Welcome to my Blog

Welcome to the Democratic entry to “All Politics is Local” blog site. I’m Dave Logan and I’ll be writing in this space for a while. Before we get to the politics of the moment, however, you should know a little something about me. I’ve been an upper east Tennessean since 1979 and have lived in Unicoi County for the past twenty years. I retired from ETSU’s Art Department four years ago after a forty year teaching career. I was raised by people who had suffered considerably through the Great Depression and who therefore thought Franklin D. Roosevelt walked on water. My granddaddy was a union man and believed absolutely that the union allowed him and his to live, and retire, comfortably. So, you bet I’m a Democrat.

As an opening shot for this new venture of mine, I refer you to a statement made yesterday by Mitt Romney as he “suspended” his campaign for the Republican nomination. He repeated a phrase that is part of Republican theology; he said that one key to future prosperity is to end restrictive regulation on business and industry.

Now we have been, during the last few Republican administrations, through a rash of business and industry abuses in an unregulated economic climate that should, by now, have brought us to realize that businesses that can do whatever they want, will. And it will not be self-regulatory. We have the savings and loan disaster, Enron, the current mortgage debacle, and much, much more evidence to prove our point.

My question for your consideration is this: do we really want to trust the Ken Lays of this world to manage our economic system with no oversight? Or might it be better if we the people exercised that oversight through our elected representatives in Congress and the Legislature? Future prosperity for whom, we might ask? What say you?