Political ads crowd WOWO over the last couple of weeks
WOWO is airing a huge number of radio advertisements from candidates in the Republican Primary for Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District.
The majority of these ads are from Congressman Mark Souder and one of his challengers, Bob Thomas.
Pat White is a local host on WOWO from 3 PM to 6 PM. He said on the air that WOWO has had numerous complaints about some of these radio ads. He states that WOWO has to run the ads; it is the law. I am not sure whether people are complaining about Mark Souder’s ads or the ads Bob Thomas has aired; my guess is they are getting complaints about both of them.
Pat White is certainly correct WOWO does need to run the ads and should run all of the ads.
Mark Souder has publicly stated that none of his primary opponents are “credible enough” to debate. He feels this allows him to break a promise he made on the campaign trail back in 1994 that if elected he would debate opponents in the primary.
At this point Mark Souder has ran four radio ads on WOWO that specifically attack one of his opponents by name (Mr. Thomas). So once again Mark “Hypocrite” Souder feels that none of his opponents are “credible”; however, he has ran at LEAST four radio advertisements that have personally named and attacked Mr. Thomas.
Mark Souder is a hypocrite and I have no idea why ANYONE would vote for him in the Republican Primary. I plan on voting for Phil Troyer in the primary.
If you are going to vote for Mark Souder in the primary please tell us why. (I will do my level best not to make fun of you!)
Mike Sylvester
City Government and Private Sector Pay Differential
I recently obtained the salary information for all city employees (see note at end of post) and conducted a quick analysis to determine their compensation related to those in the private sector. The median salary for a full time city government employee is ~$52,250. According to the latest data (2008) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics the median salary for all Fort Wayne employees was only $31,000.
One could make an argument that the technical level of the median city government job is greater than the technical level of the median private sector job. To account for this I decided to only use data from the BLS occupational group that I felt was most closely linked to the types of jobs in city government - Business and Financial Operations. The median salary for this occupational group was $51,000.
So if one buys the premise that city jobs are inherently more skilled than the average private sector job then it appears their wages are essentially on par with the private sector. If you don’t buy that premise then you would clearly believe their wages are way out of line with the private sector. I tend to think city government wages are slightly ahead of those in the private sector but not by a significant margin.
Of course this doesn’t include the generous benefits that city government gives its employees. The BLS doesn’t collect information on private sector benefits by individual metropolitan areas but I don’t think anyone would argue that the city’s benefits are better than the median private sector wage-earner’s benefits. This is where I would propose significant changes…
Note: I would normally upload the city wage spreadsheet to my server but if everyone starts downloading it my bandwidth will take a beating. If you’re interested in seeing it then just send me an e-mail and I’ll forward it to you…
Major health care reform is now the law of the land
I did not think the Democrats would enact major healthcare reform. I was wrong. The Democrats have made sweeping changes to the healthcare system; however, most of the large changes will not be enacted until 2013.
I am 100% against the health care reform legislation that was passed; there is no doubt in my mind that it will make American businesses less competitive and that it will increase the cost of health care in the United States. Each and every time the Government gets involved costs rise. Just look at how fast the cost of education has risen since the Government started massively subsidizing it.
The first tax that is enacted is a 10% Federal excise tax on tanning services. This tax will begin July 1st, 2010. This will mean that tanning salons will have to pass the tax on to their customers; the cost of tanning services will increase by 10% across the country. The JCT expects this tax to raise 2.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.
What offends me about this tax is the compliance costs that accompany it. Many of those businesses that offer tanning services are small businesses. These small businesses are going to have to collect the 10% tax and then remit the tax to the IRS quarterly.
There is no system in place yet for this tax. It will cause business owners to have to create a system to invoice the tax, track how much tax has been collected, and then submit forms to the IRS along with payment. This takes time, effort, and money all of which will be paid by the business owners and ultimately passed on to their customers.
The health care reform package will ensure that accountants make a good living for the forseeable future!
Mike Sylvester
FWEA shows what is wrong with many unions
Like most school districts in the State of Indiana Fort Wayne Community Schools (FWCS) has to cut spending. They have to cut spending because revenues are down significantly due to the recession. Mitch Daniels (Indiana’s Governor) has done the smart thing and he has done everything he can to cut State spending due to the shortfall in revenues.
Fort Wayne City Light Lease Fund
The current City Light trust fund has almost 34 million dollars.
Can someone explain to me why this trust fund is managed by a financial planning firm from Chicago? Fort Wayne has a large number of competent financial planners.
Why is the Fort Wayne City trust fund managed by Chicago firm?
I think we our local Government should use local consultants if at all possible.
Mike Sylvester
Congressman Souder, good grief!
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I truly want to see Congressman Mark Souder defeated. I do not vote for Congressman Souder and I will not vote for him under any foreseeable circumstances.
When he first ran for Congress he promised to debate opponents in the primary.
Congressman Souder keeps violating this promise (along with others; especially term limits). Most recently he stated he would not debate any of his current primary opponents as they were not “credible.”
In the last week Congressman Mark Souder has ran two different Radio Advertisements on WOWO where he specifically attacks Mr. Thomas; one of his primary opponents he considers “not credible.”
So it seems that Mr. Thomas is not credible enough to debate; however, he is credible enough to be attacked with two different negative radio ads.
Congressman Souder is exactly the type of Republican that I will never support. He is a hypocrite, he often votes for more Government, and he is not a fiscal conservative.
Mike
Housing “crisis” will last for several years
The idiots in Washington DC absolutely refuse to learn from their mistakes.
I posted about some of the programs that our politicians in Washington DC have implemented to help people stay in homes that they cannot afford in a post 17 months ago.
President Obama expanded this failed program when he implemented the HAMP program. We were told the HAMP program would save four million homeowners from foreclosure.
To date there have only been 170,000 permanent loan modifications. Worse yet a huge number of these loan modifications are already delinquent. In fact 51.5% of all of the loans that were modified in the first quarter of 2009 were already delinquent AGAIN by the end of 2009!
One has to assume that the bank modified the loans of 170,000 of the people MOST likely to be able to make their loan payments. In only nine months more than half are already defaulting again.
This program needs to be immediately discontinued. Programs like this never work. Just let these homes go into foreclosure and save the taxpayers some money.
Mike
Can President Obama save his Presidency?
President Obama is only 14 months into his first (and likely only) term and per a recent Rasmussen poll only 43% of voters approve of his performance. Admittedly Rasmussen often is biased towards the right; however, there is no doubt that President Obama is unpopular. In my opinion the Republicans will pick up a significant number of Congressional seats in November.
That being said, I certainly think that President Obama could do some simple things to improve his popularity and to minimize the Democratic losses in November. Put simply he needs to pass some legislation that will fire up his base and he needs to pass some legislation that will bring some moderates back to the Democrats.
Henry Administration learns NOTHING from the recent housing crisis
The News-Sentinel has a piece you should read entitled “City sets aside $300,000 for down-payment assistance.”
A huge bubble was created in the US housing market for a variety of reasons. This housing bubble burst in 2008 and housing prices plunged.
Apparently the City of Fort Wayne learned absolutely nothing from the recent housing debacle. The City of Fort Wayne will continue its abysmal policy of spending tax dollars to help low income people purchase homes.
Believe it or not the City will spend up to $10,000 per house helping low income people purchase houses.
It is amazing to me that government continues to refuse to learn from their past mistakes. This program should be immediately closed and not another dollar should be spent on it. There is no reason in this world that the City of Fort Wayne should select a few “lucky” families and help them buy a house that they often cannot afford.
Good Grief.
Mike Sylvester
Six reasons for any conservative to vote against Congressman Mark Souder
It will come as no surprise to any of the readers of this blog that I am hoping Republican Mark Souder does not win re-election this year. I am a Republican, however, I do not vote for “big government Republicans” like Mark Souder.
I am sure that I could come up with a huge list of reasons; however, I thought six would be sufficient for this post.
