Plunderbund » Media

We, for one, welcome our new Dispatch overlords

ModernEsquire — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 01:22:40 +0000

Last year, Columbus’ alternative newspaper, The Other Paper, ran a headline “Does Ohio Need an S.O.B. governor?” about John Kasich, which featured many of the popular tells of John Kasich’s long and distinguished history of being a jerk.

It’s also ran pieces highly critical of the Columbus Dispatch’s slanted political coverage as well as revealed its top news executives making news by using the paper as a means to fulfill their political agendas like with the Columbus casinos.

The Dispatch Printing Company’s media empire, by Ohio standards, is huge. Not only does it own central [...]

Kasich The Beggar

ModernEsquire — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:48:45 +0000

In an effort to lay the groundwork that somehow the “We Are Ohio” campaign, and not John Kasich, has been unreasonable on SB 5, the Dispatch continues with its myth that Governor John Kasich suddenly wants to compromise on SB 5 in order to avoid an Issue 2 campaign.

Note that this story doesn’t name a single source.

Yesterday, sources told Dispatch reporters that informal discussions between two people affiliated with the defense of Senate Bill 5 and representatives from the Ohio Education Association and the AFL-CIO took place about six weeks ago, but labor backed away.

We’ve never [...]

Columbus Dispatch, sensing SB 5 is about to be repealed, now demands compromise

ModernEsquire — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 02:03:07 +0000

If you need any further evidence that supporters of Senate Bill 5 are becoming increasingly convinced that it will be repealed this November, enter today’s laughable editorial in the Columbus Dispatch (“Meet in the middle”)

We’ve heard this tune before. We wrote about it back in June when Plain Dealer Kasich apologist Brent Larkin wrote the same thing. If public polling didn’t show that 56% of Ohioans support repealing the bill, you wouldn’t see this nonsense coming out.

But at least Brent Larkin admitted that it was Kasich’s heavy handed approach that doomed SB 5 [...]

Kasich goes on Meet the Press… and claims Strickland’s record as his own

ModernEsquire — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 23:17:56 +0000

First, according to CNBC’s website, the 2011 “Business Friendliness” for Ohio went from #38 in 2010 to #42 in 2011. So, that’s not an improvement. What the 2010-2011 CNBC rankings (if you even care about such relatively arbitrary ranking gimmicks are from a media outlet) do show is that Ohio was the most improved State in their ranking system with an overall improvement in their rank by eleven spots from 34th in 2010 to 23rd this year.

But, again, this has nothing to do with John Kasich. Because anyone who reads about CNBC’s methodology can [...]

It’s too late to talk about compromise over SB 5

ModernEsquire — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 22:16:41 +0000

Back in February, the conventional wisdom of the traditional media was that Senate Bill 5 showed a political reality in Ohio in which organized labor was politically powerless to stop, especially in this budgetary political environment. (Of course, they said this even after public opinion polling showed Ohioans were already not conceptually supportive of Kasich’s plan to pursue collective bargaining “reform.”) Sure, they might be able to put it to a referendum, but that was viewed as a jump ball. Fast forward to the present week.

Months after John Kasich signed the bill, and as expectations grow that the We [...]

Kasich Administration’s incompetence is proof of fragile economy recovery in Ohio (or something)

ModernEsquire — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 01:22:16 +0000

During the Senate’s floor debate of the State budget, Senate Finance Chairman Chris Widener pointed to the fact that the State’s revenues came below estimate in May as evidence that it’s premature to talk about a Strickland surplus providing additional funding beyond the draconian cuts to schools, cities, and nursing homes because the economic recovery in Ohio is fragile.

“You know the revenue estimates for the month of May? I think the (Senate) President (Niehaus) mentioned after session. We’re down for the month as compared to estimated revenue,” he told reporters. “That’s not a good sign. That’s basically a [...]

[UPDATED:] The Ohio Senate listened and revised the budget even further (but…)

ModernEsquire — Tue, 31 May 2011 23:11:07 +0000

It’s hard to capture every nuisance and change in the budget when it takes the Senate GOP caucus fifteen pages just to describe the amendments, and I haven’t the time (or yet present ability) to read the amendments myself.

WHAT’S OUT:

Workers Compensation Council. InnovationOhio was quick to declare a partial victory in that the Ohio Senate’s omnibus budget amendment eliminates the unstaffed Workers Compensation Council. That’s pretty remarkable when you consider ordinarily such a move should have been made in the separate budget for Workers Compensation that has already been signed into law. Also, we all know that [...]

Atlas Bombed

ModernEsquire — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:01:55 +0000

A zealous fan with more money than he knows what to do with invests millions of his own money in making a big screen movie adaption to spread the word of a literary tome with a cult-like following in the hopes of making a trilogy that will spread the cultural influence of the literary work to a much broader audience than has every received it and becomes part of the pop culture vernacular, only to see the first movie lose millions of dollars and bomb straight out of the gate. What's the difference between Atlas Shrugged: Part I and Battlefield Earth? Battlefield Earth is the only one that has at least covered 30% of its costs in box office revenues.

As Kasich brags about starting an “arms race” among States over “economic development” dollars, national media question his priorities

ModernEsquire — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 01:37:04 +0000

As Governor Kasich and his allies boast about how JobsOhio is putting Ohio at the head of a "jobs race" among the States, several national media outlets question what the heck Ohio is thinking. You know, liberal rags like USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, which both have reported that many of these economic development efforts fail to make meaningful progress in improving an area's economy, but do encourage businesses to engage in an incentives racket to pit one area against another. When Kasich starts to lose even the Wall Street Journal, well, game over, man.... game over.

John Kasich starts to revise the history of SB 5

ModernEsquire — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 17:24:02 +0000

In today's Columbus Dispatch, the Governor supposedly suggests that Shannon Jones made SB 5 vulnerable to attack by "jumping the gun" and introducing it before he could roll it into his State budget. It's an odd claim for the Governor to make as it's not exactly clear what he means by it. The sequence of events suggests that Kasich, in fact, supported and pushed the legislature to aggressively pass SB 5 as quickly as possible. If Kasich didn't want the legislature to seriously take up SB 5 before the budget, the recent history of the new Administration suggests countless examples that would suggest the Administration could have persuaded the GOP-led General Assembly to hold off. Is it kind of telling that as the first signatures are being gathered to put SB 5 on the November '11 ballot, Governor Kasich is already publicly laying the groundwork to direct the blame to Shannon Jones if SB 5 is defeated?