49% of the vote in a low-turnout election and….conservatives are RAMMING THE AGENDA down our throats in Ohio.
UNTIL the suffix is removed from Gov.-elect John Kasich’s title, Ted Strickland remains Ohio’s chief executive. The public pressure Mr. Kasich is exerting on Mr. Strickland to halt spending on studies of a modern passenger rail system in the state is neither helpful nor justified.
I’m waiting for the calls for humility from principled conservatives. Isn’t it time for David Brooks to deliver yet another droning lecture on how Americans in The Heartland value self-effacing, humble leaders who Share Our Values?
President Obama, after his election two years ago but before his inauguration, steered clear of involving himself in foreign-policy issues or the auto industry bailout. He said the country has only “one president at a time.” Similarly, Ohio has one governor as a time. As eager as Mr. Kasich appears to take over, he owes it to Mr. Strickland – on the 3C issue and others – to let the governor complete the last two months of this term before he imposes his own agenda.
Ohio media gave Kasich a complete pass on anything substantive. They were simply bored with the competent and decent Ted Strickland, and, predictably, slobbered all over Kasich, the Lehman director and FOX News personality, like a bunch of star-struck rubes. It was embarrassing to watch.
Now that Kasich has moved the crony-filled wrecking crew in before actually taking office, they’re whining ineffectually about silly procedural issues, and getting around to thinking about, you know, how he might govern.
Too late for that.
Corner Stone
I hope Strickland spends every penny allocated to Ohio and keeps every person employed on projects that he possibly can.
Then when Kasich gets in let Kasich own the job losses.
jwb
The best hope for Dems in 2012 is that the goopers are making no attempt to hide their poor governing skills. In my state at least, it also looks like they are having a tough time putting that teatard genie back into the bottle.
Steve
One of my Wisconsin friends was posting on Facebook about a protest against the new governor’s plan to kill the high-speed rail line. I agree with the sentiment, of course, but it’s frustrating how many people never focus on these things until after the election has already happened. People, if you elect someone who keeps saying “stop the train,” they’re probably going to stop the train!
Corner Stone
@Steve:
“You mean he’s going to stop the train?! We can’t let them stop the train!!”
Yeah. Horse, barn.
dr. bloor
Kasich can sign his own pink slips, and they can turn them into billboards all around Ohio.
mistermix
Is there anything more impotent and ineffectual than the editorial board of the typical major urban newspaper?
dr. bloor
@mistermix:
A Democratic majority in Congress.
All too easy.
Napoleon
What Kasich is doing is just a classic example of one of the few things the Reps are actually good at, which is bullying their opponents into doing something which will help let the Republicans off the hook for what they advocate. So far it looks like Strickland is far too smart to play that game and every last job lost and dollar withdrawn will be Kasich’s.
liberal
@Napoleon:
Huh? A Democrat who’s not completely ineffective at political tactics and strategy?
liberal
Did Strickland use the Lehman bit in his campaign ads?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Sorry, but once again I blame Democratic voters who couldn’t seem to realize that voting IS a zero sum game. In normal years politics might not be, but it is right now as well.
ETA: I still blame the wingers for even making these people possible, and I will scream at them more, but sometimes you do have to get up and stop the assault.
Nate
They’re doing this in my state, Wisconsin, as well: http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/107280783.html
The train opponents here have a gap in their logic: if this train deal is rejected, the federal money is just going to neighboring states. It’s going to be spent, just not in Wisconsin.
Nevermind the fact that WI is a perfect place to have a high speed line (Minneapolis-Madison-Milwaukee-Chicago, heaven forbid Green Bay or Des Moines gets involved). Short sightedness FTW.
Napoleon
@liberal:
I don’t think Strickland ran a single ad without mentioning it. On top of it they mentioned 1) that Kasich refused to say how much he made from them 2) when Kasich said he was in a little 2 man office of Lehman in Columbus they ran clip after clip of him saying he worked on Wall Street and 3) reminded the voters that Ohio seniors lost something like $400m on the Lehman collapse.
Strickland did amazingly well in light of the fact that Rep won across the board in Ohio in blow out numbers in most contest.
Kay
@liberal:
It’s all he did. It might be bias, but I feel as if he ran a great campaign, compared with the others in my (admittedly limited and volunteer-level) experience.
Strickland is sort of an odd duck, for a politician. He’s weirdly authentic. Apparently, that doesn’t play well when up against a FOX News Star! Kasich does that horrible marketing-speak that really wows the rubes.
GregB
The Ohio media better watch out. Anything less than fawning, reality show style ogling and cultish coverage will cause Kasich to go Palin on their asses and he’ll just ignore them and tweet dildonic and inane insults all while his zombie eyed minions cheer him on for sticking it to the liberal media.
Hope these pricks have fun.
Kay
@GregB:
It’s really been a lesson in double standards for me. Kasich is a wealthy Wall Streeter who worked for FOX News, and brags about sending his kids to exclusive private schools. He’s got about as much in common with lunch bucket voters as Rupert Murdoch does.
Now, I ask you: how would a candidate like that have been portrayed by media had he been a Democrat?
An out of touch elitist carpet-bagger who lacked Heartland Values?
You betcha.
The Republic of Stupidity
@mistermix:
Or more headed for extinction?
c u n d gulag
Boy, they sure do hate them some choo-choo’s on the right, don’t they?
Maybe some gay phallic thingy…
one two seven
Just think, if the Cuyahoga County corruption scandal hadn’t depressed turnout in the most populous and most Democratic county in the state to sub 40% levels, Strickland would have won.
Thanks again, Jimmy.
kideni
It’s really interesting seeing that Kasich in Ohio and Walker in Wisconsin seem to be making the exact same moves (first focus on gumming up the works in the rail projects, then huffily decree that the current gov shouldn’t do anything for the rest of his term). It’s almost as if they’re a playing from the same script. No. Can’t be.
jcricket
So when rainbow ponies fail to fall from the sky b/c the Republican governors are in charge (see Arnold, California), will anyone call them on their bullshit?
I predict no.
And 20 years from now when we’re just re-starting all the cancelled mass transit and infrastructure projects will anyone (media, individual swing voters, Republicans?) say “yeah, we could have had something good in place by now, but we were short-sighted back in 2010?”
I predict no.
Instead, just like 2010, people will be blame whichever Democrats are in office for failing to invent the mass transit system that can build itself in a week and for free. Or the infinite-number-of-lanes road that also doesn’t squash neighborhoods or cost an arm-and-a-leg to drive on.
When the Spaniards spent a decade building the first part of a network of high-speed-rail they followed it by another burst of spending b/c the first part was so successful. The swiss are finishing a 22-year project to tunnel through the Alps for large trains. But in America we are veto-ing tunnels, trains, buses, etc. – anything that could possibly contribute to making it possible for life not to suck for the 250 million people living in and around cities.
NonyNony
I dunno Kay – was the Blade all that star struck about Kasich? I wasn’t reading the Blade this election cycle, but that would seem to be out of place for them – they’ve traditionally not been afraid of calling bullshit on Republican idiots.
Now the Columbus
DispatchDisgrace, yeah, they basically been slobbering all over Kasich for the last year. But that’s the Wolfe family in action – they’ve never met a Republican they didn’t want to give the reacharound to. I think it took them 6 years to finally own up that Taft was a failure for Ohio.kay
@NonyNony:
They were, sadly. This is my half-ass theory, and I can’t prove it, but they’ve gone radically anti-union in the last 2 years and I think that’s because they have internal labor problems.
I agree with you about the newspaper generally, though. They broke the Coingate scandal which was the predicate to the Culture of Corruption national theme.
I subscribe to the print edition for just that reason. The paper isn’t “local” to me and I don’t have all that much use for it other than state issues. I think local newspapers are incredibly valuable, in terms of investigating transparency and corruption.
I’m disappointed and pissed when local newspapers do a poor job not because I hate local newspapers, but because I love them. I want and expect them to be better than television news.
kay
@NonyNony:
Too, this is whiny, and I admit that, but local news got sort of swamped by the 50,000 paid national political pundits commenting nonsensically on an Ohio governor’s race, which they knew jack-all about. They do know Fox News, however, their “sister organization”.
I’m becoming a curmudgeon. I don’t want any national coverage of state races because I feel as if national pundits import the political stupidity and silliness and bring it to bear at the state level.
I recognize I am not in a position to stop pundits at the border, however, much as I would love that power :)
Ash Can
@Nate: I wonder if the Wisconsin gubernatorial election would have turned out differently if Barrett had run ads pointing out that the FIBs would be getting Wisconsin’s rail money if Walker were elected. :)
liberal
@Napoleon, @Kay:
OK. Sounds like S put forth his best effort then, and the voters (or at least the ones backing K) really have nothing but their own stupidity to blame.
debbie
@ Corner Stone:
Using the same metrics that the Ohio Republican Party used for Strickland and just about every other Democratic candidate in the 2010 election — that Democrats were responsible for all 400,000 of the job losses in Ohio — I can then say this: The election was held 10 days ago. Therefore, the deficit is now Kasich’s fault. In fact, I also think it’s time he got blamed for those 400,000 lost jobs too. Let’s impeach him now!
liberal
@kay:
Just as a general rule, newspapers are far better than TV news anyway. There are big bandwidth limitations on the latter. (Meaning, if you transcribed TV news, it wouldn’t be all that many column inches.)
debbie
@liberal:
Strickland really closed the gap at the end of the campaign. Kasich went from a 16-point lead to a basically dead heat. I think if there had been maybe another week or two, he might have pulled it out. Or, he could have started his counterattack earlier (that video of Kasich giggling about how great this was going to be was really effective).
As for finances, there’s discussion now of just how ostentatious the inauguration celebration should be.The state GOP leader said they were ver aware of an appearance of ill-timed extravagance, but Republicans did have a lot to celebrate.
debbie
@Nonynony: I agree with you about The Dispatch, the Wolfes, and their collective bias, but in fairness, they were critical of the Bush administration.
Linda Featheringill
I contacted the Governor’s office in support of continuing the rapid rail project for as long as possible.
Maybe we could get more Ohioans to do likewise.
Nate
@Ash Can:
Probably, we do hate those troglodytes. ;)
Zuzu's Petals
I remember when Schwarzenegger was first elected, he actually called on Gray Davis to not sign any of the 282 bills sitting on his desk.
Aside from the sheer arrogance of trying to short-circuit the Legislature’s work as well as that of the sitting Governor, the silly rabbit didn’t even know that an unsigned bill automatically becomes law in California.
Yeah, he was one super-qualified guy.
doro
It’s my misfortune to have to live in Ohio. Strickland ain’t perfect, but he’s a good man and a sensible one; he deserved better than the stay-at-home Democrats who didn’t bother to vote and the crazy-ass Republicans who did. He tried his best to deal with the economic wreckage that has swamped the state like a rising flood ever since (will coincidences never cease?) the Reagan administration first nudged us all toward more “business-friendly” policies and practices, some thirty years ago. Strickland, alas, couldn’t work miracles in this broken state, any more than the president has been able to work miracles at the national level. And we voters do seem to want us some miracles.
Having voted in a venomous little starlet like Kasich SHOULD be punishment enough for my fellow-Ohioans– even a downright wake-up call–but it probably won’t be. God help us, in two years, just to make sure we all REALLY suffer here in the rusty ruins of the Rust Belt, we are almost certain to replace Sherrod Brown–one of the best men in the US Senate–with some cretinous rightwing tripe-hound backed by the international Chamber of Commerce, Rupert Murdoch, and the nimrod wing of the Army of God. There are still jobs and research projects to need to be cut and killed, after all.
cincyanon
Kasich certainly has never shied from hubris. In this case he not only feels he should tell the sitting governor how to act, he also told the president.
Guess he skipped those classes in school that showed how our government works.
Dan
This can all be gathered into one strategy for the next two years – let these Republican governors give up millions of dollars in potential spending and projects for their states. At the same time, let the congressional Republicans disavow those dirty earmarks–and watch how the federal agencies (under Obama) steer the funding that is appropriated to the states that want it (being blue).
In two years there could very well be a big difference between states that are recovering and seeing job creation, and states that aren’t. Unless, of course, that free market decides to unleash all the corporate profits they are sitting upon. HA!
ADB
Yes that wonderful high speed 79 mph rail that would connect Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus because its much faster than driving 70-75 mph in your own car in the interstate. Its necessary because it has such great impact….not. If we want to build truly effective and useful HS rail, it needs to be a system that can actually travel at high speeds 120+mph. What is proposed in Ohio is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Its like AM Stereo, why?
debbie
@ cincyanon:
Wow, Kasich’s been all over the map on this. He wants the money for other infrastructure, then he wants the money to pay down Ohio’s debt, and now he wants to “donate” it to the national debt.
This guy’s definitely got ADHD.
Patrick
Here in Wisconsin, we have a Governor-elect in Scott Walker who also thinks it’s time for the current administration to shut things down until he takes over.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/107280783.html
R-Jud
@ADB:
Mmm. Maybe not faster, but, with more people on a train, you’d have fewer cars on the road. So you might actually be able to drive 75 mph somewhat consistently at, say, rush hour.
ADB
R-Jud,
No one is going to take the train, pay more than what it woudl cost to drive and have to sit confined in the train. Its the same reason that Amtrak Acela has been a failure. It doesnt save much time, is expensive and its easier to drive yourself.
HS Rail will only be successful if you can take a train ride that would cut your travel time in half or more. It takes 5 hours to get to cleveland from Cincinnati. If it takes 4.5 by rail, who cares. If it took me 2 hours, than it might be worth it…..
Mnemosyne
@ADB:
The Acela is a failure? It’s the one of the only Amtrak lines that makes a profit. It made over $440 million last year. It gets over 3 million riders a year, and ridership keeps increasing.
You would be lucky to have your state’s train be a “failure” like the Acela.
ADB
I lived in CT and took the Acela 3 times. It took nearly as long to get to RI via the train as it took to drive. On stretches through most of CT it never exceeded 65 mph due to crossings etc. The folks who ride it do so for business mainly. Folsk dont take it because its convienent for personal travel. If we as a country are going to sink billions into HS rail and have it cost more for states to run than projected revenues, thats a problem. In OH and WI its projected it will cost more to run than it will earn.