Lacking Vision - Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority Tax Increase Should Be Rejected!

The unchecked bureaucratic behemoth -- The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, will again be asking voters in Cuyahoga County for more money this upcoming election.

With the Cuyahoga County area already losing more jobs than any U.S. Metro area over the last 4 months and several other tax increases on the ballot this year, one has to ask -- where do these so call business & community leaders supporting Issue 82 think people in this area will get the money to pay for this latest tax increase?

While a quick look at the community leaders, business leaders and elected officials supporting Issue 82, should be enough in itself to vote against Issue 82, the below Op/Ed will highlight even more reasons why the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority's continued lack of vision should preclude them from getting any more of your tax dollars....

From Cleveland.com --

The Cleveland Department of Port Control began operation in 1825 during construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal, when the population of the city was in the hundreds. Once opened, the canal and the port became central to the expansion of trade in the region, with the port serving 2,400 ships in 1838.

With the advent of railroads, use of the canal began to decline during the Civil War, and by the end of the century much of the system was abandoned. With goods being shipped by rail across the country, demand for the port lessened as well. 

Although the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway enabled international vessels to sail to Great Lakes destinations, the volume of traffic has not met the hopes of the port operators. In 2012, Cleveland hosted only 52 international vessels, an average of one per week.

Today, tonnage through the Port of Cleveland continues to decline. What is overwhelmingly shipped through the city's maritime facilities are commodities: iron ore, scrap, sand, gravel, etc. The outlook for significant growth is dim at best, and even the strategic plan for the Port Authority states:

"The Port's existing cargo markets are mature, niche markets that have been flat or declining for many years and opportunities to expand base cargo operations are limited."

There are two underutilized locations that make up the Port Authority, the Bulk Terminal located on Whiskey Island and the port itself at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. According to the Port Authority, in 2012 the Bulk Terminal operated at 55 percent of capacity on 45 acres, but it has an important economic function in supplying the ArcelorMittal plant.

In contrast, the warehouses and storage areas located on prime real estate at the mouth of the Cuyahoga add little economic value to Greater Cleveland. In 2012, the port itself was at 5 percent of capacity on almost 90 acres. Over the past 13 years, the port itself operated at 10 percent of capacity.

Trying to put a happy face on things, the port's Strategic Action Plan mysteriously conjures up the potential for additional opportunities for niche business, such as steel slab imports from Canada, maybe some feeder services from Northern Europe, containerized products for the polymers industry, and even wind turbines. How about a ferry to a tiny Canadian port two hours from Toronto or Niagara Falls?

Transportation of finished products and components do not travel via Great Lakes maritime carriers. Aircraft, railroads and trucks manage it all quite nicely. Bulk commodities are the niches that need to be transported via ships. But that market is not growing and there is no feasible analysis that projects it to grow and create the jobs that Greater Cleveland needs.

In reviewing the makeup of the Port Authority's board, one wonders where the maritime experts are. Lawyers and politicians are needed, but not necessarily running the city's port operations. Connections clearly seem to matter more than expertise. For a county still dealing with the aftermath of decades of corruption, we can do better.

The port has otherwise made itself useful by providing loans for development activities unrelated to shipping and storage, but one searches in vain for a rationale why that function should be held by a maritime authority that sits uneasily between the city and county governments. 

There is a whimsical overlay in the Strategic Action Plan that shows the Baltimore Inner Harbor as it would look if it were plunked down east of the football stadium. Aside from the fact that a portion of it would be located in the waters of Lake Erie and another would overlay part of Burke Lakefront Airport, it leaves both the port and the Bulk Terminal in place without addressing the true development needs of our lakefront.

Lacking a plan that can identify growing market opportunities, the vision to place our port operations in proper focus for the next few decades is not to be found in anything the Port Authority publishes. 

We need strong leadership with bold vision to not only right-size our port operations, but also to develop and begin implementation of a waterfront plan that would maximize the precious resource that is our lakefront. We can be a model of how to retain maritime operations while providing a world-class lakefront that shows the best of Midwestern ingenuity and hospitality. We don't need to renew the port levy to support a 1950's vision. We need a new vision that creates jobs by putting our prime lakefront property to its highest and best use.

Jim Trutko, formerly the manager of market research for The Plain Dealer, runs Trutko & Associates, a local market research and consulting firm.

Obama KNEW in 2010 that 93-million or more would lose current insurance due to Obamacare

From Insights, Issues & Istook --

In the fine print of Obama Administration documents from three years ago, it shows they knew Obamacare would outlaw far more than the 5% of policies which they now claim are involved. Instead, it’s 93-million Americans, including group and employer-based coverage as well as individual policies.

Obama has known all along that 93-million people would lose their current insurance due to Obamacare.

The White House is in full-blown cover-up mode, claiming President Obama has saved Americans from supposed second-rate, predatory, bad-apple or shoddy insurance companies.

Their crime? Offering affordable insurance that people wanted to keep. No, it didn’t cover everything like Obamacare does. But few can afford a policy that covers everything–just like flying first-class costs too much, or staying in luxury hotels.

In the fine print of Obama Administration documents from three years ago, it shows they knew Obamacare would outlaw far more than the 5% of policies which they now claim are involved. Instead, it’s 93-million Americans, including group and employer-based coverage as well as individual policies.

Obama lied to get votes, saying if you liked your insurance you could keep it. Now he’s lying to cover it up; so we can expect that his lying will never stop.

In FORBES, Avril Roy reveals an obscure Obama Administration report published in the June 2010 Federal Register.  

As he writes:

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013.

Another 25 million people, according to the CBO, have “nongroup and other” forms of insurance; that is to say, they participate in the market for individually-purchased insurance. In this market, the administration projected that “40 to 67 percent” of individually-purchased plans would lose their Obamacare-sanctioned “grandfather status” and get canceled, solely due to the fact that there is a high turnover of participants and insurance arrangements in this market. (Plans purchased after March 23, 2010 do not benefit from the “grandfather” clause.) The real turnover rate would be higher, because plans can lose their grandfather status for a number of other reasons.

How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.

Will these canceled plans be replaced with better coverage?

President Obama’s famous promise that “you could keep your plan” was not some naïve error or accident. He, and his allies, knew that previous Democratic attempts at health reform had failed because Americans were happy with the coverage they had, and opposed efforts to change the existing system.

Now, supporters of the law are offering a different argument. “We didn’t really mean it when we said you could keep your plan,” they say, “but it doesn’t matter, because the coverage you’re going to get under Obamacare will be better than the coverage you had before.”

But that’s not true. Obamacare forces insurers to offer services that most Americans don’t need, don’t want, and won’t use, for a higher price.

In an earlier FORBES article, Chris Conover calculates a larger number of Americans will lose their current coverage, namely 129 million of us. You can read that article HERE; it includes his calculations.

A chart from it is below:

President Obama Calls in Glinda The Health Care Fairy to Fix Website

Not trusting that even the "best & brightest" can fix the Obamacare website, President Obama called in Glinda the Health Care Fairy.

Though unconfirmed, reports say sounds of heels clicking together and the chant of, "I hope the website will work, I hope the website will work, I hope the website will work" were heard coming from the Oval Office.....

Happy Halloween! Obama-scare "The Healthcare Mash"

A very accurate and appropriate video describing Obamascare this Halloween....

Rep. DeSantis & Senator Johnson Introduce "If You Like It You Can Keep It Act"

From National Review --  

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Representative Ron DeSantis of Florida have introduced the text of the ‘If You Like It You Can Keep It Act,’ designed to enable Americans who currently hold health-care plans to maintain them past January 1, when most of the Affordable Care Act’s new mandates kick in. In order to do so, it makes every plan people hold through December 31, 2013, a “grandfathered” plan, exempt from the new mandates. The original bill does have “grandfathered plans,” but that is restricted to plans that existed on the day the law was passed, March 23, 2010, and which haven’t had “material changes” to their structure. Unfortunately, as the January 1 deadline for the individual mandate approaches, millions of Americans have found out their plans have been cancelled — and insurance companies are rightly arguing that this is because their grandfather status can’t be maintained because of other issues come January 1.

DeSantis says that the House version of the bill already has the support of more than 30 members of the lower chamber. And at least the concept of Senator Johnson’s bill has already won a supporter across the aisle, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu, who vowed today to introduce legislation to help people keep their health-care plans, claiming that she wanted plans to be preserved when she voted in favor of the president’s omnibus health-care law.

Representative DeSantis said in a statement today that “it is clear” the president’s promise about Americans’ keeping their health plans “was a reckless deception designed to facilitate the law’s passage against the will of the people.” Indeed, there was more than a little subterfuge involved: Technically the law as passed would protect plans that were in existence starting in 2010, but the Obama administration issued regulations that restricted how these grandfathered plans could change while still maintaining their exempt status — including restrictions on the way the financial structure of the plans could be changed that will make them essentially impossible to sustain.

Ironically, plans aren’t allowed to significantly increase various forms of cost-sharing, like co-pays and deductibles, despite the cost increases heaped on by other aspects of the ACA from which they’re not exempt, meaning that people will be dumped onto the exchanges — where they’ll likely face much more taxing cost-sharing measures. Under Landrieu’s and DeSantis’s plan, if people like their existing plans enough to pay slightly higher co-pays or deductibles, they can keep them.

The Balanced-Budget Amendment is Fool's Gold

From Renewed Reason Blog --

There is a renewed movement by many so-called conservatives for a balanced- budget amendment. The amendment supposedly would force our politicians to get our $17 trillion debt under control. We have been through this rodeo show before. The amendment is just a political farce for politicians who really don’t want to reduce the size of government.

The amendment will never reduce the size of our national debt. More importantly, the amendment will never reduce the size of government.

First, the amendment would never be enforceable. Isn’t the Senate already suppose to pass a budget and how many years did that take? Is the GOP going to file a case with the Supreme Court when the Democrats refuse to sign off on the supposedly balanced budget? Will the Supreme Court’s police squad force the Democrats to pass the budget? Will the Supreme Court even issue a decision in time?

Second, a balanced budget is just an illusion in Washington. Both parties regularly cushion their projections of revenue and hide the costs of government programs. In fact, the GOP House just passed an alleged balanced budget that increases spending by 3%! Magical. A balanced budget is a campaign tactic for courting voters who don’t think pass step one. As Murray Rothbard wisely noted,

As we all should know by this time, economists and politicians are experts at submitting glittering projected future budgets that have only the foggiest relation to the actual reality of the future year. It will be duck soup for Congress to estimate a future balance; not so easy, however, to actually balance it.

The only solution to limiting the amount of federal debt and, more importantly, the size of government is to get rid of its means to do both, the Federal Reserve. Without the Fed and its ability to print money out of thin air, the government could not increase in size but for increasing taxes on its consenting citizens or borrowing savings from a willing private sector.

At a minimum, the Fed’s ability to purchase treasuries must be eliminated. We always talk about the size of debt we owe to China. The size of China’s debt ownership doesn’t compare to the nearly $2 trillion in treasuries owned by the Fed. The Fed’s ability to purchase treasuries allows the government to grow its debt with little short-term consequences. Absent the Fed’s ability to purchase treasuries, interest rates would rise as the government borrowed more savings out of the economy. The government would be forced to pay its bills. The government debt simply could not grow to $17 trillion absent the artificially low interest rates maintained by the Fed.

The balance budget amendment is fool’s gold. If the politician boasts of supporting such an amendment but doesn’t talk about eliminating the Fed or its ability to purchase treasuries, the politician is just playing with you. Don’t be fooled.

Obama Acknowledges Tea Party was Right: Issues Another Delay

October 28, 2013

For Immediate Release

Contact: Marianne Gasiecki

State Co-coordinator (OH) - Tea Party Patriots

mansfieldteaparty@gmail.com

Obama Acknowledges Tea Party was Right

President Issues Another Delay

During the recent Continuing Resolution fiasco, the Democrats and media, along with GOP elitists, joined the chorus hurling insults at Senators Cruz and Lee. Citizens of the Tea Party movement were described as wacko, out of touch, idiots, unintelligent ideologues, frauds and several other colorful terms, regarding their attempt to delay the implementation of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). 

During this debate, President Obama dismissed warnings from his own Administration that the roll out of Obamacare will be a "train wreck". President Obama ignored the calls for a common sense delay of the Affordable Care Act - an effort to prevent millions of Americans who are not exempt, from being negatively impacted by its forced implementation. President Obama, the Democrats, media and Republican elite, instead spent their time labeling citizens of the Tea Party movement as extremists, accusing them of trying to blackmail the country. President Obama even allowed the government to "shut down".

Even in the face of these attacks, the citizens of the Tea Party movement stood their ground, calling for what is best for the American people. "Our requests were simple common sense - as 'all men are created equal', please do not fund and/or force Obamacare on American citizens that were not privileged enough to get the exemptions and waivers received by big labor, big business and Congressional staffers", said Ralph King, Tea Party Patriots State co-coordinator from Ohio.

"In putting their partisan agenda first, and acting like playground bullies, President Obama and the Democrats rebuffed all common sense requests made by the Tea party" said Marianne Gasiecki, fellow Tea Party Patriots State co-coordinator from Ohio. "While it is nice that the President and the Democrats are now acknowledging that the Tea Party was correct, from the beginning they should have been concerned with doing the right thing for the American people instead of stomping their feet like spoiled children, shutting down our national monuments and parks, and creating fear over a supposed government "shutdown".

The concerns recently expressed by the Democrats regarding the systemic failures of the Obamacare website, and President Obama now issuing yet another delay, prove that the initial calls to defund and delay were correct. Even with the affirmation of the Tea Party's stance, the citizens of the Tea Party movement take no solace in being proven right. We would rather have had President Obama and the Democrats initially do what was right for the citizens of this country, instead of putting on a show of petulant party politics that caused the government to slow down.

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