Jennifer Brunner, the U.S. Senate candidate whose day job is to make sure that Ohio elections run smoothly and lawfully, is not following a requirement of federal election law in her own campaign -- or so it appears based on a review of her campaign finance reports as well as Federal Election Commission guidelines.The Ohio secretary of state, running in the May 4 Democratic primary for Senate against Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, has consistently failed to list the identities and itemize the salaries of all her campaign staffers, as required by law.
[...]
Nowhere does the report say that this covers the salaries of campaign manager David Dettman, operations manager Mary Woods and scheduler Mallory Mitchell -- information known only because Dettman told The Plain Dealer when it asked today. Dettman volunteered to the newspaper that he is paid $6,000 a month and Woods and Mitchell each get $3,000.
The FEC says that is precisely the kind of information it wants the disclosure reports to include. The purpose of disclosure is to show the public, including donors, how the campaign spends its money and to assure regulators that campaign finance laws are being obeyed.
"Downfall," a German film released in 2004 about Hitler's last days, has been adopted for wildly popular YouTube parodies that have spanned mock rants about topics as varied as playing Xbox video games to Kanye West to Apple's new iPad.
[...]
On Tuesday, the clips on YouTube, many of which had been watched by hundreds of thousands, even millions, began disappearing from the site. Constantin Films, the company that owns the rights to the film, asked for them to be removed, and YouTube complied.
Ah, it's a sad day, indeed.
So here, for likely the last time, is the "Hitler isn't happy with Ted Strickland" youtube...
Her response, while barely coherent, will make your jaw drop.
Um. Speaker Pelosi is a centrist?
The woman that shoved the horribly unpopular Obamacare bill is a centrist? Cap & Trade? The stimulus?!?!
Hell, even her most strident admirers find Pelosi to be a far-left liberal.
I guess Kilroy will say anything to attempt to appease the Independently minded 15th congressional district.
But one thing she won't do is make it easy to see her in person.
Note when reading it that there is a Thursday, April 22nd and there is a Monday, April 26th...but there is no Thursday, April 26th this month.
In Congressional offices, quality control is everything. As opposed to this blog where everything is virtually stream of consciousness, letters from congressmen go through a thorough process of approval - normally going from the legislative correspondent or assistant/caseworker, to the legislative director/district director, to the chief of staff, and finally to the Congressman for approval.
And no one caught this elementary-level mistake?
Who knows how many people this letter went out to in Kilroy's district....and now your taxdollars must be spent to (hopefully) send a corrected letter so constituents don't show up at the wrong time....whichever it may be.
Some people just aren't suited for Congress. And Kilroy has proven she simply can't handle the job.
The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.
Ri-damn-diculous.
I know the McDonald's fries over at the Route 1 store in Arlington are waaayyy oversalted, but that's no reason to go all nanny-state on me.
The amazing part is that there isn't even clear evidence that salt causes the damage the FDA claims. Check it out.
The Big Dig is the name of the project that rerouted Boston's primary highway through the heart of the city into a 3.5 mile underground tunnel.
In 1982, the project was estimated to run $2.8 billion to complete. When it finally finished, the final cost, with interest, was $22 billion in federal and state dollars.
The project manager was Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhof.
Parsons Brinckerhof? That name sounds familiar.
It's the same Parsons Brinckerhof that was awarded $23 million this week by the state controlling board to complete a study that would produce not quite half of the final design of Ohio's 3-C Slow Speed Choo Choo.
Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff was technically supposed to act as owner's engineer on the project. But it had several other responsibilities that directly conflicted with the mandate of an owner's engineer. Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff also drew up the preliminary designs for the entire endeavor, and then managed the overall design and construction processes. So when it came time to act as an owner's engineer, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff was, in effect, policing itself.
[...]
...who was left to mind the shop? Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, which had an enormous conflict of interest because it also designed and managed the Big Dig.
The need for independent and dedicated oversight of Massachusetts highway projects is no longer an abstraction. With the terrible loss of Del Valle, it's a matter of life and death. While lawmakers, engineers, and criminal investigators rightly sift through the wreckage to determine what went wrong with the design and construction of the ceiling that collapsed, we also need to set out a course for the future. We must rewrite Massachusetts laws to ensure that the major construction projects of tomorrow never again endanger innocent human lives through indifference or ineptitude.
To provide some context to the above, massive cost overruns weren't the only problem with the Big Dig. The lack of adequate oversight led to a loss of life due to unnecessary construction flaws.
And now it seems Ohio is repeating the same mistakes Massachusetts made. By awarding the design portion of the contract to Parsons Brinckerhof, they have provided PB the exact same incentives they had during the Big Dig.
Before taking on a massive and costly project like the 3-C, Ohioans deserve a substantive analysis of cost and projected ridership from an independent voice, not one with a financial incentive to fluff their results.
This project is more focused on being Ted Strickland's political tool than a serious development project for Ohio. And the voters deserve an honest review of the worth of the project before investing millions of taxpayer dollars.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Governor Strickland will let that happen.
The Hotline reports the RNC spent at least $340,000, and likely much more, at their semi-annual meeting in Honolulu in January.
That's likely more than what they'll drop for Charles Djou's special election challenge to takeover a Dem congressional seat in Hawaii.
Just when the Michael Steele mess was starting to calm down, this will likely renew calls for his ouster.
And unlike the bar episode, this is completely on him. It's a perfect example of his inability to prioritize what's important and his love to waste vital contributor dollars.
Steele should go.
A new and temporary Chairman that inspires confidence and respect would revitalize the Party organization, bring in massive dollars as the establishment pushes donors to enhance the reputation of the new Chair, and helps streamline a poorly run organization in a way that provides an opportunity for the RNC to provide a real contribution to the 2010 election.
This was supposed to be the quarter that Brunner showed some real fundraising initiative.
With Fisher having a poor showing with bringing in $550k, it showed donors had become a little less confident in a Fisher win. That left the door open for Brunner, right?!?!
Brunner reported raising about $144,025 during the first three months of the year, up from $92,588 in the final quarter last year. But after spending $125,743 for the first quarter, her cash on hand as of March 31 increased only from about $61,000 to $79,131, her report shows.
So Lee Fisher has almost 23 times as much as Jennifer Brunner to spend on his Senate race.
This isn't a Democratic Senate Primary. It's a confederacy of dunces.
Considering Fisher will have relatively nothing left in his tank after the Ohio primary, the DSCC might as well let this one go and focus on the races it can win and defend the seats that are under serious attack by the GOP.
Today, when asked whether a European-style Value Added Tax is under consideration by the Obama administration, press secretary Robert Gibbs claimed:
This is not something the president has proposed, nor is it under consideration.
But not only has Obama advisor Paul Volcker indicated that a VAT is being considered, but The New York Times reports that the Obama’s economic team has already calculated how big of a VAT they’ll need in order to pay for their binge spending:
[S]ince any Social Security plan would probably preserve benefits for those nearing retirement, it would not help the administration achieve its goal of reducing the deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product, from 10 percent, within a decade.
One way to reach that 3 percent goal, by the calculations of Mr. Obama’s economic team: a 5 percent value-added tax, which would generate enough revenue to simultaneously permit the reduction in corporate tax rates Republicans favor.
As we have noted before, a VAT is an incredibly regressive form of taxation that would fall hardest on those who can least afford it. Furthermore, it would be a clear violation of President Barack Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on those making under $250,000 a year.
The VAT continues to grow more and more likely to be considered as an option to fund the massive new Health Care Reform law. If Ohioans are to be fully informed, they need those in the media to find out where their representatives in Congress stand.
The Ohio Jobs Crisis is the noose that slides tighter around Ted Strickland's electoral prospects with each monthly jobs report.
The most recent report showed Ohio's unemployment rate doubling during Strickland's term and sitting at 11%, its highest level in over a quarter century.
The money quote: "Last month we had, uhhhh, about a, almost a $5000 month when that many jobs weren't created."
Yeah. I know. The Governor may need to write these lines on his hand next time.
Jim Geraghty over at NRO's Campaign Spotseems to think the bumbling Strickland may have been trying to spit something else out:
I presume the governor was trying to emphasize that the state actually created 4900 jobs in the previous month, but the unemployment rate actually increased because the number of people looking for work increased — i.e., people who were not part of the workforce got back in and started looking.
And yet, Ohio's labor pool is still 62,000 workers short of where it was one year ago.
But don't think Strickland's efforts to distribute rose-colored glasses to the electorate will work. As I've said many times here on 3BP, a Jobs Crisis is personal. It effects your family, your neighbor, and your community. Simply trying to convince voters everything is going well, as Strickland is clearly trying to do, won't work.
For four years now, Julie Bittner has rung up customers in this little store on the charming grassy square at the heart of Twinsburg in Summit County. And from her view by the front window, she has watched the fortunes of a ransacked autoworkers' mecca slowly drain away. Streets once teeming with people are now deserted. Some days, she says, not a soul comes through the door.
She's seen the headlines. The recession is ending. Unemployment is stabilizing. From Wall Street to Washington, the message comes: America, the worst is over. Let the spending begin. But in places like Twinsburg, where for so many the misery goes on unabated, people aren't buying the rhetoric. If brighter days are ahead, they say, they're still awaiting the dawn.
According to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in early April, many Americans' impressions of the economy, and their own financial straits, haven't budged in a long time.
"Who are they trying to kid?" Bittner asked. "Are they trying to make you think it's better so you'll go out and spend?"
And what did Governor Strickland have to say way back on March 9th?
"The freefall has been stopped....[Ohio is] in the process of recovering."
But those watching this high profile gubernatorial race can rely on a slightly older bit of analysis in order to understand what matters to Ohio voters.
Across the street from where Strickland goes to work every day at the Statehouse sits a statue of former Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes, a fellow son of southern Ohio who made enough sense to voters that they made him governor four times. You can look it up.
An inscription on one side of the statue's base quotes Rhodes as saying, "The greatest contribution a governor can make is to create jobs in the private sector."
If that's the prime measuring stick that voters use this November, there could be a different guy going to work across the street at the Statehouse next year.
Last November, Chris Christie beat current Strickland flack Lis Smith's old boss, Jon Corzine, with 49% of the vote in a 3-way race in one of the deepest blue states in the union.
Even more amazing, among Independents that approval rating sits at 64%.
Clearly, even liberal New Jersey recognizes that business as usual doesn't cut it anymore. And it's yet another reason why Ohioans will be pushing for a regime change in Ohio. Democrats should be on the lookout.
Other interesting results:
Which is a bigger problem in New Jersey — that voters are unwilling to pay enough in taxes or that the politicians are unwilling to control government spending?
* Voters are unwilling to pay enough in taxes 11% * Politicians are unwilling to control government spending 79%
Governor Christie’s proposed budget calls for approximately $820 million less in local school aid. To help make up this deficit in funding do you favor or oppose a one year pay freeze on administrators, teachers and school workers salaries?
* Favor 65% * Oppose 28%
Are teachers’ unions more interested in the quality of education or in protecting their members’ jobs?
* More interested in the quality of education 24% * Protecting their members jobs 66%
Do public employee unions put a significant strain on New Jersey’s budget?
That's what Strickland essentially said to Senate Republicans as he forced through phase 2 of the 3-C Slow Speed Choo Choo - the $25 million to be spent on planning and design of the project.
Yesterday, in lieu of the Governor backtracking on his promise in the Transportation budget to make each 3C-related Controlling Board vote require a supermajority of 5-2 rather than 4-3, the motion passed by partisan vote and the spending was approved.
Don't forget, the $25 million in taxpayer dollars that's being spent won't even pay for half of the design of the project. That means at the end of this supposedly 9-month long study, we still will be missing a majority of what is needed for its completion. The cost could be $400 million, it could be $700 million - we simply won't know.
Despite spending $25 million.
This train isn't even close to hitting the tracks and it's already a boondoggle.
This is a major project that will require a permanent and unquestionably large investment at the state level each year in order to keep the empty trains moving. If the Governor so desperately wants to make this project happen, why can't he at least make sure it's done right? Why must he make even something like this a partisan fight?
This ugh-inducing headline appeared last night on the Dispatch website:
But then a little bit of responsible reporting comes into play...
The ad - a click-on video featuring Kasich and his running mate, Mary Taylor - was placed on the Michigan militia site by Google, which is aggressively seeking to increase its share of political advertising dollars during this year's midterm elections.
The Kasich campaign, perhaps taking a page from Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown's successful playbook last year, is investing heavily in online advertising, viewing Google as an emerging tool for focusing ads on groups of voters.
Buying ads on the Google Content Network exposes campaigns to more than 1 million sites approved by the giant search engine, which Kasich says he helped take public as a former managing director of Lehman Brothers.
The Google Adwords service screens potential sites, weeding out pornographic and other unsavory sites, and then uses keywords to match campaign ads to compatible sites.
"For example, a website containing camera reviews may contain an ad for a camera," said Galen Panger, a Google spokesman.
First off, I'm not going to complain one bit about the campaign taking a page from the Scott Brown campaign handbook. That seemed to work pretty damn well.
Additionally, props to the Strickland campaign who seemingly did not go on the attack on this issue, and justly so. As the article thoroughly explains, this kinda stuff happens when you pay for an aggressive internet-based ad campaign. In the seemingly infinite internet world, it can't be helped. At least not with the technology now available.
Ohio's unemployment rate when Strickland stepped into office in January 2007 was 5.3 percent and the state has now lost 429,300 jobs on his watch. These are stubborn facts for the Democrat who campaigned to "Turnaround Ohio" and blamed what he saw as failed Republican policies for Ohio's problems in 2006.
They also recognize the potential for further trouble for Ted Strickland:
...the little known fact about unemployment rates is that they count only people who are actively seeking work, so if you are so discouraged by the job market that you have given up hope then you aren't unemployed. National labor experts say this generally adds about 2 more percent to the unemployment number, so it's not a stretch to say that an Ohio county with 18 percent unemployment really has one out of five people out of work. Clinton, Highland, Huron, Morgan, Noble and Ottawa counties, you can raise your hands.
What they miss is a chance to highlight the future problems in store for Ted when it comes to more people coming back to the work force. While Ohio did gain a little over 11,000 jobs last month, the labor force is still down nearly 62,000 from where it was at its peak in April of 2009. Unfortunately for Ted, in that same month Ohio had 115,000 more employed workers, but still maintained an unemployment rate of 10%.
In other words, the only thing that can help Ted is if there is a surge of new jobs for those people currently looking for work. If the workforce increases, then any gains in jobs will be offset in the unemployment rate by those finally looking for work again.
In other words, it makes it hard to see a way for the unemployment rate to sharply improve in any way that can help Ted.
But the PD article eloquently ends with a life lesson that Governor Strickland never seemed to understand:
Across the street from where Strickland goes to work every day at the Statehouse sits a statue of former Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes, a fellow son of southern Ohio who made enough sense to voters that they made him governor four times. You can look it up.
An inscription on one side of the statue's base quotes Rhodes as saying, "The greatest contribution a governor can make is to create jobs in the private sector."
If that's the prime measuring stick that voters use this November, there could be a different guy going to work across the street at the Statehouse next year.
It's a little frightening. With more and more talk of the Value Added Tax, or VAT, or National Sales Tax....whatever you want to call it....the more real the prospects of its implementation become.
When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it -- after the 16th Amendment is repealed.
A VAT will be rationalized as necessary to restore fiscal equilibrium. But without ending the income tax, a VAT would be just a gargantuan instrument for further subjugating Americans to government.
Believing that a crisis is a useful thing to create, the Obama administration -- which understands that, for liberalism, worse is better -- has deliberately aggravated the fiscal shambles that the Great Recession accelerated. During the downturn, federal revenues plunged and spending soared. And, as will happen for two decades, every day 10,000 more baby boomers are joining the ranks of recipients of Medicare and Social Security, two programs with unfunded liabilities of nearly $107 trillion.
In the context of this concatenation of troubles, the administration's highest priority was to put an enormous new health care entitlement on the welfare state's rickety scaffolding. Why? Because the liberals' lunge to maximize government's growth depends on quickly creating a crisis that can be called a threat to the entitlement menu, and to the currency as a store of value. Then the public can be panicked into accepting the addition of a VAT to the existing menu of taxes.
The VAT is real. Where does Ohio's congressional delegation stand?
Do they support it? Like Will, are they for it as long as the income tax is eliminated? Are they simply leaving the door open? Or totally against it all cost?
With all this new spending, the dollars have to come from somewhere. And with all the talk about the VAT, it seems it just may be the answer for the Democratic majority.
We are still seven months until the midterm elections, so there is at least some possibility that the landscape could shift or that Democratic attacks on the GOP could keep Republican gains down to a minimum.
Substantial Republican gains are inevitable, with net Democratic losses now looking to be at least two dozen. At this point, GOP gains of 25-30 seats seem likely, though considerably larger gains in excess of 40 seats certainly seem possible.
We've moved 44 seats toward the Republicans and only 4 toward the Democrats.
And what happened for Ohio Democrats in this analysis?
Their outlook worsened. All of them.
Betty Sutton appeared on the list for the first time. Considering the $2M Republican Tom Ganley brought into the race this past quarter, that's no surprise.
Zack Space and John Boccieri became more vulnerable, moving from "Democrat Favored" to "Lean Democrat"
And the big news, Steve Driehaus and Mary Jo Kiljobs....er...Kilroy...moved from being a toss-up to Lean Republican.
FROWN Upon the death of Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, we urged Gov. Ted Strickland to appoint a “caretaker” replacement to non-politically fill the vacant seat until after voters choose Moyer’s successor in the November election. Strickland instead picked the Democratic candidate Franklin County Probate Court Judge Eric Brown. The governor’s lame excuse was that previous Ohio governors had filled high-court vacancies that way. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now. It’s an insult to Moyer’s quest to take the politics out of selecting judges.
We always hear talk of Strickland being a nice guy, ex-preacher. But this kind of opportunism in the face of Moyer's death screams of slimy politics as usual. And it's far from the first time.
When I read the column in the Plain Dealer advocating for a new job in Ohio government, a "Jobs Czar", as they called it, my first reaction was to go to the homepage for the current jobs czar, the Director of the Department of Development, and highlight the strategic plan highlighting their job as doing virtually everything that the PD was advocating.
But then I hit a roadblock.
Why? Because the page for the Department of Development's Strategic Plan was down:
Oops.
Maybe this explains why Ted's Department in charge of developing Ohio's economy and bringing jobs to the state has completely failed. They don't have a plan.
If you follow me on twitter, you probably already know I'm back home in Columbus for the weekend and to help out an old high school buddy in his wedding.
Obviously, that means 3BP will be silent the rest of the day, but don't worry, we'll be back on Monday.
Thanks for reading, everyone. And have a fantastic weekend.
It more than doubles the unemployment rate from when the Governor first came into office.
It's the 12th month in a row of +10% unemployment.
And it also represents the largest number of unemployed Ohioans in all of Strickland's four years.
But that still doesn't stop Strickland from strangely claiming victory.
Strickland will continue to paint the state of the state in as rosy a picture as possible, even claiming such clear fallacies as the above. But that denial of reality is going to ring hollow among the voters.
As we all know by now, jobs and the economy is far and away the most important issue on voter's minds.
And nothing represents that more than the unemployment rate.
With only six more reports on the unemployment rate to go before 11.2.10, I don't see any way for Strickland to make the electorate believe in his alternate delusional reality.
The Governor of Ohio from 1935-1939 was Martin Davey. And he's rolling over in his grave. Probably from laughing so hard.
Why? Well apparently when people seemed to be moving faster than normal in the old black and white silent films of the 1920s and 30s, it wasn't an illusion.
After all, how else do you explain an actual train schedule from 1935 showing a trip between Cincinnati to Cleveland taking five and a half hours?
Why is that so amazing? Because Ted Strickland's new 3-C slow speed choo choo would take an hour longer to make the same trip.
American Electric Power plans to shrink its work force by between 5 percent and 10 percent -- or up to 2,200 workers -- in its 11-state territory to cut expenses as it continues to feel the effects of the recession.
In case anyone forgot, AEP's HQ is in central Ohio and the location of thousands of employees.
Ohio Tax Commissioner Richard Levin recently took a cue from Star Wars icon Obi-Wan Kenobi, who famously used The Force to alter the thoughts of others, and launched a public relations campaign designed to dupe Ohioans into believing that "Ohio is not a high tax state." Unfortunately, neither The Force, nor the facts, are with Levin.
THE TRICK: In an effort to put lipstick on the pig of Ted Strickland's 2009 $850 million income tax hike on Ohio's families and small businesses, Levin intentionally twisted data from the U.S. Census Bureau in order to claim, "Ohio is not a high tax state." [News Release, Ohio Department of Taxation 3/31/2010]
THE TRUTH: Levin converts the Census Bureau's data to "per capita" figures, despite the fact that right there in black-and-white on page 3 of the Census Bureau's report it warns against doing that, saying: "Analysis using total tax or per capita tax as a measure of tax burden on the citizens of a particular state can be misleading and misinterpreted." [Census Report, Page 3, Note to Data Users]
THE TRICK: Levin regularly ignores local taxes when calculating Ohio's tax burden, as though taxes and levies demanded by counties, cities, school districts and townships don't exist.
THE TRUTH: Local taxes account for almost HALF of all taxes paid by Ohioans. Ignoring them amounts to a deliberate attempt to mislead. Ohio's total tax burden places it 7th highest in the nation in the amount of taxes paid as a percentage of income, and 18th in the nation on a per capita basis. [Source: Tax Foundation]
Franklin County Judge Eric Brown was appointed to the post.
Key words: FRANKLIN COUNTY.
You may recall a post on 3BP from February that took a closer look at an article in the Plain Dealer that focused on the growing frustration from Democrats in Cuyahoga County against the Ohio Democratic Party establishment.
At the time, one Democrat big-whig said this:
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."
And Democratic State Senator Nina Turner said this:
"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."
Well, here was Ted and Chris' opportunity to do both the right thing in appointing an apolitical temporary Chief Justice and also appease their supposed allies in the Northeast.
Earlier this month I made a couple posts focusing on how Democrats will likely resort to implementing a Value Added Tax in order to pay for the massive health care bill.
Well, Congressman Boehner's office took notice and e-mailed me the future Speaker's weekly column that focused on the issue:
"With Washington Democrats’ trillion-dollar government takeover of health care signed into law and the President’s $3.8 trillion budget on deck in Congress, our nation’s budget experts are sounding the alarm on the huge budget deficits and debt that are threatening our economy and undermining job growth.
“In a speech this week, Doug Elmendorf, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, said that the nation’s fiscal path is ‘unsustainable.’ Similarly, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently warned that our nation must act to take on skyrocketing debt.
"This isn’t the first we’ve heard from economists and budget experts expressing concern about the impact of a trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ that isn’t creating jobs, a proposed budget with trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, and a government takeover of health care that will increase the budget deficit by more than $200 billion, even with a staggering $569.2 billion in new tax increases.
“For months experts have been warning that Washington’s out-of-control government spending binge could lead to currency shock, inflation and crippling interest rates. Last year more than 222 economists issued a statement saying that reining in federal spending is needed to help small businesses get back to creating jobs again.
“Instead of heeding these warnings, the majority party in Washington continues to defy the will of the American people as it pursues budget-busting policies that destroy jobs and pile more debt on our kids and grandkids.
“In fact, Obama advisor Paul Volcker said recently that more taxes, specifically a job-killing European-style value-added tax (VAT) is needed. As you may be aware, a value-added tax is a tax added at each stage of a product’s path from production to consumption. In many European countries, a VAT of anywhere from 15 percent to 25 percent is levied on the production of everything from cars to clothes to furniture, which is ultimately passed along to consumers in the form of higher costs.
“Instead of fueling even more government spending with new-job killing taxes that will only hurt middle-class families and small businesses, it’s time to put a stop to Washington’s out-of-control spending.
“Republicans have proposed real reforms to do just that. For example, Republicans have proposed adopting strict budget caps that limit federal spending on an annual basis and are enforceable by the President. These caps were a critical plank in the fiscally-responsible budget alternative Republicans, led by Budget Committee Ranking Republican Paul Ryan (R-WI), proposed last year and they are notably absent from the President’s budget. Without these caps, Washington will keep on growing and the federal budget deficit will continue to spiral out of control.
“In addition, earlier this year I joined House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) in a letter urging President Obama to work with Republicans to cut spending now to encourage job growth and reduce the national debt instead of simply punting tough spending decisions to a commission that won’t even issue a final report until the final months of 2010. We invited President Obama to use his presidential authority to send Congress a ‘rescissions’ package to force a debate on serious spending cuts, and pledged that if the president did so, Republicans would work with him to ensure his spending cut proposals were brought to a vote on the House floor. Unfortunately, the White House continues to remain silent on our offer in the months since it was put forth. Meanwhile, in Democratic-controlled Washington, the spending spree continues.
“Americans are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ but all they are getting from the Democrats who control Washington is more spending and more debt. The spending binge in Washington is mortgaging the future of our kids and grandkids and costing jobs right now.”
The only poll taken this year that asked Ohioans whether they supported the 3-C Rail Project showed a rejection from voters by a massive 11-point margin.
The Ohio Department of Transportation has failed to provide consistent answers to the large questions being asked about the massive project.
And at a minimum, Ohio is going to be asked to pony up $17 million a year to keep the train running.
Despite all of the above, Ted Strickland is railroading through, pun intended, the $25 million "planning phase" of the project. By forcing the vote to require a simple, rather than supermajority, Strickland is giving the finger to bipartisanship when it comes to one of the largest new expenditures Ohio has seen in years.
Want to hear the kicker? The $25 million "planning phase" won't even tell us half of what we need to know regarding the final costs and design of the project.
The $25 million won't even pay for half of the design for the 3-C system. And thanks to "up to 45%" wording, it could even be far less than that.
Additionally, there doesn't seem to be any timeframe for when this study must be completed. So if this thing takes as long as 9 months, we still won't know more than 45% of the design of the project.
Don't be fooled. These are your tax dollars being thrown away.
And for what? An election year trophy for Strickland.
The Governor is keen on doing whatever it takes to get this project up and running, no matter what the cost to Ohioans.
Way back in February of 2009, I said the following about the efforts Kasich had made at that point. By going to Lincoln Day Dinner after Lincoln Day Dinner, Kasich was building an army.
Beginning in 2007 and through March of 2009, Kasich has spoken or will have spoken at 45 County Lincoln Day Dinners or similar Party activist events. Attendance at these events has averaged out at about 400. That's 18,000 people. What's important to note is that these 18,000 aren't just regular voters. These are Party leaders, grassroots coordinators, fundraisers and combinations thereof. The very people that need to be inspired to work hard to make sure victory is assured in November of 2010.
It would be easy to say that these people can be counted on already. There is no need to waste time courting folks that will already help you, just as they help each campaign cycle, right? But as a campaign veteran I can tell you there is a ginormous difference between Party activists who feel obligated to help you and Party activists that WANT to help you.
Well, the first semblances of that army are coming to fruition. With the "88 on 28" grassroots GOTV effort, the Kasich campaign is utilizing the hordes of supporters they've built over time.
Anyone want to bet that even after four years as Governor, there is no way in hell the Strickland campaign could even come close to organizing such an event?
In late March, the Washington Post said Lee Fisher's 1Q campaign finance report was one of the five most important reports of any Senate race. Specifically, they said:
Ohio is a big and expensive state in which to run for Senate, and, at the end of 2009, Portman had $6 million in the bank while Fisher, who is currently the lieutenant governor, had just $1.8 million. Fisher's establishment support and money edge over Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner should carry him through the May 4 primary but he needs to have had a big first quarter to build momentum as the general election starts in earnest.
Instead, Fisher had one of his absolute worst.
Raising a little over $500k, he now has a measly $1.8M cash on hand. For reference, Congressman Tiberi just put out his numbers yesterday and he is running just 300k behind the leading Democratic Senate candidate.
Lee, that's pathetic.
The fact is Fisher has officially blown his overwhelming advantage. He was supposed to have more than enough cash to saturate the airwaves months out. And he didn't. He's left the door open for Brunner.
Errr. I mean, the Secretary of State.
At this rate, if he's able to stop himself from screwing the pooch, Lee will head into the general virtually completely tapped out.
But at the end of the day, if whoever wins the primary wants to be in any way competitive to Portman, he or she will need an overwhelming amount of resources from the DSCC and other Democratic organizations to help finance and assist in fundraising their race. The question is whether these national organizations surrender any effort to takeover the GOP seat and try to defend what Dem seats they have now around the country. After all, their time and resources are finite.
My money is still on Fisher to win the nomination. But he's left the door open for Brunner to sneak through.
Either way, this primary has crushed any Democratic hopes to takeover Senator Voinovich's seat.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit group of economists, determines when recessions start and end as part of its work in calculating the peaks and troughs of the business cycle.
The bureau’s Business Cycle Dating Committee met last Friday and concluded that the jury is still out on the recession’s end, announcing that decision on its Web site Monday.
The committee reaffirmed that the recession began in December 2007, but its seven members couldn’t determine whether the recession has ended.
The bad news is that historic economic trends suggest Ohio's recovery from a recession tends to lag behind the rest of the country's recovery. Considering the Governor's failures to prepare the state for a TURNAROUND!, that trend will continue.
I've got a feeling I'm going to be using this picture quite a bit over the summer.
Here are a few examples [of how Christie has responded to his critics], culled from his budget address, public meetings and radio appearances:
The children will be the ones to suffer from your education cuts."The real question is, who's for the kids, and who's for their raises? This isn't about the kids. Let's dispense with that portion of the argument. Don't let them tell you that ever again while they are reaching into your pockets."
Your policies favor the rich. "We have the worst unemployment in the region and the highest taxes in America, and that's no coincidence."
Why not renew the 'millionaire's tax'?"The top 1% of taxpayers in New Jersey pay 40% of the income tax. In addition, we've got a situation where that tax applies to small businesses. I'm simply not going to put my foot on the back of the neck of small business while I want them to try to grow jobs by giving more revenue to New Jersey."
Budget cuts are unfair."The special interests have already begun to scream their favorite word—which, coincidentally, is my 9-year-old son's favorite word when we are making him do something he knows is right but does not want to do—'unfair.' . . . One state retiree, 49 years old, paid, over the course of his entire career, a total of $124,000 towards his retirement pension and health benefits. What will we pay him? $3.3 million in pension payments over his life, and nearly $500,000 for health care benefits—a total of $3.8 million on a $120,000 investment. Is that fair?"
State budget cuts only shift the pain to our towns. "[L]et's remember this, in 2009 the private sector in New Jersey lost 121,000 jobs. In 2009, municipalities and school boards added 11,300 jobs. Now that's just outrageous. And they're going to have to start to lay some people off, not continue to hire at the pace they hired in 2009 in the middle of a recession."
Isn't your talk of 'stopping the tax madness' just another 'Read My Lips' promise?"[Mine is] much better than 'Read my lips.' I'm sorry, it's just much better. Much stronger. . . . It's gonna be how my governorship will rise or fall. I'm not signing a tax increase."
Glorious.
So that's what a real leader is like.
Ohio sure could use one. Ohio could use John Kasich.
Yesterday, and all the way up until early this morning, Governor Strickland's Ohio Department of Development website was down. Considering their complete failure to retain or create jobs in Ohio, I think it's fair to assume "overuse" isn't the reason for the crash.
The Strickland Administration: Less Capable to Run a State Than a 12-year Old with an Internet Connection and a Primitive Understanding of HTML
Then Brunner said Fisher was sexist for calling her by name.
[Note to self: Start calling my future wife "fiancee" instead of her first name. After all, she earned it.]
Then Brunner said Fisher abandoned his post as jobs czar.
Then Brunner said she wouldn't endorse Lee.
Then Fisher ripped her on the ridiculous Party Pledge directive.
Actually, it looks like it was at least somewhat entertaining considering how bland the two candidates are in real-life.
The question is, why did Brunner wait so long to go on the attack against Lee? She should have been ripping him for months. When you don't have any cash for paid media, you do what you can to get earned media. Brunner seemed to think posting on the Daily Kos was good enough.
Well, polls show it wasn't.
Fisher's TV is up early. And it will solidify his lead provided he has a decent GOTV operation. The question is whether he has the cash to keep the ads going. If rumors of his extremely poor fundraising in the 1Q are true, then Lee may very well have given Brunner the slim glimmer of hope to somehow come back from the dead.
If so, it will be one of the most amazing failures Ohio politics has seen in years.
BAE Systems'vehicle armoring operations in West Chester cut another 180 jobs Tuesday, bringing its total job cuts since early March to 480.
BAE said the new cuts were triggered by the wind down of some long-term defense contracts such as the Army’s armored Humvee program and the overall weak economy.
“This was a very difficult decision, and was not one that was made lightly,” said Don Dutton, vice president of BAE’s Security & Survivability unit which operates three plants near Port Union Road.
Rob Portman had some bad news for Lee Fisher and Jennifer Brunner yesterday.
In the first quarter of 2010, Portman raised $2.35 million. That's an increase of nearly 40% on his previous high of $1.7 million raised.
Even more intimidating, Portman has $7.6M on-hand.
For reference, at the end of 2009, Lee Fisher only had $1.8 million on hand. Jennifer Brunner had $10.83 in food stamps.
Even worse news for Lee? There's a rumor going around that this latest quarter was his worst yet - raising even less than the 700k or so he raised at the end of 2009.
Of course, that didn't stop the Lieutenant Governor from this silly charge:
Fisher charged that much of Portman's money is coming from lobbyists and political action committees "in Washington, D.C., who have worked with him for two decades."
But Fisher, too, has accepted money from PACs and lobbyists. Asked about the difference, Fisher said he will not raise as much from such sources because they have already sided with Portman.
"The fact that they already are, in many cases, giving the maximum contribution indicates that my chances of getting money from Washington insiders are not very good," he said. "I will more than match in dollar-for-dollar from people in Ohio from all walks of life."
Other than getting called out by the Plain Dealer on PACs and lobbyists, Fisher is also wrong about getting money from DC. In fact, 80% of all that Portman has raised has come from within Ohio. Impressive stuff. And a lot of that can be traced back to Portman's recently completed effort to meet & greet his future constituents in all 88 counties in Ohio. I wonder if that's something Fisher has done in the four years he's served as Lieutenant Governor.
Finally, we're now learning that Fisher jumped the gun on his ad buy and has gone up today in Columbus, rather than the weekend as originally planned.
I guess with the Brunner school bus (which is bound to breakdown any day now) hounding him and Portman's obnoxiously good fundraising numbers, Lee sorta freaked out and jumped the gun early.
But at the end of the day, this story is about Portman and his total and absolute domination.
Dollars = confidence in the candidate and his/her ability to win.
That's why Brunner and Fisher have had such a hard time raising money and Portman has so far dominated.
For perspective on how well Portman did this quarter, note that Sen. Barbara Boxer, an entrenched Democrat incumbent in the majority, competing in a tight race, and in the largest state in the union, raised only $50k more than Ohio's GOP Senate candidate. That is impressive.
Portman is well on his way to absolutely dominating in the Fall.
It is important to remember that the various statistical models are typically based on no more than 16 cases -- the number of midterm elections held since pollsters started asking the generic ballot question. My Pollster.com colleague, University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin, created charts for each election that can help us reach our own conclusions. These show Democrats losing ground on the generic vote in the last 200 days of 6 of 7 midterm elections held with a Democrat in the White House. But notice that the one exception to the pattern was the most recent: 1998.
Some potential exists for movement in the generic ballot result in the coming months: "Over the last two decades," Franklin writes via e-mail, "we've seen movement of as much as 8 points over the last 200 days, but most years show as little as 2 or 3 points over time."
Either way, Democrats are facing a tough year. "If the Republicans gain another 2 or 3 points, that should give them a significant advantage," Franklin writes, "while if the Democrats recoup ONLY 2 or 3 points, they are still looking at significant losses, at least based on the history of the generic ballot and midterm seat change."
It's hard to spin it any other way than this:
Two of the most well-respected Democratic poll analysts in the nation believe Democrats will lose a very high number of seats in 2010.
The only proof that she exists is through a relatively new facebook fan page created by the Dems on her behalf along with an awfully robotic looking Yvette speaking directly to the camera in a short video.
As far as we can tell, Yvette has yet to publicly campaign or meet the media since the week of her campaign announcement nearly three months ago. Her last appearance was with Jim Heath of ONN a few days after her unveiling.
Since then. Nothing. For nearly three months.
When she was announced as Kasich's LG candidate, Chris Redfern compared Mary Taylor to Sarah Palin.
Well, if Sarah Palin had remained hidden from view for almost three months after her introduction, we wouldn't have seen her until about three weeks after Obama had already won.
(and yes, I'm sure many Dems would have preferred it that way)
We always hear that LG candidates don't matter much to the voters. Well, apparently Ted's LG candidate doesn't matter much to him, either.
A facebook page for Yvette, Ted? That's it? Really?
The ORP has put out a fantastic video knocking the snot out of Ohio Governor Strickland on the #1 issue on the minds of voters: jobs.
In the video, Ted says "Third Frontier is, in my judgement, the most effective economic development job creation tool that we have available to our state."
It's important to note before we continue that Third Frontier's own supporters say the program has created just 10,000 jobs in the past five years. That's 2,000 per year. They also claim 38k "indirect" jobs.
Now before you forget, Ohio is closing in on 400,000 jobs lost in Strickland's four years. But somehow Third Frontier's 2,000 new jobs a year is the best Ohio's got, Governor? Seriously?
First off, what happened to the $8 billion Ohio received in federal stimulus taxpayer dollars? This cash didn't just come off some unicorn-created free money tree. It's every taxpayer's hard-earned dollars. And yet, Third Frontier, with all of its 2,000 jobs/year, is the best program we have going for us? If that's true, can we have our $8 billion back?
Second, Third Frontier isn't the most effective tool available. It's just one of the only ones you're using. I imagine there are a lot of small businesses out there that would create a lot more jobs if their tax burden was lowered. How about using that tool? I'm pretty sure it's available.
Finally, as you so cheerfully share, Third Frontier wasn't even your idea! It was the brainchild of your favorite role-model, Governor Taft. And here you are, trying to co-opt it.
Clearly, Ted Strickland has failed during his four years as Governor and still, after all this time, has zero ideas about how to bring substantive job growth to Ohio.
Now to be fair, many Republicans, including John Kasich, have thrown their support behind Third Frontier, though with more strict requirements than what Strickland calls for. And while the program clearly has created jobs, it's impossible to tell how many jobs it may have destroyed by not allowing the free market to make its own decisions. But what's important is that these same Republicans that do support the program aren't resting on the laurels of Third Frontier, as Strickland has done. Third Frontier may be misguided, but at least the GOPers that do support the program look at it simply as a small part of implementing a much greater movement that relies on the simple and effective tenets of free market supply and demand. Meanwhile, Ted Strickland is stuck kicking the can down the road without one idea of his own.
In late March I used a fantastic column by the unparalleled Charles Krauthammer to challenge Ohio's media to ask the congressional supporters of Obamacare whether they would attempt to implement the VAT to pay for it.
Krauthammer stated:
American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.
White House advisor Paul Volcker made news this week by calling a value-added tax (VAT) "not as toxic an idea" as it's been in the past for tackling the nation's deficit problem. Today, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf confirmed he's been getting "a lot of questions" about the VAT tax from Congress.
"Many people in Congress are interested in it," he said of the VAT, a national sales tax that adds between 10 and 20 percent to purchases in European countries where it's been implemented. "We've had conversations with a number of members and their staffs."
Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy was one of the biggest proponents of Obamacare in Congress. Steve Driehaus recently had a union-staffed pat-me-on-the-back party in support of his vote for it.
Now that we have confirmation that Congress has expressed an interest in the new tax, Ohioans have a right to know if 1) either of those members of Congress are the ones who have reached out to the CBO, and 2) whether they would ever consider implementing the VAT.
Clearly, it's become newsworthy at a national level. I wonder if the Fourth Estate will find it so in Ohio.
...if the House popular vote were exactly tied, we'd expect the Democrats to lose "only" 30 seats on average, which would be enough for them to retain majority control. It would take about a 2.5 point loss in the popular vote for them to be as likely as not to lose control of the chamber. So Democrats probably do have a bit of a cushion: this is the good news for them.
Their bad news is that the House popular vote (a tabulation of the actual votes all around the country) and the generic ballot (an abstraction in the form of a poll) are not the same thing -- and the difference usually tends to work to Democrats' detriment. Although analysts debate the precise magnitude of the difference, on average the generic ballot has overestimated the Democrats' performance in the popular vote by 3.4 points since 1992. If the pattern holds, that means that a 2.3-point deficit in generic ballot polls would translate to a 5.7 point deficit in the popular vote -- which works out to a loss of 51 seats, according to our regression model.
The above-named 2.3% deficit is per the RCP average.
Democrats, want to think of something scary?
And what if, for example, the Rasmussen case comes into being? Rasmussen has the Democrats losing the generic ballot by 9 points (and has had similar numbers for awhile). A 9-point loss in the House popular vote would translate into a projected 65-seat loss for Democrats. Or, if we adjust the Rasmussen poll to account for the fact that the Democrats' performance in the popular vote tends to lag the generic ballot, it works out to a 12.4-point loss in the popular vote, which implies a loss of 79 seats!
Now we all expect the generic poll numbers to fluctuate between now and November, but if they end up in the 2.3% margin that Silver analyzed, watch out.
I really wish Congressmen would have read the bill.
Hidden away in the depths of the Health Care bill is a section requiring the following:
It requires employers to provide "a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from co-workers and the public, which may be used by an employee to express breast milk." Only companies with less than 50 employees can claim it's an undue hardship.
In other words, every single store of more than 50 people needs to set aside space for a breastfeeding room whether they have women that require the space or not. Additionally, it can't be used for any other purpose besides breastfeeding.
While I totally support a mother having the opportunity to privately breastfeed her child, it's not the government's job to assign yet more unnecessary requirements and economic burdens on private industry. I'm sure the Democrats consider it a small expense for business owners to bear, but in the long run mandates like this add up and will undoubtedly cost jobs.
Not only will these new mandates carry extra cost burdens for businesses, we now will have to fund enforcement as well. That means even more money taken out of the private sector and spent on non-productive regulatory efforts, mainly for the Democrats’ ideas of social engineering.
This week Strickland got called out for abusing the privilege of use of the state plane by forcing it many, many times to fly 4 minutes to Port Columbus just so didn't have to drive as far to board at Don Scott field.
