McCann's nonsense confirms he's full of blarney

Last week he did it again. In front of an unsuspecting group of Bergen County citizens. 

Since last summer, while he was still directly employed by the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County, John McCann has shopped around a tale about how he stopped HillaryCare and saved America.  Here is a transcript of a video recording of McCann telling his tall tale to the Sussex County Republican Committee on December 27, 2017. 

"I'm the only candidate with an actual proven record of doing things... I was gone (sic) to the United States Senate to take on the Clinton Health Care Plan.  I designed a chart, it was presented to the country, and the chart was credited -- by others, not by me -- with saving the United States from 16 years of government controlled healthcare." (Candidate John McCann, on video)

Many people familiar with the long battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan disputed John McCann's story.  They said they never heard of him and accused him of taking credit for the work of dozens of others.  They noted that there was a plethora of graphs and charts but that only one got national coverage.  It wasn't John McCann's.

The Clinton Health Care Plan began with a speech by President Bill Clinton in September 1993.  Legislation was introduced in November 1993.  Hearings were held and the debate went into 1994.  In January 1994, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) unveiled his famous chart that detailed the bureaucratic morass that was the Clinton Health Care Plan.  As the legislation was amended, dozens of subsequent charts were built off this one, noting those changes and updates.

Last week, we published a link to a C-Span video of the United States Senate Floor on January 27, 1994.  The video is 11 hours long and unedited.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?54084-1/senate-session

At two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) into it, Senator Specter speaks on the issue and appears with his famous chart.  About six minutes into his speech, he explains that staffer Sharon Helfant was responsible for creating it.  He goes on to explain how the Washington Post had a story a day earlier mentioning Helfant and her role in developing the chart.  Numerous national newspapers covered it, and in each story, Sharon Helfant is credited with creating the chart.  John McCann is not mentioned.

C-Span caught the whole thing and it is now part of history.  Numerous newspapers wrote about it.  But yesterday, the campaign of candidate John McCann disputed that history.  Presumably with their candidate's approval, they issued a media statement that made this boast by the candidate:  "Yes, I authored the chart that killed Hillarycare."

The statement by John McCann's campaign continues:  "On Friday, a conservative blogger made an accusation regarding my involvement in stopping Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposal back in the early 90s when I was a fellow in former Senator Arlen Specter’s office (R-PA), insisting that I have overstated my role and plagiarized a graph used to stop Hillarycare.

The basis of these accusations stems from a CSPAN video in January 1994 where my boss at the time, former Senator Specter, credited Sharon Helfant (whom I never worked with) for creating a chart (I never saw) to help explain how bad Hillarycare was for American taxpayers."

The McCann campaign then includes a paragraph from the Congressional Record for August 10, 1994, at the tail end of the battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan.  By this time, it had been amended and re-amended.  The legislation went through more than 130 permutations and, in the end, was scrapped when the Democrats lost control of Congress in November 1994,and were unable to bring the bill up in 1995, as they had planned.  Here is that snippet from the Record:

Read it carefully.  "John McCann, an intern on my staff who helped me prepare the chart on the Mitchell health care bill."

Thousands of names of individuals and groups are read into the Congressional Record each year for everything from boy scout troops to the winners of fishing tournaments.  It is a  small favor, often bestowed by members of Congress.  Rarely does it become the centerpiece of someone's candidacy for Congress.

The McCann campaign also included a paragraph from a letter from Senator Specter's office to John McCann's professor at the Fels Center of Government, where he was a student:  "In the summer of 1994, the Senate rejected the Clinton proposal to take over one-seventh of the entire U.S. economy in large measure because of John McCann’s charts and graphs which clearly showed the flaws and weakness of the proposal."

Again, read it carefully:  "John McCann’s charts and graphs..." 

Plural.  As an intern, John McCann obviously worked on many updates and permutations of the original chart (which he now claims not to have seen, despite the news coverage of it, or Ms. Helfant, who he claims not to have known, despite her prominence on the Specter staff and her preeminence within that staff on matters related to health care). 

Of course, it is a grandiloquent letter of recommendation, which either means that Senator Specter's office was prone to that sort of thing or that they liked and appreciated John McCann's work as a college intern.  Neither alters the record, which is now clear.

McCann campaign confirms he's full of blarney

Since last summer, while he was still directly employed by the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County, John McCann has shopped around a tale about how he stopped HillaryCare and saved America.  Here is a transcript of a video recording of McCann telling his tall tale to the Sussex County Republican Committee on December 27, 2017. 

"I'm the only candidate with an actual proven record of doing things... I was gone (sic) to the United States Senate to take on the Clinton Health Care Plan.  I designed a chart, it was presented to the country, and the chart was credited -- by others, not by me -- with saving the United States from 16 years of government controlled healthcare." (Candidate John McCann, on video)

Many people familiar with the long battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan disputed John McCann's story.  They said they never heard of him and accused him of taking credit for the work of dozens of others.  They noted that there was a plethora of graphs and charts but that only one got national coverage.  It wasn't John McCann's.

The Clinton Health Care Plan began with a speech by President Bill Clinton in September 1993.  Legislation was introduced in November 1993.  Hearings were held and the debate went into 1994.  In January 1994, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) unveiled his famous chart that detailed the bureaucratic morass that was the Clinton Health Care Plan.  As the legislation was amended, dozens of subsequent charts were built off this one, noting those changes and updates.

Last week, we published a link to a C-Span video of the United States Senate Floor on January 27, 1994.  The video is 11 hours long and unedited.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?54084-1/senate-session

At two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) into it, Senator Specter speaks on the issue and appears with his famous chart.  About six minutes into his speech, he explains that staffer Sharon Helfant was responsible for creating it.  He goes on to explain how the Washington Post had a story a day earlier mentioning Helfant and her role in developing the chart.  Numerous national newspapers covered it, and in each story, Sharon Helfant is credited with creating the chart.  John McCann is not mentioned.

C-Span caught the whole thing and it is now part of history.  Numerous newspapers wrote about it.  But yesterday, the campaign of candidate John McCann disputed that history.  Presumably with their candidate's approval, they issued a media statement that made this boast by the candidate:  "Yes, I authored the chart that killed Hillarycare."

The statement by John McCann's campaign continues:  "On Friday, a conservative blogger made an accusation regarding my involvement in stopping Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposal back in the early 90s when I was a fellow in former Senator Arlen Specter’s office (R-PA), insisting that I have overstated my role and plagiarized a graph used to stop Hillarycare.

The basis of these accusations stems from a CSPAN video in January 1994 where my boss at the time, former Senator Specter, credited Sharon Helfant (whom I never worked with) for creating a chart (I never saw) to help explain how bad Hillarycare was for American taxpayers."

The McCann campaign then includes a paragraph from the Congressional Record for August 10, 1994, at the tail end of the battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan.  By this time, it had been amended and re-amended.  The legislation went through more than 130 permutations and, in the end, was scrapped when the Democrats lost control of Congress in November 1994,and were unable to bring the bill up in 1995, as they had planned.  Here is that snippet from the Record:

Read it carefully.  "John McCann, an intern on my staff who helped me prepare the chart on the Mitchell health care bill."

Thousands of names of individuals and groups are read into the Congressional Record each year for everything from boy scout troops to the winners of fishing tournaments.  It is a  small favor, often bestowed by members of Congress.  Rarely does it become the centerpiece of someone's candidacy for Congress.

The McCann campaign also included a paragraph from a letter from Senator Specter's office to John McCann's professor at the Fels Center of Government, where he was a student:  "In the summer of 1994, the Senate rejected the Clinton proposal to take over one-seventh of the entire U.S. economy in large measure because of John McCann’s charts and graphs which clearly showed the flaws and weakness of the proposal."

Again, read it carefully:  "John McCann’s charts and graphs..." 

Plural.  As an intern, John McCann obviously worked on many updates and permutations of the original chart (which he now claims not to have seen, despite the news coverage of it, or Ms. Helfant, who he claims not to have known, despite her prominence on the Specter staff and her preeminence within that staff on matters related to health care). 

Of course, it is a grandiloquent letter of recommendation, which either means that Senator Specter's office was prone to that sort of thing or that they liked and appreciated John McCann's work as a college intern.  Neither alters the record, which is now clear.

Did John McCann lie about his role in ClintonCare?

For months we've been hearing congressional candidate John McCann brag about stopping Hillary Care from happening in the 1990's.  The story goes that as a college intern (or "fellow" as he puts it) John McCann claims to have been responsible for ending Hillary Care... yep, all by himself.  McCann claims to have come up with a graph.  That's right.  A graph. 

First, a graph is just a prop -- a visual aid that a speaker makes come alive. 

McCann has been behaving like a self-important, overblown junior academic.  By pointing to himself, taking credit, he is ignoring all the hard work of all those Senators and Congressman and Rush Limbaugh and talk radio and the medical professionals and all those thousands of conservative activists and all the reams of studies and research and opinion pieces and thousands of graphs of all those conservative and libertarian think tanks -- not to mention the Republican legal staffs of both the House and the Senate.  Nope, not them... it was "me" says McCann. 

Second, it wasn't his graph.  The Senator he was interning for -- liberal Republican Arlen Specter -- gave credit to the graph's creator in a speech on the floor of the Senate.  Her name was mentioned in a Washington Post article. 

C-Span caught the whole thing... and now it is part of history. 

The web link below from C-Span is an 11-hour video of the U.S. Senate Floor on January 27, 1994.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?54084-1/senate-session

At two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) into it, Senator Specter speaks on the issue and appears with his huge chart.  About six minutes into his speech, he explains that staffer Sharon Helfant was responsible for creating it.  He goes on to explain how the Washington Posthad a story a day earlier mentioning Helfant and her role in developing the chart.  

Yep, C-Span caught the whole thing... and now it is part of history.  That history doesn't jive with the way congressional candidate John McCann has been bragging.

John McCann: "I got to stop drinking in the morning"

Yep, that's what candidate John McCann said as he -- the candidate who hopes to take on Democrat Josh Gottheimer -- stumbled about, mistaking a rural Republican Sheriff for an urban Democrat Mayor.  That was his excuse, "...drinking in the morning."  No kidding.  It is in his video, posted on YouTube, about twelve minutes into his speech.  Well, if that's what the candidate says... we got to go with it.

Candidate John McCann is a shambolic mess.

He launched a website the other day and who does it feature?  Yep, a leftist anti-Second Amendment mayor who blocked a gun range from being built in her town.  That's  what this idiot led with.   Amazing!  McCann's event was hosted by a member of the notorious Zisa family... yep, the liberal niece of far-left Democrat Loretta Weinberg's former running mate, up front, running the event for him.   Remarkable.

When he's not comparing himself to his mentor, the liberal Democrat-turned Republican-turned Democrat Arlen Specter, McCann is surrounding himself with the detritus of Christie "My Party Too" Whitman's administration -- some who have had the uncanny ability to remain in state employment during the regimes of liberal Democrats like Governors Jim McGreevey and Jon Corzine.  How did they manage to stay when so many loyal Republicans were fired?  Doubtless they will remain unaffected by the incoming administration of Phil Murphy.  How do they do it?  

As a college intern (or "fellow" as he puts it) John McCann claims to have been responsible for ending Hillary Care... yep, all by himself.  You see, he got out his crayons and came up with... wait for it... a graph.  That's right.  A graph.  And just like the typical self-important, overblown junior academic, he takes credit for the hard work of all those Senators and Congressman and Rush Limbaugh and talk radio and the medical professionals and all those thousands of conservative activists and all the reams of studies and research and opinion pieces and thousands of graphs of all those conservative and libertarian think tanks -- not to mention the Republican legal staffs of both the House and the Senate.  Nope, not them... it was "me" says McCann.  Yeah, sounds a little whacky to us too.

He also steals credit for coming up with the 2 percent cap on property taxes, despite a plethora of newspaper stories discussing caps as low as 1 1/2 percent nearly a decade before he claims to have thought of it.  Now we're getting into Al Gore territory here.  What's next?  Will he take credit for inventing the Internet?  Or maybe he's the last survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn?  Who knows?  Perhaps John McCann is a time traveler?  Or maybe it's just that he can't sort out the truth from fiction?

McCann actually mocks people who get involved in politics because they believe in something.  He's publicly eschewed right wing and left wing -- instead he came up with a new way to describe people like him:  The Chicken Wing of the GOP.  And what does the Chicken Wing stand for?  It stands for getting paid.  It is no big deal for a member of the Chicken Wing of the GOP to be employed by a Democrat office-holder.  The Chicken Wing exists to make its members some dough and they don't let principles or things like party loyalty or right and wrong get in the way of that. 

McCann's candidacy seems to be designed by the Democrats and run by the Democrats to do nothing but screw up the Republican primary.

How so?  Remember the Democrats' reaction to Steve Lonegan's announcement?  They attacked him from the DCCC in Washington, DC, and from Gottheimer's home base in Wyckoff and they have kept on attacking him -- in emails, press releases, fundraising letters.  That's what you do when you face an opponent you are afraid of. 

And what do the Democrats make of John McCann?  Not a word.  Not even a barely suppressed yawn.  Why should they?  As the Record noted in its opening story about him:  "John McCann, the attorney and longtime right-hand man to Bergen County Sheriff Michael Saudino." 

That's Michael Saudino -- the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County.  McCann is his right-hand man.  That's right, he is one of them.