I have a secret

Don't tell anyone, but I don't care that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, nor that Mike Huckabee is a Baptist and that Hillary Clinton is a Methodist. If it mattered I would be a Hillary Clinton supporter since I am a Methodist. I am anything but a Hillary supporter.

Much has been made of values voters ever since they were 'discovered' in 2004. This election cycle has been about all religion all the time it seems lately anyway. I have somewhat of a suspicious belief that our Mainstream media sees this as a way to make religious people look silly.

I look for a candidate that agrees with my values. There is no candidate right now that I am 100% behind, religious or not. I have very little agreement with the Mormon church on theological matters, but I will not be attending the church of Mitt Romney. If he is the Republican candidate I will have to decide if he is the proper person to lead our country. I like a lot about Romney, I don't know yet if he is my candidate, but his religion matters not at all.

I am very conservative and consider myself quite religious, but think this debate of Mormon or not Mormon to be silly and a destraction. Here is a question I find interesting: Do the candidates believe that the money I earn is mine or theirs? Do the candidates consider the best way to fix health care to be the free market or a government agency? Do the answers to education concerns lie mostly in families or the Department Of Education? Do we help poor people more by giving them incentives to climb the social ladder, or by giving them handouts? These are important to me, but I see very little of them covered in the news. I hope some citizens agree with me. Time will tell.

Akron, Ohio A case study

I have written in the past at length my belief that we get the leadership and the republican government (note small r in republican) that we demand. Akron Ohio is a case where I believe this has played out.

Akron Ohio is a medium size city. A former industrial powerhouse as the rubber capitol of the world. Akron like most industrial cities has had its problems. They have a Mayor Don Pluesquallic that has been in office roughly since prohibition. (OK not quite). He is now mayor for life. The only competition he gets is occasionally from within his own party. He is a Democrat but I would object just as much to a Republican in a similar situation. We have one of those in Cuyahoga Falls which is a neighbor to Akron, and I similarly think the voters are wrong.

Recently the City Council chairman Marco Summerville was charged with felony possession of trying to take a gun onto an airplane. Mr Summervile has a gun carry permit but of course that does not entitle him to carry it on a plane. Mr. Summerville plea bargained his sentence to a misdemeanor and went on his way. I have no other grievance with Mr. Summerville other than his current legal troubles. I really don't know what kind of representative he is to his ward.

Yesterday he was re-elected as council president. Mr. Summerville has payed precious little in consequences for his error in bringing a gun onto an airplane. Let's contrast that with what an ordinary citizen might have received for a similar offense. I doubt that the plea process would have gone quite as quickly. Oh I may have forgot to mention that today the Beacon Journal reports that Mr. Summerville immediately has called for the Police chief to resign. I'm sure there is no relationship between his arrest and his call for resignation.

So the city council sees no problem with their council chairman being charged with a felony. I am going to go out on a limb and predict that his voters will overwhelmingly re-elect him when he stands for election. Like most inner cities Akron has a problem with gangs and thugs. Whenever there is a shooting in Akron there is the call for less guns. I don't happen to agree with this call but again we have a council president convicted of gun charges, and ---deafening silence.

My belief has been for some time that when the citizens hold their elected leaders responsible for crime, corruption and outright laziness something will be done. In the article I referenced earlier the Police Union chief referred to Mr. Summerville as "no friend to the Police. I quote:


''The last guy who knows what's good for the police department is Marco Sommerville,'' said Paul Hlynsky, head of the department's Fraternal Order of Police union.
Sommerville ''has never been a friend of the police department. He's made some very anti-police comments during his tenure on City Council.
''The only thing I can figure is Marco has one of his buddies in line to be police chief so he can further his efforts to influence the department. . . . To me, he's the enemy of the police officers.'''

This is of course the statement of one person and a person who may have a grudge, but in my life the Akron city government both in council and the Mayors office have been hostile to the Police department. The very department they need to help keep their inner city safe. My own name for Akron has long been Crack-ron. I grew up in Akron but now am a resident of a local suburb, because I can.

Once again, the voters get the government they deserve, because they keep re-electing it. Shouldn't we demand more of a council president than we would a local truck driver or factory worker? Akron doesn't seem to think so. I'll bet your town doesn't either, unless you are talking about some other representative, they will think theirs is just fine.

Sherrod Brown and the Big Dipper

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown misses the Big Dipper. A news report on local channel 3 tells us that the Senator wrote a letter urging them to keep the roller coaster where it is in the now closed permanently closed Geauga Lake Amusement Park.

So many problems here. Let me say that like the Senator I will miss the park. I had many enjoyable days with my parents and now my kids at this park. Recently it was also the best value in the area for entertainment. That does not preclude the fact that this property belongs to a private entity, Cedar Fair. While Senator Brown did not threaten any kind of legal or legislative action I find his using his official capacity to try to sway a private entity to change their course of action with their property, totally and wholly inappropriate.

Senator it is not you property!!! This gets to the heart of what is ailing our republic today. Politicians see their role as protecting the few over the many. By the few I am not talking about Cedar Fair. I have no love or hate for this corporation. Personally I think amusement parks are too darn expensive. That being said they are private property owners. That means something. Private property rights are at the center of what the founders went to war over, but our modern politicians think they know better what to do with other peoples property than they do. They must not be allowed to stand.

One last point about the roller coaster itself. The company wants to sell it to another park. Senator Brown thinks they should keep it where it is, at a closed amusement park. If it is sold, and refurbished maybe it can give another community enjoyment for another generation, but then there would be no press release if that happened would there?

Hillary Hoover

Democrats like to keep reminding us about Herbert Hoover. In our revisionist history we all know that Herbert Hoover single handed caused the Great Depression and FDR was the savior. Now of course Hoover deserves blame, but not for the reason that the nanny state party would like.

After the stock market decline and the downturn in the economy, Hoover gathered business leaders to get them to agree not to fire people until things got better. This was a monumentally bad action. While not single handed causing the Depression it did contribute.

Today Hillary Clinton is advocating the same type of policy in the housing slump. She is advocating a moratorium on foreclosures on sub-prime mortgages and a freeze on interest rates for five years. By the way, this is supposed to fix the crisis.

Politicians of all stripes need a victim and a villain (another legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. Government as savior. A piece for another day). Cases like this where there are no sympathetic characters don't play well for them. While there are exceptions to the generalization, we have banks in the interest of larger profits offered high interest loans to people that usually would not qualify for financing. Used as a way to increase their credit score by responsible people I believe these loans have a legitimate purpose. Banks sold too many of these to bad risks. No sympathy here.

On the other side the vast majority of these were either people who could not afford the loans or people that thought they were going make millions flipping houses. Of course when the sales of homes slowed down these people were stuck with properties they could not afford. Once again few sympathetic characters. When the government steps in to help them out, these borrowers will learn that no matter how bad your judgement is, the government will step in to save you. The banks will learn the same thing. No incentive to practice good judgement.

Besides the fact that neither side deserves to be bailed out, this will have disastrous financial consequences. The banks that issued these loans now have to absorb the losses. if prevented from moving to foreclose on these properties in default we will be forcing more strain on their balance sheets. For this sector of the economy to recover it has to get back to receiving money on solvent legitimate loans. Forcing them to tie up this money in bad loans is prolonging the sectors' recession.

The actions by Hoover helped prolong the downturn that turned into the Great Depression. I am not saying if enacted the plan by Ms. Clinton would do that, but for that sector of the economy it could do just that. It could push the duration of this housing slump out years. Presently the economy may be able to withstand the housing slump, but if actions like this stretch its duration and maybe make it worse, the economy may also slip into recession. These are exactly the wrong actions for our economy. We must demand more from our elected leaders than hollow emotional responses to problems. We need adults in Washington. Ms. Clinton clearly is not.

The Forgotten Man

I finished reading this book a couple of weeks back. (Get it here) My recommendation is get it at the library, buy it from Amazon or borrow it. It is the most important book of its type of our generation.

The history of the Great Depression has been revised so drastically. We were all taught in school how FDR came in and instituted these programs, the Supreme Court tried to thwarted him and after all was implemented all was happy ever after. When looked at closer we see that recovery from the downturn that started the Depression was not realized until World War II.

The most relevant thing is the similarity to today. The most destructive thing that happened in the Depression was the attack on wealth. Taxes were structured simply to target income and wealth. The government made success an enemy. Class warfare was born as political tool. This is very relevant to today. Since Government intervention became such a large part of the plan special interest groups were born. There were always groups that aligned with parties in power, I don't mean to imply that wasn't so. Prior to this period though, the government did not hand out support to one group over another. Throughout our history since then, the spoils of won elections were power and goodies to friendly groups. My person opinion is that Roosevelt and his advisers did not set out to create this way of life, it developed over time.

I do not intend to portray Democrats (Progressives) of that era as conniving disingenuous schemers. I truly believe they believed that government regulation and intervention would be the boost that the average person needed to get over the hump toward success. Careful analysis though shows us that just as today when you set out to help poor people by forcibly taking others' property you hurt the very people you set out to help. You see, the rich are not going to be hurt by higher taxes. They are rich after all. What they will curtail is the actions that help society. They stop putting their capital at risk. Instead of starting or expanding a business, they put it into safer investments. Instead of loaning money to a start up corporation they may invest in government bonds that are tax free.

The relevance to today comes in the things that the Democratic party is planning if they win the White House and both houses of Congress. In the Depression the government decided that electrification was not progressing fast enough. Through the TVA and other such projects they went into competition with private enterprise. There were many companies making great en roads into spreading electricity. Over time these companies either went out of business or changed their business direction. This was tragic. When the crash came one of the few expanding sectors of the economy was energy. Being in direct competition caused them to not invest and be in direct competition with government.

Our equivalent to this is health care. Many companies today are investing in more imaginative health insurance plan. Flexible Savings Accounts are a way to do this. Some companies have gone to high deductible lower cost insurance that only covers high dollar procedures. The savings is turned back to the employees to be spent on day to day medical procedures. With a little loosening of the government lock other market based solutions could come forth. Opening up heath insurance across state lines would add competition and enable dollar savings that way. The 'Universal Health Care' plans being floated in this elections season can only lead to disaster. They will put the government in competition with private enterprise even more and drive more businesses out of the market. They did just that in the nineties when they bought up all of childhood inoculations. They set the price, they set the rules, and the suppliers got out. The logical result then and in the future is shortages. We cannot let that happen. We must empower the market. Only that will make Health care better.

I encourage anyone who may read this to read this book. Follow my link above or get it from the library, but read it. Our future is at stake.