From the monthly archives: April 2011
Our second most popular post in the past 100 days is my post about John Kasich’s “first” Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Resolution:
Yes, John Kasich’s first resolution as Governor was declaring St. Patrick’s Day as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In fairness, it was a typo they cleared up the following day. However, they still said Dr. King broke “down the barriers of racial and economic justice.” Pretty sure they meant “injustice,” but since they’ve already had two goes of it, maybe not.
What could have been a one-day typo story, though, quickly became [...]
Full Story... →Kasich didn’t last an entire week without getting caught telling a whopper of a tale. At the end of his first week in office, Governor Kasich called a press conference to declare that his new Ohio EPA director had resolved in a matter of a two days an air permit for an Ohio manufacturer that had "languished" due to bureacratic delays for twenty months.
The only problem was that people at the Ohio EPA got upset being thrown under the bus, when what had actually occurred was they were asked to give the Administration an air permit [...]
Full Story... →On his first day of office, Governor Kasich mailed a letter with a copy of his Inauguration Speech attached to every State employee. In that letter, Kasich pledged:
We are going to help Ohio get back on track and we are going to do it by working together. As I said in my inaugural speech, which is attached, I believe very strongly that our only shot at success is to harness the combined energy, commitment, creativity and hard work of people from every corner of Ohio.
…
Our most important goal as the employees of the people of [...]
Full Story... →Just last month, John Kasich gave a meandering State of the State speech which lacked virtually any specifics. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Capri Cafaro (D) and others pointed out it seemed virtually no different than the stump speech Kasich had given at Chamber of Commerce and other local organization meetings across the State.
As is often the case with Kasich, the speech showed the beginning of a divergence between Kasich’s rhetoric about his budget and his actual budget:
Kasich seemed to be giving a stream of conscious speech that said more about his state of [...]
Full Story... →Governor Kasich began his first 100 days in office talking about people “needed to get on the bus” and “strap on their seatbelts” as he pushed to enact his conservative agenda to move his Administration “at the speed of business.” Proving that Kasich was better at making clichés than making good public policy.
Governor Kasich gets the House to pass his JobsOhio plan quickly despite widespread skepticism and bipartisan concern over its lack of transparency and potential for ethical problems. He dismantles Governor Strickland’s education reforms.
Yet, despite a host of legislative victories, from JobsOhio to SB 5, Governor Kasich finds himself ending the first 100 days with an unmoved 30% approval rating and a disapproval rating that has doubled in two months.
Full Story... →Two years ago, the Tea Party was being trumpeted as foreshadowing for the Democrats in electoral doom in 2010 as they held a 7,000 person rally in Columbus. At the same time, Cincinnati Tea Party activists held a rally with an estimated 4,000 in attendance.
Two years later, there was NO planned Tax Day events in Columbus for the Tea Party. Cincinnati had a “packed” rally that probably didn’t even break 100. Meanwhile, the protest for SB 5 have exceeded the size of any Tea Party rallies so far.
The most recent SB 5 rally in Columbus had 11,000 in comparison. What does that portend for the GOP in Ohio in ’12, then?
Full Story... →
The Tea Party purports to be a grassroots movement of citizens concerned about The Constitution, limited government, the influence of special interests on our government, and burdensome government regulations. In practice, however, they are nothing more than a mouthpiece for corporate backed FreedomWorks and the Republican Party.
Over the course of this week, this series will provide background and expose the hypocrisy that is the “Tea Party”. The series is from guest poster Greg Mild, a Columbus educator.
Full Story... →We knew Republicans would be looking for ways to help defeat the SB5 referendum in the fall, and it looks like they’ve come up with a new one: jump on the tea party bandwagon and help to put an anti-health care amendment on the ballot in November.
In early 2010 tea baggers in Ohio formed The Ohio Project in an attempt to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot in Ohio that would effectively block the national health care law from impacting Ohioans. They tried to put it on the ballot in 2010 but they couldn’t come up with [...]
Full Story... →When John Kasich introduced his JobsOhio plan he was very clear about why Ohio needed to privatize its economic development efforts:
“The state’s economic development efforts no longer meet the needs of Ohio’s economy”, “they do not relate effectively to businesses”, and they “have become burdened by bureaucratic inefficiency.”
It may have sounded reasonable then, but it sounds amazingly odd now given that JobsOhio is still just an idea on paper and yet John Kasich has been running around the state telling everyone who will listen that his first 100 days in office has been the most effective economic [...]
Full Story... →A year ago, Kasich spokeman Rob Nichols suggested that Ted Strickand was wasting taxpayer money any time he used the State’s plane to travel and that the State didn’t even need a State plane. Now, Nichols suggests that it’s vital for Ohio’s economy that Kasich spends nearly $400 a day using the State plane sometimes for no other reason than to make a staff announcement to garner more favorable local media coverage.
Full Story... →In November 2006 Ohio’s voters approved an indoor smoking ban in restaurants and bars. According to the Ohio Department of Health this made “Ohio the first Midwestern state and the first tobacco-growing state to enact such a ban.” Despite a great deal of out-of-state money spent on fighting the ban and a fake ‘smoke less’ initiative put on the ballot by the Tobacco companies, Ohioans overwhelmingly supported the ban.
John Kasich seems to have decided he doesn’t much care for what the voters of Ohio think, and he’s decided to take it upon himself to effectively eliminate enforcement of [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
