In the bizarre ideological, economic, ethical and moral wasteland that is GOP politics, the Ohio governor is being offered as an oasis, a “reasonable” choice for conservative voters who recoil at the clownish “conservative” caricatures running against him. But even a mere glance behind Kasich’s public demeanor at his actual record paints a much less moderate, and much less flattering, portrait. What follows is a summary of the work of many journalists who have skewered the “moderate” moniker assigned to Kasich, and exposed it as a mirage, one that hides a menacing, immoderate monster.
When I need a good laugh, I turn to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Entertainment page. Nowadays, for some baffling reason, it is titled “Opinions,” and is located where editorials used to be found.
Occasionally I do find there a serious editorial submitted by a forward-thinking private citizen, filled with reasoned analysis, verifiable evidence, and motivated by a public-service/public wellbeing ethic. Sadly, these legitimate editorials are few and far between.
Instead. readers are more routinely mistreated to some anonymous MJS editorial, written by Republican-leaning apologists in the editorial “we” format. Invariably, it is rife with pretzel logic and misdirection, concocted to “explain” the “reasonableness” of a GOP candidate, or the “timely” need for a piece of ALEC-drafted legislation.
Worse yet, it may be some business executive with no working knowledge of economics (funny how business types conflate their own narrow experience with mastery of “the dismal science”), cheerleading another WMAC (Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce) or Chamber of Commerce push to lower taxes, yet again, on corporations.
In their latest offense to intelligence and civil society, the MJS editorial (well, fantasy-fiction) writers double down on reprehensible misdirection by publishing a defense of Ohio governor and GOP presidential candidate (just barely) John Kasich (Kasich, the GOP’s best hope, can win and govern, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Opinions page, 3/30/2016.)
Here are just a few of the delightful conceits contained in this jewel-of-a-turd editorial:
“The former congressman and businessman offers Republicans a platform of conservative ideas centered on fiscal responsibility while he offers independents the promise that he will surround himself with expert advisors from various perspectives as he makes informed, independent decisions.”
Oh…really…
Hand me a shovel. The manure is already getting deep.
During Kasich’s tenure, Ohio public schools have been robbed, as an exercise in destroying the public commons, of nearly half a billion dollars in funding. Some of that funding, taxpayer money, mind you, was diverted to charter schools, which have seen a funding increase of more than 25%.
Imagine the reaction of the ordinary Ohioan when he or she discovers that one charter school’s lease, $58,000-a-month, consumed nearly half the school’s operating budget.
Sound fiscally responsible? Journalist Allie Gross documents this travesty, and it’s far more disgusting than that obscenely high lease:
“The school (Imagine Columbus Primary Academy, Columbus Ohio) received an ‘F’ grade for achievement on the 2013-14 state report card. Only three teachers had returned after the first summer break; within two years, two principals and one vice-principal stepped down. The School - which serves a high-poverty, low income community - lacked arts, music, and foreign language classes, and whenever the board inquired about adding them, Imagine (the for-profit management company) said there wasn’t enough money.” (1)
$58,000-a-month…to lease a building owned by a subsidiary of Imagine, one Schoolhouse Finance LLC.
Governor “fiscally responsible/former businessman” John Kasich, pretends not to know that Ohio taxpayers were on the hook for $58,000-a-month, for a “school” where underprivileged kids were un-entitled to arts, music and foreign language classes, where staff turnover was astronomical, and where student achievement, in a profoundly anti-education but transparently corrupt and profit-centered environment, was abysmal.
So what part of “…he offers independents the promise that he will surround himself with expert advisors from various perspectives as he makes informed, independent decisions,” does this exemplify, oh anonymous MJS editorialists?
I only ask because the executive director of Ohio’s Office of Quality School Choice and Funding was one David Hansen, who had to resign after admitting he tampered with charter school evaluations, in part by omitting data about “F” rated schools. This act disguised the pathetic performance of numerous Ohio charter schools. Oh, by the way, Hansen knew about the problems associated with the Imagine school mentioned above. He served on the board of directors for the previous Imagine-mismanaged school that operated in the same building as the one cited above. That predecessor-school had the same obscenely-high lease problem and the same miserable academic performance rating.
“Quality School Choice…” Does the GOP have the remotest understanding, the merest inkling, nay, even a nebulous though nagging awareness, of the concept of irony? No, not when there’s taxpayer money to be grafted.
Oh, but the skullduggery is even more pervasive.
This David Hansen, the “expert advisor” of the type touted by our anonymous MJS editorialists, is the husband of Kasich’s former chief of staff, who is now Kasich’s campaign manager.
Hey, Johnny K! You have a hard time distancing yourself from this Hansen guy, this “expert advisor.” You put this weasel on the payroll to keep you uninformed. Yeah, I meant that, un-informed. He’s the “buck-stops-here” tool you put in place to give you deniability.
And the failing charter schools Hansen omitted from evaluation happen to be owned by major Republican donors in the state. Some $6.4 million in donations from these “patrons” found its way into the pockets of state legislators and committees, with handsome rewards for charter schools run by Lager’s Electronic Schools of Tomorrow and White Hat management. (Would Asshat Management be more apropos?)
Those rewards: $1.76 billion in taxpayer money, or, to be precise, $1.76 billion in welfare for the undeserving. And the Ohio children who need a solid education to overcome economic disadvantage? Pawns, obstructions almost, in a large-scale, GOP-engineered theft of taxpayer money.
“…a platform of conservative ideas centered on fiscal responsibility…” Rings sorta hollow all of a sudden…
Republican strategists in Ohio and nationwide are eager to make sure public schools will no longer function as any kind of equalizer, will never mitigate economic disadvantage or promote economic advancement by developing marketable skills and talents in future voters. No, Republicans have bought into the absurd notion, already discredited by (irony alert) scholastic study, that public schooling should be commoditized and subject to market forces.
Idiots. And Kasich counts himself among said idiots. Or call them crass contingency thinkers. Too unimaginative/lazy to operate real businesses in a competitive market, such swine merely steal from the public commons and claim to be entrepreneurs.
This is just a sample of the chicanery and corruption guaranteed to victimize and pickpocket voters who buy into the notion that Kasich is “the GOP’s best hope.”
Care for another insight into the machinations of Kasich-think?
Kasich’s “expert advisors” advised him to sign a bill that defunds Planned Parenthood. This move has been pushed in state legislatures nationwide by the anti-choice minority, who choose to remain blind to all the non-abortion-related health services Planned Parenthood provides.
In a statement remarkable for generous dollops of both weasel-speak and double-speak, Kasich croaked, “I’m for making sure we have robust funding for women’s health (Translation: “No, I don’t have any concrete or substantive measures to propose right now, and I won’t work with the legislature to enact them before we defund the non-abortion-related services Planned Parenthood offers women AND men…”) and (note the misuse of this conjunction. It primes the impending double-speak) I’m going to sign a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, (here comes the illogical conclusion) so you shouldn’t be confused.”
Pardon the majority of women in Ohio who have the intelligence to see right through this absurd statement, and who recognize the bald-faced misogyny, patriarchy and chauvinism that seeps from Kasich’s arrogant pores. He has plenty of company, to be sure…among the self-proclaimed, god-loving, women-fearing lunatics at the far right fringe of society.
The women of Ohio are not confused, as it turns out. They know Kasich, a benign-sounding, low-key sociopath, has landed a gut-punch, and now stands over them, smirking, as they try to stand up. And no, Kasich is not offering a helping hand…
How can I say this? Ohio had 27 Planned Parenthood clinics. All of them were defunded, despite the inconvenient fact that only three of them performed abortions. Victimize the poor and the powerless, anyone?
Kasich panders here to the whims of evangelical lunatics. Yet the editorial “we” (that’s “we” as in “we”-akminded, or perhaps “we”-asels) of the MJS declare “What impresses us most about Kasich is his ‘independence.’”
What part of this swipe at women and their rights constitutes making “informed, independent decisions.”? Anyone? Anyone?
And this high-visibility distraction, this nonissue, which is all this Planned Parenthood defunding amounts to, diverts attention from Kasich’s evasion of leadership on an actual crisis: the lead-laced water supply in Sebring, Ohio. Kasich, you see, has his own Flint, Michigan-style infrastructure/public health crisis on his hands, and his efforts around this real crisis are truly epic. That is, his efforts to minimize the seriousness of the problem and keep it out of the public spotlight are truly epic.
So, if we try our hand at Kasich-think and overlook/give lip service to the Sebring crisis, it will quietly go away…I mean, doesn’t that sometimes work? No sane conservative would want this inconvenient call to leadership to cast a shadow over their vaunted public servant’s run at the Oval Office…
The most accurate thing to be said about Kasich and “fiscal discipline,” should the two accidentally appear in the same sentence, without obvious snark intended, is that the “GOP’s best hope,” like that fairy tale emperor, has no clothes. No economic clothes to hide his shame, or his thievery, that is.
His budgeting decisions as governor are all smoke and mirrors, as far as their affects on the ordinary Ohio taxpayer are concerned. One such decision, eliminating the estate tax, was a big, fat, wet kiss to wealthy Ohioans. And while Kasich brags about cutting income taxes (10 percent in 2013, and another 6.3% in 2015), he doesn’t brag that he raised the sales tax. He also doesn’t brag that he cut aid to cities and municipalities, so most Ohioans merely saw their tax burden shift, not fall. Now they face greater taxation for consumption, and higher municipal and city taxes. Many of the latter cut services and left employee vacancies unfilled. Net result: no gain, more pain, for ordinary Ohioans.
The story for wealthy Ohioans? Quite a bit nicer. The average decrease in their share of the state tax burden was some $17,000.00 apiece. And they unite their voices to say, “Thank you Johnny K., for yet another big giveaway!!!”
To be sure, Ohio’s economy has recovered…feebly…during Kasich’s tenure, but that recovery began some twelve months before Kasich took office! Still, “the GOP’s best hope” has no qualms about trying to ride the coattails of nationwide economic recovery and insinuating that Ohioans can credit his “initiatives” and “leadership” for what feeble recovery the state experiences.
But in truth Ohio’s economic health is less than middling. One measure: compare rankings of 2013 Median Household Income (2016 rankings are due out later this year) for Ohioans and the residents in the five bordering states: Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Ohio ranks fourth among these six. Nationally, median household income in Ohio ranks fortieth among the fifty states.
So, no, Kasich cannot lay claim to spearheading any economic miracle or savvy turnaround in the Buckeye State. And take a tour of Cincinnati, Toledo, and Cleveland (this last one ranked as the top most economically distressed city in the nation, and, no small irony here, is the site of the upcoming Republican convention!) if you want to see the extent to which Kasich’s claim of economic turnaround rings hollow. His cherry-picked factoids make for piss-poor window-dressing.
If Kasich and the state GOP want credit for any kind of “economic development,” they can cite data from Policy Matters Ohio, a think tank, which published the unimpressive news that 11 of the state’s dozen most common jobs pay under $40,000 per year. Now is the right moment to ask, “How did Kasich and the state GOP ‘develop’ this kind of economy, one tirelessly devoted to expanding an underprivileged, underpaid underclass?”
Journalist Robert Fitrakis expands on Kasich’s “qualifications” to turn Ohio into a feudal estate: “After working for Murdoch (!) and prior to being elected, Kasich spent his time hawking junk assets for the now-defunct Lehman Brothers investment bankers. He helped sell these worthless assets to the tune of $500 million into Ohio’s public retirement system, particularly the State Teacher’s pension funds. He made untold millions, which he refused to disclose, while looting the pensions of school teachers and public employees.” (9)
Recall now that $58,000 a month lease for a charter “school” that was, in reality, a poorly disguised funnel. Kasich and the state GOP were holding that funnel steady, supporting and defending an “education” travesty, so that taxpayer money, a monthly amount greater than the annual salary of many ordinary Ohioans(!), would pour into the pockets of a corporation that claimed to serve the underprivileged.
Pause here for expression of overwhelming disgust. Associate disgust with mugshot of John Kasich. Recite his official Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel moniker: “the GOP’s best hope.” Allow a moment for retching to subside…
Nearly half of the MJS editorial is devoted to diverting attention away from Kasich's sorry performance as governor by blathering about what he allegedly would do in the realm of foreign policy. So, the candidate who can lay claim to oodles of domestic policy failures, the man who aided and abetted the misuse of taxpayer monies, is the man the nation needs now to address foreign policy challenges? The leap in logic there: epic. The manure pile now overwhelms the editorial page and threatens to asphyxiate the reader and innocent bystanders.
Oh, get this: next door to this MJS editorial is another by Jonah Goldberg, entitled, “How to stop Trump.” Is there a bit of heavy-handed steering going on in this editorial pairing?
Can any of the anonymous dolts who crafted the Kasich-apology piece (to “inform” readers) ever summon a subatomic particle of integrity to recognize that these two reprobate candidates, and the Cruz-creature to boot, are pathetic human failures with far too much baggage, far too much narcissism, no concept of public service, and remain devoid of innate or acquired civility, and as such have already proven that they will never rise above their sociopathic motivations?
Were these editorial weasels possessed of the same public service/public wellbeing ethic demonstrated by informed citizens, they would have crafted an editorial to educate and inform readers that no GOP presidential candidate, and countless other GOP legislative candidates, deserves a single vote.
But the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel “Idiotorialists" prattle on about how well Kasich will manage foreign policy matters, absent any evidence. Such vacuous prognosticating merely clogs the page and distracts attention from Kasich’s abysmal and toxic performance as Ohio governor.
Look! Over there! The mirage of a moderate Kasich is shimmering, dissipating, dissolving. Now only a wasteland remains…
Sources:
1 Under John Kasich, Ohio’s Charter Schools Became a “National Joke”, Mother Jones, August 24, 2015.
2 Ohio Charter School Scandal Grows as Kasich Ascends National Stage, prwatch.org, February 28, 2016.
3 Republican Failures Are Distracting Voters Again With A Secret Weapon, politicsusa.com, Feb 12th, 2016.
4 Kasich and Bush: More Like Other Extreme GOP Candidates Than Perceived, Huffington Post, August 20, 2015.
5 Bill defunding Planned Parenthood clears Ohio Senate, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Jan. 27, 2016.
6 Poll: More New Hampshire Republican Primary Voters Are Pro-Choice than Pro-Life, National Journal, March 26, 2015.
7 Public Overwhelmingly Supports Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
8 Kasich’s legislative agenda as Ohio governor: Success or failure? The Columbus Dispatch, Monday June 15, 2015.
9 10 Reasons Why John Kasich Is As Rabidly Right-Wing as the Rest of the GOP Presidential Candidate Pack, Alternet/Free Press, August 7 2015.
10 John Kasich Boasts of Ohio Recovery, but Reality Is More Nuanced, New York
Times, March 13, 2016.
11 The Myth of Ohio’s Economic Miracle, Politico, March, 13, 2016.
12 2013 Median Household Income, U.S. Census Bureau, (Income of Households by State Ranked from Highest to Lowest Using 3-Year Average Medians)
13 Kasich, the GOP’s best hope, can win and govern, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 30, 2016.