Householder Of Cards, Con't

As Ohio Republicans are reeling from the indictment of now former State House Speaker Larry Householder on bribery and fraud charges related to taking millions from an energy company in order to pass legislation worth billions to the energy industry in the state, with former GOP Gov. John Kasich openly endorsing Joe Biden at the DNC, and the state's job market now locked in double digit unemployment, the state party is desperately trying to stay afloat and keep their total control of the levers of power, something that is no longer assured in November.

Complications pummeled Ohio Republicans this week as they sought to put up a united front headed into the GOP’s national convention.

One of their best-known politicians threw his support behind Democrat Joe Biden, their Republican state attorney general challenged the Trump administration, and President Donald Trump himself took on an iconic Ohio company in an area of the state where loyalties to job security ran higher than loyalties to party four years ago.

With early voting set to begin in less than seven weeks, Democrats are enthused about their possibilities in a state crucial to Trump, one he carried by 8 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s a striking turnaround for a party that just last year was wondering if the one-time swing state — with 18 electoral votes — had moved out of its reach.
Since Trump faced Clinton, Democrats have seen progress in the 2018 midterm and 2019 local elections, including in key suburban areas. Trump’s call Wednesday to boycott the Akron-based Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, while inaccurately claiming the company had announced a ban of Make America Great Again hats, gives the party new material as it tries to return struggling blue-collar workers to the fold.

Jane Timkin, the Republican Party chair who ousted an ally of former Gov. John Kasich from that job, was dismissive of Kasich’s speech endorsing Biden at the Democratic National Convention and expects Trump’s momentum to build.

“I feel pretty good,” she told The Associated Press. “The president has a 95% approval rating among Republicans and, aside from folks like John Kasich, who was a never-Trumper, I think the rest of the party is very united and excited about re-electing President Trump.”

A June 28 Quinnipiac University poll placed the figure at 92% among Ohio registered voters, with 93% of Democrats favoring Biden and independents divided 44% for Trump and 40% for Biden.

Kyle Kondik — an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics who wrote “The Bellwether,” a 2016 book about Ohio presidential politics — said it remains to be seen whether Kasich will sway fellow Republicans. Kasich carried Ohio over Trump in 2016′s Republican presidential primary, but his campaign soon ran out of steam.

“I think Kasich represents a lot of his friends and neighbors (in suburban Columbus) who probably feel the same way he does,” Kondik said. “They’ve just seen enough.”

Kondik also said it’s too soon to predict whether Trump’s Wednesday assault on Goodyear, an integral part of Akron’s “Rubber Capital” history, will cost him among the northeast Ohio auto industry voters who backed him in 2016. Four years ago, a single remark by Clinton — that the transition to clean energy meant “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” — damaged her performance in eastern Ohio’s coal country, where she had been running well.

Even Akron’s most famous native, LeBron James, jumped on Trump’s Goodyear comments: “Unbelievable brand and unbelievable history,” he said at the NBA’s pandemic home in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from Youngstown, helped lead a rally in Akron the next day, joined by local and union officials and a crowd of workers holding up such signs as “It will be a Goodyear without Trump.” With working families struggling during the coronavirus pandemic-pounded economy, Ryan said: “We have enough challenges.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Bill Conner, a United Steelworkers union local official in Akron, saying Trump’s boycott call could hurt “an American company, American workers.”

We'll see if it makes a difference.  Ohio is definitely a Midwestern state with more in common with Indiana and Kentucky than Michigan, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin.  It's a red state and that probably won't change in November.

But it might.

The End Of The Never Trumpers

The NY Times has finally realized that the "principled conservative opposition" that materialized to scold Trump was always a ruse, and there's no better example of that then the doomed "Never Trump" movement inside the GOP that disintegrated as soon as he got his Supreme Court picks.  They were always Trump, just not as willing to take to his extreme measures in order to win.  Nowadays there is only Trump.

As Mr. Trump has prepared to embark on a difficult fight for re-election, a small but ferocious operation within his campaign has helped install loyal allies atop the most significant state parties and urged them to speak up loudly to discourage conservative criticism of Mr. Trump. The campaign has dispatched aides to state party conclaves, Republican executive committee meetings and fund-raising dinners, all with the aim of ensuring the delegates at next year’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., are utterly committed to Mr. Trump.

To Joe Gruters, who was co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Florida and now leads the state party, the local G.O.P. is effectively a regional arm of the president’s re-election effort.

“I’ve had probably 10 conversations with the Trump team about the delegate selection process in Florida,” Mr. Gruters said, adding of a potential Republican primary battle, “The base of the party loves our president, and if anybody runs against him, they are going to get absolutely smashed.”

State and local Republican organizations typically operate below the radar of national politics, but they can be vital to the success of a presidential candidate. Party chairmen and their deputies are tasked with everything from raising money to deploying volunteers to knock on doors, and in many states they help choose delegates for the nominating convention.

For Mr. Trump, who prevailed in 2016 as an outsider with little connection to his party’s electoral apparatus, the ability to control the levers of Republican politics at the state level could make the difference in a close election or a contested primary. It also leaves other Republicans with precious little room to oppose Mr. Trump on his policy preferences or administrative whims — on matters from health care to the Mexican border — for fear of retribution from within the party.

Mr. Trump’s aides have focused most intently on heading off any dissent at the Charlotte convention: To that end, two of Mr. Trump’s top campaign aides, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, have worked quietly but methodically in a series of states where control of the local party was up for grabs. They have boosted Mr. Trump’s allies even in deep-blue states like Massachusetts, and worked to make peace between competing pro-Trump factions in more competitive states such as Colorado.

The devotion to Mr. Trump was on clear display Saturday outside Denver, where the state party gathered to elect a new chairman. Though Mr. Trump’s unpopularity helped drive Colorado Republicans to deep losses last fall, there was no sign of unrest: Mr. Trump’s name was emblazoned on lapel pins and a flag toted by one candidate for the chairmanship, and his slogan — “Make America Great Again” — was printed on the red hat from which the candidates drew lots to determine their speaking order.

Mr. Trump himself stayed out of the race, and campaign aides sent the White House a short memo last month urging the president not to pick sides between allies after Representative Ken Buck, a deeply conservative candidate, lobbied administration officials for support.

But when Mr. Buck claimed victory in the race for chairman, he described his mission in terms of unflinching loyalty to the president.

“The key is that we make sure that the voters of Colorado understand the great job the president has done,” Mr. Buck said. “That is what my job is.”

You're either with Trump, or you're an "enemy of the people".  And folks are lining up to be on the side with the orange fascist at the helm.  If somebody's actually expecting John Kasich or Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney to show up and "save" the GOP from Trump, it'll never happen.

The Republican Party is the Trump Party and it always has been.

We have to save ourselves.

Ohio Gets The Gas Face

Over at the Cincinnati Enquirer, politics writer Jason Williams argues that the incoming 18 cents-per-gallon gas tax increase is the result of eight years of John Kasich's funding neglect as governor, and not current GOP governor Mike DeWine's fault.

The next time you hear John Kasich on CNN or on a campaign trail bragging about how he was such a budget hawk during his time as Ohio governor, remember this:

His parting gift to Ohioans was leaving the transportation budget in shambles. The fallout: The cost of your commute is likely going to increase beginning in July.

Kasich kicked the can for years on a long-term budget fix in order to help preserve his political future – leaving the state facing a projected shortfall of $1 billion a year for roads over the next decade.

As the legislature mulls new Gov. Mike DeWine's whopping 18-cents-per-gallon gas tax increase, don't forget this: This tax hike is very much a part of Kasich's legacy.

If the legislature approves DeWine's plan, Ohio's gas tax would increase to 46 cents per gallon – fifth-highest in the U.S.

Don't blame DeWine, who has the political capital to do this because he's in his job before retirement. His options are limited, especially considering the Kasich administration strapped the state with hundreds of millions in debt to fix roads and bridges.

I don't blame either of them...I blame Ohio's GOP state lawmakers who spent years cutting taxes for the rich and for fracking companies (the latter something Kasich actually tried to stop) and didn't give a damn about the state's roads or bridges.  Republicans had a supermajroity in both the Ohio House and Senate for years and did nothing to alleviate the problem then.

Now DeWine is stuck holding the bag, but he still has the same GOP majorities to get this past, and odds are they won't pass it, while Ohio's infrastructure continues to fall apart.

Williams goes on to say Kasich was too much of a coward to fix the budget and raise taxes in order to maintain his business-friendly image heading into 2020 and that's correct, but the tax issue isn't his problem, it's the Ohio State House, and it always has been.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Once again the GOP supermajority in Ohio's House has passed another doomed "heartbeat bill" as with the last couple of years, unable to get enough of a margin to beat a guaranteed veto by Gov. Kasich.  This time around though they're considering a new bill, one that would criminalize all abortions and miscarriages in the state.

There’s been a lot of attention given to the contentious “Heartbeat Bill,” which bans abortion at the point that a fetal heartbeat can be detected, since it passed the Ohio House earlier this week. But Republican lawmakers are considering another bill during this lame-duck session that would ban abortions entirely.

HB 565, which was introduced in March, would allow criminal charges against both doctors and pregnant women seeking abortions. It would characterize an “unborn human” as a person under Ohio’s criminal code, meaning abortions could be punishable by life in prison or even the death penalty.

There are no exceptions even in cases of rape, incest, or danger to a woman’s life.

Jaime Miracle with NARAL Pro Choice Ohio says the bill would punish both women and doctors. NARAL and Planned Parenthood are spending money on advertisements opposing the bill.

“This could criminalize women who have miscarriages that might seem suspicious to somebody or could criminalize in-vitro fertilization procedures that might end up with an embryo," Miracle says.

This is all cover for the heartbeat bill, which is headed for the Ohio Senate, and an eventual date for incoming Gov. Mike DeWine's desk.  DeWine has said in the past that he will sign the bill into law, setting up the endgame for Roe v. Wade in a Supreme Court battle that could very well be the end of safe abortions for most women in the US.

It's the fight they've wanted for years and will almost certainly get in 2019 or 2020.

Ohio GOP's War On Women Continues

Ohio Republicans are trying to outlaw abortion in the state again in a bill that has no chance of passage, let alone it standing up to Constitutional muster, but they're trying anyway because "Ohio Republicans".

Ohio's GOP lawmakers want to ban abortions – a likely violation of federal law.

A bill from two Republican lawmakers, introduced Monday, would ban all abortions in Ohio. Doctors could be charged with murder or sued for the wrongful deaths of aborted fetuses, according to the proposal. Kentucky lawmakers are considering a similar ban. 

In recent years, Ohio lawmakers have limited abortions by restricting them to earlier in a pregnancy or banning them after a diagnosis of Down syndrome. 

Most of these efforts took aim at Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that ensured access to most abortions. Some of the new Ohio laws have faced legal challenges. But none take on abortion as directly as the proposal introduced this week.
Opponents of the bill fear it could charge doctors with murder, punishable by life in prison or the death penalty. 

"Anti-choice extremists from the Ohio Statehouse to the White House are lining up their dominoes to topple Roe v. Wade and punish those who seek or provide abortion care," said Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, in a statement.

So why do it?  Simple.

Rep. Ron Hood, R-Ashville, said he knows a federal court could find his bill unconstitutional. But that decision could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider abortion access. 

"Obviously, Roe v. Wade could be revisited," Hood said.

So many of these anti-choice zealots want to go down in history as passing the law that reaches the US Supreme Court becoming the basis for overturning Roe.   They want that place in history more than life itself, it seems.

This won't be that bill, but one of these days and soon it will happen.  We had the chance to stop this in 2016 but of course all the people who said "What difference would it make" or "There's no difference between Trump and Clinton" made that not happen.

The butcher's bill on that is coming sooner rather than later.

The GOP Shootout In Ohio

Outgoing Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich suddenly wants several new gun safety provisions in state laws after signing into law a 2011 bill that allowed concealed carry in bars and a 2017 bill that expanded concealed carry to workplace parking lots.  Kasich now wants major new safety laws for firearms, saying it's a "different day" in Ohio.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is backing six gun control measures that he believes have a support from both sides of the debate and that hopes will help end the horror of American mass shootings.

Kasich brushed aside questions about hard line opposition to gun control. “It’s a different day,” he said.

The governor will ask the Ohio General Assembly to pass measures to take guns away from people at risk of hurting themselves or others, keep guns away from those convicted of domestic violence or subject to protection orders, close some gaps in the background check system, strengthen the law against “straw man” gun purchases, and ban bump stocks and armor-piercing ammunition.

“No one is interested in some slippery slope in trying to go and grab everyone’s guns,” he said.

The response from Ohio Republicans, who currently have a supermajority in both the state House and Senate, was both swift and utterly predictable.

The leader of Republicans in the Senate says he thinks a “stand your ground” bill that Gov. John Kasich said he wouldn’t sign will pass anyway.

The bill removes the requirement for a person to try to retreat before using lethal force in self-defense. Kasich said on NBC’s Meet the Press Daily last week that he wouldn’t sign it. For a while it’s appeared the bill was stalled. But Senate President Larry Obhof of Medina says he’s not sure about that. 

“I think that would easily pass the Legislature. I don’t think there would be any problem with that, no. Now whether we choose to go that route or not remains to be seen.” 

The so-called Stand Your Ground bill is one of 23 pieces of gun-related legislation at the Statehouse – 14 of which would expand gun owners’ rights, including adding places where permit holders could carry concealed weapons.

We'll see what the General Assembly does, but my guess is that Obhof has the votes to override Kasich's veto, they've done it before.

Of course, how long Ohio has a GOP supermajority, I can't tell you.  Something tells me this fact will change abruptly in November.

Sunday Long Read: Frack You, Ohio

As Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich's second term comes to a close and voters go to the polls in November to choose his successor, Kasich's largest legacy will be that of turning the Buckeye State into the Fracking State.  We still don't know the long-term consequences of fracking, but thousands of Ohioans live with fracking wells on their land and in their water tables, and people around here are going to discover far too late that his true legacy will be a state covered in toxic waste.

We begin with a glass of wine on the wraparound porch of Michele Garman, who lives with her husband Tom and teenage son Dominic in the rural Ohio community of Vienna. Just 200 feet from the family’s house is a narrow shaft that the oil and gas industry uses to pump waste riddled with toxic chemicals deep into the earth, one of Ohio’s 217 active Class II injection wells. “I still enjoy sitting out on my porch,” says Garman, “but it was a lot more enjoyable before the scenery changed.”

The small white and maroon trucks that deliver the waste often come at night, she says. They contain what regulatory agencies innocently refer to as produced water, or brine, a slurry generated during fracking operations that can contain more than 1,100 chemicals and which is carcinogenic, flammable, and radioactive. Garman says she and her son occasionally smell, “a sweet odor in the air, almost like antifreeze.” One night last winter an alarm went off. “There was a red light and a real low siren,” she says, “and no one to call to see what was going on.”

In the morning, before heading off to work, Garman is back on her porch with a coffee, staring at a series of tanks, where the waste is temporarily held before being shot down the injection well. “The biggest thing,” she sighs, “is the worrying. What am I not hearing? What am I not seeing? What is being released into the air? The water? The soil? What does this mean for our health years down the road? That is the stuff that really eats away at me constantly.”

Michele Garman and her family are not alone. We journey 200 miles south, to a land of low wooded hills not far from the Ohio River, where Phyllis Rienhart, 66, lives with her 78-year-old husband Ron in a stick frame house that Ron built with their son. Their town, Torch, doesn’t have a single store. But for Phyllis and Ron, it is home. “Most of my family lives on this road,” says Phyllis. “And yet we have this monster on that hill.”

The house is 1,800 feet from a mammoth injection well. Unlike Michele Garman, she has never heard an alarm. Instead, her injection well clangs. “One day we were outside here on the porch and I was thinking, it’s raining, because the bird bath was vibrating,” says Phyllis. “I went in the house but could still hear the noise — clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang — and it just got louder.”

In 2016, she and some neighbors staked out the injection well for a period of 24 hours. They observed 108 tanker trucks come and go. The trucks discharge their fracking wastewater into holding tanks. Hydrocarbons in the waste emit flammable vapors that accumulate in the tanks and are vented off the tops. In April 2016, lightning struck an injection wastewater storage tank in Greeley, Colorado, “heating the metal to thousands of degrees, which ignited the vapors inside,” reported the local paper. “The tanks subsequently exploded, shooting up hundreds of feet into the air.” The thought of a similar fireball erupting in her backyard keeps Phyllis up at night. She fears thunderstorms. She sees a neurologist. “I have anxiety,” she says.

Phyllis is trying to figure this thing out, but it is bigger than her. “What if they got it wrong?” she wonders. “What is it doing to our earth? What is it doing to our water? Not to mention the air that we breathe. I mean it is waste for god sakes, it is chemicals…And I ask them, are you going to have enough hazmat suits for all of my grandchildren? These people are dealing with paper and statistics, I am dealing with my family. They say it’s good for the economy, but I can’t find anything it is good for. And these things are popping up everywhere. There are more, and more, and more…”

“This is a humanitarian crisis,” declares Ohioan activist Teresa Mills, Executive Director of the Buckeye Environmental Network. “Ohio is in a state of emergency.”

The state's Republican party takeover means that citizens have zero legal recourse on fracking waste.  The Ohio GOP was paid off handsomely from Kasich on down to avoid regulation and taxation.  I'm sure it will be years before the truth of Ohio's toxic fracking comes to light, but when it does, and thousands suffer as a direct result, who will pay for it all?

Last Call For Cutting The Cordray

As many in Ohio have long suspected, it looks like the Democrats are finally getting their top candidate in the race for Governor to succeed Republican John Kasich in 2018: former state Attorney General Richard Cordray has quit his federal watchdog post at the CFPB.

Former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray will step down as the head of a consumer watchdog agency by the end of the month and is expected to run for the Ohio Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

Cordray, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced his decision to leave in an email to all bureau staff early Wednesday.

“As I have said many times, but feel just as much today as I ever have, it has been a joy of my life to have the opportunity to serve our country as the first director of the Consumer Bureau by working alongside all of you here,” he wrote.

Former U.S. Rep. Dennis Eckart, a Cleveland Democrat, said “several prominent Democrats have told me this morning they expect Cordray to run for governor.”

He added, “Cordray has a very compelling story and is motivated by convictions that will resonate well in Ohio and especially for those voters in Ohio who believe they have been left behind, ripped off, or ignored.”

Joe Rugola, a leading Ohio Democrat and director of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees, said, “I fully expect he will at some time very soon be making some kind of an announcement about his intentions and I would be shocked if he didn’t run for governor.

“It absolutely isn’t too late for Rich to enter the race. The test will be to put together a campaign and surround himself with professionals who know what they are doing and raise a significant amount of money in a hurry.”

Former Ohio Democratic Chairman David Leland said he had not yet talked to Cordray about the governor’s race but “he would be a great candidate if he decides to run.”

“I’ve known him for over 25 years,” said Leland, now a state representative. “He always fought for issues that are important to people in the state of Ohio. I think taking his record at the CFPB and using it as a platform to say he’s actually fighting for working families in the state of Ohio would be tremendously successful for him.”

Kasich has overseen Ohio's transformation into a red state garbage fire over the last seven years, spouting nonsense about his "moderate" credentials and doing everything in his power to end legalized abortion in the state, all while plotting to wreck the country with a "balanced budget" amendment to the Constitution that would force massive austerity cuts.

Cordray meanwhile has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has already fought for getting billions in dollars back from crooked banks, shady mortgage lenders, predatory payday loan outfits and awful title loan shops. He has a real shot at winning in 2018, especially against somebody as awful as Ohio's current statewide office holders on the Republican side, anti-choice fanatic AG Mike DeWine, voter suppression expert Jon Husted, and Kasich's right hand, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor.

That's the good news.  The bad news is Trump is now going to appoint a new head to the CFPB in order to drive the agency into the ground, screaming.  His top choice is current Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.

Mick Mulvaney once called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “a sad, sick joke.” Now, he may get to oversee Elizabeth Warren’s favorite regulator.

Mulvaney, President Donald Trump’s Office of Management and Budget director, is being considered for a temporary role as interim director of the consumer watchdog after Richard Cordray steps down later this month, according to two people familiar with the matter. Mulvaney would be expected to name someone else or a team of people to run the CFPB on a day-to-day-basis so he could keep his focus on OMB, said one of the people.

The goal is to hit the ground running in overhauling an agency that some Republicans have called corrupt and that GOP lawmakers widely blame for burdening lenders with unnecessary red tape. It could be months before Trump nominates a permanent CFPB director and the Senate confirms his selection.

Under a federal vacancies law, Trump can replace an outgoing director temporarily with someone from another agency who has already won Senate approval. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has also been considered to run the CFPB on a temporary basis, said one of the people who asked not to be named because the deliberations are private.

Cordray would have been forced out eventually, his term would have been up in July 2018 anyway.  It would have been nice to get a few more months out of the one federal government agency that was actually not being awful and that Trump hadn't completely ruined yet, but there you go.

Last Call For Sandoval's Desert Grit

One of the major key players in whether or not the Senate GOP Trumpcare bill can pass the upper chamber isn't actually a senator at all, but Nevada's GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval.  Sandoval controls what GOP Sen. Dean Heller is going to do as far as voting for this bill, and Sandoval, like Ohio's GOP Gov. John Kasich, has no illusions as to how rotten Trumpcare is going to be for his state.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval said a closed-door breakfast meeting on Saturday between Trump Administration officials and a large number of governors hasn’t changed his position on the Senate health bill — that it’s a cause for concern.
The Republican governor, whose opinions on health care policy have a major influence on swing voting Republican Sen. Dean Heller, said he plans to make a decision on his final stance next week and hopes to talk with Heller on Sunday or Monday. But he said he’s trying to reconcile conflicting analyses — including the Congressional Budget Office’s projection that the immediately preceding bill would have left 22 million more people uninsured, and the administration’s contention that nobody would lose access to care.

“What’s difficult is there’s a lot of dispute about the veracity of those numbers,” Sandoval told reporters in an interview at the National Governors Association meeting in Rhode Island. “As a governor, it’s incumbent on me to sort that out.”

Sandoval said the Trump Administration hasn’t offered him benefits unrelated to health care — such as concessions on the Yucca Mountain relicensing process that Nevada is fighting and the administration is pushing — in exchange for support of the health bill. But he said he didn’t support such a trade.

“Those are two separate issues that I won’t conflate under any circumstances,” he said.

Democratic governors were more blunt about the discussion, which featured Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma. Connecticut Gov. Dan Molloy, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, said the administrators kept touting “innovation” as the solution to health care problems.

But he said they were unable to explain how innovation would compensate for reduced funding. The mood grew tense, he said, mostly out of a “frustration with being lied to.”

“They’re going to shift a massive amount of responsibility to the states without the support necessary to do that,” he said, adding that it would be the states that have to do the dirty work of paring down their Medicaid rolls.

I've been saying this for months now: the GOP Congress's plan is to dump all the blame for having to throw millions off Medicaid on to state governors and say "Well, we reformed Medicaid like you asked.  State governors like you authorized and took credit for Medicaid expansion, you can take the blame for rolling that back. We told you seven years ago that we thought the expansion was unsustainable, and here we are."

Sandoval meanwhile clearly doesn't like getting hung out to dry like this, and I suspect he's far from the only GOP governor who secretly hates Mitch McConnell for screwing him over this badly. I feel like that the aforementioned John Kasich is similarly in the same position, and that GOP Sen. Rob Portman is going to bail on it as well.  Mike Pence is outright lying about red states that have accepted Medicaid expansion and the governors of those states like Kasich are pissed.

In his speech, Pence also said Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid put “far too many able-bodied adults” on the program.

“I know Governor Kasich isn’t with us, but I suspect that he’s very troubled to know that in Ohio alone, nearly 60,000 disabled citizens are stuck on waiting lists, leaving them without the care they need for months or even years,” said Pence.

The waiting lists Pence referred to apply to Medicaid’s home and community-based services, and have not been affected by the program’s expansion under the ACA. States have long had waiting lists for these services, and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation’s executive vice president, Diane Rowland, noted that waiting lists in non-expansion states are often longer than in expansion states, which currently receive a 95 percent federal match for their newly covered beneficiaries.

Kasich spokesman Jon Keeling said in an interview that Pence’s suggestion that 60,000 disabled Ohioans remain on waiting lists “is not accurate,” adding that to suggest Medicaid expansion hurt the state’s developmentally disabled “system is false, as it is just the opposite of what actually happened.”

“That waiting list is nothing new, and to attribute it to expansion is absurd,” said Families USA’s senior director of health policy, Eliot Fishman.

Pence has declared war on red state governors who took the expansion, and that fight is not going to be one that he wins.

[UPDATE] And with Sen. John McCain scheduling surgery next week and "missing the vote" along with Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson coming out against the bill, Mitch McConnell has now pulled the vote for Trumpcare again.

BREAKING FROM @SenateMajLdr MCCONNELL pic.twitter.com/zkpBTLM6dt

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) July 16, 2017

This is starting to look like ballgame, guys.  Keep the pressure up.

Last Call For Conway Con Job, Con't

OK, I definitely needed to be over being mad at the Dems about Jon Ossoff, as several of you pointed out in the comments.  Let's not forget who the real bad guys here are, and that's the friggin Trump regime and their Queen of Propaganda, Kellyanne Conway.

Presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway asserted Sunday that the Senate health care bill does not propose cuts to Medicaid, despite projections that it would cut the federal health insurance program by $800 billion.

“These are not cuts to Medicaid," Conway said to ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on "This Week" Sunday.

"This slows the rate for the future and it allows governors more flexibility for the future with Medicaid dollars,” she said.

“If you are currently in Medicaid, if you became [a recipient] ... through the Obamacare expansion, you are grandfathered in. We’re talking about in the future,” Conway said.

When pressed by Stephanopoulos on how the proposal doesn’t amount to cuts when it directly curtails funding for Medicaid, Conway said the administration sees its actions as putting Medicaid back to pre-Obamacare levels.

“We don’t see them as cuts, it’s slowing the rate of growth in the future and getting Medicaid back to where it was,” she said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its analysis of the impact of the Senate bill this week.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hopes to bring the bill to a vote on the Senate floor before the July 4 recess.

That part about being "grandfathered in" is 100% nonsense.  What will really happen is that 1) states will be free under Trumpcare to spend Medicaid funds for whatever they want to do with them, and 2) the amount of funds from the federal government will be reduced.  It'll be then the fault of the states who will have to either raise revenue dramatically to "grandfather people in" or make steep cuts to Medicaid, not Trump or the GOP-led Congress, as nearly all states have to balance their budgets and can't go into deficit spending.

What the GOP is really hoping is that enough people lose that grandfather status because they won't be able to afford the massive increase in premiums they'll have to pay under the GOP plan, with the loss of premium subsidies under Obamacare.  Then, Republicans can say "Well, you didn't come up with your fair share of your insurance payments" and then they'll of course have to lose coverage.

Getting Medicaid back to where it was means tens of millions of people will no longer be on Medicaid, and it will be everyone's fault but Dear Leader Trump.

No wonder Republican governors like John Kasich, Brian Sandoval, and Charlie Baker are in full panic mode and publicly attacking Trumpcare.  They know what's coming for the GOP brand in their states.  And they know they're the ones who will have to present and sign ruthless austerity budgets under the "new and improved" GOP healthcare system.  If it doesn't do their party in come 2018, it'll definitely end them in 2020.

The Abortion War's Front Line Is Now Ohio

Ohio is no longer a swing state by any means.  It's a blood-red Midwestern state with 11.7 million people in it, the 7th largest in the country by population.  And it's the new front line in the War or Women as the state's GOP super-majority in both chambers of the state legislature, "moderate" GOP Gov. John Kasich, the Trump regime are all focusing on groups like Ohio Right To Life as the next test run vehicle to effectively end abortion.

Ohio Right to Life has unveiled sweeping initiatives for the two-year legislative session, six measures the organization's leaders say would build on a series of recent successes and continue its strategy of chipping away at abortion rights while working toward a complete ban. 

The latest push follows passage in December of a law banning abortions after 20 weeks, the most recent of 18 abortion restrictions enacted since Kasich took office in 2011. Others from past Right to Life priority lists include banning public hospitals from providing non-therapeutic abortions and requiring abortion clinics to have transfer agreements with a local hospital. 

The centerpiece of its agenda for this two-year session is proposed legislation to outlaw a commonly used second-trimester abortion procedure, dilation and evacuation, which accounted for about 3,000 of the nearly 21,000 abortions performed in Ohio in 2015, according to the state Health Department. 

"The No. 1 issue, which is part of our national strategy, is a dismemberment ban," said Michael Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life. "We would be the eighth state to enact one." 

Calling the procedure "barbaric" and "inhumane," Gonidakis said the proposal would have an exception only to save the mother's life. The ban would apply only to women seeking to terminate their pregnancy and not impact those who may require the procedure following a miscarriage. 

Critics argue the proposal would make it more difficult to obtain a second-term abortion. They note that the American Medical Association recognizes the procedure as among the safest ways to terminate pregnancy after 14 weeks, and it accounts for most second-term abortions. 

"Ohio Right to Life doesn't care about women's health," said Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio.

"There is not a single thing in their agenda that improves women's health; in fact, the new restrictions they are proposing will interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and prevent women from accessing the care that is best for themselves and their families. The goal of Ohio Right to Life is clear - to invoke shame and stigma against women who access abortion, and to punish the medical professionals that care for them."

Right to Life also is pushing bills that would: require burial or cremation of aborted fetuses; ban abortions based on diagnosis of Down syndrome; limit women's access to abortion-inducing pills; and prohibit the sale or receipt of compensation of any sort for fetal tissue or remains. In addition, the group is seeking additional tax funding for pregnancy centers across Ohio. It has received $500,000 in each of the past two years. 

The proposals, Gonidakis said, are part of an "incremental, transparent approach" toward outlawing abortions.

Texas was the prototype, but Ohio looks to be the finished product for an agenda that will effectively shutter the state's abortion providers and leave millions of women in the state with no safe options for an abortion procedure.

Burying women, doctors, clinics, nurses and hospitals under burdens until the procedure cannot legally be performed?  That's the plan.

Most likely it will work, especially once Neil Gorsuch is confirmed.  I just don't expect Democrats to even put up a fight at this point.  I don't know what it will take at this point.

Check that.  I do know what it will take, and that's voters throwing out the GOP across America.  But the odds of that happening when the Trump regime now stands to disenfranchise tens of millions of Democrats will grow slimmer by the day.

By 2018 it may not matter at all.

Kasich's Bill Comes Due

Understand that Trump and his administration are motivated by greed and petty revenge, and as we get closer to his inauguration, you're going to start seeing those in the GOP who dared to oppose Trump start to pay a higher and higher price for doing so.  Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich is definitely on the top of that list.

On Friday, President-elect Donald Trump and Gov. John Kasich will face off in their latest proxy battle for the hearts and minds of Ohio Republicans – and the president-elect himself on Thursday entered the fray.

Trump supporter Jane Timken, a Cincinnati native and Walnut Hills High School graduate, is challenging Kasich-backed incumbent Matt Borges for the Ohio Republican Party's top spot.

On Thursday, Trump himself called at least two Southwest Ohioans who have a vote in the race for chairperson, pushing for Timken's election, according to a person close to the situation. Kasich has also made personal calls.

Kasich and his supporters installed Borges as chairman in 2013 after they deposed former leader Kevin DeWine and replaced much of the party's governing body with supporters. But some Republicans, including Trump, aren't thrilled with Borges' tepid support of the president-elect – or with the opposition Trump experienced this fall from Kasich.

Why would a president-elect care about a state GOP chair?  Just to piss off Kasich, of course.

Even before Trump started making phone calls on her behalf, Timken had Trump's support to challenge Borges. "I spoke with President-elect Trump and he agrees that it is time for a leadership change at the ORP," she wrote in an email to the Ohio Republican Party's 66 central committee members.

Kasich is backing Borges. "He has done an outstanding job running a complex organization and has an unparalleled record of winning," the governor said in a statement.

Trump and Kasich waged a war of words throughout the GOP primary campaign, when both were presidential hopefuls, and into November. In July, Trump's then-campaign manager Paul Manafort bashed Kasich before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Kasich later refused to endorse Trump or even vote for him.

Borges largely stood by Kasich, speaking out against Trump's policies and demeanor before ultimately backing him in the general election. Many Republicans thought Borges should have kept his mouth shut.

The Trump-Kasich fight continues with this latest round, the battle for control of the Ohio Republican Party. If the state's top Republican is out of step with the nation's top Republican, where will the state party stand?

And they'll have to tread carefully.  Maybe it'll make an opening for Ohio Dems.  Maybe.  We'll see.

The Heartbeat (Bill) Of America, Con't

And Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich sucker punches women of the Buckeye State again and again as he bravely vetoes the ridiculously unconstitutional "Heartbeat Bill" only to heroically get the additional abortion restrictions he's wanted since taking office in 2010.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich today vetoed the Heartbeat Bill forbidding abortions when a fetal heartbeat can be detected while signing into law a second bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. 

The second-term Republican previously had expressed concerns about the constitutionality of the Heartbeat Bill, which would have been the most restrictive abortion law in the nation. 

Federal courts struck down identical measures in two states in finding it was an undue state restriction on a woman's right to an abortion at a point when some women do not realize they are pregnant. 

“I agree with Ohio Right to Life and other leading, pro-life advocates that SB 127 is the best, most legally sound and sustainable approach to protecting the sanctity of human life," Kasich said in a statement. 

With the Heartbeat Bill folded into House Bill 493, Kasich used his line-item veto to single out and remove the abortion language since it was accompanied by a $100,000 appropriation to create the Joint Legislative Committee on Adoption Promotion. He signed the other portion of the bill, dealing with child-abuse reporting requirements, into law. 

Kasich approved banning abortions after 20 weeks by signing Senate Bill 127, an Ohio Right to Life-supported bill, that forbids termination of "a human pregnancy of a pain-capable unborn child."

So Ohio now joins 18 other states with 20 week bans, the point of which is to argue that a fetus could be viable at less than the current legal definition of legalized abortion, 24 weeks, thus overturning Roe v. Wade.

Often referred to as “20-week abortion bans,” these laws nominally seek to ban abortion after or around 20 weeks’ gestation, though bills in several states effectively ban abortion at 18 weeks. Legal experts believe these laws are unconstitutional on their face because they undermine a key provision of Roe v. Wade, which established the right to an abortion in the United States up until fetal viability, generally determined by doctors to be around 24 weeks’ gestation. Were the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold one of these bans, it would effectively dismantle the backbone of the court’s 1973 decision legalizing abortion in the United States. Anti-choice leaders have been open about their long-view strategy involving 20-week abortion bans—to persuade the high court to overturn the viability principle on which Roerests. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2009 roughly 1.3 percent of all abortions performed in the United States were after 20 weeks’ gestation. There are many reasons women need abortions at this stage. A number of fetal and genetic anomalies cannot be identified until later in pregnancy, and some women find themselves facing pregnancies gone terribly wrong. Health conditions that threaten the woman’s life or health can develop at any point during a pregnancy. And a large share of women seeking abortions late in the second trimester do so because they face dramatically changed life circumstances or were unable to obtain an earlier abortion—a situation that’s increasingly common in states where laws are making abortion more expensive, more time-consuming, and more geographically inaccessible.

This is the real reason behind banning so-called "late term abortions".  And now that pathway to overturning Roe rests with Donald Trump's selection to the Supreme Court, stolen wholesale from President Obama by the GOP.

Meanwhile, Kasich gets to burnish his moderate credentials, and the window for legal abortion procedures closes a bit more in the US.

Very soon I suspect it will be shut completely.

The Heartbeat (Bill) Of America

Ohio Republicans in the Trump era are wasting no time in preparing to test both GOP Gov. John Kasich and possibly any Trump Supreme Court nominees on state restrictions on abortion.

An Ohio bill that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected is headed to the governor’s desk. 

Lawmakers in the Republican-controlled state House voted to approve the so-called “heartbeat bill” Tuesday night after it passed in the Senate earlier in the day, clearing the way for what would be one of the nation’s most stringent abortion restrictions. 

The legislation would prohibit most abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy after the first detectable heartbeat. 

Gov. John Kasich, an abortion opponent, has previously voiced concerns about whether such a move would be constitutional. He has not said whether he plans to sign the measure. 

State Senate President Keith Faber, a Republican, said the twice-defeated bill came back up again because of Donald Trump’s presidential victory and the expectation he will fill Supreme Court vacancies with justices who are more likely to uphold stricter abortion bans.

Asked if he expects the Ohio proposal to survive a legal challenge, Faber said: “I think it has a better chance than it did before.” 

The ban would make an exception if the mother’s life is in danger but not in cases of rape or incest, he said. 

NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio said the move would block access to abortion before most women even know they’re pregnant. “This bill would effectively outlaw abortion and criminalize physicians that provide this care to their patients,” said Kellie Copeland, the group’s executive director.

So again, two questions here: One, will "moderate" Kasich sign the nation's most restrictive abortion law (or more likely just wait ten days and it will become law automatically) and two if he does, how will the Trump administration handle the almost certain injunction against the measure?  This would almost certainly come before Trump's new SCOTUS nominee if it went to the high court in a couple of years.  It's very possible the court will refuse to hear the case after it's struck down, as similar measures in Arkansas and North Dakota were left unconstitutional when SCOTUS refused to take up either state law.

But it's also possible that a new justice and a new court could want to take it up, too.

It's a stupid law designed solely to see if SCOTUS will let states get away with banning abortions after six weeks.  I don't know if Kasich will join this mess or not, or if it even matters because Republicans would only need three-fifths of both the Ohio House and Senate to override a veto and they'll almost certainly have to numbers to do that. Odds are even if this survives a Kasich veto that the fight will end up being a big embarrassment to the state and cost taxpayers millions.

That certainly hasn't stopped Republicans elsewhere.

Last Call For Healthy Data Journalism

I know at this point that we're supposed to consider the data-driven pollster model dead (because garbage-in, garbage-out as far as people who said they weren't going to vote for Trump overwhelmingly breaking to him) but if the polls do have a last gasp, it's this: The Economist has found that the biggest indicator of Trump voters wasn't being non-college educated and white, the most likely Trump voters are Americans who are the least healthy.

The two categories significantly overlap: counties with a large proportion of whites without a degree also tend to fare poorly when it comes to public health. However, even after controlling for race, education, age, sex, income, marital status, immigration and employment, these figures remain highly statistically significant. Holding all other factors constant—including the share of non-college whites—the better physical shape a county’s residents are in, the worse Mr Trump did relative to Mr Romney.

For example, in Knox County, Ohio, just north-east of Columbus, Mr Trump’s margin of victory was 14 percentage points greater than Mr Romney’s. One hundred miles (161 km) to the east, in Jefferson County, the Republican vote share climbed by 30 percentage points. The share of non-college whites in Knox is actually slightly higher than in Jefferson, 82% to 79%. But Knox residents are much healthier: they are 8% less likely to have diabetes, 30% less likely to be heavy drinkers and 21% more likely to be physically active. Holding all else equal, our model finds that those differences account for around a six-percentage-point difference in the change in Republican vote share from 2012.

The data suggest that the ill may have been particularly susceptible to Mr Trump’s message. According to our model, if diabetes were just 7% less prevalent in Michigan, Mr Trump would have gained 0.3 fewer percentage points there, enough to swing the state back to the Democrats. Similarly, if an additional 8% of people in Pennsylvania engaged in regular physical activity, and heavy drinking in Wisconsin were 5% lower, Mrs Clinton would be set to enter the White House. But such counter-factual predictions are always impossible to test. There is no way to rerun the election with healthier voters and compare the results. 

The public-health crisis unfolding across white working-class America is hardly a secret. Last year Angus Deaton, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, found that the death rate among the country’s middle-aged, less-educated white citizens had climbed since the 1990s, even as the rate for Hispanics and blacks of the same age had fallen. Drinking, suicide and a burgeoning epidemic of opioid abuse are widely seen as the most likely causes. Some argue that deteriorating health outcomes are linked to deindustrialisation: higher unemployment rates predict both lower life expectancy and support for Mr Trump, even after controlling for a bevy of demographic variables.

Polling data suggests that on the whole, Mr Trump’s supporters are not particularly down on their luck: within any given level of educational attainment, higher-income respondents are more likely to vote Republican. But what the geographic numbers do show is that the specific subset of Mr Trump’s voters that won him the election—those in counties where he outperformed Mr Romney by large margins—live in communities that are literally dying. Even if Mr Trump’s policies are unlikely to alleviate their plight, it is not hard to understand why they voted for change.

Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana in particular were hit hard in the last four years over a growing opioid epidemic.  Various state plans were tried to address the problem with varying results: Kynect and Medicaid expansion in Kentucky being dismantled by Matt Bevin, Indiana's Medicaid-hybrid "everyone has to pay something" approach from Mike Pence, and Ohio's "quiet" Medicaid expansion pushed through by John Kasich.

But none of those programs could deal with the Ohio Valley's drug problem.  In fact, Mike Pence as Indiana's governor made the problem much worse when by fighting drug abuse he effectively destroyed Indiana's ability to deal with a massive HIV outbreak in 2015 when he discontinued the state's needle-exchange program.

In conclusion, the study found that Scott County's public health crisis -- which left 181 people in Southeastern Indiana HIV positive -- was caused by a "close network" of residents injecting opioid Opana and sharing needles. It suggests that Indiana and other largely rural states should focus on prevention measures such as more HIV testing, identifying networks of intravenous drug users, increasing access to treatment, considering syringe-exchange programs and education.

"Although the magnitude of the outbreak was alarming, the introduction of HIV into a rural community in the United States was not unexpected when considered in the context of increasing trends in injection use of prescription opioid (painkillers)," the study says.

Dr. William Cooke, the lone physician in Austin, Ind., the town at the epicenter of the outbreak, said Scott County had every indication for years that the spread of HIV was possible. Cooke pointed to poverty, high unemployment, a steady flow of opioids into the community, high hepatitis C rates and adverse childhood experience.

"If we knew there was a population at risk based on the indicators mentioned, why wait for HIV to hit?" Cooke said Thursday. "... That's what we see right now with Clark and all of these other counties."

Republican governors made things worse by refusing to embrace Medicaid expansion and Obamacare.  And the people hurt the most by those Medicaid decisions by Republican governors overwhelmingly voted for Trump.

Killing thousands through denial of health care dollars and programs paid off for the GOP.  Big time.

Laboratories Of Democracy

Meanwhile next door in Ohio, it seems that one of the state's chief forensic experts had her thumb on the evidence scale in favor of Ohio cops for, oh, about 30 plus years.

Dozens, if not hundreds, of criminal convictions in Ohio could be in jeopardy because a longtime forensic scientist at the state crime lab now stands accused of slanting evidence to help cops and prosecutors build their cases.

The credibility of G. Michele Yezzo, who worked at the Ohio attorney general’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation for more than three decades, has been challenged in two cases in which men were convicted of aggravated murder. One has been freed from prison because of her now-suspect work.

A review of her personnel records by The Dispatch shows that colleagues and supervisors raised questions about Yezzo time and again while she tested evidence and testified in an uncounted number of murder, rape and other criminal cases in the state.

Their concerns included that she presented evidence in the best light for prosecutors instead of objectively, used suspect methods while examining trace evidence from some crime scenes, and made mistakes that, as one former attorney general put it, “could lead to a substantial miscarriage of justice.”

Yezzo, 63, of West Jefferson, told The Dispatch that the accusations about her work being biased are wrong and that she approached her work objectively.

“I have never done anything to overstate analysis of evidence, nor have I done anything, for lack of better a word, to taint the evidence,” Yezzo said. “No, I didn’t appease prosecutors and law enforcement. I bent over backwards to try and find out whatever evidence was there, and that’s the best I can tell you.”

But two former attorneys general, defense attorneys, a judge, a former BCI superintendent and a nationally renowned forensic expert from the FBI all say that Yezzo has credibility issues that may have poisoned cases she touched.

Lee Fisher, who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1995, and Jim Petro, who served as attorney general from 2003 to 2007, both said they didn’t know of Yezzo when they were in office, but they now have concerns about her work.

“I would call for an investigation into every case where her findings and conclusions were instrumental in the final result of a case,” Fisher said. “We have an obligation to the integrity of the criminal-justice system to investigate every case. We have to determine whether her findings or conclusions were suspect.”

So Ohio BCI knew Yezzo was crooked and let her continue to work anyway for 32 years. And if you think the Kasich administration is going to even think about touching this mess with a 100-foot pole, you don't know Ohio politics very well at all.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Friday that his office was alerted to the concerns about Yezzo in 2015 and has since conducted two separate reviews of her work. One involved examining 100 criminal cases where Yezzo’s evidence analysis played a role in a conviction.

DeWine said they found no issues with her work.

Moving forward, DeWine, who did not serve as attorney general during Yezzo’s tenure, said he has no plans for an internal investigation into Yezzo’s history, but he will have open discussions with defense attorneys on a case-by-case basis if they raise questions.

He said the BCI, which handles about 37,000 cases a year, has a “long history of doing good work” and has received the highest level of accreditation.

AG DeWine of course is running for governor in 2018, so you can expect this entire Yezzo issue to magically vanish.  Ohio BCI certainly isn't going to do anything.

Maybe the courts will do something about it.

But we should trust law enforcement because they are just and fair, right?

What Actually Rigging An Election Looks Like

Ohio is arguably the key state for Donald Trump, he simply can't win the presidency without it (no Republican has won the White House without it) but the efforts by the Kasich administration and Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted to throw one million mostly black and low-income voters Ohio voters off the rolls has now been deemed illegal, and those voters will now be able to vote on provisional ballots.

A federal judge in Ohio laid out a plan on Wednesday for the state to restore voting privileges for people who were illegally removed from the state's voter rolls over the past five years.

The ruling stems from a case in which the ACLU and other plaintiffs sued, saying Ohio's process for removing people who had died or moved away from voter rolls was illegal because it purged people simply for not voting and not responding to a letter from the state.

Voting rights cases have become pivotal battlegrounds ahead of the Nov. 8 election between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump.

The American Civil Liberties Union and others have challenged laws in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina over voting rights issues.

In the Ohio case, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said Ohio's process for removing inactive voters was illegal, reversing an earlier ruling by U.S. District Judge George C. Smith.

In response, Smith on Wednesday ordered the state to allow people who had been removed from the rolls to cast provisional ballots on election day.

Those ballots will be checked against voter rolls, and if people were purged in the years 2011, 2013 or 2015, their votes will be counted and their registration restored.

Again, Husted tried to purge more than one million Ohio voters off the rolls over six years for the crime of not voting and not immediately responding to a letter that was often sent to an old address.  That will now be reversed.  How many provisional ballots will be cast, I don't know, but the plan was absolutely to lower turnout and give the state's elections to Republicans.

I'm glad the courts stopped this idiocy.

The GOP Conserva-schism Is In Full Effect

What the attacks in NY and NJ conveniently took out of the news for Trump is the fact that Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich (who ran against Trump and lost miserably in the primaries) has now openly declared war this weekend on his party's own candidate for president.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich's war with the national Republican Party exploded into the open Sunday night, when his top adviser thrashed GOP leader Reince Priebus and hinted that the presidential election may be out of reach for Donald Trump. 

The statement, issued on official campaign letterhead, followed remarks by Priebus earlier Sunday suggesting the party might block the Ohio governor from running for president again because he has refused to support Trump.

"Thankfully, there are still leaders in this country who put principles before politics," said John Weaver, Kasich's adviser, adding, "The idea of a greater purpose beyond oneself may be alien to political party bosses like Reince Priebus, but it is at the center of everything Governor Kasich does." 

Weaver derided Priebus as "a Kenosha political operative," referring to Priebus's Wisconsin home, and said the three-term Republican National Committee leader should be thanking Kasich for "an inclusive, conservative vision that can actually win a national election."

"The Governor is traveling the nation supporting down ballot Republicans and preventing a potential national wipeout from occurring on Reince's watch," Weaver said. 

Kasich's statement was a stunning act of open hostility between the national Republican Party and the governor in perhaps the most crucial swing state — and at a sensitive moment in the election. Trump has risen in national polls and inched closer to Hillary Clinton in swing states. He's even passed her in Ohio, perhaps his strongest chance to capture a state that Mitt Romney lost in 2012. 

RNC spokesman Sean Spicer shrugged off the Kasich camp's statement. "We are totally focused on winning back the White House and maintaining our majorities in the House and Senate," Spicer said.

Ohio remains a 100% must-win for Trump as it does for any Republican running for the White House, so for the sitting Republican governor of the state to hint that Trump cannot win is pretty much open combat on the field.  Kasich is pretty sore that he lost a primary to a clown, and I freely grant that Kasich would have been a much tougher opponent for Hillary to take on (although five minutes of press coverage on his balanced budget amendment would have ended his presidential run once America figured out it means massive, across-the-board cuts to Medicare and Social Security on top of everything else).

Still, to see this fight openly happening is amazing, and a reminder to all that the Republican party will not survive this election in its current form.  Pointing fingers seven weeks before election day over whose fault the impending loss is doesn't exactly have me looking for the Trump upset, even if he does win Ohio.

If he doesn't win Ohio, Clinton is your next president.

Worst Kasich Scenario, Con't

Ohio GOP Gov. John Kasich takes to the NY Times in an op-ed where he complains that his own chief legislative accomplishment from his time in the House, the 1996 Welform Reform Bill, was a failure.  It's just not his fault, he'll tell you, even though his claim to fame as a fiscal conservative was writing this bill 20 years ago.

TWO decades ago, Republicans and Democrats in Congress came together to make historic changes to our nation’s welfare program, working to strike the right balance between helping people in need while setting standards for personal responsibility. Twenty years ago today, President Bill Clinton signed their bill into law, famously declaring, “Today, we are ending welfare as we know it.” 

Many people in both parties will look at this anniversary as a reason to celebrate one of the greatest legislative achievements of the 1990s. But I’m here to tell you that it didn’t work — our welfare system still isn’t doing what it’s supposed to. 

I should know. In 1996, as a Republican representative from Ohio and the chairman of the House Budget Committee, I was proud to be part of the bipartisan team that overhauled our federal welfare system. These reforms, for the first time, introduced personal accountability into the welfare equation and began moving America down a better path by imposing lifetime limits on cash benefits, requiring recipients to work or get training and giving flexibility to states in shaping their own welfare programs to meet their particular needs. 

But today, it’s clear that our welfare system is still deeply flawed, thanks in part to later changes from Washington. In 2005, Congress pulled power back from the states, reducing local flexibility by enforcing a one-size-fits-all approach that sets arbitrary time limits on education and training for people seeking sustainable employment. As a result, too many lives are thrown away by a rigid and counterproductive system that treats an individual as a number, not as a person who is desperate to gain new skills and opportunities in life.

Let's break this down: first of all, as Chairman of the House Budget Committee, Kasich would have been (and was) the numbers guy on the Welfare Reform bill.  Second, who controlled Congress and the White House in 2005?  That would be the Republican party itself that made the very changes Kasich is complaining about.

Kasich goes on to detail the workarounds and waivers he wants in Ohio, but let's not forget that in his recent presidential campaign Kasich ran chiefly on a balanced budget amendment, which would have drastically cut federal spending on the very same welfare programs he's complaining about not working for Ohio.

So it's hard to take Kasich's complaints seriously when he was a major author of the legislation he's moaning about, even more so when his own party made the situation worse by his own admission, and triply so when as President he was calling for making the situation of states like Ohio even more awful with a federal balanced budget amendment.

But that's Kasich for you.

Last Call For Copping Out In Cleveland

Seems like Cleveland's Finest are a bit worried about the Republican National Convention and Ohio's open carry firearms laws, and want the city to do something about it ASAP.

The head of Cleveland's largest police union is calling on Ohio Gov. John Kasich to temporarily restrict the state's open carry gun laws during this week's Republican National Convention following Sunday's shooting in Louisiana that killed three officers and wounded at least three others. 

"We are sending a letter to Gov. Kasich requesting assistance from him. He could very easily do some kind of executive order or something -- I don't care if it's constitutional or not at this point," Stephen Loomis, president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, told CNN. "They can fight about it after the RNC or they can lift it after the RNC, but I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over." 

State law in Ohio allows for licensed firearm owners to wear their weapons in public. With the exception of a small "secure zone" inside and around the Quicken Loans Arena, residents, delegates and protesters are legally permitted to walk around the city -- including within its 1.7 square mile regulated "event zone" -- with any firearm not explicitly banned by the state. 

Kasich, responding to the request, said: "Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested." 

"The bonds between our communities and police must be reset and rebuilt -- as we're doing in Ohio -- so our communities and officers can both be safe. Everyone has an important role to play in that renewal," he said. 

Earlier, he released a video offering his condolences in the wake of the Baton Rouge attack.

So no, cops, the Republican party doesn't exactly have your back when it comes to you -- and public safety -- versus the NRA.  Maybe you want to keep that in mind the next time you decide the GOP is the "law and order" party, huh?

Guns will alway be more important that cops to the GOP.  Always remember that.