tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-279074442024-03-13T03:17:33.093-04:00Spinelli on AssignmentReporting and commentary on people, politics, government and more, brought to you by Ohio's leading independent reporter.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.comBlogger181125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-26305231843798306842019-04-17T00:13:00.001-04:002019-04-17T00:21:31.118-04:00Wily Weld Upstages Cowardly Kasich With Trump ChallengeOne former two-term Republican governor showed he has the nerve to challenge President Donald J. Trump in the 2020 Republican primary race even though 89 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of general voters support the president.<br />
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William Weld, avowed fiscal conservative whose last run in 2016 was alongside Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico Governor, announced Monday that he will do what some tease they will do—stand up to President Trump next year.<br />
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"Ours is a nation built on courage, resilience, and independence," Weld said, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/15/politics/bill-weld-2020-trump/index.html">CNN</a>. "In these times of great political strife, when both major parties are entrenched in their 'win at all cost' battles, the voices of the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering."<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">John R, Kasich,Ohio's </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">imperial </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">executive eleader </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">from 2011 to 2019</span></div>
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While Weld showed he has enough backbone to take the plunge to defeat Trump, who's already amassed a political war chest of over $70 million, Ohio's former two-time governor, John R. Kasich, who's bogus tale of having undertaking an "Ohio Miracle" unravels with each day he's gone, had his anti-Trump thunder stolen by Weld, a skilled politician who didn't wait around to hear from God about whether or not he should take on the devil incarnate.<br />
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After eight years of Kasich catechism, the once great State of Ohio finds itself in a real fiscal pickle. Among his worst administrative mistakes, Kasich left state infrastructure is such terrible shape that new GOP Governor Mike DeWine, to make up for Kasich's Lehman Brother's style bonding out Ohio Turnpike revenues, had to propose raising revenue with a hike in the gas tax of 18 cents. DeWine's uber-conservative GOP lawmakers think a 10.5 cents gas tax hike is enough despite it being far short of what Ohio needs to repair its one-time leading system of roads and bridges. DeWine or another governor will be forced into another showdown in the coming years with a GOP-led legislative that refuses to raise taxes without offsetting other taxes, especially the income tax.<br />
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Staying in the 2016 race far after it was clear to everyone that he was getting crushed and could not recover. John Kasich has shown what a political coward he is, by training and experience. Kasich could have challenged Ohio's sole statewide Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown, in 2016, but chose to let that unique opportunity to show how popular he and his policies were pass by. If Kasich had challenged Sen. Brown and won, he would have earned a 6-year term in the U.S. Senate, the respect of all naysayers and a perfect perch to run for president. But Kasich lost all his primary races by big margins except his state primary, proving why he had previously opted for guaranteed paths to victory.<br />
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“I have no idea what I’m doing in 2020,” Kasich said last November at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, a state he bet his farm on and lost to Trump, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paloma/the-trailer/2018/11/15/the-trailer-ohio-gov-john-kasich-cheerfully-stokes-speculation-in-2020/5becf8491b326b392905483e/?utm_term=.b14e3d347880">Washington Post </a>reported. “What I don’t want to do is go into it again and diminish my voice, to get back out here and get the beans beat out of me.”<br />
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Weld, a familiar face to Granite State voters, having served two terms as governor of neighboring state Massachusetts, is courting New Hampshire voters again and in a big way. By announcing this early, Weld steals the wind out of Kasich's sails, leaving the National Chaplain an also ran who likely won't run now, since doing so will stop his CNN payday and force him to raise money to keep up with the Trumps and Welds.<br />
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If Kasich ever decides to take the advice the titles of his books suggest—"It's Up to Us," "Stand for Something"—he might show he's more than another calculating politico who knows words about actions are easier to say than taking actions that matter. Leaving Ohio in a mess, that includes a for-profit charter school system that's bilked taxpayers for billions while delivering next to nothing in education advancements, a budget out of balance that can only be balanced with cuts instead of new revenues, income inequality that is shameful by any standard and social engineering, especially as it pertains to women's health and the many hurdles to constitutional abortion rights he signed into law, Kasich becomes another asterisk in the book of political graveyard politicos.<br />
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Had he put his backbone where his mouth is by declaring himself to be a presidential candidate for the third time since he entered public office in 1982, Kasich would have commanded media attention like never before. But choosing to be all talk and little action, Kasich consigns himself to the political trash heap of history. Now just another failed candidate, Kasich will have an asterisk next to his name signifying that for all his bluster about leading a greater life, he left Ohio is poor shape despite the rest of the nation advancing in fine fashion from The Great Recession of 2007.<br />
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As a sitting governor of a major state in 2016, Kasich could hardly raise any funds and whined that he couldn't get his message out, even though Ohio media followed him like a new born calf follows its mother.<br />
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Meanwhile, Weld told a national TV audience what Kasich has been afraid to say. "I really think if we have six more years of the same stuff we've had out of the White House the last two years that would be a political tragedy, and I would fear for the Republic." Weld continued, "I would be ashamed of myself if I didn't raise my hand and run."<br />
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Kasich, who found a new payday as a CNN political commentator after leaving office in early January, showed he's all talk and no walk. Always the glib governor, Kasich has toyed and teased media with fake news about his aspirations to bring people together, but has little to offer after two terms on that very topic. <br />
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Weld deserves all the attention he can command, now that he's done what others who don't want the "beans beat out of them" suggest they might do but so far have failed to do.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-45590663462159647442019-03-06T13:57:00.003-05:002019-03-06T13:57:33.558-05:00Brown on Trump: 'I don't think he cares about workers'<div class="m_4420890898870545218wordsection1" style="background-color: white; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown didn't spare the rod to spoil the president today, when he took Donald Trump to the woodshed on the many ways he and allied Republicans not only don't understand the "Dignity of Work" but don't much care about workers. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Donald J. Trump</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: times new roman, serif;">"I don't think he cares about workers," Sen. Brown told Ohio media on a conference call Wednesday. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: times new roman, serif;">Fresh from a tour of </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times new roman, serif;">four states key to winning the 2020 Democratic primary, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times new roman, serif;">the 66-year old, 3-time senator representing red Ohio in Washington </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">indicated his pleasure with meet-and-greet turnouts. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Should he declare his candidacy for president, Sen. Brown will join a platoon of 20-plus Democrats who have stepped into the long, laborious and expensive trip to the White House. The former Ohio congressman and two-time Secretary of State lit into Trump as a "phony populist who divides and betrays workers." </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: times new roman, serif;">Asked by Spinelli on Assignment (SOA) to respond to the frontal attack President Trump and allied Republicans have mounted, that casts far and wide the net of "socialism" embraced by Sen. Bernie </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: times new roman, serif;">Sanders and a few new Democratic house members as inherently un-American, </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Brown chose not to address the issue of socialism head on. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Had he done so, he likely would have cited </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Social Security or Medicare as </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">two beneficial "socialist" programs </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times new roman", serif;">Americans rely on, even if they don't understand how they work. Brown pivoted instead to his central theme of the "Dignity of Work," saying "honoring jobs" in general "unites us all." </span><br />
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The focal point of Brown's call with state media today was to announce his reintroduction of the "<i>American Cars, American Jobs Act." </i> Sen. Brown and others, including Ohio's junior Sen. Rob Portman and new Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, may be beating a dead car, as General Motors plans to layoff thousands of workers more as it prepared to close <span style="font-size: 12pt;">the Lordstown assembly plant. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Brown's office said he "continues to call on GM to do the right thing, honor the dignity of these workers, and reinvest in its Lordstown plant." Meanwhile, GM stock opened at $39 today, up from a 52-week low of $30 last November but down from a high of $45 last July. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“We know how devastating that is for the workers, for their families, for local businesses, for the entire community," Brown said in prepared remarks. "We also know it doesn’t have to be this way. We need to overhaul our trade and tax policy, and end this corporate business model where companies like GM close American plants, collect a tax break to move overseas, only to sell those cars back into the U.S."</span></div>
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Two key points of Brown’s bill, one he said he's talked to President Trump about, give <span style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">customers a <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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$3,500 discount when they buy cars made in America and a $4,500 discount if that American car is electric or a plug-in hybrid and </span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">revoke a special GOP tax cut on overseas profits for auto manufacturers that ship jobs overseas </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">After GM announced it would launch more than 20 new zero-emissions vehicles by 2023, Brown </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">added a provision to incentivize the purchase of electric cars. He hopes it encourages GM to bring one its new electric vehicles to Lordstown. </span><br />
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Asked by SOA whether it was odd that Ohio wants electric vehicles but has never offered a state tax credit to encourage their purchase, as many other states do, Brown joked that it's not odd or curious that "things about corruption in state government" are as they are, including Ohio spending billions on for-profit schools that fare poorly. Brown chided Trump and supporters as "perfectly willing to raise taxes on workers while cutting tax breaks for the wealthy."</div>
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<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">Brown’s "</span><i style="font-size: 12pt;">American Cars, American Jobs Act" </i><span style="font-size: 12pt;">bill would benefit Ohio companies and workers throughout the auto supply chain, a media release said. Brown's bill "would put U.S.-made cars on equal footing with foreign-made vehicles and update the tax code to remove incentives for auto companies to offshore jobs."</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt;"><span style="font-size: 15.3333px;">Six of the nine U.S.-manufactured electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles on the AALA list qualify for the $4500 rebate, </span></span><span style="font-size: 15.3333px;">including all passenger vehicles made in Ohio, </span><span style="font-size: 15.3333px;">bill information noted. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Brown said other candidates are picking up his "Dignity of Work" theme, and while that may be a compliment, he said he delivers the pitch best. In that role, pundits see Brown talking the language of midwest state workers best. Accordingly, he upbraided </span><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-slams-president-trump-for-boasting-about-auto-jobs-as-lordstown-workers-face-plant-closure&source=gmail&ust=1551978287142000&usg=AFQjCNEpO7bPmQmzCPeWIv0os8we1Tg_Ig" href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-slams-president-trump-for-boasting-about-auto-jobs-as-lordstown-workers-face-plant-closure" style="color: #1155cc; font-size: 12pt;" target="_blank">President Trump for failing to act</a><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> to help Lordstown workers after making false promises to workers and families in the Mahoning Valley and boasting about auto jobs coming to Ohio as Lordstown workers are set to lose their jobs. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Brown called </span><u style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="color: #0563c1;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-slams-president-trump-for-boasting-about-auto-jobs-as-lordstown-workers-face-plant-closure&source=gmail&ust=1551978287142000&usg=AFQjCNEpO7bPmQmzCPeWIv0os8we1Tg_Ig" href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-slams-president-trump-for-boasting-about-auto-jobs-as-lordstown-workers-face-plant-closure" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">President Trump’s remarks</a></span></u><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> last week a slap in the face to Lordstown workers, and again called on the President to step up and help save the jobs of Lordstown workers.</span></div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-9459880700237706552019-02-28T08:45:00.001-05:002019-02-28T12:11:20.942-05:00Jordan, Obhof win Oscars for most embarrassing Ohio lawmakersFrom 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 <a href="https://jordan.house.gov/">Congressman Jim Jordan</a> walked away with the<a href="https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a26558985/republicans-michael-cohen-hearing-disgrace-trump/"> Oscar for most embarrassing performance by an elected official.</a><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ohio Statehouse in Columbus</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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 <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/2019/02/an-income-tax-cut-is-needed-to-offset-gas-tax-hike-ohio-senate-president.html">hike in the gas tax must be off set by a similar reduction in Ohio's income tax.</a><br />
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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.<br />
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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 <a href="https://www.dispatch.com/news/20190227/house-speaker-larry-householder-disagrees-with-senate-leader-on-gas-tax-delay">moderate by comparison.</a> 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.<br />
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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. <br />
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In a soon to be released report, <a href="http://www.oneohionow.org/?link_id=0&can_id=108285cbd996415750c2fdbdd392d9d2&source=email-press-advisory-new-report-release-monday-march-4&email_referrer=email_502460&email_subject=press-advisory-new-report-release-monday-march-4">Ohio maybe worse off </a>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.<br />
<br />
The big news from Ohio's last budget was that the shortfall of <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2017/04/ohio_legislators_must_trim_800.html">$800 million</a> 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
The <a href="http://www.dot.state.oh.us/news/Pages/2012/Ohio%E2%80%99s-$1-6-Billion-Highway-Budget-Shortfall-Where-do-We-Go-from-Here.aspx">Ohio Department of Transportation</a> 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.<br />
<br />
With Ohio hurting from decades of Republican control, including passing dozens of bills that hurt <a href="https://spinellionassignment.blogspot.com/2018/12/opeditude-enacting-heartbeat-bill.html">women's health care choices</a> 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 <a href="https://spinellionassignment.blogspot.com/2018/11/is-tim-ryan-jim-jordan-of-left.html">Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan </a>is calling on Amazon to reconsider Ohio for the company's next headquarters site after the company recently announced it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queens.html">will pull out </a>of its first choice for the 25,000 jobs it said would come to its chosen location, New York City.<br />
<br />
This reporter has <a href="https://spinellionassignment.blogspot.com/2018/02/why-amazon-wont-pick-columbus-for-hq2.html">written before </a>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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-8828021221404325652019-02-21T12:52:00.000-05:002019-02-22T08:59:15.572-05:00Gone 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.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2AlH13OvhTHGgeXhaCJue99HWegVPU6YwmQoIh2al5N1N2j9MoUZU-rB3L7bvu4PAM1bUr1JFW-m6w12yKjYXUSDRxctCmAev16-CZIoy0VFpUecNhRX3dIZ9lo_HYbXo6aqz/s1600/IMG_4688.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="214" data-original-width="320" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2AlH13OvhTHGgeXhaCJue99HWegVPU6YwmQoIh2al5N1N2j9MoUZU-rB3L7bvu4PAM1bUr1JFW-m6w12yKjYXUSDRxctCmAev16-CZIoy0VFpUecNhRX3dIZ9lo_HYbXo6aqz/s200/IMG_4688.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Kasich on election-night 2010.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/2019/02/dewine-to-seek-18-cent-gas-tax-increase-capitol-letter.html">published reports.</a> 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.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, as Kasich crows about how great he was as governor, another General Motors supplier announced it will<a href="http://www.vindy.com/news/2019/feb/21/another-gm-lordstown-supplier-to-lay-off/"> layoff another 73 workers from the Lordstown plant.</a> 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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/news/2019/02/charter-schools-havent-improved-in-ohio-stanford-researchers-find.html">Stanford University </a>study showing Ohio’s charter schools have not improved in the decade.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="https://www.libertyheadlines.com/kasich-cuts-obamacare-medicaid/">one reporter put it</a>, 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.<br />
<br />
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?<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-51851408802203458112019-02-06T13:13:00.001-05:002019-02-06T13:13:22.645-05:00Sherrod Brown says Trump fell short on a bi-partisan agenda in second ‘State of the Union’ <div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 10.2pt;">
<span style="color: #222222;">On his weekly Wednesday call with <st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> media, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said he
was hopeful President Donald Trump’s second State of the Union speech would be </span>unifying.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sen. Brown says President <span style="text-align: left;">Donald <br />Trump missed the mark on a <br />bi-partisan </span><span style="text-align: left;">agenda.</span><div style="text-align: left;">
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“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. </div>
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“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. </div>
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Brown
said the president could have provided more details to congress on rebuilding
streets<span style="color: #222222;"> but missed the mark. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">Sen. Brown’s guest on the call today was Jim Obergefell –
the plaintiff in the landmark 2015 marriage equality case<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Obergefell v. Hodges. </i>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.</span><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">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.</span><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></div>
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“Their nominations to a federal
bench would serve special interests, including<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></span><u><span style="color: #0563c1;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://brown.senate.gov/download/readler-murphy-tobacco-letter&source=gmail&ust=1549471179728000&usg=AFQjCNHwjdvFS-8vPFqq0pnc7nP_FbGB8g" href="http://brown.senate.gov/download/readler-murphy-tobacco-letter" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0563c1;">big tobacco</span></a></span></u>, at the expense of
the rights of citizens,” Brown said, adding that he <span style="color: #222222;">opposed
both nominees<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><u><span style="color: #0563c1;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-will-not-support-judge-nominees-who-worked-to-strip-ohioans-of-their-rights&source=gmail&ust=1549471179728000&usg=AFQjCNFWvRngcqhF21YYhb40o74-1_cYNg" href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-will-not-support-judge-nominees-who-worked-to-strip-ohioans-of-their-rights" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0563c1;">when they were first announced</span></a></span></u><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222;">by President Trump last year and<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><u><span style="color: #0563c1;"><a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-will-oppose-judge-nominees-who-worked-to-strip-ohioans-of-their-rights&source=gmail&ust=1549471179728000&usg=AFQjCNGWQSkGP7GSHFbOXJIPW_3dmMzI0A" href="https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/brown-will-oppose-judge-nominees-who-worked-to-strip-ohioans-of-their-rights" target="_blank"><span style="color: #0563c1;">continues to oppose their nominations</span></a></span></u><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #222222;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222;">today.</span><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222;">Brown’s office will outlining “the
harmful and radical records of the respective nominees.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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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. </div>
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“(I) have a bit of comfort that the chief justice will be on
the side of maintaining marriage equality.” </div>
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Asked by this reporter what his suggestion is to new Ohio
Gov. Mike DeWine to find funds to fix <st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place>’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.</div>
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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.
</div>
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“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.<br />
<br />
“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.</div>
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Meanwhile, with another shutdown of the federal government looming, Brown said his number one priority is to keep government
running.</div>
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And who can make that happen? “(Mitch) McConnell is the key,” Brown said.<br />
<br />
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.</div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-22190801122623668242019-01-30T14:03:00.002-05:002019-01-30T14:03:47.864-05:00Sherrod Brown: 'Wealthy do not pay their fair share of taxes'<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">In a conference call Wednesday with
<st1:state w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ohio</st1:place></st1:state> media in advance of his upcoming “<a href="http://dignityofwork.com/">Dignity of Work</a>” tour to several early presidential
primary states, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown didn’t want to quibble over tax policy specifics.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">What he did agree to as a baseline
position for him is that the wealthy do not pay their fair share of
taxes.<o:p></o:p></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></strong></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbpSurx8MAW8O0pyaZKs7NpQv88oINy6mJgEVYdRkIncuuqJ3RMpb7ENJ6m5nhhutYGL6wpIW3-o7t0s9gj5qwJ5YvJZBmzpPONaU3uYtfrUCt0qdpYUAy__uRCzLcclo2wamm/s1600/2016-10-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbpSurx8MAW8O0pyaZKs7NpQv88oINy6mJgEVYdRkIncuuqJ3RMpb7ENJ6m5nhhutYGL6wpIW3-o7t0s9gj5qwJ5YvJZBmzpPONaU3uYtfrUCt0qdpYUAy__uRCzLcclo2wamm/s200/2016-10-13.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (right)<br />speaks to Ohio's leading<br />independent reporter</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Sen. Brown is preparing to
launch his "<span style="color: #656565;"><span style="color: #3366ff;"><b>Dignity of Work</b></span></span>" tour today, Wednesday, January 30, 2018, from <st1:city w:st="on">Brunswick</st1:city>,
<st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, where Brown previewed his tour to <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state> media. <span style="color: #656565;"><br />
<br />
</span>After the tour launches in <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, Sen. Brown,
whose <a href="https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2018/11/06/senate-race-ohio-brown-against-renacci/1896046002/">win last November </a>in <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state> has placed him
among the large pool of potential Democratic presidential hopefuls, heads to <st1:state w:st="on">Iowa</st1:state> on Thursday.</div>
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I asked Sen. Brown to
comment whether his tax policy differs are tracks two progressive tax policy
plans released recently, one by new <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-s-70-percent-tax-rich-isn-t-ncna963146">House Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> or <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/elizabeth-warren-s-plan-tax-super-rich-has-been-tried-n963971">Sen.Elizabeth Warren. </a>Both Cortex and <st1:city w:st="on">Warren</st1:city>
have plans that hike taxes on the very wealthy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Central to Brown’s “Dignity
of Work” theme are rising wages and better benefits. Over the decades, however,
corporate <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region>
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
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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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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To be specific, though, he
did agree that the wealthy are not paying their fair share of taxes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
“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."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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 <st1:state w:st="on">Ohio</st1:state>, <st1:state w:st="on">Michigan</st1:state>, <st1:state w:st="on">Wisconsin</st1:state> and <st1:state w:st="on">Pennsylvania that are key to winning the Electoral College.</st1:state><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It’s not enough to tax the
rich,” he said, adding, “Tax breaks for the middle” are also needed. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brown, who was on the short
list of VP candidates for <st1:city w:st="on">Clinton</st1:city>
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 <st1:city w:st="on">Clinton</st1:city>
a run for her money in 2016.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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.” <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Brown said the frigid temperatures in Ohio will no doubt dampen turnout to his kickoff event today.</div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-18227638661865636522019-01-21T22:19:00.003-05:002019-01-21T22:32:06.906-05:00Can '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, <a href="https://www.ohio.com/news/20181202/could-ohioans-square-off-in-presidential-race-for-first-time-in-98-years">in 1920</a>, when Warren G. Harding, a Republican, beat James Cox, a Democrat. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2mviz6ZUIbzF_09Ppso_ahUS9Fi-6tIez1p9zwEk6_63Dm-sVK2JCV8a8n7XEJ9OD6bjeJeZWYnzEe9XmsdAmqlkFHu_fZrbQkAxpFWY4SwoV9Zn9bMIlXQ7d6r8smzb6GNNK/s1600/IMG_2331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="594" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2mviz6ZUIbzF_09Ppso_ahUS9Fi-6tIez1p9zwEk6_63Dm-sVK2JCV8a8n7XEJ9OD6bjeJeZWYnzEe9XmsdAmqlkFHu_fZrbQkAxpFWY4SwoV9Zn9bMIlXQ7d6r8smzb6GNNK/s200/IMG_2331.JPG" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Former Ohio Gov. John Rasich</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
For all his many sermonettes about his many new ideas, Kasich offers none because lazy reporters don't ask him to name them.<br />
<br />
Some <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/us/politics/ohio-democrats-governor-midterms.html?module=inline">simple background on Ohio politics </a>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.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/2020-presidential-candidates.html">eight others</a>, including Elizabeth Warren, Julian Castro, John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Richard Ojeda and Andrew Yang.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, B<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/us/politics/sherrod-brown-ohio-president.html">rown's interesting victory in Trump Ohio</a> has created a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIWU2lue4v0">buzz about him running for president. </a><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ0xouL3d-Qod1Wdc2XUttDhCp4eJwYXM7_sEibM8oyBkVJm7aTltP_3rcLQ_OqFs_ms1A2oyqHFTRqxEw84TCDPXq75gsivJr3zL_SYqZfGiKpZ8YOP4k0nDWJZ4KD6s2Zj0/s1600/2016-10-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ0xouL3d-Qod1Wdc2XUttDhCp4eJwYXM7_sEibM8oyBkVJm7aTltP_3rcLQ_OqFs_ms1A2oyqHFTRqxEw84TCDPXq75gsivJr3zL_SYqZfGiKpZ8YOP4k0nDWJZ4KD6s2Zj0/s200/2016-10-13.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown talks<br />
to Ohio's leading independent<br />
report</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
In Brown's world, the "<a href="https://www.nbc4i.com/news/the-spectrum/sen-brown-to-visit-early-primary-states-on-dignity-of-work-tour/1710793740">Dignity of Work</a>" 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.<br />
<br />
Remember, it was just two years ago that Brown made Hillary Clinton's short-list of VP potentials.<br />
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?<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-28724952019223284092019-01-15T13:20:00.003-05:002019-01-18T10:41:54.436-05:00Gone as governor, Ohio media finally dares criticize John KasichFor 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.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwnj_snAEMRpI939_eYtnwPqKptNUT8oOYMTIgb6vVY1cy4y30BK7OLxQrC8JWwy8Q59moOCaQMtnaaXNnrZA_i2Vr3Ev8weqxl2pLj-CTLm9ayk3oENuxb9AiSWWTlio_F0Zn/s1600/Fullscreen+capture+5192014+43534+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="263" data-original-width="297" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwnj_snAEMRpI939_eYtnwPqKptNUT8oOYMTIgb6vVY1cy4y30BK7OLxQrC8JWwy8Q59moOCaQMtnaaXNnrZA_i2Vr3Ev8weqxl2pLj-CTLm9ayk3oENuxb9AiSWWTlio_F0Zn/s200/Fullscreen+capture+5192014+43534+PM.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gov. Kasich with his starting team:<br />
Mary Taylor and Mark Kvamme.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Editorials in the <a href="https://www.toledoblade.com/opinion/editorials/2018/10/14/ohio-governor-john-kasich-education/stories/20181011157">Toledo Blade</a>, <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2019/01/john_kasichs_mixed_legacy_as_o.html">Cleveland Plain Dealer</a>, <a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001kRL77HOvvfO944Y0kj_cZVl4S6WlfVIogOwXKLX_KZ8uXiXjLarTHG4FEWXa1Oq7tbaZwmdXCk_po3rTt5IpKQ5Pgns9oA3ZxmwKj1mz8HbChNXd9u1TEManA5y1SptIVuTjyKMiRpNhV9AI99mNO1zW-GAYgUNJolXO1U5HPvuK3G6Bf8xo8PBdci51oS5KjV-5Wtm2alkwqBQACzV4DX-fKzxgRvz90Yx_lLyT9R72dqURqiGOot2IcinsOaVH216fayv-oyIS8eIqgqElj5mX_xswtVsV_NWIPA91lLznAAw8_GSwRC5pjSzyUv5oBuppkLw9kwJRhrGfvvJyKit340jBKhlkLweKrrkQtOJOB1ek2yujQulzGeqTlAuRhlODR_wHX6U1qyySlqTuklxE1FKIXkb-Ds_kaVheH7yzWfYVQHs5hd-_oM-mm9dY6nlElWKqrcZjYAq291aJCicKgtSWqg2Ge84GuSa2XA60vsr3ysNfPiUSLTc2_JLEISXfUG4M5PCiSDHRq_jhXvQOZpa3C4V_b4BIpIJCoRIFwfEYYq-OyJamF3J6PyFAjWAj9j74aGs=&c=ZXPktVHB1LwjPvoKmS1SJq9evJhBdSUvJyT2xOBg2-kQVnLPNSf-kw==&ch=7UPrUD8XLULmSK0v8lqQvWaD01r3rVEtaWY4OvGP7aZyHpDgglPkSA==">Dayton Daily News </a>and <a href="https://www.ohio.com/opinion/20190111/beacon-journalohiocom-editorial-board-consequential-john-kasich">Akron Beacon Journal,</a> 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.<br />
<br />
Always a showman, Kasich, who's honed his performance politician chops over decades in the public eye, has <a href="http://www.toledoblade.com/politics/2019/01/14/john-kasich-signs-with-united-talent-agency">landed an agent</a> and his sought-after post-governor gig as a <a href="https://www.toledoblade.com/local/politics/2019/01/15/john-kasich-joins-cnn-contributor-commentator-governor/stories/20190115112">CNN contributor.</a> 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.<br />
<br />
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 (<a href="https://www.dispatch.com/news/20180311/kasichs-jobs-total-falls-under-stricklands-for-second-year-in-row">or not</a>) 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 <a href="https://www.toledoblade.com/Opinion/2014/08/17/Senate-Bill-5-remains-an-emblem-of-Kasich-s-extreme-agenda.html">SB5</a> and included <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2018/08/gov_john_kasich_will_be_a_no-s.html">his calculated PR error </a>to boycott welcoming Republicans who came to Cleveland for the party's national nominating convention in 2016..<br />
<br />
As the <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/john-kasich-response-trump-oval-office-address-2019-1">dancing bear of anti-Trumpers</a>, 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?<br />
<br />
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, <a href="http://plunderbund.com/2015/10/15/kasich-case-sabotaging-2014-libertarian-partys-charlie-earl-is-silent-but-potentially-deadly/">Charley Earl of the Libertarian Party,</a> his <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2014/03/gop_abetted_by_gov_kasich_cont.html">erosion of voting rights</a>, signing into law more than 20 bills that <a href="https://prochoiceohio.org/2018/12/21/john-kasichs-morals-mere-talking-points/">hurt women's health rights</a>, his <a href="https://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/07/18/trumps-camp-calls-kasich-embarrassing-causing-ohio-republicans-to-fire-back.html">combative personality</a> 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.<br />
<br />
Kasich's inspector general released a<a href="http://plunderbund.com/2019/01/03/how-ohios-top-watchdog-covered-up-another-bill-lager-scandal/"> report on Bill Lager</a>, 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.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://plunderbund.com/2016/03/06/plain-dealer-should-repost-2014-editorial-board-video-of-kasichs-jerky-performance/"> taking down a video of his juvenile behavior </a>at an editorial meeting that included two other governor hopefuls?<br />
<br />
As the facts show, these papers <a href="http://plunderbund.com/2018/01/01/kasich-rings-in-new-year-with-60-consecutive-months-of-sub-par-job-growth/">dropped the ball </a>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 <a href="https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LASST390000000000006?amp%253bdata_tool=XGtable&output_view=data&include_graphs=true">Bureau of Labor Statistics </a>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.<br />
<br />
The now infamous claim by Team Kasich that Ohio was in a ditch and facing a budget hole of $8 billion <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/05/ohios_8_billion_budget_hole_wa.html">is an urban myth</a> 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.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="http://plunderbund.com/2015/02/02/gov-kasich-proposes-two-biggest-budgets-in-ohio-history/">largest budgets in Ohio history </a>when he was simultaneously whining that Ohio was broke. He created a super-secret, private jobs group (<a href="http://plunderbund.com/2017/12/19/gops-wealthy-yesterday-man-kasich-frets-about-debt-youth-bolting-to-dems/">JobsOhio</a>) 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, <a href="http://plunderbund.com/2017/01/05/years-after-its-creation-jobsohio-remains-unproductive-and-likely-unconstitutional/">didn't live up to Kasich's claim of how great it was.</a><br />
<br />
His totally <a href="https://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/2018/06/12/damschroder-column-shine-light-shadowy-investments-state-funds/693575002/">unreported scandal on the pension front </a>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. "<a href="https://www.thenews-messenger.com/story/news/2018/10/16/damschroder-column-good-work-if-you-can-get/1656872002/">Good work if you can get it</a>," one Ohio editorial writer wrote.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="https://www.ohio.com/opinion/20190117/beacon-journalohiocom-editorial-board-how-ohios-tax-system-puts-heavier-burden-on-poor">Akron Beacon Journal</a> 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.<br />
<br />
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."<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis7svv9lyDHRnbSEzriCZwXjlSGKS7cbckC-NSoc6TURCr1mFH9DxRXk5B7tHjJ3dajAoP-Lu-KD4gxxqVhnzzru84u8Rc4E0pnHAE6ZnygDh_jz8Xi5iettNV2LyCQMbEoo3B/s1600/IMG_4087.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="229" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis7svv9lyDHRnbSEzriCZwXjlSGKS7cbckC-NSoc6TURCr1mFH9DxRXk5B7tHjJ3dajAoP-Lu-KD4gxxqVhnzzru84u8Rc4E0pnHAE6ZnygDh_jz8Xi5iettNV2LyCQMbEoo3B/s200/IMG_4087.JPG" width="143" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Citizen Kasich in 2010</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">decries </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">government </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">regulations</span></div>
</td></tr>
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In his latest op-ed piece in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/01/14/john-kasich-republican-party-adapt-new-america-solve-problems-column/2564182002/">USA Today</a>, 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<a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/03/john_kasich_i_hope_they_do_repeal_roe_vs_wade_leave_abortion_to_the_states.html"> his desire to overturn Roe v Wade</a>, are a mystery.<br />
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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.<br />
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Trying to parlay himself as a so-called "moderate" is one of his trump cards. But as <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/03/john_kasich_i_hope_they_do_repeal_roe_vs_wade_leave_abortion_to_the_states.html">noted here,</a> 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.<br />
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Kasich's quirky, shoot from the mouth personalty has rubbed virtually all people and parties, <a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001dHxhe5zNjmXXVjjzWPb1XK-3mnLlOo4k_G_C8MFNCzVTOWMwpi5oKn5ws3vPQSpBuJor61nLdMpHHIcGAatjVGccqvhSy7A8hOnKipiCD-Swf6bN2nKnXZOxnkWWXDUlhu-iv4mBcY9sbLLSeCgnqcym0mfDpfWQR-CqfXfXa-6hvJUCwICXxBh7yqB32z5UJXLq4Vs93FyNsuTkMlpXieJEVOV1qs0L1YEjH5baflW3vpgiYrZPSd2WjrKRCS9xG82ltmkHC73NH7xQtdTNCtGcyR0sDMQxqRVwqxh6GOWQM_Ir60SOLcaUNJ_fgzOXy5smM0KxZA8=&c=HqLF4F-9UrHoXOJJsk5kHScKY2YCDna5XgDdvcshlZlNxKS0gOAJrw==&ch=BwuPsaTDPdy0eHZk6Oqb3QDpupHuJMu4h2tMvvMfA00aTNwE18LBrw==">especially his own</a>, 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.<br />
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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. <span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: "roboto" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span>Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-22885233748893522772018-12-30T14:17:00.001-05:002018-12-30T14:17:32.833-05:00Kasich v Brown for POTUS: One is ambitious. One isn'tAs 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gov. elect John R. Kasich on Election<br />Day night in 2010.</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Meanwhile, across the isle and ready to start his third 6-year term in the Senate, is Sherrod Brown<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This reporter (left) interviews Sen.<br />Sherrod Brown in Columbus.</td></tr>
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. 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."<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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The two do share common ground: both barely register blips on a list of <a href="http://www.pollingreport.com/2020.htm">2020 candidates pollsters poll about.</a> Brown registers just one percent by Politico, while Kasich's name and many others are totally absent.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Kasich versus Brown in 2020? The sun will explode first.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-81382234205946469752018-12-28T12:25:00.002-05:002018-12-28T12:25:35.278-05:00Opeditude: Enacting 'Heartbeat Bill' aborts Ohio's futureHead Republican Neanderthal, <a href="http://www.ohiosenate.gov/senators/obhof">Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof,</a> 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.<br />
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“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 <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/2018/12/heartbeat-bill-fails-as-ohio-senate-cant-muster-veto-override-votes.html">Plain Dealer</a> reported.<br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Gov. Kasich said in 2016 while </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">campaigning for president </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">that he </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">would </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">like to see </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Roe v Wade overturned</span></div>
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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 <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2018/11/mike_dewine_wins_the_governors.html">he would sign a heartbeat bill into law.</a>"<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_heartbeat_bill">Heartbeat Bill.</a> 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.<br />
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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 <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/03/john_kasich_i_hope_they_do_repeal_roe_vs_wade_leave_abortion_to_the_states.html">he wants Roe v Wade overturned </a>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 <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/21/politics/john-kasich-planned-parenthood-bill/index.html">deny funding</a> to, was selling baby parts. Good grief!<br />
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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.<br />
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Kasich may earn some brownie points by vetoing the bill, although he squanders those same brownie points when he signed <a href="https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/kasich-vetoes-heartbeat-bill-signs-week-abortion-ban/gr25U9NK7Sa8mFT953zxpN/">yet another abortion bill </a>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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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?<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-31751590326388770862018-12-22T15:33:00.002-05:002018-12-22T22:04:30.168-05:00No surprise: Kasich exits 'stage right' with political posturingOhio'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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gov. John R. Kasich</td></tr>
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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?<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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As <a href="https://www.toledoblade.com/Opinion/2014/08/17/Senate-Bill-5-remains-an-emblem-of-Kasich-s-extreme-agenda.html">The Toledo Blade wrote in 2014</a>, 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."<br />
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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 <a href="https://www.dispatch.com/news/20181219/john-kasich-i-cant-beat-donald-trump-now-but-well-see">Trump would rub him out </a>if the two were matched against each other again in 2020.<br />
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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.<br />
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No longer the state to go to—those honors go to Nevada, Utah, Washington, Texas and Florida according to recently released <a href="https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/2018/comm/popest-change-2010-2018.pdf">Census Bureau data</a>—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.<br />
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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.<br />
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He summoned the courage to veto the so-called "<a href="https://www.dispatch.com/news/20181221/gov-john-kasich-vetoes-heartbeat-abortion-ban-pay-raise-bill">Heartbeat Bill,</a>" 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.<br />
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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—"<a href="https://www.cleveland.com/politics/2018/12/ohio-gov-john-kasich-vetoes-gun-bill-calling-it-rotten-stinking-politics.html">rotten, stinking politics.</a>" 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.<br />
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Desperately seeking a high-profile media gig that pays him well to spew his long-held beliefs that tax<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt0LTX1at1au2mXrnnQf9R3lhtw9JK7FvFZt3yqettFDlIs6S_SIy7Nr2bBBfQer_mgH5PHoEzatc_q1su1xyWDxdYFFQvq8XeZl5LEcxa2CEx1nDC4ockwV3jO0y3pl04JZ6o/s1600/DJTimage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="240" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt0LTX1at1au2mXrnnQf9R3lhtw9JK7FvFZt3yqettFDlIs6S_SIy7Nr2bBBfQer_mgH5PHoEzatc_q1su1xyWDxdYFFQvq8XeZl5LEcxa2CEx1nDC4ockwV3jO0y3pl04JZ6o/s200/DJTimage.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Donald J. Trump</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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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.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-9841336626701609382018-12-16T13:47:00.001-05:002018-12-16T13:47:34.689-05:00To MOGA, China Should Annex OhioHow 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.<div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">Plucked from </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">"</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">The Hard Truths of Trying </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy," this </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">New York Times article made a true statement: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">"No amount of tax incentives </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/05/technology/amazon-second-headquarters-split.html" style="background-color: white; color: #326891; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh; outline-offset: -2px; outline: -webkit-focus-ring-color auto 5px;">would have convinced Amazon to expand in a medium-sized city such as Columbus, Ohio, rather than Northern Virginia and Queens,</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">which sit in some of the largest pools of talent in the country."</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq-PYLcv6N623T3aNnPX1BC9qHQFov7L3_D4IyFSXWsbgv1oRBxQlo-R-wi3gUd2h3Na9iF675iql5NQheUSsAxJ07pdUqWCwP3kTKzmNoXAod8RXq2t8Qe8TynoKU-sUdgFnl/s1600/IMG_2331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="594" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq-PYLcv6N623T3aNnPX1BC9qHQFov7L3_D4IyFSXWsbgv1oRBxQlo-R-wi3gUd2h3Na9iF675iql5NQheUSsAxJ07pdUqWCwP3kTKzmNoXAod8RXq2t8Qe8TynoKU-sUdgFnl/s200/IMG_2331.JPG" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outgoing Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">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. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">Meanwhile, three of Ohio's big cities—Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo—continue to rank among the nation's most distressed, as defined by the "<a href="https://eig.org/dci">2018 Distressed Cities Index</a>," compiled by <a href="https://eig.org/">The Economic Innovation Group</a>, 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 <a href="https://businessjournaldaily.com/trump-lordstown-comment-draws-rebukes-from-ryan-brown/">Lordstown, Ohio,</a> assembly plant and relocating those jobs to other facilities far away, Ohio takes another economic hit it won't recover from.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Ohio">Voting for Donald Trump for president over Hillary Clinton </a>by almost nine points in 2016, rural Ohioans—comprised of the same group of fearful Republicans who hated <a href="https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/18/mitt-romney/romney-says-47-percent-americans-pay-no-income-tax/">Mitt Romney's "47%"</a> because they are takers, not creators—seem to want their own handout under the guise of being the "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgotten_man">forgotten man</a>." </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">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.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTKcoKCU5qc">Kasich</a>, 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. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">The promise of more jobs from lower taxes has been a long-held urban myth by Kasich and his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics">supply-side ilk</a>. 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. <a href="https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/kasich-vetoes-heartbeat-bill-signs-week-abortion-ban/gr25U9NK7Sa8mFT953zxpN/">Kasich has signed about a dozen into law so far. </a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">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 "<a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/ohio-heartbeat-abortion-ban-advances-toward-governors-veto-decision-26618">Heartbeat Bill</a>," a draconian measure that eliminates abortion when a fetal heartbeat is found and puts doctors involved in jeopardy of committing a criminal offense. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">When a historically strict <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/world/europe/ireland-legal-abortion-vote.html">Catholic country like Ireland</a> 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.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">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.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrM0VSpD4JQ2Gabyixjg4VzdCMCrU5FpVb4V2Vrb4Typ8mixF0tH-IjqoZylQwFQB2_4aXY2uvyNvqNMKSS3H567ufh7t1WZTO70d-a17q8Dog_z7hzagQnb-2WzfxcDu-bpY5/s1600/IMG_7763.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrM0VSpD4JQ2Gabyixjg4VzdCMCrU5FpVb4V2Vrb4Typ8mixF0tH-IjqoZylQwFQB2_4aXY2uvyNvqNMKSS3H567ufh7t1WZTO70d-a17q8Dog_z7hzagQnb-2WzfxcDu-bpY5/s200/IMG_7763.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shanghai Tower, the tallest building<br />in China, second tallest in the world.</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">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. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: nyt-cheltenham-sh;">To Make Ohio Great Again, maybe some "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_and_Road_Initiative">Belt and Road</a>" 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.</span></div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-71104715152781184142018-12-12T22:45:00.003-05:002018-12-12T22:51:20.841-05:00A Voter's Call To Arms: Limit Ohio's LegislatureThe 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.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcL1sLb69ZJsN3gyKNwIqlW-NjN272mN3aJF9_jr4IxhWsbeMrmB1Dp8mSvdlYKHy35BtywvmZpAO6ZakT-3jDnv_hE6ema3AqopRqP_3Xsu-ebVBgeWMCeyB2RhYFCJg_gTl/s1600/OhStatehouse.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="250" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcL1sLb69ZJsN3gyKNwIqlW-NjN272mN3aJF9_jr4IxhWsbeMrmB1Dp8mSvdlYKHy35BtywvmZpAO6ZakT-3jDnv_hE6ema3AqopRqP_3Xsu-ebVBgeWMCeyB2RhYFCJg_gTl/s200/OhStatehouse.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Ohio Statehouse in Columbus</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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With the exception of its lone Democratic leader, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, winning a third term<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Term-limited Ohio Gov. John Kasich</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Former President Barack Obama</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">speaks at a "Vote Early" rally at The</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Ohio State University in Columbus</span></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-31760559873241070612018-11-19T23:18:00.001-05:002018-11-19T23:18:53.691-05:00Is Tim Ryan the Jim Jordan of the Left?Now that the 2018 mid-term elections are over, the so-called "Blue Wave" that's been building since the minute after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of The United States in January of 2017, had its ebb tide in the Senate, where Republicans actually expanded their slim majority, while crashing ashore in the House by regaining control.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKsU34IgL9kn7PrxHxTcSJFG1y9bH_LUIXJqTD4DluQwr2IMzHGdsRMpZ4glS8wWCAM-G6jWpW9Q1t_MFTjs44tIv0WLgQdYngsPuTqrKb-wMyNRDR0PnkbRp9FJ08DzaCiZJ/s1600/IMG_4265.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEKsU34IgL9kn7PrxHxTcSJFG1y9bH_LUIXJqTD4DluQwr2IMzHGdsRMpZ4glS8wWCAM-G6jWpW9Q1t_MFTjs44tIv0WLgQdYngsPuTqrKb-wMyNRDR0PnkbRp9FJ08DzaCiZJ/s200/IMG_4265.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Placards used at a John Boehner rally \<br />in West Chester in Cincinnati in 2010.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Continuing their proud tradition of internecine fighting following a victory they desperately need, and finally won, reports say the opposition to Pelosi was spearheaded in part by <a href="https://timryan.house.gov/">Rep. Tim Ryan </a>of Ohio. A centrist who challenged <a href="https://pelosi.house.gov/">Rep. Nancy Pelosi</a> for the post of minority leader in 2016, Ryan is among the 16 Democrats who have promised to oppose the restoration of Nancy Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House, arguing fresh leadership faces are needed.<br />
<br />
The New York Times ran an article Monday titled "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/us/politics/nancy-pelosi-house-democrats.html">‘Message of Change’: 16 Rebel Democrats Vow to Oppose Pelosi,</a>'"that names Ryan as an instigator of the dump Pelosi gambit, but also said the multi-term congressman has not stepped forward to be that fresh face.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's the water or the weather in Ohio, but Ryan's long-shot scheme to topple Pelosi — the first women to be speaker who during her time in leadership moved the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Dodd-Frank through to victory without help from Republicans — apes a similar long-shot attempt by uber-right-wing Ohio <a href="https://jordan.house.gov/">Congressman Jim Jordan</a> to become the House's Republican leader.<br />
<br />
Both Jordan and Ryan made unsuccessful runs at leadership posts, but as second in command of the Freedom Caucus, a couple dozen conservative and libertarian Republicans, Jordan and his caucus were defined by University of Akron political science professor David Cohen as “a highly motivated, highly ideological wing of the Republican Party that has been desperately seeking power within the Republican Party for several years,” according to <a href="https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/against-odds-local-congressman-jim-jordan-seeking-gop-leadership-post/cv5pYWe0S80yO0nC8XUdWM/">The Dayton Daily News.</a><br />
<br />
Jordan came to congress in 2007, and like all Republicans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/republicans-had-it-in-for-obama-before-day-1/2012/08/10/0c96c7c8-e31f-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_blog.html">vowed to oppose first-term President</a><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/republicans-had-it-in-for-obama-before-day-1/2012/08/10/0c96c7c8-e31f-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_blog.html"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="500" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWsq_3kijdjuiG1XrCyEYJbTrwoKwSK54_sfRt_Sq-w-wsRGZLMfCYrAluPVoDXzj3BupmbwY-cWMMXnRGSX9jvvLSCHp9QlTAa-DU6xxvNWEdBQs6YR3EJACLYgQ0APbv1fGt/s200/TeaParty.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/republicans-had-it-in-for-obama-before-day-1/2012/08/10/0c96c7c8-e31f-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_blog.html">The Tea Party (Taxed Enough Already)<br />helped Jim Jordan win and helped<br />Republicans unseating Democrats in 2010<br />when Nancy Pelosi was House speaker.</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/republicans-had-it-in-for-obama-before-day-1/2012/08/10/0c96c7c8-e31f-11e1-ae7f-d2a13e249eb2_blog.html"> Barack Obama at every turn.</a> In 2010, Jordan and his allies, which then included the noisy, anti-government, anti-Obamacare <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement">Tea Party </a>movement, attacked Pelosi with such vigor that she became an election-year punching bag. This year saw one reporter after another quiz one Democrat candidate after another one whether he/she would vote for Pelosi as speaker again, if they were elected?<br />
<br />
About two years ago, House Democrats shot down Ryan's challenge of Pelosi. Ryan received plenty of media attention for declaring Democrats needed new leaders to win back disaffected voters, and that re-electing Rep. Pelosi of California to an eighth term as House leader would hurt the party's chance to reconnect with the American working class. While Ryan lost to Pelosi, 134 to 63, those who voted for Ryan revealed a worrisome measure of internal discontent in the party.<br />
<br />
Democrats like Ryan have allowed Republicans to tear down one of their most effective leaders without forming any counter defense to push back on her attackers. Much like Republicans did to Hillary Clinton through hearings on Benghazi and other costly wild goose chases, that turned the most qualified women to be president into the most reviled women to be president, Pelosi has undergone similar attacks, as Ryan and company sat back without punching back.<br />
<br />
Democrats might take a cue from President Trump, of all people, who to the great amazement of many has put forward a strong defense of Pelosi. Trump said Pelosi "loves her country" and could actually help her win flanking moves like Ryan is party to present a problem.<br />
<br />
"I can get Nancy Pelosi as many votes as she wants in order for her to be Speaker of the House. She deserves this victory, she has earned it - but there are those in her party who are trying to take it away. She will win!" <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump">Trump tweeted</a>.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn0VUZ85wRgN86Ts0Cz3pt-K3i7l_GZezGOlrHwDAnqaswJUDv6FJsbJH96aL3PC085XzduXbxjgtnR-ojPCb_s1W5rwErqxlDc7evYQ7PH0kgWoaXdI6aHbe2JJOOsn7LMrcO/s1600/IMG_2363.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="640" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn0VUZ85wRgN86Ts0Cz3pt-K3i7l_GZezGOlrHwDAnqaswJUDv6FJsbJH96aL3PC085XzduXbxjgtnR-ojPCb_s1W5rwErqxlDc7evYQ7PH0kgWoaXdI6aHbe2JJOOsn7LMrcO/s200/IMG_2363.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Press badges</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
During my active reporting days, I asked Ryan to explain what a fresh face really means, and what issues that fresh face would expound on that were different from the litany of traditional Democrat positions that speak to workers and their rights? Ryan was curiously non-responsive on what new message a new face would deliver that Pelosi couldn't also deliver.<br />
<br />
Ohio glows Trump red after another election that seated GOP candidates in all the statewide constitutional offices while simultaneously holding scary majorities in the legislature in Columbus. The Buckeye State now sports two congressmen, one Republican and one Democrat, who are throwing haymaker punches in order to disrupt what should be a time to rally their wagons around a central theme of coalescing, not breaking ranks.<br />
<br />
With next year's congress now evenly divided, as Republicans control the Senate and Democrats control the House, Ryan should either man-up and step forward to run for the speakership or put down his sticks and stones so a tested leadership, with the capacity and capabilities Pelosi has demonstrated when the chips are down can resume her winning ways with legislation that, new face or not, connects with the new working class, made up of mostly women, and women of color at that, instead of the so-called "forgotten" uneducated white man who appears to want a handout without working for it.<br />
<br />
Ryan and Jordan may smile at what they are doing, as media eggs them on to be the respective skunks at their garden parties. What they are doing, sadly, is feeding their inner egos at a time when their outer egos ought to push for unifying their numbers instead of dividing them.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-20519083775416248002018-11-18T11:55:00.004-05:002018-11-19T10:48:18.734-05:00Kasich's Dreams of Glory to be Rudely Interrupted by Reality<br />
"I have no idea what I’m doing in 2020,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich recently told a group of Saint Anselm College students in New Hampshire, Dave Weigel reported in "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/paloma/the-trailer/2018/11/15/the-trailer-ohio-gov-john-kasich-cheerfully-stokes-speculation-in-2020/5becf8491b326b392905483e/?utm_term=.408a28c52d7f">The Trailer</a>" in the Washington Post.<br />
<br />
Weigel, who mostly covers the conservative, Republican wing in American politics, said Ohio's term-limited CEO added, “What I don’t want to do is go into it again and diminish my voice, to get back out here and get the beans beat out of me."<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2AlH13OvhTHGgeXhaCJue99HWegVPU6YwmQoIh2al5N1N2j9MoUZU-rB3L7bvu4PAM1bUr1JFW-m6w12yKjYXUSDRxctCmAev16-CZIoy0VFpUecNhRX3dIZ9lo_HYbXo6aqz/s1600/IMG_4688.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="214" data-original-width="320" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2AlH13OvhTHGgeXhaCJue99HWegVPU6YwmQoIh2al5N1N2j9MoUZU-rB3L7bvu4PAM1bUr1JFW-m6w12yKjYXUSDRxctCmAev16-CZIoy0VFpUecNhRX3dIZ9lo_HYbXo6aqz/s200/IMG_4688.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">On night in 2010, Gov. elect John R Kasich</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">speaks in downtown Columbus</span></div>
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</tbody></table>
Like his national and state media colleagues, Weigel appears to have fallen into the trap of thinking that Kasich has a chance in hell of emerging from the Republican primary in 2020 as the party's nominee. To do this, the 66-year old multi-millionaire must knock off President Donald Trump in two years, should the New York real estate titan and reality TV show host still be president, or one of the stable of GOP candidates who decide to enter the race.<br />
<br />
After 40 years as a trained politico, 18 years of which he spent in the U.S. House and the last eight years as Ohio governor, the Buckeye State's departing executive leader is both temperamental, easily angered and quixotic. At heart, though, he's a former Catholic boy from McKees Rocks, PA, who gave up a life in the priesthood for the fame and fortune that comes with partisan public office.<br />
<br />
Kasich has spent two terms cutting taxes, accomplished by redistributing billions that formerly went to local governments and schools upwards to the already wealthy. Kasich has honed his bashing of others, which ranges from deriding Democrats for no agenda, Republicans for kowtowing to Trump and Trump himself for, well, being Donald Trump.<br />
<br />
As some in the media already know, Kasich isn't widely embraced by many in his own party, and is an outright foreigner to Democrats, despite their gushy adoration of him for accepting extended Medicaid in the Buckeye State. Ohio's itinerant governor loves the allure media courts him with, which further shows how out of touch major media stars are to his history of bad policy, as they already dream of the next political horse race in less than two years.<br />
<br />
A former Fox News host who often substituted for now disgraced Fox star Bill O'Reilly was also a banker for Lehman Brothers, the storied Wall Street firm whose collapse from being over-leveraged in the sub-prime mortgage triggered the Great Recession of 2007. Kasich claims he has the political chops to heal what ails America by bringing divergent, polarized groups together. With sparse proof of having performed similar miracles before, whether in Congress or as governor, Kasich counts on media ignorance of his past and its inability to confront him with his own lackluster track record, which on hindsight is built on his own calculated rumor mill.<br />
<br />
Kasich has such a poor performance record, in fact, that Ohio Republicans are so at odds with the 66-year old multi-millionaire that they have dismissed or severely clipped most of his major policy advances during budget debates in Columbus.<br />
<br />
Now entering his last lame-duck session, Kasich confronts the real possibility that his own party will override vetoes he makes of key legislation in the remaining weeks of his governorship, before he leaves to wander the political graveyard.<br />
<br />
But with the divide between pro- and anti-Trumpsters raging, Kasich has found a niche bashing<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCWH3JTMslbTtQu1VcQtfpuvE2cRTUON_JFWgcCVmsK0HANy7s2gduVu7EXBKoYnvT6xdROKDRradakpDIwmJNzS0x0jUu0xdgF0HxgzMRWDofUCBStxX4EseWJ_7Nt2cdHT4c/s1600/IMG_2331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="594" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCWH3JTMslbTtQu1VcQtfpuvE2cRTUON_JFWgcCVmsK0HANy7s2gduVu7EXBKoYnvT6xdROKDRradakpDIwmJNzS0x0jUu0xdgF0HxgzMRWDofUCBStxX4EseWJ_7Nt2cdHT4c/s200/IMG_2331.JPG" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Gov. Kasich in the Lincoln Room of </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">the Ohio Statehouse.</span></div>
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</tbody></table>
Trump on style when possible while staying silent on Trump policies like tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. But that's enough to garner elite media attention to a contest still two years out that won't bode well for him after he's shed his governor's cloak for the garb of his next gig, probably that of another talking pundit contributor on CNN or MSNBC or another media outlet that thinks his headline grabbing rhetoric will attract viewers.<br />
<br />
“All options are on the table," says Kasich, who by making such a statement ignores history's cold facts about independent runs from third-party candidates. Spoiler alert for "The Trailer," independent and third-party challengers get clobbered.<br />
<br />
For Kasich, who repeatedly whined about not raising much money in 2016, he'll encounter the same ebb tide of support going forward. Contrary to what he says about how good his future is, reality will send him to the showers early again. All options may actually be off the table for him, as any media pundit or reporter who cares to calculate his chances of being the victor in 2020 will realize.<br />
<br />
Ohio media seems completely unconcerned that Kasich milks the public to advance his personal designs. His big new trick is <a href="https://www.cleveland19.com/2018/11/16/gov-kasich-asks-donations-fix-america-through-new-website/">yet another new website,</a> that preaches his same sermon on the mount, through which he wants donors to give him money to fix America.<br />
<br />
In what promises to be an even nastier and more costly contest for president, if that's possible (and it is,) Kasich should have red-flagged record of legislation — which includes many bills that harm women on healthcare, limiting voting options, attacking unions, teachers and local governments, being blind to outright graft and corruption on for-profit charter schools, outrageous pension fund fees, increasing the age limit to receive Social Security, not supporting Medicare negotiating for lower drug cost, and his sleeper issue, forcing a would-be challenger off the 2014 ballot — picked through like bargain hunters at a church bazaar.<br />
<br />
How can anyone think Kasich can bring anyone together over anything since he has little if anything to show he's done it before? Saying and doing are two different and sometimes mutually exclusive things. Soon to be gone is taxpayer funding that paid Kasich to spend an inordinate amount of time over the last three years out of state, running for an office Ohio voters didn't elect him to run for.<br />
<br />
If John Kasich wants to bring people together, he can start by apologizing to me for ripping up my press availability to him in 2014 at his State of the State address in southern Ohio. Kasich knows me from the days when we first met as Ohio Senate staffers in 1977. He also knows me from the 1980s, when I worked at the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce and he was a central Ohio congressman from a reliably Republican district.<br />
<br />
Weigel reported from New Hampshire, Kasich adopted state, where he bet his future in 2016 on doing well in the tiny, sometimes libertarian-leaning Granite State. But even in his new home, New Hampshire voters went for Trump in a big way, with Kasich coming in a distant second. His phony prophecy of being above politics, when he's actually the ultimate politician, was in clear view even on a hazy day.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN84_T5Nm2AbAXyiFFTgLPbf2pTdd8ALReZqgUJ4LHMQqIyhoaMNJDZDoA7gDsepRJtoT0gy7m8jTubefrn92reQsENzG-n8EhlqohElQEHi387ZtJR4MlfgeYpge8KxZ7D9AZ/s1600/IMG_0209.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="320" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN84_T5Nm2AbAXyiFFTgLPbf2pTdd8ALReZqgUJ4LHMQqIyhoaMNJDZDoA7gDsepRJtoT0gy7m8jTubefrn92reQsENzG-n8EhlqohElQEHi387ZtJR4MlfgeYpge8KxZ7D9AZ/s200/IMG_0209.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">Gov. Kasich in 2011 making his first and<br />
only State of the State address from the<br />
Statehouse, before turning it into a road<br />
show, much like Trump does with his<br />
campaign rallies.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
As a persona non grata in the Republican Party, and a distrusted carpetbagger in the Democratic Party at best, candidate Kasich will have more to whine about without taxpayer resources propping him up. His biggest support group comes from loyalist on his payroll who cheer him on. In short order, former Gov. John Kasich won't have Ohio Highway Patrol protection to tap as he has over the last eight years, enabling him to be both governor and Buckeye World expat.<br />
<br />
Run, John, run. Show us you can do what you say you can. Maybe then you'll have a platform to ride through the GOP primaries.<br />
<br />
Until and unless media start challenging him with his own dismal record, Kasich will be the favorite dancing bear of reporters, whose most hard-hitting question is to ask him, it seems, is his favorite softball question: "Are you going to run in 2020?"Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-82785657288527353062018-11-15T15:58:00.002-05:002018-11-15T20:13:32.157-05:00Universal Voting: A Solution To Dems Winning AgainOver the many months leading up to the General Election this past Nov. 6, the anxious, excited and hyped 24/7 cable news and print coverage was all about who would turnout to vote.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNAiKRiMb-B59VRB_PNUt73ZrSj4QCcxlEU42xLoKCffULjkKcPdorsYTQ7yKOErnqvVWqf8nMHflZKUttSbajR26Mt_7NSPeFVCVt2EeSui3Prhxml93RtoIx8GcSDf7_nIhn/s1600/IMG_1973.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="492" data-original-width="492" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNAiKRiMb-B59VRB_PNUt73ZrSj4QCcxlEU42xLoKCffULjkKcPdorsYTQ7yKOErnqvVWqf8nMHflZKUttSbajR26Mt_7NSPeFVCVt2EeSui3Prhxml93RtoIx8GcSDf7_nIhn/s200/IMG_1973.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">President Barack Obama rallies </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">students in 2012 at The Ohio State</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">University.</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Coverage ran the gamut from Democrats fretting about whether their base constituencies—Millennials, African Americans, Hispanics, students and seniors—would show up at the polls to Republicans who tried yet again to suppress or depress those same constituencies by simultaneously ginning up anger in President Donald Trump's base over "caravans" of unarmed, mostly women and children immigrants walking through central America to the nation's southern border.<br />
<br />
The famous "forgotten man" that Republicans relied upon to pull off the national magic trick in 2016 that turned New York billionaire and reality TV host Donald Donald into the occupier of the White House, again came to rescue some GOP candidates in several key races. But not all of them, as Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown showed when he won his third term in the U.S. Senate in a state that glows ruby red.<br />
<br />
Headlines across all media were bloated with various versions of turnout possibilities: From NPR, "<i>Millennials Now Rival Boomers As A Political Force, But Will They Actually Vote</i>?" or from Pew Research Center, "<i>Younger generations make up a majority of the electorate, but may not be a majority of voters this November.</i>" On African-Americans, The Guardian asked, "<i>Will Alabama's black voters turn out in this year's midterms</i>? or from The Washington Post, "<i>Groups work to energize black voters in key midterm contests.</i>" For seniors, Money USA revealed "<i>Why Older Citizens are More Likely to Vote</i>" while the ACLU declared, "<i>Let The People Vote: How Can We Increase Voter Participatio</i>n."<br />
<br />
Now that the 2018 mid-term elections are over, voter turnout was higher than in previous cycles, but still far below the number of people who are over 18 and eligible to vote, who have not registered to vote or didn't vote if they are indeed registered.<br />
<br />
With a polarized and divided nation operating in a broken and very much "rigged" system, as Trump claimed America's system was when running his first campaign for public office just two years ago, any hope that voter turnout will skyrocket to higher levels is a fantasy.<br />
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Democrats argue that the more people that vote, the more issues central to their everyday lives, like healthcare, workers' wages and retirement benefits, among others, will benefit Democratic candidates. Trump Republicans and all those former establishment GOPers who are wondering in the wilderness between who they were and who they are now in the era of Trump, know that their core value agenda—tax breaks for the wealthy, valuing corporations over people, distrusting government and limiting healthcare because they believe it's a privilege and not a human right—conflicts with the overwhelming plurality of Americans who are not millionaires, who wonder about their jobs and wages, who want a good education for their children and who desperately want a solid retirement system they can depend on.<br />
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One solution in plain view, that would solve the trick of voter turnout that Democrats and others fail to see but need to see, is universal voting. Instead of wondering ad nauseam about who will turnout to vote on Election Day, what if the starting point for voter turnout is 100 percent?<br />
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The headlines above would suddenly be obsolete, as everyone 18 and older votes as part of their new civic duty as participating citizens. Carrots and sticks would apply. One carrot to voting would include a federal or state tax credit. Examples of civic penalties could include limits on eligibility for credit or home mortgages, or other privileges taken for granted now that could become troublesome if they failed to vote. Sounds harsh, but the simple act of voting would avoid the heartache of not voting.<br />
<br />
Australia and Argentina use universal voting. Australia, a strong <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9wDFO3u6Y_KE82nVD2lXWkBulH8TnUMfEeHdDQzNIRmskDTVTepAKQmhns_XdeVhT1lZ4WV_GxjXYdDgB5ZaWiFf2VxcElWfDDplOTAn4XMUVO8XlOu0oTYE-39CDhbfhTDrw/s1600/IMG_5153.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9wDFO3u6Y_KE82nVD2lXWkBulH8TnUMfEeHdDQzNIRmskDTVTepAKQmhns_XdeVhT1lZ4WV_GxjXYdDgB5ZaWiFf2VxcElWfDDplOTAn4XMUVO8XlOu0oTYE-39CDhbfhTDrw/s200/IMG_5153.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: left;">"Populism" breaks out in Washington D.C</td></tr>
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democracy by any measure, embraces everyone voting with a voting holiday and celebrations.<br />
<br />
The State of Oregon shows the way forward with universal mail-in ballot voting. Every registered voter receives a paper ballot, that is filled out and sent back at the voters's convenience. Allowing everyone, no matter their economic or physical circumstance, a chance to exercise their voice and their choice should be the goal of American democracy.<br />
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Reasons not to vote, like bad weather or transportation to polling locations or not having time from work to vote, would instantly disappear. Unlike with voting machines, antiquated as they are in many states, paper ballots can't be hacked and represent the ultimate paper trail.<br />
<br />
Instead of future elections costing billions to keep voters from voting, what if money in politics was relegated to educating voters on the issues at stake because everyone will vote? Bi-partisan Boards of Elections would be obsolete since they represent the last vestige of a dilapidated system based on two-party rule and control over voting laws and regulations. Seriously, what sporting event has judges or referees that represent the interests of the contestants? Who would vote to have referees at the upcoming Ohio State versus Michigan game wearing one team's colors? No one. Such a proposition would be absurd on its face, but that's exactly the standard America has grown its system of elections on.<br />
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Is it any wonder, then, that election battles over who is eligible vote, how they voted, and how votes are counted produces the election confusion and anger that's now standard practice?<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEqVXkNHzD5g1UsXvUC_aSJP5gR3oBO71A6MosUXmhmbODR1C5Srs0ltEMDIoMjKKSqcok41ZhyphenhyphenGeVCBd3tklbJrJqpa8naeLWauMHU18p4AzgROHIiYN152Q2fIhQQRhXKH7/s1600/IMG_5155.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguEqVXkNHzD5g1UsXvUC_aSJP5gR3oBO71A6MosUXmhmbODR1C5Srs0ltEMDIoMjKKSqcok41ZhyphenhyphenGeVCBd3tklbJrJqpa8naeLWauMHU18p4AzgROHIiYN152Q2fIhQQRhXKH7/s200/IMG_5155.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The White House in Washington D.C.</td></tr>
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Here in my home state of Ohio, Democrats lost all statewide seats again this year, as they've done for virtually all of the last 30 years, except for the anomaly elections in 2006, when Democrats won four of five constitutional offices, only to lose them again in 2010 after The Great Recession crippled the state, giving Republicans like John Kasich an open door to blame Gov. Ted Strickland for a national economic mess that could have further devolved into a second Great Recession.<br />
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If Democrats want to win in Ohio again, or in so many other states that glow red, leaders need to start rattling the cage for universal voting as the simplest, most effective way for eligible citizens to register the electoral preferences.<br />
<br />
Otherwise, Democrats and third-tier parties will continue their losing ways as Republicans continue to control legislative mapping panels that will put their candidates in Congress even though Democrats win more votes.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-71907667341335780032018-11-10T17:27:00.001-05:002018-11-12T08:47:27.493-05:00It's The Most Dangerous Time Of The YearThe Christmas season is generally lauded as the most wonderful time of the year, as good cheer and good will abound all around.<br />
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Depending on whether you've got a dog in the fight or an iron in the fire in the state legislature after elections are over, the holiday season for many Capital Square agents represents the most dangerous time of the year, as the clock runs out on the current General Assembly (132nd) but before a new two-year clock starts for the incoming 133rd.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcL1sLb69ZJsN3gyKNwIqlW-NjN272mN3aJF9_jr4IxhWsbeMrmB1Dp8mSvdlYKHy35BtywvmZpAO6ZakT-3jDnv_hE6ema3AqopRqP_3Xsu-ebVBgeWMCeyB2RhYFCJg_gTl/s1600/OhStatehouse.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="216" data-original-width="250" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVcL1sLb69ZJsN3gyKNwIqlW-NjN272mN3aJF9_jr4IxhWsbeMrmB1Dp8mSvdlYKHy35BtywvmZpAO6ZakT-3jDnv_hE6ema3AqopRqP_3Xsu-ebVBgeWMCeyB2RhYFCJg_gTl/s200/OhStatehouse.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">The Ohio West entrance to the </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Statehouse in Columbus</span></div>
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Last minute deals, some of which are made in the dark, are real threats to representative democracy. Stuffed into larger and larger bills, these threats taken collectively represent a veritable Christmas tree of gets and thank-you's for past sausage and future recipes.<br />
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Gov. Elect Mike DeWine, a Republican, wants to be friends, not enemies, with the incoming Republican-controlled General Assembly so together they can enact laws that the first-term governor and his much younger and future gubernatorial candidate Lt. Governor-elect candidate Jon Husted will use to warrant reelection in 2022.<br />
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DeWine—the former state representative, state senator, Lt. Gov and attorney general—knows what can happen in Columbus during lame-duck sessions. Elections are over, but still-seated losers use their vote for what's in their best interest. New winners and returning champs haven't been sworn in yet, so the old guard is still in charge.<br />
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What happens next week when the legislature convenes again for the final time after the campaign recess is over, will be another mystery drama that will bring smiles or frowns to many. What bills will make their way to Gov. Kasich's desk, that didn't make the cut over the last two years? More and harsher restrictions on abortion, more wild-west gun law bills like "stand your ground," or other measures that only a right-wing, Trump-loving legislature could love.<br />
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Casting for this year's year-end drama comes courtesy of out-going governor John Kasich and his irritable personality disorder, which has earned him media stardom by cultivating his potential as a viable challenger to President Donald Trump in 2020.<br />
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Opposing Kasich's dreams of being president is a super-majority, right-wing legislature that has trashed his agenda time and time again, and can do so at will still. Mike DeWine, already transitioning to take over, doesn't want to inherit anything Kasich might want to do on his way out to further advance his fantasy for a 2020 candidacy, that then prevents another unwanted political obstacle for the in-coming administration to overcome.<br />
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When a shroud is thrown over the lock, as tradition has it, so legislators don't know what time it is and keeps on working, the witching hour has arrived. The most dangerous time of the year is officially open for business. Kasich players who want to keep their state employment status, with the associated taxpayer funded health care and pension funds, are in the twilight zone between one political leader and another. Despite DeWine and Kasich both being Republicans, they march to the beat of different drummers.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZJ2l7WwaCZTTEQKcB9uuQMt8hSEz7Wa73du1gOWXyRq5JOTD-acDwgkl0hCT9YrjmAevGTdeBMympoMa-r3Sa9JphBlU1dewQh_sP1O96b8Dzjkv4YiyNOIvgWAmGHrVKjlM/s1600/IMG_2331.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="595" data-original-width="594" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWZJ2l7WwaCZTTEQKcB9uuQMt8hSEz7Wa73du1gOWXyRq5JOTD-acDwgkl0hCT9YrjmAevGTdeBMympoMa-r3Sa9JphBlU1dewQh_sP1O96b8Dzjkv4YiyNOIvgWAmGHrVKjlM/s200/IMG_2331.JPG" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Gov. John Kasich in the Lincoln Room</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">of the Ohio Statehouse.</span></div>
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Kasich marches in his own lane, as he was proud to say he did when running for president over many months that forced Ohio taxpayers to pay for his many months on the campaign trail outside Ohio. Kasich well-known self-righteous attitude provides ample reason for his fellow party members to withhold their deepest embrace for him.<br />
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His outlook for his own hide has always been masked by a sacrosanct call to come together, as he and close advisor Jesus Christ would want it. No slouch on playing the religious card, especially on his strict Catholic-raised opposition to abortion, DeWine has arrived at the apotheosis of his political career. At age 71, DeWine is old enough to know that his age is a natural barrier to any dreams he may harbor of higher office, should that opportunity arise, which it won't. Should age or health impact DeWine going forward, his young, handsome Lt. Governor, Jon Husted, will first say a prayer for DeWine, then thank the Lord for the break to ascend to state CEO.<br />
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Students of Kasich knew that after he won in 2010, his ambition would be to run for president in 2016. His second run for president, following his first failed one in 2000, netted him a lopsided win in 2014, when the Democratic candidate imploded and turnout was the lowest since World War II (37%). His 2-1 "big" win gave him the ammunition he needed to join the crowded Republican field. At the end of the race, though, Kasich, who DeWine and every other Republican with Ohio horse sense endorsed for president, got shellacked by Trump and other contenders like Ted Cruz. But the petulant and easily riled Kasich used his reluctance to quit the race earlier, holding on to the very last despite no national numbers to warrant staying in the race, used his great showmanship for media looking for a reliable anti-Trump dancing-bear.<br />
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What witches brew of legislative stew will be served up to Gov. Kasich, and what parts will he eat and what will he spit out? What battle will he pitch with a legislature that can override any veto he executes? What anti-women measures will he approve, that will add to his long list of terrible acts against females? What other provisions will he agree to because they sync with his like-wide lopside political ideology that favors corporations over people? Which ones will rile him up enough that opposing them will be a feather in his hat as he leave officing looking for new work? Does he land another high-paid, TV talking-pundit job (he's did that on Fox News). Does he land another big corporate board slot, where he'll earn big bucks for being the former governor of the once great State of Ohio?<br />
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Or, as I've long forecasted, will he find a way to become the next president of The Ohio State University, his alma mater? He's appointed many of the university's board members, he can make big bucks, provide jobs for his loyalists, speak to thousands of students as their leader, transition OSU from a land-grant university to a charter institution, and command attention by state and national media. What presidential hopeful wouldn't want that platform to run for president on? There are no term limits for college presidents, so Kasich could run for a third time and lose but know he's still president of one of the biggest universities in the world.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi30YPgXUle-0_bOjjLPtjELrkpcUyicX5u5CRndus43Xr-whrVoyiFVox7g1DPYD1fxg24CO46EyhlFz78Pf8ACs6YSwN03B1wod5SL06yN2jci-VHMeKfrzBU06lJUbwoFeji/s1600/IMG_3047.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="534" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi30YPgXUle-0_bOjjLPtjELrkpcUyicX5u5CRndus43Xr-whrVoyiFVox7g1DPYD1fxg24CO46EyhlFz78Pf8ACs6YSwN03B1wod5SL06yN2jci-VHMeKfrzBU06lJUbwoFeji/s200/IMG_3047.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">speaks on ODP dinner and fundraiser</span></div>
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And what about the role Democrats play in the most dangerous time of the year? The donkeys have lost so many statewide races over so many years that it's hard to imagine any future candidate can win, especially given the gerrymandered state grid Gov. Kasich and like-minded Republicans put in place in 2011. Current district maps will likely remain mostly intact in 2021, when the Ohio Apportionment Board (controlled by Republicans again) convenes following the 2020 census to map out districts.<br />
<br />
For all their failings of message or strategy or tactics, Democrats will have un-winnable maps as their nemesis.<br />
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Aside from statewide issues that make the ballot, and Republicans are trying to raise the bar on what citizens can do to end-run the legislature, Democrats are effectively irrelevant. They have lost so many statewide races over so many years that it's hard to imagine any Democrat candidate win any state policy-making position, especially given the gerrymandered state grid Gov. Kasich and like-minded Republicans put in place in 2011, that will likely remain mostly in tact in 2021, the year when the Ohio Apportionment Board convenes following the 2020 census.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-62523421987440415462018-11-07T01:39:00.002-05:002018-11-07T11:54:52.145-05:00Ohio glows red hot in 2018 as Dems are vanquished againThe so-called "Blue Wave" that was fueled over the last two years by the so-called "Resistance to President Donald Trump and his administration, produced a dramatic change in Washington Tuesday, when control of the U.S. House of Representatives flipped from Republican to Democrat.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis7svv9lyDHRnbSEzriCZwXjlSGKS7cbckC-NSoc6TURCr1mFH9DxRXk5B7tHjJ3dajAoP-Lu-KD4gxxqVhnzzru84u8Rc4E0pnHAE6ZnygDh_jz8Xi5iettNV2LyCQMbEoo3B/s1600/IMG_4087.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="229" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis7svv9lyDHRnbSEzriCZwXjlSGKS7cbckC-NSoc6TURCr1mFH9DxRXk5B7tHjJ3dajAoP-Lu-KD4gxxqVhnzzru84u8Rc4E0pnHAE6ZnygDh_jz8Xi5iettNV2LyCQMbEoo3B/s200/IMG_4087.JPG" width="143" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">John Kasich ran for </span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">governor in 2010 on lower</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">taxes and less regulation.</span></div>
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<div>
In Ohio, a perennial bellwether state in presidential elections, that much-ballyhooed movement failed to make a dent in Ohio's statewide elected officials in the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans won all important races again, including the retention of strong majorities in the Senate and House. This marks the third midterm election cycle that Ohio Democrats went home big losers.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Ohio Democratic Party lost it all again when it came to statewide candidates and their message to voters. Some said Cordray went soft on the spending scandal tied to The Electronic Classroom of America, a for-profit charter school that Republicans from Kasich to Yost and DeWine could have been pilloried for but were let off the hook.<br />
<br />
History shows Democrats can win when Republican scandals are ripe enough to be picked. Charter schools, pension-looting and Medicaid expansion are Kasich-era scandals Democrats could have but didn't exploit. Kasich and Republicans slashed The Local Government Fund, forcing cities to raise taxes to maintain service levels. Pay-to-play is alive and well in Columbus, but Dems couldn't figure it out enough to run with the bounty of scandals Kasich and company offered to hungry Democrats.<br />
<br />
Ohio is solid red today despite major cities and the largest counties going blue. A statehouse observer commented on Tuesday's election results, "The boys with the greenbacks own both city and state and love the business certainty of uncompetitive races." </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
After shamelessly fondling term-limited Gov. John R. Kasich for the one good policy decision he made since first being elected in 2010, that being accepting expanded Medicaid, Gov. Kasich has never reciprocated Dem's adulation foolishly dished out to him. The adoration of Kasich by Ohio Democrats was a case study in stupidity and foolishness. The former Fox News TV host and Lehman Brothers banker has surfed to national stardom with DC media as a result, offering his mantra of bringing people together when he done little of that at home as the Ohio's CEO.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Kasich, who has never spoken two words of praise for Democrats over his nearly 40 years in office and repeatedly says he doesn't know what they stand for, became the object of idol worship by Democrats. Worshipping Kasich as a golden calf, as Democrats from Ohio's senior senator in Washington, Sherrod Brown, who won a third 6-year term, to the party's losing gubernatorial candidate, Richard Cordray, and other down ballot candidates, was a terrible political blunder.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
By not hanging Kasich's terrible record as governor around the neck of Ohio's now 70th governor-elect, Mike DeWine, who previously beat Cordray for the "top cop" job in 2010, the Ohio Democratic Party and its leadership squandered an arsenal of ammo that could have shot holes in DeWine's campaign enough to put Cordray in the driver's seat.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
By coddling Kasich as it did, instead of shooting fish in a barrel of scandals, ODP's strategy was foolish from the outset. ODP argued that, because Kasich wasn't on the ballot and because he was "popular," attacking him and his record wasn't a good idea. It was, in fact, the best idea. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Republicans, who had no second thoughts about running commercials tagging Cordray for conspiring with former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs and leaving the state budget with a giant hole in it over a decade ago, had no such squeamishness dredging up Strickland's one term from 2006-2010, when the Great Recession sucker punched Ohio and virtually every other state. Republicans created the very dynamics that triggered the Great Recession, then fought President Barack Obama at every turn to recover from it. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
This year's elections for Ohio were critical because Republicans will again control the Apportionment Board (Governor, Auditor, Secretary of State) and will again draw legislative districts to advantage their candidates following the next census in 2020. Their last effort at this task, done in 2011, created gerrymandered districts that made and will make it virtually impossible for Democrats, their candidates and their issues, to win statewide or key legislative seats.</div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ0xouL3d-Qod1Wdc2XUttDhCp4eJwYXM7_sEibM8oyBkVJm7aTltP_3rcLQ_OqFs_ms1A2oyqHFTRqxEw84TCDPXq75gsivJr3zL_SYqZfGiKpZ8YOP4k0nDWJZ4KD6s2Zj0/s1600/2016-10-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtQ0xouL3d-Qod1Wdc2XUttDhCp4eJwYXM7_sEibM8oyBkVJm7aTltP_3rcLQ_OqFs_ms1A2oyqHFTRqxEw84TCDPXq75gsivJr3zL_SYqZfGiKpZ8YOP4k0nDWJZ4KD6s2Zj0/s200/2016-10-13.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Ohio's leading in dependent</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">reporter speaks with Sen.</span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Sherrod Brown.</span></div>
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<div>
After getting blown away for the third midterm election in a row, does ODP and its leadership have much promise going forward? Other than winning some mayor and county commissioner seats, Democrats have worked themselves into a corner they will be stuck in for another decade or more.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Meanwhile, Gov. Kasich is lauded by Democrats who thought cozying up to him would draw so-called moderate voters to their cause. What a silly strategy. It drew all jokers and not one ace. Kasich, who loves being courted as a presidential contender in two years, won't ever give Dems the time of day while he basks in their praise for expanded Medicaid, a decision he did for reasons that don't coincide with the reasons Democrats wanted it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Ohio Republicans will continue to control the gears of government in a state that makes or breaks presidents. For years to come, Ohio Democrats are left to continue their wondering ways in the desert of irrelevance. </div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-82196748663137276522018-10-24T19:10:00.002-04:002018-10-24T20:10:04.686-04:00Night On Trump Mountain<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Growing up in the 50s and 60s, films made by Walt Disney were staples of American culture. From "Snow White" to "Pinocchio" to even "Song Of The South," a nostalgic cartoon that featured a Black character, and the film's docile and loveable yarn teller, that were it made today would create a controversy of untold proportions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Among Disney's lesser known works was "Fantasia," a piece featuring cartoon renditions of several classical music masterpieces. Among the arrangements featured was "<a href="https://filmmusiccentral.com/2016/01/06/on-this-day-in-film-history-january-6th/">Night On Bald Mountain</a>," <span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">based on the symphonic poem of the same name by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky, with an arrangement created by his friend Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The simple background to the episode is what takes place one night in a country village surrounded by mountains. The highest peak of those mountains turns out to be the giant body of a massive black winged demon who uses evil powers to summon all the dead spirits, witches and other lesser demons to perform for its pleasure. After wreaking havoc all night long, just as the demon is eat its last supper, the tolling of distant church bells in the village douse his hunger and rage and drive him back into his mountain lair. When dawn arrives, the beast retreats.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444;">What appears to be happening in America today is a political version of this episode. The emergence of another long night of demons running amuck started two years ago when a minority of voters installed New York City reality TV star, phony businessman and inveterate liar and misogynist Donald J. Trump into the Oval Office in Washington D.C.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The witches and spirits dancing on Trump mountain now are white nationalists, xenophobism, and a full cast of characters who comprise the core and sympathetic outer layers of the alt-right movement, whose plan to make America First will turnout to make America Last, and alone.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Two years of Night on Trump Mountain has degraded our once great democracy into </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">a scary turn to the hard right, that's unfortunately gaining popularity in countries other than the US. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The kind of representative democracy our founding fathers crafted when their revulsion was to turn away from the monarchical</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> powers exercised by the then King of England is now endangered </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Night on Trump Mountain is producing stories about <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/opinion/george-soros-mailbox-bomb.html">pipe bombs being sent </a>to political figures like George Soros, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama. <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/24/politics/bill-clinton-hillary-clinton-chappaqua/index.html">CNN</a>, Trump's leading contender for so-called fake news, also got one at the media company's New York City office.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Demons supporting Trump had a field day last year in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/charlottesville-timeline/">Charlottesville, Virginia</a>, where torch-carrying white nationalists proudly marched in the city, creating an atmosphere that incentivised one young man from Ohio to drive his car into a crowd, killing one woman and injuring many more.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white;">One of Trump's first efforts to make America worse again, centered around<a href="https://www.aclu-wa.org/pages/timeline-muslim-ban"> banning Muslims</a>, especially from selected countries, from entering the country. Called "</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States," Trump's executive order, while losing in lower courts, won a </span><span style="color: #171717;">5-4 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts ruling the president's travel restrictions “squarely” within the president’s authority.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #171717;">Trump's most recent lies about terrible immigrants come in advance of elections on Nov. 6. Trump accuses Democrats of being behind the movement of thousands of migrants desperately hoping to reach the Southwest border, where they will turn themselves over to U.S. immigration authorities in order to seek asylum. With about 20<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1054088531629490178"> tweets from the president</a> on the flow of central Americans northward, making undocumented claims that many among them are criminals and Middle Eastern terrorists, all funded by Democrats who he's labeled a "mob," the sheer volume of mendacious claims is both overwhelming and historic. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #171717;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman weighed in on Night on Trump mountain in his latest opinion piece, "<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/opinion/midterms-democrats-trump-house-senate.html">How to Make America America Again</a>." Friedman offers a simple recipe and directive to force Trump and his dark minions to retreat from his mountainous momentum. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #171717;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's centered around one ingredient: voting. Specifically, voting for any Democrat no matter who the candidate may be.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="color: #171717;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">So, this year: No third party, no Green Party, no throwing up our hands and saying, 'They’re all bad,'” Friedman writes. "All of that’s for another day. For today, in these midterm elections, vote for a Democrat, canvass for a Democrat, raise money for a Democrat, drive someone else to a voting station to vote for a Democrat. It’s the only hope to make America </span><em class="css-2fg4z9 ehxkw330" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-size-adjust: 100%; vertical-align: baseline;">America </em><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">again."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">For Friedman and others like him, the church bells tolling that forced the black demon in Fantasia </span></span><br />
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back into its hidden lair are the mid-term elections on Nov. 6. Only through voting can Trump and his demons and witches be defeated. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;">But voting in America, the single greatest political franchise in world history, is as uncertain today as millennials, hispanics, African Americans and women of color showing up in numbers to turn the ballot box into tolling church bells.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333;">If Trump and his band of 21st century white nationalists retain their hold on both branches of congress, Night on Trump Mountain will turn into four, eight, or more years of evil spirits dancing on the grave of American-style democracy, as we know it.</span></span></span></div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-53728277322464686032018-10-20T00:16:00.001-04:002018-10-23T01:45:21.310-04:00China is cucumber cool while Trump acts like dumb blond strongmanAfter three weeks touring China, starting in Beijing then traveling by high-speed rail to Shanghai and Changsha, then up the Yangtze River to Chongqing, in that order, the construction cranes in each of these mega-cities dotted the landscape by the dozens.<br />
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China today is planning for China tomorrow, while foul-mouthed leaders back Washington D.C, as detailed in Bob Woodward's book "<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/08/fear-review-bob-woodward-donald-trump">Fear</a>" based on The Donald's time in the Oval Office todate, act like mean-spirited, xenophobic, paranoid abusers who know that the American century is over.<br />
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The Asian century is unfolding before our eyes. America's lunch will soon be eaten alive by China and others, with lots of hot sauce, chili peppers and MSG. </div>
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From half a world away, hurricane Michael that devastated the Florida panhandle looks like a regular rain storm compared to the political hurricane headed to the entire country on November 6. These midterm elections will show whether sleepy-time-tea American voters will again squander their franchise by deciding to again forego voting.</div>
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When a minority of the country--as Trump calls his base--is able to control 100 percent of the nation's assets, because the majority of registered voters are too apathetic or lazy to do their civic duty, then the meanness that embodies the America First attitude of the president's swamp will open the doors to more shrinkage as world leaders watch as China advances.<br />
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Graham Allison writes in his editorial in <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201810/18/WS5bc7e20ca310eff3032830aa.html">China Daily</a> that 2018 <span style="text-indent: 10px;">marks the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening-up. Over these four decades, the author of "Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides' Trap?" says </span><span style="background-color: #f6f6f6; font-family: "arial";">"</span><span style="text-indent: 10px;">the country has become an economic giant with the world's largest foreign reserves ($3.2 trillion) and second-largest GDP ($12 trillion), while foreign direct investment in China reached $135 billion last year."</span><br />
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With tens of thousands of miles of high-speed rail to ride on as America watches its rail system dissolve further, despite more than a decade of talk and little action on California's quest to build just one line of similar capability between San Francisco and Los Angeles, one respected economist has facts to show that <a href="http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/washington-post-is-badly-off-on-the-story-of-china-and-the-trade-war">China already has already become the world's largest economy</a>. Other economists say it will take a dozen years, maybe by <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201809/26/WS5baaee2fa310c4cc775e8212.html">2030 for that to happen.</a> What isn't in doubt is that China is moving inexorably forward despite President Trump's silly claims to the contrary.<br />
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Through innovation, inclusiveness, sharing and embracing global values, China knows those cards are the winning hand compared to Trump's cards of closed borders, rewarding the already rich with more largesse, and continuing to promote the false claim that reduction of income tax rates is the road to growth and prosperity will only further widen the gap between rich and poor. China's middle class is expanding while America's once great national asset is shrinking.</div>
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If democracy is still a value worth pursuing, maybe it's time for mandatory democracy? Australia and other countries have done it. American democracy is in free fall, as the 2016 elections showed with great clarity. Billions are spent to keep voters home. While the USA may complain and point to the horrors of communist or socialist systems, the rise of a once poor but rapidly expanding country like China shows that regular pragmatism, combined with accurate planning, can make a one-party ruler state whose leader is a progressive strong man like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping">Xi Jinping </a>equal to a nation run by elected leaders who think going backward in time, in thought and action, is the same as going forward.</div>
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If Trump world retains control of the House and Senate this election cycle, Democrats may be the next political party to be thrown on the trash heap of history. With more voters not voting than voting, Washington's legally dumb blond and wannabe strong man will declare his reprisal brand of democracy to be the best ever.</div>
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American under Teddy Roosevelt once spoke softly but carried a big stick. Today, China can make the same claim, as it's economic stick grows stronger by the day. America's big stick remains its nuclear power. The social fabric is bound up in false issues that the rest of the world appears to have moved beyond.<br />
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As one former Ohio budget director told me, his fears for the future align with mine. "<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "calibri" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I share your concern these Asian countries will out hustle and out organize us."</span></div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-84447465596953809952018-08-16T13:11:00.002-04:002018-08-16T13:48:28.551-04:00John Kasich's White House plans include being the next presidential 'asterisk' candidate. After two terms of questionable policies, programs and initiatives that have left the once-great State of Ohio <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/ohio">ranking in the lower half or near the bottom </a>of states on so many issues, term-limited Gov. John Kasich will soon find himself wandering the political graveyard like a lost soul in search of a new promised land.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">On election night in 2010, governor-elect</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">John Kasich addresses Republicans in</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">downtown Columbus.</span></div>
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For his early years in hometown McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, Ohio was Kasich's promised land. One of Kasich's favorite family stories tells of his uncle calling Ohio the promised land. And for most of Kasich's nearly 40 years in politics, the 17th state in the union was that promised land, indeed.<br />
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He represented the 12th Congressional District close to nearby Columbus in Washington for 18 years. After resigning to run his first failed campaign for president in 2000, Kasich spent most of the next decade either working for Lehman Brothers on Wall Street or hosting his own political talk show on Fox News. The crusty 64-year's eyes are still set on winning the White House.<br />
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Kasich mounted a second campaign two years ago to win the hearts and minds of GOP primary voters, but like 15 other candidates, he fell far short to New York real estate magnet and reality TV star Donald J. Trump. Kasich had never tasted defeat in a real political race until then, when he only won one state--Ohio--and collected only one Electoral College vote, leaving him 269 votes short of becoming the 45th President of The United States.<br />
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From the day he bowed out of presidential contention in 2016, having stayed the longest of any other candidate in the race even though he had little money and less support for voters, Kasich's new reputation is built around criticising the president.<br />
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In his role as critic, Kasich relishes cameo appearances on national TV pundit shows as the dancing bear who will criticize Trump. As a sitting governor for a few months more, Kasich receives the respect he so desperately needs from pundits who keep him on their list of guests because they know he has to keep the notion alive that he will challenge Trump in 2020 and be successful at it. But with Trump winning the support of 80 percent or more of Republican voters, as polls show he has, the disgruntled Kasich seeks media attention wherever and whenever he can.<br />
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Now that President Trump has been announced as the keynote speaker at the Ohio Republican Party's main event later in August, betting has already started on where the two politicos will sit when POTUS comes to town to rally his faithful and bash his critics, among whom Kasich has a front row seat.<br />
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While Democrats are poking Kasich on Trump sucking all the oxygen out of the room, for this very reason, Kasich may not even be there. Look for the petulant state CEO to be in New Hampshire, where he finished a distant second to Trump, drumming up support in this tiny libertarian-leaning state. And if he's not in the Granite State, Kasich, who's been auditioning for a media gig post being governor, will be on a national TV show doing analysis of what's going on back home in Columbus.<br />
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There is one thing that is certain. When 2020 arrives and Trump launches his re-election, which has already started, Kasich will be forced to run as either an ant-Trump Republican or gin up an independent run for Commander-in-chief.<br />
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Based on history from 2016, Kasich will assure himself a place on the list of failed candidates who mounted campaigns outside their party or as independents. Others pundits, like <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-15/trump-vs-kasich-in-2020-maybe-just-on-twitter">Ramesh Ponnuru writing at Bloomberg News</a>, have multiple reasons why Kasich and his Master (The Lord) won't be showing up for work in the Oval Office.<br />
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Just like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_third-party_and_independent_presidential_candidates,_2016">so many other failed candidates</a>, from recent losers like Gary Johnson or Bill Weld or Jill Stein to older attempts by Jon Anderson or Ross Perot, who won about 20 percent of the vote in 1992, John Richard Kasich will have an asterisk next to his name in the graveyard of politicos who couldn't make the grade.<br />
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Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-23457217626306855072018-08-12T23:16:00.004-04:002018-08-12T23:16:47.420-04:00Ohio Dems adore Kasich on healthcare even as he mocks them on everything elseOhio's crusty, petulant and now term-limited governor had yet another softball cameo appearance on national television Sunday, on Meet the Press with host Chuck Todd, where he sounded like a Democrat on health care.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich in The<br />Lincoln Room of the Ohio Statehouse.</td></tr>
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At the same time, the former Fox News host got to browbeat and shame President Donald Trump by invoking his favorite Superhero and Master, The Almighty, The Lord!<br />
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Kasich told Todd he's just trying to lead the best life he can by lifting people up through divine pathways. A media hound by training, after 40 years of winning impossible-to-lose elections, the easily angered governor who got shellacked two years ago by Trump said he doesn't know what Democrats stand for.<br />
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Meanwhile, Democrats, who currently hold no statewide seats in Ohio and who have no legislative clout in Columbus, quote Kasich like he's Moses leading seniors with pre-conditions to the promised land, making him sound as if he's one of their very own lambs, just gone astray, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9hyrzNxamo&feature=youtu.be">as he did Sunday.</a><br />
<br />
<span id="m_-5127609513247812400gmail-docs-internal-guid-fde2e2c8-7fff-f8f2-0947-94f75fd82bc8" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">"You can’t be talking about being in a fight here where maybe people could lose their health care if they have a pre-existing condition… these kinds of messages, plus the overall chaos, the chaos here, the chaos overseas. Chuck, people just want the government to do its job to improve the situation for them," Kasich said.</span></div>
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Kasich has cleverly used his acceptance of expanded Medicaid to batter Republicans and Democrats alike. He said while campaigning for the Oval that Obamacare would probably go if he were elected, that for-profit market places are America's solution to its unfair, unjust and immensely complicated health care system, as T. R. Reid eloquently explained in 2010 in his seminal work, "<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Healing_of_America">The Healing of America: A Global Quest For Better, Cheaper And Fairer Health Care."</a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14.6667px; font-style: italic; white-space: pre-wrap;">"There's no question that people sent a message to the Party, to Republicans to knock it off; the chaos, the divisions. I mean kids being separated from their parents at the border. These crazy tariffs, and we're gonna take your health care. We're gonna kill Obamacare. Which means you're not gonna have any health care. You know if you have a pre-existing condition, well you know, you might be out of luck," Kasich said on <a href="https://youtu.be/38-0drGzSqM">MSNBC</a>.</span></blockquote>
Trump won the got-to-win Buckeye State over Hillary Clinton by more than eight points. As Kasich heads for the exit come year's end, after eight years of lagging job growth and questionable policies, Ohio's gerrymandered legislative districts--made possible by Kasich in 2011--appear ready to function as the chief tool to elect another Republican chief executive despite so-called Democrat "Blue Wave" enthusiasm.<br />
<br />
When Kasich repeats his unbelievable mindset that he doesn't know what Democrats stand for anymore, his ego reveals its history of panning others, especially when his long-held but unworkable ideas--conveniently dubbed "The Ohio Model"--aren't credited or listened to.<br />
<br />
Kasich's favorite gambit when asked about whether his presidential aspirations include making a third run at the Oval Office in 2020, is to say he doesn't know what he's going to do tomorrow, let alone two years from now. If his third try to capture today's hearts and minds of primary Trump Republican voters is undertaken without protection of public office, it will be his great loss, one that will extinguish any devine hopes he holds of the Lord lifting him up to be president. <br />
<br />
Trumpism, long in the making, just waiting for the right Trump to come along, has captured the soul of the GOP, leaving old-school politicos and new political bi-sexuals like Kasich to wonder where his next political meal will come from.<br />
<br />
In the recent special election between Franklin County Recorder, Democrat Danny O'Connor and Republican State Senator Troy Balderson, to determines who fills the unexpired term of Pat Tiberi--a one-time driver for then Congressman John Kasich--who represented the 12th Congressional District<br />
as long as Kasich did before him, Balderson thanked many people, most especially President Trump. But Balderson didn't mention Kasich's name, even though the two-term governor endorsed him late in the election cycle.<br />
<br />
Democrats are so enthralled with Kasich on healthcare that they've lost their voice on assailing him on so many other policies where he hurts or harms workers, teachers, women, seniors and others who the Lord would otherwise want to lift up. <br />
<br />
A cold and grueling assessment of Kasich mocked him as founder of the "Independent Weasel Party." Writing for Ohio GOP blog "<a href="https://www.3rdrailpolitics.com/article/1350">3rd Rail Politics</a>," author Scott Pullins reams the Wizard of Westerville on 2nd Amendment rights versus his gun-control plan, then uses Kasich's own reported campaign financing statistics to argue Kasich is dead in the water now and going forward, unless the Lord delivers a miracle.<br />
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As Pullins puts it, after declaring Kasich wouldn't run as a Democrat, he only has one extremely narrow path forward, and that path is hooking up with a billionaire running mate. </div>
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"If one of these billionaires would join him on an independent ticket as running mate, Kasich would be free to use their personal funds on the campaign to fund the primary and general election efforts. And perhaps that’s why he really has weaseled his way towards the left," Pullins speculates on why Kasich drifts leftward, at least in rhetoric. </div>
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The Ohio Democratic Party and its top candidates feel they can't and shouldn't attack Kasich, since they says he's not on the ballot and the so-called "popular governor" polls above 50 percent. ODP hasn't learned what Republicans know, that it's never too early to demonize your opponent. Dredging Ted Strickland up after he's been gone for eight years is a classic example of never let go on a winning narrative, or as some might call it, the "Ohio Model." O'Connor had to fess up on whether he'd vote for the dreaded and much defiled former Democratic House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. The San Francisco liberal won acclaim for guiding the Affordable Care Act through to President Barack Obama's desk in 2010, the year Tea Party fervor got ginned up over it, enough that Kasich saw his opening and used anti-Washington energy to eek out a two-percentage-point win as hurricane winds from the Great Recession had subsided.</div>
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<span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Kasich, who claims Democrats have no agenda, won't like what one Republican is calling on other Republicans to do to save The Republican Party. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Michael Gerson titled "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-only-way-to-save-the-gop-is-to-defeat-it/2018/08/09/dc70b75a-9c10-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.629e2c56ac7d">The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it,</a>" the author asks the question of "What should they do" when reality is that </span><span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">President Trump "is a rolling disaster of mendacity, corruption and prejudice."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Gerson's answer is simple: "</span></span><span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">They should vote Democratic in their House race, no matter who the Democrats put forward." After explaining why the House should flip but the Senate remain in GOP hands, Gerson ends this way: " ... </span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif;">a Republican vote for a Democratic representative will be an act of conscience."</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif;">Will Kasich's conscience win out over his inability to say one positive word about Democrats in general or certain office holders in particular, even though they herald him on high for one stand on one issue, that while terribly important isn't the whole ball game.</span></span></div>
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<br />Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-4367279771603349962018-08-07T23:33:00.003-04:002018-08-08T10:55:05.655-04:00Ohio's 12th District: Danny O'Connor did great, if you don't count losing to BaldersonA friend asked me to call Tuesday's special election between Democrat <a href="https://dannyoconnorforcongress.com/">Danny O'Connor</a> and Republican <a href="https://baldersonforcongress.com/">Troy Balderson</a> to fill the unexpired term of 12 District Congressman Pat Tiberi.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKE9jKfrtJEIitHomC2IIEt4sGGVCHDPcU5-uxS2Gw9xAjMtHqXZJkGV5hg53nlfsqXPPrJJ8jJYPRAcVH8ku0aQnpJfdTX-F-w6VpnETRm3ZihayvtnfhIB-Vt4jNpV5lKqUz/s1600/Medicaid_APgraphic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="153" data-original-width="204" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKE9jKfrtJEIitHomC2IIEt4sGGVCHDPcU5-uxS2Gw9xAjMtHqXZJkGV5hg53nlfsqXPPrJJ8jJYPRAcVH8ku0aQnpJfdTX-F-w6VpnETRm3ZihayvtnfhIB-Vt4jNpV5lKqUz/s1600/Medicaid_APgraphic.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Kasich likes expanded Medicaid while </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Balderson </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">doesn't.</span></div>
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<div>
With all the enthusiasm for O'Connor, Franklin County's Recorder, so-called Blue Wave Democrats hope their momentum will crash over the country in November to put a check on President Donald Trump by reclaiming the U.S. House of Representatives.<br />
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By the end of the night on special election Tuesday, the blue wave crashed short of winning.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Before midnight, O'Connor trailed Balderson, a state senator, 50.2 percent to 49.3 percent. By fewer than 2,000 votes out of 202,521, according to unofficial voting statistics posted at the <a href="https://vote.ohio.gov/">Ohio Secretary of State's website</a>, Balderson captured the rural red vote outside of Franklin County, where O'Connor crushed his opponent.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
The winning votes for Balderson came from Delaware County, Ohio's fastest growing county for decades, where GOP voters may have been inspired by a visit last week by Trump or by a late endorsement from Gov. John Kasich, who wins coverage by being the anti-Trump dancing bear national media love, as he tries to keep his hopes to be a presidential contender in 2020 alive after he leaves office in just four short months.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Balderson thanked President Trump for his fly-in endorsement as well as Tiberi, who turned down another guaranteed term to take a job in the private sector. </div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>My election prediction</b></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"When the theory (based on decades of voter statistics) that D turnout in midterms is lower meets the theory that Rs enthralled by Trump will vote for anyone except a D, I think Balderson squeaks out a narrow victory today."</span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ohio Republican Party Chairman Jane Timken </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">said in a statement that Balderson's win today reflects the nation's thinking that President Trump is on the right track.</span></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">"Tonight, Troy Balderson and the constitutents of Ohio's twelfth congressional district sent a message to Democrats and media pundits across the country. America is on the right track under President Trump and Republican leadership., and the so-called 'blue wave' is nothing more than wishful thinking. Troy Balderson will prove himself to be an incredible Congressman by working tirelessly for his district and come November, will win by an even bigger margin."</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"> </span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">The crescendo of campaigning and the crash of not winning will signal to Republicans that they can win Ohio's other statewide seats in November, especially the open seat for governor, where Richard Cordray, the Democrat, goes up against Mike DeWine, the Republican and current Ohio Attorney General.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">Campaign spending by GOP allied sources dwarfed spending by Democratic allies by a 5-1 margin in this special election. Before November 6, the real fall General Election when the winner between O'Connor and Balderson wins a two-year seat in Congress, spending will be even higher when the stakes are the highest.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">The O’Connor campaign released the following statement on tonight’s special election victory in OH-12:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">“We always knew this was going to be a close race, and while we don’t know the results quite yet, I know that this campaign left it all on the field. There’s a lot at stake this November for the 12th District. The Republican notion that it’s more important to cut taxes for big corporations and the wealthiest among us, flies in the face of our belief that tax relief should be targeted to the working class, and that we should protect Social Security and Medicare benefits instead of showering the uber-rich with new tax cuts they don’t need. No matter what happens next, I’m proud to stand beside the thousands of volunteers who have made this campaign possible.”</span></blockquote>
<b>Kasich v Trump</b><br />
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">Gov. Kasich is as responsible as any politician can be for gerrymandering that took place in Ohio in 2011, when he went along with the terrible tilting of the electoral playing field that has benefited Republicans from then to today.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">O'Connor won big in blue Franklin County, but lost, albeit by smaller margins than Trump won the district in 2016 or Mitt Romney won it in 2012.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">Can Democrats cheer that the race in a ruby red district was as close as it was today? Yes the can. Can Democrats relish a win in a race that was supposed to verify that the blue wave was waving blue? No they can't.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">In close races, it's always nice to win rather than lose. Democrats lost again. They will have another bite at the 12th District in November, but unless they raise more money or hit on issues not hit on before that resonate with more voters, Trump Republicans may be even more energized to not lose this fall. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;">Another question to answer is will Kasich, who dislikes Trump, or Trump, who pans Kasich, earn the real laurels for endorsing Balderson? Of all the people Balderson thanked, John Kasich was not one of them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , "calibri" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-49421219042851446662018-07-18T13:22:00.000-04:002018-07-18T13:22:25.018-04:00Sherrod Brown says Trump-Putin meeting taped by RussiansIn his weekly Wednesday call with reporters, Ohio's senior senator in Washington said he "would love to know more about that meeting," the details of which no one but Trump, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and two translators supposedly know about.<br />
<br />
<b>Brown: Russians Taped Private Trump-Putin Meeting</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sen. Sherrod Brown (right)<br />talks to me in 2016</td></tr>
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Brown told reporters that the intelligence officials he's talked with all believe the private meeting was taped by Russia. "They have Trump's reaction on video tape," he told me.<br />
<br />
When I asked Sen. Sherrod Brown this question, "Do you believe Trump would have won without Russia's interference?," he paused, then responded, saying "Clearly, Russia intervened on one side."<br />
<br />
Brown, who's running for a third term this year, said he doesn't know the answer to my question, but hopes the special council investigation undertaken by former FBI chief Robert Mueller into the issue will provide the evidence that proves or disproves the belief held by many, especially Democrats, that Russia's vast meddling in the 2016 presidential election tipped the table to favor Donald Trump.<br />
<br />
When asked if anything the President Trump has done or said so far justifies anyone leveling a charge of treason against him, Sen. Brown asked cautiously. "I did not levy that charge and I'm not going to judge what others say about him (Trump)."<br />
<br />
Brown did say he doesn't understand Trump's attacks on long-standing allies and why he would make comments that undermine NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and then "throwing in with the KGB (Russia's equivalent of the CIA). Why would the president do that?"<br />
<br />
Brown's view is that the nation is "overwhelmingly disturbed by this" and that the only people not disturbed by it are members of congress (virtually all Republicans) and a sliver in trump's political base.<br />
<br />
"Virtually everyone I talk to is concerned what trump does for and with Russia," he said, adding, "NATO is the best idea post war that keeps Europe safe ... and more prosperous."<br />
<br />
Responding to my question on the call that "Rob Portman said he takes Trump at his word that the president misspoke in his press conference with Putin. Do you agree with Portman's hold harmless comment on what Trump said he should have said about Russian interference in the 2016 elections?," Brown did not respond directly. He chose instead to say "the stakes are too high ... when talking about national security."<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Sen. Brown is still waiting for President Trump to say Russia hacked the election, as every Republican he said he's 's talked to believes happened.<br />
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<b>Poll: Brown-Renacci tied among 'definite voters.'</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">President Barack Obama speaks to a<br />large crowd at OSU in 2012.</td></tr>
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In the most recent <a href="https://www.axios.com/2018-midterms-senate-races-voter-assumptions-poll-513a1291-9e61-4ffb-b4da-fae0a2b1373a.html">Axios/Survey Monkey</a> poll of over 12,000 people, Sen. Brown's once large advantage over his Republican rival Congressman Jim Renacci has narrowed to within the margin of error among definite voters. This means that the race that Brown once enjoyed a comfortable lead in has narrowed considerably with this metric. Among just registered voters, Brown holds an eight-point lead over Renacci, whose name ID across Ohio is relatively poor compared to Brown's.<br />
<br />
"Would it be a plus or minus for Democratic candidates including yourself if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton hit the campaign and didn't go into hiding as some might want them to do?"<br />
<br />
Brown responded to my last question of the day by not responding to it. He said the question fell into the category of a political question and he wasn't going to use public resources to answer it, although he might do so if we were to meet in person.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27907444.post-82055441298504289372018-07-02T18:27:00.002-04:002018-07-02T18:27:48.674-04:00Rob Portman ignores his own history on tax cut benefitsThe worst economic meltdown since 1929 happened in 2007, at the end of President George W. Bush's eight years in office. Bush's billions of unnecessary and un-budgeted tax cuts were enabled by his then budget direction, former Ohio Congressman Rob Portman from Cincinnati.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Ohio Sen. Rob Portman at an</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">energy conference at The Ohio</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">State University. Portman served</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">President George W. Bush as his</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">budget director when $2.3</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">trillion in un-budgeted, </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">unnecessary tax cuts</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">were approved. </span></div>
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Winning in 2016, Portman crafted a campaign that distanced himself from close association with Donald Trump without being tagged as an opponent. Portman moves through his second term as Ohio's junior senator in Washington.<br />
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A leader in the vanguard of those who advocated for robbing the national treasury nearly two decades ago, Portman, quite wrongly in hindsight, promised job and growth miracles would result from the approval of $2.3 billion in tax cuts convenient charged on the national credit card by a compliant and equally deceived GOP congress that believes, despite ample economic history to the contrary, that tax cuts to the wealthy, or the top 20 percent of earners, trickles down to those 80 percent below.<br />
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Texas Gov. Bush when he became president after a conservative Supreme Court effectively appointed him when they prohibited a recount of votes in Florida, inherited an expanding national economy from policies and programs pushed by then President Bill Clinton that produced an astounding prize: the virtual elimination of the national debt.<br />
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That Holy Grail of policy performance, adored by so-called fiscal hawks like Portman or Ohio Gov. John Kasich who based their political careers on it, was at hand. Members of the Grover Norquist "no new taxes" crowd includes Portman and Kasich, career politicos who prefer Norquist's famous calling "to starve the beast" of government rather than feed it so tens of millions over their lifetimes can enjoy economic and social justice.<br />
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When the Bush-Portman tax cut debacle teamed up with other congressional attempts to deregulate certain industries, including the financial industry, the worse economic meltdown since 1929 happened. It dealt mortal blows to virtually every state in the nation, as jobs disappeared by the tens of thousands overnight. The Reagan tax cuts, among the biggest in history, pushed the door open to income inequality, stagnant worker pay checks, and the resurgence of corporations as more important to people.<br />
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Never ashamed of how wrong his support for tax cuts in the past has been, Sen. Portman now highlights the benefits of President Trumps tax reform bill after six months of its passage and more than a year of demonstrating how scary he will be to our teenage democracy.<br />
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Reports say Portman recently spoke on the Senate floor highlighting the sixth-month anniversary of tax reform. The commonsense conservative he claimed to be two years ago said he's visited "nearly two dozen businesses across Ohio that have benefited from the new tax code and either created more jobs, increased wages, expanded benefits or reinvested in their businesses as a result." Some business, he said, "have done a combination of these things."<br />
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<b>Reality Ranch</b><br />
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Meanwhile, back at reality ranch, one Noble Prize winning economist wrote that Trumps "tax cut isn’t producing the promised surge in business investment, let alone the promised wage gains; all it has really done is lead to a lot of stock buybacks." <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/opinion/trumps-potemkin-economy.html">New York Times </a>editorial writer Paul Krugman, said about reflecting on this reality, "the tax cut is becoming less popular over time."<br />
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Portman may or may not be aware of an internal report done by the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/politics/white-house-tariffs-growth.html">Council of Economic Advisers </a>that conclude that Trump's "trade policy will cost jobs, not create them. If he's ignoring this report, because he's back in the saddle of proselytizing about the magic of tax cuts, he ought to stop deceiving everyone else, especially the media who offers little if any pushback on what the senator says or does. In contrast to the false or fake news promulgated by Trump's top economic official, that the budget deficit is “coming down rapidly” as “those revenues come rolling in,” the exact opposite is happening. "Actually, the deficit is rising fast, mainly because of a plunge in corporate tax receipts — the direct result of the tax cut," Krugman, the economist, writes.<br />
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<b>Portman Safe With Ohio Media Reporting</b><br />
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It's hard to imagine Ohio media, so enthralled with Portman's stump about overdosed Buckeyes, questioning Trump and company's claims about how good things are going, But Krugman has no such shyness, arguing the results of Trumps policies bear no relationship to reality. "But reality has a well-known liberal bias. Will Trump’s habit of making things up, and his advisors’ willingness to celebrate imaginary policy triumphs, make any difference?" he asks.<br />
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He answers his own question, this way: "Actually, I think they might. The trade war is rapidly escalating, with our trading partners retaliating against US actions and reports that Trump wants to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. The best hope for breaking the cycle of retaliation would be for Trump to realize that the trade war is going badly, take a deep breath, and step back from the brink."<br />
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But who will tell Trump how things are really going? he wonders? Certainly not Rob Portman, who was on the GOP-only Senate committee that brought a bill to the floor devoid of Democratic input, then passed by party line voting.<br />
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<b>Obhof Takes On Kasich</b><br />
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And simultaneous to Portman cheering on Trump and his tax reform bill, it seems Gov. Kasich's eight years of deregulation and tax cuts aren't working to the satisfaction to Sen. Larry Obhof. Obhof, <a href="http://www.ohiosenate.gov/senators/obhof/news/obhof-announces-senate-passage-of-bills-to-reduce-government-red-tape-and-encourage-job-creation">President of the Ohio Senate,</a> blessed the passage of two bills by the Ohio Senate designed to reduce government bureaucracy and encourage job creation.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Ohio's imperial commander, Gov. John </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Kasich, </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">seen here </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">at </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">the Ohio State House in </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">the Lincoln </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Room is like Portman since each</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">thinks tax cuts trickle down to the poor, when</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">they don't. America's and Ohio's income </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">inequality is </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">the largest in history.</span></div>
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"Unnecessary red tape and regulation stifles the potential of Ohio's small businesses, limiting job opportunities for Ohioans," Obhof said. "The legislature has a responsibility to make sure any rules or regulations created by state government have a specific purpose and intent to protect our citizens and do not create needless barriers to growth and opportunity.”<br />
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What has Gov. Kasich been up to these past eight years? he promised voters that if they elected him in 2010 he would make Ohio move "at the speed of business" and rain down good paying jobs for all those people who stilled one, even after Portman and Bush's terrible economic policies produced the second worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression of 1929.<br />
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Ohio under Kasich has failed for over five years to even meet the national average for job creation. The jobs he can claim credit for mostly pay minimum wage or slightly above. Meanwhile, he gave a way billions in tax cuts that have done little if anything to make state revenues roll in. In fact, the last budget cycle came up a billion short, a gap which Obhof and company filled with more cuts instead of revenue.<br />
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<b>Portman Ignores His Own History</b><br />
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Portman like Kasich knows media seems incapable of challenging their actions by holding them accountable for how their policies don't pan out for the average Billy Buckeye. What they say or do today, whether it's what they said or did yesterday, makes today's headlines, leaving readers ignorant of how their policies turned out not to their benefit before.Spinelli on Assignmenthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08776458512057540757noreply@blogger.com2