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Kasich fails to balance equation

3/24/2011

Kudos to Blade Editor David Kushma. He hit the nail on the head with his March 20 op-ed column, "Kasich budget lacks a balanced approach."

First-year algebra students learn that you cannot balance an equation by affecting only one side. Both sides have to be affected equally to balance.

Obviously, Gov. John Kasich doesn't remember this from his public schooling. Or maybe he has conveniently forgotten this fact. And while he can strut his "no tax increase" pledge before the afternoon tea drinkers, the fact is that he has guaranteed tax increases by proxy.

By refusing to face the reality that Ohio has to have increased revenues -- and refusing to take responsibility for those increases -- he has virtually guaranteed that local and county taxes will have to be adjusted. But the important point is that his fingerprints won't be on those adjustments.

He has let businesses and the wealthy off the hook, so those adjustments will fall squarely on middle-class wage earners.

Local businesses take note: The more we pay in local and county taxes, the less we have to spend locally. The less we have to spend locally, fewer jobs are created.

By refusing to balance the equation, Governor Kasich has set up Ohio to feel the effects of the recession for a long time after he's gone.

Oh, maybe that's the important point.

Ron J. Bores

Fostoria

Hold the giddiness over Boeing grant

Giddy over a government grant for Boeing's KC-46 A military aircraft and the jobs it brings to Ohio, state Rep. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo) demonstrated in a March 3 Readers' Forum letter the same stinking thinking that permeates politics from Toledo to Washington ("Good for Boeing; good for Ohio").

Tiptoeing through the shallow end of the thought process, Ms. Fedor never asks the deeper question: What is the source of those funds? The answer, of course, is that those dollars are taken from us through taxation.

Ms. Fedor could have addressed the critical question of what happened to the jobs we would have created with that money by buying a car, taking our spouse to dinner, or leaving it in the bank for new entrepreneurs to borrow for the creation or expansion of their businesses. Those jobs never come into existence.

It's what's called "the seen and the unseen." The unseen are the wealth-creating jobs in the private sector, the seen are the high-profile jobs in the bloated military-industrial complex.

Jim Boehm

Drummond Road

Liberals shaped the public sector

Liberals, both Democrat and Republican, together with their greedy allies in organized labor have only themselves to blame for the attempts by conservatives in several states to eliminate collective bargaining for public employees.

During the past 30 or 40 years, public employees in several states secured the right to bargain collectively for wages and benefits.

Unfortunately, union-supported liberal politicians have been in control of city, county, and state governments as well as school systems.

These politicians have been in charge of negotiating contracts with public employees.

Liberal officeholders, unable to divorce themselves from the public employee unions that provide them with political and financial support, have in far too many instances been overly generous in granting union demands.

As a result, public employees have been granted perks and benefits as well as wages that exceed what is available in much of the private sector. There is no better example than the way city government in Toledo has operated.

Conservatives feel that public-sector collective bargaining is a sham any time union-backed liberals are in charge. The results are inflated budgets.

Liberals are generous with other people's money. Had they and their union allies been a bit more parsimonious in their desires, the wolf would not be at their door.

John M. Stewart

Maumee

Natural gas can meet energy needs

Your March 17 editorial "Nuclear lessons" is an open and honest opinion about nuclear energy and future energy needs. While nuclear may offer a respite from the traditional energy sources you mentioned as either dirty fossil fuels -- coal and oil -- or with limited technology, you failed to mention natural gas.

The cleanest burning of all fossil fuels, natural gas is no longer a bridge to the next big energy thing. Natural gas is now.

Emissions of particles from natural gas combustion are 90 percent lower than oil and 99 percent lower than coal. Combustion of natural gas emits almost 30 percent less carbon dioxide than oil and 45 percent less than coal.

Even Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore has championed natural gas, stating that, with greenhouse gas concerns, the only alternative to nuclear at the necessary energy levels is natural gas.

The green initiative, which has become a hallmark of our community, is met and exceeded by natural gas. With 97 percent of all natural gas used in the United States produced in North America, this becomes our energy source, alleviating dependence on foreign interests.

While some are decrying efforts to extract the vast pockets of natural gas that sit beneath Ohio as environmentally unacceptable, with the income it will generate and the jobs it will create, we can't have it both ways.

Our best energy option seems to be readily available and apparent with natural gas.

Chris Kozak

Communications & Community Relations Manager Columbia Gas of Ohio Toledo

Are lawmakers earning their pay?

We have police officers and firefighters who at any moment may have to put their lives on the line for us. They often work more than 40 hours a week and don't receive $60,000 paychecks.

We have state lawmakers working part-time who receive $60,000 as base pay ("Proposal to cut pay for lawmakers stalls," March 21). These lawmakers want to change the salaries and benefits of others but not their own.

Ohio has just lost another brave officer ("Man is charged with murder in killing of Sandusky officer," March 21). Are our lawmakers going to tell his family he's not worth his pay and benefits?

Betty Lorenz

Martha Avenue

Police officers face many challenges

In Ottawa Hills, an officer responds to a motorcyclist who failed to stop, uses his firearm, and is now in jail. In Sandusky, an officer attempts to stop a man on a bicycle and is killed.

One acted too fast, the other too slow.

How sad it is that we hire, train, and pay individuals to enforce our laws and, when they are called upon to make an instant decision, they wind up in jail or dead.

Ned Plummer

Hagley Road

Stricter gun laws not the answer

Your March 21 guest editorial from the Washington Post, "Timid on guns," repeated the same old worthless arguments for gun control. Stricter gun laws will never keep killers from doing harm to the innocent.

Jared Lee Loughner was never judged mentally unfit, so he was never listed in the national background check system.

All firearm dealers at a gun show must conduct a background check through the system to see whether someone is forbidden to own a gun.

The only ways to try to prevent firearms abuses are to educate people on the proper use of a gun and to expand the concealed-carry laws for every law-abiding person.

Jim Szych

Bennett Road

State appointment smacks of cronyism

Your March 19 story "Kasich moves Calif. friend to new job" said that Gov. John Kasich appointed Mark Kvamme to the new post of director of job creation, instead of the director of development position. Mr. Kvamme will serve in the governor's office despite having no plans to call Ohio home.

Cronyism immediately comes to my mind.

Kathleen Konnert

Bay View Court