Out with the Old, In with the New

The time has come in America to get rid of our current crop of politicians and officeholders and replace them with a new crop. I say this because I believe that the folks in office are completely out of touch with reality. I am not talking about at the National level, although it is certainly true of the upper levels of government. In fact I am not even talking about State government. What I am referring to is the local politicians. Let me preface this by saying, this may be different where you live, although I doubt it.

Let me offer up a couple of examples of what I am seeing an hearing from local politicians. A few months back, in Ohio I believe, Ford Motor Company closed a local plant. In the article that I read about the closing, one of the officials of the city said that they were going to have to find a way to compensate for the loss of revenue due to the closing of the plant. His proposal was to increase the local sales tax by one and one-half percent. Think about that. People are being thrown out of work. Their incomes are being destroyed or at least greatly reduced and the city wants to raise the amount of tax they pay.

Yesterday, I got a copy of the paper from my old home town. On the front page there was an article telling how the local yarn mill was going to close in January of next year. This will put 100 people out of work. One hundred may not sound like much to you but in a town with a population of less than 500, it is a catastrophe. As sad as this article was, there was an even sadder article over in the right hand column on the bottom half of the front page. It said that the local government officials have determined that now is the time to raise the cost of a business license by 370 percent. I guess that they figure that some of the people thrown out of work by the closing of the mill might decided to open a business of their own and higher license fees would help balance the city's budget.

I know that these are just a couple of isolated instances, but I think that they represent the mentality of the current crop of public office holders in our nation. I say out with the old and in with the new.