Is there a cancer in the Ohio Republican Party?
the big eight make the decisions, while the other 80 counties go talk among themselves
Chairman Montgomery County Republican Party
Eric LaMont Gregory
Eric LaMont Gregory, delivered a major speech on the economy before the Morrow County Tea Party on Monday the 20th of June at the Mount Gilead Public Library.
Gregory a Republican candidate for the US Senate outlined the policies that got us into debt and how we work our way out of debt. Congress he argues has the Constitutional responsibility to control the economy of United States, but has not lived up to its constitutional mandates. Trading in Interest Rate Derivatives beginning with the LTCM hedge fund crisis of 1998 set a dangerous precedent by bailing out creditors while letting shareholders be wiped out. Each successive boom-bubble-bust cycle has been bigger and more costly to the taxpayer.
The recession, Gregory argues, is being prolonged by the continuation of interest rate derivatives trading, and its two sisters the dollar carry trade, and credit default swaps. If you understand one of these market games you understand the other two. Leveraging based on the assumption that interest rates will not rise is starving the system of needed investments for productive purposes and the jobs that accompany production, while traders rack in billions without moving a muscle. 80% of the world's 500 largest companies are using these off-the-balance-sheet financial instruments for working capital.
In the 1920's J Edgar Hoover wanted to prosecute highly leveraged short sellers for not only causing the Great Depression, but also for prolonging it. Short selling was illegal in the United States from 1929 until 3 July 2007 when the SEC made it legal again in the US.
We have a monetary crisis, a credit crises, and a debt crises, but the biggest crises of all, according to Gregory, is a policy crisis.
A change in policy can go a long way towards putting things right, Gregory commented, in Vietnam for example, soldiers rode into battle in the backs of open jeeps and we lost some 60,000 Americans over a ten year period. A change in policy, one that recognised personnel as our most important asset, brought about the use of body armour and armoured motorised transport and we have lost 6,000 not 60,000 Americans in the ten years of the Iraq and Afghan campaigns.
This illustrates the power of a policy change.
Home foreclosures must stop. It makes little sense to evict a family from their home and then pay them a housing benefit of 750 dollars a month, when a 2% mortgage would make their $800 dollars a month house payment less than $250. Why are we increasing our debt by paying housing benefits of 750 dollars toward rental properties when 250 dollars would keep the homeowner in their home. The dislocation and stress that accompanies moving under duress could be avoided.
But regional and local banks still burdened with the weight of malinvestments in real estate held on their books as portfolio loans, are reluctant to get back into the business of lending to small businesses. Small businesses, those with less than 250 employees, employ one-half of the American workforce. And, it is these businesses that rely on the regional and local banks for their working capital.
A policy change, the stroke of a pen, can take the toxic assets in the regional and local banks out of the realm of short term problems and make them 20 year notes which could achieve par value over that period of time. This would free up money for the working capital of small businesses and let them put people back to work.
However, it is not just money that closes small businesses, regulation also plays a significant role in business closures. Whereas, Gregory welcomes Governor Kasich's Common Sense Initiative (CSI), nonetheless he suggests that common sense works best when it is applied.
The Lt Governor who heads the CSI needs to work with businesses who are about to close their doors because of over-regulation and find out which regulations are involved and deal with them. At the same time she ought to interview those whose businesses have recently shut their doors due to the regulatory environment and ease them back into operation. This is not the kind of initiative that should be in the hands of interns, but will require seasoned professionals if the CSI is to do what it can do, and what the governor promised the electorate it would do, Gregory stated.
If we want to maximise every tax dollar, our campaigning State Treasurer ought to investigate the advantages of a State Bank in Ohio, where the profits go into the State Treasury, not the federal government. Where taxpayers’ money works within the State in which it is generated. Property taxes, state income taxes, sales taxes and all fees for services go to the State Bank.
At present our tax revenues from the State go into an account held by a private bank that makes money off of our taxes.
The State Bank of North Dakota keeps the money inside that State and the profits; the North Dakota Bank recently paid 30 percent of its income to the State Treasury which helps reduce state tax burdens.
These are just some of the topics that Gregory covered in his address to the Morrow County Tea Party on Monday night.
Gregory has also raised a concern about what he states is a cancer growing in the big 8 counties of the Ohio Republican Party.
We are approaching one of the, if not, the most important elections in American history, Gregory states, an election in which every Republican will have to do their part so that we can take back this country, bring it back to economic viability, and put Americans back to work.
If the people of this state have made nothing else clear, it is that the days of the backroom deal are over.
And yet, in a meeting with a chairman of one of the big eight counties, Gregory was told that no matter how well he did among the other 80 counties, when the party meets the big eight counties go into a room and make the decisions, while the other 80 counties go talk among themselves. The big decisions are made by the big eight, the Chairman of Montgomery County Republican Party stated in a meeting in his law offices.
Gregory suggests that it is often the case that when a problem starts at the top, there is no one to tell, but that the cancer within the big eight counties of the Ohio Republican Party is amenable to treatment.
In any cancer treatment one always hopes that natural processes will gain the upper hand, in other cases the best option is to remove it.
One county; one vote!
