Strickland has said the $5 billion in stimulus money the state used in the budget helped prevent deep cuts in funding for education, Medicaid and other services.That's an interesting way to phrase how the stimulus dollars were used, especially when you consider over the next two years overall state spending is expanding by nearly 8%.
On Monday, a microstorm of news broke about IN Governor Mitch Daniels admitting an openness to running for President in 2012. Seeing as he had previously sworn off any interest, despite the buzz he creates in conservative circles, this was a seemingly big deal.Believe it or not, Daniels is already way behind when it comes to '12 prep.For those interested in learning more about Mitch's amazing success and resume, I highly recommend reading this article that appeared in the National Review last June. If you aren't already a fan, you will be.
Folks like Pawlenty and Romney have already secured a good chunk of the finite number of top tier talent necessary to coordinate a Presidential election, and they are doing so far more transparently than Daniels.
Stating his intentions so publicly at least provides him a stage to increase his profile in the national media and enable him to establish positions that he has otherwise avoided(like foreign policy - I love Mitch, but I need to hear what he has to say on national security).
The timing was right for Daniels to make the move.
[Winning] will inspire the RNC and State Parties nationwide to push harder and faster for quality congressional candidates and the money necessary to win those states.Well, an example of this prognostication came in an article from yesterday's Politico:
The Republican Governors Association announced it raked in a record-shattering $13.5 million in pledges in conjunction with its annual gala in Washington Monday.At the end of 2009, the RGA already had $25 million in the bank - a full 30% more than their Democrat rivals at the DGA.
“Republicans saw the difference the RGA made in Virginia and New Jersey last year and are ready to replicate those efforts nationwide this year,” said RGA Gala chairman and Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) in a statement.
"...the American people do not reward failure."With that in mind, consider this:
I've spent the last couple of days talking to some of the brightest Democrats in the party that are not in the White House. And it's very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House. It's very hard. Are the seats there right this second? No. But we're on a trajectory on the House turning over...
According to GreenPapers.com, no Democrat filed against half of the Republicans currently representing Ohio in the House: Mike Turner in the Third District, Jim Jordan in the Fourth District, Bob Latta in the Fifth District, and Steve Austria in the Seventh District.This means far more than just making it easy on these four Republicans.
Nine of the ten House Democrats from Ohio will face a Republican opponent, except for Marcia Fudge in the Eleventh District.
UPDATE: In 2008, Obama carried Fudge's district with 85 percent of the vote; it's rated an astounding D+32 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.
By contrast, the four uncontested GOP-held districts are ones where the incumbent will have an advantage, but not an overwhelming one: McCain carried Turner's district with only 52 percent of the vote and it's rated only R+5 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index. McCain's vote in the other three: 60 percent in Jordan's, 53 percent in Latta's, 54 percent in Austria's. They're rated R+15, R+9, and R+7, respectively.
For years, no one has cared about that deal. But now that Kasich is running for Ohio governor, his 1996 purchase of land northeast of Columbus has left Ohio bloggers speculating that Kasich got a steal.
He paid a fraction of the price of neighboring parcels for a home site on 10 acres that backed up to a heron rookery, and was adjacent to a golf course. The county initially thought the land was worth $172,500. Kasich insisted it was only worth what he paid: $105,000.
Yet public records examined by The Plain Dealer suggest the story of Kasich's land deal is nuanced and complex. It appears Kasich got a good price, but anything else may be conjecture.
So Strickland's dirt digging "consultant" Sandy Theis throws some dirt on the wall - Lefty bloggers pick it up - And ta daaaa. Story!
Read the rest. Good stuff.
Now here's hoping the Plain Dealer will play fair and start looking deeper into the messes made by Jello Ted and his political cronies.
Former State Highway Patrol superintendents say the agency's reputation for independent, nonpolitical law enforcement is being tarnished by interference from political appointees.Shocked? I didn't think so.
[...]
Secrecy surrounding the selection of a new superintendent, failure to investigate a case of "obvious fraud" by a state contractor and the scuttling of a planned sting at the Governor's Residence prompted the ex-colonels to go public with their concerns.
[...]
"I can assure you there has been no political interference in these matters from this office," Strickland said.
The former No. 1 and No. 2 patrol leaders trace problems to Strickland's 2007 appointment of Guzman and the team he assembled.
"All of a sudden, we needed to be fixed. It was a daily thing. It is a daily thing," said William Costas, who retired last month as a lieutenant colonel.
"...in outraising his challenger $1.1 million to $392,000 last year, Tiberi proved that he is one of the hardest-working incumbents in the country and won't be caught asleep at the wheel. Brooks's predicament is further complicated by the fact that she doesn't live in the district, has a record in elected office to defend, and is running in a very Republican year when popular former Rep. John Kasich will be on the gubernatorial ballot and turnout in Columbus's heavily African-American precincts is likely to drop significantly."We could have told him that months ago. Oh wait, we sorta did. Last August. But better.
Now remember, Brooks' only name recognition in the 12th district is within Franklin County. Since 2000, Tiberi has consistently far outpaced opponents in Licking and Delaware Counties. That means Brooks not only is going to need to outpace how Democrats did in Franklin County in 2008, when Dem turnout was through the roof for Obama, but she is going to need to raise vast amounts of money to create any semblance of a challenge in Licking and Delaware County.Now, we can finally say that while Brooks doesn't live in the district, she has finally decided to define her campaign HQ as IN the 12th district. Sorta.
And he turned the "Party of No" argument back on Dems, asking why they say "no" to things like a balanced budget, entitlement reform, tax cuts and prosecuting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military tribunal.On its face, it's a very simple retort, but not one we've really heard yet from Republicans. But it's effective because it refocuses the Dem talking point back on them - the Party in power.
"We conservatives don't have a corner on saying 'No,'" Romney said. "We're just the ones who say it when that's the right thing to do."
Let me offer an analogy. Many Democratic congressmen opposed the Bush tax cuts. That was based, I presume, on their honest assessment of the policy. But once these tax cuts were passed, I bet these congressmen paid lower taxes. I bet they did not offer to hand the Treasury the extra taxes they would have owed at the previous tax rates. Would it make sense for the GOP to suggest that these Democrats were disingenuous or hypocritical? I don't think so. Many times, we as individuals benefit from policies we opposed. There is nothing wrong about that.
Now, what makes this recovery plan so important is not just that it will create or save 3.5 million jobs over the next two years, including 60,000-plus here in Colorado. It's that we're putting Americans to work doing the work that America needs done –- (applause) -- in critical areas that have been neglected for too long; work that will bring real and lasting change for generations to come.Read the rest of the speech. See anything that talks about how the stimulus will head off a depression? Didn't think so.
So the main reason we didn't have the Great Depression is that the Treasury intervened to prop up financial institutions, while the Federal reserve pumped money into the economy with a firehose. Special guest star credits go to the FDIC, which prevented the bank runs that crippled so much of our economy in the early 1930s. If you want to credit a government program, credit TARP, not ARRA.There is plenty more in her article that details more about the point on multipliers. Check it out.
Did the stimulus help? Sure. But Recovery.gov currently has a nifty graphic showing that of ARRA's $787 billion in budget authority, the government has currently disbursed about $287 billion. You'd have to posit some really remarkable multipliers for the stimulus to think that this prevented us from sliding into the Great Depression.
For comparison's sake, in 1930, GDP fell by 8.6% in real terms. In 2009, the BEA says that it fell about 2.4%, or about $300 billion. Had it fallen by anything close to 8%, that would have meant a decline of roughly a trillion dollars.
So the administration is claiming that by spending less than $300 billion, it managed to prevent more than $700 billion in economic decline--in other words, that the multiplier for their spending was higher than two. They're saying that every dollar they spent increased GDP by more than $2.
The Right points to uncertainty over looming tax increases (aren’t death and taxes life’s two certainties?) and health-care mandates. The Left says the problem is banks aren’t lending.Our political leadership, both at the state and national level, are playing politics with the nation's economy by proposing policy initiatives that wither under scrutiny, but resound with the common public.
The truth is a bit of both and something more basic. Small-business owners list “poor sales” as the numero uno problem. And the jobs tax credit for hiring new workers, proposed by President Obama and embraced by Congress, won’t do much to help. Employers aren’t about to pay a new worker $40,000 to earn a $5,000 credit unless that worker generates $35,000 of revenue, Dunkelberg explains. That’s Econ 101 (see “marginal revenue product” or “profit maximization”), a course most of our elected representatives seem to have missed.
The tax credit for hiring “has absolutely no impact on our decision-making,” says Phil Kenny, president of Trucks Unique, an Albuquerque, New Mexico, company that customizes pick-up trucks for commercial and individual purposes. “We have no tax liability to take a credit against.”
And that’s not all. A tax credit “is not going to make me hire when we don’t have work,” says Jim Henderson, president of Dynamic Sales Co., a 44-year-old construction and industrial supply company in St. Louis with seven employees. “I plan to sell my way out of recession, not wait for Washington to help me out.”
White House aides have said recently that the president will spend more time on the road, part of an effort to position him above the Washington fray and perhaps a signal that he intends to play a bigger role in helping candidates from his party who are facing tough contests.
Phil Jones is the director of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, a key “consensus” institution that has recently been caught up in an e-mail scandal revealing a mindset of global-warming advocacy rather than dispassionate inquiry. Asked by the BBC what it means when scientists say “the debate on climate change is over,” the keeper of the flame sounded chastened. “I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this,” Jones said. “This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the . . . past as well.”No, environuts, the science isn't settled, and that comes from one of your own demi-gods.
Jones discussed the highly contentious “medieval warming period.” If global temperatures were warmer than today back in 800–1300 A.D. — about a thousand years before Henry Ford’s assembly lines began spitting out automobiles — it suggests that natural factors have a large hand in climate change, a concession that climate alarmists are loath to make. Jones said we don’t know if the warming in this period was global in extent since paleoclimatic records are sketchy. If it was, and if temperatures were higher than now, “then obviously the late-20th-century warmth would not be unprecedented.”
Jones also noted that there hasn’t been statistically significant warming since 1995, although the cooling since 2002 hasn’t been statistically significant either.
When political hopefuls declare their candidacies this week for November's statewide elections, it will mark the first time in at least 70 years that a Democrat from Northeast Ohio will not be seeking an executive office.Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern quickly dismisses the observation by saying, "the reliance on having a Northeast Ohio candidate in a statewide race, from a regional standpoint, has become less important. That's not to suggest Northeast Ohio isn't important. Obviously it is, but it is as important now as central Ohio or other parts of the state."
Does that sound like someone who is going to work his tail off to utilize all of his contacts to get his favorite Democrats elected to office?Nationally known Democratic strategist Jerry Austin of Cleveland said this ticket will prove what elected officials in Northeast Ohio had suspected all along from the Strickland administration.
"Politicians up here have expressed frustration about the lack of attention from this administration for a while," Austin said. "And now you turn around and there is no one on the ballot from Cuyahoga County. Well, now people think there is absolutely a disregard for Northeast Ohio going on."
"If anyone thinks they can disregard Cuyahoga County, then they are sadly mistaken," Turner said. She added that "people are talking about this everywhere, young and old, average citizens to bigwigs."The vitally important Democratic political activists of Northeast Ohio clearly are unhappy with the Ohio Democratic Party and their slate of statewide candidates.
"...if I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months."Not exactly the message the Vice President was hoping to combat as he releases his report.
A big part of the problem is that Hamsher’s polls have been covered extensively in the media — not just in national outlets, including POLITICO, but also in local news outlets that are more important to a member’s local political standing.
One of them, the Cincinnati Enquirer, published the mid-January survey showing freshman Rep. Steve Driehaus trailing former GOP Rep. Steve Chabot by a steep 17-point margin.
“You’ve got to quit writing about these crazy-ass polls,” Driehaus told POLITICO. “They’re horrible.”
Congressman Driehaus, someone just called this for you.
Now an easy way to refute the poll released by SurveyUSA would be for the DCCC to release their own internal polling that, if they're right, would show a significantly different result.
But when challenged to do so, the Democrats refused.
According to an ABC News report, though, almost $2 billion in “stimulus” funding has been spent so far on wind power, and yet 80% of that money has gone to foreign-owned companies.
“Most of the jobs are going overseas,” researcher Russ Choma told ABC. “According to our estimates, about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.”
In fact, despite receiving this windfall of “stimulus” cash, the U.S. wind manufacturing sector actually lost jobs in 2009, according to a year-end report by its professional association. Also, most of the jobs “created or saved” in America have been temporary construction positions, or “management” hires.
Awesome. Just awesome.
And the use of these very same stimulus dollars for "green jobs" in Ohio is the first priority of the Strickland Administration.
Seriously, Guv?
It's very simple - Strickland shouldn't be trying to buy jobs - the Governor should be working to make Ohio more attractive to ALL private industry in an effort to bring them, and their jobs, into the Buckeye state.
Make it happen.
No, seriously. I'm asking.Gov. Ted Strickland has told his budget director and the head of the Department of Administrative Services to ensure that all future reports on efforts to reduce state spending reflect actual cuts in spending.In other words, the Governor had to officially remind senior members of his Administration that reports discussing Issue A should actually discuss Issue A.
Now, while I'm not a fan of using stimulus dollars in this way, there is such a thing as compromise in American politics, and considering what he's trying to get through, I'm willing to give him a pass.The plan, released Monday, would erase a $1.2 billion state deficit largely through deep cuts in aid to local governments, in funding for health and human services and with an average 6 percent across-the-board cut to state agencies, likely to result in layoffs. Nearly one-third of the governor's budget fix would rely on $387 million in federal stimulus money. That money isn't yet in the bank and, if it doesn't come through, the cuts could be far deeper.
Pawlenty also proposed corporate and small-business tax cuts. The cost -- and benefit -- of those reductions wouldn't fully materialize until after he leaves office next year.
"This is a spit in the ocean compared to what should be done," Pawlenty said at a Capitol news conference announcing his proposals.Yep. Much more does need done to fix how out-of-control state government has been run over the years. And Ohio needs John Kasich to come in to fix the problem Ted Strickland refuses to even acknowledge exists.
"I will not be seeking re-election in 2010," Mr. Konop, a Democrat whose four-year term expires at year's end, told The Blade in an exclusive interview.In reality, I don't know much of anything about Ben Konop's political career, but his retirement does give me a chance to once again post this now famous video announcing his candidacy for office.
[...]
Mr. Konop said his greatest regret as commissioner has been his inability to pass the college scholarship proposal. Critiquing his own performance, he said he regrets not building enough political coalitions to help propel his agenda. All too often, he went it alone.
Ohio included.When employers hire temporary staff after a recession, it's long been seen as a sign they'll soon hire permanent workers.
Not these days.
Companies have hired more temps for four straight months. Yet they remain reluctant to make permanent hires because of doubts about the recovery's durability.
DeCapua likely isn't alone regarding the trepidation he's hearing from clients. The unstable economy and likelihood of increased government imposed costs are stifling the economy at both the national and state level.Companies also worry about higher costs related to taxes or health care measures being weighed by Congress and statehouses. That's what Chris DeCapua, owner of employment firm Dawson Careers in Columbus, Ohio, is hearing from clients.
DeCapua says corporate demand for temporary workers has surged. That's especially true for manufacturing-related jobs involving driving forklifts, assembling products, packing merchandise and loading it on trucks.
Yet that demand hasn't spilled over into a demand for permanent workers. And DeCapua doesn't see it turning around anytime soon.
"There is so much uncertainty, and when there is uncertainty, people and companies hold onto their checkbooks," DeCapua says.
Companies "don't want to hire permanent workers and then have to turn around and get rid of them six months later," he says.
The city auditor may have broken Ohio's nepotism law when she hired her son in 2005, according to a letter from the Delaware County Prosecutor.The Auditor, a Democrat, is the second Dem in Athens to come under the microscope. The first, of course, was now former Dem County Chair, Susan Gwinn.
Paul Hecht, son of City Auditor Kathy Hecht, earned $7,000 interning for the auditor's office during 2005, according to documents provided by Jesse Hathaway, a local Republican blogger.
Yesterday's front page of the Columbus Dispatch communicated the exact image the Kasich campaign wants to portray this campaign season.Despite a projected $7 billion hole in Ohio's next two-year budget, Republican John Kasich assured those attending a campaign rally last month that he is up to the task of balancing it if elected governor in November.
After all, Kasich said, he had on-the-job experience in Congress as an architect of the landmark federal balanced-budget agreement of 1997.
"Not only did we balance the budget," Kasich said, "but we paid down a half-trillion dollars on the national debt -- never been done before -- and we were running a $250 billion surplus, and we had a 10-year projected surplus of $5 trillion."
Gotta love getting your key talking point front and center, eh?
Is the article all positive? Of course not. The Dispatch does a fair job of providing both viewpoints of Kasich's success in Congress as a steward of the federal budget surplus.
But one paragraph does a great job of extinguishing the argument that Kasich doesn't play well with others:
"John Kasich was a pragmatist," said Domenici, now a senior fellow at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center. During negotiations, he said, Kasich and others "had to accept compromises to get things done. He (Kasich) did that, and he surprised a lot of people."
Now, some on the opposite side of the aisle may love reading this quote from Newt Gingrich:
"I always preferred having Kasich near me," Gingrich said, adding that Kasich "pulled the Republican conference an enormous distance in the right direction by courage and tenacity. Without him, we couldn't have gotten it done."
More likely than not, those happy with latching Kasich to Gingrich are the same people who believe aligning Kasich and Rob Portman with Bush will work, too. Well, as history has proven, attempting to push a link to someone unpopular who used to be in power is a tactic very rarely proven effective in campaigns. But, by all means Dems, keep it up.
As I mentioned in previous poll analyses, with Kasich's less than strong name ID, it's important for the candidate to define himself before the opposition does. Well, without spending a cent, the Kasich campaign got themselves a front page story detailing the exact definition they were looking for.
Thanks, CD.
In other words, give it up, kid.“You have to have resources,” Brunner said last week. “You don’t have to have the same amount of resources that consultants tell you (that) you have to have.”
Maybe, but what Brunner’s trying to pull off has little precedent in the United States or in Ohio, where the U.S. Senate candidates in 2006 spent nearly $25 million.
Gov. Ted Strickland issued a report this week touting $366 million in reduced state spending last year, but it appears that nearly $210 million did not come from spending cuts.
[...]The administration said Strickland's "austerity" executive order last year reduced state spending by renegotiating contracts, centralizing more purchases to get lower prices, reducing fuel costs and making a variety of other moves.
Officials said they weren't trying to be misleading by releasing the $366 million figure; they simply compared expenses in three accounting codes from one year to the next for all state agencies, boards and commissions.
Strickland spokeswoman Amanda Wurst said a review by the Office of Budget and Management yesterday found no other anomalies in the report.
In other words, "ok, you caught us."
This is horribly embarrassing for the Strickland Administration. Not to mention, shameful.
Calling New Jersey's budget a "shambles," Gov. Chris Christie announced Thursday he is immediately freezing all state spending.Glorious.
Saying New Jersey is on the verge of bankruptcy, Christie declared a fiscal emergency, announcing drastic cuts. Among them, aid to school districts that have excess surpluses.
"Today we are going to act swiftly to fix problems too long ignored. Today I begin to do what I promised the people of New Jersey I would do," Christie said.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday scrapped a bipartisan jobs bill unveiled hours earlier that had been endorsed by the White House, in a jarring miscommunication between the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders.The lack of communication is downright astonishing.
Reid said Thursday afternoon that he would not introduce a bill made public Thursday morning by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, and ranking committee member Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican.
The Democratic leader of the Senate abandoned the bill after hearing complaints from within his own caucus, but only after the White House had already endorsed the Baucus and Grassley bill in the early afternoon.
That's right. The President is considering raising taxes on the middle class.President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.
Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
Other states' attempts to fill budgetary holes by soaking the poor aren't encouraging, either. In New Jersey, the state actually lost $15 million by increasing the sin tax by 12.5 cents. In Maryland, another liberal state that did this, analysts saw a marked increase in black-market cigarette sales, which meant that retailers and small businesses took a big financial hit.Check out the rest by clicking here.
In short, smoking sucks. Don't start it—and if you're already a smoker, stop it. You'll save money in the short-, medium-, and long-run. However, it's not the government's job to tell us what behaviors are good and which are bad.
State officials are banking on federal stimulus money for most or all of the estimated $517.6 million to improve freight rail lines, build or rebuild train stations and buy trains. Officials previously estimated the cost of the medium-speed service at $250 million to $400 million, but those numbers did not account for the cost of the trains.As we all know by now, Ohio only(!?) received $400 million for the 3-C Slow Speed Choo-Choo.
As I hinted yesterday on Twitter, if everything goes as well as hoped, there may be five new Republican Members representing Ohio in the 112th Congress.The closeness of the two parties over the past several months on this "generic ballot" measure is similar to that found in most Gallup readings from 1994 through 2005 (spanning the period when Republicans won control of the U.S. House and subsequently maintained it for more than a decade).What else helps Johnson's chances? Maybe the fact that Wilson has voted with Pelosi 97% of the time, including the immensely unpopular Obamacare and Stimulus.
Closer to elections, Gallup bases its generic-ballot results on voters deemed most likely to vote. Because Republicans are generally more likely than Democrats to turn out to vote, particularly in midterm elections, their positioning improves by several points when the generic ballot is based on likely voters rather than registered voters. Thus, a tie between Democrats and Republicans among registered voters probably corresponds to a Republican lead among likely voters.
