We began the tradition several years ago that each year on the radio we give our broad predictions for the market and the economy for the following year. The following are our predictions for the 2009 fiscal year.

• The stock market, a leading economic indicator, will have a strong first quarter or quarter-and-a-half. After a recovery the market will trade within a range for the balance of the year.
• The overall economy will begin to see improvement by mid-summer, led by real estate. With low gas prices and cheap financing, manufacturing shouldn’t have a problem picking up once consumer confidence stabilizes.
• We believe that the real estate market is currently at or very near its bottom for price declines. Mortgage rates are at all-time lows, which will help the sector recover. With prices 40 percent off their highs and mortgage rates under 5 percent, there is absolutely no better time for buying a home.
• We maintain our stance that inflation is going to be the problem in 2009 as the economy begins its recovery. The Fed has created massive amounts of money by expanding its balance sheet, but velocity is still so low that the public hasn’t seen this cash. When velocity does pick up, inflation will go on a tear. Unlike the Depression, everyone is going to have money. The question is what it will buy.
• Employment, being a lagging indicator, probably will not begin to recover until after the economy as a whole. It may see some improvement in late 2009.
• Oil prices, having reached unsustainable lows, will trend higher over the next year. Crude oil prices have been driven lower through speculative futures trading. It was this same speculation, oddly enough, that drove oil all the way up to $140/barrel just mere months ago. We see $2/gallon as a reasonable average price of gas for 2009 after the market resumes some degree of normalcy.
• Interest rates will begin to rise as the economy recovers and the Fed is forced to try to rein in the inflation that will be ripping through the global market. Unfortunately, the policy of free money can’t be long maintained without serious consequences.
• The worst investment that we see for 2009 is in treasuries. With yields at historic lows, having gone negative on several occasions in short term bills, prices have nowhere to go but down as investors begin to take notice of inflation and bargains to be had in the stock market and oversold corporate debt.

This past year has been an abysmal year for everyone, and we are all too happy to put it behind us and look to the future. There are some very interesting changes taking place in the investment world, and there is plenty of money to be made by those who do their homework. We believe that gone are the times when investors could pick stocks from a hat, buy on Monday, and wait until Friday to tally their profits. The old saying goes “Never confuse brains with a bull market,” and the coming times will certainly separate the brains from the bull. The name of this new game is diligence.

Dock David Treece is a stockbroker licensed with FINRA. He works for Treece Financial Services Corp., www.treeceinvestments.com. The above information is the express opinion of Dock David Treece and should not be used without outside verification.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB), serving Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan, is seeking nominations for the Torch Awards.
The Torch Awards are open to for-profit businesses that serve the public through retail or wholesale markets and tax-exempt, nonprofit, charitable organizations that meet the BBB’s 20 Standards for Charitable Accountability, available at www.bbb.org/charity.
The nominated company or organization must have been in business a minimum of three years and be located in the bureau’s 18-county service area. BBB accreditation is not required.
A nomination form is available by clicking here, at www.toledobbb.org. Mail, fax or e-mail the nomination to the BBB, and the BBB will forward an entry form to the nominee for submission. Each person who nominates one or more companies will automatically be entered in a drawing for two free adult tickets to Cedar Point.
An independent panel of volunteer community leaders will select the 2009 recipients based on criteria established by the BBB. The business awards will be given, one each, to: a firm of one to 10 employees, 11 to 50 employees and more than 50 employees.
One award will be given in the tax-exempt, nonprofit, charitable category. Net proceeds from the event will benefit the BBB Foundation.
This event will be a celebration marking the 90th anniversary of the Toledo BBB. It will host its eighth annual Torch Award for Marketplace Ethics event at 11:45 a.m. May 14 at Gladieux Meadows, 4480 Heatherdowns Blvd.
“We want to recognize marketplace excellence and ethics,” said Marilyn Levine, director of the BBB Foundation. “Oftentimes, you hear only the negative; now you will hear the positive.”
Four companies were honored at the annual Torch Awards for Marketplace Ethics in 2008.
Davis College won in the large company category; Holt Roofing won in the medium category; Island Variety won in the small; and Toledo Area Ministries was the nonprofit winner.

When I first heard of Sam “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher during the presidential campaign, I thought he had the makings of a good reporter. Wurzelbacher gained his fame when Barack Obama visited Holland, Ohio. Joe asked Obama some tough questions about his tax policy. They were questions that most reporters failed to ask. Indeed, during the final debate, John McCain seized on this disparity in coverage and “Joe the Plumber” became the darling of conservatives.
Fast forward to today. Joe has been hired by a news oulet called Pajamas Media to report from Israel during the Gaza conflict. His first appearance demonstrated his continuing disgust with traditional media. Joe’s rant about reporters in the war zone made a big splash on YouTube.
In Joe’s words, “I don’t think journalists should be anywhere allowed war (sic). I mean, you guys report where our troops are at … I think it’s asinine … I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know reporting.” Hmm. Well, never mind that Joe, himself, was hired to report from the war zone. And never mind that “our” troops from the U.S.A. are not fighting there. And never mind that the casualties in the war are far higher on the Palestinian side than the Israeli side. Wurzelbacher was expressing a view held by many conservatives who believe the mainstream media are pretty close to traitorous when it comes to military security.
CNN anchor Rick Sanchez ripped Joe for his lack of polish and his failure to appreciate the role of the press. Sanchez even went so far as to compare Joe to Fidel Castro. Sanchez’s diatribe was at least as far off the mark as Joe’s.
The chastened Wurzelbacher went on to report a piece about the risks Israeli school kids experience from Hamas rocket fire. It showed how Israelis have built bomb shelters that look like playground equipment. And it was genuine, reflective, but one-sided coverage about life in this heartbreaking conflict.
Unlike plumbing, no union card is required to be a war correspondent. That’s good. Anyone with the guts to enter a war zone with a camera or a reporter’s notebook has the obligation, if not the qualifications, to convey his perceptions to the masses.
Often the reporting will be uncomfortable to one side or the other. Most reporters can appreciate the need to hold some facts back to protect the security of friendly troops. The public will determine whether the reporting is worthwhile.
I have had the privilege of reporting from four overseas conflicts: Rwanda, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Each time I have been in the company of U.S. military personnel. And each time these brave men and women have thanked me for conveying their stories to the folks back home.
If we have learned anything from Iraq, it should be that more aggressive war coverage is needed, not less. Some tough questions from the media, like the ones Wurzelbacher asked Obama, might have prevented the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or might have prompted the public to more closely examine the need for war.
So Joe, I think you’ve got the right instincts for reporting. I’m afraid you must learn your craft on the job. You can expect to make some mistakes as you develop from apprentice to journeyman. Just remember, ask the tough questions of everyone, including those you sympathize with.

E-mail columnist Jim Blue at Jim@JimBlue.com.

For most people, the inundation of Super Bowl coverage can be too much.
The two weeks between the conference championships and the big games can involve so many story lines that by kickoff everyone knows the backup punter’s dietary habits.
This is my time to shine. It is my best chance to create a theory, based on the quarterback’s name, that will predict who will win the Super Bowl.
Let me take a step back. Three years ago, when the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL, I noticed a pattern in every playoff game. The quarterback whose last name was worth more in a game of Scrabble won all but one game leading up to the Super Bowl.
This was like discovering the wheel, electricity and a cure for cancer all in one.
There was no way the Seahawks would have lost to the Steelers because Matt Hasselback’s last name was worth 21 Scrabble points, while Ben Roethlisberger’s last name was only worth 20.
In fact, I even took it a step further, saying the Seahawks would win by that very score, 21-20.
Now, while this was wholly incorrect (the Steelers were the team that scored 21, while Seattle only scored 10), the point is that a couple of major news outlets in Seattle and Los Angeles mentioned my theory during the admittedly slow news week.
With Roethlisberger back in the Super Bowl, it was time to find a new theory, and this time the pattern is much simpler and doesn’t require the tedious task of calculating numbers using a formula invented by Hasbro.
To discover who will win Super Bowl XLIII, you just need to know the alphabet. Let’s look at each playoff game to date and how the quarterback whose last name was lower in the alphabet (closer to “Z”) fared:

• Donovan McNabb and the Philadelphia Eagles beat Tarvaris Jackson and the Minnesota Vikings.
• Kurt Warner and the Arizona Cardinals beat Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons.
• Philip Rivers and the San Diego Chargers beat Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts.
• Chad Pennington and the Miami Dolphins lost to Joe Flacco and the Baltimore Ravens.
• Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers beat Rivers and the Chargers.
• McNabb and the Eagles beat Eli Manning and the defending champion New York Giants.
• Warner and the Cardinals beat Jake Delhomme and the Carolina Panthers.
• Flacco and the Ravens beat Kerry Collins and the Tennessee Titans.
• Warner and the Cardinals beat McNabb and the Eagles.
• Roethlisberger and the Steelers beat Flacco and the Ravens.

If you kept track, that’s a 9-1 record for the alphabetically lower quarterback. This, of course, leaves Warner and Roethlisberger in the Super Bowl, and conventional wisdom dictates that the Cardinals should win the championship. If one wants to take this a step further, they can take the first letter of each quarterback’s name and its place in the alphabet. “W” is the 23rd letter, while “R” is the 18th letter. So maybe a sound prediction is that the Cardinals win 23-18.
But wait — the last time we used this logic, we were flat wrong. Roethlisberger was supposed to lose Super Bowl XL, according to a crackpot theory, so maybe he also bucks the trend and leads the Steelers to another win, scoring 23 points, while the other team scores half of the losing team’s projected total (9). Or maybe Warner gets hurt in the first play of the game; backup Matt Leinart has to play the game; the Steelers win and the alphabet theory holds true yet again when Arizona’s “W” quarterback turns quickly into an “L.”

Listening to an old man’s story about how he likes to catch fish in the pond on his property is not a place I would normally look for marketing advice. However, as I listened to the story of my former co-worker, I heard some of the best marketing advice I’ve ever heard. Strangely, he didn’t know he was giving me any advice at all.
The old man went on talking about how he didn’t understand why fishermen spent thousands of dollars on fancy equipment, fancy boats and trips all over the world to catch fish. The old man simply liked to sit in his chair, drink his beer and catch as many fish as he wanted. He laughed as he explained that, every spring, he stocked his pond with fish.  With the pond fully stocked, fishing was easy because it was full of hungry fish.
My eyes lit up as I realized he had unknowingly just given me some of the best advice I could receive as a young businessman. As marketers, we can easily be likened to fishermen. We spend countless hours perfecting our craft, trying to come up with the best tactics to lure in our prospects and spending money on fancy programs and equipment to enhance our sport. If we could take the advice of the old man, we would realize that the only thing we need to do is to stock our pond with hungry fish.
How do you stock your pond with hungry fish? The answer lies in the value you provide.  When I trained with Jeffrey Gitomer, one of the values he instilled in me was the fact that you must always provide value first. People buy from people, and therefore the secret to making more sales through your marketing lies in your ability to provide value first.
As you create opportunities to provide value to all who seek it, you are literally stocking your pond with hungry fish.
Here are the keys:
1. Find out what your public finds valuable.
2. Give value in a user-friendly fashion.
3. Capture their information.
Whether you are selling consultative services, retail products or automobiles, when your public self-identify is “interested,” you have one of the most valuable business assets in the world today — a huge database of hungry fish.
Make no mistake here; we aren’t talking about tricking anybody into doing anything they don’t want to do. We are taking a more humanistic approach to the marketing process: give of yourself and you will be duly compensated for your contribution to the world. Yes, literally give as much value as you can to as many people as seek it. You will discover that you have the ability to attract all of the contacts and resources you need to create a masterpiece with your company.
Write articles, give speeches, publish e-books, appear on radio shows, post white papers and do whatever you can do to help those who are interested in your unique brand of service. Help them find you, understand who you are and why you are different, and literally identify themselves as being right for your product.
As you put together your pieces of value, the only thing you need to ensure is that you’re able to capture their information during the process. As you build up your database, you are then free to focus on developing new and interesting products, new and interesting ways to use existing products, and new and interesting ways to help people find the answers they are seeking.
With your unique brand and information circulating throughout the world, you will have captured the top-of-mind awareness that puts you in the right place at the right time for millions of future customers.  You will discover that your pond is stocked and you can just sit back and enjoy “catching fish.”

Tom Richard is a Toledo-based sales trainer, gives seminars, runs sales meetings and provides coaching for salespeople. For more information, visit www.TomRichard.com, call (419) 441-1005 or e-mail tom@tomrichard.com.

The new possessor of the nation’s highest office has game.
We know President Barack Obama is an aficionado of athletics. He has some hoops skill, some hops, and what better way for him to utilize stress reduction therapy?
Bowling is out at the White House. The installation of a new basketball court is on its way. An occasional game of H-O-R-S-E, a little one-on-one or maybe even a pickup game will get on the president’s daily docket from time to time.
A number of athletes attended the inauguration on Jan. 20, including Muhammad Ali, Dave Winfield, Dikembe Mutombo, Tiger Woods and Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
It was Johnson who said he would be honored to shoot some hoops with Obama.When pressed further as to whether he might even trade elbows with the new president to the point that pain could be inflicted, Johnson, with his always-infectious smile, said, “I’ll take it easy on him if he takes it easy on my taxes.”
We know Obama has publicly supported a college football playoff, some saying it ultimately swung the election in his favor. (That’s a joke, folks.)
But while we try not to mix church and state, let’s hope we also stay away from political affairs and athletics. Let’s give the tyranny that is the Bowl Championship Series a presidential pardon for now.
Our new government representatives appear to symbolize hope that seems to have renewed the American spirit. That, too, filters down to the athletic world where Obama, the 44th president of the United States, will surely observe the 43rd annual Super Bowl on Feb. 1.
On that stage, in front of millions of people, as was our first black president, there will be a young coach who will attempt to become only the second black coach to win a Super Bowl.
Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin, 36, is the youngest coach to reach the Super Bowl, where his Steelers will battle the Arizona Cardinals.
“It’s natural to link the inauguration with Tomlin becoming the third African-American head coach in the Super Bowl because you see the spirit of change is real, change is here,” said Ray Anderson, the National Football League’s vice president of football operations, recently told the Los Angeles Times. “Positive change excites all of us.”
Tomlin follows Chicago coach Lovie Smith and the recently retired Tony Dungy as the only other black coaches to reach the Super Bowl. Dungy’s Indianapolis Colts beat Smith’s Bears in Super Bowl XLI.
Let’s make one thing perfectly clear. Tomlin in no way wants to compare the task confronting him with that which awaits the new commander in chief.
“What we are doing here today pales in comparison to what’s going on in our nation’s Capitol with President Obama’s inauguration,” Tomlin said at a news conference Jan. 20 that he delayed an hour to avoid conflicting with the inauguration. “As a citizen, as a parent, the hope that he sells and we buy in, that he potentially is going to bring to the table, is exciting. The hope for the future, for our children is exciting. I am as excited about that as I am about anything going on right now.”
Steelers owner Dan Rooney also endorsed Obama and presented him with the game ball from the Steelers’ semifinal playoff victory against Baltimore. Obama confessed during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh in August that he rooted for the Steelers while growing up in Hawaii and would be a Steelers fan today, “if I didn’t live in Chicago.”
It didn’t take long for T-shirt slogan novelists to jump on the Obama-Tomlin connection. The latest cotton concoction consists of Tomlin’s face over Obama’s slogan, “Yes We Can!”
Former Super Bowl MVP Doug Williams, the only black quarterback to win a Super Bowl (with the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XXII in 1988), also recently assessed the topic of Tomlin’s accomplishment just two years after the Dungy-Smith Super Bowl encounter.
“I think it speaks volumes to the fact that, with Obama going in as the president and his slogan being, ‘Yes we can,’ given the opportunity, yes, we can [too],” said Williams, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers executive. “I played in the Super Bowl 21 years ago and [no black quarterback] has won it since. So Mike has an opportunity, within a three-year period, to have two black coaches win the Super Bowl, which I think is significant.”
Tomlin is in his second year as the Steelers’ head coach, hired away from Minnesota in 2007, where he was the defensive coordinator.
It was while he was the wide receivers coach at Arkansas State 10 years ago that Tomlin told his mother he planned to be an NFL head coach at the age of 35.
Even an adoring mother, while outwardly acknowledging her son’s imposing ambition, was probably inwardly jampacked with incredulity knowing the exclusionary nature of the NFL in regard to black coaches.
Guess what?
And maybe 10 years ago a young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama might have entertained thoughts of becoming the first black president of the United States in, say, 10 years. Pure absurdity, we would have responded at the time.
Guess what?

The Meta-Planning process began more than one year ago as a tool to bring the university and area economic development groups together in an effort to understand how economic development is accomplished in our area. It also began as a way to develop a regional economic development strategy that would move the economy of the area forward.
The initial meetings spent a great deal of time explaining and demonstrating how the various economic development organizations do, in fact, work closely together, as well as talking about perceived or real problems and issues, and how to take all of this knowledge and move forward.
Each agency and organization involved brings specific expertise, talent and tools to the issue of economic development. The initial objective was to devise an approach that utilized all of those talents into a single focus. And I believe we have moved from talk to action.
Through the work of participating partners: UT, Regional Growth Partnership, Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, Toledo Metropolitan Council of Governments, Lucas County Community Improvement Corporation, City of Toledo and the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce, and, in cooperation with the state of Ohio’s Department of Development, we have moved forward to action.
The Meta-Planning Process is now known as the Toledo-Regional Economic Plan. The development efforts are focused on five industry clusters that make the most sense for our area. The clusters include transportation and logistics; alternative energy; biosciences; automotive, advanced materials and manufacturing; and architecture, engineering and construction. Affinity groups have been formed in each of these clusters allowing area professionals more ways to share ideas, best practices and collaborate on economic development initiatives.
Successes have already been realized; we’re all on the same page; we’re in concert with the state of Ohio; we’re working in the areas that have the best opportunity for success and growth for our region; we’ve focused our talent and resources; and, we’ve gone from talk to action. The new Toledo-Regional Economic Plan is an example of how the cooperative and collaborative nature of the economic development organizations is taking the region forward.

Mark A. V’Soske is president of the Toledo Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The overwhelming majority of us have dismal New Year’s resolutions records. Yet, amazingly enough, despite our collective track records, most of us go through the same process every year:
1. Reflect on all the things that didn’t happen last year as they should.
2. Vow to do better in the coming year.
3. Rinse.
4. Repeat.
Every January, we boldly pronounce our resolutions — even if just to ourselves. Then, two weeks later, we find we’re already off course. Unfortunately, this process of making New Year’s resolutions is not much more than wishful thinking — a mere hope that we’ll do better. And, as I’ve written before, hope is not a strategy.
It’s no wonder Einstein once remarked, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Whether it’s for personal, professional or business purposes, I encourage you to stop making resolutions. That’s right — you heard me. Ditch the resolutions. This year, and from now on, I encourage you to set goals, not resolutions.

Difference between goals and resolutions
Resolutions are fun, but unfortunately, they’re typically meaningless — with little teeth or enforcement. In a word, they lack accountability. For example, as personal resolutions, perhaps you’ve found yourself resolved to lose weight, exercise more, spend more time reading, less time watching TV, etc.
If you examine your current approach to making resolutions (rather than creating real goals), you’ll discover barriers like these are causing you difficulty: the time frame is too short (or so long that it’s not reasonable); the involvement or dependency on other people; poorly defined outcome or a vague strategy for how to get there; or unclear responsibility or accountability.
The simple truth is most of us are trained to make plans, not to execute them. Our business schools are consistently top heavy when it comes to strategic planning, project planning, etc. But when it comes to execution, more often than not, we learned based on the “school of hard knocks.”
No matter the goal, it’s necessary to formulate a strategy that helps us to achieve our desired results. And herein lies the problem. Formulating strategy is one thing. Executing it is another.

How to set goals, not resolutions
Rather than continuing on a path of low probability, I encourage you to make your goals SMART. The following broader definition of the SMART acronym can help you to become more effective in goal setting:
S: specific, significant, stretching (Question: Is the goal well-defined; is it clear?)
M: measurable, meaningful, motivational (Question: Will we know when the goal has been achieved? How will progress be measured?)
A: agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented (Question: Is the goal obtainable?)
R: realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented (Question: Do we have the knowledge, talent and resources to achieve the goal?)
T: time-based, timely, tangible, trackable (Question: Do we have enough time to achieve the goal?)

Goal-setting recommendations
Visualize what you want.  Take the time to visualize when, where and how your goals will be carried out. What will it feel like when you have achieved a specific goal? When you take the time to visualize exactly when and where you will do something, you’ll have a significantly higher probability of meeting those goals.
Passion trumps wishful thinking. You have to care about your goal. It has to be important to you. The goals that are most attainable are those that you want more than anything else.
Become laser-focused. A shorter list of goals is more likely to be achieved than a laundry list. If you set too many goals, it’s difficult to keep them all in mind and make progress. When you lose sight of a goal, you begin to drift. Pick one goal — or two, or at the most, three — and make these your highest priorities.
Make your goals public.  You’ll find a much higher level of accountability if you’ve publicly committed your goals to someone other than yourself.
This increases the probability of reaching your goals. Want additional assurance?
Set a specific time (say, halfway through the deadline to achieve the goal) to meet with someone you trust to assess your progress.
So will this be a year of another broken resolution or will it be a year with real goals and outstanding results? Fortunately, the choice is yours to make. Don’t just hope, make it happen.

Eric Kurjan is the president of Six Disciplines Northwest Ohio. Six Disciplines brings big company process improvement to organizations looking to break beyond the status quo. For more information, visit www.SixDisciplines.com/Toledo or call (419) 581-2823.

That explosive catchphrase still follows Jimmie “J.J.” Walker everywhere.
“Fans always think that they are being original by screaming out, ‘Dy-no-mite,’ but they don’t scream at me in airports anymore for obvious reasons,” Walker joked in an e-mail. “It is the same for Robin Williams (‘Na-Nu Na-Nu’) and Steve Martin (‘Excuse me’). People remember catch phrases; it comes with the territory. But at my age, it’s nice to be remembered for anything!”
Thanks to reruns, the 61-year-old will forever be a teenager, the oldest son of the Evans family on “Good Times,” a sitcom that aired from 1974 to 1979.
After the hit show, Walker returned to his first love — standup comedy. He’ll perform at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 30 in the La-Z-Boy Center Meyer Theater at Monroe County Community College. Tickets are $15 and $25.
The Bronx native answered  questions via e-mail for Toledo Free Press.
TFP: When did you realize you had the ability to make people laugh?
JW: There are people that say I still don’t have that ability! Seriously, I gave a book report on Dick Gregory’s “N****r” for a college English class, and the classroom erupted in gales of laughter.
TFP: Is it true you were a vendor at Yankee Stadium? That Mickey Mantle gave you a silver dollar? Were you sad to see the last game played at the ballpark?
JW: I worked at every sports venue in NYC when I was growing up — Shea, Yankee, Polo Grounds, Madison Square Gardens. It is bittersweet to see the old venues disappear, but you have to change to accommodate the fans. Yep, I still have the silver dollar I got from No. 7.
TFP: What did you take away from being part of the “Good Times” cast?
JW: A paycheck! It was and continues to be the part I am most remembered for; I am very fortunate.
TFP: What did that show mean to pop culture and America?
JW: It was an important first glimpse into the lives of the African-American family.
TFP: Time magazine named you comedian of the 1970s. What did that mean to you?
JW: It was great!
A kid from the projects recognized by Time. I never would have dreamed it was possible.
TFP: On your Web site, you share your views on a variety of topics — health care,  “colorless politics,” Bush, Obama. As a comedian, are there any topics that you stay away from?
JW: I don’t do a “blue” show. I have never done X-rated material. There are comics that do that kind of thing and I respect their right to do it, but it isn’t for me or my audience.
TFP: You wrote on your Web site that America has lost its ability to laugh. Can you elaborate on that?
JW: Political correctness has run amok. You might not like something, but you don’t have to ban it. Lighten up!
TFP: What can fans expect to hear you talk about when you come to Monroe?
JW: If it’s in the news, it’s in the act!
TFP: Will you talk about dating?
JW: Talk? I hope to be dating someone from Monroe.

On the Web: http://www.dynomitejj.com/front.html

My proposal to provide a living wage to every worker whose employer
receives a contract, loan or tax break from Lucas County has a lot of people talking this week. Unfortunately, there has been some fear mongering about my proposal, especially from my critics on the far right wing of the local Republican Party establishment.
So, let’s talk first about what this proposal won’t do:  This resolution won’t affect those who choose not to do business with Lucas County; it won’t apply to small, family businesses, and it won’t apply to seasonal employees, temporary employees or interns.
What my living-wage proposal will do, however, is ensure that those larger corporations who come to the taxpayers for a contract or tax break pay their workers a reasonable wage — about $8.50 per hour — or a little more than $1 more than the current federal minimum wage.
It’s not an outrageous demand. In fact, I wish today’s economic climate allowed us to set the wage at an even higher rate. However, in the midst of the deep Bush recession, I felt $8.50 per hour was a prudent baseline to help lift people out of poverty.
My proposal will also mandate that an employer offer health insurance coverage to its workers at no more than 15 percent of the workers’ monthly wage. That’s the right thing to do from a moral and fiscal perspective.
The economics of the living- wage proposal is simple. If Lucas County awards a contract and the employer pays poverty-level wages without health care, that worker will simply turn to other public assistance — like food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits — just to survive.
Taxpayers will get cheap labor on the front end, but will pay for an expensive and time-consuming bureaucracy on the back end just to keep that employee and his or her family at a minimum standard of living.
On the other hand, if Lucas County requires that same employer to pay a living wage to its workers and provide a health care option, taxpayers will get the same amount of labor without having to subsidize all the additional welfare costs for workers and their families.
Even better, because workers will be able to support their families on this wage, they’ll be able to go out and spend a little more, contributing to an economy that desperately needs spending activity right now.
But even more important than the solid economic arguments is the powerful moral argument to be made for a living wage. More than a century ago, the Catholic Church issued a papal-encyclical calling for a living wage. People of all faiths recognize the value of work and preach a message of economic justice for all.
More than 40 years ago,  Martin Luther King Jr. said that “a true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth.”  Since King spoke those words, the gap between the rich and poor has grown.
In fact, of all the Bush administration failures, perhaps the greatest is that the wage gap between the rich and the poor grew to record levels in the past eight years. The middle class is evaporating, and the deepening economic recession that could further drive apart those with plenty and those without.
Unfortunately, in many ways, the economic crisis we are in right now is the product of a national attitude that’s valued easy wealth over hard work. But those times are quickly coming to an end. The residents of our community are not afraid to roll up their sleevs and get to work, but it’s up to all of us to ensure that their work is truly valued.
If government, on behalf of working families, does not step up and guarantee that taxpayer dollars aren’t spent on poverty-level wages, who will?

Ben Konop is a Lucas County commissioner. Contact him at bkonop@co.lucas.oh.us or via phone at (419)-213-2133.