Corey O'Brien v Paul Kanjorski? More Of The Same

Corey O'Kanjo

Gort42 in northern Pennsylvania sat down with Corey O'Brien for a nice long interview a couple days ago. You may recall that a week or so ago we were asking if O'Brien, a young Lackawanna County Commissioner, and erstwhile Kanjorski ally, was ready to run a primary campaign against the spectacularly corrupt and relatively reactionary Kanjorski (in my old congressional district).

Young O'Brien hasn't had a chance to get down with the corruption drill-- that afflicts politics so grievously in his area-- yet, but he has certainly picked up on the reactionary piece of the pie already. Gort passed along a DWT question for us-- which O'Brien awkwardly dodged:

One of the more liberal bloggers said this about you. (DWT)

But progressive Democrats can cool their heels for now. O'Brien is no champion of progressive values-- In fact, he's a better packaged avatar of social conservatism-- anti-Choice and against equality for gays.

Reaction? I don’t know what your positions are on the hot button social issues.

Wow, I don’t know them. I would venture to guess that they don’t know many of my positions on those issues as well. I can tell you this. I would represent the values of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Those issues and values will be brought forward if I decide to enter the race. I think what they will find is that I’m certainly a progressive Democrat that believes very strongly in universal health care and health care reform. That believes very strongly in energy independence and that energy independence is a national security priority that we need to embrace. And education reform is a critical component to compete in a global economy, especially early childhood development. As you probably know 90% of a person’s brain growth is completed by the age of 5 yet we spend the least amount of dollars by the age of 5. I don’t know why we don’t have programs were we start spending more money on early childhood development, we start spending more money on bilingual education. I don’t why as a sophomore in high school it’s the first time people start taking French or Spanish as I did at Dunmore High School. Why we don’t have a second or a third language from early childhood education through college. But I also think that college should become a right and no longer a privilege and that’s something that I’ll talk about if I end up getting into this race. I think you are going to hear a lot from me about energy independence because my record is strong there. We are replacing our fleet of vehicles in Lackawanna County with hybrids. We will have set of 10 hybrids in a week or two. We are replacing our fleet of COLTS buses with hybrids. With these progressives actions we are now a COOL County, we are only the second COOL County in Pennsylvania. Which is guaranteeing a reduction in our carbon emissions to reduce the effects of global warming. So we are taking some significant steps toward energy independence and we are doing them right here in northeastern Pennsylvania. I will talk a lot about energy, education and job creation throughout any kind of campaign.

He didn't mention that he's against a woman's right to choice and against a same sex couple's right to marry, just that he thinks he's socially progressive because he thinks we should teach second and third languages in elementary school. So we don't know, do we? Well, we do know he's a sleazy political hack that doesn't even have the skill to dodge a question artfully. Guy sounds like a dud to me-- and I hope the reform-minded Democrats sickened by Kanjorski's avarice can come up with someone better than Corey O'Brien.