Ominous signs

Well, Folks -

All the good folks who have been telling us for days and weeks and months and years (as more and more Americans' situation spiraled down the drain) how great the economy, labor-market, stock market, etc. were must have taken a bullet, because now - suddenly - THEY are complaining.

The self-serving vulture practices that have degraded us in order to uplift the Titans have finally come home to roost. Below is my letter to the Columbus Dispatch in response to their frontpage report on - apparently just discovered - "ominous signs."

- Uke Man

To the Editor,

There must be some mistake. The front page today said: “Ominous signs for the economy / Ohio has been losing ground to other states for years. But now, as Gov. Strickland begins to fill a huge budget hole, there are warnings that things might get worse.”

How can that be? Ohio and the nation have been in the hands of business-friendly Republicans for years (and got help earlier from “triangulator” Bill Clinton on welfare cuts, outsourcing via NAFTA and GAT, and by declaring the end of the “era of big government”).

Ohio has been cutting taxes, granting abatements, selling lottery tickets to take up the slack, “subcontracting” jobs to avoid expensive benefits, “privatizing” school bussing and food services, providing “vouchers” for business to open schools, making young people shoulder more of the cost of their college education, outsourcing inefficient high-paying jobs, and creating low-paying “service-sector” jobs to replace them.

And now, we are going to cut taxes more (almost to the amount of the predicted deficit) and lay off hundreds (maybe thousands) of government workers. Surely the “ominous signs” are illusory?

Why would anyone be unemployed? Why would young people leave Ohio? As a state we have walked the straight and narrow gospel of business since the days of Jimmy Rhodes. Please recheck your data. Certainly, Ohio MUST rate among the most prosperous states.

Yours,

Tom Harker