30 January 2006

Who is Joy Padgett?

Jim "Jesus is my bro" Petro has chosen state senator Joy Padgett as running mate. A brief web search gave the background information below.

Padgett is from Coshocton and represents southeast Ohio. She was picked to make Petro more competitive with Strickland in that area of the state.

Joy Padgett's brief bio.

In 2004 she defeated Terry Anderson for her Senate seat. That's the same Terry Anderson who was kidnapped and held hostage by Iranian extremists for 7 years. Ten points if you can guess whether Padgett stuck to the GOP campaign playbook and sunk low enough to call a former hostage soft on terrorism and an America-hater.

During that election Padgett also blew off Project VoteSmart's candidate survey (even ignoring Sen. McCain's request to participate). Why would Padgett repeatedly refuse to help citizens become better informed? Is it because her loyalty lies with special interests and not citizens?

Well, at least the NRA trusts Joy Padgett.

Padgett had strong words about Coingate: “I say ‘chop their heads off’. I don’t care who it is. I will push for a very, very strong making sure of that we investigate this thing thoroughly and who have been part of illegal activity will have to pay the most severe price. I personally have a zero tolerance for this. Absolute zero tolerance.”

Nice sound bite, but is there any evidence of Padgett backing up words with actions (I didn't find any)?

Some bills sponsored by Joy Padgett:

SB 6: Education bill. Creates a commitee to make recommendations to help schools meet the demands of the modern workforce. It has a number of worthwhile initiatives, but the committee has no real authority to make changes.

SB 185: A bill to curb predatory lending practices, which have exacerbated Ohio's foreclosure rate (3 times the national average).

SB 235: Allows Ohio to compete for President Bush's "FutureGen" program which gives money to build "zero-emissions" coal-powered power plants. There is no such thing as a "zero emissions" coal power plant, of course; the phrase is yet another linguistic sleight-of-hand. It's called that because the carbon dioxide that is released (i.e. EMITTED) is converted to liquid and pumped into the ground ("sequestration") instead of released into the atmosphere. In other words, it's our descendants' problem, not ours.

The sequestration process also has an additional-- and I'm sure TOTALLY coincidental-- benefit: it helps "dry" oil wells release more oil. That might explain why Texas has generated so much interest in this program, and why so many industry representatives are involved in it.

The FutureGen program is a thinly veiled plan to use public monies for unworthwhile R&D in the fossil fuel industry. It is a gift to Bush supporters, and Joy Padgett is a cog in the quid pro quo machine.

SB 252: Guns, guns, guns!

3 comments:

Wes said...

I lost all respect for Joy Padgett when she besmirched the reputation of a truly great citizen, Terry Anderson.

If Jesus were to come back today, the GOP would call him "soft on terrorists."

WF

Anonymous said...

Doesn't the NRA also trust Ted Strickland?

As the spouse of a real estate agent, I honestly say that if Ohio doesn't do something about predatory lending, we're looking at a doomsday scenario in the future. These practices hurt the growing middle class minority population more than any other group- something Mike Coleman has always turned a blind eye to in exchange for huge donations from developers.

SB 235- I think that "clean burning coal" is like saying, "un-dirty dirt". Coal is dirty. But 70% of the electricity consumed in America is derived from the burning of coal. Should we not be looking into less harmful ways of extracting and using coal. It's not THE solution- it's a stop-gap. But worth pursuing nonetheless.

Mark said...

Is there a collection of "low blow" ads anywhere? I would hope attacking a former hostage would make the top ten (although it might not break the top 1000).