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The Carpetblogger is begging to be sued, Pt. II

by ModernEsquire on March 12, 2010 · Comments

After I called Keeling’s B.S. out, he changes his story in less than 24-hours after his original story in a major way.

Nothing proves evidence of reckless and malicious disregard for the truth like changing your story in order to continue to make the same allegations.  And Keeling’s blog is a treasure trove of evidence of an intent to libel the Governor’s legal counsel in order to help his old boss’s fledgling campaign.

Yesterday, Keeling claimed Marcus was facing felony charges over the thwarted tobacco bust at the Governor’s mansion.  Today, it’s for an entirely different reason.  No explanation given for the switch. 

Keeling isn’t a lawyer,  and I doubt ever went to law school.  He doesn’t know his own State’s laws, let alone Ohio’s.

Of course the Governor’s legal counsel’s office has the authority to ask the Ohio Department of Public Safety (a Cabinet agency) to ensure that the State, and not local law enforcement, has jurisdiction to pursue a criminal matter.  Legal counsel making a jurisdictional inquiry is not criminal obstruction.

If Republican Franklin County Prosecutor O’Brien’s office is seriously considering pushing such a case, the County better be ready for being sued in federal court for malicious prosecution and civil rights violations.  O’Brien might want to ask the former Duke lacrosse prosecutor what happens when a prosecutor abuses his authority for political means. 

The mere fact that Keeling himself reports that the situation is that Marcus must either plea to some crime, any crime, or else O’Brien is planning on waiting until the fall before the elections to push some Indictment (which cannot possibly be resolved before the election) makes the entire thing reek of politics…. if ANY of it is even true.

After all, what possible criminal charges could Marcus even face?  Marcus isn’t even alleged to have done any act that would qualify as Obstructing Justice as defined in the Ohio Revised Code.  The only other possible charge (and I’m being incredibly charitable) is Obstructing Official Business.  That’s a second degree misdemeanor that O’Brien would have no jurisdiction to prosecute in the first place!  (Never mind that the Governor’s legal counsel has a recognized legal privilege in making a jurisdictional inquiry to a Cabinet-agency without being accused of obstructing justice as a result!)

But even if Keeling’s own inability to keep a consistent story up is not enough to complete discredit his own slime, there’s even further evidence of how his posts are nothing more than a malicious attempt to libel Ken Marcus in the hopes that it will politically benefit John Kasich.  And it’s right there in a block quote on Keeling’s post today.  The Columbus Dispatch reported that the new reason Keeling claims Marcus is in hot water is a series of events that:

In the end, the investigation proceeded without interruption.

No interruption=no crime.  There’s a boatload of Ohio caselaw to that affect.  Ask any prosecutor or criminal defense lawyer.

To repeat, Ken Marcus has NOT been accused or charged with any crime, let alone a felony.  Every inconsistent story Keeling has offered to make such an accusation, there is statutory and amble caselaw demonstrating that there is nothing in which Marcus could possibly be charged with a crime.  And yet, Keeling keeps on suggesting things that are demonstratively false.

First, Keeling pretended to be an Ohioan.  Now, he’s playing lawyer.  He’d better get a real one quickly.  Because he’s stepped in it.

The only question is whether he could be sued in Ohio or must it be filed in Virginia where he lives?

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Jon Keeling’s going to get himself sued.

by ModernEsquire on March 11, 2010 · Comments

The Carpetblogger’s quest to get John Kasich elected has gone to the gutter.   “Scoop” now claims, citing no source, that the Governor’s Chief Legal Counsel is allegedly in plea negotiations over the thwarted tobacco bust at the Governor’s mansion.

Keeling’s story is so poorly sourced, he doesn’t even say who Markus would allegedly being negotiating with since NOBODY HAS PUBLICLY ACCUSED Markus of any criminal act, let alone charged him with one.  The matter is still being investigated by the Inspector General, who doesn’t have the legal authority to bring criminal charges.  As such, there’s no prosecutorial authority for Markus to allegedly negotiate with.

Never mind the fact that there’s no crime… (get to that in a sec).

Keeling’s claim that a thwarted smuggling bust is the same thing as a multi-million public financing scandal involving a criminal conviction of a former sitting Governor and nonfeasance by the then State Auditor and Attorney General that resulted in multiple federal and state convictions is just laughable.

But what Keeling seems to ignore is that there’s two reasons why the Patrol… yes, not the Ohio Department of Public Safety, but the PATROL itself squashed the idea of letting someone throw an unknown object for the use by convicted felons onto the grounds of the Governor’s Mansion while the Governor was there:

1) Read that last sentence.  The Patrol is first charged with the safety of the Governor and the First Lady.  You don’t allow people to just throw unknown objects into the Governor’s Mansion grounds.

2) There was strong evidence that this alleged plot wasn’t criminal.

Yes, you read that right.  One of the major problems with allowing the plot to proceed and then raid everyone is that there was a serious question that none of it constituted an arrestable offense.

According to my sources close to the investigation, the whole tip off started with an intercepted communication between an inmate who was working at the Governor’s residence and the woman involved in the smuggling plot.  The written statement’s language strongly suggested to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation & Corrections that the smuggled item would be tobacco.

Although inmates are not permitted to have tobacco products in prison, it’s an administrative rule, not a violation of a criminal statute.  And there’s no criminal statute implicated by a plot to smuggle tobacco to an inmate.  None.

R.C. 2921.36 only makes the following a criminal act of illegal conveyance of prohibited items into a detention facility:

    (1) Any deadly weapon or dangerous ordnance, as defined in section 2923.11 of the Revised Code, or any part of or ammunition for use in such a deadly weapon or dangerous ordnance;

    (2) Any drug of abuse, as defined in section 3719.011 of the Revised Code;

    (3) Any intoxicating liquor, as defined in section 4301.01 of the Revised Code.

At best, they could have charged the woman with littering (except since she knew it would be picked up, it’s a question of whether even THAT charge could have stuck.)

In fact, the Columbus Dispatch has reported that one of the issues the Inspector General is investigating is the subsequent discovery of “contraband” tobacco hidden by inmates on the Governor’s mansion.  Coincidence?

The vast majority of indications are that this alleged “bust” would have been over something that was nothing more than a misdemeanor littering crime, at best.  The Highway Patrol doesn’t lay in wait to bust someone for littering on the Governor’s lawn.  Does it?

And there’s absolutely nothing I can imagine Ken Markus could have done as the Governor’s Chief Legal Counsel that could possibly subject him to criminal liability over an overhyped plot to litter.  Keeling continues to just make stuff up.

If Keeling wants to play lawyer, maybe he should learn the concept of libel per se. He really shouldn’t accuse someone of a felony without good cause.

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Will the real Kevin Holtsberry please stand up?

by ModernEsquire on March 5, 2010 · Comments

Here’s RedState contributor, former National Review freelance writer, Kevin Holtsberry in 2006:

Conservatives and libertarians love to blast Ohio as a high tax state but ignore the fact that state wide taxes are not that high.

…

The libertarian dream of slashed budgets and minimalist government is not realistic.

Holtsberry today?

Because like the green eye-shade wearers [the media] are, they demand detailed budget scenarios and explanations of how everything will work. They simply can’t fathom how something this big might be accomplished and so they seek to nit-pick it to death.

…

During normal times this would be a risky platform. Ken Blackwell ran an awkward an often off-message campaign but in many ways he had similar elements. He too was arguing for large scale changes and blaming both parties for failing to act. The problem for Blackwell – outside of the left’s constant demonization – was that the electorate wasn’t ready for big time change.

Yes, if there’s anything we’ve all agreed on is that the voters in Ohio in 2006 weren’t read for “big time” change even though they nearly swept the Republican Party almost entirely out of the State for the first time in a generation, and then, two years later, swept the Republicans out of control of the Ohio House and the White House. 

Holtsberry’s entire thesis is that everything that made Ken Blackwell radioactive in 2006 makes John Kasich smelling like roses.

Note, the usual Kasich cheerleaders,  like the Carpetblogger from Virginia, are actually citing Holtsberry’s declaration like it’s meaningful… a conservative blogger not named Jon Keeling said Kasich is going to win, therefore, OMGs Kasich is going to win!!

Never mind that Holtsberry’s thesis is based on the assumption that:

Kasich =  Blackwell = VICTORY!!!! 

Because nothing that Holtsberry says takes away from the fundamental assumption that John Kasich really doesn’t come to the table with anything that Ken Blackwell didn’t also have in 2006 except it’s now an incumbent Democratic race as opposed to an open seat.

On top of that, Holtsberry actually thinks the same voters who see “mounting budget deficits”  (even though the state’s budget has been balanced ever year as required under the Constitution) are the same voters who “are not into the inside baseball of technical budget numbers or economic development policy.”  In other words, Holtsberry assumes that voters will only see the negative in Strickland, but the positive in Kasich.  Yeah, such a scenerio does make a Kasich victory likely, but that doesn’t make the scenerio itself likely.  In fact, it’s highly UNLIKELY as evidenced by the recent polling showing Kasich losing ground.

And that’s because the voters don’t believe in the free lunch that Kasich is selling.  They don’t believe you can give a massive tax repeal that isn’t going to cause some pain.  They don’t believe you can eliminate 45% of the State’s budget in a “responsible way” as Kasich routinely claims with no explanation, especially since local governments are already warning of higher local taxes if Kasich’s plan becomes law.

I’m glad that the Kasich cheerleading squad is buying into it Holtsberry’s self-contradicting analysis… it reminds me of the same ideological delusional rationale that conservatives were spouting in trying to justify their denial that Ken Blackwell would barely get over a third of the vote come November.

Oh wait, I forgot:

John Kasich = Ken Blackwell = VICTORY!!!

But victory for whom?

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Jon Keeling (R-VA) can’t help himself… continues to lie about polls

by ModernEsquire on March 1, 2010 · Comments

Jon Keeling goes to the well again, but still refuses to acknowledge that he lied when he suggested that a) Nate Silver agreed Strickland was toast, and b) most professional pollsters are saying that the Quinny poll is actually great news for Kasich.

Heck, Tom Blumer noted that Keeling’s dropped the “great news for Kasich” spin in his latest reincarnation.

This time, Keeling has the nerve to suggest that Nate Silver is being dishonest:

Silver, who is unabashedly liberal, is being a bit dishonest with the numbers by isolating the single Quinnipiac poll in his analysis of where the race stands.
If he wanted to play fair, he would use the same standard he used in his overall analysis, the incumbent’s average in the early polls, and according to Pollster.com, Strickland is averaging 40.5%.

Strickland’s average is that low for two reasons: 1) Rasmussen has polled nearly three times as often recently as any other polling outfit and has consistently showed substantially lower numbers than the other polling outfits, 2) Pollster.com includes a poll done by the Ohio Right to Life that claims that Strickland is only poll 33%… a result so ridiculous that not even Keeling himself bothered to even mention the existence of such a poll.  So, you can imagine with only four polls during the last few months, how much the Ohio Right to Life could distort Strickland’s average.

(Even Robert Moran, the pollster Keeling cited in his first post as evidence that the “professional polling community” is balking at the Quinny poll being portrayed as good news has backed off on his comments. Moran calls the Right to Life survey “hard to believe,” thus justifying its exclusion.)

If you looked at only the polls conducted so far this year and exclude the Right to Life poll, Strickland leads by 43% to 40%.  That puts Strickland in the mid 40-s range even Keeling admits is relatively safe harbor.

Keeling also claims that the Quinny poll is “just one poll”:

First, Keeling ignores that it’s not just the “single Quinnipiac poll that shows” that Strickland is polling at or near 45%.  The University of Cincinnati polls showed the same thing.

Other Keeling whoppers:

  • “The trend shows Kasich is stagnant, and will likely remain that way until his name ID improves.”
  • “Kasich’s “situation” is not necessarily “worse”. In fact, it’s virtually unchanged.”  (I thought he said the Quinny poll showed Kasich’s situation getting better?  Now, he’s saying it’s great news because it means it hasn’t gotten worse)

I guess it depends on your definition of “virtually.”  Either way, the polling data does not even show Kasich is stagnant.  Even taking just the most favorable polling organization for Kasich, Rasmussen Reports, you have enough of a trend line to see that Kasich’s trending downward in a head-to-head against Strickland.

Coupled with the trend data from Quinnipiac, and you have the only polling organizations which have done enough polling to suggest any trend, and they BOTH show Kasich has been losing ground somewhere between 3 to 5 points since December.  That’s the result of the disaster that was the Mary Taylor rollout and the press coverage on Kasich and Taylor utter inability to explain their own tax plan or how they’d pay for it.  That suggests that as voters get engaged the tax attack will move the race even further.

On a side note, this trend is strange given that the convention wisdom that the electoral environment is said to favor challengers against incumbents, and yet, Rob Portman is doing better in his open seat race than John Kasich is doing against a Democratic incumbent.  Some day, someone in the media is going to point that out.

I don’t know why Keeling keeps writing about the Quinnipiac poll.  He’s actually written about it more than the polls showing Kasich ahead.  But it’s a clear indication that the Kasich campaign is freaking out about it.

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Jon Keeling (R-Va) is a fucking liar.

by ModernEsquire on February 28, 2010 · Comments

I’m willing to engage in people on the other side of the aisle.  I’ll even excuse the occasional ideologically-inspired perspective that leads to one side of the debate to distort the actual situation.  But I will not tolerate a blogger who just simply FLAT OUT LIES.  And Jon Keeling is a documented liar.

From Keeling’s Friday’s post “About that Quinnipiac Guv poll… “:

It seems the experts have the same kind of frustration as I did regarding the way Strickland’s lead in the latest Quinnipiac was framed in the media.

From Robert Moran of Pollster.com:

While the Quinnipiac poll may show Strickland ahead of Kasich 44%-39%, that is in NO WAY the headline. The headline is actually that (a) Strickland is way below 50% and (b) incumbents under 50% in a two way race have a very poor track record in November.

Keeling then claims that Nate Silver backs up Moran on the issue of whether Strickland polling below 50% is actually “great news for… John Kasich!:

Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, a well-respected and left-leaning political statistics blog, did extensive research into the “under 50%” rule.

Except that the link Keeling used for Nate Silver doesn’t go to Silver’s blog, it goes to another pollster at Pollster.com who felt compelled to protect the site’s credibility by attacking Moran’s factually incorrect post!

Well, I don’t like criticizing our contributors either, but when Bob wrote on Tuesday in the context of a post on the latest results on the Ohio governor’s race that incumbent candidates “get what they get in the tracking, ” that it’s a “fairly ironclad rule” that “incumbents tend to get trace elements of the undecideds at the end of a campaign,” Nate is right and Bob is wrong.

So, the only thing the experts in polling are frustrated about is how hacks like Keeling are claiming that the fact that Strickland is polling in the mid-forties in February spells doom for Strickland come November!

Silver’s post titled “The Myth of the Incumbent 50% Rule” actually says that the Quinnipiac is good news… for Ted Strickland!

Although I have no particular comment on the dynamics of the Ohio race, which I have not spent much time following, Moran’s general sentiment is demonstrably false. What the actual evidence shows, rather, is the following:
1) It is extremely common for an incumbent come back to win re-election while having less than 50 percent of the vote in early polls.
2) In comparison to early polls, there is no demonstrable tendency for challengers to pick up a larger share of the undecided vote than incumbents.
3) Incumbents almost always get a larger share of the actual vote than they do in early polls (as do challengers). They do not “get what they get in the tracking”; they almost always get more.
4) However, the incumbent’s vote share in early polls may in fact be a better predictor of the final margin in the race than the opponent’s vote share. That is, it may be proper to focus more on the incumbent’s number than the opponent’s when evaluating such a poll — even though it is extremely improper to assume that the incumbent will not pick up any additional percentage of the vote.

On the Ohio race specifically, Silver wrote:

If we instead look at those cases within three points of Ted Strickland’s 44 percent, when the incumbent had between 41 and 47 percent of the vote in early polls, he won on 11 of 17 occasions (65 percent of the time).

In other words, given Strickland’s position in the polls, Silver concludes that historical polling data suggests that an incumbent in Strickland’s position in the polls at this point in the election cycle will win re-election TWO-THIRDS of the time.  Silver found that actually nearly HALF of all incumbents poll below 50% at this point in the election. 

Granted, Strickland’s odds do improve if he were polling above 50%.  Silver concludes that such incumbents have won 32 out of 33 times.  However, that fact doesn’t exactly spell DOOM for Strickland. 

This is the same kind of nonsense like how Keeling and the Ohio conservativesphere has gotten the vapors over Larry Sabato changing Congresswoman Betty Sutton’s re-election from “Safe Democratic” to “Likely Democratic” over the entrance of Tom Ganley’s Sutton-inspired “Cash for Clunkers” millions of campaign dollars.  Instead of certainity, it’s now only a near certainity.

Other great news for Kasich by Silver?

On average, the incumbent added 6.4 percent to his voting total between the early polling average and the election, whereas the challenger added 4.5 percent. Looked at differently, the incumbent actually picked up the majority — 59 percent — of the undecided vote vis-a-vis early polls.

Which means that Strickland got the same bump, he’s on pace to get over 50% on election day. 

How bad is Keeling’s dishonesty over the Quinny poll?

Not even Tom Blumer from BizzyBlog (who himself calls Keeling’s “spin” “pathetic”) doesn’t buy it:

That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t explain why Kasich’s situation with Qpac in Feb. 10 is WORSE than it was in Nov. 09.

Still waiting for why you shouldn’t be concerned about that ….

Tom Blumer
BizzyBlog.com

When you’ve lost Tom Blumer, give it up, man, because it’s gone…

Next up for Keeling?  Explaining why John Kasich is losing ground while Portman’s been gaining.

Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s good news for John McCain John Kasich!

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Matt Naugle’s EPIC FACEPLANT Kasich defense FAIL

by ModernEsquire on February 24, 2010 · Comments

Apparently, my post on Kasich’s sweetheart real estate deal with the Ohio GOP’s hired blogger slime merchant, Matt Naugle who writes about how dirty it is that the Democratic Party shadows Republicans in between stints shadowing Democrats for Republicans.

In true Naugle form, Naugle doesn’t dispute, refute, or even address a single damn thing I said.

Naugle, who believes Sandy Theis is behind this all, despite the fact that she and I have never ever talked about it, wants people to believe that he isn’t passing along information that was spoonfed to him.

And what’s the big bombshell Naugle has?

That the Governor and First Lady sold their Columbus condo at a $7k loss in 2007, during the worst real estate market in living memory, to a longtime Congressional staffer of Strickland’s.

Really, Naugle, that’s the best John Kasich’s oppo. researchers gave you to fire back compared to Kasich’s sweetheart land deal?

Pathetic.

According to the very same Franklin County Auditor’s records Kasich Naugle relies on, larger condos in the same building sold at a substantially lower price than the staff paid for the smaller condo the Stricklands’ owned.  So, actually, the staff can make a very reasonable case that she OVERPAID for the condo.  (It took me longer to upload the document to post here than it did for me to find it on my own.)
Franklin County Auditor Records

Kasich cannot make any such comparison.  Unlike the Strickland staffer, Kasich was a powerful Congressional chairman at the time, dealing with one of his significant campaign contributors.  Unlike the Strickland staffer, public records show that Kasich paid for the property that was 1/2 to 1/6 per acre of the price the SAME SELLER, sold the SAME SIZE LOTS, in the SAME SUBDIVISION, on the SAME STREET, around the SAME TIME.  To compare the two is just nonsense.  Even when you factor in the problems Kasich says exists on the property, he paid way below the price difference you’d ordinarily expect such problems would affect valuation. Kasich said the problems costs him approximately between $15k to $20k in additional construction costs.  His discount compared to the other similar properties sold by the seller covered that by a factor of ten!

The mere fact that “Mad Dog” Matt Naugle has gone apeshit to run defense and distraction on this story tells me that the Kasich campaign is worried about this story and where it might lead.

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Jon Keeling (R-VA) fails in poll spin… Points out that Kasich is losing the message war already.

by ModernEsquire on February 23, 2010 · Comments

Jon Keeling’s post on today’s Quinnipiac poll is a lesson in bad propaganda.  It reminds me of how ever bad poll was spun by the McCain campaign to those infamous words:  “This is great news … for John McCain!”

Keeling tries his best to spin bad news, but he shouldn’t have bothered.  By simply trying (and failing) he reveals how Kasich has to resort to some major fallacies to put lipstick on this pig.

Keeling fallacy #1: “Comparing Quinnipiac’s ‘registered voter’ results to Rasmussen’s ‘likely’ voters results show that the more people know Kasich, the better he polls.”

He repeats this fallacy twice in his post.  He’s wrong.  Except to average the results, no serious pundit or polling analysts compares polls from different polling organizations like Keeling tries.  It’s an apple and oranges comparison.  Besides just a difference in the type of voter polled (registered vs. likely voter model), there are significant difference between methodology.  Quinny, I believe, uses live question takers, Rasmussen uses automated dialers asking recorded questions.  It’s long been held by pollsters that using automated dialers instead of live questioners lead to different results.  These differences make any attempt to compare one poll from the other and make assumptions from the differences statistically unreliable.

Regardless of the differences between the methodology of the poll, Rasmussen and Quinnipiac show that the more Ohioans become familiar with Kasich, the less likely they support him.  If you compared each polling outfits most recent poll to that same outfits prior poll of this race, you’d see that Kasich has made marginal improvement in his name recognition, but his standing has slumped, not increased. 

Since the most recent Quinny poll, Kasich has lost three points in Rasmussen against Strickland and five in Quinny.

The reason Kasich does better now with voters who are familiar with him that such voters are overwhelmingly white, conservative Republicans who are his base and the people he’s been exclusively courting for his campaign for the past THREE YEARS.  That’s hardly an accurate representation of the voting public in Ohio at large.

Keeling fallacy # 2: “It’s also clear that the massive Democrat [sic] efforts to define Kasich first have so far failed.”

Keeling repeats this theme throughout his post.  There are actually two fallacies (and one glaring example of ignorant grammar) with this Kasich talking point.  One, there has been no massive Democratic effort to define Kasich.  If Keeling thinks my posting about Kasich’s reckless tax plan, and ODP’s Kasich Tax Calculator is a “massive effort,” then the Kasich campaign is in for a shock when the Strickland campaign, ODP, unions, and other go from relying solely on free media to frame Kasich to a paid media model.  When we start seeing wall-to-wall ads attacking Kasich’s tax plan, then we can talk about “massive efforts” to define Kasich.  We aren’t there yet.

To date, the effort to define Kasich can be attributed mostly to this blog since December.  And even I, in all my vanity, do not believe that my writing of Kasich constitutes a “massive” Democratic effort, or the three to five point bounce Strickland got.

The second fallacy is that it, or something else, obviously has worked.

Pollster chart

Since December Kasich has lost a THIRD of his lead in Rasmussen.  According to the most consistent polling organizations in this race, Kasich has lost anywhere between three to five points in a head to head matchup against Strickland since December– when I began my campaign to get the media to incorporate the fiscal implications of Kasich’s tax plan into the narrative of the race.

By calling it “massive,” Keeling implicitly concedes that Kasich and Keeling have been outflanked on message and that the Kasich campaign has spent the last three months on defense, not offense.  When the best he can say is deny that it worked (even though the polls show movement), you know he’s been worried that we, not his candidate, have been dictating the narrative.

Keeling fallacy #3:  No mention of the lack of a Mary Taylor factor.

Mary Taylor was picked for two political reasons: 1) get the GOP behind Kasich, and 2) make the Kasich ticket attractive to female voters.

Umm, faceplant.  Quinnipiac notes that Strickland’s improvement comes largely from his strength with female voters.

Also, according to Quinny, Kasich has more tepid support with self-identified Republican voters than Strickland does with Democratic voters.  In fact, Kasich loses Republican voters to Strickland already at half the level Ken Blackwell lost them in 2006.

In short, the poll shows that Democrats are more united behind Strickland than Republicans are against the GOP nominee.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a large reason Kasich doesn’t have as strong of party unity as Ted Strickland is due to the utter chaos putting Mary Taylor on his ticket caused for the rest of the GOP statewide ticket.

Keeling fallacy #4: “On every single question, dissatisfaction and disapproval of Governor Strickland worsened from the last Quinnipiac poll last November.”

Is that true, Assistant Director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute?

“There has been an improvement in voters’ views of Gov. Ted Strickland,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “The movement is a few points, but it is consistent across a number of measures.”

In fact, Strickland has IMPROVED on the very question of whether voters approve of Strickland.  His disapproval and unfavorability ratings?  Yeah, on Strickland they went DOWN.  Keeling has the data completely backwards.

You know who’s unfavorability ratings did go up, though?  Yeah, John Kasich’s.

Keeling fallacy #5: “Strickland and the ODP have failed at improving Strickland’s reputation as a manager of Ohio’s economy and its budget.”

Um, again, Keeling cherry picks the data.  On the more important question of which candidate do voters believe would be best at handling the economy and the budget, Kasich (who voters admittedly don’t know) comes out ahead by six points.  However, his numbers are exactly unchanged from the last time Quinny asked that question while Strickland’s numbers have improved by two points on each question.

Also, another 2% volunteered that neither candidate would do particularly better on these issues, essentially reducing Kasich’s sole issue advantage to a near statistical tie.

Keeling fallacy # 6: “Ultimately, there is little evidence that the one thing that can help Strickland’s chances, a substantively improved economy, will happen over the next few months.”

The recession is officially over.  Fourth quarter GDP ‘09 was estimated at 5.7% increase.  The 3Q showed a 2.2 increase. Housing prices are going back up.  Housing starts rose 21.2% last year, the largest year-over year increase since April 2004.  Retail is beating expectations.  Unemployment is a lagging indicator.  Keeling and the rest of his “Cheerleaders for continued economic failure” who have made a political bet that the economy wouldn’t improve substantially late last year are losing big.

Keeling can try to spin this news all he wants, but it’s clearly nobody is buying that this isn’t evidence good news for Strickland:

  • Politico: “Strickland retakes lead over Kasich”
  • National Journal: ” Strickland Reclaims Lead, Still Under 50″
  • CNN: Strickland’s numbers on the rebound”
  • MSNBC “First Read“: “Buckeye State Watch: Is the worm beginning to turn for Democrats in Ohio, too?”

Oh, and you know all those conservative bloggers who have been trying to make this race seem like last year’s gubernatorial race in New Jersey?

“It’s one poll, but it might give pause to Republicans who think the 2009 off-year elections and 2010 Massachusetts race point to an electoral tsunami that they can ride to easy wins. Strickland is in far better shape than, for example, former Gov. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) was at this point in 2009 — last February, he trailed now-Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) by six points.”–David Weigel (formerly of The American Spectator, The American Conservative, & The American Prospect), Washington Independent (“In Ohio, a Republican Candidate Slips in the Poll.”)

And what polling outfit showed Corzine losing by six points at this point a year ago?  Quinnipiac.

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The ripples of the Kasich-Taylor disaster continues to spread throughout the GOP ticket.

by ModernEsquire on January 26, 2010 · Comments

ORP Chairman Kevin DeWine clearly doesn’t think a failed County Auditor candidate/freshman do-nothing State Representative is the best chance for the GOP to stop David Pepper from winning the Auditor’s race, or else he wouldn’t have recruited former AG candidate David Yost to challenge the freshman.

Of course, just as when Taylor damaged her brand with conservatives by jumping ship and running on the Kasich ticket, Yost did the same as well.

Now, those conservative bloggers who cannot hold their tongues are publicly fuming that the GOP has somehow navigated from a likely incumbent re-election on an Apportionment Board seat to a contested primary for an open seat race in which the Democratic candidate has nearly a year head start on the GOP candidates.

Before Yost jumped to the Auditor’s race, Morgan had quickly “staffed” up with leaders from the SWO Tea Party movement.

Now the Tea Baggers are in open revolt over the Ohio GOP’s efforts to recruit Yost into the race and have the state party endorse him quickly to force the Freshman out of the race.

Conservative activists are scrambling to fight the Ohio GOP from giving the AG nomination to Mike DeWine… Kevin DeWine’s relative, who has run a gawdawful campaign that hasn’t even so much as updated his website since he announced last July.  They see two of their promising “stars” going after each other… Meanwhile, you have Rose over at Bizzyblog writing:

And where is “I’m bordering on ego & narcissism” John Kasich? So much for leadership…grabs the Auditor under the guise of “the top of the ticket will drive the other races,” then allows idiots like Husted & DeWine to prevent that from happening? So much for any of them paying attention to what’s happening on the ground.

Meanwhile, David Pepper’s campaign has been silent as a church mouse over all of this.  Not even one fundraising pitch has gone out during this time.

Grab the popcorn.  Who said uncontested Republican primaries were boring?

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Ohio 15th Blog: Nothing about Kasich is new

by ModernEsquire on January 17, 2010 · Comments

Maybe I shouldn’t take the credit, but I think the entire progressive blogsphere is waking up to the realization that John Kasich really is a phony, paper tiger.

Ohio 15th Blog has a good natured piece about how even Kasich’s campaign slogan is recycled:

There is a book called The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover 1928. OMG! Is Kasich purposely trying to emulate Hoover?

“A New Day” was used extensively by President Barack Obama in his campaign.

Oh noes, don’t let the Tea Baggers find out that Kasich has been seduced by the Kenyan usurper.  Also, note Kasich=Blackwell.

On a more serious note (as things are with Jill),  Pepper Pike Councilwoman Jill Zimon at WLST picks up on the sales tax implications of Kasich’s tax plan.

As I get ready for my jury trial this week, it’s nice to see other blogs start to realize that we have nothing to fear with Kasich so long as we are willing to take him head on.

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Jane Hamsher’s FDL continues to screw over Democrats who supported the health care reform she demanded they vote for

by ModernEsquire on January 16, 2010 · Comments

Jane Hamsher’s FDL’s glorious strategy of helping the progressive movement by 1) getting bloggers to get Blue Dog Democrats to support health care, and 2) then blast those Democrats who supported it to the delight of the Republican Congressional leadership continues.

Today, it’s a SurveyUSA poll done by FDL (always reliable) on the OH-01 rematch between incumbent Congressman Steve Driehaus (D) and former Congressman Steve Chabot (Douce).

Which is remarkably picked up by incredible speed by none other than the Tanned One, House Majority Leader John Boehner on Twitter.

Jane Hamsher, who lobbied us to put public pressure on Steve Driehaus to vote for the House version of HCR (which included a public option.)  Jane Hampsher, who was completely okay with the concept of individual mandates until the public option had to removed to get the bill VOTED ON in the Senate.

Jane Hamsher, who’s now giving John Boehner ammunition to attack the very Democrats who supported the Health Care bill she demanded they support until she decided to oppose it.

On Thursday, Hamsher released a poll about the Democrat in the Second Congressional District of Arkansas showing him losing.  He announced he was not running for re-election shortly thereafter.  Her FDL cultist claim there’s no connection, even when her own blog took credit.  A Democrat Jane has helped the Republicans remove with her newfound partnership with Grover Norquist.  Because this, somehow, is going to get a public option passed in a health care reform bill, as if that is the ONLY reason we have to need a Democrat in Congress.

Brilliant job, Jane.

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[UPDATED:]After disastrous rollout of Kasich-Taylor, Jon Keeling has resorted to simply making things up…

by ModernEsquire on January 16, 2010 · Comments

This post actually makes me happy.  It tells me that Kasich’s campaign realizes that the Kasich-Taylor launch didn’t exactly go as planned and now they’re trying to muddy the waters to make Strickland’s campaign look like an equal disaster.

The only problem is that it’s entirely untrue.

Jon Keeling honestly expects people to believe that there’s someone who would actually have personal, first-hand knowledge of this and the first person they’d think to tell is a blogger in VIRGINIA – and nobody else.  Jon Keeling expects you to believe that he (ex-Kasich staffer) is more connected to the inner workings of the Strickland campaign than I am (ex-Strickland staffer).  Nonsense.

Look to the immediate right of this website.  See that webad?  Do you honestly think the Strickland campaign would buy a webad to collect addresses and donations to announce their running mate  if they believed that they couldn’t find a running mate?  It’s already in the bag, and Keeling knows better.

Yes, technically, the campaign’s spokewoman said that “no pick has been made,” but that’s what you say when you want to build up curiosity as to the pick instead of having it leak out like it did with Taylor.  Nobody but Jon Keeling honestly heard that statement and believed it means what Keeling thinks it does.

But if you somehow still are not convinced that Jon Keeling isn’t full of crap, look what he actually wrote:

If Strickland picks someone on Monday or Tuesday, within the “days” as defined by the Governor’s campaign, then we’ll know that while he didn’t get his first choice, he still was able to get things figured out.

Yep, you read that right.  Even if the campaign announces on Monday the pick, in Keeling’s Imagination Land world of reasoning, that actually proves it.  In the Land of the Sane, it would actually disprove it.

Anyways.  Unlike Keeling, I actually DO have connections to the Strickland campaign and they’ve flatly denied Keeling’s story.

First, the campaign spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith told me, on the record:

“The lieutenant governor position has not yet been offered to anyone. As we have said all along, when the governor makes his decision, we will announce it.”

Furthermore, the campaign folks I talked to, all of whom would know, said Keeling is just nuts.  Everyone I talked to in the campaign specifically said nobody has declined to run on the Governor’s ticket.  His entire story is nonsense.

[UPDATE]:  I just got a phone call from Jeff Ortega, the Assistant Director of Communication for Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.  He had inquired into the matter with key personnel in the Secretary’s Legal Department and says they are “unaware” of anything like what Keeling reported about “someone from ODP” asking the Secretary of State if Strickland could file and name a running mate later.  Expecting the Keeling would try to change his story, I asked Mr. Ortega if anyone from the Governor’s office or the Governor’s campaign contacted the office asking for such a legal opinion.  Again, Mr. Ortega said that his office is unaware of any such request.

Beyond that, Mr. Ortega said that it’s highly unlikely anyone would ask for such an opinion in the first place as both the petitions and the statute unambiguously state that a running mate must be named on the petition.  And that’s yet another reason I knew Keeling was lying from the get-go.  There’s no ambiguity in the statute and everyone understands that a running mate has to be named.  There’d be no point in asking a legal opinion on such a clearly established issue.  I’ve given Keeling the benefit of the doubt, but everyone, whether they’re on the record, on background, and even off the record says the same thing:  Jon Keeling is simply making this up.

Keeling.  I’ve actually got sources and they’re willing to go on the record.  Better luck next time!

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Tax Foundation attempts to refute Plunderbund analysis by disclaiming that Tax Foundation’s study on Ohio’s taxes was fundamentally flawed

by ModernEsquire on January 13, 2010 · Comments

fail-owned-pwned-pictures

So the Tax Foundation’s blogger tried to do some damage control yesterday for the Kasich-Taylor campaign after I pointed out that their election-year study on John Kasich’s signature issue really didn’t help his campaign any.  Please note that the Tax Foundation’s blog post was not written by the actual author of the report, but instead someone who is far less qualified than the original study’s author.  First, read my initial post, and then read the Tax Foundation’s reply.

I know, they raised more strawmen than an Iowa cornfield!

But, just so you can follow this reply, I’m going to respond to each point in the order used in the headers on the Tax Foundation’s blog.

1) The Tax Foundation admits that its own data suggests no correlation between state/local tax rates in Ohio and migration from the state.

Remember this graph? Remember how I pointed out that the Tax Foundation’s own data shows that migration out of the State actually accelerated when Ohio began phase out corporate inventory taxes and making massive cuts to the personal income tax?  And remember how I specifically said that I’m not suggesting there’s actually a negative correlation, but I’m pointing out there’s no correlation at all?  Well, the Tax Foundation’s blogger apparently didn’t:

Just because two things happened in 2005 doesn’t mean one caused the other.

He thinks he’s refuting my point, but he actually made it: the Tax Foundation’s blogger just pointed out the major fallacy of its President’s report on Ohio taxes in which he claimed there was a correlation between state/local taxes and migration out of the State.  I only pointed out that the data doesn’t support that conclusion.  The Tax Foundation’s  blogger pointed out it would be a fallacy to suggest a causative  link between the two in the first place.  This, of course, did not stop him from repeating the fallacy as fact at the end of his post.  Irony.

Way to refute the President of your organization’s major thesis of his report on Ohio!

2.  Not even the Tax Foundation believes Kasich will run on a platform of repealing Ohio’s income tax.

The Tax Foundation essentially says it isn’t aware that Kasich is running to repeal Ohio’s income and estate tax, only that he ”mentions” he might.   This is the second time this week alone an organization sympathetic or someone tied to Kasich has suggested that Kasich will not, in fact, campaign on repealing Ohio’s income tax.  That, in and of itself, is newsworthy.

Second, the report at issue was explicitly billed as the most “sensible” way Ohio could reform its taxes to encourage economic growth.  Is their blogger now suggesting otherwise?  I’d note that the study doesn’t suggest these changes should be made because it will improve Ohio’s ranking with the organization’s biased and completely ridiculed “business environment” rankings.  No, the report said that the recommendations would actually make the actual conditions of our economy better.  Their omission of anything approaching Kasich’s platform is an indictment that Kasich’s plan is not sensible, according to them.  Again, the report itself does not even conclude that Ohio’s personal income tax, or its estate tax are the “most anti-growth” taxes in the State, instead it cites other taxes for that distinction.

Given the errors that the organization has admitted in this post later, I even question if Ohio would rank as the Foundation’s blogger “projected” it would.   There’s no question that any State without an income tax automatically gets a #1 from the Tax Foundation on income tax issues, but the rest of their rankings depends on what the organization estimated, if at all, how such a repeal would affect other tax rates as governments struggled to mitigate the loss of revenues caused by a repeal.  I bet $5 the simulated ranking failed to account for increases in local income and property taxes that even proponents of the repeal concede are likely to occur.

3.  The Tax Foundation admits that its data in the report was fundamentally flawed, and then correct it with praise for Strickland.

Don’t believe me?:

The numbers [regarding per capita spending adjusted for population changes and inflation from 1993 to the present] we used in our original report were wrong and we have now corrected them.

How flawed was the Foundation’s data in its initial report?  Well, instead of show flat growth in per capita spending when adjusted for inflation, they NOW claim it shows nearly a 40% increase on average.  Given that this was a major focus of the study, an error that profound is amazing.  It basically calls into question the validity of the rest of its “data” and the analysis thereof.

But those years were all Republican years except from 2007 till now.  What did they say specifically about state spending under Governor Strickland?  Well after observing that State expenditures in 2008 were $67.788 billion, it notes that:

Governor Strickland has proposed a 2010 total expenditure level of $63.9 billion and a 2011 level of $65.3 billion. (Executive Budget, page C-5.)

In other words, after blasting Ohio’s Republican Governors for exploding state spending, the Tax Foundation has to note that Governor Strickland has actually CUT overall State spending.  Without Governor Strickland’s first term, Ohio’s increase in per capita spending (if the Tax Foundation’s second try is more accurate) average would be worse.

And it’s not like this is the first conservative organization that has had to admit that historically Ohio Democratic governors have been better to keep state spending in check compared to Republican ones.  In fact, after Strickland’s first budget passed, the Buckeye Institute’s President said that Republicans should be “embarassed” that a Democratic Governor would pass a more fiscally conservative budget than ones the last two Republican governors passed.

Like everything the Tax Foundation does, it’s long on ideological rhetoric, but embarassingly lacking in actual facts.  Actually, as I already pointed out, even the data as they present them actually refutes their own assertions.

After first conceding that their own data does not prove their own theory: that there’s a direct correlation between state/local taxes rates and migration, they then “correct” their story by pointing out that state spending had, in fact, exploded since 1993… until Ted Strickland became Governor.

Can’t wait to read their third bite at the apple.

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Great moments in Jon Keeling delusions…

by ModernEsquire on January 13, 2010 · Comments

Jon Keeling, the Pravda of all things Kasich, is really trying to have it both ways with the Taylor pick: it’s unimportant/great news….

First, I have to mock him for this:

Last week 3BP was the first to place their bets on Mary Taylor being Kasich’s LG pick.

You didn’t bet on anything Keeling.  You reported that you were told that it was Taylor, reported it, and now are trying to declare yourself a political psychic.  It would have worked if, when you first wrote about Taylor, you didn’t write that your hearing from multiple people from Taylor.  Nobody reads you because of your insight.  We read you because your a source of intel for the inner workings of the Kasich campaign.

Then’s there this spin:

And we all know what matter first and foremost in announcements like this is the media coverage. Well, that’s the best part of these reports – the positive message that comes with them.

No, the thing that matters first and foremost is your base.  And that didn’t go over so well now did it?  Second, I cannot recall a single time that a Lt. Governor pick didn’t get mostly positive coverage.  Fuck, even Bryan Flannery’s running mate/ND Football teammate got favorable coverage in his bio stories about him.

Third, what positive coverage?  Of the two you cite, in the Dispatch, they note that Taylor is because she’s a poor fundraiser who was facing a tough re-election and because she wants to draw a government salary with no real responsibilities.

Yes, damn right fauning.

And the Plain Dealer (in the very next paragraph that Keeling quoted)?:

She is not a strong fund-raiser, which was apparent by her noticeably slow start to her re-election campaign last summer against challenger Democrat David Pepper, a Hamilton County commissioner.

And despite holding a statewide office, she is not widely known. Democrats also question her work ethic, saying she is too rarely heard from as auditor unless she is criticizing Strickland.

Then Keeling gets to the real issue for the GOP, Kasich’s ticket leaves no strong candidate for Auditor which was a key component of their strategy to keep a majority on the Apportionment Board.  Keeling writes as if this is a sign of faith by Republicans, but as Scott Pullins reported, the ORP appears to have been kept out of the loop entirely.

Yes, Jon, they have so much faith in this ticket, that’s why not a single Republican has come forward and applauded this ticket.  Something you’d also ordinarily expect when a Lt. Governor pick is named.

Keeling is right that Sarah Palin-lite isn’t going to move alot of voters.  But as the recent book being discussed on all the cable networks,  because the pick of the running mate is the first real indication of how a candidate will govern, it’s telling.

And, boy, is it telling in this case.

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Conservative blogsphere wakes up, and is not happy to see what the Ohio GOP is trying to do help Kasich

by ModernEsquire on January 12, 2010 · Comments

Remember this morning when I wrote that conservatives would get upset to hear that ORP Chairman Kevin DeWine is now trying to get AG candidate David Yost to run for Auditor instead?  Yeah, it’s already happening.

I’ll just say this.  One of the first responsibilities of a gubernatorial candidate is to wisely pick a Lt. Governor candidate who will not cause you problems with your base or independents.

For all the criticisms of Ken Blackwell as a candidate, he didn’t generate this kind of anger and resentment in his party over his Lt. Gov. pick.  John Kasich, on the other hand, has conservative bloggers seeing red and writing that they don’t care if he loses.  I may have to start using John Kasich < Ken Blackwell now.

Can’t wait to read the rose-colored glasses spin of this by Joe Hallett/Jon Keeling.

John Kasich < Ken Blackwell.

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Apparently neither Jon Keeling nor Matt Naugle have ever heard of the Law of Unintended Consequences- How Kasich’s tax plan would make Ohio’s economy worse

by ModernEsquire on January 12, 2010 · Comments

Both out-of-state Kasich blogger Jon Keeling and Matt Naugle are trying to make political hay out of a recent Plain Dealer story that Ohio-based American Greetings is thinking of relocating out of Brooklyn, Ohio due to high local taxes.

They’re both writing that it’s somehow the State government’s fault, but that’s not what the story says:

In an internal memo sent to employees on Wednesday, the company said: “we are launching a study to consider whether or not we should move the company’s world headquarters to another location” because the City of Brooklyn last spring voted to raise the city’s payroll tax 25 percent, to 2.5 percent from 2.0 percent.

In other words, it has nothing to do with Ohio’s taxes.

Keeling doesn’t even bring himself to claim that Kasich’s plan would do any better.  Seriously, read the post.  He doesn’t even say, “this is why Ohio needs John Kasich.”  Can’t even bring himself to write it.

Why?  Because even Keeling knows that Kasich’s plan would make this situation even worse.

The state’s income and estate taxes provide a broad tax base that can provide financial support for local governments at a tax rate lower than what those individual local governments can generate from their smaller tax base.

Repeal Ohio’s income and estate taxes, and local governments will stop getting that financial assistance from the broader tax base and will have to massive cut spending (when the economy has already forced cities to do so under the current tax structure) AND raise taxes.

Do what Kasich prescribes and local income tax and property tax rates will skyrocket.  They’ll HAVE to.  That’s why conservatives have failed in efforts to repeal the estate tax in the past.  The Law of Unintended Consequences demands that such a move would raise tax rates elsewhere.  And because those taxes have a narrower base, the rate that those taxes would need to increase to generate the same income is higher than the rate businesses and their employees are paying now under a broader base tax structure.

Say what you will, but John Kasich’s prescription would actually make the situation worse for companies like American Greetings, not better.

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