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Voters chose business as usual
(by Dave Lange - January 12, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Voters chose business as usual
The new speaker of the House of Representatives from Ohio, U.S. Rep. John A. Boehner, R-West Chester, took the oversized gavel with great fanfare and his customary tears last week from outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Speaking with the political correctness of the day, he told the gathered crowd, "The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin carrying out their instructions."
Coincidentally, on that same day, it was reported that Paul Siegfried, the owner of about 10 McDonald's restaurants in Stark County, agreed to pay a token fine for violating Ohio's corrupt practices law during the recent election campaigns that sent Mr. Boehner within two last breaths from the White House.
In October, Mr. Siegfried included a threatening letter with his employees' paychecks, urging them to vote for Republican candidates John Kasich for governor, Rob Portman for U.S. senator and Jim Renacci for U.S. representative. "If the right people are elected, we will be able to continue with raises and benefits at or above our present levels," he wrote. "If others are elected, we will not."
Let's end business as usual.
Mr. Renacci, the only challenger to defeat an incumbent congressional representative from Northeast Ohio, was among the slew of Republicans swept into the U.S. House in November to wrest its control from the Democrats.
The man he defeated, John Boccieri, D-Alliance, is a decorated veteran of the Iraq War. Mr. Renacci, a former mayor of Wadsworth and wealthy businessman, lost a dispute with the state in 2000 and had to pay nearly $1.4 million in back taxes, interest and penalties. Among the many other lawsuits he has been involved in, he paid $300,000 to settle a wrongful-death case brought by the family of a woman who died in 2001 under disturbing circumstances at one of his nursing homes.
Let's end business as usual.
Mr. Boehner's elevation was greatly boosted by the election of dozens of new representatives who identify with the tea party. Tea Party Patriots, which is the largest faction of the right-wing movement, has as its national coordinator Mark Meckler, whose wealth can be traced to Herbalife, and is tied to the Council for National Policy, which is funded by the DeVos family, which owns Amway. Herbalife and Amway are known as multilevel marketing companies, essentially pyramid schemes that make their money by recruiting salespeople, as opposed to actually selling their products. Their motivational rallies are eerily similar to those they stage to rally tea partyers.
Let's end business as usual.
Tea-party politicians are targeting the deficit as the biggest problem in America today. In 2002, then-Republican Vice President Dick Cheney declared that former Republican President Ronald "Reagan proved deficits don't matter."
Let's end business as usual.
Mr. Boehner and his party already have invited business leaders, from Wall Street to oil-drilling giants, to help them gut what they call "job-killing" regulations that have been enacted over the past two years to rescue the nation and world from the brink of economic and environmental cataclysms.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.1 million jobs were added to the economy in 2010, the year that President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Health Care Act. During the George W. Bush administration, job growth averaged 937,500 per year.
By all means, give the voters what they want.
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