions.

Your previous post did nothing to promote the continuation of the Bush tax cuts which I referred to in my first shot over your bow. If you want to promote the continuation of the Bush tax cuts do so in way that promotes their benefits instead of tearing down the Obama Administration. One thing about TARP that you seem to forget: it was signed by a Republican president and supported by Barack Obama’s opponent John McCain.

BTW, you were a joke of a congressional candidate.

Cheap labor=cheap products; isn’t that one more reason to not emply illegal immigrants, TB?

Unions raise the cost of everything associated with production. There may have been a need for unionization decades ago, but in the time of OSHA and the NLB it’s time for labor bosses to go. Card-check, forced unionization and thuggery have no place in a civilized country.

FYI TB, I don’t own a small business. You sure do make a lot of assumptions you can’t back up. You might be more effective if you concentrate on the issues, not engage in negative assumptions and personal attacks.

Paige you are/were a hedge fund manager. Tell me exactly why anyone in the general public should want to listen to you rather than to punch you in the mouth. You are part of the problem, not the solution. I hope they gut your tax breaks and put financially destructive people like yourself in a tax bracket over 50%.

@ Shelly I made no assumptions about your occupation or husband’s immigration status. You offered it up after the fact. I was simply making a general statement. Go join the Club for Growth you labor hating animal.

Thanks to Shawn Kelly, we now know that Republican leadership has made “cities, states, counties, and school districts all across America are struggling in this poor economy,”

Dear All,

I live in Hazleton and I am not left with the impression that either Kanjorski or Barletta are making the 2010 congressional race all about Hazleton. Hazleton did not even come up in the Kanjorksi’s town meeting that I listened to. The other thing that didn’t come up was student loan reform.

(1). Private Student loan lenders have abuse the system and so have universities and colleges. They will all put the blame on the small “for profit” schools like Devry but those schools are not the ones causing the problem. It is the best schools that are milking both the public and private loans because it is those schools that can get all the funding that they want.

(2). The solution to the problem is to put the burden of the financial risk of education on the shoulders of the universities. If the universities are told by law that if an American graduate does not make more money than would have been the case without the education, then the school must refund the full cost of the education, including living costs and opportunity costs, then the universities and colleges will stop admitting so many Americans into college and other degree programs that they can’t benefit from.

(3). If the banks were told that all private loans have a 2 year statute of limitation on collection, they would stop lending money to anyone who they were not certain would benefit economically from the education. Bankers forced to suffer the losses of bad investments will stop lending to investments that present too much of a risk of loss, which is the case with college and university degrees. There may be social benefits but there aren’t economic benefits and it is the economic benefits that allow graduates to repay student loans.

(4). If the colleges and universities were told that government loans have a 2 year statute of limitations on collections and then they are canceled and the college or university is charged by the US government for the full cost of the loans, the universities and colleges will then have to stop teaching bs and start teaching only things that lead to economic benefits for the graduates. If there is no profit for the graduate, then there should be no profit for the college or university.

(5). If colleges and universities were forbidden by law to charge an application fee, the number of applications solicited from students who have no chance of admissions or success if they are admitted would drop off. Currently, colleges and universities manipulate “prospective students”, who don’t stand any realistic chance of admission or success if admitted, by milking them for application fees. Then the admissions office hands out scholarships on the back of those families whose family member has no chance of ever getting into the school.

Sincerely,
Sean M. Donahue

[...] TRIES TO MAKE RACE ALL ABOUT HAZLETON… [...]

Kanjorski’s help in passing meaningful financial reform will benefit all Americans.

And as far as the student loan issue that Sean Donahue is referring to, the student loan problems went out of control after George W. Bush signed GOP legislation that allowed private lending institutions to take over many of the loans that were done previously by the government at lower costs. The lower costs from the government came from a) not having to create a profit for shareholders and the associated costs of paying overpaid corporate executives and b) the private institutions merely added a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy to the student loan system and was completely backed by the government. Meaning, the private companies were able to profit with no risk because the Bush Administration and GOP socialized their losses.

More name-calling…..must mean I hit a nerve.

Dear Ed H.,

You are confusing government student loans with purely private student loans. Private student loans were never managed by the government. I am not referring to stafford loans but private loans. That issue needs to be addressed.

The 2005 Bankruptcy Protection Act protects large banks from student loans being discharged from bankruptcy. Other pieces of legislation protect private non-profit private loans. The existence of those protections have been abused by banks, non-profit lenders and Tier 1 Liberal Arts Colleges and big universities.

The problem was caused by Congress when it allowed lenders to believe that the government will bail our bad student loans, even private ones. This created a motivation to lend money for any crappy degree program. It subsequently created motivation for colleges and universities to create and expand degree programs in order to get cash flow from student loans.

Now we have a slowing economy and an aggregate student loan balance that will never be paid down. Congress needs to put the risk management back on the shoulders of the colleges and universities. If schools must refund the total cost of attendance for graduates and former students who don’t make more money than they would have without the education, then they will stop admitting so many people or will admit them for free.

We won’t be worse off without all the crappy degrees in our society. We will be better off. Congress should impose a minimum SAT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, etc for being allowed to attend a college or university.

Sincerely,
Sean M. Donahue

[...] are many reasons for credit card default. Some are perfectly logical-inability to pay due to larger social conditions, such as unemployment [...]