Olinger for 84th District Caucus

Obviously I don’t have a vote in the upcoming GOP caucus to fill the seat being vacated by State Representative Randy Borror but that won’t prevent me from opining. It looks as if the list of candidates will continue to grow but I’m fairly confident that, regardless of how many people join, my support will go to Jon Olinger.

I worked with Jon during his FWCS campaign, and while we may not agree on everything, I can assure you that he is a solid conservative candidate. And most important to me, and the future of this state, is that he has consistently championed fiscal responsibility. He was the sole voice of sanity on an FWCS board run amok with financial foolishness that is now paying for their previous largess. Of course this was also a major reason he was targeted and defeated during the FWCS race.

I have nothing ill to say towards the other candidates but I do know that if Jon is selected he will be an excellent representative of the 84th district…

Note: I am not affiliated with any campaign Olinger may currently be running

Union Suicide

I’ve been away tending to matters related to the day job (blogging doesn’t pay too well) and there have been several stories that I’ve wanted to comment on but haven’t had the time. I’m hoping to address those in the next few days and I suppose I’ll start with the outsourcing of the FWCS janitorial positions.

During the FWCS budget debate I supported the outsourcing of these positions for the simple fact that if the choice comes down to janitors or teachers then I’ll choose the teachers and I assume most people feel the same way. But the philosophy behind the outsourcing is more general than just “this position vs that position.” In the private sector employers have something referred to as “core competencies” - these are positions that add to the business bottom line. For example, if you run an accounting firm then accounting would be one of the core competencies.

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Downtown Condo’s

The Harrison Square saga has been a textbook example of the government interfering with the private sector and wasting taxpayer dollars.  Out of all of the original promises made concerning the project only one positive outcome has occurred; the new downtown baseball stadium is a outstanding facility.

The condominiums we were promised will never be built as we were originally promised.  The demand for the condos that we were promised completely failed to materialize.  Those companies that we were promised would move into downtown Fort Wayne never materialized.  The increases in local property values never materialized.  The list goes on and on.

That being said I had a very interesting conversation downtown this evening that surprised me quite a bit.

I finished an MBA class this evening and we gave our final presentation.  After class several of us went downtown and had a couple of beers at JK O’Donnells.  Eventually there were five of us down there and three of them(The youngest three) started talking about how they would like to live in a downtown condo.    All five were MBA students and we ranged in age from 25 - 43; with the average age likely being a little over 30.  I was absolutely stunned.  We talked about it for awhile and three of the five people present specifically said they would love to live downtown and would buy a condo in downtown if the price were right.  I was truly flabbergasted.  They all three agreed they would buy a nice condo downtown if they were priced somewhere in the $100,000 - $150,000 price range.  They all agreed that the Harrison Square condo’s as originally priced were way over-priced.   

I now wonder if the Harrison Square condo’s would have been reasonably priced if they could have sold?

I think the answer is, maybe.  That being said they will never be built.

Mike

Local Fox TV 55

The local FOX affiliate is polling 125 3rd Congressional District Committeemen concerning the Saturday caucus.  They will post their results online tonight at 10 PM and it will be discussed at the 10 PM newscast.

Tonight I will also be updating my predictions for the Saturday Caucus.  Several things have changed and I will change my predictions accordingly.

Mitch Harper over at Fort Wayne Observed has decided to endorse a candidate around 4:30 PM today.  It will be interesting to see who he endorses; however, I would be willing to bet you that he will endorse Marlin Stutzman.  That being said; I have no idea who he will endorse; I am just making a wild and uneducated guess.

Updated at 4:38 PM.  Well I completely missed the direction of the Fort Wayne Observed endorsement and I should have known better.  You should check it out.

Mike

The actual Souder Facebook message

This post contains the actual email sent to three media sources on 6/7/10 at 3:07 PM and it contains the actual facebook message that former Congressman Souder sent.  There are no editorial comments in this post; it is provided so that you can see it as is.

First the email:

From: Steven Clouse [ mailto:stclouse@gmail.com]
Sent: Mon 6/7/2010 3:07 PM
To: jeffn@indianasnewscenter.com; Niki Kelly; mattg@kpcnews.net; bhowey2@gmail.com
Subject: Congressional caucus - message from Souder

Last night at 8:03 PM I received the attached personal message from former
Congressman Mark Souder.  This repreents the only communication I have had
with Mr. Souder since his resigation from office last month.  I do not know,
nor do I care to speculate, as to his motives for sending the message, via
Facebook, to me last night.  According to the header of the message, the
message was sent to myself, and Randall Kirkpatrick, chariman of the Noble
County Republican party.  After much deiberation with Mr. Kirkpatrick, it
was our decision to release the statement so that the voters on Saturday
have as much information before them as possible. At the time I am sending
this to you, Mr. Kirkpatrick will soon distribute the message to his fellow
county chairmen, as well as to the Noble County precinct officials.

As far as the ethicacy of releasing a message that appears to have been
intended to be a private message, let me state that given the subject matter
at hand, to not share this message would be as reckless as the acts that
drove Mr. Souder from office.  Mr. Kirkpatrick did attempt to contact Mr.
Souder for an explanation this morning, but was not successful in reaching
him.

Sincrely,

Steven Clouse

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Souder Facebook message concerning Stutzman

The press is reporting that former Congressman Mark Souder sent a lengthy email to The Noble County Republican Chair and the Noble County Prosecutor. 

The Howey Political report has a lot more on the story.

Angry White Boy (Fort Wayne Blog) has his own spin on the story that is well worth your reading.  The comments on this post at Angry White Boy are also well worth your time. 

I have a lot to say about this; however, I am trying to secure a copy of the supposed email.  I currently have two copies; however, there are some subtle differences between them; hence I am not sure which is accurate.

I have reached out to several sources and hope to get a copy to review and post in the next 24 hours or so.

If you have a copy of this email please send it to me.  I feel that it should be posted in its entirety.  Currently several news sources have the document and are just printing parts of it and then commenting on it.  Just email it to me at  sylvester@fortwaynepolitics.com.

It will be interesting to see how the usual “Souder apologists” try to spin this.  

Former Congressman Souder needs to get entirely out of politics and stop trying to play “kingmaker.”  He needs to focus on fixing his life and his marriage and stop trying to be involved in politics.

Pat Miller discussed this on WOWO today and was “spot on.”   

Mike Sylvester

Phil Troyer drops out of 3rd District Congressional Caucus

Instead he is now running for the Indiana seat to be vacated by Matt Bell…

Troyer dropping out will change the caucus somewhat and I feel that his dropping out will help Stutzman in the early rounds.

Mike Sylvester

Congressional Democrats are out of the their minds

HR 4213 passed the House of Representatives on a largely Party line vote.  Every Democrat reading this blog should be ashamed to be a Democrat after reading this bill.    This is an awful bill.  There are several reasons it is awful:

1. The Democrats campaigned in 2006 and 2008 on a platform of allowing the “Bush tax cuts” to sunset.  President Obama specifically campaigned on this.  HR 4213 extends many of these tax cuts for anywhere from 2 - 10 more years. 
2. This bill serves to make the entire tax code even more complicated.  Our government needs to simplify the tax code; not make it more complicated.
3. The bill has four broad sets of increases or revenue offsets embedded in it.  These four provisions are expected to increase Federal tax revenues by almost 56 billion dollars from 2010 - 2020.  The Democrats are calling this bill the “American jobs and closing tax loopholes act of 2010.”
4. The first set of revenue offsets (about 15 billion) are all designed to enable the US to tax more foreign income.  I do not prepare tax returns for many people with foreign income and hence do not know a lot about these provisions.  I am not sure if these provisions are a good idea or not.
5. The second set of revenue offsets (about 18 billion) are designed so that those people (hedge fund managers etc) who earn “carried interest” are taxed at a higher rate than they are currently taxed.  Currently most “carried interest” is taxed as a capital gain.  The new law is complicated; however, it will eventually cause much of the “carried interest” to be taxed as regular income.  I would favor this provision if it were done in a simple and fair way; however, Congress is incapable of that.
6. The third set of revenue offsets (about 12 billion) is a 34 cent per barrel tax on oil.  This is supposed to go into an Oil Spill liability Trust Fund.  I oppose this provision; the oil companies are already responsible for paying to clean up oil spills; we do not need another tax at this time on oil.
7. The fourth set of revenue offsets (about 11 billion) is a special tax that will only target certain small business owners.  Basically this tax will only be levied against certain subchapter S corporations.  It will target certain professional service S corporations and will ignore the rest of S corporations.  This tax will effect only certain professional service S corporations in certain industries; it also will only effect those with three or fewer members.  I think this provision is extremely unfair and I hope it is killed in the US Senate.  I will post more about this in separate posts because the way the House Democrats worded this provision it could cost my wife and I well over $12,000 in additional annual taxes starting in 2011.  Worse yet it will effect a large number of my clients who own small businesses.

I am so angry at the Democratic Party that it is hard to put my feelings into words.  The Democrats in the House are complete idiots and need to be voted out of office in November.

The United States economy is extremely fragile.  Why is the Democratic Party targeting professional service businesses in only certain industries with a new tax if they have three shareholders or less?   How is this fair?  For example I own an Accounting firm with two owners.  I will have to pay a higher percentage in taxes than an Accounting firm with four owners.  Does this make sense to anyone? 

Would any of you Democrats like to defend your brethren in the House of Representatives?  

Mike Sylvester

Handicapping the upcoming 3rd Congressional District Caucus

I am going to take a shot at predicting the outcome of the upcoming 3rd Congressional District caucus.  Caucuses are notoriously hard to predict and candidates can influence the outcome with hard work and by “pressing the flesh.”  As candidates are eliminated they often try to get their supporters to vote for a specific candidate and this can strongly influence the vote.

The way the caucus is going to work is that each candidate will appoint a person to speak for them for a maximum of two minutes and then will be able to speak for them-selves for three minutes. 

Then there will be a secret ballot cast by all certified Precinct Committee persons present.  I would guess that there will be about 450 people present who can vote.  If one candidate receives one more than half of the votes the caucus is over and that candidate is the winner.  If no winner is determined in the first ballot (and in my opinion there will not be a winner in the first ballot) then all candidates who received less than 5% of the total votes cast in the 1st round are removed from the process and the second ballot is cast.

On the second ballot if a candidate receives one more than 50% of the votes cast that candidate is the winner.  If there is no winner than each candidate who receives fewer than 10% of the votes cast will be eliminated and there will be a 3rd ballot.  If this provision eliminates all candidates but one then the candidate with the fewest votes will be eliminated and the process will continue.

On the third ballot if a candidate receives one more than 50% of the votes cast that candidate is the winner.  On this ballot and each future ballot the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and the process continues until a candidate receives 50% of the votes cast plus one.

If 450 votes are cast (this is just a guess as to the number of votes that will be cast) then a candidate will have to receive 23 votes or more in order to move on to the second ballot.  Currently the following people are expected to run:

1. Randy Borror
2. Liz Brown
3. Wes Culver
4. Greg Dickman
5. Ryan Elijah
6. Mike Foster
7. Rachel Grubb
8. Bob Morris
9. Lonnie Powell
10. Joe Schomburg
11. Marlin Stutzman
12. Bob Thomas
13. Richard Thonert
14. Phil Troyer
15. Dennis Wright

I would like to insert here that I know several of the above candidates and there are a lot of good candidates in this field.  That being said; I think a tremendous number will be eliminated in the first ballot because I do not feel that they will be able to garner at least 5% of the votes cast.  So here is my prediction based on what I know now and with the field outlined above:

I think that about eight candidates will be eliminated on the first ballot due to not getting 5% of the vote.  In no particular order I think that Schomburg, Powell, Dickman, Thonert, Wright, Foster, Morris, and Grubb will be eliminated.

My prediction is the second ballot will have seven candidates advance.  That being said the candidates will have to garner 10% or more of the vote to survive the second round.  I believe that three candidates will likely be eliminated in the second ballot.  In no particular order I think that Thomas, Troyer, and Elijah will all be eliminated in this ballot.

That leaves for my predicted third ballot only four candidates:  Borror, Brown, Culver, and Stutzman.  On this ballot I think that Culver will be eliminated. 

On the fourth ballot I think Brown will be eliminated leaving Borror vs Stutzman.  I am having a hard time predicting which of these two candidates I think will win.  I truly think one of these two will win and  I think they will win on a 5th ballot.

I think the 5th ballot will be extremely close and at this point I think either candidate can win.  I tend to think the candidate that works the hardest between now and June 12th will win; however, I think that the endorsement of some of the candidates who are eliminated could put either candidate over the top.  I think the fifth ballot will be 52% for Borror and 48% for Stutzman.  I think Borror will get the votes of many of the elected officials and their families and well as the votes of many of the Allen County Republican establishment.  I think Stutzman will draw the Tea Party vote, the votes of many of the younger delegates, and quite a few votes from the northern counties.

That is my prediction; what is yours?

P.S.  For the record I do not know who I am going to vote for at this point.  There are a lot of good candidates.  I am currently leaning towards Borror, Brown, Stutzman, or Troyer.

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