• Additional comment

Toledo's whacked anti-foreign thinking

My Aug 8, 2013 comment about Toledo mayoral candidate Anita Lopez.

Excerpts from two Blade stories about a mayoral forum that occurred earlier this week:

Story 1 and story 2

Regarding the Marina District, Ms. Lopez said the city-owned property should not have been sold and she criticized the mayor for his trips abroad to attract foreign investors.

She said the 69 acres sold for $3.8 million was "practically given away with no plan, no benchmarks, and no accountability," and that she would have given local business the opportunity first.

After the forum, city spokesman Jen Sorgenfrei pointed out the property was city-owned for more than 12 years, during which multiple development plans failed.

Ms. Lopez was impressive — hitting hard and not backing down. Was she saying not to seek investment from the Chinese and other foreign investors in part because they are foreign? Darn right. And she brought the crowd with her.

The above disqualifies Lopez for anything, in my opinion. In Lopez's deranged mindset, it would be better if the marina district land was still city-owned, instead of someone else paying taxes on the land.

How does Lopez not realize that the marina district land was available for purchase by local people for at least a decade?

The archaic, backwater, 1950s, anti-foreign thinking shared by Lopez and apparently the crowd is a handicap to Toledo's future.

Toledo will have a chance to improve only when enough of its citizens realize that it's the 21st century, and business is global.

Think of the hypocrisy in this perverted, anti-foreign thinking when considering all the foreign-made clothing, gadgets, food, etc. that Lopez and her crowd purchase. Dipshits.

Jeep - "a brand of American automobiles that is a marque of Chrysler Group LLC, a consolidated subsidiary of Italian multinational automaker Fiat."

Will Lopez and her "crowd" lead the protest against Jeep's foreign intrusion?

Additional comment

My follow-up Aug 8, 2013 comment at Toledo Talk.

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Note that it was Blade columnist/editor Keith Burris who wrote about Lopez:

Indeed, fact-checking Ms. Lopez is an aerobic activity. Back to the question: Is this candidate of admirable energy, self-discipline, and ambition Margaret Thatcher or Sarah Palin? Just saying stuff, stuff to fill the air, stuff that doesn’t add up, is Palinesque.

And it was also Burris who wrote about Lopez:

The winners were incumbent mayor Michael Bell, County Auditor Anita Lopez, and City Councilman Joe McNamara — but none was consistently good. Ms. Lopez was impressive — hitting hard and not backing down.

Was she saying not to seek investment from the Chinese and other foreign investors in part because they are foreign? Darn right. And she brought the crowd with her. She may mangle her facts at times, but she is a formidable candidate — feisty, charismatic, and demagogic.

I don't know if Burris implied that he agreed with Lopez's anti-foreign stance, but just in case, Burris probably needs reminded about his parent company's views on foreign ideas, at least.

September 2007 Toledo Blade story

Allan Block, chairman of Block Communications Inc., parent company of The Blade, yesterday pitched his idea of a Toledo Guarantee labor's promise that businesses will make a fair profit to a small group of local business and development leaders.

He said Toledo is in terrible shape, blamed unions for the departures of factories from the Toledo area, and said unions have the power to turn Toledo s economy around.

Mr. Block said Toledo is in need of new investment $20 billion worth.

There s not a chance in hell of it coming here unless we change the kind of change that runs through the offices of unions in Toledo, Mr. Block said.

This next Labor Day, instead of a traditional Labor Day, if the whole union movement was enforcing on the membership a different kind of labor celebration a Labor Supports Investment Day in Toledo it would be amazing, Mr. Block said.

Mr. Block said Toledo should model its economic rebound on former third-world countries that have pushed themselves into leadership status. He cited Singapore, the Arab emirate of Dubai, and the People s Republic of China as examples.

Acknowledging that he'd been criticized for suggesting communist China as an economic model, he focused on Singapore, a former colonial backwater that is now a financial center of the world. He said change in unions, forced upon them by the Singapore government, helped drive Singapore s economic rebirth.

My message is simple. We can be Singapore. We can be Dubai. We can be the breakout economy, Mr. Block said.

Allan Block said Toledo needs investment. He did not say only local or American investment.

The confusing part about Block's admiration of Singapore's economic turnaround is that I think Singapore demolished all of its old buildings to build its new economy. But Block Communications uses its newspaper to create activist journalism that promotes saving old buildings. Damn confusing.

November 2006 Toledo Talk thread titled The Blade's Chinese Labor Ad

Check out page A-12 of Sunday's Blade. The headline says "China Has Changed...Can Toledo Change To Survive And Compete.

If we are suppose to learn from the Chinese about how to turn around Toledo's economy, then why not accept investment from the Chinese too?

This is when I refer to my favorite Toledo street sign to describe visually the scattered brain thinking that exists here:

sign seen when driving south on Tremainsville as you approach the intersection of Tremainsville, Sylvania, and Jackman

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