From Tom Paine:

Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation (FACT) is attacking the moronic Drink Tax on two fronts:  (a) a revived lawsuit challenging the Constitutionality of the tax: and, more important, (b) an effort to place a referendum on the repeal of the Drink Tax on the ballot in November.  http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2008/04/28/daily39.html?ana=from_rss

Not surprisingly, Kevin Evanto,  mouthpiece for flailing County Diminutive Dan Onorato, poo-pooed the referendum and lawsuit as “publicity stunts.” 

We’ll see.  The good news is that fate of the Drink Tax is out of the County Diminutive and his henchmen’s hands.  The voters will dispatch the ludicrous tax faster than Brenda Frazier had to apply for Social Security. 

Time to start looking to Plan B boys.  Maybe, in your creativity, you could submit a list of new taxes to Harrisburg which includes a 10% tax on cheap poly-blend suits.  At least then the County Diminutive and his cronies would share the pain of an idiotic tax. 

The Beaver County Times, in its Editorial Page, opined that HosPAC was going after the wrong politician in the Brenda Frazier campaign.  This particular piece of fish wrapper opines that Brenda and her County Council pals were handed a bad deal by the state General Assembly, and that legislators were to blame.  http://www.timesonline.com/articles/2008/04/18/opinion/editorials/doc48077739346cd833943184.txt

Please. 

First, Brenda and her County Council cronies rubber stamped Dan O’s budget.  There were no questions, no changes.  They had a chance to show some leadership, and simply abdicated.  There were ample sources of funding for the County which could have avoided this tax, but they had no interest in doing the heavy lifting to find out what these are.  

Second, Dan O, in obtaining permission from the state legislature, got exactly what he wanted with the Drink Tax and Rental Car Tax.  Numerous state legislators have pointed out that Dan O told them he wanted the Drink and Rental Car taxes, since they had worked for his Sugar Daddy, Big Ed, in Philly, 13 years earlier.  Dan O then fed the taxes to County Council, the members of which (those voting for the tax) lacked the guts, courage, wherewithal, mental fortitude, etc., to send the budget with these idiotic taxes back to him. 

The Beaver County Times needs a little dose of, oh yes, facts, to bring them back to earth.  The color of the sky here is . . . blue. 

From Tom Paine:

Chuck McCullough, former County Solicitor and recently seated At Large Member of County Council, has called a press conference at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, May 2, to announce a new initiative (appearing on the agenda on Tuesday, May 6), whereby the Drink Tax would be scaled back to five percent as of July 1, and then eliminated in January 2009. 

The press confernece will be held at the Council Conference room in the County Courthouse on Grant Street, downtown Pittsburgh.   

From Tom Paine:

The Onorato spin on the Brenda Frazier defeat was that the HosPAC campaign had little effect on the election.  This opinion is echoed by lickspittles currying favor with Dan, such as County Council President Rich Fitzgerald, political retread Joe Mistick, and - surprisingly – the presumptive state representative in District 21, Dom Costa (talk about lack of gratitude!).  http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A45998  According to Onorato and his toadies, Brenda Frazier did quite well considering that she was running against two well known names. 

Well. 

In my fifth grade math class, if more than TWO THIRDS of those voting voted AGAINST YOU, as happened to Brenda, you, as a candidate, got smoked.  Interestingly, Brenda lost by 350 votes to Costa.  If your position is that the HosPAC campaign didn’t swing 350 votes against Brenda Frazier, you’re smoking a lot more than Camels.  During the brief HosPAC campaign, HosPAC heard from numerous voters who voted against Brenda for her vote on the Drink Tax, and told their relatives to do it too.

These dopes also ignore that Brenda was elected twice in a County Council district twice as large as the legislative district she lost.  But, oh - those names!  Among the candidates, Len Bodack just lost a City Council seat (a near impossible task).  Apparently his overwhelming name recognition, and his incumbency, didn’t help him in that election. 

People are entilted to their opinions, even if they are based on wishful thinking.  Dan O and his cronies are whistling past the graveyard of their political careers.