JobsOhio, Kasich's unconstitutional political unicorn, lives on with DeWine and Cordray

Memories fade so fast that even the Ohio Democratic Party's consumer-protecting candidate for governor this year forgets that John Kasich's single greatest illegal creation, JobsOhio, was the object of scorn by his fellow Dems in 2011, when an energized Republican legislature rammed it through on the fanciful, unproven belief that privatizing a formerly public development agency would create a sea of good jobs.

Gov. Kasich's political unicorn, JobsOhio,

believed by many to be unconstitutional,

promised to transform Ohio for growth. 

It has a long way to go before that promise

rings true.

Less than two years ago, The Ohio Supreme Court put down a move to challenge the constitutionality of JobsOhio by ruling that a Columbus attorney lacked standing to bring the case before the court.

The attorney cited in the rejection, Victoria Ullmann, argued that use of state liquor profits to fund JobsOhio was unconstitutional, because "any citizen who purchases spirituous liquor in the state is forced to support JobsOhio or travel out of state to make the purchase." JobsOhio leased Ohio's liquor profits through a subsidiary and used the money from that monopoly to leverage bonds that fund JobsOhio, reports said.

Even though Ullmann couldn't show a personal injury at a level that would establish standing, she argued she should qualify under a public right doctrine that would allow the court to hear issues that threaten serious public injury. Contemporaneously, left-leaning advocacy group ProgressOhio wanted a declaratory judgment that JobsOhio was an unconstitutional act.

Former Justice William O'Neill, who left the court this year to run for governor in the Democratic Party primary, dissented, saying that Ullmann had raised an issue that the court should hear.

"The diversion of public funds into a closely held and secret organization for distribution to friends and allies is a truly rare and extraordinary issue worthy of scrutiny by the Supreme Court of Ohio," O'Neill wrote.

At a campaign stop this week in Cleveland, endorsed Democratic candidate for governor Richard Cordray said he would keep JobsOhio, but “shift some direction on it," according to Ideastream.

“We can take JobsOhio and we can focus it, some of it, more on small business in the state,” Cordray said. “And we don’t have to solely be about throwing money at big companies from outside the state coming here and then undercutting the businesses that are already doing the right things here in Ohio," Cordray said.

One insider Republican source told this reporter recently that Democrats have a lot to explain on the turnaround from first opposing JobsOhio in 2011, Kasich's first year in office, to the party's last two candidates for governor who would keep it in tact. Both those candidates, Ed FitzGerald in 2014 and Cordray this year, are both attorneys, so their legal training and a review of where their party was not long ago would inform them that Kasich's political unicorn, alive and well with a future of funds coming to it, is actually unconstitutional and therefore illegal.

The high court can also be pilloried for resorting to a flimsy ruling based on their judgement that certain parties lacked standing to bring the challenge to JobsOhio would allow the entity to operate in full daylight before them, when each justice likely suspects that but for lack of standing, challengers might prevail in their case that it shouldn't exist based on a state constitution that prevents such private efforts to usurp public authority and funding.

Kasich in 2010 ballyhooed JobsOhio, the group he originally planned to chair until the Ohio Constitution stopped him from doing that. But despite all the talk of a privatized economic group that would "move at the speed of business," a catchy slogan Ohio media lapped up like hungry cats lapping up spilled milk, Gov. Kasich prized creation has failed to break even with the national job creation average for 65 straight months. And the jobs JobsOhio does claim credit for are, more than not, minimum wage jobs that pay less than $15 hour, the wage at which average workers can pay their bills without resorting to safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid, the federal-state program for low income people.

Now that JobsOhio is tied up with bonds that go out decades, and a Republican legislature that will have nothing to do with trimming JobsOhio's wings or authority, it's more than strange that supposedly learned candidates for state CEO like Cordray would embrace this political unicorn when history shows Democrats and sympathetic advocacy groups wanted to kill it in the crib just seven years ago.

2018 DeWine-Kasich Plot Twist

For an Ohio house of cards plot twist, this one might not be so far fetched. If Kasich has his way and Attorney General Mike DeWine succeeds him as governor, Kasich could trade his active endorsement of DeWine for a shot at running the group he had planned to run from the beginning.

Some have wondered whether Kasich's endorsement is worth anything. The recently concluded GOP primary showed that John Kasich is more alone now than maybe at any time in his 40 years in politics. Kasich sidekick and Lt. Gov. during his two terms, Mary Taylor, tried to distance herself as far from her boss as she could. She promised to be so conservative, so much an acolyte of Donald Trump, that she would undo Kasich's second signature accomplishment, expanding Medicaid. Kasich is now withholding his endorsement of DeWine until he and the attorney general have a little chat about the future.

Recall that Kasich campaigned on chairing JobsOhio until he backed down when confronted by a state constitution that prevented him from doing that. When 2019 starts, Kasich won't be governor anymore, so the constitution goes away and he could lead JobsOhio, if DeWine were to appoint him to that post. It's classic Kasich to withhold his endorsement of DeWine until concessions are made for him to change his stance. It won't be a surprise if, secretly, Kasich is given the job he wanted long ago as his next political position.

Kasich Rides JobsOhio Into 2020

Kasich leading JobsOhio would be perfect for several reasons: It's what he wanted to do all along; it pays big bucks, it's secret, he can take credit for economic miracles that may or may not happen, and maybe best of all, he can use it and its money to continue his favorite hobby, running for president in 2020. Mike DeWine just might give Kasich what he wants to shut him up and to bring him on-board, as best as he can be brought on-board anything where JRK isn't the marque star.

Then again, DeWine, who endorsed Kasich for president without any side deals to gain that endorsement, may just let Kasich wander off the political radar screen when he leaves office in seven months. Kasich is already shopping for his next gig, but being scorned by Trump and his base and totally not trusted by Democrats, Kasich will want a media job to keep him afloat for a couple years until horses line up for the next presidential cycle.

Stranger things have happened, like Donald Trump being elected President, so such a backroom deal between past and future governors in the same party seems like child's play compared to the national magic trick Trump pulled off in 2016.

Buckeyes beware: Kasich's last lame-duck session this fall could be doozy

Ohio workers and voters have good reason to fear what motivated-by-time Ohio lawmakers and a willing exiting governor can do after the fall election is over and before the next General Assembly is sworn in at the start of the new year.

Gov. John Kasich in the Ohio Statehouse

Aptly called "lame duck" sessions, the 2018 version in Ohio will be even more lame-duck when term-limited, lame-duck governor John Kasich wields his pen for good or bad for the last time.

So called lame-duck sessions are news worthy because of what can happen when lawmakers, some of whom may not be back in the new year, scheme to pass bills that maybe never had a hearing in committee or were passed out of committee, are brought back from the dead by lawmakers who fear no repercussions from their constituents and will vote for all manner of bills that benefit one special interest over another.

Next year's new governor, whether its Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine or Democratic candidate Richard Cordray, may inherit a legislative landscape they could only watch from afar as neither can effect what Ohio's 132nd lawmaker class does before they take office.

By his own design, with the acquiescence of a GOP-led legislature, Gov. John Kasich turned a two-year budget cycle into a one-year budget cycle when he started his mid-biennium review. This scheme effectively created two one-year budget cycles. The benefit of such a scheme is that since a budget cycle is about appropriating money, challenges to anything in it via citizen referendum is prohibited, enabling all manner of bad policy to be signed into law without public hearings or comments. Legislative leaders relish the weeks after an election and before year's end to throw everything that couldn't pass muster before into a giant bill where important matters easily are lost among the trees of this thick forest.

Kasich has continued to pursue his fantasy quest to be president despite two losses, the first in 2000 and the last in 2016, that he ignores because state and national media love to feature even though they all know his chances of being taken seriously, in ways that differ from his two campaign crucifixions so far. Looking for his next gig, Kasich spent large portions of 2015-2016 campaigning out of state. Even thought he national election that Donald Trump won two years ago wafts in the wind, Kasich, like The Donald, looks back to his losing campaign as if it's a prequel to his next anticipated run.

Soon to be out of office and wandering past the graveyard of fallen and forgotten politicos, Kasich could be an accomplice for good or evil this fall, depending on what lame-duck lawmakers bring to his desk as they pack the concluded weeks of the year with any number of partisan bills that the next governor and General Assembly will have to grapple with, that may help or hurt the agenda they ran on.

While Kasich is now very much of a one-trick pony preaching his "find meaning in life sermon where and when he can, as he did at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard recently, the end of his eight years in office brings a thunderstorm of scandals and policy picks that would make him a lame-duck leader the likes of which Ohio has rarely seen. Any number of categories——from budgets to women and workers to for-profit charter schools, taxes, voter suppression and healthcare—are bad enough as they are without further complications from what outgoing lawmakers will send him that he'll sign into law to cement his legacy as a performance politician whose ego, as big as the great outdoors, refuses to acknowledge that he's past prime-time.

Who wins or loses on November 6th of this year will dominate headlines. Those same headlines will be trumped by the back-room scheming so essential to how elected officials handle their responsibility when voters can't see and can't vote on what happens before the new year arrives.

Beware Buckeyes, your worst days could still be ahead of you. And don't count on Ohio media to inform you better than they already have.

Late to the party, Plain Dealer tells sad but true tale about John Kasich's poor job's record

For reporters and others who follow analysis of Ohio's job numbers by Cleveland's preeminent analyst and number cruncher George Zeller, the sad but true tale told Tuesday by the Cleveland Plain Dealer on just how poorly Gov. John Kasich's record has been over two terms comes as no surprise to those of us who peer through the haze of public relations to see the gritty world that lies beneath.

The Rotunda of the Ohio
Statehouse

Zeller, who each month issues his digestion of government data on all aspects of job creation or job loss, has long documented Ohio's failure to even break even with national job figures.

At the same time, reporters for the state's Big Eight legacy newspapers have offered worthless analysis of the numbers by focusing on the unemployment rate, which is impacted by other factors. It then takes Kasich's comments at face value, without ever challenging the public relations statements by Team Kasich that sound rosy but masks the sub-par performance by a governor who promised to be a jobs governor.

Plain Dealer Falls Short On Analysis

As recently as last week, Zeller notes that "Ohio Extends Sub-Par Job Growth Streak to 65 Consecutive Months." Only two Ohio news sources dared carry a article based on the monthly jobs data. This reporter, on the other hand, has a proven record of following and writing about Zeller's monthly work, the results of which should be among the top issues this year's candidates for governor should be forced to address in detail beyond delivering platitudes about how "friendly" Ohio is to job creators.

To quote Zeller, "Ohio extended its lengthy sub-par job growth streak to 65 consecutive months with Ohio's job growth below the USA national average. The April 2017 year over year Ohio job growth rate is 0.92%, while the USA job growth rate during the same period is 1.55%. This horrible sub-par job growth streak in Ohio has now been every month for five full years and five additional months."

The PD's jobs article, "Ranking Ohio governors for jobs: John Kasich's current term is a lot like Ted Strickland's record vs. the U.S.," starts out this way: "When it comes to Ohio's jobs count in comparison to national trends, Gov. John Kasich's current term is a lot like the four years under his predecessor, Ted Strickland."

That's high irony for a shrinking paper that portrayed former one-term Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland as the slow, plodding but dependable hare compared to the flash and flimflam of Kasich the rabbit who has yet to cross the finish line ahead of anybody.

Ohio media treat Strickland and Kasich as if all things economic were equal during their respective tenure as state CEO. The facts tell a far different story, however, because Strickland's one term coincided with the second worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression of the 1930s. By contrast, Kasich inherited a recovering economy from Strickland's astute budgeting, then stalled the recovery even though the nation was advancing to recovery.

Kasich bashed Strickland for loosing hundreds of thousands of jobs, as if the Ohio economy was humming along with nothing to worry about. Kasich accused Strickland of being incompetent, when a case for the reverse can reasonably be made. Kasich took control with a national recovery underway, then proceeded to under-perform the national average for the last 65 months.

When he's a guest on national TV talk shows who feature him because they think he'll be a challenger to President Trump in 2020, Kasich's cheery chestnuts are three-fold: 1) He balanced the state budget, a duty all governors including Strickland have done; 2) He socked about $2 billion into the state's emergency fund, money he essentially stole from local governments and schools; and 3) He's created one-half million jobs, a figure that sounds impressive until articles like today's PD piece come along to deflate that big, false, fat balloon.

PD author Rich Exner writes about Kasich's policies and promises by again re-running Kasich's bogus claims of job creation. He first cites Kasich's tax changes over the years - "decreases in state income tax rates and elimination of income taxes for most self-employed people, coupled with increases in the sales taxes and property taxes for senior citizens."

"Kasich signs bold state budget to further Ohio's Comeback," Exner posts, about a headline from Kasich's office when he signed the state budget in 2013. The release, Exner notes, predicted the changes will help "fuel our economic recovery and get people back to work." After passage of the Ohio budget in 2015, Team Kasich said this: "The result is an economic climate friendly to job creators for future prosperity that helps more Ohioans participate in our state's economic revival."

In a summary of Kasich's first and second term, which end when 2019 arrives, it's all too clear how poorly Kasich has performed on the job front. Other analysis reveals that a majority of the jobs Kasich crows about creating are minimum wage jobs, not the high-paying ones he promised when running in 2010.

With nothing but informed speculation, this reporter has already forecasts that Ohio won't win Amazon's HQ2 headquarters, for reasons that go beyond just economics to right-wing, repressive social engineering laws that in many case are directed at women and the obstacle court to their health care Kasich has signed into law on over a dozen times.

Zeller, the jobs cruncher, says what he's said before about Ohio needing to do better: "The new data once again point out the vital importance of speeding up Ohio's rate of recovery. It will be more difficult to do that next month in the May data, since large mass layoffs at the General Motors Lordstown assembly plant have already been announced, but which are not yet measured in the new April 2018 data for either Lordstown or its suppliers."

In related news, Zeller also looks at county sales tax data. When he looks at The Cuyahoga County sales tax data, as he did last week, he found was both depressing and a reflection of how weak Kasich has been in bringing prosperity to a once great state whose population growth is moribund and whose future is full of worry, made worse by Ohio's battle with opioids.

Zeller notes "The 12 month real moving average of the Cuyahoga County sales tax data in May 2018 is down -9.40% in comparison to May 2017. May 2018 is the eleventh consecutive month when the real 12 month moving average has been negative in Cuyahoga County."

He says the peak of the 12 month real moving average continues to be February 2001 in Cuyahoga County seventeen years ago. Comparing the February 2001 figure to the current May 2018 figure we see a monthly decline of $2,204,218. Annualized, that is a decline of $27,170,614 on an annual basis. That of course is $27.2 million that is badly needed, but which has not been collected."

The PD has chosen not to run an article on the decline of the Cuyahoga County sales tax, which Zeller notes "has now been negative during every month between July 2018 and May 2018, accounting for the current streak of 22 consecutive months with a decline in the Cuyahoga County sales tax."

When John Kasich says he can do for the nation what he's done for Ohio, caveat emptor (i.e. buyer beware). While Kasich spends more time out of state trying to float his boat for a third presidential run in 2020, voters in Ohio and TV pundits in New York and Washington will fail in their duties to inform their viewers and readers if they don't understand that Kasich's public relations far out distances his real out put.

Zeller Explains What PD Doesn't

A criticism Zeller has of Exner's analysis is points to the silence about why these long term patterns are so weak. "He establishes that Ohio's growth is weak over long periods of time, but he does not explain why," Zeller told me today via email when asked to comment on the PD piece.

Zeller takes time to explain the numbers. "The key factor, of course, is weakness in Manufacturing and also cuts in Government. The cuts in Government are harmful. That is the key point that everybody needs to understand. But, there is great resistance in the press to pointing this out, mainly for ideological reasons and not data reasons. Even today, the legislature and the Congress are considering additional Austerity cuts to Government. They don't clam that this will slow the economy down, but that is what it does."

The old saying, "an ounce of promotion equals a pound of production," applies nowhere more than it does in Ohio.

Goosing the gander: Is Kasich's endorsement worth anything to Mike DeWine?

When Ohio Gov. John Kasich started running what turned out to be his second losing battle for the White House in 2015, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine didn't withhold his endorsement until Kasich made certain commitments to him on certain issues of importance.

Now that AG DeWine won the Republican right to take on Democrat Richard Cordray this fall, Ohio's term-limited, lame duck CEO wants to base his endorsement on what DeWine's plans are for two of his signature policy efforts: accepting expanded Medicaid via Obamacare and the creation of JobsOhio, an entity that wouldn't hold up to constitutional scrutiny, if the state supreme court would allow a case challenging its legitimacy to come to trial.

Until and unless DeWine brokers a deal with the former Lehman Brothers broker turned Ohio governor, Kasich apparently feels it's okay to withhold any level of public endorsement to his Republican colleague.

In Kasich world, what's good for the goose is obviously not good for the gander. The question to Team DeWine is whether Kasichs endorsement is a plus or a minus for him? Kasich's political bi-sexualism, berating both Republicans and Democrats, leaves him a lonely man not liked and definitely not loved by either party.

Kasich's name is bandied about as a possible challenger to President Trump in 2020, should Trump still be president by then. If Kasich got pummeled while the governor of a major swing state while he complained of not having enough money to get his message out, the odds of anyone with deep pockets backing him when he's walking past the political graveyard in two years is so long that Vegas odds makers might not even take that bet. History is littered with losers who thought an independent run or a third-party movement was their magic bullet. The only bullet it produced was one that shot them dead.

John Kasich on Election Night 2010

As Kasich sees it, “The question is how aggressively do I campaign?” for DeWine, who hopes winning in the fall will cap his long political career. At a Michigan Press Association event in East Lansing, Kasich said about whether he'll offer any level of endorsement to DeWine, a candidate he said he'll vote for over Cordray, “And I’ve laid out a couple things that are important to me.”

Unlike DeWine who offered no such bargaining of his support of Kasich for president in 2016, Ohio's 69th governor said he and DeWine "must come to an agreement on the future of the governor’s Medicaid expansion and his job-creation program, JobsOhio."

In response, DeWine’s campaign has said in reports that it would welcome Kasich’s endorsement, then said what it said throughout the nasty GOP primary with Kasich's second in command, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, "that the plan championed by Kasich to expand the Medicaid government insurance program to cover 700,000 people in Ohio isn’t sustainable financially." DeWine looks to the Trump administration to give Ohio more flexibility to craft its own plan.

In a stunning plot twist, Richard Cordray, the Democratic attorney general Mike DeWine beat and who will again be pitted against DeWine this fall, said he believes the JobsOhio office can play a role in workforce development. “I will work to make sure it fulfills its mission and that it is transparent and effective,” he said, the AP reported in the Washington Times.

In separate but related news that further shows Kasich's ego-centric mindset, he's warning fellow Republican legislators to not "weasel" on his gun-safety proposals. “I’d really like to get my gun stuff going,” Kasich said in remarks after a Statehouse event Tuesday, as reported by the Columbus Dispatch. “You’re either for taking guns out of the hands of someone who presents a danger to themselves or others, or you are not. Say it.”

Third graders know it takes one to know one, so when a long-time weasel like Kasich admonishes his right-wing General Assembly to do his bidding as asked, it takes a lot of brass to do that. “Don’t weasel around on this; take a position ... Get out of the weasel, the weasel activity of ‘I’m going to avoid saying anything because I may make somebody mad.’ ... When you’re all things to all people, you’re really nothing to many people,” reports said on Kasich's comments.

Revealing his always dominant self-righteousness on this and other issues, Kasich said, “I don’t want to get in the area of self-righteousness when it comes to my own political party, but there are just some things I think this party should stand for. I also think there are some things politicians should be able to say.”

Breaking Fake News: CNN hires Ohio Gov. John Kasich to keep his dying presidential hopes alive

National Chaplain and part-time Ohio governor John Kasich has put himself yet again on the horns of a dilemma he thinks will work to his advantage but only serves to again show what a petulant snowflake he really is.

Gov. John Kasich at his 2013 State

of the State event, with Senate President

Keith Fabor (left) and House Speaker Bill

Batchelder (right)

Like Hamlet's famous "To be or not to be" monologue, should the Buckeye States term-limited, lame-duck state CEO endorse Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine for governor this year at all, and if so, to what degree?

Recall Kasich's quirky move that reflected his spoiled and selfish nature when he refused to welcome the thousands of Republicans who arrived in Cleveland in 2016 for the party's national convention. The GOP holding its national event in Cleveland was big news. It was so big that even Cleveland's Democratic mayor showed up to welcome a sea of ruby-red Republicans to his once great but now hard-bitten city.

By convention time, Trump had felled all his challengers, including Kasich, who despite being the last one to leave the race was among the first to get thoroughly trounced. That first big loss came when Ohio's 69th leader got thumbed bigly in his favorite state, New Hampshire. He came in a very distant second to Trump, then started bottom feeding in one primary or caucus after another, with the exception of Ohio, where his lone win looked lonelier because he couldn't break the 50 percent mark at home.

DeWine, whose long career in politics stretches from a humble county office to the statehouse to Congress, will reach its natural apotheosis should he be victorious in November against Democratic candidate Richard Cordray. DeWine blasted Kasich's two-term running mate, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, by easy double-digits on May 8th. Kasich endorsed Taylor, who promptly hide that endorsement as much as she could, distancing from her boss by promising to undue Kasich's signature legislative accomplishment: expanding Medicaid under Obamacare. Even though DeWine got on board Kasich's second presidential train like all other GOP Ohioans did, he never mentioned Kasich's name during his so-called spirited (and very nasty) campaign to beat Taylor, where mud was slung by the ton by each candidate, as each tried to out-Trump the other.

At odds with President Donald Trump from the beginning of GOP debates in 2015 to this day, Kasich seems lost by design in his lonely world where if the story isn't about him he's not interested. Spending more time out of Ohio than in it these days, Kasich relishes earning local and national coverage by repeating the common wisdom, backed up by what many polls show: political parties are further apart today than ever, and candidates are at polar opposites. Kasich says he can break the spell of gridlock in Washington, where he served for 18 years in the House before abandoning his cozy seat to run first losing campaign for the White House. Now that Trump World gets up everyday with its goal to undue something former President Obama put in place, Kasich has become politically bi-sexual, talking smack about Republicans and Democrats that only makes him even more distrusted by the warring factions.

The National Chaplain is clearly fishing for his post-governor job. That job might well come from CNN, the network he's a regular on Sunday talk shows like State of the Union with host Jake Tapper that Trump calls the fake news network. CNN employs an army of people who get paid to speak about issues of the day. If Trump's first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, can get paid hundreds of thousands, surely a honed and crafted career politico like Kasich can have a big payday. He'll be called governor and speak like he's tackled all the problems any governor can handle, when he of course has done little to nothing to make Ohio great again.

CNN can keep his boat afloat for a couple more years as 2020 approaches, and Kasich can play hide-and-seek about whether he'll try a third time to win the White House. America so far hasn't wanted him to be Commander-in-Chief after two tries, so time will tell whether he finds another hobby job to do after he leaves public office at the end of the year.

It wasn't all that long ago that John Kasich hosted his own TV talk show on the Fox News channel. During his TV days, he often substituted for now disgraced "No Spin Zone" womanizer Bill O'Reilly. Having mastered the art of political talk over decades in Congress, Kasich is a glib governor whose daily discourse is both confusing and funny at the same time. On any given day, who knows whether he'll be anti-Republican or anti-Trump or wonder what Democrats stand for? He'll parlay his governorship into a lecture on how to address the problems of the world, when his record at home in Ohio is less than stellar. Grabbing a headline by saying something bombastic is basic Kasich.

Between now and Election Day, watch what Kasich does with respect to Ohio and national elections. Will his record be a factor going forward for DeWine or Cordray? Democrats have virtually sainted Kasich for doing an end-around run of the legislature to bring expanded Medicaid to Ohio. Democrats say they don't attack Kasich because he's not on the ballot and his popularity is above 50 percent. His high ratings, for Democrats who haven't thought about it much, is due in large part because they've taken a hands-off approach, letting his myths become fact.

When a sitting Democratic senator running for a third term says he salutes Kasich for expanded Medicaid, the party knows it has lost a war that it could have won had it just done what Republicans do so well: dredge up long past Democrats as scary figures voters shouldn't install in office again. Former Gov. Ted Strickland, who served one term starting in 2006, has been demonize time and time again by Kasich and cohorts. Strickland will be demonized again in 2018.

On the bright side, if Kasich panders enough to CNN officials, maybe he'll get another chance to talk to America on a regular basis if the network hands him another "Heartland" show opportunity.

The sad fact is that Kasich has been a terrible governor, stealing billions from schools and city's, passing laws harmful to women, signing bills that suppress democracy and voter turnout while being intentionally blind to scandals involving billions for for-profit charter schools and not creating enough jobs for Ohioans who want them.

Ohio 'telecommunications harassment statute' appealed to US Court of Appeals for Sixth Circuit

House Bill 151 was sponsored by Republican State Representative Marlene Anielski of Walton Hills. Known as the "Cyberstalking and Harassment Legislation," the bill addresses "the use of technology growing rapidly every year, the tools available to offenders who wish to threaten or harass others is also growing.

Gov. John Kasich, seen here in 2011 

delivering his first and only State of the

State speech from the Ohio House, signed

HB 151 into law.

HB 151 is a step toward bringing state law up-to-date with today’s technology," a posting by the House Member says.

Lead attorney Eugene Volokh of the Scott & Cyan Banister First Amendment Clinic at the UCLA School of Law and Raymond V. Vasvari, Jr. of Vasvari/Zimmerman, an Ohio law firm, filed an appeal of "Plunderbund Media L.L.C., et al. v. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, et al," in which I am one of three plaintiffs, challenging a key provision of HB 151 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

The Honorable Sara Lioi, a judge for the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, ruled that plaintiffs Plunderbund media, a liberal Ohio blog, John Michael Spinelli, an independent blogger, and Tom Zawistowski, Chairman of the Portage County Tea Party, lacked standing to challenge Ohio Rev. Code § 2917.21(B)(2), on the grounds that Appellants suffered no injury in fact and there was no credible threat of prosecution, according to court documents filed Monday.

Plunderbund, Spinelli and Zawistowski were recruited by Volokh to challenge a provision of HB 151 that represents the constitutionality of a speech restriction that would "criminalize, in relevant part, 'knowingly post[ing] a text or audio statement or an image [online] for the purpose of abusing, threatening, or harassing another person.'”

All three appellants "fear their criticisms would be construed as intended to abuse or harass political figures, especially local prosecutors, they have limited their criticisms of such figures," plaintiff attorneys wrote.

The state, represented by AG DeWine, a Republican candidate for governor who hopes to succeed term-limited Gov. John Kasich this year, won its case to dismiss from a lower court based on plaintiff's lack of standing according to Article III standing criteria.

According to the filed document of appeal, "It is now a crime in Ohio to 'knowingly post a text or audio statement or an image on an internet web site . . . for the purpose of abusing or harassing another person,” un-less the speaker is within a favored list of exempted media entities. All three appellants do not meet media standards as defined by the bill, which covers only people who are speaking “while employed or contracted by a newspaper, magazine, press association, news agency, news wire service, cable channel or cable operator, or radio or television station.”

Volokh argues that the First Amendment protects against the kind of "chilling effect" the bill imposes "by rendering overbroad statutes unconstitutional." Accordingly, Volokh says, "Courts invalidate [overbroad] statutes in their entirety to prevent a ‘chilling effect,’ whereby speakers self-censor protected speech to avoid the danger of possible prosecution.”

At the core of the case is the understanding that nothing in the bill, specifically § 2917.21(B)(2), excludes political speech, such as the speech in which Appellants seek to engage. Moreover, the bill has no exception for political expression, an activity that all three plaintiffs engage in on a regular basis.

Included in what it does, the bill prohibits a person from intentionally posting a message using written communication, like e-mail, Facebook or text message, or verbal graphic gestures to lead another to believe they are in danger.

“The bill brings our current laws on menacing and stalking up to date and will provide more peace of mind to the victims and families of those who have experienced these terrible situations,” Rep. Anielski said. Moreover, the bill expands the offense of “menacing by stalking” and telecommunications harassment and prohibits a person from knowingly causing someone to believe that the offender will cause physical or mental harm to that person’s family.

The bill was inspired by one of Rep. Anielski’s constituents, from Broadview Heights, who was a repeated victim of cyber stalking and harassment in the mid-2000s. At the time, local law enforcement was unable to assist due to the type of harassment was not specified in state law.

In Kasich's favorite state—not Ohio—polling shows Trump clobbers the 'National Chaplain' 2-1

Kasich Gets Trumped Again In New Hampshire

Suffolk University published a poll about New Hampshire that Ohio media, especially the Columbus Dispatch, the legacy newspaper most likely to promote Ohio's lame-duck, term-limited Gov. John Kasich, didn't cover. 

Two years before Kasich's campaign 

banned me from attending his 2014

State of the State Address, I attended a 

year-end discourse in the Ohio Statehouse 

in 2012.

And for good reason: It showed President Donald Trump again clobbering America's "national chaplain" 68 percent to 23 percent. 

New Hampshire, the tiny libertarian leaning state where Kasich won only 16 percent of the Republican vote in 2016, is where he continues to travel to pump up overblown expectations that he'll try a third run at the presidency under the Republican banner in 2020. 

Other than coming in a distant second to Trump in the Granite State two years ago, Kasich's best showing, and only outright win, came in his home state of Ohio, where despite his victory, he failed to break above 50 percent.

Tuesday Turnout In Ohio

Tomorrow is primary day in Ohio, a one-time bellwether state that could make or break a candidate's goal to be elected President of the United States. For most of the last couple decades, Republicans have ruled the roost, helping to explain why the Buckeye State is losing political capital in Washington and hurting on so many fronts, from education to job creation, from laws harming women to voting rules that suppress voting to scandals galore that Ohio media have allowed to grow and fester without any serious investigative reporting to place blame where it lies.

Following the 2010 midterm elections, where majority Republican in the legislature colluded with GOP statewide office holders like Kasich and others to terribly gerrymander the state in away that chances for Democrats to win those same seats are often far out or reach, The Ohio Democratic Party (ODP), under different leadership from former Chairman Chris Redfern to his successor David Pepper, got their respective heads handed to them in local and statewide races in 2012, 2014 and 2016. 

If this year's midterm elections go to Republicans as they did in the last three election cycles, ODP can virtually pack their bags and turn out the lights, because voters will have essentially done that work for them.

With voter turnout expected to again be low, maybe as low as it was in 2014 when turn out at 37 percent was the lowest since World War II, Ohio's gerrymandered districts will deliver Republicans another win, albeit maybe a few seats less than its current veto -proof majorities in the State House and Senate.

In the Democratic race for governor, Richard Cordray is facing off against Dennis Kucinich, with two other candidates, Bill O'Neil and Joe Schiavoni, placing far, far behind the two front leaders, as polling shows will be the case.

In the Republican race for governor, where front runner Attorney General Mike DeWine appears to have a significant lead over Kasich's two-term Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, the issue is which is conservative and Trumpy enough to keep the state headed in retrograde motion, especially with respect to healthcare. Each has said, Taylor directly and DeWine more evasive, that Medicaid expansion undertaken by Kasich in an end-run around lawmakers who didn't want to accept it won't be continued, putting hundreds of thousands of Ohioans at risk of having no affordable health plan. 

Does Sherrod Brown Play Well With Other Democrats?

This question has yet to play out in real time. Brown let former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland twist in the wind in 2016. The two-term senator with seemly permanently mussed up hair and signature gravel voice didn't show up with Strickland on the stump. Even though Strickland saved Ohio from a far worse fate after the Great Recession decimated jobs by the hundreds of thousands, by cutting state spending—a favorite principle of Republicans over the years—Ohio media gave him no credit for turning the state around, but did give credit to Kasich for his rhetorical routine of claiming the state was "broke" when he took over. 

Kasich's narrative was that he replenished the emergency fund, created JobsOhio to bring

I speak with Sen. Sherrod
Brown in 2016 in Columbus

jobs back, and balanced the budget. To show how out of touch with reality one Ohio newspaper was, it said sending Strickland to the U.S. Senate would only contribute to gridlock, then later labeled Strickland a cynical candidate.

What concerns some Ohio Dems about Brown is that he'll keep his distance from Cordray, to avoid the link between Cordray and former President Barack Obama, who selected Cordray to run the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, a federal agency Republicans didn't wanted created in the first place and wanted to shut down if they could. Brown definitely won't come close to Dennis Kucinich, either, since his populist base is full of Bernie Sanders' supporters, 10 percent of whom voted for Trump in 2016.

It's not well known because Ohio media has not reported on it, but Brown isn't doing fundraising with or for local county Democratic parties. Sources say all his fundraising is for his own campaign. 

The Democrat's so-called "coordinated campaign" isn't very visible at this point, with the exception of a few large counties. Some see ODP's Pepper more interested in pushing his works of political fiction than working to make the rumors of a national blue wave a reality in Ohio. 

Not seeing this kind of hard work helps explain why Trump is making campaign stops in Ohio, where he's endorsed Jim Renacci to go against Brown. At the same time, Brown is trying to not wake sleeping GOP/Trump dogs by saying he and Trump are on the same page when it comes to issues like tariffs on steel and aluminum. 

Brown knows that Ohio voters who voted for Trump, if they turnout this year like they did two years ago, would deliver another great disaster to Ohio Democrats including Sen. Brown, who was on Hillary Clinton's short list for her running mate.