Marc's Stuff

1) This is a quote from the Toledo Blade in an store regarding TARTA's take over or TARPS today.

Larry Chasteen, a TARTA trustee who is the AFL-CIO community services labor liaison at United Way of Toledo, warned that the transit authority could lose local unions' support for future levies if the transit union's members are left out in the cold. "Injury to one union is injury to all unions. That's the motto in this town," he said

2) A propose law that would require businesses over 25 employees to give there Employee's 7 sick days. In a recent poll, roughly 70% of Ohio would vote for it. This shows you the short term/sellfishness of this state. Now.. I personally have a pet peeve about people calling off work for reasons other then what I considered valid (Valid reasons would be personal illness, family illness, and/or vehicle/house issues. FMLA is really a sore spot with me. I have worked (and a result I had bust my ass to cover for them) by countless number of people that have abuses FMLA for hang overs/ cocaine induced migraines/attend a party/laziness. (FMLA doesn't need to go away, but it needs revised majorly) This proposal will only give those same people another way to abuse this system. Personally if I owned a business looking to relocate, I would avoid Ohio like the plaque, and If I was currently located in Ohio, I would searously consider moving to another, more business friendly state.

This is f*&ing nuts.

Posted by Marc at 04:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK I need to vent. There was a time (even recently) when I used to love the city of Toledo. Hell a little over 2 years ago, I bought a house in the city expected to stay a while, but since then I have discovered that the City of Toledo is quickly becoming a big fricking joke. It's been losing populations for years and years. There are talks about businesses leaving Toledo. I read today that ANOTHER local factory has closed down. O-I one of the city's biggest employers moved to Perrysburg. And we all know about the Carty bike paths. Money getting spent on something that has shown in other areas will get little use, instead of being spent on created jobs. We had around 50 good paying Jobs getting created if Carty would cough up around $500,000 to clean up the site, but instead he choose to spend it on stupid things like bike paths, bridge lights and those “Toledo Pride” signs. All look nice, but they won't do a damn thing for people looking for jobs. Then because the city is losing money, Our wonderful leaders decide that instead of cutting expenses from administration staff, and other useless areas that it needs to create more income for the city. Couple years ago, it started a tow lot, and with it a lot of private tow companies went under. Now they are going into the Ambulance business. Already I have heard reports of one company cutting 18 from it’s staff and taking 8 ambulances off the road,( I can’t find anything to confirm this at this time) and the other company (Medicorp) has threaten, and will most likely leave the city of Toledo, and taking it’s 300 plus jobs with them, leaving a city that is compromised in EMS coverage, and with less tax revenue. The city is expecting to replace both those companies with just 6 ambulances. They also claim that they are only going to take 40% of the runs, but with Rumpf saying that they are going to go under, and Medicorp leaving town, it looks like a possibility that the city is going to need to cover the whole city with those 6. Why to go!! It’s nice for the city to give the business owner the middle finger. Now you know why other businesses don’t want to move to Toledo, or are trying to get out.
As mentioned. The city is looking for ways to increase income. Another proposal is to start charging a Tax..er..um. ”Garbage Fee” of $6 a month. We are already paying for the garbage pick-up in the city taxes. The city has had, since the earlier 80’s, a ¾ percent income tax that in part is to pay for the city’s garbage collection. We should be put another tax on top of this? This is just a case of double taxation. Once again, I feel the city needs to make more cuts in Administration areas, instead of trying to balance the city’s budget on the back of the already tapped population.

Posted by Marc at 07:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Due to a change of Job’s, I haven’t been listing to WSPD as much as I used to. I’m simply not in the right spot to be able to, and for some reason they don’t in believing in doing pod casts of the local Radio shows, but I follow the War between WSPD and Toledo’s Major Carty Finkbeiner with some amusement. It’s really more of a war between Brian Wilson, program director, and Carty more then anything, but if you think about it, but In a lot of circles, the Iraq war was considered a war between Bush, and Saddem.
For the people that are not aware of how it started, last year, while Carty was trying to get a bike path built, WSPD took a hand on getting it defeated. The home owners in the area the path was to be constructed didn’t want the path, and the radio sttation gave them a forum express their opinions. At a public forum, the mayor threw WSPD talks show Fred LeFebvre under the bus for comments made on the Radio, and accused Fred of telling “Mistruths, Half-truths, and Outright lies” Brian Wilson, backing his employee, promptly banned Carty from any Talk shows on the station. Carty in response banned WSPD from news conferences, press briefing, and banned his staff from talking to WSPD reporters. The ban was to be lifted if/When Carty Apologized. Well. He didn’t. According to WSPD’s website, they did left the ban, but Carty keep enforcing it. This came to head 2 days ago, when A reporter was banned from a press briefing, and then 3 of WSPD staff members was also not permitted from going into a meeting yesterday.
Now my 2 cents. When we elected Carty this last time, we knew he was going to do something like this. While Carty is Mayor, almost yearly something goes by that happens that Carty does that makes the news. In this case, it was with a News station. We knew this when we elected him, but why do we keep electing him. It seems like no one that is a strong candidate for mayor is willing to run for office, or the ones that do are you typical Republcrate and only want to say, what they think the voters want to hear. At election Time, Carty is now different but as soon as he takes office, he changes from a Dr. Jeckly to Mr Hyde. When every I talk to someone from Outside of the city, and explain to them about Carty, they can’t believe it. Brian Wilson was started on the radio he has never seen a Mayor act like my Finkbeiner in his travels. (which doesn’t surprise me, after all this is a man who suggested to move the deaf people to the airport) . To keep Toledo out of the laughing stock pages, and to put it in the front pages for good news. We need to have leaders that are willing to

1. Be willing to take criticism
2. Act like an Adult
3. Put forth an agenda that will make significe changes the city that will cause people to want to locate their companies, and live here, and not a plan to dress up the city. Face it, you can gold plate a turd, but remember. It’s still going to be a turd.

Welcome to Toledo

A city with PRID

Posted by Marc at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's funny how the hypocrisy of both The Blade and to a certain point WSPD showed up with the recent labor problems that The Blade. Lets deal with The Blade first.
The Blade traditional supports union causes and politicians who suppose union causes. That has been apparent with the way it reports the news, and the editorial sections of the paper. Also, The Blade will generally endorse democrats politicians (who get a majority of the union supporters) around election time. With the current lock out, they are alianating allot of those union members that they support and in turn support them. They are taking the roll of the "Big Bad" corporation that many of it's normal supporters fight against, and in stories in the paper, the type of companies that they have invesgated fron wrong doing. Now..Lets take a look at WSPD.

I guess this appears to fall under the phase "The Enemy of my Enemy is my friend". When the first lockouts happened WSPD had one of the Union Reps for the paper on air. Now considering the generally pro business stances that the station has taken in the past, this seems a little odd for WSPD. Since then, they have also had another Rep for the union on WSPD. The first Rep was on the Fred LeFebvre show, which doesn't suprise me, considering how long he has worked for Clear channel, and have been fighting the Blade, but when one appeared on the Brian Wilson show couple a weeks ago, that did. Brian, a libertarian, who belive that The owner of the Company has the right to run their company anyway they see fit, had given me the impression of being anti-union, had an union rep on his show. For me, the Conservative/libertarion views express normally on WSPD have lost creditably with the union support they are giving to the locked out employees at The Blade, but then agian, with The Blade locking out the Union, They lost most if not all creditability with it's pro union stance. Kinda makes you think..Who can you trust in Toledo, with 2 of the top sources of news and commentary counterdicting themselves...For that, I'm calling shenanigans

Posted by Marc at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, here it is, Independence Day weekend, and the fireworks start to show up at Government One. What truly happened between the Mayor of Toledo (AKA Carty) and the former Police Chief will only be known between them, and the other city Officials in the room, but the results are sill known. The Chief quit, packed his office, and is basically called Carty any name he can think of. Our poor City of Toledo spokesman is left to defend Carty…Again. Didn’t we got enough of this routine the last go around? But the citizens of Toledo elected him back into office, and thus we have to deal with him, good ,bad, or indifferent. There is no denying that Carty is an enthusiastic mayor for the city of Toledo. He is willing to go out of the way in helping Toledo, and I have heard of one story of him stopping on the side of the road to help some people (I think) pick up trash. But what drives him to help the city can also be a hindrance. It can cause him to go overboard, and the Mayor of Toledo turns in to “super hulk Carty”. Do we need to recall him? Not yet, but if Carty continues with his antics, we may need to think about it later on down the road. Face it, If Carty doesn’t like you, or you disagree,with him, he will tell you in no uncertain terms. The disagreement between Carty and WSPD that has turned into a pissing match is an example. First of all, I feel that the City of Toledo can’t be restricting from allowing or giving information to WSPD and WSPD could make a court case if they wanted. But on WSPD’s side, I do think banning any interviews by Carty is doing them, and the Citizens of Toledo a disservice. Then you have Russ Lemon from The Blade, taking his shots at WSPD for this whole issue that isn’t helping and if anything is egging it on. I know that WSPD, and The Blade as had a rough history in the past, and that in itself is turning into a pissing match with each side taking cheap shots at each other but this is getting to be comical. No wonder people are moving out of the City of Toledo. The only thing that is getting done is arguing. The politicians are arguing with each other, and then are arguing with the city officials. The Media outlets are arguing with the other Media outlets. The final result is that the City of Toledo and the surrounding areas all look like a bunch monkeys screwing footballs.

Posted by Marc at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Logic Free Zone is the term that WSPD's Brian Wilson uses to describe Washington DC. I believe that this can also be applied to the City of Toledo's City Council. Recently, a new proposal has been brought before City Council that calls for a charge to be started for the use of police services. In the measure, if someone causes a car accident, and a City of Toledo Police officer responds to the scene, the person who is found at fault is charged a service fee. Isn't one of the reasons that we pay taxes is to provide police services? This to me seems to be double taxation, and a chance at the City of Toledo to do a money grab. This is another example of why our elected leaders appear to be out of control. In general, it seems that if a government service has a budget problem, the first thing they want to do is to find ways to make money, by raising taxes or putting on "Service fees" or other cash flow enhancements in place. When we have personal budget problems, we can't do that..(Ever ask for a raise from your boss, if you don't get laughed at, chances are they will turn you down). For our household we need to cut expenses and do. We will not get the new car. or get a smaller more efficient car. We stop eating out. We will stop shopping at Dillards Giant Eagle, and start shopping at Wal-Mart, or Aldi's... Does the government follow this belief? No, they go ahead and raise taxes first, or start a "service fee.” A couple years ago, the city of Toledo tired to start a service fee of $5 a week( or a month, I can't remember) for garbage pick up. Our city “leaders” argued that residences of local villages and townships pay a lot more to have their trash picked up, so we should be grateful it was only 5 bucks. But the fee was stopped. Why? Because the citizens of Toledo spoke up and pointed out that we pay for the service in our city taxes. Those villages and townships don't have public garbage pick up, but their taxes are a lot lower so they are charged for garbage pick-up. Since the citizens of Toledo spoke up, the fee was stopped. It seems the only time politicians will cut expenses is when we bitch about the tax raises, and sometimes they still will raise them. Anyone remember the tax increases from the State of Ohio a few years back. Take a look at the tax levies that have been put up for vote recently...Alot of them have been turned down. We are tired of giving more money to the government. ..We are tired of having tax increases, service fees, etc, rammed down our throats when our income isn’t rising at the same rate. What we need to do is put people in place that are willing to make cuts, and not raise taxes but we keep voting the same clowns into office.

Posted by Marc at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

While surfing on the 'ol net today, I came across the following about a swear word that was heard on the broadcast of the Food City 500 at Bristol (NASCAR race)

http://familypolicy.net/us-a/?p=421

Now. I watched the race. and I realize that the track they competed at is a very tough race track, and tempers tend to flare....As a result the, while monitoring an incar radio, a crew chief for a driver that just got crashed out uttered a slang term for poop...Now the link I have is pointed to a "Family first" website, that is upset because they thing NASCAR has a "Swearing problem."


NASCAR has a profanity problem. It seems that every now and then, a participant in a nationally-televised race will violate the FCC’s clear rules against uttering vulgar terms on daytime television and “let one slip” on the air.

First, Family First appears to be a lobbying group that takes itself WAY to seriously...

After all the races I've watched, this has only happened once in a great while...now. When the "s word" is slipped once in a 4 hour broadcast. I’m sure that's going to stunt a Childs growth, prevent him from getting into the best schools, and going to cause the child to move into the basement for the rest of his life, playing nothing but Evercraft, and NASCAR Racing...Come on People. Get off your farking high horse...Chances are the kids they are so concerned about has heard worse at school, or on the playground..Hell, when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, I heard stuff that would make truckers blush..Now..Granted, if a driver or someone lets something slip on an interview, that's difference.. They know they are on air and should be dealt with accordly by NASCAR. But this is a joke. You are listing to a Private conversion between 2 or more members of a crew chief. It's going to happen. I don't think its NASCAR that has a problem, but it's people of "Family policy" that is. They need to get the 10 foot telephone pole out of their ass... Chances are, these people don't even watch the races. Other then to see "Who is going to swear today"... or something like that.. ..They are part of the "Lets Bitch" generation.. Basically. .if they don't like something, they’d bitch about it, until someone else caves to their views...

Posted by Marc at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)