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?

Chasing our tails to create jobs?

ALL OF THE THREATS from the right to cut government workers to shave the deficit leads me to wonder...

Every government employe who loses his or her job will not be paying taxes nor spending for things at the mall in a retail-based economy.

With tax revenue shrinking at all levels of government, it will necessitate more layoffs and only the wealthiest will be spared.

As government payrolls continue to shrink, even shedding law enforcement and school teachers, there will be more unemployed.

With more unemployed, there will be still greater loss of tax revenue.

As the tax base shrinks, there will be even fewer jobs and less spending at the malls.

And so the descending process continues unabated, feeding on itself at a time when the deep thinkers are promising to create jobs.

Not being sympathetic to the Republicans' secret plans to attack unemployment and create jobs, I know I'm missing something as we continue to chase our tails to do something that will only make things worse. But what?

Ohio Senate: Life on the lifeless track

I SELDOM WRITE about the Ohio legislature. I have found the place to be a bore. I know. Those senators and house members in Columbus shape our daily lives, from taxes to such diversions as slot machines. For their part-time labors they are well paid and receive other benefits that those of us back home seldom see. On many days they predictably sit around doing nothing at all.

As Plain Dealer columnist Tom Suddes rudely pointed out on Sunday, ignoring the minor courtesies you might expect for the near-unemployed, of the 219 bills introduced in the Republican-controlled Senate, only three made their way to the governor. And as Suddes, a veteran of seizing indolent politicians by the neck, also pointed out, they did give a hint of exhalation by forwarding to Gov. Strickland a measure to create an 18-member War of 1812 Bicentennial Commission, an event still three years away. Bless 'em! It was bipartisan. That will give them a little something to write home about when the next check arrives in their $60,584 a year payday.

Meantime, the sedentary senators don't seem to be in a hurry in plugging up a desperately current $850 million hole in the state budget, creating an aching impasse that is stalled on the issue of whether to delay a tax cut for Ohioans. You'd think they are trying to resolve the issues in Cornelius Vanderbilt's will. A foolish Ohio tax cut should be a no-brainer for the GOPers to go along with Democrats who insist it would further deepen the state's budgetary woes. But Republicans are genetically wedded to such dumb considerations. And who knows? Since they are term-limited, some may even move on to Congress to advance their troubled concepts of tax math.

All of this led Beacon Journal Statehouse columnist Dennis Willard to report that there is still a lot of gravy in doing next to nothing down in Columbus. In addition to the lawmakers' base salary for a few days a week, they are entitled to huge tax deductions by various self-serving devices amounting to the efforts of living ghosts. Legislators not only get tax breaks for days they are in session but also for those in-between idle days if the legislature adjourns for four or fewer days. They also qualify for deductions on holidays and weekends.

Willard figures it's possible for a state senator to reap $55,144 in tax deductions if he or she lives outside of Columbus. That would make the tax burden akin to that of the underemployed. Depreciation will likely come next.

None of this accounting might have surfaced if the Senate had been doing what it's paid to do.

It seldom does.

Taxing rants about taxes, et al

AMERICA AT MID-WEEK:

Hearing Republican pols endlessly chant about the evils of taxes, I am forced to conclude that their greatest orgasmic experience would occur with the abolition of all taxes except those that provide for their daily wage, health care insurance and for some, therapeutic night life. . That would leave the voluntary construction of highways to neighborhood associations; the care of the national parks system to garden groups and law enforcement to the Lone Ranger. Too bad for the R-pols, it won't happen. All of which means they will go on and on talking about it.

If you've spent a few minutes listening to Sen. Max Baucus, the Medicare-eligible Montana Democrat, boasting of the merits of his newly released committee health care reform plan, you might agree with me that he is a Republican impersonating a Democrat. And he's damned good at it. He'd better be inasmuch as he's into the health-care and insurance industry's treasury for about $4 million in campaign cash. It proves that experience does count, considering that he's been in the Senate for 31 years and doubtless knows all of the unlisted phone numbers of the lobbyists who need his undivided attention. (Two of his former chiefs of staff now work as lobbyists for health and insurance related companies. I rest my case.)

Mayor Don Plusquellic's critics will not spare the rod in denouncing the 201 layoffs the city announced this week. So what's the counter-proposal for these troubled economic times that is affecting city governments from coast to coast? Raise taxes to pay for the services? What? Are you crazy? There would be a dozen Republican candidates for mayor if Plusquellic breathed such evil. Cut back more city services? Those who opposed this week's layoffs would be the noisiest critics of further shrinkage of the safety forces. Fortunately, FirstEnergy has made its community presence felt with a $2.2 million grant to the city to ease a little of the pain. Plusquellic has presided over the best of times in the city, and is now having to make the hard choices in the worst of times. If there are less painful solutions these days, I'm sure everyone concerned would like to know about them. (The mayor could take a cue from former President George Bush, who advised Americans after 9/11 to "go shopping.")

Former President Jimmy Carter, a bona fide Georgian, sounded quite sane when he bared the roots of southern outrage sgainst Barack Obama in the White House. Quite simply, he called it "racism", which too many others who know better are trying to ignore. And people like Rush Limbaugh are exploiting it Klansman-style with not-so subtle reference these days to a newly-minted ObamaWorld, which Limbaugh sees as clear evidence of black hatred of all whites. I used to believe that Obama's election would allow us to move on as a nation from the not too-distant past when the New York Yankees turned down a chance to sign a young man named Willie Mays because, you know... he was black. Once Mays signed on with the New York Giants and did his magic act on the field, many fans became color-blind.

The University of Akron is in the midst of dodging another hit on its image with the latest episode involving John Case, the U's vice president for finance and education, who was placed on leave after his arrest on a charge of driving under the influence. But Case, who was arrested once before for erratic behavior behind the wheel, will continue to be paid under his $242,625 annual contract that runs through next June. UA President Luis Proenza says he will find some special jobs for Case to perform in the meantime. My sources tell me that it amounts to a waiting game and that Case's contract will not be renewed in June 2010. Taking note of the contretemps, the Plain Dealer concluded editorially a few days ago:

"It's a generous reassignment that the University of Akron can ill afford. While Case has been whisked offstage at full pay, the university is balancing its $419 million budget by eliminating vacant positions and reducing other costs. Surely this could have been handled better."

At the same time, UA must still adjust to the two ethics convictions of Board of Trustees member Jack Morrison, Jr. who obviously has no intention of giving up his seat on the board.

Falls riverfront project: impressive & tax worthy

WE READ with interest the big spread in Sunday's Beacon Journal about the impressive riverfront project in Cuyahoga Falls that will be an important amenity in the city's quality of life. For this, Mayor Don Robert should take a deserved bow. But before his head strikes his shoes, I believe he should host another Tea Party at the riverfront pavilion to remind his anti-tax friends that the handsome project is costing $1.8 million, with $640, 000 coming from the state, i.e., your taxes and mine. Without taxes there would be no riverfront showpiece in the Falls, no reason for the mayor to take a bow and no reason for the anti-tax crowd to rant. Trouble is, too many politicians won't admit how taxes - and only taxes - often make them look good.

Columbus Dispatch shocker: Raise taxes! :

GATHER 'ROUND ME, all ye unhappy tea baggers.   I have news for you:  You just lost another one. Glaring harshly at you from the editorial page of the Columbus Dispatch today is  an uncharacteristic plea to raise Ohio taxes to meet the peril of a financial crisis that neither political party seems ready to address,

As George Costanza might say, "This is HUGE." Over the years, the political graveyard was filled by the Big D with the bodies of candidates who even whispered tax increases on, oh... Life Savers,  in their sleep.  This was the paper that once chaperoned a number of conservative pols into the legislature and governor's office simply because they had an R after their name on the ballot.  In the earlier days it was bloody bad business for anyone to suggest that there were at least one or two liberals who shouldn't be institutionalized.  

But give the current Dispatch credit.  It has grown philosophically.  And now, in this time of great need, the paper entered the fray with words  that surely will jolt the tea bagging leprechauns from their postmodern  fantasy world of Coolidge, Hoover, McCain et al. Spoke the Dispatch:

No one wants to take the lead.  No one wants to be first to utter the T-word.

Everyone in the Strickland administration, the Democratic-controlled Ohio House and Republican-controlled Ohio Senate knows the only way to fill an $8 billion budget hole is with a combination of new taxes and service reductions....If it is quaintly anachronistic to hope for bipartisan, statesmanlike leadership to tackle one of the state's  most historic economic  crises  then Ohio may have no hope at all.

The world has changed.   I wonder why there are still some people around who don't know that.