Too Late to Debate.
Maryland Moment, 15 Nov 2007 (Helderman).
First there was Ralph Nader. Then Mike Gravel. Now we have Jason Jennings, the 37-year old utility consultant who jumped into the race for the Democratic nomination for Maryland's 4th Congressional District this month and, given his late start, has been told he cannot participate in a debate at the Oxon Hill Library on Saturday.Comment: So the club did not keep track of who is running for Congress in the 4th district and is excluding a legitimate candidate from the debate because of their failure. That seems to me to be a very lame excuse. Are the organizers just incompetent, or is there some other hidden reason for excluding Jennings?
Mark Spencer, who works with the African American Democratic Club of Prince George's, which is sponsoring the debate, said club organizers only learned of Jennings' candidacy on Nov. 11. He said the format was already set, candidates invited and time for the event limited to 90 minutes. Club organizers decided an additional person would mean each candidate would get too little time to respond to audience questions.
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Jason Jennings is a professional and locally grown candidate of Prince George's and Montgomery. As citizens in the 4th district, we need to be able to hear our candidates! Why is the African American Democratic Club excluding a up and coming candidate? Is the club secretly trying to influence the election? Is Al Wynn and Donna scared to debate with Jason Jennings? They need to step up and ask the club to do the fair thing and let citizen hear Jason's concerns and visions for the 4th district!
ReplyDeleteJason Jennings has a great vision for the 4th District and we want to hear him speak! He has ideas about changing the deep effects of special interests in our politics with campaign reforms; creating fiscal responsibility (so that we don't leave our children with trillions of dollars of debt), setting up true incentives for citizens and companies to invest in innovative ideas to improve our water, air, and environment; improving opportunities for small business who are the engine of our country; and putting investments in technology that will make our nation energy-independent from other countries (so that we can't be unduly influence my other nations).
ReplyDeleteJason is different from Mr. Wynn or Ms. Edwards because he believes that citizens of the 4th district deserve true representation and not manipulation by special interests groups or outside state influences. Issues should not be distorted into sound bites and superficial generalities. Our desire is to have a Congressman who wants to really solve problems and not lie to get voted into office.
Jason is about true discourse. He believes that if you bring the issues and facts to the people, no matter now hard an issue may be, they will make the right decisions and compromises for our children, family, economy, environment, and our country.
Mr. Spencer, what hidden agenda do you have? Preventing honest debate is unAmerican and definitely unDemocratic. Are you trying to manipulate the system and protect another candidate? You still have time to redeem yourself and your organization. Let all the candidates have the opportunity to debate and talk to their citizens!
Mr. Wynn, your letter is nice...if only it's not another political spinning to take advantage of the situation. And where is Ms. Edwards? Now that Jason is in the race, is she is scared of having a truly viable candidate to replace Al?
Ms. Edwards is no different from Al. She says anything and tries anything to obtain money and votes, even if her facts are not correct. In the debate at Blair High School on Nov. 8, she attempted to manipulate the audience to believe that bankruptcy laws directly caused the real estate crisis. That's disingenuous.
The real estate crisis was a result of unrestrained sub-prime lending--in the form of arms, balloons and interest-only loans. Some mortgage companies were manipulating consumers to get huge mortgages (because the bigger the loans, the more commission they received) and consumers brought homes that they can't afford. The real estate crisis is a market adjustment due to years and years of over-borrowing and an extreme lack of adequate mortgage lending requirements in the residential real estate industry. When interest rates adjusted and balloon exploded, people were left in foreclosures and short sales rose tremulously.
Thus, the real estate issue that we are seeing today are mainly only in the residential side. In fact, the commercial real estate side is still thriving. Also, normal 15-yrs. fixed and 30 yrs. fixed mortgages are stilling doing fine because these types of loans require more proof that buyers can really sustain the mortgages that they are applying for. Although both the new bankruptcy laws and real estate crisis are bad for consumers in general, they are not the cause of each other. To infer that they are, is wrong and misinformed.
It maybe that Ms. Edward's is just ignorant of the facts, but it seems that she was manipulating the issues to emotionally entice people to believing she cared about their views. How is this different from many other politicians that we're trying to vote out of office. Sounds like Bush and his lying to the American people to get us in the Iraq War or Al defending the credit card industry-written bankruptcy bill as protection for "small business" and a benefit to us average Americans.
Both Mr. Wynn and Ms. Edwards are going what it takes to get votes. But who suffers at the end? Us! The 4th district deserves more than lies and manipulation. We need true, fair leadership. So let Jason debate! We support his effort to bring honesty and candor back into Congress.
Keith William, Silver Spring