I started feeling sorry for Guy Fogle when I read the DDN article today, “Area candidate, ex-TV broadcaster owes $8K in child support.” Fogle, along with David Esrati and Joe Roberts, is seeking the Democratic nomination to be the party’s candidate for Congress, 3rd District, running against incumbent Republican Mike Turner.  And so, as a reward for his effort, in the DDN, today, his problems and failures are in headlines for everyone to see.

But, now I’m thinking, maybe the attention to Fogle’s financial problems, pointed out in this DDN article, in fact, might turn out to be a positive for Fogle’s congressional race.  I need more information and it is my intention to interview and write articles about Fogle and about each of the candidates.

The DDN wrote:  “Guy Fogle, the former local television sportscaster turned congressional candidate, owes $8,300 in back child support, according to an affidavit his ex-wife filed in May.  Debra D. Juniewicz filed the affidavit May 14, along with a motion filed by a staff attorney with the Montgomery County Child Support Enforcement Agency. That same day, county Domestic Relations Judge Denise Cross found there was probable cause that Fogle was in contempt of court and set a July 22 hearing.”

David Esrati in his post today, “The wrong way to vet candidates,” described the DDN article as a “hatchet job.” But, it seems to me that the DDN writer, Lou Grieco, in writing about Fogle’s financial problems, including his bankruptcy, made an effort to be fair.

The DDN reports,

“Fogle said Monday, June 14, that those problems, which started when he developed testicular cancer in 1998 and continued through bouts of unemployment, are one of the reasons he is running. ‘There have been times that I’ve lived in a car,’ Fogle said. ‘I’m not backing away from what happened to me.’”

Fogle said he had trouble paying his bills, including child support, because of continuing problems. His cancer, which started when he was a full-time employee at WDTN-2 and working as a schoolteacher, spread to his lungs, his lymph nodes and his renal artery. Though he had insurance, it covered about 75 percent of total costs, leaving him with six-figure bills, Fogle said.

He has also gone through periods of unemployment or underemployment, he said. Because he has not had health insurance, he has not been able to go in for routine testing recommended for cancer survivors, he said. Fogle said he believes people will understand his story because so many people now know what it’s like to have to make difficult decisions about what to pay: the mortgage or the medical bill?

Esrati predicts, that because of his financial plight, “Fogle will not be taken seriously by anyone, especially Turner.”  Says, Esrati, “His (Fogle’s) campaign is toast.”

But maybe not.  The headline for Fogle’s web-site, I think, is telling.  The headline is a  play on Fogle’s first name:  “A regular Guy for Congress.”

Who couldn’t imagine it happening to one’s self — a nightmare scenario of cancer and huge bills that keep mounting up?

Guy Fogle’s life experiences, and the attitude and perspective he gained from those experiences, in my thinking, could communicate a life story and point of view that could empower him to be a very effective Representative for the 3rd District.

Fogle’s problems certainly give him a unique perspective and his life story and his determination to overcome, I can see, may work enormously in his favor.  Don’t Democrats love underdogs? Don’t Democrats love those who work hard to overcome?

Robert Reich says, in yesterday’s blog, “Why Economic Advisors Are Paid to Be Economic Advisors,” that President Obama needs to hear from economists that to avoid the enormous pain and suffering of a “double-dip recession or, at best, suffer anemic growth over the next five years,” he must move quickly to take aggressive measures.

Reich would like to see:

• a $300 billion jobs bill, including zero-interest loans to states and locales to prevent them from having to raise taxes and cut services,
• public-service jobs (cleaning up the Gulf), and
• a one-year payroll tax holiday on the first $100,000 of income.

Reich says that in the face of much bad news, it would be wrong for the president to bend to Republican pressure and, “tell the American public that we now have to move toward fiscal austerity,” and that any economist who could support such a notion shouldn’t be advising the president.

Reich makes a list of reasons why aggressive action is needed:

• The economy is still in a deep hole, the deepest since the Great Depression. The jobs report for May was dismal — a mere 41,000 new private sector jobs, when the economy needs at least 100,000 to keep up with population growth.
• The Fed projects gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, to rise about 3.5 percent this year — a pace barely above that needed to keep pace with the growth in the labor force.
• Consumers don’t have the buying power to get it out of the hole because they can no longer use their homes as collateral for loans, as they could before the crash of 2008, and they also have to get out from under huge debts.
• Businesses are reluctant to create new jobs if there are few customers for their goods or services.
• Export markets are drying up because of a high dollar that’s made our exports more expensive,
• Europe has embarked on austerity measures to shrink its deficits.
• State revenues are way down because of the deep economic hole, and they’re forced to raise taxes, cut services, and lay off large numbers of state workers, including teachers.
• All the boosters keeping the economy barely going now are coming to an end. The Fed can’t keep interest rates near zero for long because it’s starting to worry about inflation. It’s already stopped buying Treasury securities and mortgage bonds, and its own deficit hawks are squawking.
• The federal stimulus is 75 percent spent, and the money will be gone in a few months.
• Census workers will also be gone by the end of the summer.