Happy Happy Joy Joy, to quote Ren or Stimpy or whoever originally voiced this ecstatic cry, that national embarrassment wrapped in a humiliation inside a mortification, Rep. Thomas Massie, is finally getting the 23 skidoo after 10 years of ignominy.
The Republican lawmaker from SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, who has proven to be too much of a whack job for even former President Donald J. Trump, who labeled him a “third-rate grandstander,” has drawn not one, not two but three warm bodies to oppose his re-election to Congress from the 4th Congressional District in the May GOP primary.
Any replacement, even an empty chair, for the dreaded Massie would be an improvement, right?
Let’s first review what Massie has accomplished over his tenure for the district that is now slated to run basically along the Ohio River and a few points south from Oldham County through the Big 3 of Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties, all the way to Greenup County as a result of redistricting.
Ready? Here it comes. . .
. . .Well, that was fast.
The list of Massie’s follies, on the other hand, would make War and Peace look like an abridged version of a Dick, Jane and Sally reader. His latest endeavor, yet another failed attempt at proving himself to be an oh, so clever boy, involves citing a quote he said was from Voltaire: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”
Experts report the famed French philosopher never uttered said declaration. Rather, it was a paraphrase of a statement uttered by a gent named Kevin Alfred Strom, identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a neo-Nazi who founded his own neo-Nazi group.
Accompanying the neo-Nazi sentiment was a political cartoon showing a hand crushing down on a large group of people. The drawing was originally used to oppose child labor laws.
Now, everyone makes a mistake, especially on social media, where it appears speed and wit are greater commodities than the truth and accuracy. So fine, you withdraw the error, acknowledge your mistake and apologize.
As of Thursday afternoon, the false claim remained on his Twitter page with no further explanation.
And this is really the least of Massie’s sins. He has spent the past two years attempting to undermine the federal government’s effort to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control. Earlier this week he visited a local DC hamburger joint, The Big Board, with fellow nitwit, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, to partake of the repast after the city revoked the restaurant’s liquor license and shut it down for refusing to enforce COVID-19 mask and vaccine mandates.
Massie refuses to wear a mask on the House floor and has been disciplined by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, for failing to do so. His laissez-faire attitude toward vaccination is, to put it lightly, not aiding the cause, after almost 900,000 deaths. In fact, the entire Voltaire contretemps was sparked by Massie’s contempt for Dr. Anthony Fauci, President’s primary health advisor, who is leading the administration’s efforts to thwart the virus.
His depraved E-Christmas Card, which spread over the web like a tumor, showing Massie and his family wielding high-powered weaponry and begging Santa for more ammo in wake of a terrible shooting tragedy, is infamous.
We could go on – he voted against legislation a few years back intended to, among other things, repair or replace the decrepit Brent Spence Bridge connecting Covington and Cincinnati over the Ohio River. He opposed the American Rescue Plan to get the economy back on its feet. Trump said he should be thrown out of the Republican Party for delaying his own $2 trillion coronavirus relief package.
As noted, the indictment is a long one. And it’s a mystery how someone like Massie got elected to represent the region in Washington DC in the first place.
For decades, Northern Kentucky, the second-or-third largest urban area in Kentucky according to who does the counting, found its congressional fortunes split between the 3rd Congressional District and the 4th, with its influence diluted without one congressional district to call its own.
That changed in the 1982 redistricting thanks to the efforts of state lawmakers like Bill Donnermeyer, Joe Meyer, and Terry Mann who fought to place the entireties of Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties in a single district.
It was thought a worthy representative of the Big 3 would emerge. But Northern Kentucky for several years thereafter continued to send Rep. Gene Snyder, a Republican from someplace called Brownsboro Farms in Jefferson County near Louisville, to DC on its dime. It wasn’t until 1986, when Snyder retired, that Jim Bunning, a Republican and true son of the region from Ft. Thomas, laid claim to the seat, providing the region with some clout until he moved to the Senate in 1998.
Bunning was followed by two Boone County guys, Ken Lucas, a Democrat, sort of, and Geoff Davis, a Republican, which made sense since the area around Florence was the fastest growing in the region.
Davis retired as a result of family issues and, rather than settling on a candidate from Kenton, Campbell, or Boone counties, voters decided, in a stroke of genius, to place their faith in Massie.
That decision, in a way, demonstrated once again that the good folks of Northern Kentucky’s Big 3, which waited four years before it acted to send Bunning to the Capitol in place of a Jefferson County interloper, don’t give a hoot and a holler over the congressional seat, handing that valuable commodity to a man who lives about 90 miles from the Roebling Bridge, four counties east of Campbell County.
Don’t try to figure it out. It makes no sense. Both the Democratic and Republican organizations in Kenton, Campbell, and Boone counties should hang their heads for failing to develop reliable challengers to this joke of a congressman over the past 10 years. Neither party is serving the public. And there you go.
Regardless, it’s a new day and Massie has three Republican challengers. No way he heads back to Washington, right?
So, what do we have here?
Well, this Alyssa Dara McDowell should be interesting. She’s from Covington, which is in her favor and has run for more offices than Carter has little liver pills with nothing to show for it. In 2018 she sought a statehouse seat and scored a whopping 3.8 percent of the vote. Back in 2012 she ran, again as an independent for mayor of Covington, telling the River City News that she opposed the “homosexual agenda” that was overwhelming the city.
Okay.
But she’s best known for storming the stage on Election night 2019 to declare that incumbent Republican Gov. Matt Bevin had won re-election.
Actually, he lost, and thank God for small favors.
Well, maybe somebody else. How about George Focking Washington, a man with a fascinating middle name, from Corinth in Grant County, which is at least a bit closer than wherever the hell it is in Lewis County.
Washington has a website, flushthecomode.com, a rather unusual title, where he tells folks not to send him any political donations, which might make running for public office a might difficult. Using all caps to organize his thoughts, Washington maintains the combination of the two-party system and the news media “IS AS USELESS AND DANGEROUS AS A CONDOM WITH A HOLE IN IT.”
Let’s move on, shall we?
Claire Wirth of Arizona — no, sorry — Prospect, in Jefferson and Oldham counties (is it even in the district anymore?) is tying herself closely to Trump and began her effort by raffling off an AM-15 pistol to some fortunate individual contributing to her campaign. She’s setting herself up to the right of Massie on guns, which will be a neat trick if she could pull it off, perhaps promising every 4th District household its own nuclear device.
Sigh.
You know, Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey, the venerable circus that entertained millions for a hundred years, closed in 2017. I always wondered what happened to the clowns.
Now I know.
The Democrats are putting up Matthew Lehman, of Newport, a businessman and CEO of Koligo Therapeutics of Louisville, which has developed opioid-free treatments for pancreatitis patients. He’s not held office before and is running in a district that Newsweek found to be one of the 50 reddest – meaning Republican – in the nation.
With Democratic organizations in Kenton, Campbell, and Boone counties asleep at the switch, you can imagine the odds on this one.
So it looks like you’re stuck, Northern Kentucky.
You should be so proud.
It’s a shame that Congressional Republicans have lied about debt and deficits for 40 years. They cut taxes while promising that lower taxes will bring in more revenue.
Then they fail to cut spending, so the debt grows even larger. They’ve never submitted a balanced budget, and the debt has grown more under Bush and Trump than under all other Presidents combined.
By cutting taxes for corporations, the Republicans are mostly to blame for skyrocketing deficits. George W. Bush and Donald Trump presided over massive tax cuts for business, and only Bill Clinton was able to get deficits reduced and the nation actually enjoyed surpluses for several years.
What Republicans are really responsible for is outrageous hypocrisy on the deficit/debt issue.
For years, Republicans have whined and complained about deficits when Democrats are in the White House. However, when Republicans control Congress and the White House, they cut taxes on businesses and wealthy people, and they forget about their deficit concerns. If anybody asks, they say something about “trickle down”, then they get busy collecting campaign cash from the people who just got their taxes cut.
Deficits and debt are not going away, because Republicans don’t want them to — Republicans have never introduced a balanced budget because their voters will not stand for the kinds of cuts that Congress would have to make in Social Security, Medicare, and the defense budget to get to a balanced budget. It’s a political game, and gullible Republican voters are played year after year.
The last time the federal budget was balanced was in the Clinton Administration. In 2001, the GOP took over and promptly blew up the budget with massive tax cuts for corporations. Then 9/11 happened, Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, and the government needed more money, not less, so deficits further exploded. Then there was the Bush Recession and Congress spent over $1 trillion to bail out businesses which would have failed.
The poison in the system is Republicans denying that the government needs money to meet obligations like Social Security and Medicare, then repeatedly cutting taxes on business while business is raking in record profits. Invariably, after the GOP cuts taxes on the rich, there’s an emergency like 9/11, the Bush Recession or the pandemic, requiring more government spending, so deficits grow larger.
The relevant measure of the burden of the debt is the interest annually that’s paid by the federal government on the debt.
According to the Office of Management and Budget, interest on the debt was $378 billion for fiscal year 2021.
The net interest payments on the federal debt are 1.4 percent of GDP for 2021, which is very low according to any historical or relevant comparison for the U.S.
When interest rates are really low, like they are today, the burden of debt on the federal budget is lower. The debt ceiling needs to rise because we have to pay debt which increased after the Trump tax cuts for the rich, and 2020 government spending to bail out businesses that were hard hit during the pandemic.