Good Governor gone bad
Ohio Governor John Kasich started out like successful Governor Scott Walker but since has gone “Voinovich”. Tom Blumer nails it via PJ Media.
In 2010, Ohioans longing for genuine reform after decade upon decade of virtually uninterrupted tax-and-spend government finally thought they had found their change agent in former congressman John Kasich.
The state hadn’t seen anything resembling conservative governance since the first year or so of Republican George Voinovich’s gubernatorial reign during the early 1990s. But just 15 months after what had been an impressive start, Voinovich began pushing for tax increases on booze and cigarettes. By the end of his second year, he and pliant Republican legislators were plotting soak-the-rich schemes. In 1996, Voinovich was the only Republican governor in America to receive a fiscal policy “F” from the Cato Institute. By that time, Republicans in the General Assembly were complaining that they needed equal time to respond to Voinovich’s annual left-leaning State of the State addresses.
Under Bob Taft, things got even worse. After treading water during his first term, Taft in 2003 seriously sullied his ancestors’ Republican and conservative legacies by ramming massive tax increases through the General Assembly. An alleged tax reform effort in 2005 barely nibbled around the edges while adding a horrid gross receipts levy to the mix. When a scandal-plagued Taft left office, Ohio’s business tax climate was fourth-worst in the nation.
Before the Voinovich era, Democrat Dick Celeste raised the income tax by 90 percent. After the Taft era, Democrat Ted Strickland allowed the spending spree which his predecessor had enabled to continue unchecked, even as the state’s economy went into free-fall. Over 400,000 jobs, a shocking 8 percent of statewide employment, disappeared.
The time could not have been more ripe for a genuine conservative to come in and not only right the ship, but also return Ohio’s economy, after over 30 years of watching other states pass it by, to a prosperous trajectory.
Kasich certainly looked like the guy who could and would do it. During the 2010 Buckeye State governor’s race, he repeatedly told audiences that “I was in the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party,” and with good reason. While in Congress, he “was the chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Budget Committee in 1997 that balanced the nation’s budget for the first time in more than 30 years.” He selected State Auditor Mary Taylor as his running mate largely because, while a state representative, she had defied the establishment by voting against Taft’s tax increases.
Despite passive-aggressive obstruction by the state’s Republican Party chairman and a desperate, media-assisted smear campaign by Strickland, Kasich become the first challenger to defeat a sitting Buckeye State governor in 36 years.
To his credit, Kasich did right the fiscal ship. His first two-year budget closed the projected $8 billion budget gap Stickland had left behind without increasing taxes. He enthusiastically signed a repeal of the state’s death tax. He made some progress cutting an overgrown bureaucracy. The state’s economy responded by generating over 90,000 jobs and growing by 2.9 percent during his first 12 full months in office. Both figures significantly outpaced the averages in the rest of the U.S.
Unfortunately, Kasich and state Republicans suffered a serious political setback in November 2011, when voters decisively torpedoed their attempt to enact collective bargaining reforms analogous to those successfully implemented by Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Since then, the Governor has been a different person, and his policies have veered into places even George Voinovich and Bob Taft wouldn’t go.
His reaction to the fracking boom has been to propose a 400 percent increase in the severance tax while ramping up the rhetoric against “big oil.”
After opposing Obamacre, Kasich turned around and championed Medicaid expansion. He spent months trying to shame opponents into supporting him by playing the “Christian” card, i.e., “You’re not really a Christian if you won’t support this.” When legislators still balked, he went around them and took his case to the Controlling Board, an obscure state agency which normally deals with completely unrelated matters. When it looked like the sitting members of the Controlling Board wouldn’t do his bidding, the Governor had the House Speaker arbitrarily replace two members who planned to oppose the move with supportive lackeys. The Wall Street Journal correctly described Kasich’s heavy-handed move as “lawless.” Washington isn’t the only place where tyranny (“arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuse of authority”) has gained a foothold.
As with Voinovich and Taft, Kasich’s budget unsustainably expands spending by an anticipated average of over 5 percent per year through fiscal 2015. Half of that would still be way too much.
Ohio’s economy has responded as one would expect: poorly. Despite the strong head start, statewide payroll employment growth during the 37 months which ended in February now trails the rest of the nation — and almost 40 percent of that growth has been in Metro Columbus, where payrolls have grown at triple the rate seen in the stagnating rest of the state. In the three years ended in January, the statewide labor force outside of Columbus shrunk by 64,000.
Luckily for Kasich, the Democrat opposing his reelection is best referred to as the Wreck That Is Edward Fitzgerald. Thus, he will probably win reelection even after dissing the people who gave him his victory margin the first time around.
In late March, while touting Ohio’s fictional “economic turnaround,” Kasich refused to answer Chris Wallace’s repeated questions on Fox News Sunday about whether he was considering a presidential run in 2016. I take that evasiveness to mean that he’s serious about it. One year of strong governance followed by several lousy ones doesn’t get it, John.
Video: Disgusted ICE head finally faces down Gang of 8
Video: Disgusted ICE head finally faces down Gang of 8
Chris Crane, President of Union named National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council cranks up the heat describing the unbelievable rush to legalizing future Democrat voters. One outstanding point was the exclusion of anyone with a contrarian view to the Gang. Inclusion of special interests including business and groups representing illegal aliens. There is much, much more.
Eric from Red State on Life-a must read
By: Erick Erickson (Diary) | April 18th, 2013 at 12:20 AM | 55
I remember it so clearly — a memory you can only remember so clearly when it is from sadness. You can’t let it go.
I was sitting in the mud by the rear passenger side tire of my old Acura cradling my one year old in the steady, driving rain. I was sobbing doing my best not to fall apart in front of my little girl. But the tears ran. My throat hurt as I tried to suppress the guttural cries I wanted to cry there in the mud.
RedState, which got up and running in 2004, was out of money. No one wanted to put ads on a conservative site after the Democrats had just delivered an absolute shellacking to the GOP. We were out of money. Christmas was a week away. I was out of a job.
But that was insignificant compared to where I’d been that day. I’d just left the hospital where I had the task of telling my wife she was dying and there was nothing anybody could do.
Then there I was one week before Christmas in 2006 sitting in mud, leaning up against a tire covering me in black, holding a one year old too young to know what was going on, and sobbing in the rain too shell shocked to even try to pray. Too overwhelmed to even think. Out of money, soon to be a single dad, no job, a one year old, and I was very overwhelmed.
Let not your heart be troubled is not just something Sean Hannity came up with on his radio show. It is not just some trite expression people use to superficially aid and comfort others. It is a phrase spoken by Jesus Christ found in the first verse of John 14. “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.”
My wife and I got married in 2000. Within three months she had a double mastectomy not because she had cancer, but because we knew she would get it. We waited five years to have our first child. We figured it would be smooth sailing after that.
The Thursday before Labor Day 2006, my wife called me from her office. She said she was dying. She sounded like she was dying.
We got her to the doctor who, based on her symptoms, diagnosed her as having either a pulmonary embolism or a gall bladder attack. He had me take her to the ER with orders to check her for an embolism knowing if it was not that it would be her gall bladder.
The scan came back clear. It was her gall bladder. “Oh by the way,” they seemed to say almost in passing. “We found some spots on her lungs.”
We went to the beach. Within twenty-four hours of arrival my wife was in the Emergency Room at the beach preparing for surgery. She had a blockage in her bile duct. She was in agony. She spent a week at the beach recovering while I took care of our one year old. When we got home we found a message on our answering machine from the local hospital we’d been to before our trip. They had discovered a blockage in her bile duct and it was vitally important we call them to schedule immediate surgery. Ahhh . . . timing.
We finally got around to her going back to the doctor about the spots on her lungs the week before Christmas. I remember she came home with a scared looked on her face. Yes, the spots were still there, but they’d found a blood clot in her jugular vein. She had to be admitted to the hospital for treatment. While there, the doctors got worried about the clots plus the spots. They decided to biopsy. That’s when they told me she was dying. There was nothing they could do.
That night after cleaning myself up and having help for the one year old I went back to the hospital. My wife and I talked as you talk when you know you might not have much longer to talk. In the course of the conversation the surgeon came in, told us everyone had now reviewed the biopsy, and they were sure it was not cancer, she was not going to die, and they’d send off the biopsy for more study.
Turns out she has a relatively benign condition.
Within a day or so, Eagle Publishing, Inc. called and offered to buy RedState. They’d keep me on as an employee. I had my wife and my job.
Fast forward four years. I had not had a pay raise, we were dependent on two incomes to make ends meet, and my wife, given everything she’d been through, wanted to stay home with the kids. We knew it was the right thing to do. We just did not know how to make up the loss of income. We took a leap of faith and my wife left her job.
Literally the next day, and I use literally intentionally as it was literally the next day, my boss called and told me I was finally getting a pay raise. It was identical — dollar for dollar identical to what my wife would be giving up. A week later CNN came calling. I would never have been able to do my job at CNN without my wife staying home.
A year later, Cox Media Group asked me to be on the radio.
My life is not all peaches and roses. But I write this whole story and highlight the ups, not the downs, because I do not believe in coincidences. I do not believe in luck. I believe in an active Creator. I have experienced too much in my life to lead me to think this is all atoms and physics and chemistry and coincidence. I have experienced pain and misfortune and sadness, but as much as those things too define me it is the joys of life I dwell on.
There is a man upstairs. He has a plan. And while I do not know the mind of the Creator, I know this all works for the good of those who are called according to His purpose. I do not know His plan, but I have experienced enough in my life to know I should trust Him and that His plan, however confounding it may seem, is a good plan that will work out in the end for the best.
So I raise my head these last few days and see liberals salivating at the idea that it might be a right wing tea partier who blew up Boston while conservatives are convinced it is a Middle Eastern terrorist. I see the wailing and gnashing of teeth over gun control, the evil of Kermit Gosnell, and the politicization of everything. Then there is the destruction in Waco, the dead and injured — it is enough to make you want to sit in the mud while holding your child close and cry.
It should be hard to be optimistic, but I, a natural pessimist, I am optimistic. I have hope. I know that there is a higher purpose to it all. I know that there is not just the rudimentary day to day existence in which we live, but there is a master plan to it all. I know some of you do not believe that and you are entitled to reject that. But I have experienced too much in my life and see clearly in hindsight an active presence who leads me somewhere down a path I did not choose, but on which I walk.
Choosing to let your heart not be troubled is not easy. It is often hard. We see bombings in Boston, planes flying into tall buildings, random explosions killing many at one time in Texas, politicians and citizens at each others throats and it seems the whole world has gone mad. But the world has always been mad. We are just more aware of it these days with bold events that shock the conscience.
We are on a blue marble circling a giant ball of plasma that if we draw too close to we burn up as we and it hurtle around a black hole at the center of a galaxy scientists believe will one day collide with another galaxy. The world is a crappy, hostile place in a colder than ice dangerous expanse of vacuum, radiation, and sweet meteors of death. The thought that we exist as we do at all borders on absurdity.
And yet there is a one year old who, though she knows not why her father cries in the rain and mud, pats his face to tell him it is okay. There are strangers who, instead of running from the blast, turn to it to help those who have fallen. There is a President some of us care little for who chooses his words carefully to bind the wounds of dark days for all of us regardless of our votes.
The world is not meant to be fair. It is a maddening place filled with bad and evil. But the good shines through. The right overwhelms the wrong. The very real good slays the very real evil. The smiles break through the tears.
You do not have to be mad in a maddening world. You can choose to be happy. You can choose to be optimistic. You can choose to let not your heart be troubled.
I am a man who had to tell my wife she was going to die. By God’s grace she did not die, but is with me still.
I can tell you confidently it is no easy thing to let your heart not be troubled. But I can tell you in a world where so many politicize everything, we yell at each other, and every hill is a hill on which to die, whether you choose to believe or not there is good and there is evil and there is a man upstairs who has a plan that while we may not know it we can be assured that all things, even in the pit of the various hells on this present earth, yes all things do work for the good of those called according to his purpose. He brings forth water from rocks and bread from heaven and you and me from the dust of the earth, stitching us together in our mothers’ wombs.
So let not your heart be troubled. The sun still shines. The smiles are still there. The good graces between neighbors still exist. Bad things will always and have always happened. But love and good and right prevail even in the madness of the present age.
Obama’s Stealth Power Grab
Senator Ted Cruz released a report that is really quite “1984” like in its brazen over reach of Federal power. Nothing in the news about this, of course, but more disappointing is the lack of exposure by anyone not named Cruz. This is why the right loses elections it has no idea how to make its way in this reality TV low info voter world.
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Press Release of Senator Cruz
Sen. Cruz Releases Inaugural Report on Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Attempts to Expand Federal Power
Contact: (202) 224-5922 / press@cruz.senate.gov
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) today released a report – “The Legal Limit: The Obama Administration’s Attempts to Expand Federal Power” – that analyzes six instances in the last 15 months where the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously rejected the Obama Administration’s arguments for increased federal power. “When President Obama’s own Supreme Court nominees join their colleagues in unanimously rejecting his Administration’s call for broader federal power six times in just over one year, the inescapable conclusion is that the Obama Administration’s view of federal power knows virtually no bounds,” said Sen. Cruz. “This is a deeply troubling pattern that we will continue to highlight as long as this Administration continues seeking ways to expand its power in direct violation of Americans’ constitutional rights.” Sen. Cruz’s report highlights the six cases that the Supreme Court has unanimously rejected since January 2012. Had President Obama’s Department of Justice been successful in its cases, the federal government would have the power to:
The arguments advanced in these cases demonstrate an astonishing view of federal power on behalf of the Obama Administration that is worthy of further examination. View the full report below: The Legal Limit: The Obama Administration’s Attempts to Expand Federal Power |
Senator Coburn trying to make Government more efficient.
It is amazing the amount of “noise” that is endlessly covered in the media while important effective solutions are ignored. This is especially obvious when a serious conservative proposes Government streamlining. Here is the Senators proposals that won’t make the news or the light of day in Reids’ wasteland called the Senate.
Mar 21 2013
Coburn Offers Amendments to the Senate Budget, Says Everyone is Part of the Solution
A Bona Fide Balanced Approach to Deficit Reduction with No Sacred Cows
Today, Senator Coburn offered amendments to the Senate Budget, S.Con.Res.8.
From the well off to the lower-income, the military, federal employees and the federal bureaucracy, to special interest groups, states, politicians, and Congress itself, when packaged together, the amendments present a balanced approach to deficit reduction that makes everyone part of the solution:
Amendment #401 — Amends the deficit-reduction reserve fund for government reform to require the consolidation of the 15 financial literacy programs. (Burr) Additional information here. Additional information here.
Amendment #402 — Amends the deficit-reduction reserve fund for government reform to require the consolidation of the 160 housing assistance programs. Additional information here.
Amendment #403 — Amends the deficit-reduction reserve fund for government reform to require the consolidation of the 253 DOJ grant programs. Additional information here.
Amendment #404 — Amends the deficit-reduction reserve fund for government reform to require the consolidation of the 15 unmanned aircraft programs Additional information here.
Amendment #405 —Amends the deficit-reduction reserve fund for government reform to require the consolidation of the 209 STEM programs. Additional information here.
Amendment #406 — Amends the employment relief reserve fund to prohibit unemployment payments for individuals with AGI of over $1 million. (Begich) Additional information here.
Amendment #407 — Reducing Social Security benefits for millionaires. Create a deficit neutral reserve fund reducing Social Security for individuals with an Adjusted Gross Income of more than $1 million or more to extend the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund and return the program to its intended purpose as a safety-net for retired Americans. Additional information here.
Amendment #408 — States pay a fair share for expanding Medicaid. Create a deficit reduction reserve fund that allows States to expand Medicaid, without the enhanced FMAP that requires the federal government to pay 90 cents of every dollar. (Burr) Additional information here.
Amendment #409 — Eliminate special hospital payment in Medicare benefiting Massachusetts. Creates a DNRF to sunset the provision in PPACA that increases payments to hospitals in a few States by reducing payments to the majority of States through the Medicare hospital wage index (McCaskill, Baldwin). Additional information here.
Amendment #410 — Creates a deficit reduction reserve fund to allow HSA to count as qualified health plan under the ACA, and allow the employer contribution to HSA to count as offer of credible coverage. Additional information here.
Amendment #411 — Creates a deficit reduction reserve fund to allow for the furloughing of federal employees with seriously delinquent tax liability. Additional information here.
Amendment #412 — Creates a deficit-reduction reserve fund to end the nonprofit postal discount for state and national political parties. This amendment would prevent state and national political parties from receiving discounts at a time when the USPS is losing over $40 million a day. Additional information here.
Amendment #413 — No Free Phones. Create a deficit-reduction reserve fund to reform the Lifeline program at the Federal Communications Commission to require minimal payments from subsidized cell phone recipients. Additional information here.
Amendment #414 — Eliminate special interest tax breaks and loopholes. Creates a deficit neutral reserve fund to eliminate the special interest tax breaks for the PGA tour, the NFL, NASCAR, Hollywood, Fish Tackle Box, and whaling captains. Additional information here.
Amendment #415 — Amends the government reform reserve fund to eliminate congressional committees that do not conduct oversight hearings. Additional information here.
Amendment #416 —End non-defense spending at the Defense Department. Creates a deficit-neutral reserve fund to remove non-Defense spending from the Defense Department, such as beef jerky and caffeine iPhone apps. Additional information here.
Amendment #417 — Creates a deficit reduction reserve fund to reduce the income-threshold for the insurance subsidies in ACA. The subsidies currently apply to those with incomes at or below four times the federal poverty level: $60,520 for a family of two. The subsidies should end at 300 percent of the federal poverty level, as they do in Massachusetts, instead of 400 percent. Additional information here.
Amendment #418 — Creates a deficit reduction reserve fund to at least achieve the same level of health care savings in the budget as the President’s Fiscal Commission, or Bowles-Simpson, achieved ($630 billion over ten years). Additional information here.
Amendment #419 —Creates a deficit reduction fund to require prescription opioids subject to abuse to have abuse deterrent formulations. Additional information here.
Amendment #420 —Amends the government reform reserve fund to require the elimination of overlapping Social Security Disability Insurance Payments and Unemployment Insurance Payments. Additional information here.
Amendment #421 —Amends the reserve fund in the bill relating to assistance for working families to prohibit SNAP funding for junk food purchases. Additional information here.
Amendment #422 —Amends the government reform reserve fund to establish a database for every unclassified report submitted to Congress. Additional information here.
Amendment #423 — Amends the government reform reserve fund to prohibit the sale of federal grants. Additional information here.
Amendment #486 — Creates a deficit-neutral reserve fund to end the nonprofit postal discount for state and national political parties. This amendment would prevent state and national political parties from receiving discounts at a time when the USPS is losing over $40 million a day. Additional information here.
Defund ACA Now!
Action must be taken this week, perhaps today. I found all of the squishy Democrat Senators that need a thoughtful reasoned phone call. We need to stop the train wreck known as Obamacare and begin replacing it immediately. I have some general thoughts that use ideas from the left and right to make this replacement a viable alternative. I will post those within a week. For now, here is a link to RedState which describes how Ohio may be slowing ACA. http://t.co/Ic1FAwxvEc
Defund ACA Call Dem Senators:
(202) 224 Baucus 2651, Begich 3004 , Hagan 6342, Johnson 5842 , Landrieu 5824, Pryor 2353, Warner 2023 .
Senator Cruz demanding clarity from A.G. Holder
Senator Cruz is a star American from my State of Texas. If the GOP wants to be relevant again Ted should be leading the charge.
Not Guns, not abortion, not marriage. Focus on…..
The most significant threat to our liberty, our American culture is being quietly eviscerated this week in Congress. While Americans focus on Sequesters,guns, gay marriage, immigration and their Facebook/ Twitter feeds the Reid, Boehner,Cantor,Pelosi cabal is quietly expediting a continuing resolution that fails to touch Obama-care.
This is a big deal. A real opportunity to unfund the bill we never read before we passed it. The Cabal has setup a no amendment ride through the house. What happened to the town criers promise of “no background deals, regular order”?
The House can defund parts of Obama-care to make it unworkable but they don’t want to fight this one out…what?? Huh??
This why conservatives and independents have so much disdain for the GOP. We need to fight harder, smarter than liberals not acquiesce on most issues. If our soft leaders in GOP need guidance on how to ram through legislation they need study some of the “greats” of our time: Frank,Schumer, Rangel, Pelosi,Reid.
We don’t need kinder compassionate representatives, we need Liberty or die fighters to save our way of life. So please shut up about the noise and focus on our liberty!
Senator Coburn specific cuts of wasteful spending.
Senator Coburn specific cuts of wasteful spending.
When specific spending cuts, budgets or insightful legislation is produced by conservatives, it gets no play in media. I’m just posting some good work that shows some easy common sense spending cuts.
Harris News & Sagacious Opinion 