Gov. John Kasich awoke to a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that not only mentioned him as a possible White House contender for 2016, but as someone who could “rebrand the Republican Party.”
After that piece, Kasich’s press office announced by 11:30 a.m. that Kasich would lead a national push to produce a federal balanced-budget amendment.
And about an hour after that, in a speech to the Franklin County Republican Party, he said the Affordable Care Act is “not Obama’s plan; it’s Hillarycare.”
It was quite a sequence ... but for a governor seeking re-election next year or of someone thinking bigger?
Hillary vs Kasich? So the Republican 50-state strategy is "give 50 states to Hillary?" C'mon, guys. First of all, Kasich has the charisma of a moldy couch. Second, he just signed into law one of the most ridiculous abortion laws in the country. Third, Ohio is completely controlled by the Tea Party, and fourth, the Tea Party is about to force an unconstitutional fetal heartbeat abortion ban bill that would end all abortions after just six weeks. If Kasich signs that, he's done. If he doesn't sign it, he's done.
And as the Plunderbund crew reminds us, there's a reason number 5.
[Friday] morning, the July jobs report came out. The good news? Ohio gained 5,300 more jobs as private sector gains (+9,100) but lost 3,300 in the public sector (losses employment in federal and local government outpaced gained in state government). 3,100 jobs were lost in construction last month which has seen 6,300 lost jobs since last July. Roughly half of the private sector gains last month came from the typically low pay/low benefits leisure and hospitality sector. Ohio’s job gains in July only erased less than 59% of the jobs lost in June.
That’s all the good news. The rest is bad news. Ohio’s unemployment rate stayed at 7.2% as the unemployment rate nationally dropped .2% last month. The only “miracle” in Ohio’s economic news last month is that Ohio’s unemployment rate didn’t go up. But over the past twelve months, Ohio’s unemployment rate hasn’t moved. Like, at all. And the trendlines over the past months strongly suggest there’s far greater pressure that will drive Ohio’s unemployment rate up than down.
For the THIRD consecutive month in a row, the number of unemployed Ohioans grew. In July, three thousand Ohioans joined the rank of the unemployed. That means there are 1,000 more Ohioans unemployed today than there were a year ago. Although the CES survey of employer’s payrolls showed a gain of 5,300 jobs, the LAUS survey of households (which actually determines the State’s unemployment rate) showed 14,000 fewer Ohioans reported being employed, so there is a disparity between what company payroll records are reporting to what Ohio households are saying.
So no, John Kasich is not going to be the 45th President of the United Anygoddamnthing. Trust me on this.
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This sounds more like the typical pre-pre-pre 2016 election scenario of "Let's publicize some obvious long-shot
egomaniac - it'll boost sales" type of story. They're starting the Republican Nominee Frontrunner of the Month Club earlier than usual this time around.
It shows a breakdown in the formerly monolithic Republican "it's his turn to run" structure.
Oddly, it sounds as though the Republican strategy is to crash the economy before the 2014 elections, and hope that they can blame the resulting damage on the Democrats in 2016. Once in power, they'll run various scams designed to minimize the number of registered voters in typically Democratic demographic groups. Here's a new one from the New York Times:
Victims’ Dilemma: 911 Calls Can Bring Eviction
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — The police had warned Lakisha Briggs: one more altercation at her rented row house here, one more call to 911, and they would force her landlord to evict her....
Over the last 25 years, in a trend still growing, hundreds of cities and towns across the country have adopted nuisance property or “crime-free housing” ordinances. Putting responsibility on landlords to weed out drug dealers and disruptive tenants, the laws aim to save neighborhoods from blight as well as ease burdens on the police.
But the laws are sometimes forcing victims, especially women facing domestic violence, to choose between calling the police and holding on to their homes, according to legal aid groups and experts on housing and the poor.
Combine laws such as this with rigid Voter ID laws, and you've got a really subtle way to minimize the number of poor registered voters. All you've got to do is force people to move before an election - they won't have time to get their state-issued ID changed in time to get re-registered.
Constructing a web of this nature takes time - but consider how many articles we've seen lately about some law or another that forces poor people out of their homes. Add strict voter ID and registration requirements into the mix, and it's not hard to get enough of a shift to swing an election - especially a low-turnout election.
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