Mr. Obama, What Are You Doing for Her?

This past weekend some friends of ours asked them to join them at the Mount Carmel Festival at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church. They picked us up, and my buddy took Market Street downtown driving through Youngstown’s South Side, and the Uptown district. It was pitiful. Outside of government buildings, a random well fortified convenience store, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Buildings, it was void of much of anything. Empty storefront was followed by empty storefront. Scary people walked on the sidewalk. Sitting on the stoop of one vacant building was a lady dressed in pink…obviously stoned out of her mind. It was fairly depressing.

Looking at this mess, it struck me why I am a conservative. Youngstown has an unemployment rate of about 12%. Right now, it is a little higher than usual, but not by much. Since the mills closed in the late 1970’s, our unemployment rate has always been high. What is disturbing is that many of these folks are not only unemployed, but unemployable. They have been doomed to an existence with “no life chances”. They are wards of the state from the day they are born until they day that they die. It is sad. It is heart wrenching. Many, if not most, of these of these folks are minorities.

Government has supposedly tried to help these folks. Trillions of dollars have been spent since the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which destroyed these families by requiring any father figure to move out of the house in order for the mother to receive Aid to Dependent Children. Then it provided more money for each child the mother had. It took more than 25 years to correct the problem, but by then, it was too late. It became an acceptable life style.

But at the end of the day, government welfare is not the root of the problem. That belongs to government mishandling of business notwithstanding what political party is in charge. I can guaranty you that in the next 20 years, not one factory job will open up for these folks to get work because the government has decided that factories are bad. The government has decided profit is bad. Through whacko environmental regulations, bad foreign policy, bad monetary policy related to emerging market currencies, bad trade policy, and a complete lack of a sane energy policy, and I don’t mean the global warming crap, not only will no new jobs be created, we will lose what we have. Where are these people supposed to work?

When I was a kid, the night sky was lit red by the steel mills as they churned out product 24 hours per day with three shifts. Then the environmentalists came in. The mayor of Youngstown said when the Mahoning River flows clean; there will be no more steel mills in the Mahoning Valley. He was right on the money. What the environmentalists didn’t kill, the excessive union policies did. Even as factories were closing in droves, those that were left we still the object of strikes. And they left too.

Let’s not forget the robber barons who came into the area, knowing the handwriting was on the wall, and squeezed the last bit of money out as they shuttered the mills. Lykes Corporation is one. Victor Posner and his rape of Sharon Steel is another. It was criminal.

We were left to pick up the pieces. Under the Republican policies of Ronald Reagan, Bush 1, and the Blue Dog Democrat policies of Bill Clinton, things at least stabilized. But as the right looked the other direction, the left made its move. Now we have a President who is hell bent on destroying what is left of our industry with Cap and Trade policies based on voodoo computer models already proven to be wrong. He wants to degrade our health care system by taking from the 85% of us who are happy with our health insurance. He is enabling unions, which is admirable to a point, but which will make us even less competitive in the world than we already are. Finally, he and is Treasury buddies still refuse, like Bush 1, Clinton and Bush 2, to address the problem of a Chinese currency artificially valued at 30% below our currency making Chinese products 30% cheaper to produce before we are out of the gate.

Obama says he is going to make millions of "green" jobs. Bull. THERE ARE NO GREEN JOBS. Do a little research and see how that plan worked for Spain. China and India and Russia and Brazil are laughing in our faces.

Just ask yourself, if you wanted to open a factory, why would you come to Ohio? If labor is cheaper in China and environmental regulations are cheaper in China and materials are cheaper in China and governmental regulation of finance is less stringent in China and taxes are cheaper in China…where do you think the factory is going to go? Maybe you would want to come to Ohio for the great weather.

Unless the nut cases from both the right and the left, but especially the left, are thrown out of the political system and replaced with pragmatic people who aren’t steeped in ideology but in what is good for the American people, you might find yourself sitting on a stoop dressed in a pink jump suit stoned out of your mind.

By the way, when we returned home 4 hours later…the lady in pink was still there...still stoned. President Obama, what are you going to do for her?