There are certain things we hear repeatedly told about
certain states in the union. For
instance, we hear of nasty New Jerseyans exemplified by their governor or that Illinois
governors eventually land up in prison or stubborn Missourians need to be shown
something before believing it or – and this has even gotten a special recurring
segment on a TV show – the dumb things that happen in Florida putting the duh
in “Floriduh.”[1] But how about the following type of state story?
Suppose we hear in the news what has become a typical story
from the state of Ohio: in a northern
town of that state, two men lured the mayor to a meeting for the purpose of
shooting him because they wanted to keep secret years of plundering the town’s
treasury with the mayor’s assistance.
After the mayor was shot, he was crammed into the trunk of his car. Upon capture and adjudication of the two
killers, they were sentenced to lengthy prison terms, but were able to draw a
partial paycheck from a job they were not really needed to perform since they
were employed in a bloated workplace.
This story, let me continue, is situated amid a backdrop of repeated
incidents of scams that Ohioans have perpetrated for decades, often involving
state officials.
For example, the state is notorious for regular occurrences
of tax fraud and common corruptions which have drained state revenues – which,
by the way – state officials had been able to keep hidden from bond markets
until the financial crisis hit in 2009.
At that point, the facts hit the fan and now cheap loan dollars are hard
for the state officials to find – as in non-existent – resulting in state coffers
facing $430 billion in debts. As a
consequence, the state is facing enforced austerity measures: severe cuts in government subsidy programs,
large layoffs in government sponsored businesses and government programs, and
drastic cuts and reforms in the state’s overly generous pension program. In return for these measures, the Federal
Reserve will extend the state a $146 billion bailout to meet its pending
interest payment obligations and put the state on track to eventually work
itself out of yearly deficits and overall debt in which it has placed itself. And suppose further that there is talk of
pushing Ohio out of the union and having it face its own fate. Okay, okay; it’s not Ohio and the United
States union, but Greece and the European Union. And it’s not the Federal Reserve, but what is
called the troika: the European
Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank.[2] If it were Ohio, the emission option would be
off the table unless a constitutional amendment would be ratified to expunge
such a renegade state as depicted above.
But then again, if Greece belonged to a union as that formed by the US Constitution, I believe things would
not have been allowed to get so out of hand.
And maybe something can be said about what could be a false
expectation; I don’t know. That is, can
we expect a federation to be erected and maintained across national entities,
at least of the type hoped for by the establishment of a European union? What cultural prerequisites have to be in
place in order to build a more unified economic zone as that contemplated by
the Europeans embarking on their Euro Zone project? These are federalist questions that civics
instruction should look at in order to appreciate how special our national
union is and how it should not be taken for granted. Our history has demonstrated how fragile this
bonded existence can be. What can we
learn from Greece and its current travails?
Why Ohio? It is
roughly comparable in population to Greece each having just over 11 million
people. And by the way, before you think
I somehow dislike Greece, I admire its life expectancy rate: over 80 years. They’re doing some things right.
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