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 [...]
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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... →Jimmy Haslam, this year’s owner of the Cleveland Browns, is facing a long summer. Like previous owners, he is looking for ways to coax a winner out of the perennially forlorn team that has never been to the Super Bowl. The other day one of the team’s new draft picks was arrested and pleaded no contest to DWI after once promising that he would shape up his off-the-field lifestyle. Finally, about that draft, the team’s brain trusts insisted that they’re looking to 2014 to turn the Browns around – sort of up-down-talk when you’re trying to sell season tickets for 2013.
But [...]
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 [...]
Full Story... →The Columbus Dispatch editorial board is well know for it’s anti-union positions, so when I saw a recent editorial headline calling proposed ‘right-to-work’ legislation a “solution to a non-problem” I have to admit I was intrigued.
Sadly, the editors failed to provide any commentary on the legislation and instead focused on what they view as the potential negative fallout from a fight over right-to-work: that it might reflect poorly on their BFF John Kasich.
In short, the editorial goes something like this: Kasich is super awesome and if the GOP doesn’t ditch right-to-work it might help those pesky Democrats [...]
Full Story... →Help set the record straight on voting problems in Ohio
by Gena Miller Shelton
Our friends from True the Vote published a recent report entitled “The Myth of Voter Suppression” where they stated that not a single case of voter suppression occurred in Ohio in 2012. The basis of their claim is that not a single person in the state of Ohio filed a complaint with officials that their vote was suppressed. Apparently the folk who had their cars were towed while waiting in lines to early vote, or the students who waited over 2+ hours at the Ohio [...]
Full Story... →Representatives Hayes and Patmon have reintroduced legislation to allow schools to count their school year in terms of hours instead of days in the form of House Bill 32. In the previous General Assembly, this was House Bill 191 and it fizzled out in the House Education Committee. This Wednesday, May 8, the House Education Committee will take up HB32 by hearing testimony from the sponsors.
You can read our writing about HB191 here.
In addition to allowing public schools some flexibility in the crafting of the school year (the bill removes the 182 [...]
Full Story... →Soon after taking office, Secretary of State John Husted started talking about the importance of “uniformity” in Ohio’s election process. By this, Husted of course meant the elimination of early voting on the days most preferred by Democratic voters – especially African American voters in large counties – during an important presidential election year.
In case there was any reason why Husted and his fellow Republicans were trying to keep Ohioans from voting on the last three days before the elections Republican Doug Preisse made it clear when he admitted the goal of limiting early [...]
Full Story... →Two weeks ago we broke the story of Republican lawmakers trying to disenfranchise Ohio’s college students. This week we got some rare honesty from House Speaker Batchelder when he admitted that he was, in fact, trying to keep college kids paying out-of-state tuition from voting in Ohio and he was doing it because he didn’t think they should be allowed to vote on tax levies that they might not be responsible for paying.
David Pepper, candidate for Ohio Attorney General, called Batchelder’s justification “blatantly unconstitutional” and warned that his “comments would quickly become Exhibit A in a successful Constitutional challenge of this [...]
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