Several media sources are reporting that President Obama will be visiting Lorain County on January 22. Ostensibly, his message will focus on employment and economic recovery for Main Streets all over America.
Of course, politically speaking, Ohio is a bellweather state, so I understand why the President would, from time to time, schedule appearances here. I suppose U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown is quite pleased with himself that the President has selected Lorain County for the upcoming occasion. I’m sure local residents, whether they voted for the President or not, will be eager to make the President’s acquaintance.
Since 2002, I’ve been campaigning for improvements to Lorain County’s economy, and my proposals aren’t really on the same page as Senator Brown’s. I’m curious what the President will say, but, if I were a betting man, which I’m not, I’d venture to say that the President’s message to Lorain County residents will not substantively differ from what Senator Brown’s message has been. If the President did say anything that marked a departure from what Senator Brown says, that would raise lots of eyebrows in the blogosphere, and perhaps in the MSM, as well.
I’ve been less active in posting on my blog in recent weeks. Perhaps I should give myself a swift kick-in-the-pants to increase my blog content before the President arrives. My transportation series, in particular, keeps nagging at me. I need to complete it.
I’m sure to weigh in on the President’s message in the aftermath of his visit . . . unless, of course, he hires me to be the czar in charge of scheduling sports events in order to save the BCS from itself, in which case, as a czar, I’d have to recuse myself from criticizing the President.
Will the President’s appearance be carefully stage-managed? Or will there be unscripted and impromptu moments in which local residents can interact authentically with the President? I’m curious to see how that turns out.
Reader’s opinions are welcome. What are your thoughts and feelings about the President’s upcoming visit?
Buckeye RINO 
January 5, 2010 at 10:42 pm
We disparately need to turn out the congressional leadership in 2010. This has to be done in the primaries. If good candidates cannot win the primaries will have no good choices in the general election in the fall. The current administration and congressional leadership are fascists at beat and I believe Marxists is closer to the truth. These people ignore the Constitution and usurp power they were never intended to have by the founders. They are guilty of treason by trying to subvert the Constitution and turn this country into a fascist state. They do not recognize the sovereignty of the people. They only serve themselves and their insatiable lust for power.
I believe Yost, Ganly, and Kacik are the best candidates for their respective offices. If David Yost fails to win the primary for Ohio attorney General then the next best choice is Richard Cordrey. Even though I am a registered Republican I cannot vote for Mile DeWine. His voting record in the US Senate is abysmal. He gets an F from the National Rifle Association. and small wonder. He has voted against good federal judges and voted with the Democrats as much or more than the Republicans. We need the most conservative candidates we can find.
January 6, 2010 at 1:21 am
I wonder if, during Obama’s visit, he’ll get a sense that the grassroots might be contemplating overturning Congressional majorities.
January 6, 2010 at 1:45 am
I think it’s great that the President is coming to Lorain County. He will be able to speak with business leaders and community leaders alike to find out what if really going on here in our county. Now, Dan raises good questions and I hope people can ask the President about jobs and about what he plans to do about getting jobs back into Ohio and other “rust belt states”. I look forward to hearing what he has to say and I look forward that no matter what the message is, we in Lorain County will keep fighting and keep working to make our county a great place to start and bring your business.
January 6, 2010 at 11:30 am
I don’t think all in Lorain County will keep fighting and keep working to make our county a great place to start and bring business “no matter what the message is.” Lorain County’s been shedding jobs for a long time now, and not all the blame can accrue to the Federal government for that. Some politicians within Lorain County hamper the economic environment. For example, twice recently have voters rejected a hike in the county’s sales tax. Commissioners like Ted Kalo keep seeking to hike that tax anyway, even though retailers are adversely impacted by such hikes. How badly can businesses be affected by such tax hikes? Well, once upon a time, even Ted’s Flooring, the company owned by Commissioner Ted Kalo, had difficulty remitting sales taxes to the county. Fighting for the jobs of cronies in county government isn’t the same thing as fighting for private sector jobs.
I do recognize that there are individuals, though, such as yourself, that continue to grapple with the question of how to improve conditions in our county, and I must commend you for it, but, at the same time, there are certainly others that have been holding us back. I hope, for the county’s sake, more people try to be problem solvers, like you.
January 6, 2010 at 10:27 am
All show. Surely he will speak on economic matters and most probably campaign for his stimulus program. Government cannot and will not ever stimulate real growth by spending and regulation. Government can only get out of the way of the private sector and let them do their job. There are a host of reasons that we are in the position we are in and many of them directly related to bad regulation. Why is it that we must accept free trade when other countries don’t? We have structured trade laws so that the Chinese have easy access to our markets but they have structured theirs so we don’t have easy access to the Chinese market and yet all our legislators say that protectionism is not the answer. Do they really believe that or are they just on the Chinese payroll? We sold our birthright for a mess of pottage and now we have a bunch of actors in Washington trying to convince us that the “fundamentals of our economy” are strong when they really aren’t. Pretty speeches won’t get us out of this mess and at this point anything Obama has to say on the economy is irrelevant because it won’t have anything to do with reality. I don’t know how many people I know are disillusioned with him because his rhetoric doesn’t match his actions but I can name a lot of them that voted for him in 2008 but wouldn’t now. Obama is not alone either. We have 535 legislators that all have their heads stuck in the sand. While they all strut around making a show and trying to show that things are improving we will continue to decline as legislation like the health care bill and cap and trade erode our economic base. Nothing will come out of Lorain but hot air.
January 6, 2010 at 10:42 am
James,
Just curious and not trying to debate you but I thought you said something in your post that seemed as a bit of a double standard. You said the government needs to get out of the way of the private sector while at the same time saying the reason why we got into this mess was because there wasn’t enough regulation (government intervention). I think that for the past 8 years or as you mentioned free trade came about we have done just as you mentioned in terms of getting out of the way and letting the private sector have at it. This hasn’t proven too great as we are now in a recession. I am not one for big government and I am a huge advocate for small business but I do feel that it’s the governments job to set good regulation standards as you mentioned as well as also making sure that in those standards private companies that take jobs out of this country pay a harder price to get the products they make overseas back in. I can’t say for certain what will come of the Jan. 22nd meeting but I can say that 2010 country wide will be an interesting year for both parties if we don’t have a plan moving forward to bring/create jobs here in America.
January 6, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Brandon, I agree that we need some common-sense regulations to hold the marketplace accountable, especially so that there isn’t widespread fraud, scams, and deception. The number and size of recently revealed Ponzi schemes, in particular, I find to be quite shocking (and the expansion of legalized gambling gets my dander up, too). However, I see the Federal government getting in the way of free enterprise nearly everywhere I turn. The bailouts, in particular, are arbitrary government interventions in the marketplace that not only nationalize businesses into quasi-governmental monstrosities (like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that were chiefly responsible for our housing market meltdown), but that artificially try to repeal the laws of nature (natural laws of economics) which disrupt the business cycles so that true economic recovery is delayed simply because fraidy-cat politicians, concerned with covering up their own complicit roles, didn’t want to let us hit rock bottom. Rock bottom is no fun, to be sure, but you have to go beyond that point to get to the other side and begin a true recovery. Now, because of the fear of hitting rock bottom, the government has intervened, and we’re in a holding pattern over an economic storm where we won’t make headway, hence the staggering unemployment numbers we’re seeing now.
While the government is intervening to cap the salaries and bonuses of the Wall Street executives that got us into this mess, they still have propped up the culprits and sustained them in their positions. Without the bailouts, the culprits would have rightfully been the ones unemployed as the companies went bust, and there would have been no salaries or bonuses to try to cap. Economic justice was denied by the bailouts. I don’t think any company was “too big to fail.” I think the bailed out companies deserved to fail, based on the high-stakes risks they took and subsequently mismanaged. New York City might have been decimated as the financial capital of America had all those companies gone bust, but perhaps a new financial capital would have arisen elsewhere, like Houston or Atlanta, to replace it, and markets would have readjusted. Unfortunately, the decision-makers in New York and Washington DC are too invested in rigidly maintaining the status quo, but the world economy is much more fluid than that. Swimming upstream only unnecessarily saps our resources. Allowing the economy to be fluid would be much more efficient and would help America to be more adaptable in the global marketplace, and greater adaptability could make us more competitive.
January 6, 2010 at 11:32 am
Yes, James, I anticipate that the President’s appearance may be highly scripted and stage-managed. Speeches and photoshoots. I dare the President to surprise us.
January 6, 2010 at 6:03 pm
I was always a firm believer in not bailing out the big banks but bailing out main street where we would all get checks for 852 billion divided by 300 million (roughly, and that would include tax payers only) And of that amount we would each get a new bank account. A account created by the Treasury where the money would sit and then be of access to us to spend. NOW! Before you guys get all up in arms about what I just said. PLEASE continue reading. Americans would be allowed to spend the money how they saw fit however there would be guidelines on what they could spend it on. Debt would be the biggest reason to spend the money including mortgages. After that you could put the money into stocks and bonds (or, for you Glenn Beck fans…GOLD! haha!) and then you would be able to make additions onto your house or buy renewable energy products to cut our dependency on oil. To ensure that nothing would be wasting by people going to Vegas or going on vacation you would have to show receipts at tax time and those that didn’t show adequate use of the money and abused the system would be charged with theft and arrested (Harsh, but remember, this is our tax money others are dealing with).
Brandon
January 6, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I read through it, Brandon, and I’m up in arms, anyway! LOL!
January 6, 2010 at 10:26 pm
LOL!
January 8, 2010 at 4:54 am
I am sure he will bring “hope” to the people of Lorain and surrounding counties.
January 8, 2010 at 2:13 pm
The “hope” Obama is bringing is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. According to Sherrod Brown, this visit will highlight government-sponsored job training to shift manufacturing workers into green jobs. Of course, the unending government cash outlays will only end up collapsing our currency and balloon our national debt beyond any possibility of repayment, and the Obama “hope” Ponzi scheme will be revealed and the green jobs won’t be sustainable because nothing but subsistence agriculture will be sustainable. In addition to stockpiling food and other supplies, I recommend families prepare themselves by planting vegetable gardens over the next few years, and obtaining fishing and hunting licenses. Currency that’s worth anything may be hard to come by at some point in the future.
January 18, 2010 at 11:06 pm
[…] Obama to visit Lorain County on January 22 […]
January 25, 2010 at 12:42 am
[…] Of course, politically speaking, Ohio is a bellweather state, so I understand why the President would, from time to time, schedule appearances here. I suppose U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown is quite pleased with himself that the President has selected Lorain County for the upcoming occasion. I’m sure local residents, whether they voted for the President or not, will be eager to make the President’s acquaintance. Read on Buckeye RINO […]