Since John Kasich is running for the GOP presidential nomination, I recently received an email from the Democratic National Committee group known as the "Factivists". They had a question for me and other like-minded Ohioans:
Can you tell us a little bit about John Kasich?
Here's what I told them (and now you, too):
________________________________________
Oh, yes, I can tell you a little bit about John Kasich.
He has a long-held, often-expressed ideological dream: to eliminate the state income tax in
Ohio. Can’t do it completely, but he’d
like to. He’s a classic regressive tax
policy guy – slash income tax rates, increase sales tax rates, cut spending on
public education.
As a state rep, Kasich was a member of ALEC, the GOP
law-writing machine funded by and doing the bidding of right-wing billionaires.
Worked for the disgraced Wall St. firm Lehman Brothers, but
bugged out just before Lehman failed in the Great Crash of ’08. Kasich claimed he knew nothing about Lehman’s
troubles and had nothing to do with it.
He took temporary shelter as a Fox News host until his campaign for
governor.
As governor, Kasich’s signature legislative move was his
disastrous “get tough” attempt to bust public employee unions in Ohio via
Senate Bill 5. SB 5 sailed through the
legislature and was signed into law by Kasich in February 2011. This ignited huge public outcry and protest
demonstrations. SB 5 was repealed by
referendum in November 2011. Kasich’s
pet project was a horrible misreading of the tea leaves and a miserable
failure.
Kasich has staunchly opposed gay marriage and LGBT
rights. He ordered the state’s AG to
defend Ohio’s constitutional ban on gay marriage. That ban was overturned in the recent Supreme
Court decision in the Obergefell case.
He is a voter-suppression advocate. He favors less absentee voting and less
in-person early voting. He opposes same-day
voter registration. He supported a
failed photo-ID bill.
His Cabinet appointments are completely Caucasian. Kasich is our Honky-In-Chief.
As governor-elect, said he was anxious to “exploit the wonders” of our state’s
natural resources. (2010)
As governor-elect, told the sitting governor to stop all
work on a high-speed rail project which would have provided Ohio with $400
million in federal funds. Kasich had the
nerve to ask the feds if Ohio could just keep the $400 mil and skip the
high-speed rail thing. They said
no. Kasich also refused another $450
million in federal education funding.
(2010)
At a 2010 press conference:
“We have so many stupid rules and
regulations that prevent us from getting the best people to work in
government. And I blame it on all of you
(the media), all this ‘transparency’ and ‘conflicts’ and all this other
stuff. I want to just tell you, it’s a
problem.”
“I find myself
tripping over anthills on the way to the pyramids.” (Same press conference, 2010)
Told Ohio teachers unions they’d have “zero access” to his administration unless they ran state-wide ads
apologizing for their criticism of him in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
Appointed a former utility company executive and current
operator of a Dubai oil and gas company to be Director of the Ohio Dept. of
Natural Resources. (2010)
Appointed a former executive at Perdue Foods, one of the
largest commercial poultry operations in the world and creators of mega-tons of
chicken shit, to be the head of the Ohio EPA.
(2010)
His first head of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio
was a pro-coal climate-change denier.
(2010)
His first proposed budget in 2011 cut funding to Ohio’s
nursing homes by half a billion dollars.
Quadrupled tuition vouchers for charter schools. (2011)
His 2011 budget not only slashed funding for the [now
defunct] Ohio Consumers Council, it also contained a sentence prohibiting the
OCC from making any derogatory comment about deregulation of the natural gas
industry.
Wanted to throw $400 million in tax abatements at Sears to
get them to locate some operations in Ohio.
Sears? Who goes to Sears
anymore? (2011)
Eliminated the Ohio Dept. of Economic Development and
replaced it with a “privatized” entity, JobsOhio, which was funded by $7.5
million in state grants and appropriations, plus the “lease” of $100 billion
per year in state liquor sale profits.
This is “privatized”? (2011)
Launched his union-busting effort, SB 5, by telling state
workers they were “lucky to have a job.” (2011)
Regarding Ohio’s public employees, said: “We
would outlaw strikes, and the penalties would be either firing or docked
wages.”
Any recourse for dissatisfied workers? Nope. “They have a job. Try to come up with something.”
Kasich also said he’d eliminate Ohio labor laws requiring
binding arbitration and prevailing wages.
(all 2011)
On the day in February 2011 when the legislature passed SB 5,
the Kasich administration locked the doors of the statehouse to keep out all
the protesters. (I was there.) The next, Kasich shut down all email access
to state senators.
Said that “a waitress
at Bob Evans doesn’t have a pension, and has health care that is shabby at
best,” so SB 5’s gutting of public employee benefits and rights was “fairness”. (2011)
At a 2011 GOP event, Kasich said public employees “don’t pay a dime” toward their pensions
and health insurance. (False.) “We are
at war with these people.” He said
that if SB 5 is repealed (it was), “we’ll
ram it through anyway” with piece-meal legislation. (They did not.)
Gave his first State of the State address in 2011 in the
midst of his SB 5 debacle. His speech
was drowned out by raucous, booing protesters who filled the Columbus
statehouse and the Capitol grounds.
(Kasich decided to give his 2012 speech out of town, 100 miles in
Steubenville.)
While continuing his SB 5 effort to destroy Ohio’s public
unions, Kasich displayed audacity and total lack of irony when he declared the
week of May 1, 2011 “Public Service Appreciation Week.”
In August 2011, announced a sudden willingness to
renegotiate and compromise on SB 5, if only the opposition would first pull its
repeal referendum off the fall ballot.
Kasich’s offer was refused and SB 5 was repealed.
In a 2011 speech to the Ohio EPA, Kasich went off on a rant
about a 3 year-old traffic stop: “Have you ever been stopped by a policeman
who’s an idiot? I had this idiot pull me
over on Route 315. . . . He’s an IDIOT!!”
Told the Ohio EPA Director to be “friendlier to business.”
(2011)
“Raising taxes at the
local level is not an option.” (2011,
ignoring the fact that local tax decisions are none of his business.)
While speaking in Cleveland, Kasich, the governor of Ohio, proudly
called himself “a Pittsburgh boy.” Someone groaned and Kasich shot back, “Yeah, well, when you win a Super Bowl, let
me know.” (2011)
In his second State of the State address in 2012, Kasich
rambled extemporaneously and bizarrely about such things as blue-tongue cows
going to Turkey, a dream about Jerry Seinfeld in the backseat of a car, and
deep brain massage. He called
Californians “a bunch of wackadoodles.”
Kasich refused to set up a state-run health insurance
exchange under the ACA/Obamacare. (2012)
Kasich’s president of the Ohio Board of Education had
Facebook posts comparing Obama to Hitler.
(2012)
Kasich appointed an utterly unqualified former lobbyist and
non-doctor to be the Director of the Ohio Dept. of Health. (2012)
Three private citizen consumers,
along with nine doctors, are appointed by the governor to sit on the State
Medical Board. Two of Kasich’s
“consumer” appointments were the president of Ohio Right to Life and a trustee
of that same outfit. Both are rabid
anti-abortion zealots. (2012)
Kasich’s Ohio Dept. of Natural
Resources fired a division chief, a 39-year employee, for denying permits to
allow the coal industry to violate state and federal law. (2013)
After Kasich touted a supposed
budget increase in state education spending, the actual figures revealed that
60% of Ohio school districts would receive no increase at all, or would be
dealt a funding decrease. When asked if
he had actually reviewed any of the data on his school funding scheme, Kasich
said, “No, I don’t look at those because
it’s the philosophy that matters.”
(2013)
He signed a budget bill
restricting access to abortion in Ohio, and reducing funding for it. (2014)
He instructed the Ohio Dept. of
Natural Resources to devise a “marketing plan” to promote and sell fracking in
our state parks and forests. (2014)
“He upset a lot of working
people.” From Kasich’s own 2014
reelection campaign ad, a reference to his doomed SB 5.
“Taxes should have the least impact on the private economy.” (2015)
“Income taxes punish success.”
(2015)
Kasich opposes Planned Parenthood
and supports the work of Center for Medical Progress, the slimy hidden-video
makers. (2015)
Although he has green-lighted
every conceivable fracking endeavor, after almost 6 years in office Kasich
still can’t manage to pass an increase in Ohio’s oil/gas severance tax. There’s money to be made, but the State of
Ohio is not making any of it. (2015)
___________________________________________
Despite the recent spin-efforts to soften his image,
John Kasich remains a standard-issue conservative Republican -- a real SOB at heart. In my humble
opinion, he's a shoot-from-the-lip, arrogant, hot head of below-average intelligence
who’s never met a piece of bait he wouldn’t rise to. He would be a dangerous and divisive
president.
