Monday morning musings
By
Rory Ryan-hcpress@cinci.rr.com
Ohio has its new budget and, depending on the rhetoric, it's either the state's salvation or it will send us spiraling into the second coming of the Great Depression.
What's that? Oh, right. Ohio's been mired in a Great Recession for the past three or four years.
On the plus side, Gov. Kasich and state lawmakers appear to have balanced the $56 billion behemoth, while overcoming the previous administration's misguided application of one-time federal stimulus funds to support Medicaid.
Excluding Medicaid, the Ohio FY 2012-13 general revenue fund goes down $1 billion from the previous biennium. "This reduction is due to dramatic efforts to reduce state agency spending and improve program efficiencies through major, overdue reforms," Gov. Kasich said.
"With Ohio’s total income tax burden ranking in the top third in the nation, it is essential to reduce government costs so we can begin reducing taxes and restore a jobs-friendly environment.
“We faced our problems and took them on,” Gov. Kasich said. “We have now stabilized the state. It is a new way, and it is a new day and, we are delivering.”
It sounds promising enough coming from the governor's office.
But here's the Democratic Party response from Liz Brown, Ohio Democratic Party political director:
"Did you see John Kasich on 'Face the Nation' this weekend? I keep thinking this governor has gone as far as he can – but he just keeps surprising me and going even further. First it was a war on employee rights, blaming public employees for Wall Street’s mess. Then, a war on women. Then, a war on voting rights, our schools, our local communities’ budgets, and on and on.
"(The) last I checked, the governor works for us. And it is our mission at the Ohio Democratic Party to remind him of that. So we are organizing in every corner of the state: to help beat back Gov. Kasich’s anti-middle class Senate Bill 5, to remind Ohioans who’s fighting for them and who’s fighting for the small few at the top, and to lay the groundwork for big Democratic gains in 2012."
Brown closes her letter with the valediction "In solidarity."
* * *
Meanwhile, a story in The New York Times (of all places) says, "In his five months in office, Mr. Kasich, a former congressman and Lehman Brothers executive, has established himself as a get-things-done governor who has expansive powers and is not afraid to use them."
“Inning after inning, the guy scored every round,” said Gene Beaupre, a political science professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. “I don’t see where he lost anything in the budget game.”
Except, come November, when the unions overturn all the reforms in Senate Bill 5...
* * *
In one from the "I told you so" files, The Weekly Standard has an interesting report on the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors' Seventh Quarterly Report (SEVEN quarters?).
You can read the story at www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-economists-stimulus-has-cost-27800….
The essence of it is this: economists for the Obama administration admit the so-called stimulus has cost roughly $278,000 per job and the policy is now causing the economy to shed jobs.
The Standard reports: "The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the stimulus in adding or saving jobs.
"The council reports that, using 'mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus' (which it describes as a 'natural way to estimate the effects of' the legislation), the stimulus has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion."
That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
"In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the 'stimulus,' and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead."
Things are tough all over.
* * *
Well, almost.
Then there are the Obama aides and their collective salaries of more than $37 million.
A Los Angeles Times story says Obama's aides, some 454 of them, average more than $81,000 a year (plus bennies); 141 of the aides receive more than $100,000 a year.
This represents a $4 million increase in the previously bloated staff of President Bush.
The White House released the information on Friday afternoon, as the nation's three-day holiday weekend was already under way.
The Times reports the top paychecks include:
• "Chief of Staff William Daley, who is the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who just retired and left the top Democratic-machine job there to Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama's chief of staff and before that held the Chicago House seat of Rod Blagojevich, who had given it up to become governor of Illinois, which he no longer is due to impeachment and, now, conviction on 17 counts of fraud."
• "Valerie Jarrett has a White House title as long as Chicago's winters (senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement). Before this, she was a chief of staff for the most recent Mayor Daley and hired an assistant named Michelle Robinson, who went on, of course, to become Mrs. Barack Obama, whose chief of staff also earns the top $172,000 paycheck."
How's that Hope and Change working for you?
* * *
Speaking of franking, er, fracking news, there's a new story this week from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the Keystone State is increasing its shipments of more fracking waste to Ohio for disposal deep underground.
Fracking waste is what's left after toxic chemicals and water are used to fracture rock and release natural gas. Pennsylvania has been under scrutiny for this brine escaping into the water supply.
"To free gas from the rock formation more than a mile underground, drillers use more than 4 million gallons of water per well," The Associated Press explains. "Laced with chemicals and shot at high pressure, the fluid breaks through the earth, but more than a fifth of it returns to the surface with chemicals, solids and metals freed from underground. That water must be treated either for reuse or disposal."
The amount of fracking wastewater Ohio accepts from other states is increasing.
The Tribune-Review reported that "Drillers 'have to do something with this waste,' said Pam Melott, manager at WTC Gas Field Services, one of several haulers newly registered to ship to Ohio."
One man's fracking trash…is another man's fracking treasure...
* * *
Hey, before I forget, did you hear the one about the bartender and the three lawmakers at the Ohio Statehouse?
A Republican senator, a Democrat House member and the governor walk into the new Statehouse bar.
The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?”
Rory Ryan is publisher and editor of The Highland County Press.[[In-content Ad]]
What's that? Oh, right. Ohio's been mired in a Great Recession for the past three or four years.
On the plus side, Gov. Kasich and state lawmakers appear to have balanced the $56 billion behemoth, while overcoming the previous administration's misguided application of one-time federal stimulus funds to support Medicaid.
Excluding Medicaid, the Ohio FY 2012-13 general revenue fund goes down $1 billion from the previous biennium. "This reduction is due to dramatic efforts to reduce state agency spending and improve program efficiencies through major, overdue reforms," Gov. Kasich said.
"With Ohio’s total income tax burden ranking in the top third in the nation, it is essential to reduce government costs so we can begin reducing taxes and restore a jobs-friendly environment.
“We faced our problems and took them on,” Gov. Kasich said. “We have now stabilized the state. It is a new way, and it is a new day and, we are delivering.”
It sounds promising enough coming from the governor's office.
But here's the Democratic Party response from Liz Brown, Ohio Democratic Party political director:
"Did you see John Kasich on 'Face the Nation' this weekend? I keep thinking this governor has gone as far as he can – but he just keeps surprising me and going even further. First it was a war on employee rights, blaming public employees for Wall Street’s mess. Then, a war on women. Then, a war on voting rights, our schools, our local communities’ budgets, and on and on.
"(The) last I checked, the governor works for us. And it is our mission at the Ohio Democratic Party to remind him of that. So we are organizing in every corner of the state: to help beat back Gov. Kasich’s anti-middle class Senate Bill 5, to remind Ohioans who’s fighting for them and who’s fighting for the small few at the top, and to lay the groundwork for big Democratic gains in 2012."
Brown closes her letter with the valediction "In solidarity."
* * *
Meanwhile, a story in The New York Times (of all places) says, "In his five months in office, Mr. Kasich, a former congressman and Lehman Brothers executive, has established himself as a get-things-done governor who has expansive powers and is not afraid to use them."
“Inning after inning, the guy scored every round,” said Gene Beaupre, a political science professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. “I don’t see where he lost anything in the budget game.”
Except, come November, when the unions overturn all the reforms in Senate Bill 5...
* * *
In one from the "I told you so" files, The Weekly Standard has an interesting report on the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors' Seventh Quarterly Report (SEVEN quarters?).
You can read the story at www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-s-economists-stimulus-has-cost-27800….
The essence of it is this: economists for the Obama administration admit the so-called stimulus has cost roughly $278,000 per job and the policy is now causing the economy to shed jobs.
The Standard reports: "The report was written by the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, a group of three economists who were all handpicked by Obama, and it chronicles the alleged success of the stimulus in adding or saving jobs.
"The council reports that, using 'mainstream estimates of economic multipliers for the effects of fiscal stimulus' (which it describes as a 'natural way to estimate the effects of' the legislation), the stimulus has added or saved just under 2.4 million jobs — whether private or public — at a cost (to date) of $666 billion."
That’s a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job.
"In other words, the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the 'stimulus,' and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead."
Things are tough all over.
* * *
Well, almost.
Then there are the Obama aides and their collective salaries of more than $37 million.
A Los Angeles Times story says Obama's aides, some 454 of them, average more than $81,000 a year (plus bennies); 141 of the aides receive more than $100,000 a year.
This represents a $4 million increase in the previously bloated staff of President Bush.
The White House released the information on Friday afternoon, as the nation's three-day holiday weekend was already under way.
The Times reports the top paychecks include:
• "Chief of Staff William Daley, who is the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who just retired and left the top Democratic-machine job there to Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama's chief of staff and before that held the Chicago House seat of Rod Blagojevich, who had given it up to become governor of Illinois, which he no longer is due to impeachment and, now, conviction on 17 counts of fraud."
• "Valerie Jarrett has a White House title as long as Chicago's winters (senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement). Before this, she was a chief of staff for the most recent Mayor Daley and hired an assistant named Michelle Robinson, who went on, of course, to become Mrs. Barack Obama, whose chief of staff also earns the top $172,000 paycheck."
How's that Hope and Change working for you?
* * *
Speaking of franking, er, fracking news, there's a new story this week from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that the Keystone State is increasing its shipments of more fracking waste to Ohio for disposal deep underground.
Fracking waste is what's left after toxic chemicals and water are used to fracture rock and release natural gas. Pennsylvania has been under scrutiny for this brine escaping into the water supply.
"To free gas from the rock formation more than a mile underground, drillers use more than 4 million gallons of water per well," The Associated Press explains. "Laced with chemicals and shot at high pressure, the fluid breaks through the earth, but more than a fifth of it returns to the surface with chemicals, solids and metals freed from underground. That water must be treated either for reuse or disposal."
The amount of fracking wastewater Ohio accepts from other states is increasing.
The Tribune-Review reported that "Drillers 'have to do something with this waste,' said Pam Melott, manager at WTC Gas Field Services, one of several haulers newly registered to ship to Ohio."
One man's fracking trash…is another man's fracking treasure...
* * *
Hey, before I forget, did you hear the one about the bartender and the three lawmakers at the Ohio Statehouse?
A Republican senator, a Democrat House member and the governor walk into the new Statehouse bar.
The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?”
Rory Ryan is publisher and editor of The Highland County Press.[[In-content Ad]]