COAST Chairman Faces Foreclosure

CityBeat doesn’t like to revel in anyone’s misery or misfortune. Sometimes, though, there’s a confluence between a person’s political philosophy and subsequent events that begs for attention and analysis. One such instance is the foreclosure and impending sale of the house owned by an anti-tax leader.

Jason Gloyd, chairman of the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), will have his home sold at public auction at the Hamilton County Courthouse on Thursday.

The action comes after Gloyd’s lender, Citi Mortgage Inc., filed to foreclose on the house in July 2009 due to nonpayment on the mortgage note. Common Pleas Court Judge Ethna Cooper ruled in December that the home must be sold.

COAST is well-known for its anti-government, anti-tax, pro-business philosophy. One of its tenets, as listed on the group’s Web site, is “Reduce the intrusion of government into our daily lives.”

The same general philosophy was shared by the Bush Administration which – for eight long years – refused to impose any new regulations on business, stating it would unfairly burden the markets and inhibit Wall Street’s pursuit of the almighty dollar. More importantly, it instructed federal agencies not to enforce many existing regulations and failed to provide sufficient oversight to prevent excesses, as was the mission of many of those agencies.

The “see no evil, hear no evil” approach led to the real estate bubble and the financial collapse that occurred in fall 2008.

Put in starker terms: COAST fretted last year while Hamilton County commissioners spent 20 cents to issue a proclamation for Gay Pride Day, but said nothing while reckless bankers and amoral investors wrecked the economy and Bush borrowed billions of dollars from China, skyrocketing the deficit. Let’s get a sense of perspective, fellas.

In his day job, Gloyd is a real estate agent for Coldwell Banker West Shell. The real estate market was one of the hardest hit by the U.S. economy’s meltdown, so it’s easy to see how Gloyd might have gotten into his current predicament.

Shortly after the financial collapse, and at a private fundraiser that he thought wasn’t being taped, President Bush said, “Wall Street got drunk” to describe the situation. Yes and, as we’ve written before, it was Bush and conservative Republicans like COAST that supplied the alcohol.

Maybe Gloyd’s foreclosure will help him and his cronies understand that there are other important items that affect the lives of everyday Americans just as much – if not more – than tax policy and the tired “less government, less taxes” mantra. In fact, government does have some useful purposes.

That’s probably too much to hope.