8th congressional district

Paranoia Will Destroy Ya: 2016 Election Comes To An End For Me

Posted on October 28, 2016 by CharlieClaywell

Screenshot of image on Preble County GOP Facebook page.

It’s officially over. I cast my vote, sealed the envelope and dropped my ballot in a locked metal box inside the lobby of the Preble County courthouse.

And, like comedian Samantha Bee, I’m glad it’s finished.

It has been the most contentious election I’ve known and it definitely changed my opinion of the GOP — locally and nationally. For more than 30 years, I voted as an Independent, but this year’s debacle drove me to the primaries for the first time where I cast a vote as a Democrat.

Under Ohio law, I will remain a Democrat for two years.

Heroin, Not ISIS, The Killer Here

This election opened my eyes to the failings of the local political process and to the degree good people go to in the effort to rationalize their choice. The latter has become glaringly obvious on social media and in letters to the editor. Yet, despite all the local discourse about ‘stopping ISIS and Clinton’ and Trump being an ‘outsider’ — in Preble County we have more down-to-earth problems.

Residents in Preble County earn 75 cents on the dollar (it fell to 70 cents during Dubba’s presidency), heroin cases have skyrocketed in our court system — in 2011 five heroin-related cases were processed in Common Pleas Court, but today, through 10 months of 2016, 43 cases have been.

We have an underemployment issue — 45 percent of our residents cannot afford a two-bedroom apartment (pdf) and only 11 percent of our 25 or older population (pdf) have a four-year degree — considerably less than Ohio’s 25 percent average. This, coupled with the fact that 11 percent of our 18-to-25-year-olds do not have a high school diploma, makes it difficult to attract higher-paying positions to the region.

Without higher paying jobs it is hard to build a strong tax base and so the Catch-22 begins: low-paying jobs, more children raised in poverty, children — who in adulthood — accept a reality that low-paying jobs is all they can have, take a low-paying job so our tax base declines, storefronts and buildings are empty, etc., etc., etc..

It seems, solving the local employment situation is more within the realm of what local leaders could — and should — address.

This issue impacts local lives significantly more than ISIS, Clinton or Trump.

Solutions, Not Slogans

But, addressing local problems means politicians must become effective. They must become astute at creating viable solutions for their constituents. They must generate answers.

Since I live in a One-Party town, I do lay the responsibility at the GOP’s feet. They should follow the advice found in the 2013 national GOP report, instead of

decorating their Victory Center with “Lock Her Up” signs,
embracing the counterproductive ‘deplorable’ movement,
posting alt-right videos on their Facebook page or,
promoting conspiratorial theories about the media (as the image above demonstrates).

In the Internet age, those with initiative can dissect information and come to an understanding of what most closely aligns with the truth. Fortunately, most Americans do not daily feast on a diet of conspiratorial stew.

Selling Fear

The absence of solutions is just one issue though. Another symptom of GOP woes can be found in the plethora of flyers I’ve received this election cycle. GOP flyers have a common theme: Fear.

Fear

of a ‘liberal’ Supreme Court,
of someone taking all our guns,
that someone, somewhere is getting a social good that I am not getting.

The list of GOP fears feels endless, while their list of viable options, solutions and ideas, based on the flyers I have received, is non-existent.

Republicans, it appears, have become the Puritans of the modern era.

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. — H. L. Mencken.

Brand Needs An Overhaul

I don’t have the mental energy to absorb the Party’s fear, distrust and paranoia. I want a political party that believes in progress, in America and in its people, one that embraces diversity — not a Party determined to oppose everything.

The GOP brand is tainted for me. It is the brand of anti-intellectualism and regression.

My Vote Counts

But, oddly enough, my little corner of the world may be an indicator of Ohio’s political pulse. According to political columnist Thomas Suddes,

Trump has to attract such anti-establishment voters, many in Ohio’s southwestern corner. That’s where to look, on election night, for clues about whether Clinton or Trump will likely carry Ohio.

This does give me a little bit of hope.

As the resident of a Trump County, I know Clinton will not carry it, however I do think, based on the political signs I have seen, her appeal is growing beyond the 30 percent I originally predicted she would carry. This upward tick may indicate she will carry Ohio since moving 5-10 percent of Preble County voters suggests she can do it on a wider scale in more liberal — and less anti-establishment — regions of the state.

Oh, the audacity of hope.

Categories: 8th congressional district, Age of Discontent, Small Town Politics, Understanding Trump Counties

Deplorable And Proud Of It — Now’s There’s A Feather In Your Cap!

Posted on October 12, 2016 by CharlieClaywell

When Kramer, of Seinfeld fame, announces to his friends that he wants to ‘die with dignity,’ Elaine quips, ‘now there’s a feather in your cap,’ because achieving some things, well, just isn’t all that glorious. Neither is embracing slogans that are harmful to the country — like ‘deplorable and proud of it.’

Deplorable and Proud of It

In my hometown, the GOP rents empty downtown storefronts each election cycle (there is never a shortage of options) for its victory center. This year the signage in the window includes the slogan “Deplorable and Proud of It” — an obvious reference to a quote from Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. The entire quote goes like this:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.

Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.

It is a quote that resonates with some Trump supporters — and smaller versions of the sign are sprinkled throughout Preble County. When individuals embrace the slogan, some may dismiss it as the opinion of the unenlightened in a country built upon Enlightenment principles, but when a political organization embraces it, it is problematic. It gives credence to undesirable mores and values.

Deplorable Traits 101

When I see the sign inside the GOP Headquarters on Main Street in Eaton, Ohio I wonder which of the five attributes named by Clinton they are most proud of:

Sexism
Homophobia
Racism
Xenophobia
Islamophobia

These are traits that, by and large, we teach our children to eschew — usually in Sunday School when we teach them the Golden Rule — or maybe later in life by reading books like Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. We have dealt with the negative aspects of these beliefs since our country’s inception — and, it goes without saying, a society built on these concepts is a disgrace to democracy.

Autopsy Report

In 2013, the GOP released a 97-page report, the Growth and Opportunity Project (pdf) trying to decipher how the Party lost the 2012 presidential election to Barack Obama. The report, which became known as the autopsy report, spelled out specific changes the Party should embrace to maintain a relevant presence on the national stage. A few of the points it listed were:

Move left on the Gay issue
Listen to Minorities
Stop Blocking Out All Dissenting Voices

But Trump happened and the new play book was thrown out.

Sexism and Homophobia

Although his rise to prominence was due to his carefully orchestrated exploitation of the inherent weaknesses of the primary system, Trump’s presidential campaign is currently in a freefall after tapes of him bragging about sexual assault to a giggling Billy Bush were leaked to the press. GOP leaders, women more quickly than men, are unendorsing the candidate, much to the chagrin of Bill O’Reilly wannabe Tomi Lahren who, like many, is trying to reduce the scandal down to some bawdy language. It’s not about language, as countless commentators, comedians and moms have pointed out. It’s about the abuse of power and the willful disregard of another person’s rights.

Republican Rob Portman

Not everyone in the GOP is embracing this 5-star deplorable movement. Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who distanced himself from Trump over the weekend, supports same-sex marriage because, as is often the case, when a political position becomes personal it is reevaluated. Several years ago Portman’s son, Will, announced he was gay, and Portman reconsider — and reversed — his view on same-sex marriage. Preble County’s (and Ohio’s 8th) former Congressman John Boehner, a Catholic — possibly taking his cue from the 2013 GOP report — abandoned the long held GOP anti-gay agenda and campaigned in 2014 for an openly gay GOP Congressman.

Xenophobia and Islamophobia

Xenophobia is a blight on America’s collective consciousness. It’s why we turned away Jewish refugees in WWII. It is why a Minnesota farmer in the early 1900s was abused and beaten — first physically then by the legal system — for being a German-American when anti-Germany sentiment ran high in the country.

Fear of non-Protestant religion is another unsolved problem. Although Hillary correctly stated in Sunday’s debate that Muslims have been in this country as far back as George Washington, she did gloss over the persecution they endured. In the beginning, the preferred religion was white Protestant — as Jews, Catholics, Muslims and even various sects of white Protestant churches were persecuted — with a handful of Quakers and Baptists being imprisoned or executed during the colonial era.

As late as the 1850s a gang of thugs associated with the Know-Nothing political group (a political forefather of Trump’s movement) bombed a missionary school run by Father John Bapst, and when damp weather prevented their scheme to burn the missionary alive, they tarred and feathered him. His real crime was being Catholic — and none of the Know-Nothing fear mongers, convinced Bapst was trying to ban the Bible from the United States, were ever charged in the crime.

President George W. Bush

Despite Muslims living peacefully and productively in the United States in the years leading up to and after 9/11, once the terror attacks occurred president George W. Bush was quick to halt Islamophobia from wreaking havoc on our society. Addressing the nation on Sept. 20, just nine days after the attacks, Bush reached out to Muslims saying,

I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.

Racism

Countless books have been written on this subject, but Christian author Robert P. Jones may have best summed up, in our modern era, what proponents of All Lives Matters have failed to understand in their rush to put Black Lives Matter behind them. In his 2015 book The End of White Christian America Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute notes,

Given White Christian America’s long history of complicity in slavery, segregation, and racism we are at the beginning, not the end, of the journey across the racial divide.

Stickin’ It To Them

In the slow simmering of Trump’s implosion, one may expect local GOP leaders to do as the national leaders and distance themselves from Trump. Instead they have hunkered down on their dark horse candidate — placing an additional ‘deplorable and proud of it’ sign on the sidewalk Tuesday, Oct. 11, the last day of voter registration in Ohio — and by posting this video on their Facebook page.

In the video, Lance Wallnau uses the phrase “anointed vessel of God,” when describing Trump, who Wallnau claims has been undergoing a metamorphosis since about 2004/2005 — when Trump, apparently was chosen by God (despite the grabbing women’s genitalia thing) to rise up and lead this nation.

My Hometown Wallnau goes on to compare Trump to Samson. Of course, missing in the comparison is Samson’s heroics. Samson took one for the team by pulling down the temple upon himself to save the Israelites. Trump isn’t that heroic, choosing instead to put it to the team — boasting he was thankful to be unshackled from an organization that constrained him.

If you look at Wallnau’s About Me page, though, you may find a more plausible reason why Wallnau has so much faith in an anointed Trump. One of Wallnau’s students was a winner on Trump’s Reality TV show, The Apprentice. So, in keeping with the biblical focus of his Facebook video rant maybe mammon is what’s driving Wallnau’s position with God’s chosen, albeit seriously flawed, vessel.

Accountability and Morality

There are plenty of valid reasons why responsible church leaders, school officials, civic leaders, politicians and parents teach children not to embrace the five deplorable principles. They’re uncivil. They’re not democratic. They do not bring out the best in a person or in a society. They are not something to ‘hang your hat on.’ They foster hate, encourage divisiveness and partisanship. They prevent compromise and progress.

Simply put they are deplorable — and nothing to be proud of.

Although they spelled the lesser used word deplorable correctly, the local GOP struggled with the word they spell every election cycle -- Headquarters.

Although the local GOP spelled the lesser used word deplorable correctly, they struggled with the word they spell every election cycle — Headquarters. If they would have dropped the U as well as the R, it could have been a play off of the old standard ‘What is missing from ch__ch — UR.’

Categories: 8th congressional district, Broken Promises, My America, Politics, Preble County | Tags: 2016 presidential election, american politics, Democrat, Deplorable, Deplorable and Proud of It, donald trump, Growth and Opportunity Project, hillary clinton, Republican

Solving Heroin Problem Requires New Approach, Local Resources

Posted on March 7, 2016 by CharlieClaywell

Note: This is part of a year-long series where I look at the events, issues, problems and successes in my corner of America and see how they compare with the country as a whole.

Billboards about Vivitrol, heroin and drug counselling dot the landscape throughout my region of the country. This invasion of unhealthy drug use has impacted many families in Preble County and beyond. The stories of tragedy feel endless — from permanently disabled overdose survivors to teenagers who don’t survive.

In the Sunday, Feb. 21 Dayton Daily News B-section centerpiece story, the reporter tells of a 36-year-old heroin overdose survivor who can no longer walk or eat on his own. As the mother, and others, tell their stories of personal struggles, the mom’s words reveal just how much heroin altered her life.

She says,

My day starts at 6 a.m. I dry him, tube feed him and turn him every two hours…. He understands everything you say. He gives me a thumbs up. That’s how he communicates with me.

These tragic stories, and the sheer number of victims and addicts, has many local officials fighting back — trying to reverse the trend. A Kettering judge, tired of the traditional, ineffective legal approach to dealing with heroin addiction, noted,

We’re not solving the problem by sticking them (heroin addicts) in jail for six months. We’re solving the problem by educating them on ways to get their lives back together, Kettering Municipal Court Judge Jim Long said, the paper reported.

This educational approach is also being used by various agencies in the rural county of 40,000 where I live.

Heroin Arrests Double In My County

Recently my hometown paper, The Register-Herald, ran an article about a drug awareness program conducted at a local high school. The program highlighted how deeply heroin is embedded in my community.

The paper reported,

According to members of the Preble County Sheriff’s Office, heroin, along with methamphetamines and abuse of prescription pills remains common in Preble County. Heroin arrests have more than doubled in Preble County since 2012, having overtaken meth, meth labs and prescription pill arrests, according to official reports.

Plenty of disturbing facts exist in that one quote — including meth and prescription drug abuse apparently being a normal, everyday problem for the community — but as the article further states officials are beginning to see some payoff for their work.

…(a) former user told (Preble County Sheriff Mike) Simpson the amount of drugs she sees and is exposed to in Preble County since returning from her time in rehab is well below the amount she was experiencing while using the drug some 8 months ago.

No Man Is An Island

Because of Preble’s close proximity to Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati, Preble County and southwest Ohio is one of the hardest hit areas in the state and the epidemic has spilled across the border into Indiana affecting the very young. In the past year, 54 babies were born addicted to heroin in Wayne County (Ind.), one official noted.

With children being born with a heroin addiction — is it actually possible that a long-term solution is being hampered by governmental policies and inaction?

United Methodist Church Pastor Scott Bell says local resources are a key to recovery because once a person is hooked on the drug, breaking the grip requires a vigorous commitment.

They need to be in counseling for at least a year,” Bell said. “They need to settle into a more constructive life. They can be weaned onto the pill form of the drug, but the psychological addiction never goes away. It’s difficult because the treatment centers are all gone. The government stopped funding them.

Solution Requires Local Facilities

Without adequate funding, treatment centers don’t exist and long-term solutions do not happen.

In impoverished regions of the country, like Preble County (pdf), the burden of care and recovery is cast onto the addicted — people unable to buy their way into treatment and health. Regardless of one’s personal beliefs on why or how a person becomes addicted, the heroin epidemic is a societal problem and requires public funds to solve it.

This means national, state and local politicians must reach across the proverbial aisle, compromise and deliver solid programs to undo the damage.

Without local treatment options, the health of the community — and the lives of some of its citizens — are at stake.

In America

Although Ohio is dealing with a heroin epidemic, it is not the only state. According to Yahoo News, Ohio ranks 10th on the list of states with a heroin problem. The neighboring states of Kentucky and Indiana rank higher. According to the report, 10,574 people age 12 and older overdosed on the drug in 2014 (latest numbers available) — a substantial increase from 10 years earlier when 2,089 individuals died.

It is also a problem in West Virginia, the state that borders Ohio to the east, as former West Virginia State Senator David Grubb explained last fall when President Barack Obama held a community forum there. Grubb noted that one of his daughters was introduced to heroin in 2009 and said she almost died from an overdose — her fourth — in August, 2015. His wife and he hope, Grubb said, that the August overdose would be the one that led to a successful treatment.

Talking to the crowd, Grubb said,

We are full of hope. But we understand the pain — the pain in this room, the pain the families feel. The concern we have is access — where do you get the treatment? How do you get the treatment?

My Hometown: An Outsider’s View From Inside Boehner’s Congressional District

For 25 years one of the most powerful GOP leaders, former Speaker of the House John Boehner, was my Congressman. In My Hometown, I blend statistical evidence with personal stories as I seek to understand how my hometown descended from the thriving community of my childhood to an impoverished area dealing with a heroin epidemic. The eBook opens with the story of William Bruce, the man who founded Eaton, Ohio, and compares Bruce’s concepts of government and community to the methods believed and practiced today.