Gov. John Kasich has enjoyed over six years of seemingly sycophantic coverage by most of Ohio’s print legacy newspapers. Two in particular, The Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Columbus Dispatch, have covered Ohio’s 69th governor as if they were his adjunct public relations department.
But behold, The Toledo Blade [TTB], which in the past has shown it’s not as squeamish as its other colleagues among Ohio’s Big Eight newspapers to ruffle feathers in Columbus, dared to ruffle them again .
In its editorial penned today on the winter solstice, “The miracle vanishes,” TTB finally catches up to the drumbeat […]
Full Story... →When Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” was published in the mid-1930s the world was in a frightening mess. America was trying to survive the Great Depression. Hitler’s forces were menacing Europe. Where could one turn for relief from economic anxiety and poverty at home and savage repression elsewhere by Storm Troopers?
As Lewis writes in great detail, Americans’ turned to a U.S. senator named Berzelius Windrip from the Vermont town of Fort Beulah, hoisting him to the presidency in 1936. As he had promised, Windrip set out to overturn the political landscape with a radical plan to
make […]
A December 12 New York Times research article indicates the positive relationship between higher funding levels and outcomes.
During the DeRolph school funding litigation era, the state defendants often attempted to convince the court that money doesn’t make a difference in educational outcomes and opportunities. For the record, the Court didn’t buy that argument.In the real world, whether in public education or any other enterprise, of course money makes a difference. But, state defendants in school funding cases across the nation hired school finance “experts” to support the myth that the level of funding is not […]
Full Story... →The OAPCS will be out of business at the end of this year. This organization has been an influential advocacy agent for Ohio’s publicly-funded, privately-operated charter industry. Some of the reasons for its demise are identified in a December 14 Columbus Dispatch article.
The dismal reputation of Ohio’s charter industry may be the reason funders have withdrawn their support of OAPCS. It is ironic the federal government has awarded a $71 million grant to expand the failed charter industry in Ohio.
The newly anticipated federal emphasis on expanding the failed charter industry will no doubt generate another […]
Full Story... →How much evidence that something doesn’t work must one accumulate to conclude it’s time to try something different?
If I have an irritant in my eye, and I choose to try to dislodge the offending particle by repeatedly whapping myself in the face with a ball-peen hammer, how many whaps shall I allow my face to withstand before, say, splashing some water on the little bugger instead?
How many whaps does it take to convince one the method has failed? Apparently, with regard to supply-side “trickle down” economics, 40 years of whaps doesn’t quite cut it. This next whap, surely, will […]
Full Story... →As many of us look on in horror at the burlesque President-elect Donald Trump is planning to make of our national government, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel’s reptilian political brain has slithered forth, sniffing with forked tongue a new opportunity for personal advancement – a new persona to emulate.
From The Hill:
Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel (R) is looking to replicate Donald Trump‘s campaign strategy, hoping to reap the benefits of the president-elect’s success in his second Senate bid.
Mandel is looking to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) in 2018, taking advantage of a midterm electorate that leans more Republican.
Mandel announced his bid […]
Full Story... →It’s been a busy week for our next president, Donald Trump, as he returned to his campaign mode with his audience chanting “lock her up”. In the spirit of the holiday season, he’s packed his cabinet nominees with a goon squad, giving them an opportunity to advance their own grievances against the departments they will serve.
Rick Perry, for example, is Herr Trump’s choice to head the Energy Department, the very operation that he vowed to eliminate when he ran for president. And Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who has long scorned climate change science, will doubtless carry on […]
Full Story... →Reports were in Friday about what labor statistics released from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services said about how Ohio under Gov. John Kasich’s guidance is doing. And it’s not a heart-warming scene with Christmas, supposedly the wonderful time of the year, a week away.
The Grinch that’s stolen jobs over the last few months took a little vacation this month, as Ohio gained 9,100 jobs in November 2016, breaking a streak of three consecutive months when Ohio had lost employment. While last month’s job number is positive news, the year over year Ohio job growth rate for […]
Full Story... →When traditional public schools are low performing, federal and state officials demand alternatives-when charter schools are low performing and laced with corruption, they demand charter expansion
What is it about charter schools that gain the favor of public officials regardless of their performance, proneness to fraud and corruption and lack of inclusiveness?
Why do some parents transfer their children from a high-performing public school to a low-performing charter?
Are some public officials so enamored with the notion of choice and/or privatization that it blinds them to the failure of chartering?
Low performance and fiscal fraud in the charter industry is […]
Full Story... →On Monday, if everything goes as planned, New York real estate billionaire Donald John Trump will be elected the 45th President of the United States. The Electoral College, the brainchild of Alexander Hamilton that is named in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, is composed of 538 Electors who collectively represent the combined total members of the U.S. House and Senate for each state.
For Ohio, the number of Electors is 18, although it once was as high as 25 in the 1920s. The Twelfth Amendment requires each elector to cast one […]
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