Who said money cant buy you…votes:
I might be criticized for what I’m about to say but…oh well. I think that a lobbyist is the devil in disguise. Anytime you have important issues come up, lobbyists are already there. I liken it to a shark smelling a drop of blood from a mile away. This very issue is why I wanted to run for Senate. It was about five years ago when lobbyists showed how much money was spent on issues that representatives just voted on. This has corruption and greed written all over it. When I was elected as Council-at-Large for the City of Sheffield Lake, I had to attend an Ohio ethics program. They said to me, “If it looks wrong, if it feels wrong, than it is wrong.” To this day I believe that with all my heart. If we take the root word of representatives, we come up with represent. Now, lets look at the idea of whom they are supposed to represent. My guess is that they are supposed to represent the people that voted them into office and NOT the interests of big corporations, or certain wealthy persons that make big contributions to certain campaigns. If I was elected to office I would like to see that we do away with lobbying at least in Ohio. There is nothing democratic about money buying votes.
Hold your breath:
I’m a nature kind of person that believes that man and nature can coexist. However, in Ohio we had the most polluted air in the NATION in 2003. Studies showed that our factories and other pollutants pumped over 132 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air. Five of Ohio’s big cities made the top 20 worst asthmatic cities in the country. They were Cleveland, Canton, Youngstown, Toledo, and Cincinnati. Also, an Associated Press analysis said Ohioans suffer the greatest long-term health effects from industrial air pollution, with 26 of the country's 200 most polluted cities. One has to scratch their head when workers at factories smoke cigarettes more, because they believe that it is healthier than the air around them. This is the sad state that we are in. I know that Ohio has not had a good track record with pollution in the past. For example, the Cuyahoga River catching on fire was pretty bad in 1936 and several more times including June 22, 1969. Time magazine described the Cuyahoga River as the river that “ oozes rather than flows” and in which a person “ does not drown but decays.” Also, Lake Erie’s continual dead zone that has been depleted oxygen to the point where fish cannot survive, which might actually be caused by livestock manure runoff. Another example is our tap water being contaminated. A study done by National Tap Water Quality Database shows that between 2000 and 2003, 92 contaminants were found that reached over 9.6 MILLION people. That study was done over 1,321 water systems and found that we were 10 pollutants over than legally allotted in agriculture pollutants. We were 27 over in the industrial pollutants. Here is the site if you want more information (http://www.ewg.org/tapwater/statereports/statereport.php?state=OH). Ohio clearly has a dirty record when it comes to pollution. Having said this, Senate bill 265/House bill 496 wants to relax the current air standards to promote more business growth. I have bad news…Ohio wasn’t exactly hard on businesses to begin with. So, how is relaxing the environmental standards going to draw businesses to Ohio? If you don’t like the sound of this, than please do your civic duty and tell your representative that they need to vote no on these bills. 
