Shortly after I first moved to Ohio in 2005 in the midst of the first Bush II recession, I remember hearing then Gov. Robert Taft brag during his State of the State speech about shedding state workers. As if putting people on the unemployment line in a recession was a good idea or that residents didn't need the services those state employees provided.
I'm reminded of that willfull ignorance when I read new Gov. John Kasich's State of the State speech delivered Tuesday. If you didn't know about Kasich's record as a Republican nine-term congressman and Lehman Brothers executive, it would be a lot easier to take the concens he expressed about Ohio's joblessness, homlessness and poverty seriously.
Kasich in 1999 voted to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act (http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=8065&can_id=27017) the FDR-inspired 1933 law designed to prevent another Great Depression by preventing the merger of commercial and savings banks with investment banks. The kind of law that would've prevented the bankruptcy of Lehman and the ensuing Great Recession http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/taste-glass-steagall-lash-lehman# Of course, Kasich had a soft landing departing Lehman with a $432,000 golden parachute while Ohio's pension fund took a nearly $500,000 hit thanks to Lehman's financial shennanigans http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/2010-election-wall-street-factor-ohio-governors-race/story?id=10586618
The Great Recession drastically decreased federal revenue for states like Ohio and increased personal bankrupticies, but Kasich also voted to make it harder for working people to declare bankruptcy, http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=7939&can_id=27017 The kind of people who don't get billions in taxpayer bailouts and interest free loans from the Federal Reserve like Kasich's Wall Street buddies.
And in 1998 Kasich voted to make life easier for millionaires and strip the treasury of more revenue by raising the exemption for estate taxes to $1 million http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=8257&can_id=27017
In his speech, Kasich lamented the loss of jobs and population in Ohio and talked about bringing Bill Clinton into the state. Perfect, the criminals returning to the crime scene. In addition to supporting the overturning of Glass-Steagall, Clinton supported North American Free Trade Act and China's admission to the World Trade Organization both of which Rep. Kasich voted for.
The NAFTA vote paved the way for corporations to exploit cheap labor and non-existent environmental and labor laws in Mexico costing the US some 1 million jobs by 2006 including nearly 50,000 in Ohio http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp173/ Between China's admission to the WTO in 2001 and 2008, about 2.4 million US jobs were lost or displaced including nearly 92,000 in Ohio http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp173/
Kasich said Ohio isn't just "under seige" from China and India, but neighboring states like Indiana who he accused of pirating jobs by offering tax breaks, forgetting that Ohio ended all corporate taxes in 2005.
"The higher our costs are, the more opportunity another state has to come in here and offer a better deal," Kasich said. "That's why we can't raise taxes."
The truth is companies relocate primarily because of the things that the tax cuts Kasich advocates are destroying: a solid infrastructure, good schools and an educated workforce. The corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks is just the cherry on a sundae. However, companies have sucessfully been pitting states like Ohio against one another in a race to to give out the most tax breaks for decades and taxpayers are the ones who end up getting burned http://www.greatamericanjobsscam.com/pages/book.html
Just as Kasich thinks the only way to draw in businesses to Ohio is to bribe them he thinks that's the only way to keep Ohioans from moving out of the state. You're not leaving because you lost your job, it's because of those pesky estate taxes. The reailty is estate taxes affect only a fraction of Ohioans, those with estates worth at least $338,333. http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/ohio-news/gop-effort-to-repeal-ohio-estate-tax-raises-debate-1067554.html The $55 million in revenue is minimal in the context of Ohio's approximately $120 billion budget and affects only one in 14 Ohio estates, but that's what's killing the state, according to Kasich.
Kasich also wants to save money by having your elderly parents to stay at home with you rather than go to a nursing home implying that children put their parents in nursing homes because they don't love them, not because they can't take care of elderly people with serious medical conditions or Alzheimer's disease.
"We need to think outside the box on Medicaid," said Kasich whose party wants to overturn healthcare reform which would increase the deficit by $230 billion http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/cbo-health-care-repeal-deficit_n_805192.html and deny coverage to between 111,000 and 282,000 in our congressional district including between 8,000 and 35,000 children http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/health_2011/OH9.Kaptur.pdf
Kasich also spoke of giving parents more choice in schools, code for busting teachers unions as part of the union busting Senate Bill 5 and making taxpayers pay for vouchers for charter schools. Unlike public schools, charters can cherry pick top students and don't have to provide English as a Second Language classes and special education.
Kasich also said Ohio needs to enter the "international uranium market." Perhaps we can sell some uranium to Japan so they can build new nuclear power plants as if they don't have enough problems with the old ones since the earthquake.
And Kasich said we need to make more ethanol which costs more to produce than the gas savings and increases pollution, erosion and world food shortages http://motherjones.com/environment/2007/10/ethanol-effect-when-alternative-fuels-go-bad#
Kasich who previously warned we need to "get on the bus or get run over by it" said that we're all Ohioans and we'll, "climb the mountain and make Ohio great." The reality is Kasich's split-and-divide policies will drive us off a cliff.
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