2014 Higgins Endorsement
First, Don't be a Lunatic |
Election day is coming up, and I generally give you some BS half-assed "endorsements" of candidates who, in my opinion, deserve your vote. Typically, I don't do that until a day or two before election day itself, but the race for the 26th Congressional District is not remotely typical.
I don't agree with Brian Higgins on every single issue because he can be sometimes more conservative than I, and because he can sometimes be overly cautious on waterfront issues. By way of example, I was disappointed that he is opposing the construction of places to live and things to do on certain portions of Buffalo's Outer Harbor.
That aside, there is absolutely no doubt that he has been a wildly effective proponent of all things Buffalo and western New York. Sure, as the Buffalo News pointed out earlier this year, he's not lighting Washington on fire with pointless legislation that is likely to go nowhere in a tea party-dominated body. But when it comes to using his power and clout as a federal representative to help rebuild Buffalo and her waterfront, to restore NYPA funding to do it, to help improve our border and to push for needed changes in air traffic regulation, Higgins is the guy for us. When it comes to using the power of the federal purse to help fund projects and programs that help feed, clothe, house, and employ the weakest in our society, Higgins is the guy for us. Even Republicans recognize Higgins' value and leadership. Higgins says,
My service in Congress is everything about Buffalo and Western New York. I’ve learned that when you do good for your community, you’re doing good for your country, because the most important part of my country is my community.While Brian Higgins represents the best that western New York has to offer, his opponent is the polar opposite. Kathy Weppner is a craven cartoon character. Her deep paranoia and hatred, willingness to promote and advocate for utter and complete nonsense, ease with which she lies and makes things up, and her mindless regurgitation of whatever gibberish she reads on the right-wing internet renders her palpably unfit for public office.
But it's not just that.
Below is a compendium of every post I've written about Kathy Weppner since she began her campaign. As a political meme for this season, she has been a bottomless pit of unfortunate material. What Kathy Weppner represents is the absolute worst of what western New York has to offer; reactionary thought, paranoia, a tendency to lie and to promote others' lies, a provincial and narrow mindset, and above all - ignorance and misinformation.
When Weppner first announced, this is what I wrote:
In the 26th, incumbent Democrat Brian Higgins is likely to coast to re-election, as well. This is especially true thanks to the fact that his opponent is not only going to be a tea partier, but is – quite literally – a low-information WBEN caller. “Kathy from Williamsville” is going to take her fact-free jingoism on the campaign trail. She is a walking, talking anti-Obama chain email, and anyone reporting on her should be sure to have Snopes queued up on their mobile browsers. Seriously – there will be no point covering her campaign if you’re not able immediately to vet her pronouncements and cross-examine her on the inevitable fabrications and fantasies she’ll discuss. After all, she has a list of known communists, doesn’t seem to be ready or willing to represent Muslim residents of the 26th (hint: it’s the primitive blood lust), has declared “white guilt” to be “dead”, warned against a hyperinflation that never came, and – like Ronald Reagan – opposes Medicare.I love it when I'm right.
That one will be fun.
Take this for example. This was posted (publicly) to Weppner's own Facebook page just this week. For some reason it wasn't good enough for her campaign, but this is a pretty representative insight into the mind of a person who wants to go to Washington and represent the people of a diverse NY-26.
To start out with, I absolutely detest these sorts of ignorant, uninformed violations of Godwin's Law. The United States is not at any risk of becoming a Nazi state, and anyone who thinks it is, is a moron. But let's examine the specifics; most basic is the lie - oft-repeated by demagogues and charlatans - that the Nazis killed capitalism in Germany. Nothing could be further from the truth, as National Socialism was, at least in part, a corporatist movement where the party, the military, and big industry were united in goal and deed. It wasn't Marxist socialism that drove Nazi ideology - quite the opposite, as the Weimar-era street battles with the Spartacists can attest. Instead, it was a fascist socialism, born as a nationalist reaction to Marxism's internationalism. The goal wasn't a proletarian utopia, but a pure and strong Germany where the individual was subjugated to the state. Any notion that Naziism is remotely similar - much less identical - to the kind of western pluralist liberalism that people like Weppner so oppose - is laughable.
Prayer was taken out of schools? Hitler didn't just stop there - he was openly hostile to all organized religion, because it represented a singular challenge to Nazi hegemony and the totalitarian deification of Hitler himself. In the United States, we have no such action taking place, and prayer is not allowed in school because of the prohibition against a government establishment of religion; it's in the Constitution.
"Socialized medicine" didn't lead to the extermination of the disabled - that was the Nazi sterilization and eugenics program - one that was quite popular in the United States in the early 20th century, as well. Every single western industrialized nation has some form of universal health insurance - some of it socialized - yet extermination of the old, sick, and disabled is not part of any of those programs. This is a lie and a scare tactic.
Like all things, under Hitler's totalitarian state, all school curricula and administrations were subjected to the will of the party. Private and Catholic schools did exist, but were under constant scrutiny. No such thing happens in the US today.
Likewise, I can tell you this: I have visited and lived in totalitarian dictatorships in my life. While some may find fault with our government using signals intelligence and other methods to try and keep tabs on real and suspected terrorists, it is not the same as a government using secret police, informants, and SIGINT to maintain a totalitarian purity of thought. We don't have political police out there manning checkpoints to make sure where you're supposed to be, and limiting what you think, say, or with whom you associate. Having experienced true totalitarianism, I can tell you that my possession of a passport, my ability to write this blog, my right to say and think what I please, and my right to express my political opinion all run counter to any half-brained notion that this country has devolved into some sort of fascist totalitarian nightmare. Anyone who suggests otherwise has automatically disproven their own point: if we truly were that totalitarian dystopia, you'd have no ability to express that fact, and you'd be arrested, subjected to a show-trial, and then exiled or killed.
Government spending in Germany skyrocketed because they were planning to take over the world through endless war.
Germans have always been very ecologically conscious - this pre-dates and post-dates Hitler, and is part of the German psyche. While Nazis and Communists alike purported to love and protect the natural environment, that doesn't mean protecting the environment is a totalitarian aim.
Finally, Hitler actually eased gun restrictions, but only for non-Jews. The US has a hodgepodge of state and federal gun laws, none of which have disarmed anyone based on religion.
The copying and publication of that passage above - alone - disqualifies Kathy Weppner from public office. That's before we get to the following laundry list of abhorrent things that this candidate has done and said since announcing her campaign. She - and the people who endorse her - are an insult to the intelligence of western New Yorkers. Below is the compendium of all the Weppner posts since March.
March 2014: Weppner Deletes It All
Back in the early Spring, the Buffalo News’ Jerry Zremski picked over some of the more malodorous parts of the Weppner mindswamp, and asked her for an interview. She declined, and agreed instead to answer via email. The result was a glorious, factual recitation of some of the things she’s promoted and said, and her weak explanations for them. (Weppner Vetted 3/24/14) Much of it surrounded her very outspoken involvement in the “birther” nonsense, questioning whether Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, or part of some half-century-long conspiracy to overthrow America.April 2014: Kathy From Williamsville's Calls to Rush Limbaugh
You know, we have ended up with a society where all the people that work in government, all the politicians, the teachers, the firemen, the policemen, all of our state governments, municipalities, and we are in a very heavily governed area here in western New York, all of them are living inside the castle walls, and all of us, everybody else is living outside of the castle walls. And all of the rules they make protect them, where our people, the public employee, they can retire at 55 here and they live to 85.
May 2014: Issues!
She then promptly took the video down, without explanation or apology. She also knows all the things about Ohio fertilizer runoff. (Kathy Weppner's Clownshoes: Now with Guns and Corn! 5/30/14)
Summer 2014: Infected Poors!
September 2014: ISIS Fundraising
Later that month, Weppner touted the fact that she had received a participation award - a prize for just showing up - from some obscure New Jersey-based school choice lobby that no one's ever heard of. (Kathy Weppner gets Participation Award 9/24/14). The irony, of course, is that right-wing nutjobs like Weppner detest what they perceive to be participation awards and social promotion in our public schools. It makes the kids soft, don't you know?
October 2014: Desperation Sets In
I highlighted the insanity of some of what Weppner was pimping in this post (Kathy "Purple Penguin" Weppner 10/10/14). She is - and will always be - the Snopes candidate; whenever she promotes some weird nonsense, you have to check Snopes first and determine just how wrong or misguided she is. Is that who should be sent to Washington as a legislative representative - someone so casually loose with reality and facts that you have to check what she says against an urban legends debunking site?
Weppner's so-bad-they-must-be-joking media allies defamed the League of Women Voters for supposedly succumbing to Brian Higgins' scary pressure, deciding to not hold a NY-26 debate. The problem is, the local LWV isn't holding any congressional debates in WNY this season. (The League of Women Voters Would Like Everyone to Stop Lying, please 10/17/14).