Jordan, Obhof win Oscars for most embarrassing Ohio lawmakers

From the beginning to the end of Wednesday's all-day hearing in Washington, featuring President Donald J. Trump's former personal attorney providing "smoking-gun" evidence and hours of testimony that corroborated the corrupt and likely criminal activity Trump and loyalists, including his family members, are alleged to have engaged in during his presidency and prior to his election in 2016, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan walked away with the Oscar for most embarrassing performance by an elected official.

Ohio Statehouse in Columbus

The only member of the committee to not wear his suit jacket, Jordan, a founder of the so-called Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives, was the hatchet man who went after Trump's legal fixer for a decade. Michael Cohen eventual rose to become Trump's personal lawyer, a position he said he wanted, that flummoxed Jordan who insisted that Cohen was peeved for not landing a job in the White House.

Defending the president by attacking Cohen as a liar who cannot tell the truth and the FBI as an untrustworthy federal agency, Jordan demonstrated his abject but misplaced adoration of Trump despite Cohen's evidence and truth telling at the second of three congressional committees he will face this week.

Acting like an trained yet mad ideological attack dog, Jordan's shirt-sleeve performance brought tremendous ignominy to the Ohio congressional district that elected him and further damaged his well-established reputation as  a dedicated warrior against any policy or program that smacks of the public interest. Not recognizing truth when it reared its ugly but clearly seen head, the former wrestler who has managed to disassociate himself from being complicit in know about but doing nothing to stop sexual abuse that take place during his years as a wrestling coach tried to be Cohen's grim reaper.

Meanwhile, while Jordan was giving Ohio a political black eye in DC, back in Columbus, GOP Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof has indicated he's more than ready to keep Ohio moving backward. Obhof, a black-belt fiscal and social conservative, said that any hike in the gas tax must be off set by a similar reduction in Ohio's income tax.

Obhof was an active Republican wingman who aided former Gov and now CNN political pundit. John Kasich. Kasich's faux fiscal record is unraveling by the day amid new reports from state media no longer afraid of frozen out by Kasich's media machine that lower taxes for the rich will create more revenue and good jobs.

As Obhof delays to figure out his proposal to ransom off raising more money for transportation infrastructure, Ohio's other state leader, Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, is looking downright moderate by comparison. Householder, who during his previous speakership was linked to "pay to play" statehouse schemes, got brownie points in exchange for Democratic who voted to elect him speaker instead of another Obhof-like candidate, Ryan Smith, who do what Republicans know they do without fear of consequence, run over Democrats like they were snakes on the road.

When Ohio fractures along political fault lines that make a former GOP power player like Householder look like a leader who includes instead of excludes Democrats, what was once normal hegemony practiced by Republicans against Democrats is no longer the standard. 

In a soon to be released report, Ohio maybe worse off in some key areas after two-terms of Kasich than when Gov. Strickland left it, following the pounding on jobs it took from The Great Recession of 2007, as hundreds of thousands of jobs out-right evaporated or relocated to other states or countries.

The big news from Ohio's last budget was that the shortfall of $800 million was filled by spending cuts. After years of tax cutting and special deals for a special class of business, the belief in "no news taxes" is alive and well to Buckeye Republicans.

In classic Kasich fashion, Obhof says adding 18 cents to the state's gas tax, to generate money to fix and repair transportation assets, especially roads and bridges, must be off set by lower income taxes, making it tough going forward to pay for state needs with a declining revenue base. Revenue shortfalls over the past couple of months are worrisome, but Obhof believes complicating Ohio's future seems to be a strong part of his agenda.

The Ohio Department of Transportation wonders where it goes now a $1.6 billion shortfall in its budget is hanging over the state like the Sword of Damocles. Once a model for other states to follow because taxes imposed more than paid for a system of roads and bridges critical to job development and growth, Ohio is now a model for what not to do.

With Ohio hurting from decades of Republican control, including passing dozens of bills that hurt women's health care choices or those poor enough to qualify for Medicaid who may soon have to hop new hurdles to remain eligible for their meager healthcare assistance, it's both funny and sad that Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan is calling on Amazon to reconsider Ohio for the company's next headquarters site after the company recently announced it will pull out of its first choice for the 25,000 jobs it said would come to its chosen location, New York City.

This reporter has written before that Ohio's lawmakers, the same GOP dunderheads who have set the state in reverse motion on so many fronts over many years, represent the major reason why a giant company like Amazon wouldn't consider the right-wing state no matter how good the public bribes might be.

Someday, Ohio media will wake up to the fact that there is a connection between economic development and social development. When the latter hearkens back to earlier times when race and gender were issues that divided neighbor from neighbor, 21st century companies looking for diversity, inclusiveness and openness in where they have a business presence will see Ohio as a second or even third tier state to do business in.

When high-profile members of congress like Jordan put on the display of rabid ideology he did yesterday, with Obhof eager to pursue more bone-headed tax policy that's put Ohio more behind the Eight Ball than in front of it, Ohio takes a beating among thoughtful people and business.

With Sen. Rob Portman constantly befuddled by Trump's deceptive and maybe illegal behavior, afraid to take a stand that clearly shows whether he supports or opposes the White House on a laundry list of important issues, the dignity of work, as exemplified by Ohio's senior Sen. Sherrod Brown, is indeed a fresh breeze that blows away the stench created by Jordan in Washington and Obhof in Columbus.

Gone as governor, Kasich's Ohio 'Miracle' reveals itself to be a 'Mirage'

In the weeks following his exit as Ohio's 69th governor, John R. Kasich's self-described "Ohio Miracle" is revealing itself to be mostly mirage, as money shortfalls crop up for Ohio's 70th Governor, Mike Dewine, who is being forced to course correct to keep the Buckeye State from falling farther behind the other 51 in so many areas.

John Kasich on election-night 2010.

Long known as The Wizard of Westerville, 66-year old John Kasich can no longer abuse the trappings of state CEO now that's he's signed on as another well-paid talking pundit on CNN. While some question whether he should even have his new media gig given his persistent and sophomoric strategy to engage in yet another a peek-a-boo campaign for president in 2020, Kasich's narcissistic ego that sees his eight years as Ohio's top leader is taking a beating, as nearly daily reports from Ohio's gullible media show his razzle dazzle on budgeting and taxes policies has left Ohio poorer off when it comes to adequate revenue to fix roads and bridges, among many other policies central to the state's overall health and vitality.

Recalling that Kasich made advocating for reduced income taxes and buying into the notion of "supply side" economics, which former President George H.W. Bush once dubbed "voodoo economics," central to his conservative political philosophy over the decades, Ohio found itself $1 billion short last budget cycle, a situation resolved by spending cuts alone. New revenue was anathema to the quirky, sanctimonious leader who signed on to Grover Norquist's "no new taxes" pledge in 2010.

Kasich contributed to Ohio's growing problem of income inequality through repeated overtures to a friendly Republican legislature who, with the exception of adhering to some of his most outlandish policy proposals, went along with income tax reductions across the board that took from the poor and gave to the rich.

Since DeWine won his election for governor last fall, beating a Democrat whose leadership of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau was his main selling strategy, more money problems have arisen, starting with the sad fact that the Great State of Ohio, where a once robust system of infrastructure was a hallmark of its growing importance, no longer has money to fix or repair the very infrastructure that once made it great. If not corrected, Ohio will sink further as people and business choose other states to live or relocate to that are taking care of business. Right now, estimates are that state and local governments will face a $2 billion to $2.5 billion yearly deficit in road and bridge construction.

At issue is a proposed 18-cents-a-gallon gas tax that Gov. DeWine will ask state lawmakers to enact for road and bridge projects. “We’re taking that to the legislature,” DeWine said, according to published reports. Whether the governor gets his wish or not will depend on whether anti-tax Republicans will increase the gas tax or suffer by not increasing it.

Meanwhile, as Kasich crows about how great he was as governor, another General Motors supplier announced it will layoff another 73 workers from the Lordstown plant. Kasich mocked former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland for letting NCR slip away to Georgia, something he said wouldn't happen on his watch. But it did, and did so with Kasich's much vaunted but much criticized private nonprofit jobs group, JobsOhio, letting it happen. For Kasich, who's still waiting for God to tell him whether or not the former Fox News host and Lehman Brothers banker should make a third run at the White House, spending the greater part of nearly two years campaigning out of Ohio didn't allow him to be on the job to convince GM to keep Lordstown in business. Since announcing it will shut down Lordstown, GM stock has gone up.

More than a few critics of Kasich and his GOP-led legislature say the tax-cutting policy he and it promoted so vigorously for two terms, to replenish the state's emergency fund drawn down during the Great Recession, shifted the burden of taxes to local governments. Reports say that more than a fourth of the state’s cities and villages increased local income taxes during the Kasich years. Local officials pegged their tax increase strategy to Kasich's cuts in both the local government fund and the estate tax.

Kasich's support for for-profit charter schools earned Ohio a reputation as the "wild west" of charter schools. From a national ranking of fifth place under Gov. Strickland (2007-2010), Ohio schools under Kasich plummeted to 23rd. Further distressing news came from a new Stanford University study showing Ohio’s charter schools have not improved in the decade.

Even though Kasich said in 2010 that he would probably trash The Affordable Care Act, commonly dubbed "Obamacare" by Republicans, his lust for billions of free federal funding ruled the day, as he did what most other Republican governors refused to do: Accept expanded Medicaid, an option made possible when Supreme Chief Justice John Roberts untethered Medicaid from the court's ruling that the ACA was constitutional.

Quick to embrace the flow of free money that would end after he left office, Kasich had Ohio Democrats, federal and state, cooing after him as someone who was on their side, when in fact the National Chaplin has never been on their side. His "moral preening and self-praise for expanding Medicaid under Obamacare," as one reporter put it, endeared Democrats to him. But true to his austerity prone political philosophy that always prescribes a dose of bitter medicine to those most in need of public support, Kasich made massive cuts to Ohio's Medicaid program as he left the Statehouse in Columbus to shine before the bright TV lights of CNN.

Are Democrats still adoring him for accepting expanded Medicaid or have they finally learned that he was only after the approximately $2.5 billion that would flow to Ohio before Ohio had to kick in 10 percent of the cost?

Kasich appears to have left Ohio worse off than he inherited it in 2010, as revenues slide and funding priorities leave public officials wondering where more money can be had if they continue to keep the doors to tax increases closed.

For the new CNN pundit, Kasich can boast of how great he and his "Ohio Miracle" was, but the facts emerging each week are showing that the performance politico was boasting about miracles that were nothing more than mirages.

Sherrod Brown says Trump fell short on a bi-partisan agenda in second ‘State of the Union’

On his weekly Wednesday call with Ohio media, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said he was hopeful President Donald Trump’s second State of the Union speech would be unifying.

Sen. Brown says President Donald
Trump missed the mark on a
bi-partisan agenda.

“If he had focused instead of attacking immigrants on things we could work together on, like infrastructure or the cost of prescription drugs, we could make major progress,” he told media on the call. 

“Unfortunately we are not (unified). The White House looks like a retreat for drug companies,” said the three-term senator who will decide in March whether he’ll jump into the Democratic race for president next year.

Brown said the president could have provided more details to congress on rebuilding streets but missed the mark.

Sen. Brown’s guest on the call today was Jim Obergefell – the plaintiff in the landmark 2015 marriage equality case Obergefell v. Hodges. Obergefell and Brown stated their agreement in opposing President Trump’s nominees to serve on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Those nominees, Chad Readler and Eric Murphy, are expected to be voted on by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, despite Brown’s objections to both nominees.

Readler and Murphy have proven too extreme for Ohio, with combined records of working to roll back healthcare protections, to strip Ohioans’ of their voting rights, to deny Ohioans their right to marry the person they love, and to eliminate reforms to hold Ohio charter schools accountable, information from the Senator’s office in advance of the call noted.

“Their nominations to a federal bench would serve special interests, including big tobacco, at the expense of the rights of citizens,” Brown said, adding that he opposed both nominees when they were first announced by President Trump last year and continues to oppose their nominations today.

Brown’s office will outlining “the harmful and radical records of the respective nominees.”

Brown described Obergefell as one of "my civil rights heroes." Asked how well he sleeps at night since the landmark marriage equality decision just four years ago, Obergefell said he looks over his should wondering how secure it is. His hope is that Chief Justice Roberts, who was against marriage equality before, will support the precedent decision.

“(I) have a bit of comfort that the chief justice will be on the side of maintaining marriage equality.”

Asked by this reporter what his suggestion is to new Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to find funds to fix Ohio’s rundown roads and bridges, now that former Gov. Kasich has left the state broke when it comes to infrastructure funding, Brown said DeWine should reestablish the local government fund, a source of funds that had flowed to local governments for many decades until Gov. Kasich confiscated those funds as he sought to replenish Ohio’s emergency fund.following The Great Recession.

Sen. Brown said GM president Mary Bara had told him and Sen. Portman that she “was taking care of people.” Brown seemed less than impressed with news that 950 Lordstown plan workers had accepted transfers to other GM locations.  

“Workers feel betrayed by the president and GM,” he said, adding that he and others continue to talk with GM about bringing a new auto product to the endangered auto manufacturing plant.

“They (GM) realize their brand is damaged by the way they’ve treated this Northeast Ohio community.” He added, “Maybe an electric vehicle should come to Lordstown.” Bara, he said, thinks it would be too expensive to bring another SUV line to the plant.

Meanwhile, with another shutdown of the federal government looming, Brown said his number one priority is to keep government running.

And who can make that happen? “(Mitch) McConnell is the key,” Brown said.

Democrats are unified, so it's up to some Republican senators to join Democrats to override Trump's threats to again shutdown the national government, after the last episode that lasted about a month and cost between $3-10 billion dollars.

Sherrod Brown: 'Wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes'

In a conference call Wednesday with Ohio media in advance of his upcoming “Dignity of Work” tour to several early presidential primary states, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown didn’t want to quibble over tax policy specifics.

What he did agree to as a baseline position for him is that the wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes.

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (right)
speaks to Ohio's leading
independent reporter

Sen. Brown is preparing to launch his "Dignity of Work" tour today, Wednesday, January 30, 2018, from Brunswick, Ohio, where Brown previewed his tour to Ohio media. 

After the tour launches in Ohio, Sen. Brown, whose win last November in Ohio has placed him among the large pool of potential Democratic presidential hopefuls, heads to Iowa on Thursday.

I asked Sen. Brown to comment whether his tax policy differs are tracks two progressive tax policy plans released recently, one by new House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Sen.Elizabeth Warren. Both Cortex and Warren have plans that hike taxes on the very wealthy.

Central to Brown’s “Dignity of Work” theme are rising wages and better benefits. Over the decades, however, corporate America has mostly not delivered on those two objectives. The President’s tax bill passed without input from Democrats including Sen. Brown has done little to remedy stagnant wages and job benefits that include affordable health care.

Brown ticked off three bills he said penalize companies who don’t do right by their workers, tell reporters on the call that he wasn’t going to pick and choose between specific parts of plans released by Cortez or Warren

To be specific, though, he did agree that the wealthy are not paying their fair share of taxes.

“I want the dignity of work to be the center piece of every Democratic campaign in the country,” he said. “Respecting and honoring work. That’s the purpose of the tour."

Sen. Brown is seen by many as the working man’s public official who might be able to do what Hillary Clinton couldn’t do two years ago, namely, capture key heartland states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that are key to winning the Electoral College.

“It’s not enough to tax the rich,” he said, adding, “Tax breaks for the middle” are also needed.

Brown, who was on the short list of VP candidates for Clinton in 2016, described the White House as a “retreat for Wall Street executives.” Depictions like this place him next to or very near to the same sentiments expressed by Cortez and Warren and others, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who gave Clinton a run for her money in 2016.

Brown wants Congressional Republicans to stand up to Trump, and if need be, override any veto he might executive on future budgeting bills, especially those that could trigger another shut down of the federal government.

Brown expressed concern over trying to “straight jacket the executive branch” given there has never been a Commander in Chief like Trump who “takes pride in shutting government down.” 

Brown said the frigid temperatures in Ohio will no doubt dampen turnout to his kickoff event today.

Can 'The National Chaplain' engineer a White House win for 'Rumpled Suits?'

For everyone obsessed with political intrigue surrounding the growing list of declared and undeclared White House candidates, the unlikely but possible interaction between two prominent Buckeye State politicos is worth a cursory discussion because it's only happened once before, in 1920, when Warren G. Harding, a Republican, beat James Cox, a Democrat. 

Former Ohio Gov. John Rasich

In Republican world, President Donald Trump is the foregone reelection nominee. Providing he survives a sudden health event that would incapacitate him or withstands an attempt to impeach him by now-majority House-caucus Democrats, any other Republican with eyes for Washington will find any attempt to unseat him through the GOP primary process a costly and grueling uphill battle.

Enter stage right, Ohio's recently departed two-term Ohio Governor, John Kasich. The "National Chaplain" got shellacked in 2016 when he and more than a dozen other Republicans were dispatched by The Donald like so many ducks at a county fair shooting gallery. Remaining in the race long past his use-by date, Kasich has shown himself to be a sore loser who found his media niche in being the Trump critic's dancing bear.

Now gone as governor, Kasich hopes his new post-governor gig as a CNN political contributor will keep him before the nation's eyes as a Republican alternative to Trump and his base voters who stand by their man's policies and style.

In one of his TV appearances this past weekend after he landed a talent agent and became employed as another CNN political pundit, John Kasich no doubt relished his guest appearance on Bill Maher's new season opening show Friday. Whatever rosy outcome he thought might happen, didn't, as Maher put Kasich in irons with one simple question followed by one simple encouragement.

The upshot of Kasich's opening segment, during which he tried but failed to impress Maher with his now-cemented narrative that he's got new ideas other Republicans don't,  Maher urged Kasich to run so he could do the nation a favor by splitting the Republican vote, that would thereby help elect a Democrat president.

Maher labeled the 66-year old Kasich as "Republican Classic" even as Kasich congratulated himself for accepting expanded Medicaid when so many other GOP governors said no. A former Fox News channel TV host, Kasich has honed his public relations shtick over four decades in public office. Trying to schmooz Maher, Kasich jokingly asked the progressive and very liberal HBO host of "Real Time" if he wanted to run his presidential campaign? Maher said no.

Dubbed the "National Chaplain" because he loves to invoke his sanctimonious Bible beliefs into his ideas for governance, Kasich became easily paralyzed when Maher asked him the simple question of what Republicans stand for these days? Further quieting the glib governor, who tried to dominate the segment, Maher told him that he couldn't win, but he should enter the race anyhow so his candidacy could help a Democrat win the presidency in 2020. Unable to explain to Maher why Republicans are as insane as the president, Kasich fumbled his answer with more platitudes—including his current favorite, "change happens from the bottom up"—and vagueness.

For all his many sermonettes about his many new ideas, Kasich offers none because lazy reporters don't ask him to name them.

Some simple background on Ohio politics shows that Republicans have dominated state level politics going back to the early 1990s. During this long red wedding, one Democrat politico who voters kept returning to office was Sherrod Brown, a Democrat. Last November Brown won his third 6-year term in Washington by defeating his GOP and Trump-endorsed opponent by about six points.

Known for his now trademark features of a gravelly voice and Boss suits appropriately rumpled, Brown hasn't declared his yet declared his presidential candidacy as have eight others, including Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Richard Ojeda and Andrew Yang.

Nonetheless, Brown's interesting victory in Trump Ohio has created a buzz about him running for president. 

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown talks
to Ohio's leading independent
report

From his early days in the Ohio House to his two-terms as Secretary of State to seven terms in the US House of Representatives and his dozen years in the US Senate, Sen. Brown has shown none of Kasich's Aaron Burr-like raw, manipulative ambition to be president.

Down home, Brown has built his bona fides by championing common workers and programs and policies that address their needs. From worker and union rights to fair-trade policies and battling Wall Street, from defending women's rights and advocating for a healthcare public option, Brown is the virtual polar opposite of John Kasich on so many issues.

Kasich has encased himself in Reagan-era beliefs that market dynamics will solve most problems and that going to bat for supply-side CEOs, especially lowering their income tax rates, will create jobs and wealth as their largess trickles down to the less well off.

In Brown's world, the "Dignity of Work" has become his new rallying cry as he contemplates more than a brief flirtation with the prospect of running for president, as others think he should do. His aw-shucks demeanor, world views and pragmatic economic affiliation with America's shrinking middle class could hold the key to unlocking the Electoral College vote in 2020. A white, male, moderate from an important Heartland state like Ohio, Brown's place on the next ticket could prevent Trump from winning the Midwestern states he won two years ago, that put him over the top and into the Oval Office.

Remember, it was just two years ago that Brown made Hillary Clinton's short-list of VP potentials.
So it begs the question, if John "Classic Republican" Kasich does what he teases about doing—actually declaring he's a candidate for president—would his vanity campaign, guaranteed to lose as Bill Maher said it would, help elect a Democratic ticket Sherrod Brown might find himself on?

Brown is the "dark horse" candidate for some, should he announce he's a candidate, which becomes increasingly possible the more he talks about plans to visit some early primary states. He's said that he'll make a determination in the coming months about whether he's going to launch that campaign, resign himself to being a strong voice for whomever Democrats do nominate to be their standard bearer.

As for John Kasich, his predictable and now rote routine as National Chaplain soothing the pangs of a dysfunctional nation may wear thin on CNN, especially if and when anyone with any history of his record in Congress or in Ohio challenges him on his long-held policies and programs.

Meanwhile, Maher showed how easily Kasich can be disarmed. Maybe other reporters, especially the high-paid coastal elites who adore him despite his dismal record in Ohio, will break with the good-old boy media fraternity and take it to one of their own.

Gone as governor, Ohio media finally dares criticize John Kasich

For long-time students of John Richard Kasich who have followed his performance politician's career arc from LSC intern to Governor of Ohio, it's curious that Ohio media in general and the statehouse press corps in particular are finally daring to criticize him in ways they couldn't muster over the last eight years.

Gov. Kasich with his starting team:
Mary Taylor and Mark Kvamme.

Editorials in the Toledo Blade, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dayton Daily News and Akron Beacon Journal, among others, paint a picture of the petulant and prickly state CEO as someone who had tense relations with so many would-be partners, especially his ultra-right Republican lawmakers, who sent him a gaggle of terrible bills he signed into law. In his second term, they were so out of step with him that they mustered the votes necessary to override several of his vetoes.

Always a showman, Kasich, who's honed his performance politician chops over decades in the public eye, has landed an agent and his sought-after post-governor gig as a CNN contributor. His landing an agent and his hiring by President Donald Trump's most despised TV network made news on the day all other Buckeye media was fixated on the swearing-in ceremonies, and the six executive orders new Gov. Mike DeWine signed as his first policy initiatives on his first day in office.

Finally confessing after years of being reticent to do so, Ohio's legacy newspapers repeated Kasich's false but now set-in-concrete talking points about his great (or not) creation of jobs, his saving a state whose emergency fund was depleted to 89 cents when he was first elected in 2010, and his most worthwhile although very misunderstood adoption of expanded Medicaid. They all recalled his first big blunder, pushing to gut public sector unions via SB5 and included his calculated PR error to boycott welcoming Republicans who came to Cleveland for the party's national nominating convention in 2016..

As the dancing bear of anti-Trumpers, Kasich, now 66, will become another 24/7 talking pundit on CNN, where he'll keep his "voice" in front of a world-wide TV audience even though he's admitted repeatedly, as often as lazy TV personalities asked him the question, that he couldn't beat Trump if the race were held today. If he's wishy washy on his chances at mounting his third run for the Oval Office in 20 years, come 2020, what will change his fortunes going forward now that he's no longer leader of a major, and very red state like Ohio, where Trump beat Hillary Clinton by nearly nine points, and he as the sitting governor beat Trump in his lone primary win even though he couldn't push past the 50-percent mark in his home state?

While a handful of papers dared look back on his tenure to weigh-in on what he did right and wrong, every one of them left many of his scandals on the table. Each avoided laying out some of his biggest political pitfalls, including his dirty-tricks campaign in 2014 to derail a potential challenger, Charley Earl of the Libertarian Party, his erosion of voting rights, signing into law more than 20 bills that hurt women's health rights, his combative personality that criticized politicians and party politics even though he was guilty on both counts in many cases, and two huge failures, one on for-profit charter schools and a second on the degraced husband of his chief of staff who falsified data on a federal education grant form.

Kasich's inspector general released a report on Bill Lager, owner of the Electric Classroom of Tomorrow, who made large donations to Kasich and other Republicans over the years after receiving tens of millions of dollars that should have gone to public schools but for policies Kasich and his GOOP legislature put into place that kept the money flowing even when the students at these for-profit charters performed poorly. Kasich took Ohio from 5th best in the nation on education to 23rd, earning Ohio the nickname of "The Wild West" of charter schools.

Where was the outrage of these broad sheets when it came to his near abandonment of his governor's duties, his fleecing of taxpayers for millions to protect him on a presidential campaign trail he never once mentioned he would undertake if reelected in 2014? There was no apology by the Plain Dealer, who seemed proud that the paper had endorsed him twice, for taking down a video of his juvenile behavior at an editorial meeting that included two other governor hopefuls?

As the facts show, these papers dropped the ball or were blind to when Ohio's turnaround from the Great Recession started, and it wasn't when the glib governor he came into office. Former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, as Bureau of Labor Statistics charts show, took the entire brunt of giant job losses yet managed through skilled budgeting and stimulus help from Washington to send the job creation line heading up again before he left office.

The now infamous claim by Team Kasich that Ohio was in a ditch and facing a budget hole of $8 billion is an urban myth Kasich exploited that newspapers let him exploit. The truth is the $8 billion hole figure was only an estimate by then Republican Auditor of State Mary Taylor. Taylor's made up figure was taken as fact, as the real gap was billions lower as fathomed by budget experts. Taylor went on to become Kasich's Lt. Governor running mate, who cut herself loose from him when she ran for the top job.

Out of office, John Kasich will do what he does best: motor his mouth on TV and in editorials about solving problems he's been part of creating for decades. Kasich, who made his bones by decrying debts and deficits, oversaw the largest budgets in Ohio history when he was simultaneously whining that Ohio was broke. He created a super-secret, private jobs group (JobsOhio) he said when first running for office that he would head until the Ohio Constitutional said he couldn't do that. JobsOhio, beside being a money hog, didn't live up to Kasich's claim of how great it was.

His totally unreported scandal on the pension front was allowing Wall Street managers so soak state pension funds for huge fees even though these funds have little to show from spending millions on exorbitant fees. "Good work if you can get it," one Ohio editorial writer wrote.

Maybe highest on Kasich's list of shameful actions is how he skewed Ohio's tax system to favor the rich by shifting the tax burden to the poor. The Akron Beacon Journal makes this important point in an editorial that outlines how Kasich, a multi-millionaire himself, cut income taxes that were sold as winners but have produced the opposite effect. Kasich's tax scheme produced a budget that was $1 billion short, that apostles of no-new taxes filled with budget cuts.

As the ABJ notes, over the last decade, including eight years under Gov. Kasich and an Republican-led legislature, "state spending on key priorities down sharply in real dollars, for instance, higher education, down 20 percent; transportation, 42 percent; local governments, 46 percent. Such trajectories do not point to a stronger Ohio economy or improved quality of life. So there is much to be gained in a more equitable tax system that generates additional revenue."

Citizen Kasich in 2010

decries government regulations

In his latest op-ed piece in USA Today, the Catholic boy who once wanted to become a priest but found fame and fortune through partisan politics more to his liking says his Republican Party is mired in 1950's thinking, and that new ideas, of which he will claim to be the father of, are what's needed now. What those new ideas are, if they are different than his life-long belief in supply-side economics and free market mechanics and his desire to overturn Roe v Wade, are a mystery.

One new idea Kasich should embrace, but he won't because he's stuck in the past as deeply as he claims the GOP is, would be championing a Canadian-style, Medicare-for-all health system. Another new idea he might voice on CNN is that America's military buildup is a prime driver of our debt and deficits, a subject he says can be controlled with a federal balanced budget amendment, which virtually all sane economists say would be disastrous if all options to cut spending—including military expenditures—are not on the table.

Trying to parlay himself as a so-called "moderate" is one of his trump cards. But as noted here, he's not a moderate. With media encased in its belief that he is a moderate because his talks like a moderate even though his real record shows he's not, media will continue to hide his real record.

Kasich's quirky, shoot from the mouth personalty has rubbed virtually all people and parties, especially his own, the wrong way. As many a Capitol Square observer has observed, he's got his ideas and if his ideas aren't yours, good lucking coming to a compromise with him.

As many a Capitol Square observer has observed, he's got his ideas and if yours aren't his, he's not with you. All his talking about coming together through compromise is something his track record in Ohio shows he doesn't do well.  

Kasich v Brown for POTUS: One is ambitious. One isn't

As Ohio media, especially Columbus statehouse reporters, mentally masturbate over the giddy improbability that the race for President of The United States in 2020 could pit two native sons against each other, that the odds of that happening are near equal with another dinosaur-eliminating meteor hitting Earth anytime soon.

But the brigade of Buckeye reporters, led by the always John Kasich-friendly Columbus Dispatch, will spare no digital ink in following the road ahead for the soon-to-be former governor and Ohio's senior senator, recently elected to a third 6-year term, Sherrod Brown.

Gov. elect John R. Kasich on Election
Day night in 2010.

For John Kasich, the Pennsylvania-born backer of Reagan-era supply-side economics that former Republican President, now deceased, George H. W. Bush called "voodoo economics," his life after governor rests on the media's continued gullibility in believing that he's the anti-Trump dancing bear who might, could, maybe but won't tell now (that is, until God tells him) whether he'll take on the President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries slated in two years.

Kasich, as ambitious and wylie as Aaron Burr ever was in the 1790s to elevate himself to president, thinks he can cherry pick the issues he wants to talk about, knowing he can rely on media to confine itself to his top-drawer topics: debts and deficits and proselytizing about a fantasy federal balanced budget amendment he claims will cure the ills of wasteful government spending.

Ever the showman, Kasich's time as a Fox News commentator will soon be revived as he desperately seeks another easy, high-paying gig as another partisan talking head on some 24/7 cable news show. Kasich's second showing as a presidential candidate in 2016 (his first was in 2000) ended in tragedy as he barely won one Electoral College vote (270 are needed to be POTUS). His politically motivated stubborn streak kept him in the race as the last man standing against Trump despite his laughable showing in one state primary contest after another. He lost 49, winning one, Ohio, but with less than 50 percent of the vote.

For John Kasich, the call to be president is his life goal as he puts his old one of being right with Jesus when his soul reaches the Pearly Gates in layaway. With little campaign cash to spend in 2016 compared to many of his better financed rivals, Kasich turned to financial help from Ohio taxpayers, who covered the cost of his salary and certain expenses, especially protection services by state highway patrolmen dedicated to protecting Ohio's governor while on the road. Kasich says he wants to keep his voice active while he wanders the political graveyard. The only problem with his voice is that it has a history of being wrong on most important issues, from health care to women's rights to voting to job creation and tax cuts and more.

Meanwhile, across the isle and ready to start his third 6-year term in the Senate, is Sherrod Brown

This reporter (left) interviews Sen.
Sherrod Brown in Columbus.

. Born a Buckeye, unlike Kasich who adopted Ohio, Brown has defined his persona and political leanings over 40 years in public office. Starting in the Ohio House, then as Secretary of State for two terms, then as Congressman and now as sitting Senator, Brown's recent win in a very red Trump state may appear more like a political anomaly than a slam dunk, given his alignment with progressive values that include defending workers' rights, which he's translated into his new catch phrase, "the dignity of work."

But with Brown's cruise to victory over GOP Trumpster Congressman Jim Renacci, Brown now finds a growing platoon of Democrats, and others more open to the new breed of Democrats who are making their own way against the traditional tide of establishment Democrats, who want him to run for POTUS. Kasich has to hunt and peck for his band of zealots outside the ranks of media, compared to Brown who finds himself on a list of more than a dozen Democrats whose names are touted as 2020 contenders.

The big difference between these Ohioans is that the former, Kasich, will spare no child to be president, while the latter, Brown, is being pulled along like the moon pulls a reluctant sea to rise to high tide.

Sherrod Brown, for his many decades in public office, isn't running forward to occupy the Oval Office in the same pell mell way Kasich is. Is Brown responding to the cheering crowd who wants him to run? Yes. He says crowd pressure is forcing him to take a look at a race he wasn't planning on making, unlike Kasich who's eyed the Oval Office going back to 2000, when he retired after nine terms in Congress to mount a pathetically troubled campaign for president that crashed before it took office as Republicans rallied around their real favorite, then Texas-governor George W. Bush.

The two do share common ground: both barely register blips on a list of 2020 candidates pollsters poll about. Brown registers just one percent by Politico, while Kasich's name and many others are totally absent.

As national and state media invest their time in wild speculation on whether one or both of these Ohio officials will actually declare their candidacy in early 2020, this reporter, who called the results of Ohio's 2018 elections nearly a year ago, before any candidates had actually declared their candidacy, can save them all some time.

Kasich will make a third run at it just to show his ego is as unbounded now as it has been since he first entered elected politics in 1978. Brown, a short-list contender for VP for Hillary Clinton, will not make the leap despite calls to run. And no matter whether Mr. Rumpled Suits gets haircuts on a regular basis, these considerations of appearance, which right now are all media has to hang on to, are not predictors that he'll essentially leave his job as full-time senator to run for president, even though he can do so in two years, lose, and still have a job for another four years, maybe in the majority if 2020 is as good to Democrats as 2016 was to House Democrats.

Term-limited Kasich, meanwhile, has no where to go but up after he retires from state CEO status. He will get a media job, so his twitchy face and strident voice will be seen and heard by the American public.

But the glib former governor should be forewarned that if he gets his wish, his voice on all the issues he's wrong on will resonate to his disadvantage, as wised-up Americans see through his false prophecy of claims he can "bring people together," when all he's done is try to triangulate the great partisan divide to his advantage.

Kasich versus Brown in 2020? The sun will explode first.

Opeditude: Enacting 'Heartbeat Bill' aborts Ohio's future

Head Republican Neanderthal, Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof, boasted to reporters that failure to override Kasich’s veto of the so-called "Heartbeat Bill" during this year's lame-duck session won't be repeated in the 133rd General Assembly.

“We will have a supermajority that is pro-life in both chambers and the next General Assembly that will be sworn in less than two weeks, and we have a governor coming in who has said he will sign that bill,” Obhof said, the Plain Dealer reported.

The PD reported that the vote in the Senate was 19 to 13, one short of the constitutionally required 20 votes needed to override a veto.

Gov. Kasich said in 2016 while 

campaigning for president that he 

would like to see Roe v Wade overturned

Why is Obhof so confident this stupid bill will rise again? Gov.-elect Mike DeWine, a Republican and staunch pro-life Catholic who chaired uber-conservative Rick Santorum's Ohio presidential campaign in 2016, said "on the campaign trail he would sign a heartbeat bill into law."

If that happens, Ohio will have effectively aborted its future, rushing pell mell in retrograde motion to claim it's a state of the past, not of the future. Media, especially the platoon of Ohio statehouse reporters, has completely missed the relationship between backward thinking social engineering and future economic development.

Women represent a majority of today's workforce, they represent a majority of voters, and they arguably represent Ohio's future workforce, as Buckeye youth leave for greener pastures in other growing states where jobs are far more plentiful or will be than back home.

Outgoing Gov. John Kasich, whose tenure is short-lived as Ohio's quirky if not Quixotic CEO who hopes God sends him a message to run for President of the United States a third time come 2020, in his heart of hearts would love to sign the Heartbeat Bill. Afterall, it represents his long-held, male dominated notion that abortion is a sin against God, because the Bible says so. A Bible thumper his entire life, Kasich retreats into sanctimonious blather, a political redoubt he hopes cannot be trumped.

Please recall, that on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, Gov. Kasich, who everyone, especially reporters should remember wanted to be a Catholic priest as a young boy, said he wants Roe v Wade overturned so states can be free to deal with abortion on their own terms. It comes as no surprise, then, that Kasich believes the tripe that Planned Parenthood, a group he worked to deny funding to, was selling baby parts. Good grief!

By using the clever red herring reasoning that signing such a monstrosity bill would trigger court challenges that would cost taxpayers a bundle to defend the backward measure in court, Kasich hopes to appear one shade saner than Obhof and like-minded Republicans who seem determined to force this terrible bill into law next year.

Kasich may earn some brownie points by vetoing the bill, although he squanders those same brownie points when he signed yet another abortion bill into law that limits the time a woman can exercise her constitutional rights to a procedure not sought, that nonetheless can save the life of a mother when performed.

Barely positive in population growth over the last ten years, Ohio is drifting older, less educated, fatter and, with Obhof's cock-sure crowing that the HeartBeat Bill will become law next year, dumber.

When a mega-corporation like Amazon looked at dozens of communities across the nation to expand its HQ2, Columbus and Cincinnati were among the contenders. Amazon selected New York City and Washington D.C, locations where social attitudes are far more liberal and saner to the social current and proposed landscape in Ohio.

There's no doubt that Amazon would have turned down Ohio's public largess in a heartbeat, simply based on backward social engineering like Ohio's austere climate for women's health options. What CEO would want to subject their female workforce, including the daughters and granddaughters of those female employees to the kind of harsh climate Obhof thinks Ohio needs?

Already struggling to create enough jobs for all the Ohioans wanting good-paying, full-time jobs, despite Kasich's easily disproved claims of how his super secret JobsOhio group is doing, Ohio's is ready to further abort its future with ill-conceived laws like the Heartbeat Bill.

While it may bring smiles to Ohio's Right-to-Life community, a slender slice of the population Kasich and other GOP officials love to court, the court challenges that are guaranteed to occur if the GOP-led legislature does what it wants to do will further shine a light on how Ohio, a once great state, has fallen into a severe state of mental disrepair.

The social climate and the jobs climate cannot be separated. One begets the others, so the sooner statehouse reporters understand this relationship the sooner they can push Obhof and company to confront their own cruel thirst for draconian bills, that if quenched with more monstrosity bills like HeartBeat, will foreclose on any serious job growth the Buckeye State hopes to garner from new growth states like Idaho, Arizona, Washington or old ones like California.

Ohio's future is a heartbeat away. But if bad bills are the vowed future agenda of nutty lawmakers like Obhof and nuttier governors like Mike DeWine, don't blame Amazon or any other company for saying thanks but no thanks to any tax giveaways the state thinks it can offer that offset the dire consequences from backward thinking people and their backward looking bills.

No surprise: Kasich exits 'stage right' with political posturing

Ohio's term-limited quack governor, John R. Kasich, has until January 14 to swagger, strut and posture before he wanders into the political graveyard brimming with so many over-the-hill politicians.

Gov. John R. Kasich

Shouldering a legacy of ignominious bills and equally bad policy initiatives, Gov. Kasich's eight years in office has left the once-great state wondering where its future greatness will come from?

How to make Ohio great again is a perplexing problem, one sure to elude Republicans who swept away their Democratic challengers just a month ago, and who mostly align themselves with Kasich's outdated supply-side mentality that favors pro-business policies that invariably result in anti-worker, anti-wage-growth.

With one foot out the door after two terms of bullying and berating local governments, public school districts and public workers, Kasich's first bonehead move was to try to gut public-sector collective bargaining with the passage in 2011 of SB 5. Had the bill remained law, it would have relegated collective bargaining for public union workers to the harsh whims of employers. Buckeye voters did something then they have failed to do again, rise up in mass to nullify a bill designed to hurt unions—and their historic support from Democrats to take up the causes of workers, women, minorities and seniors.

As The Toledo Blade wrote in 2014, Ohio voters should "consider whether to give John Kasich another four years as governor this November ... they might want to revisit his first year in office, when he promoted a series of extremist policies. Chief among these was the union-busting Senate Bill 5."

The quixotic, easily angered Kasich still thinks God has a plan for him that includes being President of The United States. Lashed to the absurd notion that the free market is actually free and a humane arbiter when confronted with massive social problems, Kasich's hope for his future is so glum that even he acknowledges that Trump would rub him out if the two were matched against each other again in 2020.

That was the ballgame in 2016, when Kasich and 15 other GOP candidates thought their "establishment" political credentials, honed over decades of polished, professional showmanship that sung the song of CEOs while forgetting the words to the song that average workers wanted to hear, were no match for a never-politico like New York billionaire and reality TV show maven, Donald John Trump. To this fraternity's great surprise, and greater chagrin, Trump blew Kasich and company away. The sanctimonious governor who always invokes God in his jabber, performed among the worst of the lot, but stayed in the race because he knew media would follow him.

No longer the state to go to—those honors go to Nevada, Utah, Washington, Texas and Florida according to recently released Census Bureau data—remaining Buckeyes are older, less educated and fatter. With a population that has grown over the last decade by barely enough people to fill Ohio State's football stadium once, Ohio lawmakers are doing their level best to give the world more reasons to stay away.

Not satisfied with the slew of anti-women's health bills he's already signed into law over the last eight years, Kasich added to his pathetic pile by signing another bill to limit abortion options. Signing SB 145 into law, which bans the dilation and evacuation procedure, Kasich cements his reputation as man ignorant of women's health issues.

He summoned the courage to veto the so-called "Heartbeat Bill," which bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. But not because he disagrees with the intent of the bill, but because he thinks it won't hold up in court, and defending it will cost Ohio millions. But Republicans who hate government intervention in general, think using it on woman's health rights is alright. Ohio's full-time legislature is controlled by a supermajority of Republicans, so Kasich's one act of sanity maybe overridden before the year ends. And if it isn't, Gov-elect Mike DeWine, a staunch Catholic, said he'd sign the heat-beat bill.

Thinking his voice will not be diminished once he leaves office, Kasich's future depends on gullible state and national media following his outbursts and flamboyant utterances—"rotten, stinking politics." As he migrates back to what he does best, blathering on about policies he helped enact (deficits, gerrymandering, income inequality) then turned against when that made news, it's safe to say The Columbus Dispatch, a life-long Kasich support whose editorials virtually always support his tortured, austere thinking, will continue to cover him as if he's still Ohio's leader and the savior of the free world.

Desperately seeking a high-profile media gig that pays him well to spew his long-held beliefs that tax

President Donald J. Trump

cuts create jobs, poor people should work harder and hurdle obstacles before they receive public benefits, and deficits are bad and should be adjusted with cruel corrections to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Kasich will continue his dependability as Trump's alter-ego dancing bear. Always seeing business from the viewpoint of CEOS, Kasich long ago sacrificed the plight of workers to balance sheet priorities, where the cost of workers, like overhead expenses like utilities and property taxes, are to be reduced.

His stump speech in 2016 centered on his unique ability to bring people together. The history of that claim is so false as to be funny. Anyone who cares to research it will find he's been unable to bring people together on anything that doesn't share his vision. Even his own legislature's frustration with his inability to do that will be manifested when his vetoes are overridden, as if he were an out-going  Democrat. GOP big game hunters have him in their sights and won't be afraid to pull the trigger.

The Catholic boy from western Pennsylvania gave up a life in the priesthood for the fame and fortune in Republican politics. He's enriched himself over four decades in politics to the tune of between $9-22 million. Playing "The Grinch" this Christmas, Kasich vetoed a pay raise for elected officials who had not had one in ten years. Posting budgets that set records as the highest in Ohio history, a strange phenomena for someone who harps on government spending and especially federal deficits, Kasich kicked his fellow Republicans in the teeth on the way out the door this year, as he searches for his next big payday on a 24/7 cable news network. 

His quirky personality and equally quirkier policies have made him a persona non grata among Democrats, a traitor to Trump Republicans and a false prophet to independents who think he sounds good until they examine his outbursts further, realizing they're in-line with Trump's policies. Despite the small difference in personal styles, with Kasich's being just short of The Donald's overt clownishness, Republicans of a feather gather together as was the case when Kasich remained silent of Trump's humongous tax giveaway to already rich business and absurdly rich individuals.

The National Chaplain is certainly older but not appreciably wiser. Planning yet another book that will re-plow the same furrows from previous auto-biographical books, John R. Kasich seems content to float along in the flotsam and jetsam of cable news shows that do more to divide the nation than bring it together.

To MOGA, China Should Annex Ohio

How to Make Ohio Great Again? It was once, for over a century and half from its statehood moment in 1803. Sadly, that run is over as population stagnantes and demographics drift to the old, the poor and less educated, as the next generation departs for jobs in greener pastures in other growing states where social climates are far more welcoming.

Plucked from "The Hard Truths of Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy," this New York Times article made a true statement: "No amount of tax incentives would have convinced Amazon to expand in a medium-sized city such as Columbus, Ohio, rather than Northern Virginia and Queens,which sit in some of the largest pools of talent in the country."

Outgoing Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich

After eight years of outgoing Governor John R. Kasich's reverse Robin Hood policies, many of which took from the poor and gave to the rich, he signed into law a host of obstacles to hurdle for many to secure public benefits, including a woman's Constitutional right to an abortion. 

Meanwhile, three of Ohio's big cities—Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo—continue to rank among the nation's most distressed, as defined by the "2018 Distressed Cities Index," compiled by The Economic Innovation Group, located in Washington D.C. Other small cities like Youngstown, where its economic backbone was made of steel, have stood helpless as half their populations left as the corporate tide of jobs and benefits receded to wash ashore elsewhere. When giant corporations like General Motors stiff one-time "beehive" again, as appears to be the case with shuttering the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant and relocating those jobs to other facilities far away, Ohio takes another economic hit it won't recover from.

Voting for Donald Trump for president over Hillary Clinton by almost nine points in 2016, rural Ohioans—comprised of the same group of fearful Republicans who hated Mitt Romney's "47%" because they are takers, not creators—seem to want their own handout under the guise of being the "forgotten man."  

Another view of the so-called forgotten man, that the forgotten man doesn't want to discuss, is that the forgotten men and women of Buckeye State farm county don't have and don't want to acquire the education or skills modern companies look for in workers (see Amazon above). They also won't or can't move to where 21st century job are migrating to (not Ohio) and think corporations acting in the best interest of shareholders, not government working in the public interest, is their free-market answer when reality shows business leaders (viz. Romney's job creator class) will abandon them without shame or regret, administering in the process great harm to communities who competed for their presence, often with tax incentives or public brides as some may see the practice of business attraction.

Kasich, Ohio's 66-year old term-limited state CEO whose tried and twice failed to become the GOP nominee for president, received help from a like-minded fiscal- and socially-conservative GOP-led legislature to cut taxes at every opportunity, thereby redistributing money upwards from the rural poor working at minimum wages jobs, if they have work at all, to already wealthy corporations and individuals who don't share the Christmas spirit of helping the forgotten and forlorn. 

The promise of more jobs from lower taxes has been a long-held urban myth by Kasich and his supply-side ilk. But as reality has clearly shown, it's proved to produce more fantasy than rising take-home wages. For reasons based largely on shifting demographics, and an obsession by state lawmakers to pass socially conservative bills that put Ohio among the nation's most backward looking states, corporations like Google or Apple or Amazon don't want to locate their growing ranks of female workers, and their daughters, in states with anti-women health measures. Kasich has signed about a dozen into law so far.  

Not letting up from its Medieval ways, the 132nd General Assembly will send two more Right-to-Life endorsed bills to him as the 2018 lame-duck sessions quacks to a close. Among them is the "Heartbeat Bill," a draconian measure that eliminates abortion when a fetal heartbeat is found and puts doctors involved in jeopardy of committing a criminal offense. 

When a historically strict Catholic country like Ireland where abortion was banned legalizes it by amending the Constitution, Ohio striving to be old Ireland is indeed a strange tale of backward thinking for seriously out of whack lawmakers who pass such bills and governors who sign them into law.

Kasich and company think they can avoid their real record of lost opportunity and unnecessary hurdles by talking about the peril of national debt. He argues for a balanced budget amendment to remedy government spending, but it's government spending in communist China—where millionaires and billionaires are born daily—that pushes the centuries old, dirt-poor nation forward as it becomes the largest economy in the world, where the Chinese Dream of an expanding middle-class is more viable today that the American Dream of middle-class status is shrinking by the day.

Shanghai Tower, the tallest building
in China, second tallest in the world.

Maybe one way Ohio can find its future is to have China annex it? By doing this, China's central government, which never shuts down as President Trump wants to do soon, can spend to rebuild bridges like the Brent-Spence, so important to commerce, and build a new 21st century version that includes high-speed trains that cruise along at 190-mph. In China today, spectacular feats of engineering are both amazing and commonplace. 

To Make Ohio Great Again, maybe some "Belt and Road" programs on the scale China's leader Xi JinPing is pushing for countries it wants to partner and do business with is just what the doctor ordered to drag an aging, backward-looking, former great state like Ohio whose political leadership has been corrupted by decades of faulty thinking into the modern world.

A Voter's Call To Arms: Limit Ohio's Legislature

The State of Ohio's wonder years date from its post-Revolutionary War land-of-opportunity allure to its post World War II prosperity. Growth in the Buckeye State was fueled by an expanding middle class, whose labor and taxes built robust public infrastructure and scores of competent public school systems. High school graduates from Ohio or elsewhere could attend a variety of affordable and admired liberal arts colleges and universities that helped the state hits its stride.

The Ohio Statehouse in Columbus

From its birth in 1803 as the Union's 17th state, Ohio has traveled from being the sought-after Northwest Territory newly minted Americans bet their futures on to today's modern Republican Party-driven state that prides itself on mean-spirited social engineering and regressive tax policies that benefit few except the already wealthy and corporations seeking public subsidy for their private profit-making.

Unlike the planet Mars that confused early astronomers who didn't understand why it periodically moved in retrograde motion, Ohio GOP political leaders have over the past quarter century consciously put it in reverse with laws that represent their extreme social- and fiscal-conservative thinking.

After 216 years of statehood, and now just weeks away from the start of 2019, Ohio finds itself inextricably caught in the grasp of modern Republican Party activists who pride themselves on passing laws that further push the one-time state-on-the-move toward being a dysfunctional state that's losing the race for the future by forcing government to be the handmaiden of corporate shareholders who relish shifting the burden of taxation from fat-cat business to lean-income individuals.

With moribund population growth that leaves those who won't or can't move to 21st century states of opportunity, including Colorado, California, Washington, or Oregon, Buckeyes are now older, fatter and less educated than ever before. The so-called "forgotten man" of President Donald Trump's base, who believed his incredulous fake-news promises of bringing back well-paying manufacturing jobs that will never return, cry for handouts when a giant, very profitable corporation like General Motors shutters auto assembly plants to move jobs out of state, and even out of the country.

Republican candidates have controlled the gears of government—occupying the state's five constitutional offices and both chambers of the legislature by mostly large margins—for a quarter of a century. With the exception of four years from 2006-2010 when Democrats occupied four statewide offices and ran the Ohio House of Representatives for a lonely two-year stint, the heartland battleground state, whose well-paying, middle-class job industries of rubber, steel, glass and a host of other attendant automotive supply chain business, now confronts a future made less bright future, as knowledge-based tech industries like Amazon, Google or Apple reject it for other states where leaders and lawmakers value government's role instead of trying to hobble it.

Ohio's slide from its once mighty manufacturing prowess may have started in the 1970s, but accelerated when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became law in the 1990s. NAFTA greenlighted the dismemberment of communities, large and small, who suffered as manufacturers sought cheaper labor in countries like Mexico or China, where unions are weak if they exist at all.

For a state that has consistently trended red Republican—with 2016 demonstrating it could support a crooked real estate developer male over a seasoned and experienced female government leader by nearly nine points and 2018 demonstrating again that GOP candidates can sweep away their Democratic rivals—allowing its legislature to be in perpetual session runs counter to Republican beliefs that government that governs lease governs best. This notion was espoused early on in America by Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father who in 1776 authored The Declaration of Independence, who aligned with farmers and states over Alexander Hamilton's fondness for bankers, manufacturers and a strong federal government.

With a full-time legislature comes full-time employment for lobbyists, as the Buckeye State ranks among the top states with registered lobbyists whose job is to win special deals for their special-interest clients.

With the exception of its lone Democratic leader, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, winning a third term

Term-limited Ohio Gov. John Kasich

in Washington this year, Ohio continues under GOP control. Years of scandal under out-going Gov. John R. Kasich went virtually challenged by Democrats and their candidates despite the low-hanging fruit their scandals offered.

In the 40 days between this year's November elections and the swearing in of lawmakers early next January, Ohio's lame-duck legislature is doing its best to pass a posses of bad bills that will further earmark the state as a state to stay away from, especially if you're a woman seeking your health rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Legislators can be expected to do some or all of the following in the coming weeks: raise their pay at will, pass more anti-women bills related to abortion that criminalize participating doctors and cater to National Rifle Association demands for loser gun laws.

With statewide Democrats held captive by their low numbers to the resolve of majority Republicans to have their way on core issues, the last hope of citizens to change how their government work is through citizen initiatives. But Ohio GOP leaders are working to keep citizens at bay by raise the bar for thresholds to let all Ohioans have a say on any single issue. Once issue that might well work, if sold to voters who think government spending is always bad, is to limit the time the legislature can be in session in any year. Much like a state like Maryland, where the legislature comes in for a few months to do its work, then sends elected officials back home to do something else, Ohio should take control of their government by enacting a constitutional amendment to turn a year-long legislature into a very limited session.

It's precisely during lame-duck sessions when the goblins of greed come out to insert provisions into bills that may have languished in committee or never received a hearing at all, only to rise from the dead as their next life as an addition to another bill is assured by leaders of one party who make the ill-tasting sausage they are famous for.

Retrograde motion comes from retrograde thinking, and Ohio stands second to none on this score. Gov. Kasich, a performance showman who wants a gig in the media to keep him alive for two years when he'll get schellacked again if he makes a third run for president, believes that low taxes create jobs, despite decades of his belief not working out in real time. He's done his best over eight years to exacerbate income inequality by lower taxes across the board, enriching the rich while expanding those who struggle to make a living at minimum wage jobs that often come with no benefits, especially healthcare.

America's National Chaplain, Kasich turned a blind eye to billions in wasted government funding that went to for-profit charter schools, that almost always underperform the worst public schools. Outrageous fees charged to pension funds for little in return, was a fruit ripe for the picking, but Democrats were oblivious to how to tackle this scandal to their advantage. Signing more than a dozen bills that put Ohio among the states with the harshest anti-women's health measures will be among Kasich's most harmful actions.

Former President Barack Obama

speaks at a "Vote Early" rally at The

Ohio State University in Columbus

Ohio media, from its newspapers to electronic outlets including TV stations, chose again to chase the stick of political press releases and contrived comments instead of asking candidates questions that would have put their feet to the fire. Questions about policies and programs, and who will pay for them, were absent from discussions and debates. Until Buckeye media grows a backbone strong enough to confront candidates with tough questions, the he-said-she-said, ping pong of daily talking points will further confuse those voters who bother to vote.

It was a point of pride this year that voter turnout was over 50 percent. It was seen as proof citizens were engaged. The sad reality is that 48 percent of registered voters didn't vote. And more discouraging democracy is that, of the 7-million-plus registered voters, many more who are eligible to vote are not registered. Gov. Kasich won his re-election in 2014 by a 2-1 margin, and while that sounded impressive, he received fewer than one in four votes from registered voters.

Republicans want to run government like a private operation instead of public interest institution. The challenge for change now resides in the hands of ordinary voters. But voter apathy of voters, even during trying times like these when the nation's president lies every day with impunity, is the biggest obstacle to representative democracy.

Media could inform their readers with more than chase-the-stick reporting. But that seems a bridge to far for reporters who want access to officials and for editorial boards that seem to see the light only after elections are over.

Universal voting would make a 52-percent voter turnout seem terrible instead of the great turnout it was heralded this year. If Democrats ever want to win again in Ohio, they ought to be rattling the cage for a statewide initiative to amend the Ohio Constitution to provide for universal voting.

If everyone had to vote or suffer a significant civil penalty for not voting, Republicans would have to fear the will of voters, 99-percent of whom would not be millionaires because they scap along as best they can when GOP policies favor owners over workers.