Income Tax due today

File your income tax returns today. The only post office open late is the Orange Rd. main branch - open until 9pm. Map here. 

Truth in Campaigning? Not in the 9th District GOP Primary!

At this time of the year many people are being flooded with campaign literature through the U.S. Mail and are being bombarded with emails, tweets and facebook messages/posts from candidates in the upcoming primary races.

The primary challengers do their best to portray themselves as reflecting the views of the voters in the political party with which they are affiliated. And as we all know, incumbents facing a primary challenge will use the best spin doctors money can buy to redefine a poor voting record in attempts to make it appear they are line with the views of their political party.

Pretty much - GOP candidates & incumbents try to make themselves Ronald Reagan, and Democrat candidates & incumbents try to make themselves Bill Clinton or John Kennedy.

A case in point of candidates trying to mislead voters and create themselves as something they are not would be the GOP primary in Ohio's 9th Congressional District between Richard May and Robert Horrocks. The winner will face off against Democrat incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur this November.

Taking a quick look on the "About" page on Mr. Horrocks campaign website, in trying to portray himself as conservative, you immediately see the obligatory quote from Ronald Reagan on the right side bar. 

And at the top of the page, in an attempt to show voters he supports "Family Values," Horrock's has a picture of himself with his kids - and what he would want you to think is his wife...

And this is where we come to the integrity of candidates..... while attempting to portray himself with a wife and kids - at the very bottom of this webpage - Horrock mentions he lives with his partner in Lakewood and has shared parenting with his ex-wife.  Why no picture of Horrocks & his partner?

It is clear that by having a warm & fuzzy family picture placed boldly at the top of his webpage and the one sentence regarding his "partner" at the bottom - Horrocks is clearly trying to mislead conservative voters into thinking he is something he is not!

Make no mistake - this is not about Horrock's being gay - it is about Horrocks being deceitful and clearly trying to mislead voters. The question begs to be asked -- if he cannot be honest with voters in his primary race - how could one expect Horrocks to be honest if he is elected to office? 

Further advancing this farce would be the Plain Dealer, the local newspaper that supports all things liberal. The PD has recently come out and endorsed candidate Robert Horrocks over Richard May in this race. 

Taking issue with Richard May because he supports traditional marriage and doesn't "think a gay man can't represent the 'party of traditional values,'" in their endorsement of Horrocks the PD looks past his failures and questionable abilities as a previously elected official.... (emphasis added)

Horrocks, of Lakewood, is far from an ideal candidate. He couldn’t immediately explain how New Carlisle developed financial problems in 2002 when he was on city council. (Voters recalled him the next year). He's experienced foreclosure. May revealed that Horrocks removed, at May's request, links on his Facebook page to websites that included photos of scantily clad men.

Horrocks should have learned by now that the personal is political on the campaign trail. 

On balance, Horrocks appears to be a thoughtful, if flawed, candidate...

Thoughtful but flawed?!?!? How about lacking integrity, honesty, fiscal responsibility, etc...?

With our country facing a $17 trillion debt, the Plain Dealer supports a candidate, Horrocks, who was recalled by voters in New Carlisle over financial problems in the city that happened under his watch. But he is thoughtful!

The Plain Dealer clearly endorsed Horrocks not because of his qualifications or past performance as an elected official - but simply because of his being gay. This should not be about a persons sexual orientation or sexual confusion and should be about integrity of the candidates - and Horrocks has shown he has none!

In full disclosure - I have personally known Richard May for many years and have stood shoulder to shoulder with Richard in fighting against the RINO's in Cuyahoga County. 

As a group, the Cleveland TPP does not endorse candidates, but as an individual I can personally attest to the fact that Richard May is a conservative candidate that not only walks his talk - he truly lives by it.

Corporate Charlatan's Supporting Sin Tax (Issue 7) Dismiss Proposed "Fair Share" Facility Fee

The Coalition Against the Sin Tax held a press conference yesterday to offer up an alternative avenue of funding to replace the proposed Sin Tax extension.

This "Fair Share" Facility Fee would be $3.25 per ticket for events held at Progressive Field, Quicken Loans Arena & First Energy Stadium. This proposed fee would generate an amount roughly equal ($13 - $14 million per year) to what is raised with the current Sin Tax on cigarettes & alcohol.

The hypocrisy of the pro-sin tax crowd is priceless.  Without even looking at it -- they immediately dismiss the Fair Share plan of being hastily put together.

Really?  This coming from the same people that did not consider any alternative funding measures and came directly to the people at the first opportunity they could.

It is time to come together to put a stop to this corporate cabal of charlatan's - The Greater Cleveland Partnership - that have been fleecing this area for far too long.  

For those that may not remember - always having their hands in our pockets - the Greater Cleveland Partnership is the same group that pushed the forced sales tax increase for the Med Mart too.  And the same as they did then they are doing now - looking straight to the residents to pay for their projects.

Vote No on the Sin Tax (Issue 7)

Below is a copy of the Fair Share Plan from the Coalition Against the Sin Tax.

Fair Share Facility Fee proposal, a preferable alternative to the proposed 20-year $260 million Sin Tax up... by Andrea Torres

The Legacy of Obama's Illegal Alien Aunt Zeituni

From Michelle Malkin via Townhall --

Zeituni Onyango, President Obama's illegal alien aunt, died this week of cancer and other complications. I hope she rests in peace. America, however, should be up in arms.

Auntie Zeituni is an enduring symbol of all that is wrong with this country's immigration "policy" -- or rather, its complete lack of a coherent, enforceable system of laws and rules that puts the national interest first. She was a beneficiary of the welfare state run amok, enabled by bipartisan fecklessness. To the bitter end, she bit the hand that fed her with predictable ingratitude and metastatic entitlement.

Zeituni's 14-year illegal overstay is a reminder that our temporary visa program is an abysmal joke. Like millions of foreign students, business people and tourists to this country, Auntie Zeituni obtained a short-term visitor visa in 2000. It had an expiration date. She was supposed to go back to Kenya in two years after traveling here with her son, who had been accepted at a college in Boston.

But like millions of other "temporary" visa overstayers, Auntie Zeituni never went home. And despite billions spent on homeland security and immigration enforcement, no one ever went looking for her to kick her out of the country after her time was up.

Auntie Zeituni had no job skills, no special talent, no compelling reason to keep her here in America as an asset to our culture or our economy. She didn't value the American Dream. She was a dependency nightmare. She collected $700 a month in welfare benefits and disability payments totaling $51,000. Somehow, Auntie Zeituni also drummed up money to apply for asylum and finagled her way into both federal and state public housing in Boston.

She contributed nothing to this country. The only "work" she did was gaming the system, complaining about her lot and blaming everyone else for her problems while they subsidized her 14-year illegal overstay.

Auntie Zeituni's ridiculous asylum application and what happened afterward are reminders that our asylum and deportation systems are appalling jokes. Auntie Zeituni's bogus request was rejected by the immigration court system. A judge ordered her to return to Kenya in 2003. She appealed. She lost. A judge again ordered her to leave in 2004.

But Auntie Zeituni never went home. Like an estimated 700,000 other deportation absconders, she evaded the judicial order for nearly a half-dozen years and continued to feed at the government trough. When the Bush administration had the chance to put the pedal to the enforcement metal in 2008, they caved. Pandering to pro-amnesty forces, Bush officials issued a 72-hour cease-and-desist order to all fugitive apprehension teams to spare Obama embarrassment over his auntie right before Election Day.

As an Immigration and Customs Enforcement source told me at the time: "The ICE fugitive operations group throughout the U.S. was told to stand down until after the election from arresting or transporting anyone out of the U.S. This was done to avoid any mistakes of deporting or arresting anyone who could have a connection to the election, i.e., anyone from Kenya who could be a relative. The decision was election-driven." Such stand-down non-enforcement orders are standard operating procedure in Washington.

Auntie Zeituni's illegal activity and ingratitude were rewarded time and time again. She got multiple bites at the immigration court apple, where it ain't over till the alien wins. Despite twice being ordered to go home, the feds allowed her bogus case to be reopened. After breaking visa laws, campaign finance laws (she donated illegally to Obama three times), deportation rules and judicial orders, she was allowed to have yet another hearing. Her manufactured claim of a "credible fear of persecution" in Kenya made a mockery of every legitimate case for asylum or refugee status.

"If I come as an immigrant, you have the obligation to make me a citizen," Auntie Zeituni demanded. She griped that America had "used" her and then cashed in on a book about her travails called "Tears of Abuse." And then, after a decade of doing absolutely nothing to enhance the well-being of our country, she received a coveted green card in 2010.

Neither Republican nor Democratic leaders in Washington had the will to kick this trash-talking freeloader (or her drunk-driving, deportation-evading, amnesty-securing deadbeat brother Omar Onyango) out of our home. Auntie Zeituni's story is a disgraceful reminder that the only thing worse than the ingrates thumbing their noses at our immigration laws are the people in power on both sides of the aisle enabling them.

Hypocrite Ed FitzGerald (P.O. #14) Conducts his own "War on Women"

From the phony cries of racism and voter suppression and now the so-called GOP War on Women - nobody owns being a hypocrite like the Ohio Democrat Party & Cuyahoga County Executive and Democrat candidate for Ohio Governor - Ed FitzGerald (AKA - Public Official #14 in the Cuyahoga County Corruption Scandal).

And consistent with FitzGerald paying women less then men, as we posted back in 2012, the Democrats have been conducting a War on Women for some time.

From Third Base Politics --

You’ll hear Democrats squawking quite a bit today about equal pay today. They love to quote that women make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Today is National Equal Pay Day. Did you know women still make just .77 for each $1 a man earns? RT to stand w/us in the fight for #equalpay
— Ohio Dems (@OHDems) April 8, 2014

Of course, many of us know that that figure alone does NOT reflect men and women doing the exact same jobs. There are many factors that go into that 77 cent figure, and it is far more influenced by factors such as the careers that women go into compared to men, plus the fact that women often take maternity leave.

But let’s pretend that 77 cent methodology, taking all workers across all careers and job types, is a valid one to consider. Let’s do what the Democrats are doing, and NOT consider the type of work or career, and only look at raw numbers, even if it is comparing apples to oranges.

How would they fair in their own hiring practices?

Third Base Politics has acquired the salaries of Ed Fitzgerald’s county executive staff through a public records request. Below is what the county provided.

Ed Fitzgerald has 7 men and 5 women on his staff.

He pays the men an average of $94438.
He pays the women an average of $71011.

The women on Ed Fitzgerald’s staff make 75 cents for every dollar that the men on his staff do.

This is the same standard and methodology that Democrats are using when they claim that there is a “war on women” because women earn 77% of what men do.

Heck, in Ed Fitzgerald’s office, it’s even worse than Democrats are saying about the national average!

So, Ed. Why are you discriminating against women this way? We’ll be waiting for the Ohio Democratic Party to criticize the pay discrimination going on in Ed Fitzgerald’s office.

Illegal immigrants don't want to be Americans; they want money: Kevin O'Brien

Below is an excellent column by the Plain Dealer's Kevin O'Brien on the difference between immigrants wanting to come here here for a better life and to become an American citizen and illegal immigrants coming here and sucking the system dry....

From Cleveland.Com -- 

Back in 2008, before then-Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora’s world started to crumble in earnest, I penned a little song parody about his throwing a couple of Plain Dealer reporters out of a news conference. They were questioning him about a county employee whose hiring looked a lot like cronyism.

It was titled “That’s Dimora”and was sung to the tune of “That’s Amore.”

A couple of days later, a delegation of guys — most of whom you’ve probably at least heard of — dropped by the editorial writers' department to chew me out for disrespecting Italians. Every one of them was as American as an apple pie chaser after a big plate of lasagna. Solid citizens. Here for the duration. Completely invested in the United States of America.

In one particular case, American and proooooooud of it.

They obviously had great love for their ethnic heritage, but they weren’t straddling continents. Their lives were here. Their families were here. Their businesses were here. Their future was here. And the most meaningful parts of their past were here.

I’m confident that if someone ran an Italian flag up the schoolhouse pole above Old Glory, to a man they would have taken offense. Because, to a man, they love this country. Somewhere along each of their lineages, some gutsy forebear risked everything to come here — legally, one would surmise — and stayed to make a life and to contribute to a better, stronger America.

They didn’t forget their heritage, but they aren’t confused about where their allegiance lies.

Contrast that with the vast majority of “immigrants,” who arrive illegally and with no interest whatsoever in contributing to a better, stronger America. They’re immigrants only in the sense that they have entered from another country. They stay as long as it suits them, or until they get caught.

Citizenship is the very last thing on their minds. Money is the very first.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush got the money motivation absolutely right when he rhapsodized about illegal “immigrants” on Sunday, during an event at the George Bush Presidential Library. The rest of it, he mangled beyond recognition:

“The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally, they come to our country because their families — the dad who loved their children — was worried that their children didn’t have food on the table. And they wanted to make sure their family was intact, and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their family. Yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony. It’s an act of love. It’s an act of commitment to your family.”

OK, Mexico is a hell of a mess. It’s corrupt. Its oil riches have been horribly mismanaged, and what hasn’t been squandered has been stolen by the people in charge. It’s drug-ridden, gang-ridden and poverty-ridden. Getting out of there has to have tremendous appeal.

But they can’t do it legally, so their lives stay there, even when their bodies are here. And going back with a bag of dollars earned up north in the land of opportunity has a lot of appeal, too.

Their apologists remind us constantly that the United States is “a nation of immigrants.” And so it is. But let’s not flatter today’s illegals by calling them immigrants. They’re just visitors, here on their own, individually conceived guest-worker program.

The immigrants of previous generations came here looking for opportunity and wealth, too. But the vast majority did so with no thought of returning. They packed what they could, booked passage on ships, said goodbye to everyone they knew and disembarked days or weeks later at Ellis Island. They were committed to being in the United States because they were convinced that the United States was the best place in the whole world to make a life.

They came to be Americans, not to be Italian or Irish or Polish people merely residing in the United States, with roots and plans no deeper than a mailing address.

That, too, was an act of love — love for the things they understood America to stand for.

They came to be Americans, not just to take what they could get and head for home as soon as they thought they had enough or felt the law closing in. They didn’t break the law to come, in hopes of being hired by an employer willing to break the law, under the nose of a government that declines to enforce the law. They came to learn and assimilate into the culture, not to change the culture so it resembled what they had left behind.

America, meanwhile, doesn’t exist because the Founding Fathers made an act of commitment to their families. Far from it.

America exists because of enormous risks — to lives, to fortunes, to sacred honor, to families — taken by people who believed strongly enough in the ideals laid out in the Declaration of Independence to commit everything to them.

You won’t find any such commitment in today’s illegal “immigrants.” They’re here to use America. And while they’re here, they, in turn, are used to increase the political power of groups that cynically play on the emotions of good-hearted, soft-headed people — like Jeb Bush.

It’s good that he spoke up the way he did, because in doing so he torpedoed his already extremely slim chance at the Republican presidential nomination. That was a public service. So was giving Americans reason to re-examine the point of immigration.

If immigration is to make any sense, it must benefit both sides — the new arrival and his new nation. In no way does the scant benefit of cheap labor begin to offset the damage that is being done to American law and culture.

Kevin O’Brien is The Plain Dealer’s deputy editorial page editor.

Cleveland-area bingo players say No Dice on Sin Tax!

From the Coalition Against The Sin Tax --

Earlier this week, the Coalition Against the Sin Tax (C.A.S.T.) visited a popular Cleveland-area bingo game to speak with citizens about Issue 7 — the proposed $260+ million Sin Tax on alcohol and cigarettes that Cuyahoga County’s business and political leaders want to take from the County’s residents to give to Cleveland’s pro sports teams for improvements to their facilities. 

Not surprisingly, the bingo players were none too pleased with the idea of the sports owners reaching back into their kitty....

Unfortunately, there’s far too much doubt as to whether informed opinions of regular Clevelanders will be heard in this low-turnout May election, especially with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of “Keep Cleveland Strong” propaganda flooding the County like something out of an Orwell novel. 

Which makes it especially important for folks to inform themselves and stand up for themselves, including in Cuyahoga County on May 6 by voting no on Issue 7.

Join in the fight to stop the Sin Tax! (Vote No on Issue 7)

Click here or on the below photo and go to the Coalition Against The Sin Tax webpage & sign up for more info, volunteer sign up, fundraising info and email updates.  

Click here to "Like" their Facebook page and share it with your social networks.  Save the picture below and use it as your Facebook profile picture.