Michael Bryan

By Michael Bryan I can't even begin to imagine what possible benefit Secretary Bennett thought he might derive from his birther stunt. I suppose he saw Sheriff Joe milking that particular bull and thought, "Heck, I can get some mileage off that, too…" Well, Ken, I didn't serve with Sheriff Joe. I don't know Sheriff Joe. Sheriff Joe certainly is … Read more

By Michael Bryan

Jesse Kelly is trying to run from his past radical statements regarding eliminating and privatizing Social Security and Medicare, eliminating the minimum wage, slashing taxes on the wealthiest, and eliminating vital oversight of the free market to ensure the public is protected. 

Well, he's still a radical, and it comes out when he's not appearing in carefully crafted campaign ad. In the video after the fold, we see Kelly addressing his base at the Marana Chamber of Commerce, where he is more comfortable showing his true colors, even though he knows that he is being filmed by Democrats (as he acknowledges at the end of the video). He just can't help himself. He's a true believer, a simple (some might say simplistic) man, and a straight talker. Those can be admirable qualities, but in a Member of Congress, convictions as radical and unrealistic as Mr. Kelly's are just downright dangerous to the public welfare.

On minimum wage:

When asked for his position, he scoffs, and uses an absurd scenario to denigrate the minimum wage. He hypothesizes that we could set it at $150 a hour, and that would just result in increased prices. Apparently, he is unable to discriminate between a small measure of fairness, and an absurdity.

Clearly, he thinks the minimum wage should not exist, and that free market forces alone should set all wages. He does not understand that the purpose of the minimum wage is not a naive attempt to vote ourselves wealth, it is to ensure that a person who works for a living does not have to live in abject poverty, and that even unskilled workers have enough money to afford the neccessities of life and a measure of dignity.

We accept as a society a slight increase in labor price imputs in order to achieve that meagre measure of economic equity. Americans overwhelmingly support the minimum wage, and even want to see it higher. But Kelly just can't understand that at all.

Energy resources:

"We are sitting on top of a mountain of money in this country."

Kelly continues to claim that the solution for our economic recovery is energy exploitation. He still ignores the fact that Arizona doesn't have any significant oil, natural gas, or coal resources and won't benefit from Kelly's dream of a Russian-style natural resource led boom. As in Russia, the primary beneficiaries of Kelly's dream are the oligarchs who have the wealth and political clout to exploit those resources, not the broad American public.

Kelly asserts he's a strong supporter of the Keystone XL Pipeline and he just can't imagine any reason to delay it. He says, "it's anti-the-American-people to stand against the pipeline…" He doesn't express any concern about the fact that we have no idea the environmental impact of a spill, nor any idea of how to clean up such a spill.

And, of course, his support for the pipline won't do a damned thing for Arizona: there are no direct economic benefits or jobs created in Arizona by this boondoggle. Kelly cites the price of gas as a reason to approve the pipeline, but TransCanada's own application, and indpendent analysis both indicate that the effect of the pipeline will be to strengthen price leverage for Canadian crude, increasing prices for refined products in the U.S. That result may seem counter-intuitive, but the pipeline moves gas production using tar sands oil to a deepwater port for world export, thus reducing local oversupply of gasoline products in the U.S and thus raising the local price. You know, supply and demand? That central idea of market economies seems beyond the intellectual scope of Mr. Kelly. Just who is Kelly really seeking to represent in supporting the pipeline: the people of Arizona, or the energy lobby and Canadian oil?

Oh, and the fact that his family business is a pipeline contractor wouldn't have anything to do with his position, would it? Surely, Mr. Kelly wouldn't be so crass as to support a dangerous environmental boondoggle that would raise gas prices just because it might profit his daddy's company in some way?

Job creation:

Kelly claims that Arizona is a number one location nationally for computer chip fabricators because of the dry air and geological stability. We do have those features. But Jesse then claims that the reason those jobs aren't in Tucson is "We told them they're not welcome. We told them we don't want them in Pima County, we don't want them in Cochise County. And that's just flat wrong." Yes, what you just said is just flat wrong, Jesse. Intel has long ties to Chandler, and Tucson was never seriously considered by Intel.

Kelly exclaims, "We should be booming down here. We should be Scottdale. We could be Scottsdale." I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in Scottdale, Jesse. If you like Scottsdale so much, move up there and run for office there. BTW, Jesse, Intel's plants are in Chandler, not Scottsdale. Disturbing that he doesn't even know that.

Environmental protection: 

"I will be attempting to defund the EPA and to strip them of their regulatory power."

Enough said. It's clear that Kelly has no concern whatever about protecting the health of citizens and the quality of our environment. Kelly is stuck in the mode of framing every protection of our environment as anti-business.

Kelly blames the EPA's regulation of coal plants' carbon emissions for there being no new coal energy plants being built in the U.S. He does not seem to grasp that plummeting natural gas prices due to domestic fracking has made them largely price non-competitive, in any case.

It goes without saying, perhaps, that Kelly is an anthropogenic climate change denier. So, to him, the idea of regulating carbon emssions to avoid catastrophic costs of climate change just doesn't make any sense.

It's very telling of Kelly's view of economic development that he would like us to be more like China, where the environment is not protected from pollution, and the people are suffering terribly as a result.

Kelly claimed:

"Everthing is made in China because we chased all that industry out.  Sadly, in many ways, right now… communist China is more elightened in business than the free United States of America."

We chased business out of America and into China? If you mean incentivized companies to move labor costs to low-wage Chinese factories with our tax code, your party did that thing and is blocking President Obama from undoing it, Mr. Kelly.

Multi-national companies have no loyalty; they go where they can maximize profit and externalize as many costs as possible. Part of that process of externalizing costs is not having to pay to prevent or remedy environmental pollution. Kelly's comments seem to indicate that he wants to kill the EPA to make it easier for companies to pollute America's environment like they do China's. That is insane and radical.

Tax Rates:

Mr. Kelly also claimed:

"We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world."

Problem is, that's just not true. The marginal combined effective corporate income tax rate (what a company actually pays doing business in a country, combining all taxes at the national and sub-national levels and taking into consideration deductions and credits) in America is about average for OECD countries, and significantly lower than many other advanced industrial nations.

Of course, such nuance is really beyond an ideologue like Kelly. He thinks the proper corporate income tax rate is zero, so, of course, he thinks it's too high, regardless of what it actually might be.

Of course, Mr. Kelly thinks that real people should pay taxes, even if corporations should not. He thinks that every person should pay the same rate, regardless of income. He says with almost unseemly enthusiasm:

"I love the flat tax… Every American should pay same small percentage of income to the federal government."

Really, even if they make very little? Yep. Even if they make billions? Yep. Kelly has completely abandoned the idea of progressivity in taxes: from those who benefit the most from our societies' services, more is required. He considers that "demonizing wealth".

Kelly's philosophy is "Keep what you earned, you earned it, and pass it on to the next generation." Never mind that nobody earns a fortune alone; the society around a capitalist allows and enables that accumulation of wealth through services to the individual and creation of the business environment.

Kelly's comment about passing it to the next generation would indicate that he doesn't favor an estate tax, either. No surprise that Kelly is in favor of such unearned wealth, that's how he makes his living after all.

Kelly reminds me of a teenage boy who is frantically trying to deny his dependence on his parents while worshipping at an altar dedicated to Ayn Rand, even as he lives in his parents' basement. Kelly works for his dad's constuction company, which gets up to 90% of it's business from government contracts. I'm sure that his position at the company was earned solely on merit, and has nothing to do with his position as scion of the family…

Let's get real: Kelly has never been exposed to the "free market" he worships so assiduously. His whole poltical persona is a smirking, swaggering, cock-sure denial of any collective responsibility or accountablity. He's all about getting the "nanny state" out of our lives, even as he nurses at that nanny's tit like an overgrown man-child. A recent article by Sara Robinson, "How the Ayn Rand-Loving Right Is Like a Bunch of Teen Boys Gone Crazy", perfectly embodies the childish political phenomenon that is the modern GOP right wing and, especially, the person of Jesse Kelly.

Watch the video after the click (Hat tip to AZ08RawFootage)…

By Michael Bryan

Jesse Kelly's latest salvo criticizes Ron Barber for support of a bill (Waxman-Markey's cap and trade bill) that he's never (that I can find) taken a position on, and which has been as dead as a doornail since 2010.

Gabby Giffords did support and vote for Waxman-Markey when it passed the House in 2009. I assume that Kelly is basing his allegation that Barber supports it on Gabby's vote. That might be a fair assumption, or it might not. But it is certainly deeply irrelevant to any possible current cap and trade bill before the House: there is none.

Is Kelly swinging at a strawman, or is he just stupid? A bit of each, perhaps?

Kelly's ad claims that cap and trade would cost consumers an additional $1000 a year in energy costs and destroy 40,000 jobs. Given that no cap and trade legislation is pending, I suspect that Kelly is freaking himself out by playing Fantasy Congress, only with the Dems in charge. I certainly would like to see Jesse's little nightmare come true…

Kelly's newest ad is simply not relevant to the real world, but let's take a quick look at the numbers anyhow, just to see how accurate his fantasies are.

When Waxman-Markey was still pending legislation with a chance of becoming law, the non-partisan Congression Budget Office scored its likely economic impact, concluding that it would have negligable impact on jobs, and only a very slight impact on energy prices for most consumers because the revenues from cap and trade would be redistributed to consumers to offset price increases. Further, given the likely very substantial costs of climate change in future years, the ecnomic impact of not avoiding those costs by passing such legislation could be catastrophic.

Of course, fossil fuel industry shills (like Kelly) spared no expense in attacking Waxman-Markey as a job killing nightmare that could cost the U.S. as many of 2.4 million jobs. Spread that number out proportionately over the country somehow, and I'm guessing that is where Kelly got his 40K job loss claim. I'm sure some right-wing or energy industry scoring is behind the $1000 annual cost claim. Something like ALEC's hit on cap and trade (though it claims more like $1,500 to $3,000 annual cost). The sort of impacts that Kelly's ad claims are, of course, the most pessimistic estimates by hacks in the pocket of the energy industry.

Independent FactCheck.org indicates that the jobs impact of a cap and trade regime is uncertain and really depends on exactly how the bill is structured and how quickly the green energy sector would expand to replace jobs lost in the dirty energy sector. In any case, the impact would be much more moderate than any of the industry scare scenarios.

So, Kelly is misleading voters again about the effects of Democratic policies on climate change and carbon emissions, just like he does about Obamacare's impact on Medicare. His consistent modus seems to be to scare voters into casting their ballots for him, which is the lowest and most deceitful form of political campaigning: and just so happens to be what wingnuts like Kelly are really good at.

But that's all pretty much beside the point. Waxman-Markey is dead, dead, dead. Republicans and Blue Dog Dems killed it. Barber hasn't taken a position on it, and doesn't really have to. America is (unfortunately) not passing any legislation to address climate change any time soon with the do-nothing GOP in charge of the do-nothing House.

Electing Jesse Kelly, who denies the existence of anthropogenic climate change due to CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, is certainly going to continue gridlock on this particular issue, among others. So, to the extent that Kelly's ad is really just saying, "vote for me and I will do my best to make Earth look like Venus by ensuring the energy industry pumps out unlimited CO2 emmissions," I guess it might contain a sliver of truth.

See the ad after the click, if you can stomach it…

By Michael Bryan AZGP's political strategy is as good as this movie… Just a few quick thoughts on Charlie Manolakis, who is running in the CD 8 Special as the Green Party candidate. I didn't mention Mr. Manolakis in my discussion of the first CD 8 debate. There was a reason for that. I respect … Read more