(Image from Flickr user Ali Graney, used under a Creative Commons license.)
Less than a month in office, Ohio’s new governor, John Kasich, has given us plenty of reason to doubt his integrity. He tried – and failed – to keep media away from his inauguration. That was a silly little thing, really, but it portends a new era of secrecy in governance. The legislature took a cue from Kasich and imposed onerous requirements on recording committee hearings. I expect that any day now, we’ll hear that Kasich is governing the state from a secure undisclosed location.
Then Kasich started driving his bus over state employees. He appointed a raft of (all-white) cronies to help him run the state and gave them pay raises. He fired attorneys who were life-long state employees, not political appointees, simply because they had voted Democratic. (No link on that one; I heard it from the niece of one of the purge’s victims.) At the same time, Kasich cut mailroom staffers’ salaries by 21%. Such is the new era of fiscal responsibility in Ohio.
Secrecy paired with cronyism and contempt for the little guy … where have we seen that combo before? Um, yeah … George W. Bush. Good times. Brownie, Brownie, where are ye when we need ye?
But what I’ve really come here to talk about today is The Stupid. The wonderful blog Plunderbund (which I gleefully plundered for the links above) has revealed that along with all his other sterling qualities, Kasich ain’t none too smart, neither. As Modernesquire reported, Kasich officially proclaimed Martin Luther King Day to be March 17.
(Image via Plunderbund – and no, it’s not photoshopped.)
I suppose we can toast racial equality with a glass of green beer? And route a St. Paddy’s Day parade from Selma to Montgomery? Yes, I realize some poor sodding staffer made the error. Kasich signed off on it. The buck stops … oh, right, the buck may never reach Kasich, because he’s gutted the state mailroom. Good planning, dude.
In another shining moment, Kasich advised Ohioans last week on how to weather the storm. The worst of the weather hit north of my house, but had I been less lucky, I would have been prepared, thanks to my governor’s memorable words:
So, if you need to go somewhere, to a neighbor or whatever, you’re going to need to prepare – extra blankets, some candles – I’m not a big fan of candles, but uh, make sure you can control them and blow them out.
(Plunderbund has it all. Oh, do they ever!)
I get that candles can be a safety hazard, especially if you trip over them as, er, ummmm, some governors fall over their words while trying to sound authoritative. But did I miss some super-secret lesson on blowing them out (maybe the boys got it while we girls got the Menstruation Talk)? Is there a special blowing technique? Does it help if you sing “Happy Birthday” first? And what if I want to blow out all but a couple of candles, so that I can have a couple of boyfriends?
Fortunately, Stephen Colbert picked up on Kasich’s turnip-esque intellect and pilloried it – and his racism, to boot:
(Click here if you don’t see the video in a blog reader.)
(Via Plunderbund, of course. Have I mentioned their awesomeness yet?)
Here’s hoping Colbert has bookmarked Plunderbund. For all the horror the Kasich Administration threatens to deliver, it also promises to be an endless seam of comedic gold. God knows we’re are going to need some laughs.
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
Great summary of the recent Kasich failures.
And you’re right: Kasich is very likely to be disastrous for Ohio, but he’s providing a gold mine of material for political bloggers and reporters.
Well, it’s a summary that relies almost entirely on your good work! You and your co-bloggers have done just a superb job of documenting Kasich’s perfidy, greed, and plain ole stupidity. In fact, I can think of exactly two positive things that have come out of Kasich’s governorship so far: 1) I discovered Plunderbund, and 2) there’s a rumor that Kasich will put the public schools back to five calamity days instead of three. Given that my district has burned through at least ten so far, I’m hoping he’ll deliver on that rumor.
Kasich has a buddy in his next-door neighbor governor. I live in Pennsylvania, and Tom Corbett is expected to allow the Adult Basic program, a low-cost health insurance program for working poor people started by the previous governor Ed Rendell, to expire, b/c the state’s Blue Cross plans, which are supposedly non-profit, don’t feel like spending their huge surpluses on charitable care that they had previously committed to.
Corbett also thinks that there’s tons of jobs out there and the unemployed are just being lazy bums because “Ooh, look, I saw want-ads in the newspaper!”
He’s also received huge ($700K) contributions from the natural-gas industry, and naturally his administration is perfectly happy with gas industries using a process called fracking that contaminates ground water and fouls rivers and water wells with salt and heavy metals, and he’s promised the gas operators that he won’t even bother to impose an extraction tax.
Not to mention, PA is one of the 27 states that filed a lawsuit against the insurance mandate in the Affordable Health Care Act, and managed to get the entire act – not just the mandate, the whole thing – overturned in Federal court (Pensacola).
These dudebros may be turnips, but they’re dangerous turnips. I fear what will happen in 2012.
You put your finger on something really important: It’s not just Ohio. It’s not just Pennsylvania. It’s not even just us plus the usual suspects south of the Mason-Dixon line. Most of the states are now saddled with venal, nasty, un-bright, uncompassionate leaders who are going to break so many things, from our social welfare net (such as it is) to our environment to our schools … Yes, the Republican House in D.C. is a massive problem, but at the state level we’re going to see fewer checks and balances. We can expect Obama to veto the most egregious legislation. In Ohio, Kasich won’t be vetoing that shit, he’ll be out stumping for it.
I reach for snark when I can’t make some dusty academic argument. Kasich has been cagey enough that we don’t really know many of the specifics of his evil plans. We’ll know more in March and April, unless the state budget is another of the things he’d prefer to hide down a deep, deep well. By the time we know details, time will be very tight.
For instance, if he guts K-12 education, there will be no chance to get a bond measure on the May primary ballot to replace the funding locally. I think we could do that in my community, despite endemic poverty, because we’re a university town – lots of other towns would not get a levy to pass, and they’re the ones whose schools would suffer most cruelly.
Or if he tries to gut the universities, we’ll have no plan. We’re preparing for a 10% budget cut scenario. Last year we already took 5%. If Kasich paints 20% on the front of his bus and veers straight at us, we will just be hosed.
I imagine the same inability to plan is plaguing every state agency. And I’m pretty sure that the intransparency of Kasich’s goals is deliberate. I don’t think it’s politically smart in terms of winning hearts and minds, but it’s politically expedient in that Kasich’s true goals would almost certainly have been too radical for the mushy-middle voters who ultimately vaulted him into office.
Condolences to all y’all in Pennsylvania for being as fucked as we are.
Thanks for your condolences.
In the meantime, here in Philadelphia, rec centers (with pools that are often the only way [besides opening fire hydrants] that kids can cool off), libraries, and health clinics have been closed or had hours curtailed, we’ve had to beg the state for a 2% surcharge on the state sales tax, which means we’re at 8%, which is a heavy regressive tax that >.< sucks for a city that has so many people in poverty.
And the fun part? The building boom in million-dollar condos continues. We've had G-d only knows how many luxury condos built in the last five years; they cater to people who are making money off of the current depression.
And the *really* fun part? All those million-dollar condos come with a nice, pretty, ten-year abatement on property taxes, which is strangling the city budget, but our so-called “Democrat” mayor and majority “Democrat” city council won’t touch, because G-d forbid maybe some millionaire will throw a temper tantrum at being expected to support the city that they’re helping to bleed dry.
Ugh. The Dems are really not any better than the Repubs. My town is basically a one-party town, and for years we had a Democrat as mayor who was very cozy with the local landlords. (We don’t have many millionaires; the landlords are the closest thing to it in this college town.) We managed to replace him with a progressive Democrat who better reflects the values of the town’s residents, and it has made a big difference.
But if state funding is cut, our municipal services will be affected, too. The library has had to reduce hours already, and I’m sure much worse is to come.
Secrecy paired with cronyism and contempt for the little guy … where have we seen that combo before? Um, yeah … George W. Bush. Good times. Brownie, Brownie, where are ye when we need ye?
Unfortunately, the Democrats aren’t any better. They’re just as cowardly and contemptuous as the Republicans. And Obama?? Please. Of course I voted for him — with great hopes, with tremendous hopes. But he is a fraud. He is upholding, even strengthening every abuse and usurpation of power Bush initiated. And he is just as bedded down with our corporate overlords as any of his predecessors. We are fast becoming serfs. Serfs in a security state.
Dark times ahead for this country.
Obama has been pretty disastrous for civil liberties in particular. I too had high hopes. He’s an expert on constitutional law, for goodness sake! I knew we were in for trouble as soon as he brought Geithner and Summers on board, but I never imagined he would be this bad for our basic rights. Even after that awful FISA vote in summer 2008, I still thought our worst problem would be his promise to escalate in Afghanistan. But it’s as if John Yoo had never left Washington.