From the monthly archives: June 2011
I’ll admit it. I’m skeptical that Ted Strickland will really run for Governor in a rematch come 2014. Maybe because it’s just the novelty of it. Maybe it’s because Ted had told so many people publicly last year that it would be his “last election.”
But the more I see of Ted (from afar), the more it starts to make sense. After all, he only lost by some 70,000 in what will likely be the high water mark for GOP turnout advantage in Ohio for the foreseeable future. November 2010, so far at least, appears to be the high water [...]
Full Story... →John Kasich recently announced Diebold would be receiving over $100 million in State and local economic development dollars including tax credits and loans to help move its headquarters. Kasich says we had to give them the money or else they were certainly going to leave the state.
Diebold, however, never seriously considered leaving Ohio and the company even told the Strickland administration they weren’t seriously considering it. But Diebold still wanted the money so they hired a company to get them an offer letter from North Carolina just so they could use it to extort cash out [...]
Full Story... →Back in 2008, Ohio Daily caught Republican State Sen. Steve Austria Plagiarizing his Labor Day column in the Xenia Gazette from a Department of Labor publication.
It looks like he’s done the same thing with his Memorial Day message this year.
Austria’s email newsletter, sent to supporters on May 30, 2011, contains a long and detailed segment about the history of Memorial day that was ripped off – word for word – from a piece from a 2007 written by Gary Kurpius, VFW National Commander, titled “The Meaning of Memorial Day, A Memorial Day Message”.
Here’s Full Story... →
State Senator Shannon Jones tweeted this morning from her campaign account:
Yeah, I bet there are some 10,000 Ohioans who wish they could just hang with the kids, but they’re busy getting signatures so we can repeal her middle-class crushing, Columbus knows best SB 5.
Shannon Jones apparently also wants her constituents to know in her heart, she’s a party girl:
And, of course:
So now we’re starting to see how the heck SB 5 got written the way it did.
Full Story... →Back in March, Kasich’s newly-appointed Deputy Communications Director Jon Keeling was looking to impress his boss and he had a great idea: find some examples of outrageous and egregious labor agreements between Ohio’s public workers and the state that will help prove Kasich’s anti-worker and anti-union agenda is the right path to save the state money and put those nasty union thugs (e.g. teachers, police officers, fire fighters, etc) in their place.
So Jon called up Pieter Wykoff at the Department of Administrative Services and asked him to find some examples.
Wykoff sent the request to Mike Duco, the [...]
Full Story... →If you make it over to the Columbus Arts Festival today, be sure to check out the carnival games at Couchfire Collective’s booth, including this one that aims to raise some money for Columbus’ creative community by hitting golf balls at our Grinch-like Governor’s chest.
Pretty damn creative if you ask me – and relevant too, given how time Kasich spent on the golf course raising money during the campaign.
Full Story... →Ohio’s Republican leadership continues to demonstrate a complete lack of understanding about the education provisions that are in Senate Bill 5 and that were recently removed from the budget bill. Senator Peggy Lehner, referred to as the Senate’s “point person on education issues” (the author must not know what “point person” actually means), expressed her desire to discreetly slide these provisions back in while House Speaker Batchelder tweeted made it clear that he will make every effort to restore the provisions in conference committee if the Senate doesn’t correct their crazy mistake.
When they try and force through [...]
Full Story... →I got an email from John Kasich this week asking me if I know any teachers who want to share their thoughts on the merit pay language he inserted into the budget, asking if I know any teachers who would be willing to help him “design a better system to accurately and fairly assess teacher performance.”
In the email Kasich claims he wants to “make sure that teachers across the state know that if they want to participate in establishing this criteria, we want to invite them to be a part of this process.”
Funny story…
Two [...]
Full Story... →Last week, in yet another party-line vote, the Ohio House of Representatives voted to approve oil and gas drilling in State parks. One of the main reasons Republicans justified the bill is by arguing that ODNR has $500 million in delayed maintenance projects that fracking in the State forests will help fix.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which is lead by a former oil executive with no real conservation experience, has even put out a helpful website to make this very case. They’ve even provided the math:
So, naturally, one way to solve the [...]
Full Story... →The Columbus Dispatch today reported that State Senator Karen Gillmor is heading to a seat on the Ohio Industrial Commission, likely replacing Kevin Adams, whose term expires this month:
Gillmor was already under heavy consideration for appointment to the three-member commission and acknowledged to media outlets this week that the Kasich administration approached her to apply.
We broke the story nine days ago. (ODP was nice enough to give us the credit for breaking the story, even though the media so far hasn’t.)
Here’s the Ohio Democratic Party’s press release:
Karen Gillmor, under heavy criticism throughout her [...]
Full Story... →If the primary were help today, polling indicates that Ohio’s Republicans would choose Ken Blackwell as their candidate to run against Senator Sherod Brown in 2012 – by a surprisingly large margin.
It seems Ohio’s conservatives have a special place in their hearts for Ken’s unique brand of social conservative craziness which he let run wild during the 2006 race for Governor. Ken’s homophobia and misogyny won him the gubernatorial primary – and some big fans among “real” conservatives – but it made for some really bad general election sound bites (e.g. NAMBLA) and certainly contributed to his [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
