Obama Rope-a-Dopes Republicans, Media on Health Care Reform Fight

Obama Rope-a-Dopes Republicans, Media on Health Care Reform Fight

Opponents to Health Care Are Punching Themselves Out

by John Michael Spinelli

August 12, 2009

Op-Editude

COLUMBUS, OHIO: As I watched the episode yesterday evening about Muhammad Ali from VH1's Lords of the Revolution, a five-part series that chronicles cultural game-changers from the 60s and 70s, I was transported back to the night in 1964 when, as a 16-year old living in Columbus, Ohio, I listened alone to the radio broadcast of the great fight in Miami, where a 22-year old Cassius Clay surprised the world by busting up the then-heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston to win the the fight despite nearly every one's predictions that the "Louisville Lip" would lose.

TAKING PUNCHES TO WIN

Ali, who had secretly become a Muslim two years prior to the big fight with Liston on February 25th, went on to become the greatest boxing champion of all time, a feat that required him to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes as he fought his way to to the championship three times.

As a much older fighter fighting a much younger and much stronger George Foreman in Zaire in the fight nicknamed "The Rumble in the Jungle," Ali allowed Foreman to whale away at him, one round after another with little response. After eight rounds of delivering constant punches to Ali's body as he leaned against the ring ropes, Foreman, who said his goal on entering the ring against an opponent was to "kill him," had punched himself out. Although stronger at the start of the fight, the young foreman could no longer defend himself against a more experience boxer who recognized the fight was his to win.

Ali, using the energy he had husbanded while the younger and stronger Foreman expelled all his, came out of his guarded stance and delivered a series of punches that knocked Foreman to the canvass, where he lay exhausted, unable to get back up. Ali had once again proven wrong all the naysayers who predicted he would lose.

IS OBAMA ON THE ROPES BY CHANCE OR CHOICE?

The Rope-a-Dope, Ali's strategy of non-resistance that allowed his opponent to hit him without really hurting him, seems to be the national tactic President Barack Obama has adopted as so-called "Town Brawls" take place locally across the nation during August, a month when Congress returns home to hear from their constituents, many of whom have been pre-programmed by corporate organizers beholden to their funding masters who want the cash cow of American health care delivery to remain as it is to make fools of themselves as they flail away with round-house punches that don't connect.

The naysayers for Obama, of course, are the media and the Republicans. The media counted him out from the first day he announced his run for president in 2007. And they've been wrong about his ability to recover from body blows his opponents have delivered -- from Hillary Clinton and her campaign to the onslaught he took from John McCain, Sarah Palin and the right-wing Republican empire that threw every accusation at him they could last fall, only to realize that he became wiser and stronger the longer the contest went on.

I believe the same will happen with the debate on reforming health care. The media machine, from national outlets to local ones, have either pronounced Obama dead on arrival or unable to stay alive on a variety of issues, only to be proven wrong. While Obama learns and adapts, the media is stuck in its reflex to repeat the hollow, misleading and intentionally false talking points spewed out by Republicans, who each day are withering on their vines of sour grapes over losing the presidency. And as we all know by now, the GOP is slowly shrinking as witnessed by the loss of hundreds of state legislature seats over the past four years. Little more than a regional party, Republicans are now mostly older white guys, mostly from the south, who all want to date one female pitbull with lipstick from Alaska.

Obama, who was the President of the Harvard Law Review, a fact that has impressed me but seems to be of no value to any talking-head pundit who champions dunces with little experience over accomplished professionals who are agile and articulate, has taken one body blow after another over reforming health care insurance, an issue Republicans have done nothing over their decades in power to help with except to enable their big corporate donors to prey on and milk like cash cows everyone who can afford their ginned-up health care schemes.

Even New York Times columnists like Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, normally dumped in the liberal category, have wondered allowed whether Obama is "punking" us (Rich) or whether it's too late for him to make a comeback (Dowd).

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A BEE

In addition to his proven ability to evade capture by the media and right-wing Republicans on one issue after another, Obama has another strong reserve going for him that will win the day for him as he comes off the ropes and turns the tide in his favor. He's got the American health insurance industry and their greedy, uncaring, profit-only business model to whale on.

As the so-called "Birthers" and "Deathers" gnash their teeth and cry to "have my country back," showing just how stupid they are now because they never dared utter such inanities during the eight years President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney gave money to their rich friends through tax breaks, set the world on fire by starting two wars of convenience and pushing the nation to the brink of a second Great Depression, Obama has remained cool, calm and collected in the face of Americans who think being gouged to death by insurance companies and denied a competitive system that will reduce cost and lead to greater coverage is what Americans should opt for.

Republicans have made the media think that because their loudness, obnoxious disregard for the truth and blatant misinformation campaign is being reported on as if it had merit they are winning and Obama is loosing the war of words on this issue.

Obama will do in Washington what Ali did in Zaire, win the health care contest even though it looks grim for him in the early rounds of a fight that isn't over till it's over. And it will be over when Republicans, aided and abetted by their right-wing media henchmen and those who think the truth is equal distance from any point of view no matter how silly or obscene, punch themselves out. Obama won't stand over them like Ali did with Liston, but he will knock them to the canvass now and again in 2010, when their ranks will thin even more as voters realize they have no power and can no longer punch their way to victory over a smarter and more agile opponent who like Ali did before him show them he can "float like a butterfly and sting like a bee."

Photos courtesy of Google Images

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com and is available for subscription (99 cents/month) to Kindle owners. His tweets on Twitter can be followed @OhioNewsBureau. To send a news tip or to make a comment, email him at: ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

The Heartache of it All

The Heartache of it All

New Ohio Budget May Bring Faster Meltdown

by John Michael Spinelli

July 15, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Down by nearly $20 million in uncollected state revenue after ten days of political fighting between Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland and Senate Republicans, the new $50.5 billion two-year state budget seems likely to create an economic debris field in its wake if tens of thousands of jobs are cut and service reductions for those least able to fend for themselves become reality as some have said will happen. The state of the State of Ohio is a sad one indeed.

The state that once thought itself the "Heart of it All" seems better described as the "Heartache of it All," if revenues continue to decline and one-time dollars from Washington evaporate and projected revenues from slot machines don't materialize as advocates said they would. For those in the business of sewing together and supporting the social safety-net more people will need to weather the so-called Great Recession, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the good news is that they will only have to cut off their hand in stead of their arm, as they figure out how to make due with less. Doing more with less was the management mantra of former Republican Governor George V. Voinovich, now Ohio's Sr. Senator. Sayings like this may sound good in MBA classes or business school, but actually doing more with less for those who actually need more is harder to do than say.

With the spiraling of Ohio's economy downward, a situation long in the making that has accelerated and exacerbated in direct response to the sour economy afflicting virtually every state, the projected loss of possibly another 3,000 state jobs and upwards of 40,000 non-government jobs due to serious reductions in state aid to areas like libraries, food banks, early childhood learning initiatives, elderly in-home assistance, mental health and drug and alcohol addiction services and libraries, is news only the most unsympathetic and selfish would see as the kind of tough-love medicine needed to make Lazarus rise from the dead, find a job and get back to work.

Strickland can boast that his public school funding reform plan remained in the budget, an effort that if continued by future legislatures for the next decade is supposed to make Ohio's school funding plan constitutional again.

The Methodist minister who was against the sinful revenue that can only begot by slot machines before he reluctantly endorsed them as a revenue escape hatch for an economy worsening by the day due to shortfalls in revenue, is now just another gambler, hoping it hit it big. But his wager, that winnings from loosing players, many of whom will be from Ohio, will come close to the projected $933 million slots, is expected, not guaranteed. Of course, before the first dollar is lost, critics of the slot machine gambit vow to file lawsuits claiming the Governor is acting in contravention to the state constitution.

But gambling advocates who have long waited for this day to come say the approximately 17,500 slots that will be distributed to Ohio's seven horse racing tracks will fill a partial revenue hole in the $3.2 budget shortfall Strickland and lawmakers had to work out this cycle.

Ohio's take from allowing these digital bandits to set up shop like never before, made possible by the deal worked out between Strickland and Harris to legally immunize them from lossing lawsuits opponents said they will file to challenge the their constitutionality, may also disappoint as did Keno revenues. This shortfall would force Strickland to add insult to injury by reducing government workers by thousands more.

Republicans are hoping Strickland will take political flack from voters who are less forgiving about how he has handled the already declining finances and economy of the state, and more willing to pin the tail of this Democratic donkey. To help this happen, the budget hammered out between the House and Senate and sent to Strickland was opposed by 59 or the 65 Republicans in the General Assembly.

It would be a dark game to play of how bad things could be if Strickland had taken the advice of Republicans, who said he was making things worse by accepting about $7 billion in non-repeating federal stimulus dollars Ohio took from President Barack Obama and a Congress now controlled by Democrats. Budget-hole hunters found funds elsewhere, too, like the state's rainy day fund, its tobacco settlement monies and by a loan from a state program that helps local school districts finance buildings. But Republicans, nationally and locally, have come to see spending as bad, when they didn't see it as bad when the purpose of the funding was for the War in Iraq or Afghanistan or for subsidizing already well endowed stakeholders in the American system of health care, among other party goals.

And while Ohio's budget is balanced on paper, loosing lawsuits and not bringing in as much money from various sources as had been projected, all eyes on gambling specifically, are situations Strickland and Harris should not bet against but be prepared to fix when they blow a gasket.

The heartache of it all is that Ohio is undergoing a giant meltdown with very little it can do to turn the tide anytime soon. The human toll this budget has wrought has yet to be tallied. But as yet more jobs are lost even though macro statistics may show things are getting better by being less worse, a brighter future for Ohio will only arrive when we start having a heart for all.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Time Right to Make Ohio General Assembly Part-Timers

Time Right to Make Ohio General Assembly Part-Timers

Elected Officials Should Help Bear Brunt of Balancing Budget

by John Michael Spinelli

July 7, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: While Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland arm-wrestles with Senate Republicans over what combination of hurtful spending cuts or wild-card revenue generators can deliver a two-year balanced budget, one big, blatant expenditure category that could produce real savings is the sacred cow of converting the Ohio General Assembly from one of the longest sessions in the nation to a part-time avocation that could net tens of millions in cost avoidance.

As each day goes by without an agreed-upon two-year budget after July 1, the start of the new fiscal year as required by the Ohio Constitution , the meltdown in cooperation between the executive and legislative branch over what cuts in spending or proposals for new revenue will win the day will only exacerbate the already fiery contest of political wills and agendas Democrats and Republicans are now engaged in.

Current solutions to patch the projected $3.2 billion budget hole include a combination of harmful measures that either weaken the social safety net millions of Ohioans who have lost jobs of late now depend on or undercut the state's investment in education or rely upon the wishful thinking wild-card that bringing new gambling devices and operations to a state that has said no to them four times previously will be a partial revenue White Knight.

Reflecting on the menu of statewide constitutional reform issues brought to a statewide vote in 2005 by progressive groups and labor unions who thought Ohioans would approve them in response to a string of government scandals tied to Republican officeholders and their loyalists, many of whom were judged guilty by a court of law of unethical or corrupt activities, one reform item that should have been included but wasn't should have been to limit the term of the Ohio General Assembly.

While the five reform amendments went down in flames, some by staggering proportions, giving Ohio voters a chance to change how long politicians stay in Columbus, site of the Statehouse, may have been the one that could have passed had it been included. Playing on the general right-of-center gut belief that the longer elected officials are allowed to be professional politicians, the more special interest lobbyists will be able to buy laws that favor their agendas even though the public at large may be the victim of that legislation, it seems the time is right to revisit the issue of converting the virtual year long session of the legislature into a shorter, defined term that will force elected officials to prioritize and address the key issues of the day. If other states can do it, so can Ohio.

But the will of the people must be brought to bear for this to happen. That will, it seems, is no where in site despite the constant carping, bickering about government and taxes and the general contempt Ohio voters have for public officials other than the ones they vote for.

Where are the TeaBaggers and the fiscal conservatives , who generally wave their American flags and spout platitudes about the benefits of small government but who have been asleep at the switch of limiting the time their legislators can boost their pay and pension contributions, the two reasons why professional politicians will fight to stay in office.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Ohio legislators who are term limited to eight years in one chamber or the other are always looking for a chance to extend their terms to maybe a dozen or even more years. Their argument has been that voters can term limit any candidate by unseating them in the voting booth and that so-called "institutional knowledge," the intangible wisdom that comes from being in office for decades as was the case before term limits were approved in the early 1990s, would deliver good government because the experience accumulated over time would accrue to a legislator's understanding of various issues, giving them the perspective and wisdom to make good decisions.

Of the nation's 50 states, Ohio has long ranked as one of the top states with full-time legislatures. The cost to Ohio taxpayers, vis a vis the General Revenue Fund, for running the General Assembly, both the Ohio House and Senate, is not insignificant.

According to most recent FY 2010-2011 Redbook analysis of the executive budget proposal for each agency prepared by the Legislative Service Commission, total funding for the Ohio House of Representatives, comprised of its 99 members, 165 full-time staff and 40 pages, is $20.6 million a year or $41.2 for the biennium.

For the Ohio Senate, with its 33 members, 125 full-time staff and 40 part-time pages, total funding amounts to $12.6 million or $25.2 for the biennium.

Therefore, the combined total of our full-time professional legislature for two years is $66.4 million.

For a state whose residents historically have decried government at all levels as being too big, too costly, too intrusive in personal affairs or an obstacle to business development, it is curiously ironic that those who complain the loudest are suddenly silent to clipping the wings of the very people they charge with either playing politics or for partisan advantage or working in opposition to the what's best for the public interest.

Amid the the flame throwing over whether taxes should be increased or more cuts to government should be made, one cut that could achieve the dual goals of reducing the cost of government and forcing lawmakers to address the key issues of the day would be to send elected officials to Columbus for a limited period, to do the public's business on the key issues of the day. Afterward, they can go back home, where they can work on family or personal business without tax payers footing the bill.

But such a sane, common sense proposition seems a bridge to far for Ohioans, who will suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous politicians acting outrageously at a time when outrageous behavior is not their calling.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ding Ding Ding Go the VLTs

Ding Ding Ding Go the VLTs

Can Ohio Walk Away a Winner?

Casinos Betting Race Tracks Finish Last

by John Michael Spinelli

July 6, 2009

Charles Town, West Virginia: To get a glimpse of a possible future for Ohio should Gov. Ted Strickland, with or without the help of the Ohio General Assembly, authorize video slot terminal (VLT) machines at the Buckeye State's seven horse racing venues, one need only drive to Wild and Wonderful West Virginia, as my wife and I did over the July 4th Independence Day weekend, to see the combination of live thoroughbred horse racing and spinning wheels whose "ding, ding, ding" lures many a gambler hoping to win by not loosing.

Charles Town Races & Slots, owned by Penn National Gaming (PNG), which owns and operates casino gaming, horse racing and off-track wagering facilities in many states that generate more than $2 billion in revenues and who spent tens of millions last year to defeat a statewide ballot issue in Ohio to authorize a first of its kind casino-style operation in Ohio, offers visitors 5,000 cash-less VLTs to sit and stare at, hoping to hit it the jackpot even if it is only on a penny machine.

Even though $5-a-pull VLTs stand in silent readiness close by, sometimes it makes sense to play for cents depending on your budget and tolerance for pain.

The owner of Toledo's Raceway Park horse track, PNG, which has gaming venues in Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, is a major backer of the Ohio Jobs and Growth Plan, which if approved by Ohio voters in November, would authorize casinos in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus and Toledo. According to a media release in March, Ohio would stand to benefit as the various venues are estimated to bring in $1 billion in new private investment and create 20,000 new jobs and $600 million in new annual tax revenue that would be distributed to Ohio's 88 counties and 614 school districts.

But as we know, Gov. Strickland and Senate Republicans are engaged in a contest of political wills over whether about 12,000 VLTs will be divided among Ohio's seven race tracks through either executive or legislative action. Republicans are daring Strickland to make the call himself through the Ohio Lottery Commission, while the chief executive say he needs them to approve it so as to guarantee the move water tight against expected legal challenges.

Part of the big gamble is whether the VLTs will bring to dried up state coffers the $933 million Strickland's advisers say is possible, or whether that amount will ultimately turn up far fewer dollars, as was the case with revenue generated from Keno, a game Strickland put in place in much the same way Senate Republicans say he should do with VLTs.

Walking through the maze of VLTs scattered through PNG's gaming operation in Charles Town, where players only need be 18 compared to 21 in Las Vegas, the flashing, garish neon lights that inundate the space as thoroughly as fog in San Francisco might likewise light up Ohio's future budget picture. But the odds of that happening seem unlikely in the tussle between a Governor who opposed them but who has now embraced them, and Republican legislators who want to see Strickland roll craps so they can get a leg up on him in 2010 when he runs for a second term.

Further complicating the future is whether Ohioans, who have turned gambling issues down four times in two decades, will show they have had a change of heart this year, when PNG's casino issue is placed before them.

If it wins, PNG and its partners win, turning race tracks, whose clientele is shrinking, into losers. Will Ohio, now surrounded by states with gambling, be able to catch up by keeping its gamblers in-state or will all this sound and fury over VLTs amount to nothing as the state's economic fortunes worsen and the white knight of gambling some say can save the day doesn't ride to the rescue?

Ask not for whom the VLT dings, it dings for thee.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Brown's IMPACT Act Included in Climate Change Bill Passed by US House

Brown's IMPACT Act Included in Climate Change Bill Passed by US House

Loan Fund for Transition to Clean Energy R&D

by John Michael Spinelli

June 26, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Ohio's junior Sen. Sherrod Brown had something to crow about Friday, when the US House of Representatives included his bill to establish a $30 billion loan fund to help manufacturers transition to a clean energy economy in a climate change bill that squeaked to passage with only 7 votes.

Even though the battle to address issues related to global warming claimed 44 Democratic defectors, Brown rallied around the work of two Ohio congressmen, who he said fought to include his bill designed to help small and medium-sized manufacturers across the nation adapt to the clean energy economy by providing them with much-needed access to credit.

But another Ohio congressman, John Boehner, the Minority Leader, used his privilege as a party leader to stall the vote, according to one published report that said he consumed just over an hour by reading from a 300-page amendment added in the early hours of Friday.

Boehner and other Republicans have framed the bill as a "tax" that would lead to more job losses and to problems in the voting booth for those members who voted for it. Only eight Republicans crossed over to vote for it.

The goal of this bill is to reduce greenhouse gases in the United States to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 83 percent by midcentury.

All Ohio's Democratic Congressmen, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland and Charlie Wilson from the southeast, voted for it, while Ohio Republicans voted against it as a block. Ohio currently has 18 Congressional districts, although speculation has it that the next Census will reduce this number by 2 seats.

"Our nation's traditional manufacturing industry, which helped build our nation's middle class and is critical to national security, currently faces significant challenges," Brown said in a prepared statement.

Elected in 2006 when Democrats reclaimed many offices formerly long-held by Republicans, Brown, whose gravely voice and perennially musted-up hair contribute to his trademark style, applauded Ohio Congressmen John A. Boccieri (OH-16) and Zack Space (OH-18), both Democrats, for working to include his IMPACT Act [Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology] in the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

The bill, the heart of which is about a "cap-and-trade" system some say will lead to big changes, both positive and negative, in sectors like election power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction. legislation, offers opportunities to use energy better or retool for a new era of jobs realted to clean energy.

Motivated in great measure by the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs in Ohio, where the demise of the US auto industry as tracked by Chrysler and General Motors going in and out of bankruptcy court where they will be reshaped and reformed, Brown hopes his loan fund will help domestic manufacturers recover from the 30 percent slide since 1987 their sector has had on the nation's gross domestic product or GDP.

The manufacturing sector, which according to Brown is responsible for America's great middle class and that accounts for 12 percent or $1.6 trillion of GDP and nearly three-fourths of the nation's research and development, needs access to credit so they can become a part of and not a victim to the rise of clean energy jobs. The National Association of Manufacturers opposed the bill.

He noted that passage of the climate change bill confirms that clean energy legislation is an opportunity for Ohio manufacturing. "By creating a funding source to help Ohio manufacturers retool, we can revive Ohio manufacturing through investments in clean energy," a move he said will "go a long way toward making Ohio the Silicon Valley of clean energy manufacturing.”

Boccieri, a veteran of the war in Iraq who was elected last year, said, “This legislation represents the next step toward freeing our nation from its dependence on foreign resources and it will help fuel our economic recovery.” He said the bill is about "creating jobs right here at home that cannot be outsourced, protecting our national security, and helping our manufacturers retool to thrive in a new green economy."

The impact of IMPACT is that it will allow small and medium-sized manufacturers to improve energy efficiency, retool for the clean energy industry, and expand the nation’s clean energy manufacturing operations.

In his release today, Brown said the current economic crisis has exacerbated existing problems within the U.S. manufacturing industry, and taht manufacturers continue to face a reduction in demand and a lack of capital.

He cited a survey done in May that found that more than 70 percent of manufacturers anticipate difficulties securing credit to purchase raw material and rehire workers as business conditions improve. For the past 16 consecutive months, U.S. manufacturing has contracted. Moreover, Brown noted, according to the Federal Reserve Board, manufacturing output fell 2.7 percent in January 2009 to a level 13.1 percent below that of only 12 months earlier. And just last month, nearly half of the nation’s job losses were tied to manufacturing.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. Spinelli on Assignment is syndicated by Newstex.com, can be followed on Twitter @OhioNewsBureau and available for subscription to Kindle owners. To send a news tip or make comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Budget Battle Leads to More OhiWoe

Budget Battle Leads to More OhiWoe

Ohio Poll Shows 46% of Ohioans Fear American Dream May Fail Next Generation

by John Michael Spinelli

May 11, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: With fewer than 50 days left for a split General Assembly and Governor to hammer out a budget they can both agree on, the news last week that figures for the current fiscal year could be as much as $900 million more out of whack due to plummeting tax hauls was tantamount to pouring more salt into an already gaping wound.

Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, the first of his political ilk to hold that office since Republicans dominated it starting in the early 1990s, has had to trim state spending three times to the tune of about $2 billion in his first three years, due to an economy that was already failing fast when he won the office in 2006, and is falling further and faster with little expectations for recovery anytime soon. The Ohio Constitution requires a two-year balanced budget effective July 1st.

Strickland has stuck to his story that Ohio's woes are the result of a national economy gone sour, due in large measure to reckless management by former president George W. Bush and a Republican-led Congress that turned a blind eye to their leader's flagrant spending on the war in Iraq and his staunch philosophy toward business that regulating them is wrong.

But Strickland, who by one recent poll may still be popular enough to beat any Republican opponent in 2010 when he runs for relection, is taking lightning strikes from Republicans, who want to see his apple cart upended at all costs, and from Ohio media, which is less timid to assign more of the blame for a bad economy on the good governor and his budget director,, who has been lambasted for poor prognostications that fewer statehouse watchers put much faith in these days.

In a one-two punch from Ohio's Greatest Newspaper, the lead editorial in last week's Columbus Dispatch pegged Gov. Strickland and his new Democratic House of Representatives with performing a "profound disservice to the state" by ignoring reality and putting off tough decisions.

Part of Strickland's budget problems stem from his use of $7 billion in one-time federal stimulus money to patch program funding for the next two years while whistling past the graveyard of future budgets that won't have manna from heaven to rely on.

A second problem was the gamesmanship over budget numbers and forecasts used by the Ohio House to justify adding even more funding to placate social service advocates who saw their clients going without with no happy ending in sight. Adding to the mess are the happy budget forecasts Strickland received from the Legislative Service Commission that House Democrats relied on when they padded the budget and passed it to the Senatet, where Republicans rule the roost.

Further exacerbating his budget woes is the news that funding for his new education plan, a plan he said would make or break his administration in terms of being successful, was determined to be under-funded by more than $1 billion.

Republicans, who have been good at throwing brick bats at the phlegmatic governor but who have offered little in the way of realistic remedies, are as happy as pigs in mud over Strickland's plight. State Auditor Mary Taylor, the lone Republican to hold a statewide office after Democrats swept the election of 2006, estimated recently that the "structural deficit" will be as much as $4 billion in each year of the next two-year budget. But estimates are, well, estimates, and things could change, but no one can forecast with any certainty which direction change takes us in.

The paper's senior editor chided state leaders, including Strickland, House Speaker Armond Budish and Senate President Bill Harris, for not acting on the reality they can see before them. Joe Hallet said this about OhioWoe's difficult situation: "The state is bleeding jobs, 269,000 more in the past 15 months. The jobless rate is the highest in 25 years. More than one in 10 Ohioans receive food stamps. More than one-third of Ohio's schoolchildren qualify for the federal lunch program. Food pantries are overrun, and some have closed because they can't keep up with demand."

Hallett, whose paper's long tradition of siding with Republicans against Democrats and backing business over consumers, called for raising taxes, even though his paper regular demonizes the need to raise taxes on the wealthy or business in general.

While journalists are notoriously wrong about what will happen, the results of The Ohio Poll that gaged what OhiWoeans thought of the American Dream was cannily pertinent.

In a media release on whether OhioWoeans see trouble ahead, 46 percent said the next generation of working adults will be worse off economically than the current generation of workers.

"The poll found a majority of Ohioans pessimistic about their current economic conditions when compared to their parents and that a majority say the next generation will be 'worse off' than the generation working today," according to the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati that conducted the poll this April.

Thirty percent of Ohioans, the poll showed, said their household had been impacted by job loss during the last year.

Even though Mark Zandi, economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, said on the Nightly Business Report that the Great Recession had bottomed out, Ohio's woes will not soon rebound. Not having recovered from the recession of 2001, it's a long shot that Ohio can rebound from the crippling blows of lost jobs that will continue to roll its way, especially as we watch the fate of Chrysler and General Motors, two automakers who still employ tens of thousands Ohioans each.

In a news release today from Ohio junior U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), he said a proposed Chrysler plant closing in Ohio will make him explore "all avenues to keep jobs and economic activity in Twinsburg.” Brown said he has "discussed the Twinsburg closing with administration officials and will continue to fight for federal assistance.”

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Will Lack of Curiosity Doom Ohio to Turtle Train Technology?

Will Lack of Curiosity Doom Ohio to Turtle Train Technology?

Senators, Representatives Express Curiosity in Tubular Rail

" Trackless Train" Company to Meet with Development Officials to Talk Jobs, Economic Development

by John Michael Spinelli

April 30, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: Curiosity, it's long been said, killed the cat. But can lack of curiosity kill a state? For a state like Ohio, where legendary inventor heroes like Orville and Wilbur Wright and Thomas Alva Edison were born, believing the train technology of 1934, when the Burlington Zephyr, the first Diesel-electric streamliner in the US, topped out at 112 mph on a dawn to dusk run between Denver and Chicago, is as good as it gets does not bode well for its future.

Why would a state who says they champion innovation and name programs after the Wrights and Edison want to squander a billion or more dollars on a slow, costly system built on train-museum-era locomotives that even in 2010, when the first train may crawl out of hibernation to cross the state diagonally for the first time in 41 years, average 20 mph less than the Zephyr did on its historic run during our Great Depression?

It's a question that needs to be asked. Given Ohio's rhetoric on innovation and funding schemes designed to court the most innovative advancements in all industries, why is transportation reform such a taboo subject?

What state would want to broadcast to the world that it's stuck in the past when it comes to energy, education, medicine, information or any other industry for that matter? But that position, blindly defending old technology, is exactly what Gov. Strickland and his Transportation Director, Jolene Molitoris, are doing by refusing to consider any train technology that doesn't look, sound or perform like railroads from days of yore.

But a growing chorus of state senators who know the proposal to fund a train to the past, as many say the 3-C Corridor proposal is, is a bad idea at a bad time are penning letters of curiosity in anticipation of a meeting next week between Tubular Rail and state development officials is a no cost, no obligation query that should challenge the status quo on how we think about train technology.

Robert Pulliam, inventor and founder of Tubular Rail , based in Houston, Texas, will arrive in Columbus next week to make his case for why his patented technology, featured in the Discovery Channel show called "FutureTrains," can create manufacturing jobs and spur economic development while transporting people and goods in new ways.

As one connected statehouse insider said recently, if the state is going to spend all this money, shouldn't we at least buy something that's fast? By its own admission, the 3-C Corridor or Turtle Train, will only average 57 mph, a pathetic pace that will take longer than driving from Cleveland to Cincinnati, via Columbus and Dayton, and will leave passengers to fend for themselves once they reach their destination.

Sens. Jason Wilson (D-30th), ,Tim Grendell (R-18th) and Karen Gillmor (R-26th) have expressed their curiosity about Tubular Rail in a letter to Mark Barbash, Interim director of the Ohio Department of Development.

Verbal commitments for similar letters have been received from Sens. Fred Strahorn (D-5th), Robert Schuler (R-7th), John Carey (R-17th), Ray Miller (D-15th) and Tim Schaffer (R-31st) and Reps. Bob Hagan (D-60th) and Todd Book (D-89th). The bi-partisan lineup of senators and representatives curious about Tubular Rail's technology shows the bi-partisan nature of the need to reform transportation.

Sen. Gillmor, of Tiffin, has already written an article on why Ohio isn't likely to see so-called high-speed trains, like are common in Europe, here anytime soon. In her article, she says the proposal for a publicly subsidized passenger rail system is "undercooked" and missing many details that "confirm a rail system is needed or supported by the taxpayers who would foot the bill."

What we do know, she writes, is that officials say the system would cost $250 million to launch and require a state subsidy of $10 million each year. Continuing, she notes that, based on studies conducted by the Ohio Rail Commission in 2004 and 2007, "the system would likely cost be between $1 billion and $1.3 billion after adjusting for inflation and only run "at speeds of up to 69 miles per hour along existing freight tracks," a speed that is "unlikely to be much faster than highway travel."

Gillmor and other members of the General Assembly who are asking development officials to be as curious about Tubular Rail as they are, are in line with the campaign goals of Transportation for America, a coalition of housing, environmental, public health, urban planning, transportation, equitable development and other organizations who say Americans need transportation options that are "cheaper, faster and cleaner" than the current system of transportation they say leave "too many older, younger and rural Americans stranded."

Ohio needs to be future-ready. By developing and employing a new, energy efficient train transportation system that could reduce road congestion, travel fast, go places where conventional railroads cannot, and be built by Ohio manufacturers, Buckeyes can stake a claim on their future without waiting for some other state, or country, to do the heavy lifting first.

Being a leader means doing something first. Ohio, who has yet to walk away from its reputation as a "rust-belt" state and who frets each day that more more layoffs from automakers will further complicate its already shaky budget picture, should spend a little time, and maybe even a few funds to see of Tubular Rail technology is all Mr. Pulliam and others say it is.

The Wright thing to do is be curious. Gov. Strickland and Director Molitoris would do well to be more curious. Lack of curiosity could kill the state.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Ohio, Nation Less Religulous

Ohio, Nation Less Religulous

Atheists, Humanists No Longer Fear Their Secular Orientation

by John Michael Spinelli

April 27, 2009

COLUMBUS, OHIO: As the high tide of Republican control of government in Ohio and the nation recedes from the sea change made possible by the onset of the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, is the related retreat of religion among Americans being filled in part by atheists who no longer fear proclaiming their secular orientation?

The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS ), performed in 2008 by investigators at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn, shows Americans are "slowly becoming less Christian," not because the dominant religious sect in America is being threatened by other world religions but from a general "rejection of all organized religions."

Whether "Religulous," the documentary spoof released in 2008 about the absurdity of religion in general and the sheer goofiness of some true believers in particular, was a factor in the ARIS survey can only be attributed to either divine intervention sheer speculation. But such a movie would have been impossible to produce or show in public in decades past and would have been difficult to distribute just a few years ago. The times are indeed a changing

Other celebrity atheists like Christopher Hitchens , who believes religion poisons everything, or Richard Dawkins , who said he is against religion "because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world," have helped lead the charge out of the pew and into the public square, where others of their ilk will gather to brandish their status as non-believers.

Principal ARIS investigators Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar, who conducted this third landmark series of large, nationally representative surveys that track changes in the religious loyalties of the U.S. adult population within the 48 contiguous states from 1990 to 2008 and that collected answers from over 54 thousand participants, said people who identified themselves as not being affiliated with any religious group grew by almost 20 million adults since 1990, or a rise from 8.2 to 15 percent of the total population.

More worrisome for traditional believers in "The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost," or as Bill Maher, the force behind Religulous, calls them, "people who believe in talking snakes." is that that figure rises to nearly 20 percent, or one in five adults, if those surveyed who didn't know their religious identification (0.9) or who refused to answer their key question (4.1) is included in the "None" category.

In a related story about the coming out party many atheists who once kept silent on the topic of religion for fear of being socially ostracized or hurt professionally are experiencing, Laurie Goodstein, of the New York Times , writes that the new-found bravery by a growing number of non-believers to proclaim their secular, humanist leanings is refreshing and beckons others to do the same.

More than ever, Goodstein says, America’s atheists are "linking up -- on the Internet, in bars, advertising on billboards and buses and in other ways" -- and speaking out in the same way gay-rights advocates have done for decades in their plight to gain legal and social legitimacy.

One reason atheists have become bolder of late to stand up and be counted, is reaction and fallout to eight years of the George W. Bush administration who overtly embraced and invited the religious right -- who in recent years were strong enough to nominate and elect public officials at all levels of government -- to participate and share in the re-creation of government in their image.

And while an avowed atheist probably still has little chance of being elected to any office let alone a national one, the days of cowering in a closet are over. Atheists as a group still rank lower than any other minority or religious group, according to ARIS. But their gains, exemplified by a once unthinkable advertising campaign that says "Don't Believe in God? You Are Not Alone," may affect the coming war between Republicans, who believe staunchly in Jesus but who show little sympathy for helping individuals who are treated unkindly by fate and circumstance, and Democrats, who are seen by more young people especially as more socially conscious and sympathetic to the plight of those less fortunate.

In Ohio, where the Christian right has had a major impact on state laws, from the regulation of adult entertainment businesses to passing a statewide amendment to the Constitution in 2004 that banned gay marriage , the resurgence of Democrats in the guise of a new governor and a new majority in the Ohio House of Representatives may bode ill for Republicans who find themselves on the defensive as the human wreckage of job losses resulting from a dystopian economy many blame them for piles up below executives and general assemblies who are being thrashed for not budgeting for their needs.

In their statistics on states, ARIS investigators show Ohio's "Nones" category more than doubled, from 8 to 17 percent, between 1990 and 2008. Similar gains by atheists were seen in Ohio's neighbors, Illinois (13), Indiana (15), Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (15).

Among the surveys highlights are that 76 percent of American adults identify as Christians, down 10 points from 1990 and that 34 percent considered themselves in 2008 to be "Born Again or Evangelical Christians." Catholics declined in New England states and in New York but rose in California and Texas where Hispanics are on the rise.

ARIS said that based on their stated beliefs rather than their religious identification in 2008, 70 percent of Americans believe in a personal God, while about 12 percent are atheists (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12 percent are deistic (a higher power but no personal God).

ARIS broke out 31 categories of religious traditions from Catholic to Baptist to Pentecostal, to Buddhist, Muslim or Jehovah's Witness. There was no category for "Born Again Pagans" or "The Church of Dark Energy," two traditions I hope to lead one day.

John Michael Spinelli is a Certified Economic Development Financing Professional, business and travel writer and former credentialed Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is registered to lobby in Ohio and is the Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

CrissCrossingOhio Word Puzzle

CrissCrossingOhio

Are you puzzled by government in general and Ohio government in particular? Don’t have a clue about what’s happening, what it means or who’s responsible for it?

Spinelli on Assignment is posting the January 2009 edition of CrissCrossingOhio, the Buckeye State's first and greatest people, politics and government word puzzle.

Test your knowledge of Ohio people, politics and government. Brush up on the Ohio Legislature, state agencies, politics and politicians and much more.

From today’s breaking news and the people making it to fun facts and figures that include a pinch of history and a surprise or two along the way, CrissCrossingOhio is a fun and easy way to improve your Ohio IQ. From pages and interns to elected and appointed public officials, CrissCrossingOhio is recommended for people of all ages as a way to take your Ohio I.Q of important and trivial information to a new level.

Whether you wander through the Ohio blogosphere on a regular basis or are just content to read the front page headlines of your local print newspaper, spending time with CrissCrossingOhio will improve your IQ on Ohio people, politics, politicians, the state legislature, state agencies and other noteworthy facts or figures about Ohio.

By spending just a few minutes with CrissCrossingOhio, you will sharpen your knowledge of current events and the newsmakers behind them, and boost your general understanding of Ohio through the years.

Tips for using CrissCrossing Ohio: Send it to friends, co-workers or clients. Have a contest or just use it for pop quizzes at work or home.

Spinelli on Assignment, from time to time, will feature a new CrissCrossingOhio word puzzle.

If you have a clue and an answer you'd like to submit for consideration for a future CrissCrossingOhio or you would like to sponsor a specific topic or the puzzle over a period of timie , email your name, address and phone number to me at ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

CrissCrossing Ohio is copyrighted by John Michael Spinelli and published by Spinelli on Assignment. All rights reserved.

Blame Forward: Holding Republicans Accountable as Obstructionists to Revival

Blame Forward: Holding Republicans Accountable as Obstructionists to Revival

with John Michael Spinelli

Op-Editude

Columbus, Ohio: Having stymied important legislation from passing for two years by preventing Senators from reaching the magic number of 60 in the Senate, backing a reckless war launched by a reckless president that will end up costing us all trillions of dollars and loosing big time in two successive election cycles that show just how fed up Americans are with their brazen, party-first policies that have brought us to the brink of disaster, it seems appropriate that Republicans be blamed forward for what appears to be their strategy of opposing at all costs President-elect Barack Obama's spending plans to bring America back to life again after eight straight years of pet Republican policies that put the nation, and much of the world, on life support.

Republicans, from George W. Bush in the White House to their control of both chambers of Congress for four years starting in 2002 when the GOP regained control of the US Senate, can rightfully be adjudicated as the party who endorsed at best and sat by idly at worst as their leaders, who said government was the problem but who became intoxicated with its power, took us from Clinton budget surpluses to massive Bush budget deficits.

It would seem that people who constantly carp about government as the enemy, who don't know how to run it efficiently or effectively when put in charge of it yet feel as happy as a pig in mud when they have that responsibility and who say starving it so it can be drowned in a bathtub is good, shouldn't be allowed to have anything to do with it; but that would be un-American and un-Democratic, not matter how much sense it makes.

As compassionate as a fox in a hen house, Republicans have brought great harm and heartache to the nation. As the minority party, they now intend to thwart the first African American president and his agenda to revive an economy that's tanked, put to work millions of people who have lost their jobs and bring about the kind of change that garnered him eight million more votes than John McCain or Sarah Palin, showing just how tired and disgusted the nation is with them and their party's so-last-century social and fiscal models.

Woody Hayes, the now infamous football coach of Ohio State University who won several national titles but who will forever be known as the military-like curmudgeon coach who was fired because he slugged an opposing team's player in a bowl game as the tide turned against the Scarlett and Gray, used the phrase "paying forward" to teach the lesson that "paying back" is retrospective while doing good deeds along the way instead of at the end of your career is prospective. Doing so, Hayes believed, you'll have built up a line of credit in being humane that will make you and those you touch better off for it.

Republicans who ruled Washington and state capitals from the mid-1990s to the election cycle of 2006 and who ladled out opportunities for Democrats to me partners in policy formulation as sparingly as a jailer giving food to prisoners and who believed unbridled spending was good as long it was for the war in Iraq, are now whining that Obama needs to be mindful of spending so future generations won't be unduly burdened. Such overt, disingenuous hypocrisy is a wonder to behold. But Republicans have no shortage of brazen chutzpah when it comes to telling others to not do what they do.

Now the minority again after an electoral drubbing of staggering proportions that will be achieved again in 2010 because hopeful GOP leaders think that doubling down on their agenda of making the rich richer, the middle class poor and siphoning off tax dollars to pay their cronies is what you do when you get elected, Republicans are staging, and the media is swallowing it whole like they did the bogus reasons for going to war in Iraq, that too much spending to put people back to work and remedy a housing situation made possible by the greedy Wall Street crowd their economic policies were crafted to satisfy, an assault on Obama and a new, expanded Democratic congress voters installed last November for following through on the campaign promises they ran on and won on.

New York Times columnist and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, Paul Krugman, sees the new-found caution on spending by Republicans as their way to water down Obama's spending plans to a point where they won't do the job, thereby giving them the chance to say his agenda doesn't work, and please elect us again.

Krugman displays his math skills, arguing that Obama's plan to spend about $775 billion over two years is a conservative amount to do what's needed to put people back to work. He says it "takes $300 billion to reduce the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point" and that spending less will do less, playing into Republican arguments they media is already regurgitating that tax cuts for the wealthy and business is what's needed.

"I see the following scenario: a weak stimulus plan, perhaps even weaker than what we’re talking about now, is crafted to win those extra GOP votes. The plan limits the rise in unemployment, but things are still pretty bad, with the rate peaking at something like 9 percent and coming down only slowly. And then Mitch McConnell [aka "Dr. No"] says “See, government spending doesn’t work.” [Paul Krugman ]

Job losses just in 2008 is about 2 million, and news from the Gallup polling group released Tuesday forcast that the unemployment rate is likely to surge on Friday, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to show that jobs lost at the end of the year will exceed the seasonally adjusted four-week average of 552,250. The Gallup poll also predicts that the unemployment rate is likely to "surge past 7%." And for those of us who believe the official unemployment rate is tamped down from what it shoud be, the real rate, made up of categories of workers not normally factored in to calculations, could be 4-5 percent higher.

While this debate is taking place, we learn that manufacturing activity fell to its lowest point in 28 years. We also hear that some state governors, especially five from the Midwest including Ohio, are asking the new president and congress to open the cash-flow sluice gates to prevent more cuts to education, social services and infrastructure.

For states like Ohio, where about 250 thousand jobs are directly or indirectly tied to the fortunes of Detroit's Big Three, news that Chrysler sales are off 54 percent, General Motors 31 percent and Ford over 32 percent is downright scary. Even without a collapse of car makers, Ohio and two other states, New York and North Carolina, had to shut down their electronic unemployment filing systems due to system stress and heavy volume.

The report by ABC News said about 4.5 million Americans are collecting jobless benefits, a 26-year high. Web sites and phone systems now commonly used to file for benefits, it said, are being tested like never before. That's not all, folks.

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional, business and travel writer and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter. He is also Director of Ohio Operations for Tubular Rail Inc. To send a tip or comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Tyrannosaurus Republicanus

Tyrannosaurus Republicanus

Is the Age of Republican Dominance Over?





With John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: During the Age of Dinosaurs, the most feared of the giant lizards was the Tyrannosaurus Rex, whose vertical posture, swift and strong legs and powerful jaws stacked with tearing teeth made it the dominant hunter of its time. But those days of devastating dominance are over. T-Rex's genes have drifted downward over the millennium to the point where the once mighty carnivore is so small, toothless and tasty that local grocery stores routinely offer them roasted for about $6 bucks.

Sifting through the scores of post-election mortems on America's voting electorate, arguments are being made that while Republicans aren't likely anytime soon to be skewered and roasted like modern day chickens, their once powerful and some say terrifying rein of terror has reached a point where their core principles -- small government, free markets, fiscal and social conservatism -- may be bordering on extinction. The ranks of new voters -- made up of the poor, minorities, women, youth, Latinos and seniors -- are swelling and swerving the nation left of center on issues like universal health care, energy independence, universal voter registration, fair but regulated markets, collective bargaining and war as the last not first resort in foreign relations. The Rovian age of divide and conquer has yielded to the Obama age of unite and collaborate.

From 1980, when California's Republican Governor Ronald Reagan christened the era of Republican rule by matriculating to Pennsylvania Avenue, to the recent White House years of two-term President George W. Bush, political mavens and prognosticators, including the mainstream media, thought the age of Republicans would continue forward, showing their "family values and core principles" would be the basis for a "permanent Republican majority." Illinois Sen. Barack Obama beat his rival Arizona Sen. John McCain nationwide by about eight and one-half million votes, in an election earmarked by huge voter turnouts in Democratic primaries that set the stage for what happened on Election Day, when about 123 million voters (or 67% of eligible voters) cast their ballots. While white voters used to control elections, that is no longer the case. A decrease in white voters and a rise in black andLatino voters, among other factors, contributed to Obama's win even though the total turnout was not the record-setting dynamic many thought it would be.

But that notion was shattered on November 4, when American voters, whose conscience and pocketbooks had been beat down and battered by a president who campaigned on being a "compassionate conservative" but who governed as a warrior president who took from the middle-class and poor to give to the rich in the guise of tax reductions, rose up to "Just Say No" to a third term of Bush policies and "Yes We Can" to a new era of change that could signal the end of the age of Republican dominance.

One question political pundits are asking is whether the results of the general election mark the beginning of a political realignment that will present Democrats as the new dominant party? Will this year's election results be short lived or long lasting? Many political mavens like Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report, say that despite the progress Democrats made in 2006 and this year -- winning at least a dozen Senate seats and at least 50 House seats and taking total control of Congress and the White House at the national level, and at the state level with 4,090 state legislators to the GOP’s 3,221 -- this year's election results don't convince him that a political realignment has not taken place. Democrats may still be short of doing doing to Republicans what Republicans did to Democrats over the last 38 years, when except for eight years of Bill Clinton, Republicans stalked the landscape withimpunity like T-Rex did in its time.

But others, like Todd Lindberg, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and the editor of Policy Review, say the rise of Republicans, as Republican loyalists say will happen as soon as the mid-term elections in two years, is a myth. Writing in the The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Lindberg, an informal policy adviser to the McCain campaign, said the "decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats." He said this is a "portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left." But while he counsels Republicans to not count on Obama stumbling, leading to Democratic failure, he does advise them that the "right of center" electorate they think is still here has moved on to a "left of center' agenda.

But the bad news for Tyrannasaurus Republicans lies in the tens of millions of voters who have yet to make it to the rolls and why, when they do, they are likely to register as Democrats, as we saw happen this electioncycle when new registered voters by a lopsided margin went Democratic. Approximately 67 percent of the 202 million eligible Americans voted for president in 2008. Obama won 53 percent (66,882,230) of them to McCain's (58,343,671) 46 percent. That means that about 76 million more Americans could vote. If Democrats garnered about 75 percent of new voters, that means, potentially, that if efforts underway to bring universal voter registration to bear are successful, as some believe it can be, that means another 57 million votes will be electing Democrats not Republicans to high office. The staggering implications of this should be clear to both major parties.

And just think, if Obama raised about $600 million in campaign funds from about 3.1 million donors at an average clip of $88 dollars each, the amount he and his successors could raise from tens of millions more energized voters is pretty awe inspiring, another standard Republicans wouldn't be able to keep up as their base goes south. If money is the mother's milk of American politics because it buys exposure time in the media, then progressives like Obama and his ilk who used technology, especially the Internet, in innovative ways will have a long lead for elections to come. And in between election cycles, once corralled in that left of center database, drilling another $25 from people who would pay for the pleasure of seeing their political agendas come to fruition would result in hundreds of millions more in campaign cash that Republicans couldn't match through their traditional sources of corporations and wealthy private donors.

In President-elect Obama's sweeping victory, from coast to coat with the exception of the stronghold of Deep South that Republicans have used to win seven of the last 10 elections, his Electoral College romping of McCain (365 to 173) shows just how receptive Americans are to the core tenants of his agenda. But the South, while it voted Republican again this year, isn't the trump card Republicans think it is. Obama showed that the West, with states like Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico going Democratic, can neutralize the power of the South. More importantly, if Republican states like Virginia and North Carolina can drift left of center, the meteorite thatundid T-Rex and associates could come in the form of the polarizing leadership qualities of a social and fiscal conservative of the timbre of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. If she becomes the GOP's standard bearer in 2012, it could be a long, bumpy ride for Tyrannosaurus Republicans.

John Michael Spinelli is a certified economic development professional, business and travel writer and a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist.

To send a tip or story idea, email to ohionewsbureau@gmail.com