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.