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

I Now Pronounce You Mr. and Mrs. Neocon

I Now Pronounce You Mr. and Mrs. NeoCon

Will GOP Peg Future on Shotgun Wedding of Ken Blackwell and Sarah Palin?

Republicans On Leadership Ledge Find Democrats Shouting Jump

with John Michael Spinelli

Op-Editude

Columbus, Ohio: The news that J. Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's former two-time secretary of state roundly criticized for his partisan administration of the 2004 election that gave the state and the White House to George W. Bush, is a leading contender among GOP neocons to become the next leader of the Republican National Committee (RNC) warms the hearts of Democrats.

Instead of fearing what a wealthy, Evangelical African-American who lost a race for Ohio governor to Democrat Ted Strickland by historic margins in 2006 can do to resuscitate a party many now believe is a regional party because it only reflects the voters in mostly southern states, some Democrats are encouraging the GOP to peg its future on Blackwell and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, two polarizing politicians who embraced social-wedge issues against gay rights and stood for guns, melding the Bible with government and fiscal conservatism that delivered big losses for each of them in successive election cycles.

Two dozen conservative luminaries are poised to announce their support for Blackwell for Republican Nation Committee chairman, according to Politico reporter Ben Smith. A group backing Blackwell that "mixes leading economic conservatives, including Steve Forbes and Pat Toomey, and leading social conservatives, including James Dobson and Tony Perkins" has agreed to endorse and campaign together for a candidate based on a questionnaire assembled by veteran GOP neocon activist.

"The conservative endorsers noted that there were other good candidates, but all agreed that Ken Blackwell is the best choice. They intend to contact grassroots conservatives across the country and ask them to urge the three RNC members from each state and U.S. territory to vote for Ken Blackwell for RNC chairman." [Ben Smith of Politico]

Smith says Blackwell appears to have the public support of 12 RNC members now, but the winner will be whom ever can garner a majority of the RNC's 168 members. Among his other post-election positions, Blackwell is now the Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council and the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow for Public Policy at the Buckeye Institute in Ohio's capital city Columbus.

Blackwell, a Xavier University football player who once tried out with the Dallas Cowboys, will compete with southern state contenders like current RNC Chairman Robert "Mike" Duncan of Kentucky, South Carolina Chairman Katon Dawson and former Tennessee chairman Chip Saltsman. The physically imposing Blackwell, who hails from conservative southwest Ohio, joins former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele as the only two black candidates. The last RNC hopeful is Saul Anuzis, the Michigan GOP chairman. One of these candidates will be selected to lead the GOP back from the brink on Jan. 28.

Sarah Palin, the GOP 2008 candidate for vice president who energized the GOP base with her feisty, small-town style of stump politics that tried to replay a hand of divide and conquer that worked so well for the GOP over a generation but came up craps in a staggering loss to President-elect Barack Obama, is the focus of many pundits and media types who think her good looks, aggressive opportunism and taste for the kill will put her ahead of the tired old white guys who lost to one of their own, Arizona Sen. John McCain, but who are now jockeying four years out for another run at being top of the ticket.

If the marriage of two unabashed, unrepentant neocons like Blackwell and Palin is what the GOP thinks is their turnaround ticket to the post-election alignment of the nation to Democrats and a socially progressive agenda, they will indeed have headed the call of progressives and Democrats to "jump" from the narrow political ledge the GOP finds its self on, made possible by stunning gains by Democrats at all levels of government in states like Indian, Virginia, North Carolina and Nevada that Republicans thought they had in their back pocket.

It would truly be a contemporary exercise in Double Think and Double Speak -- concepts at the center of 1984, George Orwell's tale of a dystopian world -- to believe that two ultra social and fiscal conservatives like Blackwell and Palin can be true to their agendas when the nation has chosen to another road, one more open to a progressive agenda that embraces values so anathema to the GOP's shrinking base now mostly isolated to Deep South states. Moreover, Mr. and Mrs. Neocon were front and center in support of President Bush, whose presidency ended with sky-high disapproval ratings and whose political party is now being characterized as a "party of whiners."

Ohio, a state now facing historic budget problems in part due to the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the last eight years, was run stem to stern by Republicans like Blackwell from the halcyon days of the "Contract with America" in the mid-90s to 2006, when Buckeyes, tired of Republican scandals and pay-to-play politics, gave Democrats a turn at bat.

If President Obama and a new, expanded Democratic Congress can pull America out of the steep economic dive Bush and company has put it in, the challenge of Blackwell and Palin, already daunting, will become an exercise in futility as whites, their voting base, become a minority and as progressive programs show that working together rather than pitting one group against another is the smarter, humane course to pursue.

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

Recognition of Most Valuable 2008 Progressives Includes Ohio Congresswoman, Economic Analysis Group

Recognition of Most Valuable 2008 Progressives Includes Ohio Congresswoman, Economic Analysis Group

Nation Magazine Applauds Marcy Kaptur, Policy Matters Ohio for National, Regional Leadership, Backbone

with John Michael Spinelli

Op-Editude

Columbus, Ohio: The Nation, a progressive magazine that has issued one clarion call after another on a variety of topics, domestic and international, over the last eight years of the reckless and damaging presidency of George W. Bush, issued an end-of-year list of picks of most valuable progressives.

The article posted by John Nichols, whose work focuses on the "political, social, economic and cultural activism that mainstream media commonly ignore," named Ohio Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Toledo as the most valuable House member.

Nichols also culled out Policy Matters Ohio, an economic, non-partisan, non-profit think tank group based in Cleveland, as its most valuable pick for state or regional group. PMO was applauded for its work on tax policy and education, among other issues key to Ohio's economy and budgeting.

The Nation on Kaptur:

"When Democratic leaders in the House buckled in the face of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's call for a no-strings-attached bailout for big banks, it was Kaptur who rallied the opposition--successfully blocking Paulson's first proposal in the House and forcing minor improvements in the plan. Ultimately, Paulson got most of what he asked for – and the banks pocketed hundreds of billions without aiding beleaguered homeowners or stalling the downward spiral of the economy. Kaptur warned that this would happen, as part of an ongoing critique of the bailout scheme. Throughout the fight, the Toledo Democrat's speeches on the House floor were as visionary as they were populist--making the longest-serving woman in the House something of a YouTube phenomenon. For this, she will get no credit from Democratic party leaders. That's too bad, as her record on economic issues--especially trade and agricultural policy--is one of consistently being right when just about everyone else was wrong. To a greater extent than anyone else in the House, she has defined the distinction between Main Street and Wall Street as something more than a slogan; and she is one of the few Democrats who actually understands that the only economic "fix" for America will be the one that begins on Main Street."

The Nation on Policy Matters Ohio:

"Bridging the gap between sometimes esoteric national debates about economic issues and the real-life challenges faced by people living in Cleveland, Youngstown and Dayton, Policy Matters Ohio is a non-profit research and advocacy organization that pushes the envelope on debates about tax policy and the funding of essential education and safety-net programs. Intellectually rigorous, yet always accessible in its approach, this group has produced more than 160 reports that have given Ohio's progressive activists and legislators the tools they need to challenge corporate spin and pressure tactics. In tight economic times, groups such as Policy Matters Ohio are absolutely essential players in life-and-death debates about how state and local governmental agencies should respond to revenue shortfalls and rising demands for services. PMO's founding executive director, Amy Hanauer, is great at making the link between the initiatives of national groups with which she works--the Economic Policy Institute, Demos and the Apollo Alliance--and local and legislative policymakers in Ohio, moving progressive priorities out of Washington to the communities where good ideas can and must be turned into practical programs."

During my Ohio Statehouse reporting days, I covered Congresswoman Kaptur on numerous occasions in Columbus as she conducted press conferences in the minority caucus room, where it was not unusual for her to be in the company of other individuals or elected public officials who were relevant to the topic at hand.

As an important member of the US House Appropriations Committee, Kaptur, who will acquire more leverage now that Democrats are firmly in charge of the people's house, has always put the the concerns of her constituents over the interests of corporations. As Nichols points out, she played a leadership role in forcing Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former power player on Wall Street who wanted no questions asked and little oversight in shelling out $700 billion to banks to lend, to think differently about what he wanted the so-called TARP funds to do.

Covering the state legislature as I did for three years when Republicans controlled all branches of government, I soon realized that testimony offered on various bills by PMO representatives made more sense than others. Unfortunately, PMO's guidance was rejected out of hand by Republican leadership because it didn't endorse their now-failed economic policies, which have driven both Ohio and the nation into a deep ditch.

As a reporter I found their research to be well researched, well-documented and focused on why lawmakers should have pursued avenues other than ones that mirrored the dictates of big business and their loyalists, who sought to pay fewer taxes and lower wages to their workers.

Had Ohio legislators given more consideration to what PMO had told them to do to keep their economy humming and their budget topped up, Buckeyes might not be hurting as much as they are today, hoping for a Hail Mary Pass from President-elect Barack Obama that can help lift it out of its deep doldrums.

The message from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that Republicans better evolve [especially for the ones who don't believe in the Theory of Evolution] or go extinct. Krugman's thesis is that America isn't the same one Republicans controlled for a generation, based on a so-called "Southern Strategy" that was ultimately pinned to racist agendas. From the feel-good days of Ronald Reagan to the out-in-the-cold nights of the nearly finished Bush years, the tide has changed, as this year's state and national elections showed with big gains by Democrats from statehouses to the White House.

The Nation and other progressive sources and voices can take heart that a post-election alignment to Democrats has taken place, despite the reluctance of the mainstream media to come to the same conclusion.

The MVPs Nichols listed will move to the front of the class as Obama and his new, expanded Democratic Congress help workers up instead of forcing them down, as the soon to be minority Republican Party did for so many years.

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

Shovel-Ready Infrastructure Not Necessarily Future-Ready Infrastructure

Shovel-Ready Infrastructure Not Necessarily Future-Ready Infrastructure

Funding Shovel-Ready Projects May Only Dig Nation's Car-Centric Hole Deeper

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: Even though Washington has approved $17 billion in TARP funding to Detroit's Big Three car makers to tide them over to spring, the news that one renowned billionaire investor has dumped his considerable holdings in Ford, whose stock has plummeted this year and now resides at about $2, should be a tale of caution for public officials, from president-elect Barack Obama and a new Democratically controlled congress who want to open the flood gates on massive spending on infrastructure to under-gird its economic recovery plan, to consider the best interests of the nation as it chooses between infrastructure projects ready for a shovel and projects that are ready for the future.

Economic development professionals and public policy makers have rounded up thousands of conventional infrastructure projects, the vast majority of which are about roads and bridges and by extension cars, as projects that but for the lack of a shovel could create jobs quickly.

With the American economy in a tailspin of such velocity that nearly 2 million jobs have been lost in 2008, it is clearly appetizing that car-centric projects involving roads and bridges move to the front of the class ofObama's stimulus package. But the question being raised by a growing chorus of economy watchers is whether throwing billions of dollars into convention projects is wise? The need for the nation to find a better, more affordable and realistic road to mass transit, which is growing in popularity as family and community budgets tighten in the wake of job losses from companies that have thrown in the towel, is clear.

In Ohio, for example, the state department of transportation proudly announced it performed 493 road and bridge projects this year. The same can probably be said for the other 49 states when it comes to road versus non-road projects. A new report issued by a 62-member task force to Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland about the "crisis" state of state transportation efforts, offers guidance on spending. But the guidance, sadly, is for conventional, past-ready projects that some critics of "shovel-ready" projects would say spends good money on old infrastructure that will only gobble up more funds in a handful of years because their life-span is short and repair and maintenance will soon be needed.

Chester Jourdan, executive director of the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission and a task force member, said the report represents a long-overdue attempt to "move the state beyond its traditional role as builder and fixer of highways to one as a strategic creator of interconnected public transit, rail, road and water routes that can boost economic development," according to Columbus Business First (CBF).

“Not everything in the report will be put into law, implemented or passed tomorrow,” Jourdan told CBF. “But there are some tremendous opportunities for Ohio to do some things that are significant, bold and innovative.”

High sounding as the report is, it reflects many of the committee's agendas, which appear mired in expanding on conventional, old-school technology. One would be hard pressed to find language in the report that opens the door to include or embrace outlier technology like Tubular Rail or PRT or Monomobile . All three of these "unproven" technologies, as their critics would say of them, are advancing to proof-of-concept [PRT will soon be seen at Heathrow Airport outside London, England]. For supporters of "proven" technology like steel-wheel-on-rail trains, which is proving that building tomorrow's transportation infrastructure based on yesterday's technology is outrageously costly at a time when Ohio, among other states and the nation, is using a straw to breath because its budget is so far under water, with little expectation that new jobs can roll in any time soon.

So while a specific infrastructure project may be "shovel ready," by its very nature it may not be "future ready." Building advanced transportation systems that avoid the pitfalls of current, conventional technologies -- costly, difficult to build and environmentally unfriendly -- seems a wiser, more prudent tact to take for the tsunami of funding Washington will wash over the nation in 2009 to reclaim prosperity and the middle class jobs that are key to it.

Both Tubular Rail and Monomobile represent outlier technologies that have an uphill climb before them. State bureaucrats, totally risk averse by nature, only seem interested in fully baked cakes -- late stage commercialization in program talk -- and don't seem too eager to help start-up companies gain the traction they need to show their technologies may be eminently cheaper than conventional transportation infrastructure, not to mention quicker to be built which translates into new, sustainable jobs. But as Malcolm Gladwell points out in his trilogy of books on the unforseen phenomenon of why new, small events can suddenly bloom into game changers [Tipping Point, Blink and Outlier], a new idea like Tubular Rail, prominently featured in the Discovery Channel's episode on future trains that will air in January, that uses readily available existing technology in a new way isn't shovel-ready but it is "future-ready."

Hungry lobbyists representing the infrastructure status quo will use their sharp elbows to eat up as much of Obama's infrastructure stimulus package as it can, despite the fact that putting money into their agendas may only dig us into a deeper hole because it furthers our dependence on cars and the roads and bridges they need to operate. The same will be true for rail, which is using its capacity for freight. High speed rail on conventional tracks, while it sounds good, is just too expensive. California voters who approved a $9.5 billion bond package this November for only a quarter of the state's projected 800-mile system [close to that of France] will find out that build out costs will be double or triple the cost sold to them, and that's after they settle lawsuits with the Union Pacific railroad over use of their tracks.

The Wright Brothers invented heavier-than-air, controlled flight in 1903. If Orville and Wilbur were to show up today to ask Ohio development officials for money for their outlier technology, the Wrights would be wrong in thinking Ohio would give them a dollar since their invention wasn't in the "late stages of commercialization" and they couldn't bring $3 in investments for every $1 of state funds. So while Ohio, which worries over loosing more of the 250,000 jobs directly or indirectly tied to the Big Three of Detroit, claims itself on its license plate as the "Birthplace of Aviation," it hasn't recognized that a new industry, like Tubular Rail, which can be every bit as powerful as planes or cars, can be had for a song, creating many new jobs in Ohio for former Chrysler, Ford or General Motors employees who have either lost their jobs or soon will be seeking state unemployment benefits.

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

Lewis' Carol on Modern Financial Insanity A Wonderland of Failure

Lewis' Carol on Modern Financial Insanity A Wonderland of Failure

Liar's Poker Author Says TARP Dollars Down a Rabbit Hole

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: Michael Lewis has one really good question about the use of TARP funds. Why was Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and by extension the White House and all the legislators who bought into the panic memo that said America's financial sky was falling, was in such a pell-mell rush to handout $700 billion to banks whose assets were troubled because they made bad loans when the money should have gone to banks, maybe even some small banks, that made good loans?

On a segment of MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" about how the US and now the worldwide economic meltdown happened and why the TARP program is both not working and secretive, Mr. Lewis said it was a total collapse of the entire system, from the banks to the rating agencies to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal regulator he said was an "embarrassment." Out of clear blue skies, Lewis said our current problems were "auto generated by financiers" and aided by federal treasury officials who seem to change their game plan daily and keep their actions secret.

Having earned his pedigree in financial analysis from inside Wall Street and the world of high finance as a bond salesman for Salomon Brothers in London in the late 1980s, Michael Lewis' latest book, Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity, adds another important perspective about the marketplace he knows well and some of the individuals whose fame, fortune and reputations were made and lost there.

Lewis' short answer to how we got into the financial mess we're in, posted in an interview at the money and The Motely Fool, a Web site about money and finance, was the "ability of Wall Street to repackage subprime mortgages as an investment-grade security" that then became worthless when the "casino in side bets" against the subprime mortgages going bad, went bad themselves. An even shorter answer, Lewis says, is the underpricing of risk, a factor he claims is common in many financial panics, especially modern ones. "They have sort of systematically misclassified the nature of the risk that they are dealing with," he says about how Wall Street got its insurance priorities mixed up.

The author of best sellers like Liar's Poker, The New New Thing and Moneyball, among other works, Lewis says finance has become complicated due in part to academic research. Mathematical models were offered up and smart people used them to justify their misguided belief that financial gravity wouldn't apply to them. They then jumped off buildings, financially, of course. Expecting to fly, they instead nosedived to earth, the power of their elaborate assumptions and mathematical schemes having blown off in their cliff dive.

Some investors, generally the first ones ensnared in Ponzi or "pyramid" schemes, oftentimes make money. It's the ones who come later or last who are sucked dry by the vortex of back-paying schemes to make it all look legitimate. Lewis' anthology book comes out just as Wall Street and big investors woke up to the news that Bernard Madoff, a long-time hedge fund manager, made off with $50 billion of their funds. Lewis doesn't specifically equate the meltdown of Wall Street with a Ponzi scheme, but he says it in so many words. Charles Ponzi, whose eponymous scheme to defraud investors is being replicated four score years after the scam on postage stamp speculation he funded with just $30 dollars went bust, is a household name again.

First fault lies with rating agencies like Moody's, 20 percent of which is owned by Warren Buffet, according to Lewis, who said the problem subprime mortgages has wrought on us all could have been nipped in the bud had these firms done their jobs. But with profits big and easy to make, why take the punch bowl from the party.

The Kool-Aid that washed it all down was leverage, borrowing too much, and no one having enough skin in the game to care what happened.

"If the Wall Street firms had been partnerships instead of corporations, if the people in them had had total long-term engagement with the risks they were taking, they never would have done what they did. If American culture had not evolved to inure people to the risks of leverage, then I don't think nearly so many people would have borrowed money they couldn't repay." [Michael Lewis]

Lewis says TARP funds [Troubled Asset Relief Program] should start at the bottom and trickle up. And that if banks fail after individual homeowners are kept in their home through subsidies or recalculating loans, then so be it.

"I think you let more institutions fail. I think there is no solution that is not a painful solution. I think that this top-down approach of trying to sort of hand over taxpayer dollars to failed banks, hoping that they will become successful banks, is a mug's game ... what they should do is target homeowners in their homes, and use that subsidy to subsidize those people so they stay in their homes, and re-jig the mortgages so they lower principal balances, and so and so ... you start with the level of the crisis, which is the level of the individual homeowner. And if, above that, and while you are doing that, some of these institutions fail, then they fail." [Michael Lewis]

The unintended consequences of handing huge sums of money to failed enterprise are seldom appreciated, Lewis says. "I hope that the Treasury and the Congress has already learned something from the money they have handed out to the banks. It wasn't a smart thing to do."

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter and business columnist. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

On Making Our Own Stuff Again

On Making Our Own Stuff Again
Import Substitution Factor in Economic Recovery Plan

Spending on Right Infrastructure Good First Step

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: The foreign trade goal of third-world countries who want to graduate to emerging economies is to substitute imports with goods made at home instead of in foreign nations. American manufacturers, spurred on by tax policy that paid them to outsource millions of middle-class jobs over a decade and more, have turned the one-time butcher into the fatted calf that China and Pacific Rim nations, where labor is cheap, have been feeding on for quite some time.

Having lost millions of jobs due to policies like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, that a political outlier like Ross Perot, running as a third party candidate in 1992 against then-president George H.W. Bush and a young, brash governor of Arkansas who would twice be elected president, said would produce a great "sucking sound" as jobs crossed the Rio Grand, was the tipping point of American manufacturers who used to make goods with American labor, making goods with low-cost foreign labor that were then imported to a hungry nation of consumeroids trained to buy not to save.

But America is now caught in a a fierce recession that could take it down like the La Brea Tar Pits did to once-mighty creatures who inadvertently got caught in and succumbed to its sticky ooze. To extricate ourselves from the fate that met Saber-toothed Cats and other creatures of prey whose bones are testament to their misguided misfortune, maybe its time America starts doing what emerging nations have done to keep their hopes alive, their money at home and their jobs from wandering abroad: start making our own stuff again.

It might not be the best for corporate bottom lines and the shareholders that enjoy them, but it sure would be good for the top lines of American families and the communities whose survival is dependent on their incomes. Would you rather pay a dollar less for something and create a job overseas or pay a dollar more and create a job for your neighbor? The answer to me is no contest.

The nation could loose 3.5 million jobs and unemployment could be 9 percent or higher, according to Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post. Speaking on the News Hour on PBS, she said 41 states face budget deficits now, among them Ohio, where a potential $7.3 billion gap is the largest in history. Montgomery said Obama's spending payout could last two years due to the fierce recession facing the nation. Montgomery said fixing rather than building would get more money more quickly percolating through the economy. For the construction trades, who she said have the highest rate of unemployment of any sector, over 10 percent, traditional infrastructure spending would be best. But she said a "green stimulus" may well be part of the estimated $775 billion Obama's economic team is talking about now. If the plan is good "economic medicine and not just a grab bag" for politicians, she said it would be viable.

Economist Robert Frank, also interviewed for a segment on infrastructure spending, said that if the "government doesn't spend, we're in for a terrible downturn." New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine rattled off projects like the Hoover Dam, the TVA, the Golden Gate Bridge, the George Washington Bridge and the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels as WPA projects that made a tremendous contribution to reducing employment in the 1930s and still serve the nation nearly 80 years later. He said such spending won't be a panacea, but it will contribute to putting idle hands to work.

The first thing we can start making is our infrastructure. Weeks ago I wrote "Pax Obama Stars in Rebirth of a Nation," my opinion about President-elect Barack Obama's need to fix, repair and build infrastructure systems like water, sewer, roads, bridges and rail that can put lots of people to work quickly. But he also needs a grander strategy for continued job creation. World War II saved the bacon of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose turn to conservatism in 1936-37 nearly quashed his mighty works programs like the WPA and CCC that created much-needed jobs for the nearly quarter of the workforce out of work. Obama and the new Democratic Congress must overcome the vortex of forces driving our current economic meltdown by playing their infrastructure trump cards early and smartly.

Newly minted Nobel Prize winner and New York Time's columnist Paul Krugman seems to echo my prognosis to prosperity in his Monday column. In it Mr. Krugman opines that more will be needed than the Obama's expected pursuit of $800 billion or more in deficit spending to turn the economy around.

In so many words, Krugman appeared to endorse the Spinelli plan of "lets make our own stuff again."

"A more plausible route to sustained recovery would be a drastic reduction in the U.S. trade deficit, which soared at the same time the housing bubble was inflating. By selling more to other countries and spending more of our own income on U.S.-produced goods, we could get to full employment without a boom in either consumption or investment spending...Despite rising trade in services, most world trade is still in goods, especially manufactured goods — and the U.S. manufacturing sector, after years of neglect in favor of real estate and the financial industry, has a lot of catching up to do." [Paul Krugman, New York Times]

A growing chorus of advocates who want to see more federal and state investments in infrastructure cautions that not all infrastructure is created equal. This piece posted on the progressive Web site Daily Kos said that investments in roads and bridges, while why might be "shovel ready" would only harden America's dependence on cars and become magnets for more public spending because they don't last that long.

"The last thing, the absolutely last thing, that America needs now is more miles of highway. Pave another half a million miles of road, and you end up repaving up to fifty thousand miles of that a year. And the costs of infrastructure goes up sharply when that new highway starts to attract housing development.

"A hundred billion dollars invested in new highways is no investment at all. It's a commitment to spend another ten billion a year. Forever. Recreating the employment and energy of the WPA is a great idea. Replicating the outcome is begging for a white elephant we can't afford." [Daily Kos ]

The growing interest in rail-oriented infrastructure, as attested to when the lion's share of public transportation projects on the November 4 ballot passed, shows that America is ready to consider and pay for alternatives to cars. This may not be good for Detroit's Big Three car manufacturers, but if they got behind the ball on this, as I said they should do in "Time Right to Shake Up Detroit," they too could benefit, as could their suppliers who are thirsty for new systems and the new components needed to build them.

Making our own stuff again starts with conventional infrastructure, including roads and bridges, but must expand to new public mass transit systems that can create a bounty of middle-class jobs, the lifeblood necessary to rebuild our urban cores.

John Michael Spinelli is an economic development professional and former Ohio Statehouse political reporter and business columnist. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Solis Selection Gives Solace to Wary Workers

Solis Selection Gives Solace to Wary Workers

Is The Day Workers Stopped Standing Still Here?

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: Seasoned sailors can anticipate coming weather by interpreting clouds. When clear blue skies show the encroachment of streaking strains of stratospheric clouds, mariners know something more formidable this way comes.

Workers have reason to believe their fortunes may be brighter under the administration of President-elect Barack Obama than former presidents. From the era of Ronald Reagan to our current lame duck president, when it comes to worker's rights the current occupant of the White House has acted in the interest of Ebenezer Scrooge than Bob Cratchit, the miser's underpaid and abused employee.

But with the selection of Hilda Solis, a Democrat Congresswoman from California as secretary of labor, who will replace current labor secretary Elaine Cho, wife of ultra-conservative and anti-labor Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, workers have hope again that the war waged against them for decades will either come to an end or at least be joined by a better armed army that can fight back. Solis has walked picket lines and will have the backs of workers, whose chance to form unions, greatly despised by Republicans and even some Democrats, could tilt the balance of power away from captains of industry and their sycophant down-chain managers who took pride in keeping all labor costs but their own down to them.

Solis will champion workers, the heart of any business great or small, rather than stiff-arm them as has been done for decades. The leading edge of the Obama weather system gives workers evidence that they may no longer be forced to act like shooting gallery targets, forced to stand still as business managers and elected public officials forced them to take wage concessions and then stacked the deck against them by making the process of unionizing difficult and unsavory.

Bob Herbert of the New York Times wrote of Obama and his selection of Solis as "developments that portend a radically different environment for the nation’s workers."

From Ronald Reagan’s voodoo economics to Henry Paulson’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, he said "we’ve put the mighty resources of the national government overwhelmingly on the side of those who were already rich and powerful."

Herbert's article quotes Andy Stern, president of the huge Service Employees International Union, saying, "We’ve had a 25-year experience with market-worshipping, deregulating, privatizing, trickle-down policies, and it has ended us up with the greatest economy on earth staggering, and with the greatest amount of inequality since the Great Depression.”

Included in his column is the now-famous statement about showers and baths. Leo Gerard, president of the steelworkers union, said of the government’s attitude about workers, "Washington will bail out those who shower before work, but not those who shower afterwards.”

One non-partisan economic think tank in Ohio said the roots of the current "staggering financial catastrophe lie in over-reliance on the market, excessive deregulation, and our economy's failure to deliver for most families." Researchers from Policy Matters Ohio show that wages have been essentially stagnant for the typical worker since the late 1970s, despite rising productivity and tremendous growth in incomes at the very top. To access the basics, PMO argues that many families went deep into "poorly regulated" debt, which was not sustainable for individuals or the economy; price we're all paying the price for now.

Their remedy is better regulation and better wages. One way PMO says is the path to better wages is to make it easier for workers to join a union.

But we know that the bastions of business will go nuclear to defeat enactment of legislation known as Card Check. Card Check, shorthand for the Employee Free Choice Act, is a method of organizing employees into a labor union in which employers enter into an agreement to recognize the unionization of its employees if a majority of employees in a bargaining unit sign authorization forms, or "cards".

Under Card Check, introduced in the United States Congress in 2005 and again in 2007, the NLRB would recognize the union's role as the official bargaining representative if a majority of employees have authorized that representation via card check, without requiring a secret ballot election. It was passed by the House on March 1, 2007, but failed a cloture vote in the Senate. Card Check allows employees to choose a secret ballot process to elect union representation if they do not desire a card check election, but employers are required to accept whichever method employees choose.[Wikipedia]

Big Business, lead by powerhouse groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, say the program would "result in employees being subjected to coercion by unions, employers, or other co-workers." But they have no problem coercing workers to take pay cuts, as is happening in President Bush's proposal to use federal funds to keep Detroit's Big Three car manufacturers alive until spring. Southern senators with foreign car plants in their states have laid the blame of Detroit's car costs on wages and benefits negotiated by the United Auto Workers. These senators want the UAW to reduce their wages aboub $3-per-house to levels for workers at Toyota or Honda.

The coming four years could be the thaw labor and workers need to regain levels of dignity, pride and wages they've been missing. Solis could be the solace wary workers have been waiting for.

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

American Debt Greater Than Collective Networth, Budget Birddog Group Forecasts

American Debt Greater Than Collective Networth, Budget Birddog Group Forecasts

Subsidies, Savings Highlighted as Sinners and Saints

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: Recent calculations forecasting that America's debts and other financial commitments will soon exceed the collective networth of its citizens, marks a historic first at precisely the wrong time, when the escape hatch out of a long, rough recession calls for massive new spending by a new president and congress.

The foreboding prediction of America under financial water came from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation (PGPF), the eponymous budget birddog group that's riding like Paul Revere to warn us about our financial crisis and how to avoid the disaster it will bring if presidents and other leaders don't act with dispatch.

In its latest newsletter, the group who made "I.O.U.S.A," a tale of how America accumulated its sky-high debt that was recently nominated for the Critics' Choice Awards for Best Documentary, said unfunded promises for social insurance programs such as Medicare, when combined with a drop in the networth of Americans due to lower home equity values, has brought the world's reigning super power to it s financial knees.

The foundation's dire warning is based on new consolidated federal financial statements as of September 30, 2008, numbers that do not reflect the additional toll taken by more recent market declines, bailout packages, and record October and November deficits.

Hard to fathom but all too true, the group's math show that $56.4 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded promises for Medicare and Social Security is for the first time in the nation's history more than a total of household networth, which it pegged at $56.5 trillion.

"Given more recent developments, it's clear that America now owes more than its citizens are worth," said Foundation President and CEO David M. Walker, writing for the group's newletter. "Passing this shocking milestone highlights the need for President-elect Obama and the next Congress not only to turn the economy around and boost consumer confidence, but to put a process in place that will lead to tough choices getting made to strengthen the government's financial condition once the economy begins growing again."

In a related piece called "The Breadth of Brokeness" about the extent of government's problems, author Gene Steuerle outlines a dozen areas where President-elect Barack Obama and a new Democratic-led Congress can make changes.

Many government programs were created decades ago for a different economy, a different family and industry structure, and even a different understanding of our economic and cultural opportunities, says Steuerle, who observes that "many of the agonizing debates over the past three decades have represented a see-saw battle, more often over symbol than substance, leaving in place agencies and programs often moribund and incapable of meeting many modern needs."

Concerns expressed by Steuerle on various topics - health care, tax policy, social security, disability, environment, housing, consumer protection, antitrust, justice, transportation, education, pension policy - may appear on first glance as curmudgeonly, but seem eminently foresighted in their practicality and ability to plan ahead rather than react to.

But the sheer size of the financial picture it paints will be troubling to art lovers, who will come to realize that the rich paying more and individuals saving more are fundamentals to reaching the surface so America can again breath on its own, without resorting to artificial aid like foreign borrowing.

In a separate story on Ohio's worsening budget picture, Policy Matters Ohio, a non-partisan economic think tank, argues that the "roots of the current staggering financial catastrophe lie in over-reliance on the market, excessive deregulation, and our economy's failure to deliver for most families." PMO researchers say wages have been essentially stagnant for the typical worker since the late 1970s, despite rising productivity and tremendous growth in incomes at the very top. The group says "many families went deep into (poorly regulated) debt, which was "not sustainable, for individuals or the economy, and we're all now paying the price. With Obama's selections for various cabinet posts and regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, PMO's call for better regulation and better wages may be realized.

Focusing on the Buckeye State's budget hole of $7.3 billion, the largest in its history, PMO says "failure to fill it will lead to devastating cuts to essential services, services that currently provide the basics to children, families and communities." Further more, not filling it now will "suck money out of our economy just when we need to stabilize, leading to a deeper and longer recession." The research group says only the federal government can come through with aid to cities and states now. But criticizing a five-year incomee tax cut plan Ohio Republicans pushed through in 2005, PMO advises Gov. Ted Strickland and a split legislature to "stop further implementing tax cuts that were ill-advised in any economy and will deepen the crisis."

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com

Pro-Democratic Alignment Possible, Vote Turnout Report Posits

Pro-Democratic Alignment Possible, Vote Turnout Report Posits

African-Americans, Anger, Fear Drivers for Obama in 2008

Mobilization Good But Candidate, Issues Better

OhioNewsBureau

with John Michael Spinelli

Columbus, Ohio: A final report on voter turnout in the 2008 election found that a possible pro-Democratic alignment is underway, propelled in part by a historic high level of support among African Americans, while Republicans lost ground as the demographic sun sets on their go-to sub-group of whites, who in coming decades will become a minority.

The 25-page report, authored by Curtis Gans of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, based on final and official returns from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, reached a conclusions that the only way that the Republican Party can restore its majority status is if President-elect Barack Obama fails utterly, and "they win via the negative vote or if they reconstitute their advocacy and actions (and not with symbols) so that they have some programmatic appeal to an increasing diverse America."

Democrats, on the other hand, can solidify their hold on the future only if the Obama administration "is seen as effectively responding to the many deep crises of today in a manner that recalls Roosevelt facing the depression or Lincoln with respect to slavery and secession."

Highlights of the Gans report showed that:

In all, 131,257,542 Americans voted for president in 2008, nine million more than cast their ballots in 2002 (against only a 6.5 million increase in eligible population).

The turnout level was 63 percent of eligibles, a 2.4 percentage point increase over 2004 and the highest percentage to turn out since 64.8 percent voted for president in 1960. It was the third highest turnout since women were given the right to vote in 1920.

Overall turnout increased in 37 states and the District of Columbia. The greatest turnout increases occurred in the District of Columbia (13 percentage points), followed by No North Carolina (10.3), Georgia
rth (7.6), South Carolina (7.4), Virginia (7.1), Colorado (6.3), Mississippi (5.9), Alabama (5.5) and Indiana (5.2).

Overall turnout records were set in Alabama, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.

Democratic turnout, as measured by their share of the aggregate vote for U.S. House of Representatives increased by 5.4 percentage points to 31.6 percent of the eligible vo vote, their highest share of the vote since 33.4 percent voted Democratic in 1964 and the largest year-to-year increase in Democratic turnout since women were enfranchised in in 1920. Democratic turnout increased in 46 states and the District of Columbia and declined in only four.

Drivers that pushed Obama into the White House were polling data showing 90 percent of citizens seeing the nation on the wrong track, fear of a deep recession with personal implicatons and the organizing efforts of college-educated youth.

From a geographic perspective, the report showed the GOP out of contention in New England and the West, where Obama won states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico that George W. Bush won in 2004.

The GOP is loosing ground in the industrial and agricultural mid-west, where former Republican states like Ohio and Indiana flipped to Democrats this year.

Gans says that the only place where the GOP enjoyed a "durable advantage" are Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Oklahoma and Texas, which is forecasted to be a "toss-up state" within the next ten years.

"It is virtually certain that African-Americans were a major factor in the Democratic turnout increase," Gans said of where the enormous rise in Democratic turnout and where those turnout increases occurred.

Two reasons Gans gives about why Democrats had an 8.8 percentage point spread over Democrats were that Republicans didn't see Arizona Sen. John S. McCain as "one of their own," while he said GOP moderates were "appalled by the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin" as McCain choice for vice president.

Another factor discussed was whether some "Reagan Democrats," who shared Democratic economic concerns but were driven to the GOP by 1970s Democratic excesses and cultural issues, just didn't vote.

Cultural issues this year, Gans says, "took a back seat to economic concerns" while some who didn't vote did so based on racial concerns or the perception of elitism, which were emphasized by McCain and Obama's primary candidate New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Youth participation, while it was only one percent above 2004, provided energized bodies, especially among college-educated students who were in part responsible for the large increase in Democratic turnout.

The Republican Party motivated more voters to vote early and on election day in 2004, but the Democrats won that contest in 2008. This dynamic suggests that no matter how sophisticated they are and how comprehensive their reach, mobilization efforts "are as successful as the ground they till in terms of affirmative voter sentiment."

Contrary to how it's been sold, Gans sayd that so-called convenience voting -- mail voting, no excuse absentee voting, early voting and even election-day registration -- not only does not help but may hurt voter turnout.

Of the dozen states that had turnout declines in 2008 when compared to 2004, 10 had some fort of convenience voting. Of the 13 states which had the greatest increases in turnout, seven had none of the forms of convenience voting.

While Gans cited a number of reasons why convenience voting doesn't increase voter turnout, he said The United States should consider adopting what Mexico has done, which is a "biometric identity card which would at one and the same time enfranchise every citizen, eliminate the forms of fraud the GOP biennially claims which lead to intimidation and suppression, and eliminate much of the cost and complexity of election administration."

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. To send a tip of comment, email ohionewsbureau@gmail.com