High court ruling for Husted in voter purging case is bad news for Ohio Democrats

As if Ohio Democrats didn't have enough to worry about this mid-term election cycle, Monday's ruling by the court's conservative justices agreeing that canceling the registration of voters who don't go to the polls and then fail to respond to a state notice sent to them about voting doesn't violate federal provisions that regulate voter registration just might make it impossible for Democrats to win any statewide seat this year.

Former State Sen. Jon Husted, now Ohio's

Secretary of State, is GOP candidate for

governor Mike DeWine's Lt. Gov. running mate.

I have already predicted that Ohio Republicans will sweep Democrats in the fall again this year, which only begs the question of whether the state party is good for anything except local races?

The ruling that will only vindicate what Secretary of State Jon Husted did to "follow to the letter," as Justice Samuel Alito wrote to show how much in agreement the majority was with what Husted did and Attorney General Mike Dewine did to defend the action, that by a different name is "voting caging,' the practice of trapping and tagging unwary voters by mail schemes, but on a state-wide level. Upholding Ohio's voter "list maintenance," practice by Husted and challenged as violating federal voting rights laws, unleashes the kind of purging power that will doom Buckeye Democrats.

Of practical concern is how many Democratic-leaning voters might be purged if one statistic used by the court to measure fall off is valid here. A dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "roughly one in eight voter registrations is 'either invalid or significantly inaccurate.'” She criticized the ruling because she predicts it will disproportionate effect on the poor, the elderly and minorities.

If one-eighth or 12.5 percent is applied to the total number of voters who voted for the party's endorsed candidate Richard Cordray this primary season (428,159), that could mean about 54,000 fewer voters can cast ballots for party candidates.

Immigrantphobic Trumpoids who sent Trump to the White House in 2016 after crushing Hillary Clinton by almost nine percentage points will revel in what the court's ruling could mean for separating the wheat from the chaff among Democrats. The chaff will be tens of thousands of urban dwellers who may fall prey to Ohio's legal list management practice as practiced by Husted, who is running for Lt. Gov. on DeWine's ticket. Guaranteeing “accurate and current” registration lists, as the court ruled Husted is doing, wasn't in violation of both the 2002 Help America Vote Act, directed the states to maintain a system to cull ineligible voters from their lists, or the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

This could be a recipe from hell for Democrats if the wrong hands are in charge. Husted is directing counties not to purge Ohio voters ahead of the midterm elections, according to reports. In Alito's opinion, Congress indicated that states can remove voters “who have not responded to a notice and who have not voted in 2 consecutive” federal elections are subject to Husted's list maintenance plan. The argument made by plaintiff lawyers that “no registrant may be removed solely by reason of a failure to vote” was dismissed by the majority.

Alito's majority decision said that Ohio followed "the law to the letter," adding, “It is undisputed that Ohio does not remove a registrant on change-of-residence grounds unless the registrant is sent and fails to mail back a return card and then fails to vote for an additional four years."

Sotomayor made the very obvious point the ruling will have on minority voting behavior. She noted that “African-American-majority neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati had 10% of their voters removed due to inactivity” in the last few years, as “compared to only 4% of voters in a suburban, majority-white neighborhood,” according to Scotusblog. She added that most states have found a way to keep their voter-registration lists accurate without relying on the failure to vote as a trigger for their schemes.

Amy Howe writes that Sotomayor concluded that the ruling will force "these communities and their allies to be even more proactive and vigilant in holding their States accountable and working to dismantle the obstacles they face in exercising the fundamental right to vote.”

Running to replace Husted as Secretary of State, Democratic candidate State Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) issued a statement commending Husted for holding off doing the court said he could do. 

"I commend Secretary Husted for directing counties not to purge Ohio voters ahead of the midterm elections," Clyde said after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. She said it's up to the state to decide how its rolls and it can decide not to purge infrequent voters. 

"The process of purging people for choosing not to vote is properly on hold until after the November election, and it should be postponed indefinitely." 

Based on primary voting statistics published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Democrats outvoted Republicans in only 12 of Ohio's 88 counties. By a margin of about 71,000 votes, GOP voters were more motivated to vote than Democrats.

Even though talk of a "Blue wave" earlier this year crashing over the country this fall has become a widely debated topic, the margin between Republicans and Democrats is narrowing so much that the once double-digit Dems had over Republicans is now a single digit. With spending for Republican candidates and against Democratic candidates projected to be massive, the blue wave may ebb before it hits Ohio, where gerrymandered districts may be too high an obstacle for Democrats to overcome this year.

New York Times quietly castigates Kasich on Medicaid work requirements

Without once mentioning the current governor of Ohio, the Wednesday New York Times' editorial "Medicaid’s Nickel-and-Dime Routine" castigates Kasich in ways Ohio Democrats have failed, feared or forgotten to do.

It's a wonder Kasich isn't on the Democratic ticket for governor this year, given the adulation Ohio Democrats have lathered on the 69th governor since he accepted expanded Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in an administrative end run. The 44th president, Barack Obama, signed the ACA into law in 2010, lighting the fuse Tea Party Republicans wanted so bad to blow up the best effort yet for America to move an inch closer to the national policies all other advanced nations have found work much better.

Proponents of work requirements, like Ohio's hard-right state CEO Kasich who ran for re-election in 2014 on the promise of lifting everyone up no matter their circumstances, "say that the goal is not to punish the poor, but to lift them out of poverty by nudging them into the work force," the Times editorial argues. "But decades of experience with similar social experiments tell us that it will not play out that way," it says, adding, "The welfare-to-work strategies of the 1980s and 1990s succeeded at getting people off government rosters — but without alleviating their poverty."

Congressman Kasich, who served a reliably Republican district near Columbus for 18 years in Congress, boasts about his role in shaping the welfare-to-work bill then President Bill Clinton signed into law in the wake of the Gingrich revolution that brought eager GOP ideologues like Kasich to the forefront of backroom DC dealing.

What The Urban Institute found in Arkansas is what will be found in Ohio if Kasich's Medicaid waiver request to federal Medicaid officials to add work requirements to stay eligible for expanded Medicaid is granted. What those findings showed, as the Times reported, is that "nearly 80 percent of Medicaid enrollees who would be subject to the new work requirements face limitations that include significant health problems, a seriously ill family member, no vehicle or a lack of education. These barriers would make it difficult to impossible for many of them to meet the new rule’s monthly reporting requirements, even if they managed to secure the required 80 hours of work each month."

Ohio Democrats who have been shut out of statewide politics for decades, with the exception of a stint in 2006, are desperate for a win this year, but the party and its candidates seem incapable of raining down any criticism on Kasich, who has basked in the warmth of praise heaped on him for his one-trick pony acceptance of expanded Medicaid. Democrat insiders have said they won't Kasich on by name because he's still popular and because he's not on the ballot. While his name won't be on the ballot, his last eight years and all its misguided or misbegotten policies and programs are. So why do Ohio Democrats tread lightly on Kasich is a question worth an answer, given the close political ties Kasich has to all the other GOP candidates this year that ODP has gone after in its new website "The Statehouse Gang."

A Medicaid waiver was submitted by the Kasich administration in early May detailing Ohio's plan for imposing a work and community engagement requirement lawmakers passed last summer, the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote. The waiver requires Medicaid expansion enrollees to work unless they're over age 55, a student, seeking substance abuse treatment or have serious physical or mental health issues. State officials downplayed the number who will be harmed by the waiver if it's granted, but as is the case in Arkansas and other states where new work requirements have been approved, those numbers underestimate the true population of people who will have more than just not enough money to worry about.

One progressive advocacy group, Policy Matters Ohio, wants Kasich to scrap his waiver request. Policy Matters Ohio's Executive Director sent a letter to Ohio Department of Medicaid Director Barbara Sears, asking the Kasich administration to reconsider submitting the proposal to the Trump Administration.

That letter, from Amy Hanauer, argued the proposal "could cause many people to lose access to medical care" because the "proposal is unnecessary, because the vast majority of Medicaid patients are working, disabled or caring for someone who is disabled." The proposed requirement, Hanauer said, "is ill-suited to the uncertain schedules and other realities of the low-wage work place. The state fails to fund necessary components of the program. Finally, the proposed program may violate labor laws.”

Prior to the work waiver request, recall that Kasich quietly pushed for a federal waiver so Ohio can bill Medicaid recipients poor enough to qualify for it a monthly premium. It’s basic Kasich to dispense a dose of bitter medicine to wean the takers off so-called “dependency” on government support.

When Ohio’s senior senator in Washington, Sherrod Brown, spoke on the Senate floor to rail against passing the GOP-designed repeal of the ACA, he made reference to Kasich three times in one short talk.

“I agree with Governor Kasich: We must put politics aside and work together to come up with bipartisan solutions to bring down costs and make healthcare work better for everyone,” Brown said, previously telling reporters he salutes Kasich for his stance on Medicaid.

When a party and its candidates are running to reverse course on eight years of policies championed and pushed by Kasich, but are fearful or have forgotten how to tie him directly to his own record, it may offer a glimpse into why Kasich is riding high on national TV shows, where he opines with the craft only a skilled politico has accumulated after decades of playing catch me if you can to media and reporters who can't catch him.

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

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

Gov. Kasich's political unicorn, JobsOhio,

believed by many to be unconstitutional,

promised to transform Ohio for growth. 

It has a long way to go before that promise

rings true.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2018 DeWine-Kasich Plot Twist

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

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

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

Kasich Rides JobsOhio Into 2020

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

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

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

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

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

Gov. John Kasich in the Ohio Statehouse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rotunda of the Ohio
Statehouse

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

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

Plain Dealer Falls Short On Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zeller Explains What PD Doesn't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Kasich on Election Night 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gov. John Kasich at his 2013 State

of the State event, with Senate President

Keith Fabor (left) and House Speaker Bill

Batchelder (right)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gov. John Kasich, seen here in 2011 

delivering his first and only State of the

State speech from the Ohio House, signed

HB 151 into law.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kasich Gets Trumped Again In New Hampshire

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

Two years before Kasich's campaign 

banned me from attending his 2014

State of the State Address, I attended a 

year-end discourse in the Ohio Statehouse 

in 2012.

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

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

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

Tuesday Turnout In Ohio

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

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

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

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

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

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

Does Sherrod Brown Play Well With Other Democrats?

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

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

I speak with Sen. Sherrod
Brown in 2016 in Columbus

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kasich taps Tapper on CNN's 'State of the Union' like a sweet maple syrup tree

Duty bound to keep outgoing, lame-duck Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich's name front and center before he fades into the sunset, The Columbus Dispatch reported that the Buckeye State's CEO is warning that suburban women, who have "traditionally been voting Republican," are very uncomfortable with the harsh rhetoric on today's political front.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich looking his crusty

self in the Lincoln Room in the Ohio

Statehouse. His term ends later this year.

Offering nothing more than the conventional wisdom shared by most beltway pundits, that Democrats are more energized this year than Republicans, one of Ohio's best career politicians said what politicians say about respecting a free American press, despite  a Quinnipiac Poll poll showing more than 50 percent of Republicans don't trust the press and think, like President Trump believes and instructs them to believe, that media is the enemy of the people.

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union with it's super-friendly-to Kasich host Jake Tapper, Kasich said people from both parties came up to him last night at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner to say they support him should he stop his favorite peek-a-book scam of keeping the idea that he'll run to challenge Trump in 2020 and declare his candidacy.

Tapper, who with his wife was also in attendance last night at a dinner where comedian Michelle Wolff was unanimously condemned for crossing the line of attacking political people on a personal basis, couldn't help himself when, at the conclusion of an interview about everything except the state of Kasich's Ohio, he lobbed another big softball to Kasich, a former TV pro from Fox News who often substituted for now disgraced Fox News "No Spin Zone" TV leader Bill O'Reilly. Kasich, grinning like a slugger who sees a slow pitch coming his way, drove it out of the CNN park.

Kasich, a politicians politician after nearly 40 years in public office whose public service extends from 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives to the Office of Governor, said the far-left and far-right have left open a middle ground that he purports to represent. He said that when a blue department story and a red department store no longer offer what people want, it opens the door to a third department store. Tapper got played like all other national TV political talk show hosts, giving Kasich another shot at the free-throw line to further pump up himself as a candidate who can fill the void.

It was classic Kasich, when he again said he has no idea what Democrats stand for today. For someone who's fought against nearly everything Democrats do and have stood for for decades—like taxing the rich more, universal healthcare for all, pro-choice policies, strengthening unions, supporting public schools and their teachers, expanding voting rights, and not balancing budgets on the back of those who can least afford to pay more, among a long-list of other Democratic-backed issues—it was stunning to again hear him say he doesn't know what they stand for.

At the same time, Ohio Democrats wrote a letter to Kasich telling him some of the things they do stand for, as reported by Kasich's adjunct PR department, The Columbus Dispatch. What Ohio's congressional Democrats told Kasich was to do more than he's doing on expanded Medicaid, an issue Democrats have given to Kasich without challenging him on its implementation. Waivers and work requirements, they told the governor, are bad for Buckeyes.

Appearing at the White House Correspondents' Dinner last night is further proof that Kasich is networking on the tax-payer dollar to land himself another lucrative, talking-head gig on TV that will keep his name in play for 2020. It was another example of the gone governor being gone from his normal day-to-day duties back in Ohio, where both his Republican wannabe successors, one of them his Lt. Gov for two-terms (Mary Taylor) are running as fast as they can away from him.

It's worth mentioning for Tapper's benefit, that unlike what Kasich did back in 2010, Republicans Taylor and Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine have shown the press their tax returns. Kasich refused to do this, choosing instead to let media have a 30-minute gander at just one of his tax returns with further restrictions of no copying.

Kasich got another unchallenged shot from the 3-point line to tout his fake news that back in Ohio he's balanced budgets, created jobs, and produced surpluses. He and every other state governor is by law forced to balance budgets.

Tapper doesn't care about this, otherwise he might have asked the supply-side politico why lawmakers had to fill a billion dollar whole with cuts to other programs? His statement of creating one-half million jobs is better understood when the fact is brought to light that he's underperformed the national job creation average for 64 straight months, and that Ohio today has fewer jobs than it did in 1980?

Kasich bragging about a state surplus is tempered by the fact that he stole billions from public education and local government funding to do so. Many of these same local governments have had to make up for Kasich's executive branch theft by putting tax levies on the ballot to keep services levels the same. Kasich seems to have no memory of the billions of dollars he took away from public school system budgets to fund poorly performing for-profit charter schools, among them ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) that gave Kasich plenty of campaign cash and a chance to address an ECOT graduating class.

When media does the bidding of flimflam politicians like Kasich, who has mastered the craft of pretending he's not a politician who does very political things while denying he's doing them, they indeed deserve the low ranking the public places on them. Until and unless Jake Tapper confronts Kasich with his own record, and all the rhetoric that surrounds it, the big, high-paid talking heads only add to their reputation of being complicit with skilled politicos like Kasich when they should be deep-diving on a record that shows Kasich's very Republican ideology doesn't work in Ohio and won't work for the nation.

Kasich's duplicity gets even worse. "I'm still a Republican ... the Republican Party left me," he told Tapper about why he's on the outs with the White House and Democrats. His political bi-sexuality is stunning, begging the question of why the media turns every outlandish statement into its own article.

Gov. Kasich can be credible, first by stop saying he does know what Democrats stand for, then by acknowledging that his performance salesmanship is part of his stagecraft to find a job where he can pontificate (a cherished goal for all former Catholic choir boys) and spread his sweet sounding but false narrative of austerity politics, while still being considered a rising star as he approaches his seventh decade of life.

Is Ohio the home of the brazen or land of the failed?

The State of Ohio is in quite a state these days. Statehouse watchers can genuinely wonder whether it's the home of the brave and land of the free, or home of the brazen and land of the failed?

The Buckeye tree is indigenous to Ohio.
It's nut is poisonous and hard to crack,
much like some of its political leaders.

The leading big presidential battleground state that can make or break the fortunes of candidates seeking to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. is caught on the horns of a dilemma of its own making.

A once purple state, Ohio is now ruby red in many ways. From control of statewide offices to the composition of the General Assembly, its leadership has devolved toward the worst public policy on taxes, women, voting rights, fair representation, income inequality, education and healthcare, just to name a few areas where it falls far short of best practices.

With moribund population growth and diminished political clout in Washington, the Buckeye State is stumbling forward to elect a governor this November to replace outbound John Kasich. Ohio's 69th governor is governor in name only, as he fills his remaining months with out-of-state events designed to keep his long hoped for fantasy of being elected President of the United States, a quest he's failed at spectacularly twice already, an example of zombie apocalypse come true.

Ohio media carries its fair share of guilt coddling Kasich over the last eight years. It has chosen to put down its investigative pen when it comes to Kasich's many scandals while inking many column inches following the former Fox News TV host's various performance-politician forays into national politics. The consequences of these Quixotic have been to make a once-great state less great.

For Kasich fans, his abandonment of governor's duties is all for higher goals, as his surly ego plays on the national stage in advance of 2020, when America will again be keel-hauled as President Trump defends himself and Democrats try again to connect with voters at the local level on kitchen-table issues like jobs, wages, healthcare and taxes.

Camp Kasich tells us about what Ohio's term-limited, lame-duck career politician does to fill his days. A three-fer trip to Texas, to commune with for Bush-era Secretary of State Jim Baker prior to speaking at the Baker Institute for Public Policy's lecture series, an appearance at the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation and remarks delivered at the 2018 EarthX Global Gala event in Dallas, are among his recent sojourns as he auditions for National Chaplain.

Ignoring the fact that Ohio under his watch has lagged the national job creation average for 64 straight months, Kasich touts March as the second best month for new business filings in history and a state unemployment rate at its lowest point in 17 years. Not to be missed Kasich classics include well-worn fake news talking points like balancing the state budget, cutting government spending and taxes and diversifying Ohio’s economy. His showboat number, that out of context sounds fantastic when it isn't in context, is creating over a half million new jobs, when in reality Ohio has fewer jobs today than it did in 1980.

"Under Gov. Kasich's leadership, Ohio continues to set an example for other states and the nation that when we balance our budgets, lower taxes and remove the regulatory burdens, it leads to job creation," Camp Kasich says.

One of Ohio's Big Eight legacy newspapers sees a very different Ohio. Here's what the Toledo Blade sees and says.

"There is plenty to be angry about. Poverty and crime infest our central cities. Our great lake is perishing before our eyes. Many of the beautiful small towns of Ohio, and the gentle folkways that existed in them, have been obliterated by the so-called global economy. Our children are dying of heroin and fentanyl. And as all this unfolds, our governor, blinded by an idiotic dream of being president of the United States, has seemingly lost all interest in the people who are suffering in our state, or in governing — the job he is duty bound to perform."

The Blade passes judgment on Kasich without naming him, as it struggles to endorse two aging, it says boring candidates, who may be elected Ohio's next and 70th governor.

"Maybe the old shoe Mike DeWine and the plodding, rational Rich Cordray, both of them uninspired and uninspiring, win by a kind of default. Both will offer sobriety, calm, competence, and something else — full engagement. Half the secret of being a good governor is working at it. Not at the promotional part of it but the job itself."

Land of the free and home of the brave doesn't explain Ohio today. The nation's 17th state has seen far better days since it joined the union in 1803. Claiming eight leaders who moved into the Oval Office, Ohio, where people once moved to for a better, richer, fuller life, is rusty-belt fly-over country.

Growing western and southern states are the new frontiers for jobs, family and lifestyle.

Ohio to decline even more after Chevy Cruze lays off 1,500 at Lordstown

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics and ODJFS released employment and unemployment data for Ohio on Friday. Even though the numbers look good in comparison to previous months' figures, the speed of job growth in Ohio remains well below the USA national average, Ohio's top jobs number analyst reports.

The Ohio Statehouse Rotunda

" Ohio extended its lengthy sub-par job growth streak to 64 consecutive months with Ohio's job growth below the USA national average," George Zeller wrote today. "The March 2017 year over year Ohio job growth rate is 1.17%, while the USA job growth rate during the same period is 1.55%," Zeller noted, adding, "This horrible sub-par job growth streak in Ohio has now been every month for five full years and four additional months."

Ohio To Decline Even More

Ohio's economic slide down hill over the decades is well documented. Ohio Gov. John Kasich lands lots of newspaper ink for going out of state to pursue a favorite fantasy that he'll be elected president in 2020.

Kasich got shellacked bigly by Donald Trump in 2016. Ohio's term-limited, lame-duck governor's name always escape mention when the state comes up short on the jobs front, as it has each month for more than five years. Kasich, a former Wall Street banker who worked for Lehman Brothers before it crashed, promised to "move the needle" on jobs if elected in 2010. He's has moved the needle, but mostly in the wrong direction.

Poor, Slow And Fewer Jobs Now Than In 1980.

As Zeller observes, during 2017 Ohio gained just 32,200 jobs, the weakest annual year for job growth in Ohio since the end of the "Great Recession."  Ohio's job trend, he says, is most closely associated with trends in Manufacturing and Government employment. "During March, Ohio gained 1,600 mainly high wage Durable Goods Manufacturing jobs. In contrast to most months during 2017, Ohio also gained 2,200 Government jobs, including 1,900 Local Government jobs, 200 State Government jobs, and 100 Federal Government jobs," he says.

Poor, slow and fewer jobs than in 1980 isn't what one Ohio Republican leader saw in today's number. Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof (R-Medina) prefered to focus on the figure of 501,000 new private sector jobs created since 2011, as if that's an impressive number when it's not. Obhof ignores the fact that the Buckeye State today has fewer jobs than it did in 1980 and has yet to recover from the recessions of 2000 and 2007.

"We work diligently to not only create an environment of possibilities for Ohio's job creators but also to ensure Ohioans from all backgrounds are prepared to take advantage of those opportunities," Obhof said in a statement Friday.

"We've done this through creating a jobs-friendly business environment, developing a jobs-ready workforce and empowering Ohio's small businesses, the backbone of our economy," he said, adding, "While this is an important milestone that shows Ohio's policies are working, we have much more to do, and we will continue to build on this progress."

The John Glenn School of Public Affairs released a report recently on Ohio's decline called "Toward a New Ohio." Co-authors William Shkurti and Fran Stewart offered lots of history and perspective along with a dozen questions the 2018 class of governor hopefuls should have to answer if only Ohio media would ask them, instead of asking questions based on the daily ping-pong of social-media side issues that replace more substantive ones.

Cruze Lay Offs Will Also Lay Off Hundreds More In Supply Chain

When I asked Zeller to noodle on the consequences for Chevy Cruze's announcement that it will lay off 1,500 jobs at its Lordstown plant, he offered some key observations you won't find any other Ohio media reporting on, since their focus on these monthly statistics mostly focus on the unemployment rate, which offers little to no understanding on the numbers.

Zeller tells me that the Ohio job trend is most closely associated with trends in Manufacturing and Government employment. He then says that during March, Ohio gained 1,600 mainly high wage Durable Goods Manufacturing jobs as well as gaining 2,200 Government jobs, including 1,900 Local Government jobs, 200 State Government jobs, and 100 Federal Government jobs.

"The odds of continued growth in Durable Goods Manufacturing will decline in the short run future, as a result of the already announced mass layoffs at Lordstown," Zeller says. He adds, "In addition to those layoffs, there will be additional declines in the hundreds by contractors who provide parts for the Cruise."

It is likely, he says, that Durable Goods Manufacturing will turn negative during next month's April data, although that might extend to May, depending on the actual date of the mass layoffs in Trumbull and surrounding counties.

The other variable he mentions, is that it looks like a "decline in Federal Government is likely, given day to day chaos in Washington with the federal appropriations process." Moreover, cuts made by the Ohio legislature are also relevant.

"This month's and last month's gains in Local Government are locally financed, not financed by the state. There are limits to what the cities, counties, townships, and school districts can spend, given the large cuts that they took at the legislature," he warns.