Curious Priorities in SW Lucas County

There are probably many issues to be concerned with at this time with our economy in freefall, health care costs skyrocketing, education funding, our high unemployment and declining tax base. Hunger, desperation and hopelessness!

We are extremely fortunate to have a state representative who has identified as one of her priorities the proper classification for the "pit bull" in Ohio. I can't tell you how much sleep my neighbors and I have lost recently regarding this issue. Personally I can't think of a bigger problem to sink one's teeth into (no pun intended, of course) than removing the pit bull from a list of "vicious" dogs! Read the link from today's Toledo Blade. http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090318/NEWS24/903180353/0/OPINION03

I'm sure you will agree with me that we're certainly getting our money's worth from our present representative from District 46 in Ohio. Fix the "pit bull" classification and the jobs will surely follow! Sort of like Field of Dreams' "build it and they will come" ? Finally, after all these years of wandering in the proverbial desert, we have a representative who truly gets it in SW Lucas County! I can almost hear every pit bull within a three mile radius heaving a sigh of relief.

Seriously folks, haven't we got bigger fish to fry? Amazing!

Volunteer opportunity in NW Ohio

My family and I just returned from a wonderful volunteer experience working with "Food for Thought", a christian based group which operates out of New Harvest Christian Church in Oregon, Ohio and works to help feed the hungry in NW Ohio. Their website link is as follows: http://www.freelunchtoledo.com/



Last night we helped from 6 pm to a little after 7 pm, helping to pack lunches for almost 400 people and also packing toiletries to pass out Saturday morning. This morning we met with other volunteers to help pass out the lunches along with fresh fruit, eggs, and cookies/cakes to an estimated 150-200 persons near the Lucas County Public Library at Michigan and Adams in downtown Toledo. This was an excellent experience for our family and the nice thing is that our two daughters, ages 7 and 4, were able to and encouraged to help out with the effort.



I encourage any of you in NW Ohio who are interested in helping out to check out the website mentioned above and contact the group to indicate your interest. We were wholeheartedly welcomed and plan on returning to help out in the coming weeks and months.

Odds and Ends

Please say a prayer for the victims of the latest round of flooding which has hit NW Ohio hard, especially the Findlay/Ottawa Ohio areas. Perhaps we should have been re-building and addressing some of our infrastructure needs instead of wasting our Federal tax dollars in the needless and useless war in Iraq, but I certainly don't want do confuse any of you out there who believe otherwise with logic.



We are still paying a tax on our groceries in Ohio due to the commercial activity tax (CAT), a tax contrived by the ever-popular Taft administration and supported by various local politicians. This was implemented after the bill was passed in 2005 by the GOP legislature. The CAT imposes a tax on gross receipts for certain businesses in Ohio which effectively means they are paying tax before they make a profit. We continue to pay this tax on groceries since 2006, a tax which hadn't been seen since the great Depression. Good going, GOP'ers.

The tax is assessed for the "privilege" of doing business in Ohio, a privilege that many businesses seem more than willing to pass up, given the state of our economy lately. That same tax bill permanently increased the sales tax in Ohio from 5.0 percent to 5.5 percent, yet another example of the low tax GOP actually increasing our taxes. Maybe someone actually ought to call out these anti-tax hypocrites regarding these changes when they start crying about high taxes. The sad thing is that these changes put more of the total burden on the lower and middle classes, who continue to have the audacity to eat and buy household staples in these rough economic times. At least the very wealthy received a generous tax cut so they can continue to contribute obscene amounts of money to the Republican of their choice.

I'm signing off for now until next time. Have a great week!