There were many wonderful tributes to JoePa during the memorial service yesterday…..Phil Knight’s tribute was the first one to address the ’scandal’, and Mr. Knight was right on the mark.

His message was well recieved by those in attendance. WELL DONE Mr. Knight….you said EXACTLY what needed to be said!!!!!!

In response to:  “Question: would every citizen be fully funded to run for office, or would multiple-level primaries need to be added?”

First of all, that is a good question. Right now, the first step in an election process is getting on the ballot. For the prospective candidate this is done by securing a certain number of valid signatures on a petition, which is then validated by the board of elections. This would not change. What may change is that whoever carries these petitions would not be paid.

Once confirmed as a candidate, a certain budget amount of public money would be given to the candidate to conduct a modest campaign informing voters on why he should be elected and even why another candidate should not. These funds would be accounted for in public filings and subject to audit. The public airwaves might be used to broadcast, at no cost,  debates and/or public service announcements approved by the candidates on an equal time basis.

Whatever additional or alternative procedures are enacted, media influence comes to mind, equal time issues etc,  the bottom line purpose and end result to be achieved  would be to have every political office owned by the people and not the special interests. Politicians at every level would be free to make decisions based upon the common interests of the majority. The check against the majority doing harm would be our existing constitutional tradition for an independent judiciary, and which principle could certainly be improved upon. Getting money out judicial elections would be a big step to better insure that absolutely needed independence.

A side benefit to all this would be that there would be much less money spent on the election process making more money available for important community projects. If we coupled the “waste, fraud, and abuse” and outright theft (legal and otherwise) in the private sector, as well as the public sector, we could balance the budget tomorrow, fund a civilized social security, and “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity” forever.  Get money out of politics or continue to sell it to the highest bidder.

That is the choice.

“I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people,” Newt Gingrich

We need to examine this claim against his many “articulations”. Does he not also articulate our fears, our ideological biases, our stereotypes, our anger? Does he really articulate the “deepest-felt values of our “better angels”?

Our society is in a very vulnerable position, a position that can be exploited by a clever and well financed demagogue.

Some say all politicians are demagogues and all of them exploit peoples fears for their own power and ego together with the interests of those who finance them. So, their conclusion is that it does not really matter. “In the battle of demagogues, we vote for our own brand”.

If this view prevails we are doomed. As cynical as we may be, we simply cannot afford to indulge our despair.

The Lancaster County Commissioners are NOT going to approve an increase in the “hotel tax”. Period. Craig Lehman is a fiscal conservative, and Scott Martin has been pushing for severe cuts to existing programs. Stuckey would not look good if he were to vote for a tax increase of any kind in today’s economy.

A significant portion of the convention center’s marketing comes from the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau, which would be forced to treat the convention center on an equal basis with all other facilities in Lancaster County if revenue from the “hotel tax” was lost. Interstate Hotels and Resorts is focused on marketing the “integrated facility”; they claim that there is no differentiation between the hotel and convention center when they interact with potential customers. Without the added marketing push from the PDCVB, it would be quite difficult for the convention center to maintain its current level of sales initiatives.

Kevin Molly is absolutely correct in saying what he did; he’s only following a path that was laid out for him years before he ever applied for the job in downtown Lancaster. Those of us who were carefully watching the proposed figures pointed out long before the construction bonds were sold in March of 2007 that the need to increase the “hotel tax” would be inevitable. But without that increase, the convention center will be in serious trouble.

The agreements between the convention center and the Penn Square Partners must be revisited, since they are so unfair to taxpayers. Eventually they will be; it’s only a matter of time before the elephant in the room can no longer be ignored.

Of course the Penn Square Partners could threaten to close the Marriott. Their bluff should be called, especially since Lancaster City owns the hotel building; a new operator could literally be given ownership of the hotel in exchange for taking over whatever payments remain (something in the neighborhood of $20 million), and taxpayers would come out considerably ahead as long as fair and equitable agreements replace the current legal nightmare.

I saw the PBS segment, “Are U.S. and Iran Veering Toward War?” which continues the media presenting Iran as having a nuclear military program despite the complete lack of evidence for such a program.

In recent weeks we now have the New York Times, The Washington Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, National Public Radio and PBS all being asked to retract statements about the non-evidential nuclear military program in Iran. The Post and Star-Tribune both printed retractions. The Times merely excised the offending paragraph from their website with no formal retraction, despite the fact that Arthur Brisbane, the Public Editor, opined in his blog that the phraseology was a mistake. NPR’s ombudsman dismissed the “thousands of complaints” they received about this as being a bunch of “form letters.”

Now we have PBS allowing Dennis Ross to insinuate the existence of a nuclear military program without any remonstrance from either Vali Nasr or the host, Margaret Warner. This is not a quibble. The more often the media repeat this inaccuracy, the more people advocating a military attack on Iran feel they can cite it as fact. It is part of the drumbeat to war, and if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran on this basis, the media will have been absolutely complicit.

I still maintain that the simplest solution to this financial shortfall is to DEMAND that those involved in formulating/promoting  the original plan (Penn Square partners, legislators, poltical allies, ‘proponents’ of this heavy-handed venture) should be the ONLY ones to make thing right.

I also firmly believe that a re-vist to the ‘agreement’ between the Convention Center and the Marriott Hotel be done to insure the ‘fairness’ between all parties concerned.

I am just a simple Lancaster County taxpayer with no ‘political clout’…perhaps there is someone out there who shares my opinion and who could be a better ‘voice’.  Doubtful if a ‘letter to the editor’ from a ‘common person’ on this issue would even get printed.

“Exactly what do you hope to achieve? What are your specific goals? What parts of the Constitution would you change, how, and why?”

Speaking personally, what I believe is absolutely essential for our country, which needs a constitutional amendment to achieve, is to get money out of politics. Specifically, this means to get every private, corporate, union, foundation, pac group, super pac, 501c3 . . .dollar . . . out of every public election for every public office in the country.

The only part of the constitution I would change would be to add an amendment, according to the process established by the original constitution, providing the full and mandatory public funding of every public election for every public official and every public referendum in the country, and this to better ensure that American citizens owned the process whereby their own representatives and their own public policies are selected.

The “Why” of all this has become increasingly evident to ordinary citizens in every political category. Political offices belong to the public, by its citizens, by all of us. Today in the USA every significant public political office is either owned outright, or heavily influenced by non public private interests which have bought the political process by purchasing (financing) each and every election.

Elections cost money. Billions are spent. Most citizens have little left over from the essentials of life and taxes to fund the ongoing (24/7/365) electoral process. Others have billions to spend, as well as having their own private interests before every public body at every level from the local planning commission to the Federal Internal Revenue Dept. Currently, this is all legal, OK but stinks like a road killed skunk.

The always thin veneer of respectability, of paying for “access”, or paying for a “hearing” or even “having a place at the table” has been long since been overtaken by the raw power, and sophisticated use, of money to serve its own interests. The examples are legion.

How easy would it be to make a list of every private parochial interest that was delivered by a public body after having been the recipient of private dollars? Ordinary citizens have been “priced out of the market”. They should not be, we should not be. It is our government, our elected representatives, our laws, and our public policies.

The following list comprises the 10 most significant, positive developments relating to marijuana policy reform in the U.S. in 2011. To see explanations for each of the 10 items, please read my column in the Huffington Post today.

1.  Congress de-funds the White House drug czar’s ad campaign.

2.  Our ideal bill is finally introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives — a bill that would let states determine their own marijuana policies without federal interference.

3.  Public support for “making marijuana legal” reaches an all-time high of 50%.

4.  Delaware legalizes medical marijuana.

5.  Maryland and Vermont improve their medical marijuana laws.

6.  Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, and D.C. implement/expand their medical marijuana laws.

7.  Arkansas and Connecticut lower their penalties for marijuana possession.

8.  World leaders reject the drug war and advocate marijuana decriminalization via the “Global Commission on Drug Policy.”

9.  Ron Paul shakes up the political debate by relentlessly criticizing the drug war during his presidential campaign.

10.  Governors ask the federal government to reschedule marijuana.