Wednesday, March 30, 2011

My Plan: Expose Meaningless Political Speech

We all hate meaningless poltical speech, but politians continue to use it. Why? Well, the "we" I use means those reading this blog and other political commentary. That "we" doesn't include most people.  The average person in America doesn't bother to pay attention to anything other than American Idol. When they do finally pay attention it is for about 2 minutes and that is only enough time for a candidate to give a few political generalities about their ideas. 99% of the time they are meaningless.

In the City Council Election we are going to see this a lot. Today I offer up the meaningless political speech of the week from Republican candidate Catherine Smith Mills. In a recent blog post on her campaign website she addressed her "Mills Means Jobs Plan." She emphasized it to the point of putting it in bold.

I looked through her website for a white paper. I didn't find one. I looked for some type of listing of what the plan would entail. I didn't find anything. A plan to create jobs is not an easy thing to create, if you are actually going to write up how to create jobs.

Instead I found this on her "issues" page:
Mills Means Jobs: Job Creation, Retention, & Economic Development

I support job creation and retention efforts for businesses, because a city with a strong tax base can support its services. We must stop unnecessary barriers for business creation and growth. The vitality of small businesses in Cincinnati and the cultivation of the entrepreneurial spirit are key components to our City’s future success. I will work to develop new polices[sic], research tax incentives, and create a business friendly atmosphere in which companies of all sizes have an opportunity to succeed.
So her plan is nothing but typical light Republican fare with a little extra pro-business sauce on the side.

That's not a plan, that just word tested meaningless political speech that maybe a few ignorant people will think means something. What she needs to do is tell the truth: She's willing to give away the farm to businesses, and hope they actually hire people here. She's not going to do anything that is unfriendly to them, so I presume that includes NOT making it legally binding that any give-away to business requires the business to maintain a number of jobs here in the City (as opposed to overseas or out of state.)  If Mills would do that, why not put it in print?

What she has put out their so far is meaningless. There is no detail. There is the illusion of detail, but that is worse than no having no political rhetoric at all.

Mills is not and will not be unique in this or any campaign. She's just the first I chose to look over. There will be more.  We can only hope other candidates will try a little harder to provide more details on their websites.

5 comments:

  1. New polices?!? LOL. I'm assuming that's a typo.

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  2. FWIW, The Windbag did issue a jobs plan. It was silly, juvenile crap. People elected him in spite of it (most probably never read it). But to his credit he did put one out there.
    And look who endorsed him!
    LOL

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  3. Brian: Here in lies a problem. If you remember John Schlagetter (sp?), he put together a very very lengthy "plan" for Cincinnati. I believe it was close to 50 pages. It was detailed, it was specific.....but guess what.....most people only read the first page.....if they even bothered because it looked so daunting to pick up.

    I agree that there are many politicians whose only depth of issues are the political "buzz words" of the moment, like "jobs" and "economic development," but you're leaving out a part of the story if you don't mention the role the general public plays in fostering this kind of "issue light" dialogue.

    In the end I think there has to be some kind of balance. You have to have short, concise statements or people won't bother to even read.....but you have to have the knowledge behind you statements to get specific when needed.

    Just my two cents on this cold, snowy March 30 day!

    Chris Seelbach

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  4. VisuaLingual,

    Yeah, that's not my typo! I justed added a [sic] to it. I would agree it appears to be a typo, but a Freudian typo.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, I guess "new polices" would indeed be jobs.

    And I guess she supports the streetcar? Or does she have another plan to create 9000 permanent jobs at a cost of like $1.5 mil/year?

    ReplyDelete

Don't be an idiot or your comment will be deleted.