Columns

Vote for who?

JOE GREEN, Guest columnist
Published: August 30, 2012

There are a variety of campaigns going on across the country for public office. The mixture of candidates can be overwhelming, so much so that many voters will find it difficult to make a choice, especially if one wants to vote a position rather than a party. Here are some thoughts.

The Democrat running for President has decided to garner more votes by relaxing the residency requirements for children of illegal immigrants. In addition, one with a sense of fiduciary responsibility might say that Barack Obama is a spendthrift. Those voters who want perpetual unemployment benefits may want to give him another four years.

The Republican presidential candidate pushed through universal healthcare while he was governor of Massachusetts, but he thinks the same concept is bad for the country.

He is obviously a superb businessman with an outstanding record of leveraging meager assets of companies into enormous debt, a perfectly legitimate practice. Voters who feel that the debt of our country is not already leveraged to the limit will probably want to give Mitt Romney another go at it.

We had some other Republican/Libertarian presidential timbre candidates who could not compete with the final winner. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul were, for the most part, all candid and honest in their presentations.

That kind of behavior does not seem to cut it anymore, but perhaps they have a place in the future administration, and those thoughts will appear later in this article. There is also probably a place for Todd Akin of Missouri, the senatorial candidate who recently put forth some voodoo psychosomatic medicine, in case he does not make it to the Senate.

On a statewide level, we don't hear much about the senatorial race, and I suspect that unless you are a staunch Democrat or Republican, there is not much excitement there compared to the national ticket.

We have a governor who could add some spice and a whole lot of substance to a statewide race, but he is not in contention. He has been relegated to a minor speaking role at the RNC next week. It strikes me as being odd that forthright plain speaking politicians (or whatever they are supposed to be called) like Rick Scott do not win a whole lot of favor in a political party.

On the county level we have Rich Nugent. I don't know whether he is campaigning or not. I do know he is not campaigning with me. He used to though because he would acknowledge my e-mails to his office. That stopped abruptly when I suggested to him that someone in congress needed to swing from the rafters and declare that excessive spending needs to stop.

Congressman Nugent wants to control the debt and the deficit. It is my impression that he does not believe wealthy senior citizens should participate in debt and deficit cuts. If this is so, the gravy train for many senior citizens on Social Security and Medicare would not stop.

Even closer to home we have the nip and tuck race between Jason Sager and John Druzbick. Druzbick wanted the millage rate rolled back to generate more revenue for the county. I still don't understand how a "rollback" results in more, but I wonder if that is why Druzbick lost. Our county property taxes already border on the ridiculously low so I hope Druzbick will return to our governing unit soon.

Here are my choices for some jobs in the new administration come 2013:

Joe Green is a Brooksville resident.