Column by Joe Gallenstein

Each of us has a responsibility to the other, and to sit idly by while we watch jobs from places like Mayfield, Portsmouth, Detroit and Youngstown leave this country, is to ignore the enormity of the situation we face.

Further, to ignore the residual effects of these plants closing, be they toy factories, shoe factories, energy plants or automobile plants, the effect for hardworking people who worked to save their entire lives, is that when push came to shove, the company cared more about maximizing profits than about the dedicated work force.

And unfortunately, thanks to the works of people like David Williams in our state Senate and senators like Mitch McConnell and John McCain in our federal government, we have seen that the safety net America worked so hard to create for our working families has fallen apart. Now, as we enter economic crisis after economic crisis, there is no infrastructure left to care for the working poor.

It is time for a change. We cannot sit idle while politicians vote themselves pay raises but filibuster the moment a pay raise is suggested for working Americans, something both John McCain and Mitch McConnell did last year. It makes it hard to scrap and save when wages are going down in real dollars and the government refuses to help average people out.

Some politicians rail against public health care but have no problem with gold-plated insurance at our expense. When wages are going down and the job you have does not offer insurance or refuses to cover a preexisting condition like diabetes, it makes it hard to afford health insurance. Many on the­­ right have no problem discussing personal responsibility as people who have struggled for years lose their jobs and the government that once was willing to help them or their children receive assistance has instead decided to turn their backs on its citizens in their times of need.

What is worse is that some politicians think that in these tough times we need to be increasing pay to political appointees and renovating offices, and ignoring the fact that 60,000 children who qualify for assistance are being denied it due to a lack of funds. Of course, if anyone saw a state senator’s office or the conference rooms they must make do with, perhaps they would understand. Then they may realize the intense urgency for our state government to spend more money-making lavish legislator offices while we sit by and allow struggling families to be one illness away from a complete disaster.

Of course many people see those who struggle and blame them. There is a desire among many people to want to believe that those who are poor want to be poor, or that those who lack health care fail to have it because of some deficiency they possess. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The 90-year-old woman, who had lived in the same home for 40 years in Cleveland, took her life not because she was foolish, but because in the current economic crisis she was no longer able to keep up the bills she had managed her entire life. She could not stand the idea that after working so hard for so long, doing everything she could to make the American dream a reality for herself and her family, she was being rewarded by being tossed on the street.

What must a person do to prove that they are worth saving? What can a child do to prevent getting sick because their family lacks health insurance? Why should someone be punished for their jobs being shipped overseas? This recession is not in our heads, it is all around us. Do not punish the working poor struggling on Main Street in Mayfield for the mess that Washington and Wall Street created.