Posts by: Joseph
Last month we broke the story of Republicans trying to disenfranchise Ohio college students. The plan, buried in the Ohio House budget, would penalize Ohio universities that provide proof of residency documents to students who live on campus. Without such documentation, many students would not be able to comply with voter ID laws and would be forced to vote provisionally.
When asked about the plan, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s office told Talking Points Memo that “he is not pushing for the universities to provide students with documentation to help them register to vote.”
“This is not [...]
Full Story... →By all accounts, State Representative Connie Pillich should not even be in the legislature right now. When Governor Strickland appointed then State Representative Jim Raussen to a post at the Ohio Department of Development shortly before the 2008 election (and Raussen accepted), it avoided the 2006 rematch in which Pillich, an Air Force veteran who served in support of both Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield, narrowly lost. After the Republicans quickly unified around a replacement candidate, Pillich narrowly carried the district by a little over 5,000 votes.
In the 2010 election, Pillich was pitted against Mike Wilson, the head [...]
Full Story... →For the first two years of his term as Attorney General, we didn’t hear much from Mike DeWine. But as the race heats up for the 2014 election cycle, you can’t seem to turn on the TV or open a paper lately without seeing him photobombing any story or event that might get his face or name in front of Ohioans.
The Steubenville rape trial, the Cincinnati IRS office scandal, the shootings at Sandy Hook, the Cleveland rape victims, the Cleveland police-involved shooting… DeWine’s press team has found a way for DeWine to capitalize on all of these [...]
Full Story... →On Wednesday, Speaker Batchelder told the media that if the Senate would add an emergency clause to HB 7, a bill that would effectively make Internet sweepstakes cafes an illegal form of gambling in Ohio, he had the votes in the House to sustain it. Which isn’t really that surprising given that when it passed the House last month, it passed with the 66 votes (two-thirds majority) it would take to sustain it as an emergency measure. This is significant because as an emergency measure, HB 7 would take effect immediately after receiving Governor Kasich’s signature, and emergency measures [...]
Full Story... →Last December, Adam Lanza killed 20 kids and 6 adults at a school in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. In response to the tragedy, many Republicans around the country suggested school employees should be carrying weapons to school in order to defend against a similar situation in the future.
Here in Ohio, Attorney General Mike DeWine was quoted in an article about Republicans who support more guns in schools:
“If I was on the school board … I would think about having someone in the school who is very well trained, who has a gun under [...]
Full Story... →Last month Attorney General Mike DeWine signed a letter urging the Obama Administration to allow employers to opt out of paying for contraceptive coverage, a move that would effectively restrict access to contraception for women in Ohio . It was one more on a growing list of occasions DeWine has used his public office to push his own religious agenda.
David Pepper called DeWine’s position “a dramatic step backward for women’s health and autonomy” that “shows utter disregard for the rights of women to make their own health decisions.”
Our own Leonidas questioned the legal logic [...]
Full Story... →The American Greetings Corporation, based in Brooklyn, Ohio, was founded in 1906 by a Polish immigrant selling cards from a horse-drawn cart. Diebold has been operating in Ohio since 1859, when it was founded by Charles Diebold to make safes and vaults for banks.
Two very different companies that took two very different routes to success in Ohio. Sadly, the latest chapter in the history of both companies finds their paths intersecting with John Kasich’s folly and the tragedy of JobsOhio.
And the recent problems at both companies – including a new announcement of massive layoffs [...]
Full Story... →Imagine if you had a multimillion dollar empire with no accountability or transparency except once a quarter you had to issue a public report in which you graded yourself on metrics you got to choose and nobody outside of your organization had any way to independently verify. Now, imagine you still had to go out there and basically give yourself a D and admit that you’re doing much worse today than you were most of last year. Congratulations, now you know what it feels like to be JobsOhio.
Yesterday, JobsOhio released its 2013 First Quarterly report. But in order to [...]
Full Story... →JOBSOHIO
The AP reports that former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Cupp, now working for Auditor Yost, is “raising unique ethical issues” after meeting with the Governor’s office and JobsOhio in the days leading up to the turn over of financial records to the Auditor’s Office. While serving on the Supreme Court Cupp dealt with legal questions about JobsOhio. The return of public start-up money by JobsOhio could impact the lawsuit.
The Dayton Daily News reports that 19 of JobsOhio’s 22 employees are former state employees, and most got pay raises averaging 20% when they moved [...]
Full Story... →Chief Executive Magazine supposedly is a real thing. Perhaps they wanted to go with Fat Cat Fancy first, but was afraid it would attract a misled readership.
Chief Executive Magazine is largely an ignored publication except for that one time every year that it releases its “ranking” of the “best” States for businesses in the prior year. It’s the sort of totally subjective survey of those few CEOs who are vain enough to spend $100 a year on something called “Chief Executive Magazine.” The only other people more shallow that the readers of such a publication are the Republican politicians [...]
Full Story... →In 2011, support for a referendum to repeal the anti-union provisions of Senate Bill 5 resulted millions of signatures and huge rallies at the Ohio Statehouse. As Republicans begin moving new anti-union legislation through the Ohio House, they’ve already made moves to hinder an effective response from those who oppose the so-called right-to-work bills.
The first roadblock was Senate Bill 47, which contains language that would greatly restrict signature-gathering efforts to put unpopular legislation on the ballot for repeal. This means anyone wishing to collect signatures to repeal one of these bills would have less time to do [...]
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