From the monthly archives: December 2011
Stan Heffner, corruptible leader. Ohio’s Superintendent of Public Instruction has insulted the intelligence of Ohioans once again. In an effort to convince people that he knows what he’s doing, he took the stage this week and told an audience of Charter School advocates that Ohio’s academic standards are “no longer good enough.” The Columbus Dispatch titled their article about the event:
Throughout the speech, Heffner cast blame on “the system” and implied that Ohio has rested on its laurels for far too long.
“The entire (state) system is focused on minimum competence, and [...]
Full Story... →In a press conference this week, State Rep. Matt Huffman suggested dramatic alterations to the components of his school voucher proposal, House Bill 136. The changes are so significant, in fact, that he even stated that he believes that the bill will should be re-introduced as new legislation instead of trying to revamp HB136 after it has already passed the House Education Committee. At the Monday press conference, Huffman stated:
These are significant changes to this program. I don’t think that it’s appropriate to simply try to do this as a floor amendment to the bill. I’m working [...]
Full Story... →The Cincinnati Enquirer’s story this morning on yesterday’s Ohio jobs report for November points out the same issues I did in this post yesterday—the unemployment rate dropped .5%, which sounds impressive, but it was almost totally due to Ohioans dropping out of the workforce entirely, and not due to the modest gain of 6,000-7,000 new jobs (depending on which survey you examined.)
Most of the result is people leaving the workforce. We’ve seen this at the national level, and now we’re seeing it at the state level,” said George Vredeveld, director of the University of Cincinnati’s Economic Center [...]
Full Story... →Economists at The Ohio State University conclude that while widespread fracking of the Utica Shale gas deposits in Ohio will create jobs in Ohio, the actual number is more likely one-tenth of the numbers cited by the gas industry and its proponents like Governor Kasich:
"Previous studies on the economic impacts of natural gas appear to have widely overstated the economic impacts," the new OSU report notes.
"This is not surprising, as these studies are typically industry-funded, and industry-funded studies are usually not the best sources of information for economic effects," regardless of the industry, according to [...]
Full Story... →Two Republican staff members received a combined $210,000 to serve for three months has the secretaries for the Legislative Task Force on Redistricting. While it was assumed that both staff members would serve in their positions as state employees, instead the Republican members of the Task Force entered into contracts with their respective private companies and paid them $105,000 a piece.
Documents included in the Ohio Redistricting Transparency Report show that both Heather Mann and Ray DiRossi entered into contracts with the Task Force to be paid $105,000 a piece. Republican members on the task force entered into [...]
Full Story... →Over the past couple of weeks we have delved into the minds of John Kasich and his education experts to try to understand their rationale behind the school ranking criteria they adopted into law in House Bill 153 (budget bill). We found nothing. However, the absence of any informed or coherent education-related legislation coming from our GOP-owned General Assembly should not be surprising to any Ohioan after this volatile year.
Still, we have finalized our version of the state rankings as we have discussed described them in our previous posts:
Today, the Ohio Department of Jobs & Family Services released the November jobs report, showing Ohio’s unemployment rate dropped .5% down to 8.5%, dropping with the national rate which had also dropped from 9% to 8.6%. This brings Ohio’s rate to essentially where it was in May and April of this year. Seriously.
Still, a .5% drop is a sign that things are improving in Ohio right? Yes, so long as that’s the only thing in the jobs report you actually bother to look at. If you actually look at the reason why Ohio’s unemployment rate dropped, you’d [...]
Full Story... →Or as I like to call it, how NOT to defend yourself under allegations that you are a racist.
This is the sign outside of the swimming pool at a property Cincinnati landlord Jamie Hein rents out.
According to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, Ms. Hein put the sign up after claiming that the chemical in a tenant’s African-American daughter’s hair made the water cloudy. Ms. Hein, however, told ABC News its all a big misunderstanding, and is asking the Ohio Civil Rights Commission to reconsider its ruling saying it got the facts wrong.
First, she claims [...]
Full Story... →Back on September 12th Tom Whatman, Chief Executive of Team Boehner, emailed some Ohio GOP staffers working on redrawing Ohio’s new congressional districts. Eight minutes later the 16th district, represented by congressman Jim Renacci, had been redrawn to include the HQ for Timken, a company whose founders, executives and PACs had contributed over $120,000 to Renacci in the past two years.
Earlier in the process his district had been redrawn to include part of the former 13th District, including the home of Betty Sutton, the Representative from the 13th.
Ohio’s Republicans redrew the 16th District intent on making it [...]
Full Story... →This wonderful play on Casey at the Bat was sent to us by a clever reader who was inspired by today’s unfortunate news that Sears will not be coming to Ohio…
KASICH AT THE BAT
The outlook wasn’t brilliant for Ohio that day:
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play.
And then when Kvamme died at first, and Bob Evans was the same,
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.
A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope [...]
The ability to get the necessary signatures during both the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday seasons was challenging enough. Then there was the delay created by legal challenges. Then the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) decided that it was not willing to contribute to help the Ohio Democratic Party hire the paid circulators who could work full-time to get the signatures. With a petition filing deadline just nine days away, and all indications being that the all-volunteer petition effort would fall short, the Democrats had little choice but to take what they could get as the Republicans became increasingly convinced that there [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
