Community Dialogue

When I saw the George W. Bush "Miss Me Yet?" and "Where is John Galt?" bumper stickers on the van outside the Sandusky Bay Cigar shop I visited Saturday in Sandusky, Ohio, I had a feeling I was in for a fight.

Inside the van owner was watching the Cleveland Indians game and calling for the New York Yankees, baseball's wealthiest team, to pay into a fund that could be used by poorer teams like the Indians, whenever the Yankees spend extravagantly on a baseball player. While a Yankee fan, I told the guy that I agreed with his idea since the Yankees - who benefit from being in a huge television market that enables them to consistently buy the best players, including former Indians - don't operate on a level playing field.

While the proudly libertarian guy was fine with redistributing the wealth of baseball's richest team to help the poor teams gain equality, sort of a sports version of socialism, it was a different story when I suggested we needed the superrich to pay their fair share of taxes. This was after the guy accused public workers of being lazy and overpaid.

I explained to the guy that as the son of a single mother who worked as a metermaid to put food on the table for me and was a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, I know that union benefits and wages are often the difference between being poor or middle class. And that having no union means being at the mercy of bosses who can make up the rules as they go along including trying to make workers do unpaid overtime or endure sexual harassment.

When he said that workers are free to hit the bricks if they don't like their boss, I noted that there are currently five Americans for every job http://workplacepsychology.net/2010/07/21/5-unemployed-americans-competing-for-1-available-job/

When he said that there would be more jobs if there were lower taxes I noted that the highest federal income tax rate was about 90 percent after The Great Depression and about 50 percent in 1981 when St. Reagan took over. During that time the US built a middle class and an infrastructure that were the envy of the world and rich people didn't starve. The top income tax rate now is 36 percent and Americans in 2009 paid the lowest amount of federal income tax since 1950. http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm

Things deteriorated from there. The guy said corporate CEOs deserved to be rewarded with bonuses for shipping jobs to China even if China uses child labor and prison labor. Despite the golden parachutes received by many of the CEOs responsible for the Wall Street crash, he insisted they would "pay for their mistakes." He said Donald Trump got rich from hard work.

I said relying on corporations to to police themselves was as effective as voluntary speed limits and that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a disciple of libertarian goddess Ayn Rand, was one of the biggest a-holes in the world and helped trigger the crash. By this time my $3.50 cigar had been smoked and strongly resisting the urge to threaten to kick the guy's fat libertarian ass all over the parking lot - in fairness he might have kicked my flaming liberal ass - I departed.

While I never could've changed the guy's closed mind, if I'd been more diplomatic, maybe I could've at least gotten him to agree that not all of us unemployed people want to be jobless and that most librarians and teachers aren't rich or lazy. Instead of talking to each other, we were talking at each other.

That's a shame because despite his worship of dog eat dog capitalism I don't doubt that the guy works hard and pays taxes, however reluctantly. Liberals like me don't want to take anything away from people like him, we just don't think it's fair that the wealthiest 1 percent, who earn about $1.137 million annually, just got a tax cut. And that the budget deficits in Ohio and around the US are largely due to the massive redistribution of wealth to the rich http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

I wish the libertarian guy and I communicated the way the people at a community meeting in Sandusky did a couple hours earlier. The meeting was called in the wake of the March 19 fatal shooting of Sandusky police Officer Andy Dunn. Dunn was white and the shooting suspect, career criminal Kevin Randleman, is black. That death unleased underlying racial tension in Sandusky, a mostly white city of about 26,000 in northwest Ohio.

The mostly black group of about 60 people talked about black and white churches working together to decrease violence by addressing issues like absentee parents and dysfunctional children. About volunteering in schools to provide children with the guidance and values they may not be getting at home.

They spoke about how police need to be respected, but also how all officers also need to show respect.

"The Officer Friendly you see on TV is not always the officer you see on the street," said one woman. "Authority needs to be tempered with a little compassion."

I spent a few minutes talking about the importance of pushing for stricter gun control and said it was the least we could do to honor Officer Dunn's memory. I told the audience that as a reporter I've seen the result of gun violence firsthand having visited dozens of homes of families whose loved ones were victims of gun violence. Dunn was one of about 31,244 who die of gun violence annually, 12,632 of whom were homicide victims.

I noted that criminals can't legally buy pistols like the .38 revolver used to kill Dunn meaning someone bought the gun legally and it was either part of a straw purchase, or stolen. I neglected to mention that in individual gun purchases not involving licensed gun sellers, the seller is not legally required to check if the buyer has a criminal background. That gives criminals a blank check.

Of course there will always be gun violence, but I pointed out that if all gun purchasers were required to go through the same one-day education and safety class required in Ohio to obtain a permit to carry pistols, it would discourage frivolous puchases and reduce the likelihood of guns ending up in the wrong hands.

As a gun owner who has pistol permits in Indiana and Michigan, I stressed that I'm not anti-gun, but that the lack of gun laws and lack of enforcement of them in this country is insane. I said they should lobby their politicians to renew the assault weapons ban which would reduce the kind of high capacity ammunition magazines used in the Virgina Tech and Tuscon massacres.

I told the audience they should go to Ohio US Sen. Rob Portman's area office and demand to speak to him about why he accepts donations from the National Rifle Association, an organization funded by the gun industry and dedicated to ensuring as many guns as possible are sold. Portman recieved the third highest contribution of Senate candidates in 2009-10. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=q1

Although the people who take part in these kinds of community meetings are well meaning, not a lot usually comes out of them. Nonetheless, it's important to keep the dialogue going because it's the first step to affecting postive change. I wish the libertarian guy had been there.