From the monthly archives: December 2011
Yesterday, the Illinois media reported about a leaked internal memo from Sears’ CEO informing the employees of the company’s intent to stay in Illinois after the legislature passed a new set of package with a price tag north of $200 million, nearly doubling the initial offer Illinois made which was still greater than $100 million. In response to news reports that Governor Kasich was offering something in the neighborhood of $400 million in incentives, the Illinois legislature met to approve an even larger package.
That led Sears to declare that if the package was approved, they’d stay.
So, Illinois gets [...]
Full Story... →Our baby face Treasure Josh Mandel is at it again. According to recent reports Mandel refused to speak at the Akron Press Club any time over a seven month period because his campaign said he was “too busy”. Which if you think about it, taking seven months to decline an invitation to speak about his campaign is almost exactly how long it took him to file his campaign finance forms – maybe that’s what they mean by “too busy”.
According to the Plain Dealer, the Akron Press Club is a non-partisan form that political leaders are invited to attend [...]
Full Story... →As the Republicans in the legislature haggle among themselves on how they’re going to reunify the federal and state candidate primaries next year, I keep wondering when are we going to see some official action by the legislature to appropriate money and grant the authority for the State to send an early ballot application to every registered Ohio voter. Remember that?
In order to prevent the Cuyahoga County government from paying to send an early ballot application to every registered voter in the county (as it has done in prior elections) for this year’s elections on [...]
Full Story... →United States House Speaker John Boehner and political advisors close to him played a key role in determining how redistricting lines were drawn according to emails in the Ohio Redistricting Transparency Report.
Tom Whatman, Executive Director of Team Boehner, and Adam Kincaid, Redistricting Coordinator for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), played key roles in directing Ohio state house Republicans on how exactly they should exactly draft redistricting maps.
In January of this year Tom Whatman was named Executive Director of Team Boehner, a PAC to work in tandem with the NRCC and the Republican National Committee to elected [...]
Full Story... →Today’s release of a report by the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting and a cadre of good-government groups including Ohio Citizen Action and the League of Women of Voters about Ohio’s overly partisan and laughable redistricting effort is almost as telling as the predictable Republican response to it.
On Friday, when the report was first announced, Ohio House GOP Caucus Communication Mike Dittoe was defiant, defending the GOP’s handling of reapportionment as the model of transparency by citing the regional public meetings held, the first of the kind in the process. The GOP communication apparatus also pointed out [...]
Full Story... →According to the Ohio Redistricting Transparency Report released this afternoon, Republican lawmakers at the state house implemented a strategy of deliberate secrecy to withhold information from the public about redistricting efforts. The documents paint a picture of lawmakers who purposely operated in a legal gray area to prevent their actions from ever being made public.
For months, Republican lawmakers and staff meet in secret to work on redistricting efforts in possible violation of Ohio’s open meetings law. The documents show a Republican party that are so obsessed with privacy that they used taxpayer dollars to rent a secret hotel [...]
Full Story... →How long does it take to gerrymander a congressional district? It seems the short answer is: about 8 minutes.
If you have any doubt about the sincerety or correctness of the claims of gerrymandering made by Ohio’s Democrats against their Republican counterparts responsible for redrawing our state’s congressional maps, then you must read the report put out by Ohio Citizen Action this morning.
The Ohio Redistricting Transparency Report documents some amazing, unbelievable, thoroughly disgusting, and likely-illegal activities involving those responsible for redrawing Ohio’s congressional districts.
It’s a long report, but worth every second you’ll spend reading it.
We’re going [...]
Full Story... →So the Senate Republicans decide to block the nomination of former Attorney General Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Board because the Senate minority wants the rest of Congress and the President to water down an agency the majority of Congress created and but for their nomination hostage-taking, the Republican lack to the votes to pass the changes the major banks financing this political exortion scheme demands. Just as he failed as a member of the “Super Committee,” Ohio’s freshman senator, Rob Portman, who ran on a campaign of being able to get things done in Washington, voted [...]
Full Story... →Word association!
You say: John Kasich
We say: Gifted!
That’s probably the last thing you thought we would say, right? Alas, Kasich and his Ohio Legislative Syndicate have dabbled in the realm of gifted education, if only in name. Much like everything else Kasich doesn’t understand (pretty much everything) he has mucked up this item, too. This is our 5th post in a series in which we are dissecting the new school ranking system imposed by the Ohio GOP as a part of this year’s budget bill. You can find our first four entries at the following links:
State superintendent Stan Heffner is really making the rounds lately. On November 14, Heffner presented to the Ohio School Board Association with a PowerPoint titled Renewing Ohio’s Place in the World. The third slide in to his presentation was remarkably Kasich-ian in appearance, while the fourth slide had a strange sense of irony about Kasich’s efforts.
Slide #3
Heffner’s talking point: “Since 2000, Ohio has lost over half a million jobs. Students today are depending on our teachers, principals, and school leaders to prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. Good enough is no [...]
In a move that was fairly boring until placed into context, Ohio schools superintendent Stan Heffner said in a recent speech that student performance in Ohio needs to be improved and that the root cause is that expectations for Ohio’s students are too low. As reported by the Columbus Dispatch:
“Good enough is no longer good enough.”
“If Ohioans want good jobs, … we need to step it up.”
We wish we could have witnessed the reception that Heffner received for his message of raising the standards for Ohio’s schools, especially considering that it was Opening [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
