Ohioans drinking their way to prosperity?

THERE ARE moments when I'm convinced that Gov. Kasich is running the state for his own amusement. His repeated boasts that he's personally changing Ohio's impoverished landscape, no matter how harshly many people will have to suffer, sounds terribly like the puffed up neighborhood bully who is out to prove to himself that he alone commands the streets.

Look, we heard his threats the first time! Still, he has yet to show us anything other than he is a reckless swashbuckler on the loose. He's not the sort of person you would want to negotiate a deal with the Queen of England.

As for changing everything, he hasn't - not when he is forcing the middle class and impoverished to play by rules he hasn't applied to the wealthiest residents of the state. Of course, some of the state's editorial writers are buying into his self-absorbed crusade, arguing that something must be done to wipe out the huge deficit.

We already know that! What we don't know is how his Draconian plans will benefit the state's less fortunate class. Nor increase employment, not when his programs quite likely will put a lot of tax-paying Ohioans out of work.

Just when you think he can't tilt the pinball machine much more with his antics, he is now proposing to lease a highly profitable state operation to private owners - an idea so corrupt in its own arithmetic that we can only guess what Wall Street firm put him up to it. You don't have to know how to add 2 and 2 to challenge the idea of selling the state liquor sales operation to a private agency that he has created. So keen is he on improvising his promise to create jobs that details are strewn on the cutting-room floor.

Go ahead. Look it up and work the numbers yourself. Kasich is basing his case on his evidence that Ohioans are drinking more and more and will provide revenue for all of the partners down the road. Critics like Ohio Budget Watch, however, said the state would end up selling $7 billion in revenue at the fire-sale price of $1.5 billion . Booze is currently earning about $225 million annually.

Kasich's scheme in behalf of his cronies and big donors reminds me of an old short story by Damon Runyon called "Blood Pressure." In it a fearsome bully shoots crap in a hat without anybody daring him to reveal his "winning" numbers.

Skilled in the culture of Wall Street, which paid his salary and bonuses for seven years, and as fact free as his days as a commentator for Fox News, there's little hope that he will return to earth very soon. Maybe it's time for all of us to order another beer.