Posted on 05/12/2010 12:56:23 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. -- Almost four decades after John Murtha stood at the Rod & Wire Division gate and shook enough hands to loosen his arm, Mark Critz's stayed firmly in its socket, a testament to the possibility the 12th Congressional District could soon be in very different hands.
"Mr. Murtha told me once, when they're coming out, shake their hand and let them go, because they want to go home. When they're coming in, they'll want to stop and talk," said Mr. Critz, who was awarded the Democratic nomination to Congress after Mr. Murtha, his boss, died three months ago.
In those days, the Rod & Wire Division was owned by Bethlehem Steel. Thousands worked the mills here and Johnstown was the geographical center of the 12th District. A generation and multiple recessions and industrial shifts later, Johnstown is one end of a dumbbell-shaped district and Cambria is no longer the most populous county in the district.
Bethlehem Steel is now a ghost, and the Rod & Wire Division is now an independent company, a place where more than a thousand men -- invariably labor Democrats -- once walked through its gates. Fewer than 200 work here now. On the afternoon he pressed his case to succeed as congressman, perhaps 40 men filtered through to meet Mr. Critz. Some, like Ed Baldish, who shook hands and took the campaign fliers pressed into his hands, don't even live in the district.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Does Johnstown not smell like ass since Murtha died? Some choice.
Makes no sense. If he wouldn't have voted for it, why not repeal it? Nothing prevents introducing a sane bill, if he thinks "the issue is too important." It's much easier to write a new bill without the garbage, as opposed to trying to pick out each little morsel of pork, each of which has its own lobby.
He's weaseling it already, and shows, by opposing repeal of DeathCare, that he's afraid of Pelosi & Co. As a Democrat in Congress, it's clear he would have all the independence of a tick riding on a donkey's rear end.
He's toast. Burns should milk this issue non-stop, since Critz is obviously afraid of it and can't give a satisfactory answer.
(the Pittsburgh neighborhood where I grew up smelled more like rotten eggs, with a piquant touch of burnt tire. But men had jobs.) Another Class Act by the P-G! Hey, Dennis Roddy, how long did it take you to come up with some convoluted way to slip "Tim Burns" and "dumbbell" into the same sentence? You Schmuck!!
Johnstown PA was a hole when I lived in Western PA 13years ago. I shudder to think what it looks like now.
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