OH-10 Congressional Campaign Trail: Beavercreek candidates night

Last night, we had yet another candidates’ night that was well attended. The people in Greene County not only have a lot more choice in candidates for office, but they come out to see and hear from them. Maybe it’s because the party doesn’t try to interfere with primaries by endorsing (Montgomery County Democratic Party is going to screen tomorrow night- they say too many people are calling the party and asking who they should vote for).

The Ohio 10 congressional candidates lead off the meeting. Again, our congressman didn’t show. Neither did Edward Breen, Olivia Freeman or Mack Van Allen or the unopposed Libertarian candidate David Harlow. To me, Mike Turner’s disregard for every single one of these events (even when he was most definitely in town) is further proof that he doesn’t really care about meeting his constituents. He doesn’t even send a proxy. However, I did run into a friend who said she woke up to find a Mike Turner sign planted in her yard the other day without her permission, so he has people working on his campaign.

It was my first time hearing Republican candidate John Anderson speak. For some reason, he reminds me of John Wayne, without the drawl. A very forceful speaker, with a clenched fist, he lays down his rules, which include eliminating so many government departments the lobbyists wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. The public would also be wondering what they were still getting from government by the time he’s done. Watch the video when I get it posted to see what I mean. He has run before and has no love for Mike Turner. His last line in his “Contract with the citizens of the 10th District”  is a direct hit on Turner:

(25). Last but not least, if elected, I further affirm that I will not personally profit from my service in Congress. To demonstrate this personal commitment, I will voluntarily establish a public financial oversight committee (consisting of clergy, general public, financial accountant, and press/media members) to meet semi-annually to review and verify that I am not profiting from my position in Congress. I will voluntarily release all of my personal income records/receipts to the committee upon request to support this commitment.

via John Anderson for Congress.

The forum was put on by the Beavercreek Chamber of Commerce. They did a great job with the timing, however, in the future, their format of running through all the candidates and then an intermission, then questions- made the candidates stay through a lot of speeches that we’ve either already heard plus took time from attending other events. They did have the cable access channel- and did manage to get a Dayton Daily News reporter, Jeremey Kelly to cover it. He told me he would be on the primary from now on- and give it as much coverage as they will allow. It seems informing voters isn’t part of their mission anymore.

Beavercreek High School was well represented with an AP Government class in attendance, the students had my literature- and all wanted it signed (felt like a rock star for a minute until I realized the teacher was assigning it for extra credit). Tom McMasters and I are the only Dems who actually had literature, even though Sharen Neuhardt has a “campaign staff” and is raising money from Washington and has the endorsement of the AFL-CIO.

I’ll have video posted soon. There were a few technical difficulties last night- partly due to a hyper-active 8-year-old by my side. My initial shot of John Anderson starts out cropping his head off (apologized already) and the first response by Ryan Steele didn’t get taped because my camera was being used by said 8-year-old to make movies during the intermission. I hope Ryan forgives me- he’s thanked me several times for providing this service.

I’m also going to say, that my 1-minute answer to how I’d cut the budget wasn’t a complete thought. I do believe that until we take the money out of politics we’ll never have a budget that aligns best with the needs of all Americans. But, I believe that we can make great strides by changing the way the government conducts business as well. Besides limiting our business to companies that don’t have excessive compensation structures for their executives, we can also streamline the government purchasing system to make it more competitive and accessible to small business. My GSA EZ proposal for companies under the $6 million size standard would be a good start to help spread the money out to the small business job creators and to rebuild our tax base. Eliminating all corporate welfare masquerading as “economic development” or “job creation” credits- of the type Georgia used to steal NCR from Dayton and moving companies like Reynolds and Reynolds from Dayton to Kettering- would also leave more tax dollars for government to pay down their debt with real instead of promised dollars.

The number one way to cut our debt is to end the war in Afghanistan and stop pretending that we ended it in Iraq. It’s time to eliminate private contractors from doing military work at much higher pay (and danger level- last year more contractors died than military in Afghanistan). It’s also time to stop defending South Korea so they can build cars to put Americans out of work unless they want to pay for our military there (with a markup). Same goes for Europe. Closing overseas military bases and stopping to believe that the U.S. military extension of muscle makes us safer while we go deeper in debt to the Chinese is insanity. We’ve already seen that three small private companies, Fitch, Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s can take a nation out by simply downgrading its debt.

We could spend half of what we do on our projection of force in the world and still outspend the next 6 countries who are “threats” to our nation and not miss it.

Video to be posted as soon as possible.

As we appeared: John Anderson video first (apologies again for the crop):

David Esrati video (in a suit)

Tom McMasters video:

Sharen Neuhardt video:

Ryan Steele video (apologies for not having his one minute response to the question after):

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