A few months ago I would have forgiven John Kasich for not being fully engaged. It was early in campaign and Ted’s numbers were low and the economy sucked and the best thing for John to do was shut up and let things roll along. We’re moving into the spring right now and I’m still waiting for John to step up and take a stand on something, anything. But it seems like he still thinks he can ride through to victory by not actually doing any work.
I know I’m not the first one to point out that John Kasich acts like a bored rich kid who spent his whole life being told he was special; the kid who gets everything he ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter but still ends up getting angry and punching the butler because the platter has a small smudge on it.
Sellouts like carpetblogger IM DoucheBox (AKA Jon Keeling) continue to defend Kasich’s lazy, disengaged, direct-to-video style of campaigning, but more intelligent and realistic Republicans like Scott Pullins, Buckeye Rino and even KyleSisk have pointed out that John Kasich has a tendency to act like a lazy frat boy who refuses to do any actual work and can be a huge fucking asshole to the people who are supposed to be his friends.
The guy hasn’t run for office in a long time so maybe he’s just forgotten how much effort it really takes. Or maybe he’s still getting up to speed with modern political campaigning – things have changed a lot in the past decade. Maybe he still thinks he works at Lehman Bros and he should be getting ridiculously large paychecks for doing nothing at all. Maybe his overblown sense of self importance has blinded him to the fact that there are a lot of Republicans out there who think he’s kind of a dick. I’m not sure of the reason(s), but it’s becoming painfully obvious that John Kasich doesn’t think he needs to actually work for our vote, or even for the votes of the people in his own party.
So far John has shown he’s not willing to put in the time or effort necessary to run for any public office let alone the top job in the state, and the stories I heard in a recent Dispatch Podcast seem to back this up.
In this podcast produced by Columbus Dispatch political reporters, Joe Hallett and Mark Niquette discuss recent party dinners they attended with Strickland and Kasich. Both reporters seem to agree that John Kasich’s behavior at these dinners leaves a lot to be desired.
When Governor Strickland accepts an event invitation he drives across the state to attend. He shows up on time, greets all of the other people in attendance, sits at a table and eats dinner with the other guests, listens to 2+ hours of other people speaking and stands to give his speech at the end of the night. All things one would expect from the candidate at the top of the party’s ticket.
But John Kasich seems to have his own ’style’.
When John shows up to party dinner events he also shakes some hands. But he then insists on speaking first – often before dinner is even served.
John Kasich never sits down and eats with the people at the dinner. He never listens to other people speak. And as soon as he is done speaking he immediately leaves.
Sure, the food probably sucks and the speeches are amazingly boring and the people you’re sitting with at dinner probably want something from you.
But you know what? That’s the job of a candidate. Suck it up and do the work or give up and go home.
At the end of the day attending a party dinner is much less work than actually governing the State of Ohio.
And if you can’t at least show up and eat dinner with your friends, if you can’t handle something as simple as this with at least a little tact and a minimal amount of class, if you can’t at least feign a tiny bit of respect for the people who actually support you – how the hell can we expect you to deal with the long hours and the stress and the difficulty and the complexity of the top job in the state?
In a meeting yesterday with the Dayton Daily News yesterday John Kasich attacked Governor Strickland, blaming him for not doing enough to bring NCR to our state. “If they weren’t answering my calls I’d be starting to call boards of directors. I’d know the people’s names that I was meeting with. I’d show up on time for a meeting”, Kasich said.
John’s friends at Fox News would have let this comment slide by. The small town paper reporters that John normally talks to just let him ramble on about the evils of the Strickland Administration and the terrible state of our State under Ted. But not the news staff at the Dayton Daily News. Nope. They responded to John Kasich EXACTLY how a reporter should: with a relevant follow up question…
… when asked if he knew the names of all five people sitting at the Dayton Daily News meeting — including editorial page editor Ellen Belcher — Kasich admitted that he did not. And, Kasich called one writer by the wrong name three times.
Kasich also blamed a doctor’s appointment for his late arrival to the March 18 meeting.
And now we know why Kasich’s staff keeps him away from the press.
It’s been a long day and I’m much too tired to go into my whole Catholic back story again. Let me simply say that my relationship with the Catholic Church is long and complicated but it continues to improve, especially when I hear stories like this one about Catholic hospitals supporting healthcare reform…
“We are trying to respect other people’s conscience and views” said Carol Keehan, chief executive of the Catholic Health Association. “… We think this bill is a good first step to health care reform.”
The highly-partisan folks over at the Buckeye Institute love to take big sets of numbers and twist them around so they can get themselves a good headline. Their latest “report” titled “State of the State Update: It’s Worse Than We Thought” perfectly illustrates this trend.
Buckeye Institute’s new President Matt Mayer knows full well that very few people are going to read all of his so-called analysis and even fewer people are actually going to go look at the data he references in his ‘report’. And why would they? The headline tells it all.
The problem is that the numbers are cherry-picked to fit his agenda. Even the way he decides to group the numbers by decade or the way he compares totals over 20 years completely oversimplifies the data and helps him ‘prove’ his point: under Democrats government grows and the private sector loses jobs.
If all you did was read his ‘analysis’ you’d come away thinking Voinovich and Taft shrank state government and created jobs and Governor Strickland did the opposite.
But if you take a look at the actual numbers you find the exact opposite to be true.
When Republican George Voinovich became governor in January 1990, the number of statewide government employees in Ohio was 714,800. By the time Republican Bob Taft left office in December of 2006 that number had jumped up to 802,000. That’s an increase of over 12% in the number of statewide Government employees in Ohio during the 16 years Ohio had a Republican Governor.
Compare that to the current estimate for January of this year: 781,900.
The facts are pretty clear when you strip away all of Matt’s double talk and magic math:the number of statewide government jobs in Ohio went down over 2% under Governor Strickland after double-digit growth under Republican leadership.
While the Republicans are out there talking about being the party of small government Ted Strickland is actually walking the walk.
It seems every time I watch Fareed Zakaria’s show I find something great…
While you’re listening to the current Commander of the U.S. Central Command admit that he’s successfully worked with gay and lesbian agents of the CIA, be sure to pay attention to the little info blips at the bottom of the screen talking about David Howell Petraeus’s extensive and very masculine military record.
This guy was top of his class at West Point. Shot in the chest during training. Released early from the hospital after doing 50 push-ups. This is guy is tough as nails and smart as hell and HE thinks we can successfully integrate gays and lesbians into the US military.
From now on it’s going to be really hard for all of the old, chubby, civilian congressman who disagree with our top General to be taken seriously on this issue.
I visited BSB today and noticed an ad for John Kasich on the left side of the page. It’s not their fault, of course. And no one would reasonably think they are actually supporting Kasich. They are running ads from Google and with that you get what they serve up – whether you like it or not.
The first time I saw it I was annoyed. The second time I saw it I also saw an opportunity.
That’s because the second time I saw that ad I realized that every time I click on it BSB gets paid and John Kasich’s campaign gets charged.
So now I’m going to click that ad every time I see it. Click. Also going to click the ones that keep coming up on Facebook and every place else I see one. Click. Click. Hell, I’ll even click the one on Right Ohio. I’m sure Matt can use the change. Click. Click. Click.
Sucking a few cents at a time from the Kasich campaign isn’t going to do much damage, but it makes me feel like I’m doing my small part. Thanks Google.
Twitter was abuzz this afternoon with pictures of John Kasich posing with celebrities at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus.
It would be easy for me to attack Kasich for hanging out with celebrities while Governor Strickland was up in Cleveland attending the Cleveland Praisefest. Even easier given that Kasich was nowhere to be seen at yesterday’s anti-abortion event with Sarah Palin.
But to be honest I don’t fault Kasich for running around with celebrities. I don’t dislike Arnold. As far as Republicans go he’s one of the better ones. And I don’t blame him for blowing off Palin either. It sounds like it was a mess like it always is at Palin events. Sarah sets a limit on how many hands she’ll shake and twice that number of sweaty right palms always end up in line.
But it does make me wonder why Ohio’s conservatives are giving John Kasich a pass.
With all of the tea party madness and the infighting with Ohio’s Republicans over which candidate is more conservative, how is it that John Kasich spends his day at a photo op with the pro-choice governor of California and skips the anti-abortion rally with the newly-crowned queen of the ‘pro-life’ movement and we hear not so much as a peep from any hardcore social conservative bloggers?
I’m not a sports fan. Not at all. Not even a little. As matter of fact I could be considered an anti-sports fan. But living in Central Ohio one can’t help but hear about local sports news and local sports stars and their families. I’m specifically talking about Chris Spielman and his wife Stefanie.
Unlike a lot of former OSU athletes, Chris Spielman caught and maintained our attention. He was a college star who went on to the NFL. And later to sports-themed TV fame.
But Chris’s main claim to fame, at least recently, is the fact that he’s married to Stefanie Spielman, the Columbus-area woman famous for her long and very public fight against breast cancer and her ability to raise awareness of, and a great deal of money for, the fight against this killer disease.
Finding the cure for breast cancer is a goal that crosses political boundaries; a cause that brings people together.
And when Stefanie died last year everyone in Central Ohio came out in support, Plunderbund included.
So when I heard that Chris Spielman was introducing Sarah Palin at her highly-political, anti-choice speech in Columbus tonight I was quite surprised and a little saddened.
I still am, actually.
It confuses and amazes me that someone who spent the past decade working to help his wife improve the lives of suffering women has decided to move over to the dark side by helping to raise money for an organization dedicated to stripping women of their reproductive rights.
Maybe they lied to you. Maybe they offered you tons of cash. Maybe you are just misinformed about Ohio Right to Life and their very anti-woman agenda.
I honestly don’t know why you chose to team up with them Chris.
But if you take a few deep breaths and a few minutes to rethink your goals in life, I think you’ll realize that Palin and her pals are not your friends.
Yesterday John Kasich had an opinion piece published in the Plain Dealer. As expected, it’s full of lots of statistics – specifically statistics related to areas in which Ohio is not performing well – but not any actual answers or real solutions.
He opens the piece by quoting a bunch of statistics related to Ohio’s education system from a recent Brookings Institute report.
He muddles around with some stuff that Strickland is already working on and then he eventually gets to this gem, which appears to be the foundation of his education plan: “If we believe that the core mission of education is to teach children, then let’s reflect that in how and where we spend our education money.”
Wow! We should reflect our priorities in how we spend education money? That’s your fucking solution?
I’m guessing your solution to our infrastructure problems is to determine how and where we spend our transportation money by reflecting on our belief that the core mission of roads is to support car and truck traffic?
Jesus Christ, man, you’ve had days to write this article and plenty of staff to help. These are your best ideas? No wonder you won’t take questions from the press.
Here’s the thing, John. I read that report as well. And there are some glaringly obvious parts you left out. Specifically the way THEY suggest we solve the problem.
The Brookings Institute offers some very specific solutions to help fix our education system that don’t involve reflecting on our core beliefs. Most importantly they suggest that we cut the number of Ohio’s school districts by at least one-third..
So how about taking a stand on something, John? How about actually presenting a real answer to a question?
Do you or don’t you support eliminating one-third of Ohio’s school districts?
According to the wackjobs at WND the Romeikes and their 5 kids deserve asylum “because of the propaganda included in modern German textbooks that violates the family’s religious beliefs. This includes explicit lessons on sex, the promotion of the occult and witchcraft and an effort to teach children to disrespect authority figures.”
Those must be some school books! I’m assuming the cover of the 3rd grade math book must have a picture of unicorn fucking a witch who is extending her long, green, gnarly middle finger to flip off a police officer.
The problem with the religious persecution argument here is that there is no historical religious tradition or doctrine that supports their assertion about homeschooling as a religious belief or practice. More importantly, the law applies equally to people of all religions so it’s pretty difficult to make the argument that this family is being specifically targeted. And the law itself has been around for something like 80 years and is just being challenged now?
I lived in Germany for a number of years and I’ll agree they have some ridiculous laws. For example you need to take a first aid class before you can apply for your driver’s license. But that’s the way it is there – and if you want your driver’s license then you take the course. Could Christian Scientists claim they are being religiously persecuted because they don’t believe in secular medical treatments? Are we going to give them asylum too?
Hell, let’s reverse the situation…
It turns out the US is the only western country – and one of the only countries in the entire world – with a drinking age of 21. The only other countries that have a drinking age of 21 or higher are almost exclusively nations that have a majority Muslim population like Tajikistan, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Indonesia.
Since my family is Irish Catholic and Irish Catholics have a long tradition of teenage alcohol consumption, can I claim religious persecution by the US government because they keep arresting my teenager for trying to buy a bottle of Jameson?
Honestly I think I have a stronger case here than the German family since I can actually provide a crap load of historical evidence for a hard drinking Irish Catholic tradition and for previous attempts to persecute us for it. For example the temperance movement in the US that resulted in over a decade of Prohibition was nothing more than a Protestant plot to take away my ancestors’ God-given right to get shit faced and beat the crap out of each other.
Can the homeschoolers give us any evidence like that? Can they give us any real evidence that homeschooling is part of their religious doctrine or that it’s a time-honored religious tradition or, hell, I’d settle for even a long-standing cultural tradition?
I didn’t think so.
If they could, they would at least have some ground to stand on with their argument. But you can’t just make up new religious traditions – that happen to be against the law in your country – and then suddenly claim you’re being persecuted for them.
Germany is a democracy. The laws are written by democratically-elected legislators. If you don’t like the laws, run for office or – better yet – have another 5 kids and get all 10 of them to go into politics. Or move. Move to the US if you like. We’d love to have you.
But don’t try to claim you deserve some kind of special political asylum here just because you happen to disagree with and refuse to follow the laws in your own country. Breaking a law you don’t agree with doesn’t make you some kind of religious martyr; it just makes you a criminal. And we have enough of those here already.
In case you haven’t been following the drama, LetOhioVote.org has been actively fighting a plan by Governor Strickland to use race track slots to help fill a hole in the state budget.
The group has been using the courts to block the plan and delay its possible implementation until after the gubernatorial election in November.
The group was formed by former-Ken Blackwell staffers Carlo Loparo, Gene Piece and Norm Cummings and has received millions in funding from a shady DC-based group named New Models, which is also run by another former-Blackwell staffer named Tim Crawford.
Recently Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner subpoenaed LetOhioVote.org asking them to reveal the true source of their funding.
Today Loparo and his pals took their battle back to the courts to try to avoid having to comply with the subpoena. According to the court documents they filed today LetOhioVote.org claims that the Secretary of State “patently and unambiguously” is “without authority to issue these subpoenas… or to take any action to enforce the subpoenas.”
Back in 2004, the situation was reversed.
Back then Carlo Loparo was the spokesperson for Secretary of State Ken Blackwell – and it was Blackwell who was issuing the subpoenas and Loparo who was defending their legality.
And when Pullins questioned the legality of a very similar subpoena request from SOS Blackwell, Loparo defended Blackwell claiming “the secretary of state is doing his duty to investigate campaign finance irregularities.”
“While I’d love to join Mr. Pullins at his pity party,” LoParo said, “we have a job to do and we want him to comply with our subpoena.”
So now that Carlo is throwing his own pity party, I have to ask: which is it, Mr. Loparo?
Does the Secretary of State’s office have the authority or doesn’t it?
It turns out some legislators actually do have a sense of humor.
Anthony Weiner, for example, took this shot at John Boehner during Thursday’s health care summit where John’s obnoxious and rude behavior during the event made him look even more orange than normal:
“I think Leader Boehner is particuarlly [sic] livid about the tanning bed tax. Surprised he hasn’t mentioned it.”
I guess when you find yourself with a family name that sounds like a male reproductive organ you can respond by developing a sense of humor like Anthony Weiner. Or you can respond like John Boehner: change the pronunciation of your last name and hope no one notices.
When the US hockey team loses Gold to Canada in a hard fought Olympic battle I fully expect Matt Naugle to say stupid shit like:
“Ok I’ve had enough. Carpetbomb Canada!”
or…
“Canada is just a frozen tundra full of Frenchies and the worthless offspring of Vietnam draft dodgers.”
But I really expect a little more from State Senator Mark Wagoner who, via Twitter, just threatened an invasion of our neighbor to the north over a silly sporting event:
“Now might be the time to finish the unfinished work of the War of 1812. See you in Ottawa in 7 days.”
I guess I should give him credit for at least knowing the capital of Canada. Though he seems to have forgotten that the War of 1812 was actually with Britain. Canada wasn’t officially formed as a country until 1867.
Props to the Dispatch for printing this piece by Jennifer Smith Richards and Bill Bush that documents the many problems and eventual failure of another charter school in Central Ohio.
This time it’s Chase Academy for the Communication Arts – which is kind of an ironic name given the completely fucked up method they chose for communicating the news of the schools demise to parents: sending a letter home with the kids on Friday afternoon notifying parents the school would not reopen on Monday.
Schools close for any number of reasons. For example Columbus is closing down 9 schools next year. But the district informed parents a full nine months in advance and held a fair for parents to help them find a new school for their kids.
Parents of students at the Chase Academy weren’t even given 24 hours notice before the school was shut down. No preliminary warning was given. No guidance was offered to the parents. Nothing.
But, like so many other poorly run charter schools that have closed over the past few years, the story behind Chase Academy gets worse.
It turns out the school had been lying to the state for years in order to get additional funding. The school was supposed to have 189 students enrolled this year. And based on that number they received $458,000 in funding from the state starting at the beginning of the school year.
Based on first-hand accounts from teachers at the school, only 22 kids actually showed up for class on the first day of school.
And it gets even worse, if you can believe it…
It turns out the school refused “to provide legally required services for special-needs students” even though the state had given them nearly half a million dollars in funding.
And yes, it gets even worse…
The school handled its financial planning and investment strategy so poorly that this amazing situation occurred (as recounted by the parent of one of the students): “One day we came in and there was no lunch for the kids because they hadn’t paid the lunch people… they had to go down the street and buy Pop-Tarts and orange juice.”
Unbelievable.
The big problem here is not the irresponsible people who ran this school into the ground. It’s the irresponsible people who allow schools like this to operate in the first place. The real problem is Ohio’s Republicans who refuse to revise the state’s horrible charter school program, instead clinging to their belief that reduced oversight and less government involvement is better for the education system because it promotes competition and innovation. They cling to the idea that our state’s children are the same as hungry customers and that schools are like fast food restaurants.
This idea fails on so many levels.
If a restaurant makes bad food for four years, the only thing we end up with is some disappointed customers. If a school spends four years delivering a substandard education to its students then the lives of this school’s ‘customers’ are effectively fucked up. That’s not just bad for the students but it’s bad for the state as well. Poorly educated citizens are not productive and happy citizens who hold down good jobs, start new businesses or attract employers to town. They end up costing the state more money in the long run through unemployment, social services programs and even prisons.
It’s also worth mentioning that if a restaurant fails to properly manage its finances and fails then the only people who suffer are the owner and probably the bank who loaned the restaurant money. With a charter school it’s taxpayer money. Your money. Money that could have been spent actually educating these students in a real school.
How many more of these disastrous charter school stories do we have to hear before we take some action to close down the shitty ones and stop letting new ones open?
Did John Kasich’s campaign steal marketing ideas from pop music icons and sex websites? Having visited Kasich’s website it’s really hard not to make the comparison.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for developing a brand for your candidate.
But “a New Day”? “Tried,-Tested-and-Proven”?
These ’slogans’ sound much too familiar.
I’m the exact opposite of a Céline Dion fan, but even I know they stole “a new day” from her Vegas show…
Get yourself a frilly, white, tight-fitting pants suit and maybe we can talk about a campaign slogan that pays tribute to Canada’s most famous pop star. Until then you just seem like you paid your DC-based advertising company too much money for a crappy, stolen campaign slogan.
