BuckeyeBlog

Raided

Where is the New York Times on the Cuyahoga County corruption story? By my count this morning there were 17,000 hits for “Ted Stevens” in the NY TImes site for the past seven days (yes, 17,000, counting all articles, blogs and comments) and nothing for “Dimora“.

Now I get it that a Senator may be a bigger target than a Midwestern Commish for the national media, and perhaps our expectations for the ethics of the US Senate are greater than those we hold for a county position.

Still, we are talking about a county that is home to one of America’s poorest cities, one plagued by all kinds of evils the lefties ascribed to too little government, such as unemployment and the mortgage meltdown. A county that is the political cornerstone to a Democratic victory in Ohio and thus nationally in the November presidential election. A county that is nearly twice the size of Alaska in terms of population.

17,300 cites to 0 is simply out of whack, but then again, it is the New York Times.

BTW, Cuyahoga County also costs all of the honest, hard-working taxpayers of the rest of Ohio dearly to support. So that’s why it is also disconcerting about the silence of our Governor Ted Strickland on this issue, and our new Attorney General Nancy Rogers. Where’s the outrage over the foul smell of offenses which draw in 200 federal agents from across two states to investigate?

Forget this nonsense put up by Strickland about leaving this all to the FBI and the feds. Think of all of the times you’ve read of state and local authorities, smelling blood in the water, jump into cases looking for their own chance at a pound of flesh, like Michael Vick facing VA charges after the federal case was prosecuted. Any good prosecuting authority can figure out how to get into a game as good as this one is.

And then there’s Marc Dann, whose impeachment Strickland, et al. were jonesing so hard after. Not because Dann had been found to have done anything “impeachable”, but because, well, Marc had been kind of a slob in running his office.

Where is the alacrity in running Dimora and Russo out of office shown by Strickland in the Dann Affair?

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has done a great job in covering this story and should be commended for pursuing accountability of government to the people so vigorously. Too bad other media outlets in Ohio and nationally aren’t following suit. Yet.

Youngstown teacher union boss Will Bagnola should be credited for candor in revealing the YEA’s true interests in thwarting kids from getting the education they need from a charter school. According to the Youngstown Vindicator:

Will Bagnola, teachers union president, said the Youngstown Education Association’s chief concern was that sending city kids to the charter school could result in job losses for teachers in the regular system.

(more…)

Old Del Latta, excuse me, Bob Latta (who says we don’t have royalty), thinks “It’s very important that we thank farmers in this district and in this state right before people cast votes for me.”

Maybe I paraphrased that last bit.

Okay. Farmers feed us. Less than one percent, feeding the world, etc. But what about the bolt manufacturers? I bet it’s way less than 1 percent of the population working in the bolt industry, and what if we lost them tomorrow? All our tractors would fall apart, not to mention everything else. Everybody’d be sitting on their arses on the Interstates, like in one of those insurance and/or global warming commercials, pretending to drive a car the way a six-year-old might, but not having any car to drive.

Do you want that? Do ya? Huh? Let’s hear it for the bolt manufacturers, and maybe give them a little subsidy, what?

(I think the Blade just wanted an excuse to use the phrase, “cleans teats” in a news story. But give them kudos for the closing sentence: “Farmers know when manure is being spread by politicians.” Only, I don’t think it means what the farmers think it means.)

The Washington Post reports on the flap over privatizing the Senate’s cafeterias.

Now remember, gasoline is $4.00/gallon, 130,000 troops are afield in Iraq, tens of thousands of young adults will be graduated by public schools unable to read, and the Democrat senate caucus finds time to not only contemplate, but to debate, the issue of privatizing the Senate food service.  Have they ever heard of the phrase “no-brainer”?

Here’s what Ohio’s junior senator had to say about this burning conflict: (more…)

The AP reports that the central government of the People’s Republic of China is requiring its agencies cut spending by 5% in response to the recent earthquake. Compare that to the $1.5 billion spending increase Ohio’s politicians are currently pursuing in the name of “stimulating” our state’s economy.

A country raised on Mao’s Little Red Book shames Ohio’s political class through its vigorous embrace of limited government.

What an amazing spin put out by Stephen Koff of the Plain Dealer on AG Marc Dann’s lobbying office in Washington, DC. He writes in regard to this office that few have noticed Dann’s “pioneering ways.” [The Columbus Dispatch runs the article today with the sub-header of "Ohio Attorney General's Innovation".]

Sorry, Steve. There is nothing pioneering about one government entity lobbying another government entity for handouts. This is a well-established, pernicious process that costs taxpayers both in needlessly inflating demand for government spending and in the intrinsic waste of government spending money to get money from…government. This process is highly susceptible to pork-barrel politics and in general defeats the kind of efficient, transparent government Ohioans deserve for their tax dollars. (more…)

Wall Street Journal reports that the national business lobbies are slighting John McCain when it comes to campaign donations. Actually, the WSJ reports that the two Democrat presidential hopefuls “have been cleaning his clock among business interests that give mainly to Republicans.”

While much of American business lobbying is supportive of the virtues of free markets, dynamic capitalism and limited government, a large part is also unfortunately directed toward securing the favors of government in the form of corporate welfare, special perks and privileges. While some may read into this news the business community’s sanguine assessment of McCain’s chances this November, I’d remind readers of something Milton Friedman said…

“One of the reasons I am for less government, is become when you have more government, industrialists take it over.”

Perhaps our business friends understand that McCain is someone who won’t so readily provide them the perks, pork and favoritism their donations are intended to buy?

Kudos to Governor Strickland for admitting that we can live without a good share of state government spending. He comes to this realization when told that there may not be the tax dollars in the treasury to pay for every dime of spending planned through July of 2009.

Of course, true conservatives knew of the needlessness of much state spending independent of a shortfall in taxes to pay for it all.

Strickland says he doesn’t want to raise tax rates to pay for the planned spending, so good-bye spending….we would hope.

Our 2005 Ohio Piglet and 2006 Ohio Piglet should be helpful for the Governor. The reports document more than enough wasteful and duplicative state expenditures that can be cut in order to close the $1.9 billion shortfall presented in the Governor’s worst case scenario.

Our 2007-08 Piglet report is due out in a few weeks to bring our list of pork and waste fully up-to-date.

Here’s a couple of my favorite piggies and potential cuts:

$22.9 million on the Ohio Arts Council. A fine work of art deserves appreciation. But it doesn’t deserve to be subsidized by our tax dollars.

$6.5 million for the Ohio Business Development Coalition (OBDC) and other “brand-building” activities of the state Department of Development. The OBDC runs an expensive ad campaign in national media designed to lure a special kind of CEO to Ohio. Unfortunately the OBDC’s targets are CEO’s who don’t care about high taxes and high government spending — often because they pocket tax dollars themselves.

Turning a silk purse out of the sow’s ear of Ohio’s business climate is better left to private Chambers of Commerce. If the state really wanted to “build its brand” as a place for CEO’s to invest and grow their businesses, it would eliminate the income tax, end compulsory unionization and end the government monopoly of k-12 education services.

$200,000 for the Ohio Film Office (OFO). The OFO was eliminated from the state budget in 2002, but surprisingly the state just reopened the office. The OFO subsidizes the motion picture industry in an attempt to lure producers to film in Ohio. That is to say, it takes your tax dollars and waves them under the noses of Hollywood and Michael Moore and Sean Penn and all the rest to come here and shoot some scenes on location.

To quote one state official trying to justify the OFC: “But we really thought about it from a tourism perspective, of getting Ohio images, our beautiful scenery and locations like the Old State Reformatory at Mansfield, where they filmed The Shawshank Redemption or Columbus, where they filmed Traffic right across from my office, and its really a win-win.”

That’s two-thumbs down on a tourism strategy that uses taxpayer dollars to entice people to Ohio based on our gruesomely retro prisons and nightmarish crack houses.

To be continued…