King John's Ad Wars

A couple weeks ago, Ohio's nursing home industry had the audacity to run an ad criticizing Gov. King Kasich for his proposed budget, which cuts their state funding by about half a billion dollars. Quite credibly, their ad claims this would result in reductions in nursing jobs and in care and service to those they serve.

Kasich responded with a fit of pique. He called the ad an unfair attack and insisted that nursing homes are nothing but a big money suck and his "jobs budget" would give their "powerful lobby" their just desserts.

Then, on cue, came ads from a consortiom of Ohio big businesses urging passage of Kasich's budget. One Ohio United is a non-profit 501(c)(4) now authorized to do partisan shit like this, thanks to the moronic Citizens United v. FEC decision. (CU v. FEC ranks right up there with the Dred Scott decision in the annals of Supreme Court stupidity.)

Gov. Kasich claims he has no involvement with One Ohio United, which is, of course, a big fat fucking lie. OOU was founded by the CEO of a company on which Kasich served as a board member, and its articles of incorporation were filed by a former Kasich campaign staffer. There are several possible campaign violations here, but John-Boy, he don't care.

One Ohio United's ad is a lie, too, although it fires a flurry of "facts" at us. It claims that in the past decade, Ohio's tax revenues are flat but its "government has grown by 36%." Specifics? No way. Just a provocative statement, and let the other side prove it isn't true. And how exactly does government "grow"? Explain that to me. What do you mean? And are these guys saying we should grow tax revenue? These guys?

Their ad says "Ohio has lost more jobs [in the past decade] than any other state except Michigan." What they don't say is that much of that job loss came in auto manufacturing (Michigan & Ohio being the top two in that area) and those jobs didn't leave Ohio for, say, Nebraska. It was not the result of some horrible Ohio anti-business policy. They left forever, not replaced anywhere, the result of forty years of silly-ass over-capacity in the auto industry. Kasich's budget will do nothing to fix that.

Their ad claims Ohio has "higher sales AND property taxes than New York." (Ooh! Higher than that hotbed of liberalism, New York!) No details with this claim, either. Of course, sales & property taxes differ from county to county, and the many school levys add even more variation. The truth, if any, may lie in the ad's combining of the two. Why those two? Why not toss in taxes on income, gasoline, food, tobacco, what have you?

Their ad touts Kasich's miraculous balanced budget ("balanced" with fantastic, fake increases in projected revenues), accomplished without any tax increases whatsoever. (No, just some right-wing social engineering, draconian spending cuts, and union-busting. That's all.)

The ad wraps up by telling us it is "time to downsize government" (Here we go again -- the return of the Reagan zombies!) and "make Ohio business-friendly again." (Pardon us. We just didn't realize how terribly "unfriendly" we'd been until Kasich and his cronies began whining about it every five fucking minutes! Now we get it -- friendliness means huge cuts in corporate taxes and regulations. Right, ol' buddy?)

When you believe you need an ad campaign like this just months into your administration, when you feel you've gotta use deceptive advertising to prop up yourself and your stupid store-bought policies, what does it say about you? It says you're a fucking shit-heel.