What Governor Strickland needs to tell the Democratic National Convention about the economy

I've provided an outline for him in a letter. Excerpts:

1. I hope you’ll tell them about our schools in Franklin County and the rest of Ohio. What’s this latest push on “self-esteem?” How will that help a kid read his diploma?
   
2. And what about “retention” or “remediation” (i.e. flunking)? Which is more harmful to Ohio? Graduating stupid 18 year olds or having them repeat third grade at age 8 when there was hope?
   
3. And if you’re going to give these kids 2 meals and a snack each day during the school year, at least require daily PE. For that, you'd also need to reinstate the 9 period day.
   
4. You also need to review some of the cities’ renewal and rehab programs, which drove poor families from their neighborhoods (Columbus: German Village in the 60s, Victorian Village in the 70s, Short North in the 80s) because of lead paint or asbestos, or various beautification and preservation projects or just to make work for the architects and contractors under the guise of progress;
   
5. regulatory agencies decided that the automobiles of the poor (usually 2nd hand, used) weren’t safe or emitted too many toxic substances, so those were taken away;
   
6. and how many neighborhoods of the low income workers were displaced in the 1960s and 1970s by free-ways and interchanges--that they'd probably never drive on because you declared their cars weren't safe;
   
7. then you (not you personally but the social rocket-scientists of the late 20th century) decided the children needed to be bussed to meet some sort of social goals, and that included taking black teachers away from black children, their positive role models;
   
8. over the years, liberals and conservatives alike have closed orphanages and homes for the mentally ill and challenged (or whatever the current PC term is), moving them first to “group homes,“ and then to the street to fend for themselves;
   
9. you (again, not you personally, but liberals) decided that children didn’t really need fathers, so you continued to be foster-dad in absentia for generations of children, which drove their own fathers away to hang out with their buddies while making it virtually impossible for a single man to receive any government benefits or assistance, in turn making them dependent on girlfriends or grandmothers;
   
10. you listened to or dabbled in every social, labor, medical and economic theory that dribbled out of Ohio State University, Cleveland State, Yellow Springs or Dayton about mass transportation, the poverty gap, mixed use neighborhoods, drug use and jobs programs for the elderly.

Governor, you're a former pastor. Tell the Democrats the truth about the economy and poverty.