Friday, October 2, 2009

"BY THEIR 'BREAD CRUMBS' YE SHALL KNOW THEM:" STARK COUNTY'S POLITICIANS


Political analysis is a lot of fun.

You ought to try it some time.

And it is not as difficult as you might think.

Politicians are some the most prolific generators of  telltale "bread crumbs" as humankind has ever known.

The "good Book" says:  "By their fruits ye shall know them."

Well, with all due respect to the "good Book," when it comes to politicians the truism needs a bit of re-phrasing:  "By their bread crumbs left on the trail of life ye shall know them."

Ya see, politicians are out collecting "manna" (the biblical word for bread) from "heaven."

Heaven?

Aren't they a liitle more "earthy" than seeking an eternal reward for all the earthly good they do?

Of course, its all about defining "heaven" in a more, let's say "down to earth" way.

How's that?

Well, let's just say that "heaven" to a politician is "you and I:"  the taxpayer.

We rain dollars down on them daily for them to gather up and use for their our benefit.

As they go about dispensing our money back to us, they leave a trail of bread crumbs.  We follow the crumbs, picking them up one-by-one for our bodily edification but also in a quest to learn where they are leading us.

In the case of  the Jackson Township fiscal officer, deputy Canton Municipal clerk of courts, Stark County Democratic Party chairman and Stark Council of Governments Governing Committee (SCOG) chair Randy Gonzalez, (don't you just love all those titles);  his bread crumb lead to:
  • the building the biggest and the baddest (the economic merger Canton and Jackson) dead end metropolis in the county.
  • the re-building of Stark County's 9-1-1 in which he and his political consorts determine winners and losers on the back of an "imposed" sales/use tax,
  • the building of a one-party-county for Stark County so that Stark can become the most like Cuyahoga County among all of Ohio's other counties.
Gonzalez is a quick study.

He and and his allies (those nearest to him in personal and political sense) take the heart and soul of the manna from heaven (taxpayer money) for themselves in the form of public jobs and their pet projects (the legacy factor), whether they work or not.

Mostly they don't.

So, we are left with the crumbs.

Go figure!

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