Welcome to the Coatesville Dems Blog

Public Corruption in Chester County, PA

I believe an unlikely mix of alleged drug trafficking related politicos and alleged white nationalist related politicos united to elect the infamous “Bloc of Four” in the abysmal voter turnout election of 2005. During their four year term the drug business was good again and white nationalists used Coatesville as an example on white supremacist websites like “Stormfront”. Strong community organization and support from law enforcement, in particular Chester County District Attorney Joseph W. Carroll has begun to turn our community around. The Chester County drug trafficking that I believe centers on Coatesville continues and I believe we still have public officials in place that profit from the drug sales. But the people here are amazing and continue to work against the odds to make Coatesville a good place to live.

Monday, May 5, 2008

It looks like the Democratic Party may be separating into two groups.

The Democrats who want to bring back the old Southern Democratic Party of segregationists and a new Democratic Party that looks to the multi-cultural future of the United States.

In just a few years there will be no White majority in the United States. Most of the segregationist, Regan Democrats in Pennsylvania that are the Clinton base here, will be dead.

I see what the Clintons are doing as winning the Primary Election at any cost. In this case the cost is the future of the Democratic Party.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Drug dealer to serve 6 to 15 years in prison

First it was CCRC Area 14 Chairperson Richard Legree’s son now it’s CCRC Committeperson Clayton Ayers’ son. The children of the Area 14 Chester County Republican Committee are falling (into prison) like flies.

Of course Richard (Fat Boy) Legree Jr. can have his potential 130 year prison term reduced if he cooperates sufficiently with the Federal ADA’s.

On another matter; Modena borough councilman and state constable are both elected offices. Is it now OK to hold two elected offices in Pennsylvania? See the article below.
Jim Pitcherella

DAILY LOCAL NEWS-Chester County, PA
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Drug dealer to serve 6 to 15 years in prison
EAST BRANDYWINE MAN HAD BEEN A FUGITIVE
By MICHAEL P. RELLAHAN, Staff Writer
WEST CHESTER — Judge Thomas G. Gavin may not have a degree in mathematics, but he knows how to count. And the numbers he presented to a drug dealer Friday added up to a glaring reality.
For the $2,255 that Clayton J. Ayers III made from four cocaine transactions he completed in 2005, he will be spending at least the next 2,199 days in state prison, under the terms of a plea agreement that calls for a sentence of six to 15 years in prison.
That, Gavin said, calculates to about $1.03 for every day in prison, or about a nickel an hour.
“If you look at it in that sense, maybe you knuckleheads (who sell drugs) will begin to look at (the business) differently,” Gavin told Ayers.
“I’m not certain that $2,255 buys an awful lot, but when you put it against losing 2,190 days of your life it doesn’t even begin to compute,” he said.
Ayres attorney, Curtis Norcini of West Chester, said his client was “humbled” by what had become of his life and that he was hoping to serve his sentence and move on with his life. “He is sorry for his actions,” Norcini told Gavin. “If he could take them back, he would.”
Ayers, 39, of East Brandywine was charged with four separate counts of delivery of a controlled substance. He had been a fugitive for two years as police tried to track him down after Ayers apparently learned he was about to be arrested for the sales, which involved a confidential informant. A fugitive warrant was issued for him in October 2005, and the married father of three children was taken into custody in September.
The sales in February and March 2005 were each for varying amounts of cocaine and at various prices, with the transactions occurring in a grocery store parking lot in East Brandywine and at an intersection in West Bradford. The most Ayers delivered at one time was 20.6 grams of cocaine, for which he was paid $1,100.
During the transactions, Ayers either sold the cocaine to an undercover

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.dailylocal.com/WebApp/appmanager/JRC/Daily?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pg_article&r21.pgpath=%2FDLN%2FNews%2FLocal+News&r21.content=%2FDLN%2FNews%2FLocal+News%2FTopStoryList_Story_1996860

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Hey, What About the 24th?

From Slate:
Hey, What About the 24th?
The constitutional amendment about voting rights that the Supreme Court forgot.
By Bruce Ackerman and Jennifer Nou
Posted Friday, May 2, 2008, at 12:34 PM ET
________________________________________
Americans have long fought hard to protect the right to vote and a generation ago emphatically rejected the idea of paying for the ballot. As the civil rights revolution reached its peak, Congress and the states in 1964 enacted the 24th Amendment, forbidding any "poll-tax or other tax" in federal elections. Yet, remarkably enough, this basic text went unmentioned by the Supreme Court when it upheld Indiana's photo-ID law this week.
Indiana's law insists on a photo ID to vote, which in turn requires documents, like a birth certificate or passport, that verify identity. Getting these papers costs voters money as well as time and effort. This leads to the question the court failed to ask: Does the extra expense violate the absolute ban on all "taxes" imposed by the 24th Amendment?
The leading Supreme Court decision about this amendment provides a starting point. In Harman v. Forssenius, Virginia responded to the new constitutional prohibition by allowing citizens to escape its poll tax if they filed a formal certificate establishing their place of residence. Otherwise, they would be obliged to continue paying a state tax of $1.50 if they wanted to cast a ballot. Lars Forssenius refused to pay the tax or file the residency certificate and brought a class action suit attacking the statute as unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court agreed with Forssenius in 1965, only a year after the amendment came into force. Chief Justice Earl Warren emphasized that Virginia's escape clause for avoiding the $1.50 was unconstitutionally burdensome: "For federal elections," he explained, "the poll tax is abolished absolutely as a prerequisite to voting, and no equivalent or milder substitute may be imposed." Although the Roberts Court divided sharply this week over Indiana's voter ID law, Warren's opinion gained the support of all the sitting justices except the conservative Justice John Marshall Harlan—and even he concurred in the result.
Harman casts a shadow over Indiana's photo-ID law. On the face of things, Indiana provides identification free of charge, but so did Virginia when it required proof of residence. Like Virginians trying to avoid the tax, Indianans must file paperwork to get their IDs. And their burden is often heavier. It was enough for a Virginian to swear that he or she was a resident in front of witnesses or a notary public. Indianans must also travel to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get a photo ID as well as pay for supporting documents like a birth certificate or passport. They can escape the requisite fees only by casting a provisional ballot and then taking another trip to a local official to swear that they are too poor to comply. And they must repeat this humiliating procedure every time they cast a ballot.
Like Indiana, Virginia told the court that a certificate of residency was necessary to preserve the integrity of its elections. But in 1965, the justices would have none of it. According to Harman, the 24th Amendment could not be satisfied by a showing of "remote administrative benefits"—especially when other less burdensome devices were available for proving residency. In particular, the court pointed out that Virginia could ask voters to take an oath and rely on the threat of punishment to deter lying. The same is true today in Indiana.
We don't suggest that the Roberts Court isn't clever enough to find a way around Harman. Our point is that the justices didn't even try. They
READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.slate.com/id/2190372/

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Sidney Blumenthal Uses Former Right-Wing Foes To Attack Obama

Sidney Blumenthal Uses Former Right-Wing Foes To Attack Obama

THE HUFFINGTON POST
Posted May 1, 2008 | 03:34 PM (EST)
________________________________________

Former journalist Sidney Blumenthal has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House where he worked as a high-level aide. A decade later, and now acting as a senior campaign advisor to Senator Clinton, Blumenthal is exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era.

Almost every day over the past six months, I have been the recipient of an email that attacks Obama's character, political views, electability, and real or manufactured associations. The original source of many of these hit pieces are virulent and sometimes extreme right-wing websites, bloggers, and publications. But they aren't being emailed out from some fringe right-wing group that somehow managed to get my email address. Instead, it is Sidney Blumenthal who, on a regular basis, methodically dispatches these email mudballs to an influential list of opinion shapers -- including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- in what is an obvious attempt to create an echo chamber that reverberates among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists. One of the recipients of the Blumenthal email blast, himself a Clinton supporter, forwards the material to me and perhaps to others.
These attacks sent out by Blumenthal, long known for his fierce and combative loyalty to the Clintons, draw on a wide variety of sources to spread his Obama-bashing. Some of the pieces are culled from the mainstream media and include some reasoned swipes at Obama's policy and political positions.

But, rather remarkably for such a self-professed liberal operative like Blumenthal, a staggering number of the anti-Obama attacks he circulates derive from highly-ideological and militant right-wing sources such as the misnamed Accuracy in Media (AIM), The Weekly Standard, City Journal, The American Conservative, and The National Review.

To cite just one recent example, Blumenthal circulated an article taken from the fervently hard-right AIM website on February 18 entitled, "Obama's Communist Mentor" by Cliff Kincaid. Kincaid is a right-wing writer and activist, a longtime critic of the United Nations, whose group, America's Survival, has been funded by foundations controlled by conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife, the same millionaire who helped fund attacks on the Clintons during their White House years. Scaife also funds AIM, the right-wing media "watchdog" group.

The Kincaid article that Blumenthal circulated sought to discredit Obama by linking him to an African-American poet and writer whom Obama knew while he was in high school in Hawaii. That writer, Frank Marshall Davis, was, Kincaid wrote, a member of the Communist Party. Supported by no tangible evidence, Kincaid claimed that Obama considered his relationship to Davis to be "almost like a son." In his memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote about meeting, during his teenage years, a writer named "Frank" who "had some modest notoriety once" and with whom he occasionally discussed poetry and politics. From this snippet, Kincaid weaves an incredulous tale that turns Davis into Obama's "mentor."

Kincaid's piece had been previously circulating within the right-wing blogosphere, but

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/sidney-blumenthal-uses-fo_b_99695.html

"A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue' a long, self-destructive Democratic campaign"

As far as the National Elections, the Republican Party is in a death spiral in a pilotless aircraft. I believe that any Democrat will win against McCain.

But Hillary on the ballot in November could mean heavy losses for local candidates here in Chester County PA.

The Clintons may now be considered “fair weather friends” by Black voters. Judging from what local Black people here have said they will not come out to vote for the Clintons. I am not sure if the Clintons have permanently lost the support of Black voters or if it is possible for the Clintons to regain the support of Black voters.

The Democratic Party has achieved a plurality in voter registration here in Chester County Pennsylvania. That is mostly because of the voter registration efforts by the Obama Campaign that began in October of 2007. I feel that most of those new Democratic votes would be lost with Hillary Clinton on the ballot. The support for Hillary Clinton is also just not there among independents and Republicans here and we still need them to win elections in Chester County.
Jim Pitcherella

From THE HUFFINGTON POST:
Hillary Rodham Clinton was jolted Thursday by the defection of one of her longtime superdelegate supporters, a former national party chairman who urged fellow Democrats to "reject the old negative politics" and unify behind Barack Obama.
"A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue" a long, self-destructive Democratic campaign, Joe Andrew added in a letter designed to have an impact on the turbulent race nationally as well as in his home state of Indiana, site of a primary next week. ...
Andrew's defection came at a particularly opportune time for Obama. The front-runner in the race, he has won more states than his rival as well as more of the popular vote, and he has an overall lead in delegates, 1736.5-1602.5. It takes 2,025 to clinch the nomination.
But he has struggled in recent days to limit the political damage caused by controversial comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Clinton's hopes of stalling Obama's drive to the nomination rest on a strong showing in the remaining primaries, beginning Tuesday in Indiana. At the same time, she hopes to persuade superdelegates that she would be a stronger candidate for the party this fall against McCain and

READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/01/defection-of-longtime-sup_n_99741.html

Reaction to smear ads

Here is my suggestion for how Barack Obama should handle the North Carolina smear ad.
He should run an ad telling everyone that this type of distraction is exactly what he was talking about in San Francisco. The Republicans are running an ad, focusing on an issue that may be emotional, but it is not going to help improve the life of the average person. The Republicans are talking about Rev. Wright because they cannot talk about jobs, they cannot talk about the economy, they cannot talk about improving your life or leveling the playing field for the average person. They want you to look at Rev. Wright to distract you from focusing on things that could actually help the average person. They want you to look away from the issues that are so difficult for you to deal with everyday, and look at something that will take your eye off of the ball.
I'm clearly not an advertising professional, but I'm sure that a good pro could do something effective with this theme.

--Susan Murray, Glenmoore

Dirty Politics

It is unfortunate that these dirty politics are again and again played and playing on Barack while the real culprit in many ways candidate Hillary is being treated Scott free - look how she is provoking Barack for debate - look in the msnbc channel today morning just around 9 am today - how the reporter is provoking Barack advisor David on Rev. Jeremiah Wright issues - they do not have remotest morals out there and they are looking ways to destroy the Barack Obama wave - they are finding all demeaning ways to destroy the strength and support for this man called Barack Obama who is very simple and without any political play - history is witness that change is not so easy - however, now in 21st century, when the change wave reached this far supporting Barack Obama is clear indication that this many people want and are desperate for change in their lives – Senator Clinton talks about experience all the time – what experience former President Bill Clinton has when he took oath as President – does anybody remember his Presidency for the first 3 years that almost reached to impeachment? Why doesn't anybody dare to ask this question to him or to Hilary Clinton? Hillary is involved in felony charges [true or not – there is a charge on her] why doesn't anybody talk about it? Once a while media did hint about Hilary being not right with negative campaign why don't media ask her or insist her to stop and be fair? Why doesn't media show the full remarks or full version of Rev. Jermaiah Wright comments and explode the channel with only sound byte which is provocative and damaging to people and not just Barack Obama ?

Hello North Carolina and Indiana – please do not all for any negative campaign – use all your intelligence and your desire for change- Barack Obama is for real and he is for change for better of all of us Americans – support Barack Obama with you heart and your intellect

- swati gana