According to the US Census Bureau, the median household income for Ohioans is $47,358. The national median is slightly higher: $51,914. (Note: per-capita income is $27,334)
Ohio’s Corrections Officers, however, start out making $34,008 per year and they max out at $41,350 with step increases.
You read that right: The MAXIMUM salary of an Ohio corrections officer is 20% below the national median household income.
The men and women who work at Ohio’s prisons are not, by any stretch of the imagination, overpaid. And considering the work they do, it would be very easy to make the [...]
Full Story... →The Columbus Dispatch made this bold claim in today’s paper:
Now, let me begin that Joe Vardon has vastly improved the objectivity of the Dispatch’s political reporting, and he doesn’t write the headlines. His story was balanced in that it mention the vast drop in the labor market we’ve seen the past two months (more on that later.) But my biggest complaint is the subheading that “most indicators point to steady improvement in Ohio’s economy.”
That simply isn’t true, as much as I wish it were. The reality is the most indicators indicate Ohio’s economy has unsteady [...]
Full Story... →Ohio House Bill 191 basically has two specific outcomes. First, changing the definition of a school year from a minimum number of days to a minimum number of hours. Second, restrict districts to beginning school after Labor Day and ending the year before Memorial Day (with exceptions for calamity days and year-round schools). This second component is specifically intended to lengthen the summer break (because there’s SO much research showing how valuable a longer summer is for students).
To be fair, co-sponsors Bill Hayes (R) and Bill Patmon (D) aren’t really interested in having a positive outcome for children. This [...]
Full Story... →There’s a nice Q&A with Former Assistant Education Secretary Diane Ravitch over on Ohio’s NPR StateImpact website. Ravitch was in Cleveland discussing school reform last week when she sat down for the interview. Ravitch used to be a major proponent of charter schools before personally discovering that they did not work in practice. Since then she has become an outspoken critic of these attacks on the public education system. As a said, it’s a nice piece and I recommend following Diane Ravitch’s work if you don’t do so already.
But at the end of the interview there was [...]
Full Story... →As we enter a weekend before the Governor’s State of the State next Tuesday, I can’t help but wonder what’s in store that is going to give the House Republicans something they can run on for re-election this November. I mean, let’s recap what the last litany of policy proposals Kasich had in his last State of the State added to the Ohio House Republican’s re-election effort:
A “Jobs Budget” that since it’s been enacted has seen a net loss of jobs in Ohio. A privatized JobsOhio program that is not much beyond the same planning/formation it was a year [...]
Full Story... →As promised, Public Policy Polling (PPP) released its latest poll on the U.S. Senate race this year in Ohio.
PPP has Sherrod Brown’s approval rating lower than what we’ve seen in Quinnipiac with 42% approval to 34% disapproval (Quinnipiac had Brown at 47% approval.) It also shows him underwater with independents at 37%/44% (Quinnipiac had Brown above water with Independents at 46%34%.)
Both still show Sherrod Brown with an 11-15 point lead over Josh Mandel. The most recent poll, PPP, shows Brown leading 47%-36%, with a five-point lead with independents. Mandel’s numbers will improve once he [...]
Full Story... →Back in August, Speaker Boehner had Ohio Governor John Kasich deliver the Republican response to the President’s weekly radio address under the theme that Washington needed to model what Kasich was doing in Ohio to get the economy going again.
Yes, we know the $8 billion deficit claim is totally false. We’ve covered that extensively that total political fiction. But also, note that Kasich’s praising his Jobs’ budget just a couple of months after it was enacted.
It was a poor time to have Kasich be held as the Republican model for economic growth. A few weeks after [...]
Full Story... →by Sandy Theis, Spokeswoman for Healthy Families Ohio
Abortion opponents from Operation Rescue have a new, high-tech tool. It’s the successor to the Wanted Posters used in the past – posters that featured abortion providers and appear to have led to the murders of several of them. The new tool is a nationwide, online, state-by-state list of providers, complete with physical descriptions, address and other information intended to make them easy to hunt down. Rachel Maddow recently provided a comprehensive history lesson on these tactics. Please take a look at it. She explains it better than I ever [...]
Full Story... →Let’s recap the political news surrounding American Greetings first.
American Greeting, citing a minor increase in the City of Brooklyn’s personal income tax (which I don’t believe is one the company itself pays except as a payroll withholding for its employees), threatened to move to Illinois, which just enacted a significant hike in its corporate tax rate (which it would pay if it was located there.)
Enter Governor John Kasich, who promptly promises the company millions in state aid. In fact, the combined state and local aid package to the company is so large that it will construct a brand [...]
Full Story... →One of the lesser reported themes in the 2010 gubernatorial races was how Governor Kasich told conservatives that a vote for him was actually a vote against President Obama’s re-election in 2012:
Of course, as the titular head of the State party, a Governor can have influence over national politics. Normally, a Governor’s popularity can be used to transition to support his or her party’s presidential candidates. Also, the Governor traditionally is well tied into the State party organization structure and other political statewide political operations that can be lent to the presidential effort. It’s no surprise that in [...]
Full Story... →Update: We’re getting some great entries and putting them in a special photo album on our Facebook page. Let us know which ones you like!
Josh Mandel has been amazingly busy during his first year as Treasurer. Unfortunately, much of that time has been spent on the road (in DC, Florida, Hawaii, etc.) fund raising for his Senate Campaign instead of in Columbus running the Treasurer’s office like he was elected to do.
We thought you could help us track him down.
Simply download and print out our Flat Josh Printable PDF and take him with [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
