Where will government stop?

Today’s Advocate editorial on Council’s proposal to increase Newark’s bed tax by 3 percent is well-conceived and written, but it ignores the most important issue.

Beyond the Advocate’s concerns for Council’s need to determine beforehand how funds will be spent, how they will be accounted for, and who will be involved in those decisions, there should be concerns about the purpose and power of government.

Did citizens really bestow upon government the authority to screw around in private business profits for the benefit of self-proclaimed tourist attractions? More important, how do we stop these intrusive attitudes and practices?

Requiring a 3-percent hike in local hotel fares is one more example of Council sticking its nose into private affairs of certain businesses for the benefit of a few vocal “customers.”

Hotel owners and employees in Newark represent a miniscule number of voters, so reaching down from above and ordering a new tax on their profits is a shoo-in. More easy money for Big Brother - like the auto tag tax and the charge for emergency squad transportation.

And no real harm done, right? Except that nearby hotels without that new tax aren’t far away.

Support for tourist attractions should be generated from whatever attractiveness they can muster, not from more attempts at jiggering the marketplace with another tax-and-spend plan by Big Brother.

Where will government stop? It’s up to us to draw the line and the way to begin is to stop thinking of this meddling as a legitimate function of government.

Money out of the Waugh Zoo

Heath, renamed the “Waugh Zoo” by an unidentified wit, is trying to put on a happy face over its traffic-camera disaster.

Politicians have yet to admit publicly (to my knowledge) that the Redflex and Heath government milking of motorists is hurting businesses.

Count the brainiacs in the local chamber of commerce as also being in denial on this matter. Evidence: its endorsement of the Waugh Zoo’s Mayor Waugh for the coming election.

Many commenters to Advocate news reports say they’re avoiding the Waugh Zoo, echoing the buzz I get from Newark cashiers and others.

I have not driven through the Waugh Zoo for three months, except for three trips in the first days of July. This has cost businesses there $1,716.84, assuming I would have spent the same average per month ($572.28) as I spent there during April and May, 2009.

Something else. I have developed new shopping habits, most no less convenient than the Waugh Zoo offerings; many are more so. That’s a factor I don’t think Heath’s good ol’ boys considered. The effects of the Waugh Zoo era - like the George W. Bush era - will linger.

Heath businesses, get real

The thing that Heath businesses seem to be missing is this: While shoppers are avoiding them, they are at the same time developing new habits and routes for shopping.

Heath businesses will not automatically recover lost customers when this is over. Some, but not all, will come back just because the cameras are gone.

Count me among those who may never return to many/most of them. Likely I’ll keep shopping elsewhere because “elsewhere” is just as easy and just as good and that’s how I’m now - and will be in the future - accustomed to doing it.

When Heath businesses awaken to this, they will wish they had “taken sides” at the very beginning. Not taking sides against your Nazi mayor and council? Whining to customers “Please do not punish us. Support us."

Gonad-less business owners of Heath: grow a pair and defend yourselves.

Relief for oppressed cart pushers

I could hardly wait for Walmart to open its first store in Newark. Other big grocers were driving me nuts.

Grocery marketing zealots shoved merchandise into pathways of customers under the misguided assumption, I suppose, that we’d be more likely to buy if we had to wrestle cans and boxes to get past them. Many aisles were so narrow that two carts could scarcely pass and the odds were lessened several hundred percent by unattended stock carts strewn about many, if not most, aisles.

Mine was a sincere effort to help alleviate such nuisance-shopping when I called one of the store managers about it. Apparently he assumed that I didn’t know my asparagus from a hole in the swiss: He offered no excuses and nothing changed.

When Walmart opened it offered more roomy cartways - for a while. It didn’t take long, however, for this grocer to start shoving everything in my face as was the local custom, and it no longer mattered which equally bad store I chose; all were perverse in their ability to inconvenience customers.

Then, lo, the Age of Reason struck 21st Street Walmart. Hooray. This store manager at last listened to customers. You want room to push a cart past someone else pushing a cart? You want a well-organized, comfortable, well-lit, newly painted, spectacular retail environment? You’ve lived long enough to see it, Bunky.

Grand opening is July 8th - this Wednesday - according to my most recent Walmart cashier. If you haven’t already seen it, you’ll be amazed at what transpires when a big retailer listens to oppressed cart pushers.

Local businesses: Advocate bloggers’ choice

The list of businesses that scored with readers is too long and complex to present in this space, so I have published it, along with the original Advocate blogger comments, at this Newark Tea Party link.

You may want to bookmark it so you can refer to it as needed, or you may want to print it off and keep it with your telephone book.

Thanks to all who participated and to the Advocate for providing the forum.

Let’s use local money to reward Holophane

A local task force has recommended the reward of Holophane and others with our tax dollars, according to today’s Advocate report.

That they so recommend says everything you need to know about the unnamed “21-member Licking County Stimulus Task Force” and how any recommendation it makes will represent the interests of taxpayers or should be taken seriously.

In an article 10/7/08, Columbus Business First reported that the corporation that had acquired Holophane - Acuity Brands Inc. - would cut 150 Newark-plant jobs by February 2009. It would also close its Utica plant at a cost of another 100 jobs. Acuity said this would “cut overhead costs.”

That still left this $2-billion-a-year-in-sales corporation with 6,200 “associates” throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Read about this Atlanta-based giant at this link.

How Kaiser and Fiberglas stack up against Holophane’s magnificent contribution to local welfare should be next under the spotlight before the first dime of tax money is handed to them by some mystery “task force” that set itself up to represent the interests of local taxpayers.

Solve Newark’s trash problems by enforcing the law

If hot air from politicians could solve problems, Newark’s trash would have long ago melted and our city would by now be pristine.

It matters not, however, that politicians have blown hot air at this problem since the days of Mayor Bain. So far, nothing has changed; trash lines the streets of Newark in many, if not most, parts of town; residents freely use sidewalks and curbsides to store unconfined junk and litter without regard for how it looks and smells, or whether it emits germs and vermin, nor into which neighbors’ yards it blows.

And hot air is all we get from these helpless public employees whose solution is not the least hidden in city ordinances. As I wrote 8/29/08 There is a solution for curbside trash. It’s called police work - enforcement of city laws by the mayor, the safety director and the policemen.

The most recent report by the Advocate that I’ve seen was 2/8/09 Property owners could feel trash burden in which this group called “trash talkers,” (defined in the article as “a group of concerned citizens along with local trash companies”) assigned by the “city administration” to make recommendations to council. Surprise! These folks are STILL hashing the idea of limiting the way and the areas specific trash haulers could do business. That, plus burdening landlords with trash bills for renters, which would be another brilliant intrusion on the conduct of private business. That’s only about an inch away from requiring every homeowner to buy trash services whether they need it or not. Trash is a favorite avenue by which Newark yearns to intrude on private affairs.

This is just more of a rich tradition of foolish, bureaucratic ideas to solve a problem which has years ago been solved. I have written about them 5/1/08 Trash is fertilizer for Newark government and 5/7/08 Let’s license newspapers and 12/5/08 Are trash dumping centers feasible?

Here it is, 3/9/09, and these people still haven’t figured it out. It goes right back to my solution of more than a year ago which is the solution put in place long ago by Newark City Council. That solution is evident and obvious where it’s dealt with in Newark City Ordinances.

Look at 660.04 (Noxious odors; filthy accumulations ...); and 660.05 (Duty to keep sidewalks in repair and clean); but especially at 1860.03 (a), (1), (2), (6) and 1860.04 (a), (1) What you will find is that Newark’s laws already prohibit people from creating and maintaining improper and unsanitary and bothersome trash.

And what that means, clearly and simply: laws are not being enforced by the people we pay to enforce them.

This city needs a mayor and a safety director who will order officers to get out of their cruisers and solve the trash proliferation by enforcing city ordinances. How simple can it get?

Bankers probably should stick to banking

In his pump-up of Newark Schools and Keith Richards, Dan DeLawder took special pains to offer a kick in the pants to the Advocate. It appeared today in the letters column.

DeLawder, a banker by trade, offered this journalistic critique:

"I was happy to see your paper provide such positive coverage, especially since I have been gravely concerned with your publishing focus that too often fails to report good news and accomplishments but is quick with glaring headlines that point out deficiencies and areas for improvement. I assure you I am not alone in that assessment."

I suspect that he and other community boosters would indeed prefer the time not many months ago when the Advocate editorial department was no more than an arm of the Chamber of Commerce and a mouthpiece for government officials.

It was that kind of crappy journalism that infuriated me and anyone else who understands what a newspaper should be. In those days it was people like me who were crabbing about worthless newsprint coming off the local presses.

The favored class of Licking County can't bear to look at itself honestly and have public problems discussed in public. But this is not new; it's a tradition in Newark that I have personally experienced, one for which there is no education.

But as a journalist I can report here that DeLawder's comment is off the wall. Today's Advocate is better editorially than it's been for many years, which is why I rarely go gunning for it myself.

Payday lending referendum

If you're still confused, or haven't paid attention to the statewide referendum on payday lending, read this:

"Here's the deal: Ohio lawmakers have enacted a law that caps the annual interest rate on payday loans at 28 percent. A "yes" vote on Issue 5 would continue the cap. A "no" vote means lenders could return to the wicked ways of the Check-Cashing Lender Law, which caps annual interest rates and fees at 391 percent."

That's from today's column by Ann Fisher in the Columbus Dispatch at this link.

GM refuses public-money bribes

Tax credits and grants of more than $56 million weren't enough to keep General Motors' plant near Dayton in business. AP reported yesterday that GM has refused a $54-million "job retention tax credit" and a $2-million "rapid outreach grant" and will depart by 2010, leaving 2,400 persons without jobs. What might interest Ohio taxpayers is how many millions (if any) GM had already sucked out of Ohio's behind-the-scenes bribe money. AP also failed to report who authorizes the gifting of business with public funds.

Tax abatements for business add to cost of owning real estate

Though I'm still looking for more details, one thing is certain about tax abatements for businesses: they are responsible for higher property tax bills to home owners.

How abatements work, who awards them, who benefits from them, how much Newark City Schools loose because of them, and how much they add to property owners' tax bills isn't yet clear in my mind.

I think we're talking a big chunk of change and as an indicator of that here's one example:

The Gannett Co., with a revenue in 2007 of $7.4 billion, received in 2007 a $1.2-million mark-down on the taxable value of its real estate on First Street. That's the result of a 15-year tax abatement (1995-2010) for a building addition.

On its building, valued at $7.5 million, Gannett and the Thomson Corporation, the previous owner, held a 100 percent abatement from 1991-2006. Thomson Corp., by the way, had revenues of $7.3 billion in 2007.

Thousands of little Newark home-owner people did, in fact, subsidize the bottom line of these giant corporations, but it isn't the kind of thing your local newspaper would want to talk about, especially in view of the fact that there's scarcely ever been a new tax proposal in Newark that the Advocate didn't like.

Tax abatements and their births in Ohio law are perhaps the most unreported behind-the-scenes maneuvers of government. Either that, or I - and the rest of the reading public - aren't paying attention.

PROPERTY TAXATION AND SCHOOL FUNDING offers facts, though it's not easy reading. If you go there, notice on Page 5 that tangible property for business, before 2006, was taxed at 25 percent and by 2009 that rate will drop to zero. And guess who will pick up the slack for that?

That's part of the story about tax abatements. It's not complete without a having a grip, however loose it might be, on how tax abatements affect the property tax bills of homeowners. I'm working on that, and maybe the local news media might now take an interest.

If I were a merchant you'd have to write this yourself

I had in mind for several months the raw stuff for an essay about the way retail customers are increasingly being asked to perform the work of store clerks. I hate this self-checkout system mostly because of the in-your-face profiteering that inspires it.

I will never stop waiting in a cashier's line, if only as a matter of defiance to merchants who want me to replace their expensive employees.

It isn't bad enough I have to wade through their unattended warehouses with a shopping cart, attempting to locate my stuff without help. Now these pirates are trying to set up their stores like gasoline stations.

A few days ago I noticed that Meijers had expanded its self-checkout stations to include nearly half the store front (under a sign that says something like: "We're happy to serve you"). That was just before I noticed Giant Eagle's new self-checkout stations.

My essay was about to give birth, but a fine writer from the Boston Globe beat me to it and probably wrote it much better than I would have. Read Ellen Goodman's "Self-serve and slave" at this link. Unless you're a merchant getting fat off your customers' labor, you'll empathize.

We must require oil/energy competition

If you've wondered, as I have, where all the money goes when you pay nearly $4 for a gallon of gas, the answer is given - at least in part - by an article in the New York Times Business section.

Entitled "Exxon's Texas-size war chest," it tells how this company is hoarding its money, while preventing the value of its stock to rise much and avoiding the need to share most of the loot with its own shareholders.

It does this, in part, by buying back its own stock and has amassed a quarter-trillion-dollar war chest with which it is expected to swallow up other companies when the time is right.

All of which again points to the burning need to bust up this giant robber and others like it, to begin enforcing anti-trust laws, and to require competitive practices in multinational companies, especially those selling oil and energy.

Let's license newspapers

The Advocate likes the proposal for having city bureaucrats pick certain trash-hauling companies and the area(s) where they could do business. Yesterday's editorial Trash collection ideas are not a waste proclaimed that "at first glance, there are a lot of benefits."

The Advocate appears to be ready to hand over yet another freedom to the Magic Nanny. Such a change would take us one step closer to the licensing of other types of businesses - say, um, newspapers.

If we sink to government-supervised trash collection, the stretch to Magic-Nanny-governed newspapers is closer.

Local bureaucrats could authorize the Columbus Dispatch to report news and sell ads in the western part of Licking County to center of Granville. The Advocate could do business from that line to Hanover, where the Zanesville Times Recorder would begin its territory. The Advocate could report news and sell ads as far north as Van Atta and south to Hebron, where the Mount Vernon News and the Buckeye Lake Beacon would take over.

Bureaucrats could set the price of all these newspapers while mandating delivery times and ad rates. The Nanny could require every household to subscribe by simply folding the fee into local water bills. Readers could purchase only their assigned newspaper, no matter how bad it is - and however terrible, you could count on it getting worse when government takes charge. Never mind that, government would set it up so each news "provider" would profit. A lot.

Added to the cost of the newspaper would be the expense of supporting another layer of government bureaucracy with its legions of license-issuers and enforcers, so the price - but not the value - would have to increase, though government would take great pains to hide that fact.

As an added benefit to citizens of Newark in general and the Diebold regime in particular, Gannett's contract would require this company to move its printing operation out of Newark to save wear on city streets; no more big trucks hauling newsprint in and USA Todays out. The damage by trash trucks to city streets might not be as great as Gannett's semis, a consideration which so far seems to have escaped Advocate editorialists - along with advantages of a free and competitive marketplace.

Wal-Mart, you're stupider than they say

Wal-Mart is the country's fav whipping boy. It can't do anything right in the eyes of a national media; it is portrayed as a threatening giant from every perspective, and that idea has filtered down to Everyman, almost.

Perhaps it's merely an attempt to escape this media perception that influenced Wal-Mart to join big-city mayors on controlling gun ownership by making a video record of the all gun sales, which the store will keep on file and will effectively create a video database of gun purchasers.

Also, Wal-Mart employees will be given discretion to deny firearms purchases to anyone who has had a firearm traced by BATFE for any reason.

The NRA news release about this quotes a Wal-Mart executive as saying: “The costs are, we think, part of what it takes to be responsible ... This is not a signal that we're getting out of firearms."

Really? Perhaps more so than Wal-Mart might suspect. And likely it won't be selling as much of anything to the NRA faithful as it has been.

CU's solutions to the foreclosure debacle

The most recent notice from Consumers Union begins like this:

"What kinds of reforms will actually help families save their homes and stabilize the economy? They're pretty simple, really.

"- Encourage lenders to restructure loans so people can avoid foreclosure.

"- End lending practices that prevent people from refinancing or steer families into high cost loans when they qualify for better ones.

"- Stop lenders and brokers from putting people in loans they know the borrowers can't afford."

Greed is the driving force. CU summarizes:

"Lenders and brokers profit by maximizing the size and cost of loans. Brokers make more commission. Lenders make more fees. Then they sell off the loans to someone else and walk away. The companies who bought the loans can't fix them, but bailing out corporate America will not cure the problem."

CU is urging that Congress not bail out Wall Street without fixing the real problems. They ask citizens to "tell Congress to pass real reform for real people" and they provide a link from which to do this.

Do you care? Let Washington know you do at this link.

Stealing for the sake of bigger government

State-level Republicans and governor and Dispatch are trying to abscond with $230 million in stop-smoking funds.

Protagonists in this latest scam claim they'll "create jobs" (hooray for more jobs, as usual!) if they can only get their paws on the pot full of money paid by the tobacco industry as punishment for - what? - selling tobacco products? (As for "more jobs" please read Magic Nanny Strickland should cut government slop, not sell bonds.)

The money was ear-marked for the people trying to influence other people to quit smoking. Like they've been doing any good anyway. What do these people do with all that money?

Still, the purpose of the financial punishment of tobacco companies was to do battle with smokers.

But big state government can't stand to see any stash of change not being spent on the creation of bigger government, which is exactly their plan - a plan sketched in today's Dispatch editorial entitled "The greatest good."

And, by the way, this plan for "stimulating the economy" entails not just scarfing money that doesn't belong to "stimulating the economy," but also a vast new debt of $970 million in bonds which every Ohio taxpayer will also provide to this "stimulation."

True to form in this matter, the state legislators, governor and Dispatch never saw a government spending plan they didn't like.

DST spells profits, so reset your clocks, bunky

Reprinted from March 14, 2007

Intro: I am reprinting the Observation from March 14, 2007 because big media refuses to see and/or talk about the real rationale behind DST, which is profits for business. Dollars for business is what government's purpose has become, and this foolishness is among penalties the rest of us pay.

Daylight Saving Time is a gift from Washington to U.S. business interests.

Washington nannies never tire of fixing non-problems at the expense of citizens. Because of that we recently lost several minutes of our collective life - as happens twice every year - because these meddlers make everybody turn their clocks backward and forward.

And why is this? Follow the money: It's a commercial thing, promoted by chambers of commerce, manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, travel industry, and service providers. But, because none of those money machines wants to take credit, government nannies justify it as an energy-saving device.

Yet there are those who say it doesn't save energy, but costs more when the additional travel costs are figured, and that makes sense to me.

Who wants to take an hour from the morning and add it to the afternoon? Nobody whose job or lifestyle depends on the rising and setting of the sun, but just about everybody who's in business. Not just the golf courses and not just the barbecue suppliers, all enterprises associated with sports, recreation, and travel benefit. That's a big chunk of change, but that's not all.

Since almost nobody goes out for routine shopping after dark if they don't have to - or anything else except night-life socialization and recreation - all retailers profit from more routine shopping because of more evening daylight. There is more of everything happening that costs money during that extra hour in the afternoon.

DST is government's way of making you stay up an hour later so you can spend more money. Slick, huh?

Some references are:

Winners of new daylight savings - Industries cashing in on the change

For a history of the efforts of Robert Garland, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Pittsburgh back in the 1920's, read his report on his efforts and his rationale for "daylight savings." It's called "Ten Years of Daylight Saving from the Pittsburgh Standpoint."It demonstrates how he and his chamber of commerce back then talked about all the supposed advantages except the profit motive.

An extensive report on the history and effects of DST (except that here too the profit motive is pretty much ignored) plus lots of reference material.

USDA: Symbolic badge of the Bush government

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is among federal agencies whose purpose is protecting business interests because it's a lapdog of President Bush.

I explained here 6/1/07 how USDA has refused to implement a Congress-passed mandatory country-of-origin labeling law, though consumers are being sold dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical, frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics, scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria, and mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

Now, courtesy of your USDA, consumers are eating meat from sick cows that are likely to contain harmful bacteria and/or transmittable disease. Moreover, USDA refuses to pinpoint exactly where this meat was shipped. Consumers Union says USDA knows but it won't tell.

Profit for big business is the motive, and the Bush Administration - likely the most arrogant and defiant in the history of this nation - is the prime mover.

This is an outrage, but few are outraged because this is just one more failure of a government known throughout the world for its consistently insensitive failing of U.S. citizens.

Consumers Union is complaining to USDA and if you want to help, at least in the matter of sick and secret beef, you can get started at this web site.

Hottinger: Take money from taxpayers, give it to businesses

State Representative Jay Hottinger has countered Governor Stickland's call to sell bonds "for new jobs" by urging, instead, more tax credits for business. His plan for sticking taxpayers again is written with a straight face in a column on the WCLT web site.

(I wrote about Strickland's plan 2/7/08 "Magic Nanny Strickland should cut government slop, not sell bonds")

Increasing tax credits for business is the same as raising taxes on citizens because state income is going to come from someone. Strickland's plan would borrow money today and let our grandchildren worry about how to pay it back.

Hottinger has problems with that because, well, it would take too long to get voter approval, get the bonds sold, get the spending party started. His plan would get the hogs to the trough quickly and wouldn't require that pesky voter approval.

Also - get this - Hottinger warns that "Given the cyclical nature of the economy, our state could have exited any recession we might find ourselves in by the time this (Strickland's) stimulus package goes into action."

In other words, if we don't stick taxpayers for more money quickly, we may not need it.

Our state representative would serve voters better by coming up with a plan to save money, not just another slight-of-hand to encourage political donations.