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In my last update, Kasich had a 3-0 lead.
Ohio Governor John Kasich looks smug because he's seen the Barbarian's latest scorecard.
Congratulations, Obama fans! He finally scored on the Barbarian’s tally! He proposed legislation to ban military-style assault rifles, limit the size of magazines, and expand background checks to close the notorious gun show loophole. He might even be serious. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Well done, Mr President. Push hard, and some of this will actually be enacted, even by this Congress, into law.
Then, today, Republican Governor John Kasich of Ohio came out with his proposed budget. He scored with me by proposing the following:
1. A real small business income tax cut. Half of the first $750, 000 of business income, or $375,000 is exempt from the state income tax. As a Socialist, I’m not totally in favor of this, but it is progressive in its way. It clearly helps out local merchants and start ups, green grocers and farmer’s markets and repair shops and bookstores and the like. And it definitely does not give away the store to large corporations.
2. The state sales tax is lowered from 5.5% to 5%. Sales taxes are inherently regressive. Any reduction is welcome. To make up the revenue, Kasich proposes imposing the sales tax on previously exempt businesses, including law firms and lobbyists. You gotta love that.
3. Medicaid expansion. Families making up to 138% of the federal poverty line, or about $32,000 a year for a family of four, will qualify for Medicaid. Contrary to many expectations, especially in the progressive blogosphere, Kasich went for it. Yes, I realize this was part of Obamacare, but that was before the 2012 election. This scorecard is only about what has happened since.
4. An excise tax on oil and gas companies extracting oil and gas from Ohio lands. It’s not much, only 1.5% the first year and 4% thereafter, but a lot better than the current rate of nothing. Kasich originally wanted 10%, but I figure he figured he’d never get it through the Republican legislature.
5. No cuts to state funding for K-12 education as a whole. His budget actually increases state funding for poorer districts and lowers it for the very wealthiest. Hence the score.
6. Refusal to privatize the Ohio Turnpike. In fact, revenues from the state-run road will finance $1.5 billion in desperately needed revenue to improvements in roads throughout northeastern Ohio. This is a complete reversal from one of Kasich’s original campaign promises, and a good one, IMHO.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a nice, short article on the budget.
9-1. One would think a Democratic President could do better. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. I’m not optimistic, for reasons very well-known to the reader if he or she has read my previous posts, but we shall see.
Public domain photo by the Office of Ohio Governor John R. Kasich.
22 Comments
Good Barbarian. Now the qestion of the hour..or so. When does Kasich switch parties ? ( ;-) )
Good Barbarian. Now the question of the hour..or so. When does Kasich switch parties ? ( ;-) )
Sorry for double post. It hiccuped.
When it’s politically convenient and advantageous, of course. If ever. What’s ironic, politically, about his budget is that Kasich will need the support of all of the Democrats in the state legislature to get some of this through. He’ll get it on at least half of my six.
What he probably won’t get through is imposing the sales tax on lawyers and lobbyists. Even Kasich chuckled at himself when he mentioned lobbyists in his speech:
“Lobbyists, heh! I’m sure they’ll knock that one out,” or words to that effect.
I have to admit, Kasich has been making intelligent decisions. perhaps Issue 2 enlightened him, because I see a fair number of “Kasich made democrat” bumper stickers.
Boxturtle (I never would have suspected that he’d be more progressive than Obama)
I think he’ll pass it, but he won’t get many GOP votes. A party change doesn’t seem out of the question.
Boxturtle (Can’t help the feeling he’s Up To Something, though)
Nice to hear, Ohio Barbarian! Recommended.
To those who think he should switch parties, my question is: “Why?” Democrats aren’t exactly covering themselves with glory these days.
LOL! Comment rec’d, as well as Barbarian’s post.
Hi, Wendy! Thanks! Heck, even Rand Paul (I know. Ick.) asked John Kerry the right question: he asked Kerry (who denounced the Viet Nam war) why it was wrong to bomb Cambodia without Congressional approval and okay to bomb Libya without Congressional approval.
That said, people should be absolutely embarrassed to be affiliated with either party.
With those progressive like proposals above, I don’t think he’d be welcome in this Democratic Party anyway.
The original progressive movement came from the republican party, until they forced them out.
Democrats had only two progressives that I am aware of. FDR who was moderately so and Henry Wallace who was a true progressive.
I agree. “Progressive ideas” and “Democrats” are like oil and water.
‘Progressive’ as in ‘spiked by commie labor in the ’30s’ has been coopted toooooo far now, imo. (See: ‘Progressive Caucus’, rest my case) I’m thinkin’ ‘radical’ these days. ;~)
And yes, FDR and Wallace.
Thanks for this update, OB….
I rarely do this, but “Liked” on Facebook and of course, highly rec’d!
Yes, thinking people should be and are embarrassed to be part of either of the Two Uni-Party Programs.
Glad to hear this news about Kasich. Good for the people of Ohio, and I hope these things come to pass.
Interesting! Thanks for the update, OB.
As for the *truly* Small Bus tax exemption up to $375,000: I’m not opposed to that tax exemption, myself. Here’s the dealio (which I’m sure you know): the “real” small businesses are allegedly “courted” by Republicans, but in the end, they get screwed over just like the rest of the 99%. Yet I do believe that a big percentage of citizens are, indeed, employed by really small businesses (as opposed to S Corps, which *pretend* to be small but, in fact, are gargantuan, like Koch Industries, for ex).
Hey: give the small businesses a tax break. That’s actually progressive most of the time, esp the way that Kasich seems to have set this up.
As for the rest: thumbs up! I won’t hold my breath on the tax on lobbyists or lawyers, but nice try.
Anymore, why should Kasich put a “D” behind his name? Democrats are NOT, emphatically NOT, progressive. I suppose in this day and age, Kasich could be considered “Independent” or something.
Oh, that’s the best mod-added photo and caption ever! Thanks!
And he SHOULD be smug.
LOL! I don’t care who you are, that’s funny right there!
Issue 2, if it didn’t enlighten him, at least scared him out the Koch Bros suit he was wearing at the time. He tried, just a couple of months before the election with Issue 2 trailing badly in the polls, to negotiate his way out of it, but the Democrats and the unions stood firm and insisted on the vote.
Afterwards, the Republican leadership announced plans to take on public sector unions one at a time, starting with the teachers but leaving cops and firefighters alone. Kasich was asked what he thought about this strategy at a press conference. If memory serves, he said, “I don’t support that approach. Look. The voters spoke loud and clear. And I heard them.”
There were some flustered noises from the Teabagger and total Chamber of Commerce types, and shocked silence from the Democrats and the unions, who were already gearing up for another battle, but nothing happened after that.
When Kasich was elected in 2010, I and a lot of others thought we were screwed. But, since the Issue 2 debacle, he HAS really been more progressive than President Obama, even if his stated reasons are based in true conservative, Eisenhower Republican-style pragmatism.
It’s what he’s done, or actually tried to do, or refused to do since Issue 2 that counts with me.
And, there’s a lesson to be learned here. The progressives, the unions, and the Democrats stood their ground and fought against Issue 2. And We The People won.
And Governor Kasich, for whatever reason, paid attention.
He’s one interesting pol. I saw a video clip, it must have been the statement you referenced, just after the referendum, saying that the people had spoken. He seemed, in that moment, like an actual person, not a suit with sound bytes like most pols most of the time. Just my impression, of course, but it was very memorable.
Thanks for keeping score. Recommended.
Yes. I think radical is the right term, too. The Democrats co-opted the word “Progressive,” probably because they knew they couldn’t use the word “liberal” when it came to policy. JFK’s definition of “liberal” was good, but they can’t co-opt “radical.”
Recommended.
Sometimes I miss Cleveland. (I lived there for a year in the early 1990s.)
And lefttown: I think “Left” is a good term, but some people can’t handle it.
Looking at the terms Radical and Liberal reminds me of that monumental face off under the great President Ulysses S Grant in his first term:
The Liberal Republicans wanted to forbid Blacks from voting until they were literate: This group included The Nation magazine and Horace Greeley, who would end up running against Grant in 1872.
The Radical Republicans led by Grant, on the other hand, insisted that all Black men be empowered to vote, regardless of education.
Grant pushed for school education for US children, by hit opposition from Protestants who were upset that proliferation of Catholic schools had made Protestants an educational underclass, and so insisted on Protestant education being taught in the schools, to manipulate the Catholics into being the educational underclass.
Grant held that education in our country has to be secular: He said that the US can neither favor nor discriminate against “sectarians, atheists, or pagans.”
Can you imagine a politician today speaking out for Civil Rights for atheists and pagans? God bless the United States of America.