Posted on 10/24/2010 8:40:58 PM PDT by Born Conservative
U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski sometimes talks now as if he's free to say anything.
The Nanticoke Democrat has finally achieved a certain stature as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee's capital markets subcommittee, having written key parts of the Wall Street reform bill. He apparently chats fairly regularly with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden or their staffs. He's good friends with former President Bill Clinton, who will campaign locally for him again Tuesday.
Mr. Kanjorski is either confident or comfortable - confident voters will understand the power of his seniority or what he really means when he says something cringe-worthy and re-elect him anyway, or comfortable with possibly losing Nov. 2 and wanting to go out on his terms.
More than a few things he's said in recent years probably made his advisers wish he measured his words better. Before the 2008 election, he said at a town hall meeting that Democrats "sort of stretched the facts" to sound as if they would end the Iraq war and told a CBS News reporter that federal money for a Nanticoke parking garage was "free money."
He beat Republican Lou Barletta anyway.
Earlier this year, Mr. Kanjorski said he stopped face-to-face town-hall meetings to avoid setting himself up "for nuts to hit me with a camera," a feeling probably generated partly by Internet video of the "stretched the facts" comment and the infamous "Bubblegum" video.
We thought more people would have raised the roof over his comment that Republicans want to take the country "back to when Wall Street billionaires or millionaires controlled this country and their kids could just slosh around, didn't have to work, didn't have to produce and they were guaranteed their membership at the country club and their membership at the yacht club."
Guess no one wants to defend "billionaires or millionaires" nowadays.
This week Mr. Kanjorski told The Times-Tribune editorial board about how large companies don't want the government changing the way it does business because they make big money off the government, and about how he's getting closer to supporting a single-payer health care system "because the health insurance industry is about as corrupt as you can ask for as an industry."
"They're blood suckers," he said.
This was followed by a reference to Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for Florida governor, who was ousted in 1997 as head of the giant health care company Columbia/HCA, amid the nation's largest Medicare and Medicaid fraud scandal. The company paid $1.7 billion in fines and civil settlements.
"That Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida," Mr. Kanjorski said. "Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him. He stole billions of dollars from the United States government and he's running for governor of Florida. He's a millionaire and a billionaire. He's no hero. He's a damn crook. It's just we don't prosecute big crooks."
The word choice might produce some outrage, at least partly because Mr. Scott was never charged with a crime, but it demonstrates perfectly what we're talking about.
Maybe the congressman stopped doing town halls because of a fear that his loose lips could sink his re-election. If that's what happened, it's too bad because he should talk even to people he thinks are "nuts" and because the congressman still handles himself well. He has displayed an energy on the stump that demonstrates that, at age 73, he can keep doing the job if voters let him.
He's also shown a bluntness missing forever from Democrats and Mr. Obama, who have shied away from touting their health care reform bill and economic stimulus package during this election campaign. (Note: Mr. Kanjorski doesn't talk about them much, either.)
Say what you want about Republicans, but they are far less afraid of defending their ideas or attacking the Democrats.
It sounds as if Mr. Kanjorski tried to relay a message along these lines to Mr. Obama during a one-on-one, hourlong meeting a couple of months ago.
Mr. Obama had asked him to "critique his administration."
"If he follows my advice, and he has in some instances, he'll have a good presidency," Mr. Kanjorski said.
Mr. Kanjorski declined to be specific about what he told the president, but did say - and this is the opinion of many others, too - Mr. Obama needs to act more presidential.
"He's a terrible wielder of power, terrible," Mr. Kanjorski said. "I don't know that he received it (the criticism) well because four times during the discussion he stopped me and said, 'God, congressman, I've never been so depressed as I am right now in particular in any conversation since I've been president.' I said, 'Look, you asked me. I'm going to tell you as it is. That's what I'm like."
Ping.
“At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a “tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars.” According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occured over the period of an hour or two.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2187175/posts?page=34
Didn’t we all think it was soros tanking the market to get his puppet into office? Betcha Kanjorski knows......
KanJoke ping
How’s he polling?
Don’t know but damn I hate these people.
He’s consistently behind, but the last poll, done by the local paper (who endorsed his opponent, Lou Barletta), has him only down by 2.
He absolutely knows.
Dead man walking. He’s toast and he knows it.
Let the WAVE take out the Rats....flush the Party of Rats!
Kanjorski is DISGUSTING!!
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