Friday, July 1, 2011

Kasich's boast of "new day" arrives with an asterisk

ON SOME DAYS, the newspaper headlines offer the best insight into Gov. Kasich's hoopla over his no-new-taxes state budget and the realities of trying, say, to get a college education in Ohio. At the top of the Plain Dealer 's front page, the headline declared:
Kasich signs $112 billion budget, marking a 'new way and a new day'
Settle down, guv. It's not a new day for everyone. Here's what the front page of the Beacon Journal told us on the same day:
KSU to increase fall tuition 3.5%
The story cited "declining" revenue from the state as a reason for the increase. That has been the old way of paying the bills.

As rising tuition at state schools has steadily increased, I have frequently asked, without getting a reasonable answer, why a tuition increase isn't a new tax on students. To broaden that question, with drastic cuts in state assistance to school districts and local government ($2 billion) in the Kasich budget, we will doubtless find local leaders across the state seeking new revenue (taxes!) to pay for the services that people not only need, but want.

When you boast of "a new way and a new day", guv, what am I missing in the translation?


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The elimination of the estate tax will be burning a hole through everyone's pocket as local municipalities look to cover lost revenues.

Anonymous said...
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David Hess said...

Kasich's slogan, "a new way and new day," is the typical Republican euphemism that adorns all of the party's proposals and policies whose end results are to afflict the afflicted and enrich its main sources of campaign money. This strategy, basically, is fashioned as a way to ensure a steady of flow of election-year lucre by preserving the wealth of the wealthy who, in turn, pay a fraction of their gain back to the politicians who protect them from the taxes that are needed to support programs and projects that succor the poor, disabled, jobless and uneducated. "A new way and a new day" is neither. It is simply the application of lipstick to a pig.