Why Traficant Matters

Last night I had the occasion to attend a TEA party rally in Rogers, Ohio. For those of you not from this area, Rogers is a TINY burg in Columbiana County. It is home of the most notorious “flea market” in Ohio, often raided for sale of certain types of contraband and illegal goods. It is off the beaten track, and not freeway accessible. The venue for this event was the Rogers Auction Barn. This is the real McCoy. It is difficult to find…way off the road. It is a stark room made of concrete block, with a “stage” in front and a huge warehouse behind it.

This was my first trip to this facility. The event was supposed to be a Town Hall meeting. Charlie Wilson, the current 6th Ohio District Congressman, was invited to speak. Also on the agenda was a presentation by former Congressman James Traficant (17 District – OH), fresh out of jail. Traficant has taken out petitions in several Congressional districts stating he will run for Congress as an independent in a district that he thinks he can win. Odds are it will be the Ohio 6th District, which stretches from the southern Youngstown suburbs 350 miles down the Ohio River to Ironton.

Mr. Traficant is somewhat of a pariah to the political powers that be in all of the districts, but especially the 17th which includes Youngstown City. The press continually ridicules him. He is a joke on the national media with recent appearances on Greta Van Susteren’s show, among others, making local politicos wince. You either like this guy, or you hate him, with few in between. He is known for his antics in Congress. And since being released from jail, has chosen to hang out with some Native Americans in hopes of establishing and Indian Casino in the Mahoning/Trumbull Counties area.

Charlie Wilson, true to form, was missing in action. Traficant was a given. He can’t resist an audience and a microphone. But the folks from Rogers, and surrounding Columbiana County, aren’t his constituency. He does well with blue collar industrial workers with strong ethnic backgrounds. So when I walked in the door last night, my teeth just about dropped out of my mouth. The hall was packed.

I estimate about 200 or more heartland Americans showed up to hear what the disgraced, convicted felon former Congressman from Youngstown had to say. They applauded when he walked into the room. They laughed at his self deprecating jokes about his unfortunate incarceration. They listened when he talked about the unbridled power of government, the IRS, and the Justice Department. The applauded at his anecdotes about his days in Congress and his legislative coups, particularly changing the burden of proof in IRS audit matters.

At the end, they lined up at two microphones asking him questions that many of them had either typed or written out. This wasn't your normal political audience. These folks were angry. They were very angry, and were looking for a voice. They came to check Traficant out. And many of them stood up and said that they heard he was a crook, but after listening to him it didn’t matter any more given what is going on in Washington today. The livelihood of many of these folks have been lost to bad trade policy, bad tax policy, and bad environmental policy. The only thing government has done for them is to go back for more when there is nothing else to give.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with Traficant, or support or oppose him, is irrelevant. These folks are looking for a voice, and they want an angry voice. An Associated Press reporter was there to report on the proceedings. I am not sure she understood the importance of what was happening last night. I am not sure she understood the frustration of the “just plain folks” who made the effort to find this auction house looking for a voice. They are as mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it anymore. Charlie Wilson and his ideologue cohorts are tone deaf to their demands and needs.

If Traficant decides to run in the 6th District, he could win. The disdain for Charlie Wilson and those in Washington was as clear as could be. They called Charlie Wilson “the Ghost” because he is never around. The Democratic establishment doesnt care; and the national Republican Party is not paying attention notwithstanding pleas from several Republican candidates to look over here.

Traficant is a force to be reckoned with. There are those who feel that the best way to get back at Washington is to send him back to Congress. The major parties cannot be dismissive towards his efforts. His anger and the anger of the voters are simpatico.

I’m just sayin’.

History Texas Style

Fox News ran a story this morning about the upcoming battle in Texas over guidelines relating to the contents of history textbooks. Apparently it is “so goes Texas, so goes the nation” time. Because Texas is the second biggest buyer of history textbooks in the country, textbook publishers incorporate those guidelines into their history books which are distributed nationwide. There are only four major textbook publishing houses in the country…all of whom want a bite at the Texas textbook apple.

Fox News slanted the story as an attempted liberal takeover of the Texas educational system. After my own limited reading on the subject, I concluded the opposite was true. The guidelines are established by the elected 15 member Texas Board of Education, who has hearings on various textbook issues and then establishes the guidelines. The current makeup of the Board is 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats. Within the Republican block there is some dissent from a moderate group and a more conservative group rooted in fundamental Christianity. The latest go around of controversial note was several years ago on the teaching of evolution vs. creationism.

Depending on the news story you read, the latest go around seems to be based on a left wing group attempting to establish revisionist history by proposals that would eliminate references to the role of religion in the founding of the country; eliminating any references to Christmas or Veterans Day; eliminating references to various historical figures such as Washington or Lincoln; and an emphasis on figures such as Cesar Chavez.

While that makes for good copy, the opposite seems to be true. The conservative makeup of the Board of Education almost assures defeat of any such efforts while allowing debate as to whether Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, is worthy of being included in Texas history books.

While Texas conservatives may be acting in ways that make even make my right wing eyebrows rise, the problem is rooted in left wing ideology permeating the public school systems. Most social studies teachers are Democrats, and liberal if not downright progressive in their political views. The political ideology comes out in the teaching. Of particular note are school systems that put Christopher Columbus on trial for his crimes against native inhabitants of the western hemisphere. Like he was responsible for western diseases that swept through native populations! Those diseases would have reached here sooner or later, with or without Columbus.

Downplaying or denigrating the role of religion in our society, and the importance of the Judeo-Christian ethic is another tactic of left wing revisionists. And of course, slavery….and colonialism…it goes on and on.

History is. It just happens. There is social history and economic history and cultural history and comparative history and “history-history” of the timeline variety. It is open to many interpretations. But one thing I can tell you for sure. Social progressives and liberals tend to view the history of the United States in the negative and look for the sins of the nation, while conservatives look for the strengths and goodness of the nation that has served as a beacon and example for the world, no matter how imperfect America may be. On its worst day, American values of freedom and equality are far better than anything that can be found anywhere else, now or in the past.

So if the Texas Board of Education bends to the right in an effort to stave off those who would portray George Washington and Thomas Jefferson as devils incarnate because they owned slaves…good for them.

But guys…Thurgood Marshall should be included. Really!!

Flipping America the Bird

The left wing cabal currently running Washington, along with its cohorts at CNN, NBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times, are sounding the alarm about the rise of right wing extremism in the United States. This past Sunday the NYT ran an opinion piece about the John Birch Society being one of the sponsors of the annual CPAC convention (the Conservative Political Action Committee) this past month in Washington. The article echoed television commentators going ballistic over the “extremism” of the TEA party movement and how it is taking over the Republican Party, which apparently has “has no discernible national constituency beyond the scattered, often impotent remnants of aging country club Republicanism.”Wow!

The article goes on to make accusations such as those opposing Obama’s agenda quietly approve of the actions of the man who flew a plane into the IRS offices in Texas. They also tacitly approve of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. It also warned of the violent language coming from the spokespeople of the TEA party movement, as these folks are apparently ready to take up their guns and pitch forks and storm any government installation that happens to be handy. Big Sister Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has once again taken up the refrain that the biggest danger to US security is from America’s conservative right wing. Meanwhile, the jihadists are attempting to blow up airplanes filled with people and shoot up military installations as our government supplies lawyers to those that destroyed the Trade Center on 9/11.

Those espousing this point of view are right, no pun intended. Our elected government officials should be afraid. They should be afraid of an angry American electorate who was lied to in the general election by a man who promised a post partisan Washington and to govern from the center. What we got was a tone deaf left wing ideologue hell bent on shoving through his radical agenda using bribes, threats, lies, and every scummy political trick known to man. We should forget what he promised the moderate independent center of American politics in the last election, and the message those folks sent to him in Virginia, New Jersey, and especially the Massachusetts special election. Obama and his cabal have in effect flipped the bird to the American public, calling them stupid, and telling us to shut up because Holy Father Obama knows what’s best for us.

Do these folks really think outraged Americans are going to bow down to their omnipotent presence? Hell no! We are going to react in ways that will protect the rule of law, and our way of life using government as a tool when necessary, but only when necessary and as minimally as possible. We will take to the streets. We will march. We will protest. We will exercise our rights of assembly and free speech; and Obama, and Reid, and Pelosi can complain about our ignorance all they want.

Nancy Pelosi double downed on the bird flip when she told ABC News that Democratic Congressmen should ignore what the public wants and sacrifice their jobs for Obamacare. We don’t know what is good for us. She actually said that!!! She told her guys to ignore their constituents. She is willing to sacrifice the Democratic Party control of Congress in order to achieve the left wing ideological dream of socialized medicine. I think that says it all. These folks are obsessed with their agenda and drunk with power. It has taken America a year to wake up to what these folks are doing and how they are going about doing it.

The American public knows the score. It can’t be fooled anymore. And if that makes some of these left wing nut jobs fearful, then good for the American public!!!

So to Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, with all due respect to the New York Times, right back at ya!!!

Youngstown Resurgent - The Miracle on the Mahoning

No matter how you look at it, this past month has been a good month for the Youngstown/Warren metropolitan area. While the rest of Ohio, and indeed the nation, languish in economic limbo, this little pocket of the rust belt is shedding its image and becoming a hot bed of economic activity. The recent mammoth economic downturn is giving America a taste of what this area went through thirty five years ago when the steel mills closed down and the area lost 30,000 direct steel jobs, with estimates of up to 100,000 support jobs.

Now, we are resurgent and ready to lead Ohio and the country into economic prosperity as we finally reap the benefits of thirty five years of trying to get our act together. We did it. There is still a long way to go, but we have gained national attention, and people are taking a look and liking what they see.

GM LORDSTOWN. That facility is becoming ground zero for the new GM. It will be the preeminent GM production facility producing the Cruz and possibly one other model. The announcement yesterday of an addition of a third shift is good news for here, and the country, as Lordstown consolidates and strengthens its presence in the region.

V&M STAR’s selection of Youngstown/Girard as the location for its $350,000,000.00 new pipe production facility next to its existing Brier Hill plant is a stunner, creating untold numbers of construction jobs and 350 good paying manufacturing jobs in an area where we were told to forget about any additional manufacturing. A new pipe mill in Youngstown/Girard…who’d have thought? Ground breaking is in April.

TMK IPSCO ( parent of Koppel Tubular Corporation) has announced it has leased the former Sharon Tube facility in Brookfield, and will be begin production of pipe connectors in April. This is the quintessential small business, employing 40 -50 new hires.

REVERE DATA, as San Francisco based research firm supplying information to various financial institution, is located in downtown Youngstown. It could have gone anywhere, but Turning Technologies and the Youngstown Business Incubator which has garnered national attention, attracted it here. It starts with 10 -20 employees, but will expand to close to 100.

SEVERSTAL STEEL has announced it is restarting its production facility in Warren. Preliminary start up work is underway with an unspecified number of employees being called back in the next few months. The plant has been idle since early 2008.

This doesn’t even begin to touch the thousands of call center jobs that have moved into the area at various locations including downtown Youngstown, Boardman and Austintown; and the sale of Gorant’s Candy to a local concern based in Warren; and the expansion of the Exal Aluminium (one of the largest beverage aluminum can producers in the country).

While Forbes Magazine dissed our region this month calling it one of the worst places to live in the United States…we were ranked higher than any other Ohio City, including Dayton, Toledo and Cleveland (deemed to the worst city in the United States). But Entrepreneur Magazine listed Youngstown as one of the top ten cities in the nation to found a new business, along with Atlanta, San Diego, Orlando, and Chapel Hill….not bad company to be in.

All of us who live here freely admit that we have problems, chief of which is a systemic high unemployment rate made up of folks who have become permanent victims of the largesse of federal social policies. These folks aren’t going away, resulting in a permanently high area unemployment rate. That is an issue for another day.

But for the most part, Youngstown has turned to the corner. Success breeds success, and as other companies take notice of what is going on here either through trade journals or the news, or through sending businessmen to the area to deal with Youngstown businesses, I believe the Youngstown area will continue to shed its rust belt image and not only lead Ohio out of the recession, but become on of the economic engines of the state reclaiming it rightful place. This is a great place to live.

Kudos to the local politicians, the Chamber of Commerce, Youngstown State University, and to the numerous other local promoters, believers, and dreamers, who have helped to establish what Congressman Tim Ryan calls, the Miracle on the Mahoning. It has been a long time coming.

America the Dependent

Whether we like it or not, America is becoming a nation of dependents. More and more Americans are on the public dole. It is becoming worse instead of better. Unless America moves to make folks more responsible for themselves, the nation will stagnate and decline.

And, no, I am not talking about the proverbial welfare queen. Sure, that is part of the story, and a growing part of the story. School lunch programs turned into school breakfast programs which turned into school dinner programs with students in some school districts dependent upon the school for three meals a day plus day care services pre and post school hours. Some of these even extend into the summer, making children of people already receiving public assistance dependent on the school year round for food, even past the age of 18. What does that teach that student? The government is the family bread winner. Not a good lesson!

That is the classic story. But here’s the skinny. Right now more than 53% of all Americans depend on the government for some degree of monetary support. Included in that number are government workers, social security or federal pension beneficiaries, housing subsidies, food stamps, Medicaid beneficiaries, and federal school grant programs. This number will continue to grow, perhaps approaching 60% as baby boomers age.

The problem of government dependency is a problem for all Americans, not just the poor. And it is becoming more and more institutionalized. Go down to the Department of Human Services and watch folks with no hope. It is tragic, and we did that to those people. Seniors, hoping for a good retirement on social security, are sorely disappointed when the reality of old age sets in. For many, the amount of their social security checks will barely cover the cost of their medications.

It can’t keep going this way. Government needs to change it philosophy across the board. It just isn’t a welfare question, or a social security question, it is in the total governmental approach to governing. The government should not solely be concerned with “payouts”. The government should be concerned with policies that foster economic growth, to provide the framework to allow individuals take charge of their lives. It should foster a sane trade policy that benefits the American worker. It should pursue a sane tax policy to encourage new and expanded businesses. It should teach self reliance and individual responsibility in the schools. It should teach Americans that the best the thing they can do for their country is to learn to take care of themselves.

Unless that happens, America is on a road that ends in a not so good place. We need freedom – responsibility – common sense. These are the three building blocks to a better America. Without this kind of approach, a nation founded on independence will become bogged down in dependence.

Utopian Detroit

A show on PBS last night focused on the Detroit transportation system. It included a history of mass transportation in the city, and its demise in the 1950’s in conjunction with the explosion of the Detroit auto industry. It followed the development of commercial and residential neighborhoods along the grid of a light rail system built in the early 20th Century. It then followed the demise of those neighborhoods with the construction of the nation’s first freeway system coupled with the dismantling of the city’s streetcar system supposedly at the behest of General Motors.

The program attributed Detroit’s economic woes and racial dysfunction to lack of a mass transit system, specifically light rail. If only Detroit were to develop such a system, industry would return to the city as it would become a center for green transportation technology. Build the light rail system along Woodward Avenue, and blacks and whites would ride it holding hands; together bringing down the walls of racism.

Utopians come in all shapes and sizes, and have always played a role in American politics. But with the first Progressive administration since Jimmy Carter now in Washington, utopian schemes take on a more onerous tone as social experimentation becomes the raison d’être of an increasingly powerful and aggressive central government.

Most of the schemes are unworkable and based on hope rather than reality. While I am a big supporter of the development of rail transit systems, both within and between cities, it’s more of an issue of convenience rather than Utopian hopes and dreams. Car and air travel have become such a hassle, rail is an attractive alternative. That ought to be the motivation for these kinds of worthwhile projects. They will make getting from Point A to Point B easier and faster.

What they won’t do is have any direct effect on economic woes or social injustice. That’s not to say they won’t have an indirect effect. Any kind of mass public works project will have a stimulus effect on the economy, something the Obama administration missed in its last “stimulus” package. Generalized spending doesn’t do it. But specific construction projects…like upgrading our heavy and light rail infrastructure, or adding third lanes to I-71…or I-76 across the Pennsylvania Turnpike, will have a dramatic effect. How about a campaign to replace our aging bridges and water and sewer systems? And if the economy improves, so will the racial divide as all Americans will benefit from an improved economy.

Champagne wishes and caviar dreams are great for academics and television addicts. In real life, the result may be something less than desired. After all, the vision of an inner city freeway system coupled with broad avenues and boulevards which are the hallmark of Detroit started out as a utopian vision.

Right here in Youngstown, Ohio, turning Federal Street into a pedestrian mall 30 years ago was supposed to bring us a user friendly urban paradise. It got us a ghost town. When they put it back the way it was, it was like blood started to flow through the main arteries, and wonder of wonders, there is life in downtown again.

Utopians are dreamers. There will always be a place for dreamers in our society telling us what life would be like in the best of all worlds…in fact, they demand the best of all worlds. But none of them have ever figured out how to get it because it is impossible to get.

Rather than change the world, I would settle for any utopian idea that might get me, like I said, from Point A to Point B. That would be a significant accomplishment.

America Adrift

America is adrift. The country as a whole has rejected the extreme left wing policies of the Obama administration. After a year of ignoring public opinion, it took Republican wins in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts to get the attention of President Obama and his cohorts in Congress. The December deal between the unions and the administration relating to health care reform finally put an end to the public’s belief that this was a new era in politics that transcended special interests and partisanship. Barack turned out to be more of the same, but only worse.

Of course, these folks only partially got the message. They believe that this reversal of fortune was as a result of their failure to communicate with the public effectively. No, the public knew exactly what was going on, and the substance of what they were trying to do. It wasn’t the message. It was the policy that was rejected.

Now we have a disconnected administration giving pep talks to its party to pass legislation the public overwhelmingly doesn’t want. “Don’t pay any attention to them” is Obama’s message. Let’s try to back-door it. In the meantime, the administration seems to be floundering in foreign policy and on terrorism. On top of that, it is exhibiting a “what do we do next” kind of approach to the economy. And let's not forget its random attacks on the Supreme Court and various cable news channels. This isn't a pretty picture.

Over on the Republican side, notwithstanding its political successes in state elections and its resurgence in the polls for the fall elections, the GOP has failed to produce a single leader that can give voice to America’s frustration. It is simply kind of oozing around with all sorts of things bubbling up out of the lava of public discontent, everything but a leader. Included in the goo is the right wing tea party movement, with several different versions of it vying for dominance. Out of New England comes the resurrection of the Rockefeller Republicans as evidenced by Scott Brown, a fiscal conservative but social moderate. I’m not quite sure who…or what…is in the middle. The two possible leaders that personify both ends of this dichotomy are Palin on the right, and Romney in the middle. Now there's a pair.

So America is adrift in a very dangerous world with an administration so steeped in leftist ideology and its narcissistic view of itself, it has lost any realistic touch with the American electorate and is planning a continuation of the 2009 policies in 2010…which are toxic to Democratic candidates in the fall. The Republicans are trying to define and articulate what their political position will be in the fall election of 2010 and the big one in 2012, and no one seems ready to take on the role.

I have never experienced anything like this before, where the country is kind of muddling along with the body politic pushing policy in one direction or another, but completely rudderless. While it is an intellectual curiosity to watch this happen, these are dangerous times in unchartered waters.

We need a captain. If you find one, let me know.