News Intelligence Analysis
Ken Blackwell Intends to Make
the Rich Richer
by Making the Poor Poorer
with his Tax Reform Measure
J. Kenneth Blackwell: There
He Goes Again
By Edith Earle Fonder
(With Apologies to Eudora Welty)
“I can’t help it!” I shouted crossly.
“I was born with a love of the south and a tongue that could whip any horses’ ass into walkin’ straight and to toe any line.”
That’s what I said to one of the Beal sisters the other day! (My how they used to sing!) But what idiots they’ve been when it comes to politics. (They’d vote for the devil if he smiled and wore a white robe! Although I think they’re comin’ round our way since I’ve devoted some missionary effort time with them.) Anyway, my uncle was famous in Mississippi and in Arkansas. You may have heard of him: Billy Bob Fonder! (To me he was of course Uncle William. We spoke proper at our hotel.)
Uncle William was elected to more offices than—well add them all up and put them together: mean-ole-Bob Dole; pinched-face-and-humorless Orrin Hatch; and that old bag of wind who died in the Senate makin’ a motion to allow those sweet Holy Ghost filled congressional aides into the men’s rooms! And what’s more important, Uncle William gave more money to more people than that nitwit in Congress who calls hisself: “I-am-the-Government-Tom-the-Exterminator-DeLay” and that other one, Ohio’s-in-big-trouble-representative-Bob-gulp-Ney (Ohio’s 19th District) could count!
As for me, I’m an unpretentious Pentecostal girl from way back when, at least to the time before the days the churches got political if you have to know!
I’m unrepentant about my background. The truth is I’ve got to speak out. When America has degenerated to the point of fallin’ for that wet-corn-on-the-cob-false-prophet Pat Robertson and his twins (Paul-having-trouble-in-the-Crouch and Tim-zap-them-dead-in-Jesus’-name- LaHaye), each calling themselves a ‘man of God’! Ol’ Pat declared “God’ll get Dover, Pennsylvania” because, he says, the good folks there had the good sense to vote out the crack-pots and ass heads who’ve started ramming their nutty religion down everyone’s throats—I can’t be quiet any longer! And don’t you dare tell me that Mississippi and Louisiana got the wrath of Katrina for our sins! We don’t sin any more than you do! And that’s the truth!
Now just look what’s happenin’ in the great state of Ohio! Here comes this little pip squeak Ken Blackwell runnin’ for governor before he’s learned how to supervise one single honest election in that state! How do you figure these folks? Now, I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. I am a southerner, and to me, Ohio will always be southern! They had the good sense to name Ohio State after the best football team in America!
But here’s this low-down scoundrel
who posted
his “agenda” or platform on the web so the whole
world can read it and look what he’s for and against! Mind
you, this man is supported by a bunch of idiot pastors callin’
themselves ‘Patriot Pastors,’ who walk around so stiffly
they look like they’ve got on underwear three sizes too
small and I’ll bet not one of them ever gave their money
away to just ordinary poor folks like my Uncle William did! Those
poor pastors probably never went to school or learned to read
and write or tell right from wrong! Just look at this Blackwell
agenda.
He admits there’s a colossal problem with the economy in Ohio. He says right out front: “Ohio has been devastated by an economic downturn, manufacturing layoffs and population loss.”
How does he plan to fix it? Bless his sweet-smell-the peonies-diversion-thinking: He plans to give away tons of money to the corporate interests that’ve bought and paid for him! But he doesn’t say it that way. No sir-ee. He says it this way with dignified tone:
“Jobs require a business friendly environment with a tax structure that is not punitive and a state government designed for efficient use of fewer tax dollars.”
Tax Structure Revision:
You see, Kenny, (please don’t mind
my getting informal with his name—I’m from the south
and that’s what we do on hot days!) wants to revise
the tax structure.
He says he’s going to convert the income tax of Ohio to
“a
single rate system.” That’s like saying you belong
to the flat earth society! No one in their right mind is going
to believe you! Folks, the reason we’ve got a graduated
income tax structure is because congress went to school and they
figured out Kenny’s plan hurts the little guy! That’s
why they made it “graduated.” See the man who earns
$2,000 per year and has to pay $400 in taxes at a twenty percent
flat rate is being hurt by the taxes much more than the corporate
millionaire who earns $2 million a year and pays twenty percent.
While the poor man has only $1,600 left over to live on, the
corporate millionaire’s got $1.6 million left over. No matter
what the flat rate is, you don’t have to be a mathematician
to see that the little guy is going to be hurt! I hate to say
this, but Kenny is looking more and more like an old fashioned
Scallywag! He's even going to fight to eliminate
the estate tax, which mostly helps the rich and their kids.
What a guy!
Now, I don’t know how you feel about
that—in the South, we don’t cotton to folks who want
to rob the poor to pay the rich!!! I tell you, I’d
stop tithing to any church that was advocatin’ the stealin’
of my hard earned money the way Kenny Blackwell is doin’!
What that means is this: Ken Blackwell plans
to give all the tax breaks to the big business corporations in
the middle of an Ohio depression! And he plans to tax the workers,
the elderly and the poor and the sick!
Bless his pea-shaped head! He’ll try
to turn this whole program around on you and say he’s just
workin’ to get a square deal for the rich and powerful!
“What’s fair for one is fair for all!” Honey,
don’t you believe him! Just read his sensible answers on
why he should cut the costs
of government (which usually means cut services to the poor
and needy) which means when disaster strikes Ohio, you'll be
living in tent cities like thousands of us in Mississippi are
still doing and with no help in site! Only thing is--it gets
a lot colder in Ohio than down south!
Medicaid Reform
Next, Kenny Boy Blackwell wants to reform
Medicaid. He says he just wants to cut the costs. So his idea
of helping the most seriously ill patients in the whole State
of Ohio is to deny them the
right to twenty-four hour care in a nursing home. “Hell,”
someone’s said, “why can’t those dying old folk—just
die at home in their own beds?” Good for you Kenny,
just gerrymander those rules around like those Diebold voting
machines—hide those nursing homes in the darkest corners
of new legislation and make sure no sickly elderly, starving
human can get to a nursing home without filling out 378 pages
of questions on 20 pound paper! And if they leave something off,
or use the wrong weight of paper—do what you did with their
votes: kick them out!
Anti-Abortion
Kenny Boy Blackwell’s agenda moves on to “Advancing a Culture of Life.” Of course anyone with a heart does that! And there’s no bigger heart than the Fonder heart! Everyone knows that!
But Kenny means something else. He says, “The first obligation of government is to protect innocent life—all children in the womb or outside should be guaranteed the right to life.”
There’s at least two things wrong with this if you ask me, and as you know, I’m known to speakin’ my mind. Let’s take the “nut” aspect first! Doesn’t the man know that abortions and miscarriages happen naturally and no one and nothing and especially the government can’t guarantee that an abortion or miscarriage won’t happen?
Any how, does he really think the government should insist that every fetus must come to birth, even if it has no brain? I’d have a lot more respect for him, if he’d say the government will pay all the medical bills and the feeding and the caring of the creature he would force a woman to carry to term if he had the power! But he won’t say that! He wants government to place burdens upon Ohioians—not to lift those burdens!
Please, would some kind nurse just pull Kenny aside and explain to him that women can’t help it, they often abort in the first seven weeks of pregnancy and after that a woman can miscarry at any time. Now the proper word for the disgorgement of an embryo in the first seven weeks is an “abortion.”
So, Kenny Boy can’t possibly mean that the government has to protect the growth of the embryo in every woman’s womb. How could the government keep a woman’s body from disgorging an embryo if her body’s got the urgency to do so? I mean the next step for the nutters and their nutter government would be to insist that all the bloody mess of the disgorgement should be registered with a funeral home and a church funeral will follow!
Now Kenny Boy and the Patriot Pastors of Ohio won’t like this, but there’s no way the government can protect the life of the child growing in a woman’s womb! Even if they put all pregnant women in pregnancy camps and feed them scientific diets and give them special beds to sleep on—there’d still be abortions and miscarriages! Honey, if this is too much for you, ask your professional doctor to explain it!
Now we come to the Holy Bible and the word of God. I’ve been brought up with the Good Book and bein’ from the south and all, it gives me special diploma graduation honors in Bible automatically: So children, gather ‘round and Aunt Edith Earle will tell you what God wrote in his Holy word in perfect King James English:
Open your Bibles to Exodus 21:22-24, where we find this:
“If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follows; he shall be surely punished, according as the woman’s husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follows, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Emphasis added.)
The “mischief” to follow the aborting of the “fruit” of the woman’s womb wasn’t the abortion. Something had to happen to the woman; she had to lose something like a tooth or the woman had to die! The lost “fruit” was not yet a human and was not equal to the mother, so the scallywags just had to pay a fine for the aborted fetus. But they would have been put to death if they caused the woman to die!
Now that’s the Gospel and there’s no false prophet and no false government that can make the Bible say anything they want it to say! And if they try—don’t vote for the Scallywags!
It looks like to me and the Beal sisters that Kenny Boy Blackwell is against the culture of life for women and then he turns around and he bestows citizenship rights on a non-sentient petri dish cell; yet if we dig into this a bit more, I’ll wager the man is against birth control, family planning and consideration of the mother’s health over the fetus!
Defending Traditional Marriage
Ken Blackwell believes in the sanctity of marriage so much that he’s against monogamous life-long relationships for everyone. He thinks some folks are more equal than others. He thinks marriage is between one man and one woman serially! He’s pro serial marriages or to use the fancy words for it: he’s pro digamy (or deuterogamy if you prefer). It just means that a man can divorce a woman and marry again to a different woman and divorce her and marry again to a different woman. You know, it’s like Newt Gingrich and Mayor Guiliani, and just about the whole south! Adultery doesn’t bother him and it’s the root cause of splitting homes. No! Clever man that he is, to keep the Godly among us diverted, he plays shell games with words and no one ever guesses that he’s against life-long monogamy.
I know, I know. If he came out against adultery as well as hating gays, there wouldn’t be anyone left to vote for him. I grant you that. But please, don’t fool yourself into thinking that he’s for protecting your marriage! Only numbskulls would even entertain that. How is a law against a gay couple going to keep your husband faithful to you? I ask because I’ve known a lot of truck drivers in my life and they do have their truck stop romances! Of course, one at a time! But really, Kenny just isn’t interested in selling you on monogamy for everyone! He’d rather scare you into thinking that the Gays are coming like they used to whip up the poor dumb Americans by saying, “The Russians are coming!” They just have to have someone to hate. But I’m going on record, right here and now, fear and hate are just the wrong ingredients to make a happy marriage!
Defending 2nd Amendment Rights
Don’t let his constitutional prattle fool you! He’s not interested in the Constitution, the Bible or honesty in government—if he were—he’d talk straight! He’d stand up like a man and say, “I’m for Guns, Rifles and all killing Weapons!” Okay, I am too if we have to fight a war! But before we get that far, let’s just be honest and say it straight out! Some of us like to have a six shooter in a holster like the Lone Ranger did! The Lone Ranger did a lot of good in the old west and I’ll never forget the sound of the hoof beats of the great horse Silver! It brings tears to one’s eyes just thinkin’ about how out of the past comes such wonderful memories!
Of course, I wouldn’t mind peace on earth and the end to all wars. But—that’s just the Fonder heart beating again! And if you've ever read Mark Twain you know we are fond of our feuds in the south. There as plain as day, was the Grangerfords fightin' the Shepherdson crowd until they just shot each other all dead and the folks buried them. Why they took their guns right into church with them! Guns are useful tools if you've got a mind to kill something or someone. I just have a whole lot of trouble imagining Jesus with a six shooter. Of course we've got that paragon of truth, Tim LaHaye, who has Jesus melting the skin off people in His second coming--and one pastor told his folks that George Bush is selling phosphorus to the Lord! And he wanted everyone to get ready for the rapture! Well so much for defending our second amendment rights! I wish I knew what's got into these church people. It's like ants in the pants at the annual Sunday School picnic! Everybody's gettin' bit!
Reading Blackwell’s 20-point Code of Ethics
By now, nothing much would surprise you about Ken Blackwell I would imagine. But here came the Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio, one of the papers we read down south! As big and as bold as you would please, my eyes fell on this:
“A spokesman for Blackwell suggests reading a 20-point code of ethics, called ‘UncommonSense,’ and Blackwell’s “declaration of character,” posted at his Center for Civic Character on the Ohio Secretary of State’s web site.”
Of course you should read it and take it with a grain of salt. Especially note number 7:
“7. ACCOUNTABILITY: High-character people scrutinize themselves and welcome the scrutiny of others. They acknowledge that human nature compels us toward independence. Our preference for independence results in isolation from one another. Isolation breeds temptation to unethical conduct. High character people resist this chain reaction by adopting transparent life--and work--styles that invite inspection. They place themselves in relationships that motivate self-examination and encourage constructive critique from others, particularly those they serve. (Observable Virtues: an open, up-front, disclosing spirit)” (Emphasis added.)
We in the south just can’t stomach all this scrutiny of folks critiquing us. We’ve got a lot of problems with incest down here, and we’d kind of like to keep it quiet. Kenny just isn’t the kind of Republican we’d vote for, but of course you can if you really want to break your streak for independence! With that, I’ll sign off for now. Take care! And watch those ballot boxes folks. It never hurts to keep an eye on a Scalawag when you see one!
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J. (John) Kenneth Blackwell's Profile
Age: 57.
Party: Republican.Hometown: Cincinnati.
Family: wife, Rosa, superintendent of Cincinnati schools;
three children. Education: bachelor's and master's degrees
in psychology, Cincinnati
Xavier University.
Blackwell's Citizens for Tax Reform
Citizens for Tax Reform’s
Tax Expenditure Limitation
(TEL) Amendment limits state and local government
annual spending growth to 3.5 per cent or the sum
of the rate of inflation plus population
growth.
Ken Blackwell's Platform on the Issues
Blackwell’s Un-American Scheme:
Under the Guise of “Character
and Civic
Renewal” Ohio State Foists a Religious
Moral Code upon Its Citizens
by Katherine Yurica
J. Kenneth Blackwell has stepped
to the forefront of
the American culture wars. He has posted his
official endorsement of a 20-point religious moral
code claimed to be “a shared vocabulary of
character-building ethics” on Ohio’s official
Secretary of State web site. Blackwell wrote,
“Character is the cornerstone of American
citizenship. And good citizenship is the foundation
of community. But to a lot of people, civic renewal
means the opportunity to not only religionize our
government, but, as we shall see, to create a new
religion that is decidedly not Christianity. Instead,
it is an opportunity to convert our citizens into
docile followers of a new authoritarian rule.
Includes a linked glossary of definitions of terms
plus parallel columns that compare the text.
Cult of Character
How the 'secular' Character
Training
Institute is working to build evangelist
Bill Gothard's vision of a First-Century
Kingdom of God--one city, one state,
one school board, one police force
and one mind at a time.
By Silja J.A. Talvi January 9, 2006
From the outside the bland, unmarked
exterior of the Character Training Institute's
headquarters blends remarkably well into
its immediate surroundings. This is a
section of Oklahoma City that hasn't yet
benefited from the nearby, upscale urban
development intended to draw both tourism
and business to the area. Both the downtown
Greyhound Station and the county jail are
situated a few blocks from here, which explains
the number of forlorn, transient men and women
wandering down West Main Street. For the most
part these folks seem to have more immediate
priorities than paying attention to the dozens of
foreign-looking visitors entering and exiting the
10-story Character Training Institute (CTI), which
also serves as the headquarters of the International
Association of
Character Cities (IACC).
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