The Ohio Brain Drain and Supply and Demand

There's been a lot of coverage in Ohio the past couple days about the brain drain that the state is suffering.

Yesterday, the 'Spatch gave us some details:

About 88 percent of native Ohioans attending seven top colleges in the state say they are proud of Ohio, but more than half indicate that they plan to leave after graduation, according to the survey. Among out-of-state undergraduates, 79 percent believe their future lies outside Ohio.

Ohio leaders have long been concerned about its brain-drain problem, and if the state and schools don't do more now to keep graduates from leaving Ohio's economy will continue to falter, Fordham Institute officials said.

Today, in a separate article detailing the difficulties Strickland and the General Assembly will have in finding $3.2 billion for the budget to be balanced, we find this gem:

State leaders in recent years have acknowledged that Ohio's long-term economic success hinges largely on its educated work force. They hoped to make 2010 the third straight year of tuition freezes.

Now, I'm not fond of the ambiguity found in "state leaders", but I do know of one politician that has supported this line of thinking. From Ted Strickland's fundraising letter last month:

I'm convinced that the key to growing our economy is making sure we have the best educated workforce in the nation. In a global economy, good-paying jobs and capital investment go to where the workforce is most prepared. And this is an area in which Ohio can excel.

As was described in this article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, it's increasingly difficult for college graduates to get jobs in Ohio.

So now we know a couple important points:

1. Businesses aren't offering jobs to Ohio college graduates.
2. Without jobs, young people are leaving the state.
   

And Strickland's solution?

Make more college graduates.

Now I only took a few econ classes in college, but I know the basics of supply and demand. If demand for college graduates is static, increasing the supply of graduates will not help the situation.

Now don't get me wrong. For the most obvious of reasons the higher education of Ohio's youth is vital to the state's growth.

But, Strickland is missing a vital piece of the puzzle.

The business environment.

Rather than focusing solely on education, the state needs to make increasing the private sector's demand for college graduates a priority.

How do you do that? Well, that's easy, as we've been repeating on 3BP, Ohio absolutely must improve its business tax climate.

From the non-partisan Tax Foundation:

Ohio ranks 47th in the Tax Foundation's State Business Tax Climate Index. The Index compares the states in five areas of taxation that impact business: corporate taxes; individual income taxes; sales taxes; unemployment insurance taxes; and taxes on property, including residential and commercial property. Neighboring states ranked as follows: Indiana (14th), Pennsylvania (28th), West Virginia (36th), Kentucky (34th) and Michigan (20th).

47th.

Improve this ranking and more businesses will come to Ohio. More businesses yields more jobs. More jobs provides opportunity for these college graduates. More employed graduates brings more tax revenue. More tax revenue balances this mess of a budget.

And there's your answer, fishbulb.

Opacity.

A blurb in NBC's First Read this morning had me scratching my head:

Dennis Ross is coming to the West Wing, according to multiple reports. While he's losing his Iran portfolio with the State Department (one that was never completely defined), Ross will have more access to the president than he would have had as a special envoy. Although some are trying to paint this as some sort of negative fallout regarding Ross (see the Israeli press), it's clear that anyone who gets West Wing clearance is getting a promotion -- not a demotion. This Ross move actually furthers the narrative that this administration is putting together the most powerful West Wing in modern presidential history. The heft of personalities with West Wing access only grows, leading some to even wonder if this White House is diminishing the influence of actual cabinet secretaries.

That last statement is the money quote. But, I wish the reporter would take this analysis a step further.

We've all joked about the ever-growing number of Czars and special advisors that are being placed in charge of major projects for the Administration. But one has to worry about these chosen ones not getting the proper vetting and approval by the United States Senate. There is a reason the Senate has the final say on cabinet secretaries and other high level appointments. Bypassing this process is yet another example of Obama's lack of transparency when it matters.

Of course, considering everyone he sends through the Senate has problems paying their taxes, I guess I can understand trying to avoid it.

Ugh.

And a gift in return...

Apparently Gov. Strickland wanted to give me a gift in return for the video I put together this morning.

"I like Bob Taft. He's a good and decent person who deeply cares about Ohio."
-Gov. Strickland, Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/16/09

Free advertising.

What can I say? I just couldn't resist giving the Ohio Democrats a helping hand.

Thank you, President Bush.

Millions of Iranians have poured into their streets the past couple days.

In the face of a dictator, they have shown the courage to stand up and let their voices be heard in support of free elections.

In support of Democracy.

Would this have even been possible without the development of a free and stable democratic system as established in neighboring Iraq?

Without pictures of purple Iraqi thumbs, would millions have donned their green scarves to protest a brutal regime? Would they have had the guts to say enough is enough?

This may not be the end of the Iranian dictatorship, but it may very well be the beginning of the end.

And we have George W. Bush to thank.

Kasich's Twoosh

Kasich's gubernatorial campaign is showing their innovative spirit once again, this time by initiating the first politically-based contest that I've seen using the micro-blogging tool, Twitter.

They call it a Twoosh.

How does it work? Well, if you're on Twitter, using all 140 characters, post a tweet that describes why you're supporting John. Then tag it with #newday, so it can be tracked by the campaign. The winner becomes John's "special advisor" for a day.

Learn more about the contest here.

This is how twitter should be used by candidates. So many others use the medium as just another way to publicize press releases, but Kasich's campaign is utilizing it the right way by interacting with his followers on Twitter. All 4,499 of them.

Somehow I don't think Strickland and his 773 followers would be able to pull this off.

Voting present.

Does this seem like something the White House should be silent on?

Quit running, Governor

147 days.

885 days.

Those are the number of days Barack Obama and Ted Strickland have been in office, respectively.

Keep that in mind when reading this blurb from the Grey Lady:

As President Obama struggles to turn around the moribund economy and confront multiple international issues, he wastes few opportunities to remind the country that the problems are not of his making.

[...]

But at a certain point, a new president assumes ownership of the problems and finds himself answering for his own actions. For Mr. Obama, even some advisers say that moment may be coming soon.

[...]

“Whatever problems he inherited walking in the door, they’re his responsibility now,” Mr. Axelrod said. “Nobody’s trying to duck responsibility or make excuses for them. But it is important at times to put it into perspective, not to fix blame but to underscore that some of these problems are complex and they’re going to take time to solve.”

Yep, even the New York Times is getting impatient with President Obama and his team constantly playing the blame game against the previous Administration.

Sounds familiar, eh?

Ted Strickland's Administration hasn't stopped blaming Bob Taft and George Bush for Ohio's problems.

Governor, if after 147 days Obama must start claiming ownership of his problems, shouldn't you after 885?


h/t: Jason Mauk

Throw the bum out.

As many of you likely heard, in Ohio last week a Franklin County judge came under fire for his treatment of rape victims.

A quick summation from the 'Spatch:

Common Pleas Judge Tim Horton(DJ ed note: and Democrat) recently ordered two victims to appear in court, in front of their attackers, because he said he wanted to make sure that everyone understood the plea deals that had been worked out by attorneys.

One of the victims, a 13-year-old boy, eventually was allowed to give a written statement through his mother.

But in the other case, a young woman began to break down on the witness stand, and Horton, who has been a judge for three years, scolded her.

Burgherbuck, a first-time contributor to 3BP and a dedicated trial lawyer, gives us his perspective on the scandal:

The Honorable Tim Horton, after reading your recent fiascos while on the bench, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are a couple of books that you need to read before you ever sit on another rape case. The first one is “The Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure” and the other one is “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

See, in Ohio, and I presume in most states, when the State and the defendant work out a plea deal, the victim doesn’t need to make a statement. They can if they want to, but it is not required. Why you ask? Well, the state has these things called “prosecutors”. Among the many duties a prosecutor has is to discuss the ramifications of plea deals in any particular case with the victim. When a victim is informed by the prosecutor what will happen in a rape trial a common thing occurs: victims don’t feel like getting hammered by defense attorneys and having to retell their horrible ordeal before twelve strangers in excruciating detail in the same room as the person who committed the violent act. So, many times the victim/witness tells the prosecutor to offer a plea to the defendant. That’s the normal and very common course of events. The victim agrees, the defendant agrees, the sentence is imposed. Everyone is informed of what is going on. The lawyers hammer out the details and the judge is free to accept or reject the plea. What doesn’t happen is a judge forcing a victim to make a statement before the court and the defendant so that the court can hear that the VICTIM understands the plea deal that was reached. That’s bad enough, but you took it one step further didn’t you? You actually told an obviously distraught 19 year old rape victim that you forced onto the witness stand that you were going to rip up the plea deal and let her attacker go free unless she “gathered herself” and inform the court that she understood the above mentioned plea.

That’s pretty bad. Maybe that could be overlooked by someone, I don’t know. However, you also made a 13 year old boy do the same thing. Fortunately, you allowed the boy to have his statement written down and recited to you by his mother, again, in front of the attacker.

Your excuses for these actions were twofold. First was that you were not sure that the victim was content with the procedure [plea deal]. I figured that a judge would know this, but ultimately, the defendant is the person who has to understand the procedure and the plea deal, not the victim. Even if you have doubts that the victim didn’t fully understand the plea deal, you ask the prosecutor if the victim understands, you don’t threaten the victim with setting the attacker free. Your second excuse was that you were “evolving as a judge.” There are two problems with that. One is that you excuse your performance on a lack of familiarity as though one needs judicial experience to obtain the basic elements of human compassion. Two, maybe you shouldn’t have put your name on the ballot until you understood the basic elements of criminal procedure rather than treat the bench as an on-the-job-training opportunity. I don’t think that either one of those is too much to ask from a judge.

I think it's safe to say Judge Horton may want to take a pass when it comes time to run for re-election.

Pittsburgh may be the city of champions....

....but that won't stop our President from being an idiot.

A sound technician knocked over a glass of water on the president's desk in the oval office while entering for Obama's photo op with Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Obama heard something untoward as the press entered the room.

"Uh oh," he said. "What'd you all get there," he inquired.

"A water glass," came the reply from several in the press.

"Alright," he said with unmistakable dismay in his voice, adding sarcastically, "It's the Resolution Desk. It's only like a hundred years old."

Actually it's the Resolute Desk, made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes from Queen Victoria in 1880.

CONFIRMED: DeWine is Running

Turns out the rumors we heard were true. Former Senator Mike DeWine has in fact filed his designation for Treasurer. That means he can now start raising money in a run for Ohio Attorney General.


h/t: Ryan S.

I'm usually not one to promote fundraising for Democrats.

So I'm glad this video may actually dissuade some from contributing to the Marionette Defense Fund.....er, I mean Ted Strickland and the Ohio Democrats.



And don't worry. This isn't the last you've seen of this video from 3BP...

:evil grin:

Apparently things can get worse.

Back on May 18th, we here at 3BP threw up our hands in disgust at the reported $912 million shortfall in Ohio's tax revenue.

It got worse.

Way worse.

J. Pari Sabety, Gov. Ted Strickland’s budget director, painted a "bleak" picture of the state’s economic situation before the six-member House-Senate conference committee, noting that actual tax collections have been so woefully off from her office’s estimates that she now expects to collect $2.3 billion less than projected.

Crap.

This kind of news has brought me to wonder something.

Have things become so bleak in Ohio that voters will re-elect Ted Strickland?

Crazy, eh?

Think about it. There is so much ammo to use against him, the cynical independent Ohio voter may find it all impossible to believe.

• 90% increase in unemployment since he took office
• Failure to implement an education plan
• Ethics questions
• A budget boondoggle
• Time after time sacrificing principle for politics

With that record, how could any indepedent-thinking Ohioan possibly consider voting for him?

But it just may occur, unless Ohioans take it upon themselves to educate their family, friends and neighbors. If this happens, the Kasich campaign will be that much more effective at communicating Strickland's failures as things ramp up next year.

One way to help is to sign up at 25on25th.com and commit to contributing $25 to John Kasich on June 25th to help remind us of the 25-year high in Ohio unemployment under Strickland's watch. It's a grassroots movement organized by Kasich supporters who want to bring real change to Ohio. Sign up today.

Take action, Buckeyes.

$25 on 25th.

Many of my readers are, like me, big Kasich fans.

Well, it's time to show it.

A grassroots movement has begun to help John raise the all-important funds that he needs to mount a challenge to Gov. Strickland.

25 - number of years since unemployment has been this high in Ohio.
25 - number of dollars (or more) you should contribute
25 - the date you should contribute.

Join the movement.

http://25on25th.com

A Challenge for Democrats...

With news today that a plurality of Americans want the stimulus cancelled, I give this challenge to my more liberal readers:

Find a legitimate economist who claims we would fall back deeper into recession or stagflation if we cancelled the stimulus right now.

As of late May, only $36 billion of the $787 billion stimulus plan has been spent.

Let it die.

Congrats, Ted. Only 291,000 more jobs to go.

As we've repeated on this blog over and over again, since Ted Strickland became Governor, unemployment has increased by 90%.

That's 293,000 jobs.

Today, Ted Strickland is in the Columbus Dispatch trumpeting 1000 new jobs from JP Morgan Chase and the announcement of a foreign HQ coming to Ohio, with for argument's sake, 1000 more jobs. He accomplished this by using individualized tax incentives for each individual company.

From the 'Spatch:

Jim Newton [Chief Economic Adviser for Commerce National Bank], said big announcements such as the Chase jobs are welcome news, but the real growth in the state's economy will come from medium- to small-size businesses -- and he's not seeing much expansion there so far.

In fact, Newton doesn't expect Ohio will begin to come out of the recession until perhaps the end of next year.

Exactly. Once again, Strickland is foregoing principle for politics. By using tax abatements to encourage "foreign HQs" to come to Ohio, he is able to get press about bringing jobs to Ohio. But true economic recovery can't be done one press release at a time.

The entire tax environment in Ohio needs to change.

But that didn't stop Ted Strickland from uttering one of the dumbest things I've heard come from his mouth.

Strickland asserted yesterday that Ohio's tax structure is the "most attractive" to businesses of any Midwest state.

You really wanted to go there, Gov?

I quote myself, circa 7th grade after my friend Mike put nacho cheese on my pizza hut pizza, "big mistake."

The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan educational foundation founded back in 1937, takes it upon themselves to analyze a number of tax issues, including ranking business tax climates nationwide.

If we wanted to determine just how good of a tax climate Ohio maintains relative to other states, this is the barometer to use.

So without any further ado, let's take a look at the national rankings of every midwestern state, shall we?

Dead. Frickin'. Last.

LAST! IN THE MIDWEST! WORST BUSINESS TAX CLIMATE IN THE ENTIRE REGION!

NOT THE "MOST ATTRACTIVE", TED! LAST!

Yeesh. Sorry for screaming. But damn, that's frustrating.

Ironically, two days ago the Tax Foundation posted on their blog about Ohio's tax situation. They closed with this:

We have no reason to boost one state over another; it just goes to show that it's easier to shoot the messenger than to fix real problems. Who knows - if they just repeat "Ohio is a low-tax paradise" enough times, maybe people will come to believe it. But it's still not true.

It doesn't get anymore clear than this, Ohio.

Your Governor is lying to you.

Vrooooom!

That's the sound of 95% of Ohio's Interstate 71 during rush hour.

Don't believe me? Here are photo captures from the state's traffic cameras along I-71 at 8:30am this morning. The top being I-71 at Polaris in north Columbus, the 2nd being I-71 and 270 in south Columbus, and the bottom being I-71 and Kings Mills in Cincinnati. There aren't any on I-71 heading towards Cleveland because....well, because who wants to stare at an empty road?


Why? As you can see, there is no traffic. While I-71 is an important artery in Ohio, it isn't exactly the busiest of roads. People can get back and forth with relative ease with the biggest challenge being not speeding on open areas of flat highway.

So let's build a $400 million train network that goes from Cleveland to Columbus to Cincy.

That's Gov. Strickland's brilliant plan.

Gov. Ted Strickland is in Washington today to lobby the Obama administration for $400 million in federal stimulus money to build the proposed high-speed passenger rail service between Cincinnati, Columbus and Cleveland. "Ohio and those cities represent the most densely populated part of the country that is devoid of passenger rail service," Strickland said, calling that fact "intolerable."

Yeah, after looking at those highways in bumper to bumper traffic, Ted, I can just feel the commuter rage burning within each voter.

The fact is, commuter rail will not work in Ohio. Let's use NYC as an example of what can happen.

Metro-North runs the commuter rail system from the northern suburbs of NYC into Grand Central. Those trains are packed every morning and every evening. They run trains from dozens of stations on several lines, multiple times per hour for several hours. This happens every morning and every evening.

Most of those people pay $200-250 per month to ride those trains on a monthly commuter pass.

It's clearly a total home run, as far as mass transit goes.

But thanks to maintenance, unionized conductors and crews, and all sorts of previously unconsidered costs, the system is practically bankrupt.

And doing it in Ohio on a sparsely traveled route is just moronic.

So now we know it won't make money. We know the stimulus dollars won't keep coming to pay for it. And we know Ohio taxpayers will end up footing an enormous bill to keep it running.

So why does Ted feel the need to bring rail to Ohio?

Pure politics.

The Governor knows he's done nothing. He feels like he needs to show voters that he can bring the gravy to Ohio in the form of a massive project such as this.

But for those who actually are in favor of the stimulus, shouldn't they at least be asking why $400 million of our total allotment is going to a system that can't and won't work? I'd imagine there are plenty of other programs that stimulus supporters in Ohio would deem more worthy than this boondoggle.

Of course, when has common sense ever worked for Governor Strickland?

h/t: The Seaward

World's best bumpersticker.

BWWWWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

According to a new PA poll...

Among voters that know Sestak (mostly in the Philadelphia inner suburbs) he enjoys an 18 - 4 favorable-unfavorable ratio, and among voters who already identify both candidates, Sestak actually leads Specter in the initial head to head 52 - 44 percent.

Oh my God.

Hysterical.

Rubio/Crist may be the most interesting primary next Spring, but Specter/Sestak may end up being the funniest.

Obama announces plan to raise taxes

I'm dumbfounded.

Obama's hypocrisy reached levels unseen before at an event in the White House touting PAYGO, the principle that tax cuts or entitlement programs be paid for and not add to the deficit.

Mark Knoller from CBS News tweeted the following this afternoon:

Obama calls on Congress to enact PAYGO requirement so that "Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere."

Obama tells East Room event: "Paying for what you spend is basic common sense. Perhaps that's why, here in Wash., it has been so elusive."

Now, I give you news from March 21st:

In a new report that provides the first independent analysis of President Barack Obama's budget request, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the administration's agenda would generate deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion a year over the next decade - $2.3 trillion more than the president predicted when he unveiled his spending plan just one month ago.

10 trillion dollars.

So how could this grandiose new debt coincide with Obama's advocation of "paying for what we spend"?

Easy.

If he is true to his word, Obama must raise taxes.

Here is your moment, Obama fans. We now have a quantifiable test of what kind of man President Obama really is.

Thanks to his own actions, he will have drastically increased our debt by $10 trillion. Now, he challenges Congress to pay for what we spend.

If this is the case, then Obama is advocating increasing taxes for every American by $32,894 over the next 10 years to pay for his budget.

That's $3,289.40 per year.

Interestingly enough, the National Energy Tax that Obama has proposed, otherwise known as Cap and Trade, would increase taxes by $3,100 on every family.

Just words.

Just words.

UPDATE: Update from Knoller states that Obama's plan will only go for cutting taxes and entitlements. It does not apply to discretionairy spending.

Damn hypocrite.