Ohio’s Lieutenant governor, Mary Taylor- best known for lying about the health care law– has switched gears and is mounting a campaign to defend Kasich’s budget. She’s doing this because Kasich’s budget strips state funding from local public schools and other local public entities and services.
She’s doing it because Mary Taylor knows what I know: that there is strong and deep resentment about the state collecting money from here and then not sending any back here, and that resentment is huge in the rural conservative counties that Republicans count on to win elections. Now, this has always been something of a myth. Just as state conservatives bitch incessantly about federal spending but are first in line for federal subsidies, local conservatives bitch incessantly about state spending but are first in line for state subsidies. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true. Local conservatives are convinced that most of the money collected by the state goes to black people in urban areas. They’re convinced of that because Republicans told them it was true over and over and over again.
Kasich’s problem is that the myth that conservatives relied on to drum up resentment and division- where state money collected in rural counties wasn’t coming back to rural counties- is now true, except Kasich isn’t sending any money to the (alleged!) moochers in “urban areas”, he’s giving it to wealthy people, privatizers of formerly public entities like public schools, and corporate welfare; the looters.
This isn’t a wealthy county. We depend on state subsidies. Not only do we depend on state subsidies, but local conservatives are of the opinion that they are the ONLY state residents who earned and therefore deserve these state subsidies. They’re not moochers OR looters. They “paid in” and now they are simply making a withdrawal before the moochers get their grubby paws on it and distribute it to ACORN and abortion-on-demand.
Taylor can spin all she wants, but my local public school has lost 1.6 million a year in state funding and people here support and send their kids to public schools whether they’re Republicans or Democrats. To people here, their school isn’t getting their “cut” of state money. Maybe it’s going to black people, maybe it’s simply disappearing into the maw of Big State Government, they don’t care. They’re down 1.6 million a year and Kasich is “giving them back” 9 dollars a year with a much-oversold income tax cut, while raising sales taxes
Since Kasich’s budget primarily and overwhelmingly benefits wealthy people, his donors in the rip-off public school privatization industry, and corporations who not only don’t want to pay taxes, but actually want to be paid by us for doing business in this state, local conservatives (who are overwhelmingly lower and middle class here) are mad that the money the state collects here isn’t coming back here.
So that’s why Mary Taylor has taken a brief break from lying about the health care law to spinning like a top on Kasich’s trickle-down budget.
Jay C
Very good post, Kay: Just out of curiosity, is anyone with the power to actually DO something about it (e.g., public offcials) making this argument, as opposed to
just some bloggera valued Internet commentator?negative 1
Are Kasich’s numbers suffering as a result, or is this one where everyone is blaming “greedy teachers”?
srv
The only thing missing in your county apparently is enough graves for the locals to jump into to.
Kay
@Jay C:
It’s interesting, because the divide is at the local level, too. Better-off Republicans here are making a trade-off argument, we may have to raise local taxes but you’re getting this awesome break from our man Kasich! It’s a WASH!
The problem is, it isn’t true if one makes 35k a year, and MOST Republicans here make that or less.
It’s absolutely easy to sell among Kasich’s “base”, they didn’t want to send any money to the state anyway, and they can just raise local taxes for great public schools or what have you. That isn’t true in rural areas like it is in suburbs.
mainmati
My question too. Where’s the MSM in all this subsidies for grifters business. There are a lot of examples where the subsidies for grifters has resulted in really awful outcomes. Is no one discussing this in Ohio?
Tommy
I live in a town of 8,700 folks. Three years ago we built a new $60M high school. Now working on a $28M primary school. We did raise our taxes a little to do this, but most was cause of the money we get from the feds. Huge military base near us. They pump millions into here. Good thing is almost everybody knows this.
Kay
@Tommy:
I’m helping local Republicans with a school bond issue to build new schools, and I have to say it’s a lot of fun. I never work with them, for one, it’s Ohio so we’re always on opposite sides of giant national campaigns, so that’s bizarre – my new buddies- and the whole thing is so small and easy to get your arms around. We need 2,000 votes :)
Villago Delenda Est
The self-proclaimed “makers” are, in fact, parasites.
Wipe them out. All of them.
rikyrah
break it down like a fraction, Kay.
break it down.
Botsplainer
I’ve never understood the philosophical justifications of Southwest Ohio conservatives. They don’t maintain infrastructure – they use it until it is worn out, and then they abandon it to collapse as they sprawl out.
As a result, everything outside the city center of Cincinnati is in a state of deterioration. It is readily apparent that the neighborhoods around the city are in a state of free-falling collapse, much like Detroit, while the sprawl spreads NNE toward Columbus and Southward into Northern Kentucky, where all those “rugged individualists” who benefited from Cincinnati’s economy of scale in extending urban services into the sprawl can pretend they did it all themselves while looking down their noses at blacks and browns.
Frankly, I’m pretty resentful – the influx of that Southwest Ohio ethic into Northern Kentucky has really skewed Kentucky politics in a bad way. Those not infrequent populist notions (combined with Louisville’s left populism) led to great results on multiple occasions, but now there is a demographic lump of suburban/exurban Christian sprawl candyasses which have shifted the legislative balance and have brought concepts in that are just fucking retarded.
The really sad part is that while I work in the People’s Republic of Louisville (represented by the reliably progressive and always great John Yarmuth), I live in a district currently repped by embarrassing teatard Thomas Massie, and due to gerrymandering, this district spreads from Ashland to the boundary line for Louisville Metro, and encompasses that great demographic lump of sprawled white suburban/exurban teatards that fled Cincinnati. We have zero in common with those people, and while the district used to be purple and competitive in previous incarnations, is now a festering red pustule.
Patricia Kayden
And unfortunately Mary Taylor is probably going to be very successful with her new grift. Even my Black liberal friend believes that moochers are getting her hard earned money via too high taxes (she lives in NY). The stereotype of Black moochers is not just firmly implanted in the White conservative community. It has spread.
Tommy
@Kay: In 2008 we voted 57% for McCain (did I mention I live in IL). 63% to raise our taxes to build that high school. As I work more and more with others in my area (I just moved back not that long ago) we can get things done.
I swear I am not making this up, but green spaces. I live in a very rural area. We have acres of fields of corn or soybeans within the city. I grew up here and joke that the parks should be better. I mean they are there. I played baseball on that field in 1980, can’t we clean it up?
Funny thing, those that govern by me get it ….
Schlemizel
@Kay:
I read your earlier post on working with _those people_ and I hope that you are able to plant a little virus in their brains. A virus that eats the portion that believes the BS coming from the right and leaves room for reality to creep in.
Good luck
Kay
@Botsplainer:
I may be over-stating my own influence, but we had the Dem candidate for governor come out and he did his speech and I talked to him after and told him “tell them Kasich is taking your money and not giving any BACK in the rural counties” and now he does that (in so many words, well, better).
I like to think I taught him the code.
Kay
@Schlemizel:
I have one coming at 1 PM. This should be great because we used to chat at public school events until Palin arrived on the scene and then she became a Palinite and started pretending she didn’t see me, which was just silly.
I don’t care, really. I hate to lose. If she can bring the Palinite demo, she’s fine with me.
kindness
WTF happened to Ohio anyhow? Indiana I can understand. But Ohio? No, don’t get it.
burnspbesq
@Villago Delenda Est:
And then what?
That’s the question you’ve never even tried to answer.
Have you even thought about it?
Do you have anything to offer besides rage?
scav
@Botsplainer: It’s stunning to see the difference in road quality between here, even city here, and
those damned surrender-eating socialists in Europe. It’s not all grand over there, bien sûr, but damned if even backwaters like Hereult and Aude have nice roads, even the skinny ones, and they manage numbered really skinny ones.
ppcli
@scav: Crossing the US-Canada border at Windsor, from the pockmarked I-94 to the smooth 401/MacDonald-Cartier Freeway is an eye-opener too.
Emerald
@Villago Delenda Est: I long for the day they move to Galt’s Gulch.
Shurg, makers, please shrug!
xenos
@burnspbesq:
It is a schtick. Whatever. There is a point in all that business about remembering to take this personally, because it should be personal.
But after five years of the same statements, every day, it is a bit lame, I suppose.
The Moar You Know
@scav: I have been to Germany, Canada, and China, and they were all supremely humiliating experiences as regards the storied superiority of American infrastructure. Shit, even deep in Mexico they have better roads than most of the US.
Mnemosyne
@Tommy:
When it comes to working with Republicans, it can be much easier to do on local issues like parks and schools because they can see the results for themselves up close. Having money go to the state or federal government is much more abstract, so it’s easier for them to build weird stories in their heads about “waste” and “moochers” taking it.
Some of the red states have really gorgeous bicycle infrastructure because, again, the Republican legislators and locals that people are working with can see the results for themselves, so they’re willing to do it.
The Moar You Know
@xenos: You make a really good point here. And maybe it needs to be repeated every day for five years, because not a lot of folks seem to get it.
Linnaeus
@The Moar You Know:
Heck, in some places in the US, they’re repealing the 20th century by removing pavement and going back to gravel roads. They’d rather have unpaved roads then “a big tax bill”.
Chris
@Emerald:
I know, right? The single most frustrating thing about hearing their “we’re gonna go Galt!” thing… is that you just know they’re never going to do it. They likes them some soshulist benefits too much.
Chris
@Linnaeus:
Penny wise and pound foolish, much?
PeakVT
Most States Funding Schools Less Than Before the Recession
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne: I’m reminded powerfully of discussions with an old friend whose brother worked for State Dept over in Botswana. They had the hardest time convincing the locals to pay taxes – because “the government doesn’t do anything for us.” For an example, they pointed out new road construction, saying “See that? That’s the government building you a road.” The response? “NO! That’s not government building the road – that’s those guys over there building the road.” It’s the same thing in these cases: Washington DC is so far from the consciousness of the average Teahadist that anything originated as a federal program is unrecognizable as such when it arrives at the local level. Added plus: it’s amusing to compare the Galtian Kochistani Paradise with Sub-Sarahan Africa.
@Chris: The trouble with going Galt is the sudden, heart-stopping realisation that you’re living entirely off your own resources, without any Big Gubmint supplementation. But of course suggesting that’s why there’s no Great Randian Walkout amongst the Job Creators™ doesn’t register with their
dumberpoorer adherents.Another Holocene Human
@ppcli: Crossing the US-Canada border at Windsor, from the pockmarked I-94 to the smooth 401/MacDonald-Cartier Freeway is an eye-opener too.
Crossing the line from Washington State into the Province of British Columbia aboard the Cascades is not so much an eye opener as a bone rattler, and not in a good way.
Say what you will, but America’s rail infrastructure and in particular its passenger rail infrastructure is in superior shape to Canada’s.
Another Holocene Human
@The Moar You Know: Well, you see in Germany they maintain things. It lets them keep nice things longer. Dirty word in the USA.
Mexico doesn’t even have a national passenger rail corporation. I hardly see the virtue of holding up the pork/poor choices of countries whose asses we kick economically. America hauls more rail freight tonnage percentage wise than most of the companies around us. It saves fuel and money.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: It’s not all grand over there, bien sûr, but damned if even backwaters like Hereult and Aude have nice roads, even the skinny ones, and they manage numbered really skinny ones.
That’s okay, because everything in the US is bigger. Travel from France to Florida and you’ll see what I mean. We’ve made a series of choices that allow the top 40% to have big houses so public infrastructure had to take some, er, cuts.
You must understand the necessity of big houses. It’s what separates our way of life from the Communists.
Redshift
@ppcli: It’s not just international borders. If you drive north from here, you can tell when you cross the MD/PA line with your eyes closed.
Mnemosyne
@Redshift:
Hell, in Southern California you can tell when you’ve crossed the border from LA County to Orange County, at least on the 5 Freeway. But at least part of the reason for that is that Disney had to pony up a chunk of money when they wanted to expand Disneyland and the county used it to improve that freeway.
boatboy_srq
@Another Holocene Human: There was a (PBS? BBC?) item not too long ago on the Interstate System, and its origins in the Autobahn. Seems that the folks designing Eisenhower’s crowning glory decided not to build to the German standard (to reduce the cost of the system) and opted for a twenty-five-year lifespan for the roads instead of the fift-plus-year one the Autobahn. So even the best infrastructure achievement of the US’ last seventy-odd years was done (comparatively) on the cheap.
kc
local conservatives are of the opinion that they are the ONLY state residents who earned and therefore deserve these state subsidies. They’re not moochers OR looters. They “paid in” and now they are simply making a withdrawal before the moochers get their grubby paws on it and distribute it to ACORN and abortion-on-demand.
This really sums up the mentality of every single conservative I know.
Rob in CT
Our roads suck, though I am pleased with some recent repair work along my commute. There’s more to be done, but hurrah for what’s been done.
A while back I sat down and tried to figure out the trends in the Connecticut state budget. It started because a coworker (vaguely liberal, has run as a democrat for local office) claimed that state spending exploded once we put in the income tax. I was able to blow that completely out of the water – in fact, spending growth slowed after the income tax went through.
Still, inflation adjusted CT state spending per capita has quintupled since 1960.
So, what drove it? I broke it down by category, and the only one that didn’t see massive growth was transportation. Granted, it did rise a bit. But it paled in comparison to other categories. The worse offender: the Protection category. Police, Prisons, Fire, etc. Despite falling crime rates, despite fewer and less deadly fires, we spend 27x(!!) what we spent per capita in 1960 (~$100 -> $2700). This accounts for more than half of the total cost growth (~$1000k/capita in 1960 -> $5000k in 2010). Other big cost drivers (duh) healthcare (14x), Education (6x) and Welfare (3x).
My coworker’s response to this was to blame public employee unions & enabling Democratic politicians. And this guy is a Democrat. Though he is honest enough to note that he’s really a Republican of the old New England school, which is dead so he switched.
Xecky Gilchrist
@burnspbesq: Do you have anything to offer besides rage?
Rage, and making it easy for any visiting nutpickers to find evidence about how bloodthirsty liberals are.
andy
Same as it ever was. Here in Crow Wing County, MN, we have the lowest county taxes in the state, our county seat, Brainerd, is #2 in highest unemployment of any city in Minnesota. We would be in a bad way without our LGA payments from the state, and the irony is our local conservatives are the first to say LGA is a big waste of money, and are the first to complain when our severely cut back city employees aren’t plowing the street in front of their houses at the first sign or snow (or patching their potholes in spring.)
James E. Powell
local conservatives (who are overwhelmingly lower and middle class here) are mad that the money the state collects here isn’t coming back here.
It’s a pity that in Ohio, as in the whole of America, we all have to suffer for the political choices that these people have been making for the last 30 years or so.
James E. Powell
@mainmati:
There are a lot of examples where the subsidies for grifters has resulted in really awful outcomes. Is no one discussing this in Ohio?
The only time in recent years that I have heard anyone complain about the taxpayer dollars handed to corporations has been the Great Solyndra Scandal.
If people don’t want to learn something, they won’t.
Kass
There is something excruciatingly maddening about the middle and lower-class conservatives of SW Ohio. Their political views almost never intersect their own interests. They want the millionaires to be free to be millionaires, because America. They believe all the GOP lie-gospel all week, then believe (their version of) God’s gospel on Sunday. Come Monday, back to hating the Other, vote down improvements, blah, blah, blah. I moved away right out of college, returning just for family holidays. Now that my parents, believers in all the GOP lies both, are gone, I will never go back.
The Pale Scot
When I’m savoring my bitter(ness), (I’m Irish and that’s how we roll); I get to thinking that a spate of true Federalism would do the country good. As in being able to deduct the entirety of your state tax payment from your federal tax bill, eliminate deposit insurance and farm subsidies, and so then see how these red state makers make out. But, as in thinking that letting the rebels secede would have been a good idea, there’s too many good people left on the wrong side of the line.
Kay
@The Pale Scot:
Yeah, the truth is between 40 and 45% of people here don’t vote for conservatives. It’s just that us getting that crucial 6% to stop reflexively pulling the R lever is like pulling teeth.
The Pale Scot
@boatboy_srq:
There’s been a debate for decades about increasing the load capacity and durability of highways to match Euro standards, the road builders are dead set against it, “we don’t want to design them, we just want to build them”. built in obsolesce is still the standard in the US.
The Pale Scot
@Kay: Really, that 6% should be 40. It would drive me to drink (if I wasn’t there already) to try to figure out why here in Pt. Charlotte Fl the locals vote along side the wealthy permanent snow birds and enable incompetence that would never be tolerated back home in NJ. They set aside 3 million to drill test wells to find new water supplies (which is a huge issue here), not one well got drilled and the proponents come back asking for another 3 mil. Or in up Tampa it’s discovered that whole sections of an elevated highway have to be replaced because the concrete is defective.
But the population thinks that “at least they’re not corrupt like those yankees up north.
Up north you can find competent people to drill a hole or mix and pour cement, it’s not rocket science. There’ll be cost overruns, but hey, a person’s gotta eat :D. The locals would rather go to tea party gigs than actually assess whether their Repug politicians are idiots or scam artists. Can’t say whether Dems would be any better, stupid is as stupid does. And The Stupid is embraced down here.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@burnspbesq:
We go to Corsica and put up ‘Help Wanted’ ads for artillery corporals?
debbie
Can’t we recall that bitch?
Kropadope
You think that’s unique to Ohio, Kentucky, or red states in general? We got plenty of A-holes in MA who think the only thing the government does is give money to indigents and that personal responsibility means allowing industry free reign to destroy weaker people’s property and business prospects.