Remember that number and paste it on your refrigerator.
13 million.
Add the figure to your song in the shower.
13 million.
Stick it in the beginning, middle and end of your evening vespers.
13 million.
Repeat it to the clerk at the checkout counter.
13 million.
Write it on a blank greeting card to your Republican state senator.
13 million.
Enter it on your Facebook page.
13 million.
Post it on the door of the headquarters of your Republican county chairman.
13 million!!!!
That's the quaint payoff by Team Kasich to a New York consultant to close the deal in cash-poor Ohio on those casinos in Ohio - a deal, which the slickest of governors described as a "win for all involved". However, I would caution you that it was a deal that seems to have involved no sweat equity. Although the figure has been reported in the press many times, it was Brent Larkin's column in today's Plain Dealer that again reminded us of its folly . It was the sort of work, Larkin wrote, "that a bright , well prepared fifth grader could have performed as a homework assignment."
13 million.
Once you move beyond Kasich's boasts about the brutal budget-balancing slashes in the state budget, there's an entirely different universe out there. In Ohio it's known as megacronyism in which no expense is spared to serve the opportunists who show up at the governor's door each day.
Even the casino deal enriched the four casino owners at the state's expense as they were given more than they were prepared to argue for. That, too, brought puffy huzzahs from Kasich. It's how they add two and two to get five on Wall Street, where the governor spent too many impressionable years.
In early Rome, tradition called for honoring military heroes with something called The Triuimph, in which the honorees often in bejeweled robes and fancy headresses were paraded through the streets for two days to the cheers of the citizenry. A few more boastful triumphs by Kasich and the hour will be upon us to watch him paraded through downtown Columbus to the cheers of his personal melange of beneficiaries.
And when one of his friends steps forward to propose a marble statue on the statehouse grounds, there will soon be a statue.
In his own gruff way, Kasich is nothing if he can't boast of phony triumphs - this from the fellow who is trying to convert a small plurality in last November's elections to victory by acclimation.
13 million.
I can't explain it; maybe your Republican county chairman, who is reaping the rewards of being an enabler in Team Kasich, can.
But be sure to mention...
13 million.
P.S I neglected to mention that you can be a charter member of my 13 Million Club. Unlike the schemes of the money-changers in Columbus, this transaction won't cost you a dime.
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2 comments:
At the risk of repeating myself (which I do quite often according to my wife), this SOB is just getting started. Imagine what the total at the bottom of the cronyism column will be three years from now.
Along with "13 million" keep repeating to yourself, "It's about JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!"
JLMm, I now have two members in my 13 Million Club. If you would like to join, it won't cost you a dime. Just repeat it to your wife.
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