It ranks 7th in population and gross state product, 30th in per capita personal income, 6th and 5th, respectively, for business and personal bankruptcies, 18th in annual income, 28th in people living in poverty, 6th in senior population, 5th in union workers, 37th as the most livable state and 4th in greenhouse gas emissions.
Not in the same category but curiously connected all the same, The Ohio State University, a venerable behemoth of college sports, is now 2nd to The Florida Gators in college football and basketball. But I digress.
Even though the one-time titan of industry now finds itself rubbing shoulders in a number of areas with perennial low-tax, low-performing bottom dwellers like Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as a new governor attempts a turnaround of its lagging economy, it is seen by many politicians and political pundits in one key category – who will be the nation’s next president – as Number One.
WHY OHIO GOES BLUE IN 08
As in 2000, but more so in 2004, when Ohio is believed by many to have returned the Minister from Midland to the White House, all eyes will again be focused on the nation's 17th state. And depending on which way it sways in two years between the Democratic and Republicans presidential standard bearers, will determine if Democrats retake the White House much as they did the Governor’s Mansion in Ohio in 2006.
Democrats last year took back four of five statewide offices and picked off another six seats in the legislature, which is still controlled by Republicanoids. However, without a little parlay with Democrats now, they are unable by themselves to override a veto by the House and or pass an emergency measure in the Senate. Used skillfully in combination with an executive veto by Strickland, who did so on his first day as governor,, the limited leverage Democrat lawmakers now enjoy can out maneuver Republicanoids by forcing them to oppose sensible, compassionate policies to move the job-battered state they are responsible for creating forward.
JOB LOSSES CONTINUE
In the most recent analysis of how Ohio’s economy is faring these days, Policy Matters Ohio (PMO), a thoughtful, non-partisan economic analysis think tank, showed the sad truth that, if anything, things are getting worse as more jobs continue to seep from the state.
Ohio’s job market continues to struggle. The state lost jobs during the winter, more than offsetting the modest gains experienced during calendar 2006, according to seasonally adjusted payroll numbers for nonfarm wage and salary jobs released March 27 by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS). Over the past year, the state has lost 24,000 jobs. Small increases in service jobs have been more than offset by losses in manufacturing and construction.
But most disheartening for Ohio, a state whose historic prowess has been measured in manufacturing jobs, is the continued loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs, a sad fact of reality that makes the uphill climb by new Democratic Governor Ted Strickland that much tougher. Ted the Good has inherited this sorry economic mess from Republican lawmakers, who feathered their nest and the nests of their big business buddies on the backs of average Ohioans, who rank near the top in personal bankruptcies and home foreclosures.
Today's CBS program "Sunday Morning" featured a family from Youngstown, Ohio -- a troubled and depressed part of the state -- in their story about the growing pressures on America's shrinking middle class to keep up with overall living costs in spite of disappointing wage growth.
To frame the state's job picture properly, PMO's report continued with this sobering view:
Since June of 2005, when an overhaul of state taxes was signed into law with the intent of creating jobs, employment in Ohio has essentially been flat, growing by less than 1,000 jobs. During the same period, the nation added more than 3.8 million jobs, for a growth rate of 2.8 percent. U.S. manufacturing employment has fallen since June 2005 by 109,000 jobs. However, Ohio has lost close to 30,000 manufacturing jobs in the same period, more than four times the relative loss experienced by the nation as a whole.
THE WHITE HOUSE AS ALAMO
It is quite ironic that Bush and Cheney, whose power and reputation were built in Texas, are now holed up in the White House, much like Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie, two heroes of their time, were trapped at the Alamo and died there. But this time, instead of an approaching army of bad Mexicans bent on their demise, Bush and Cheney (the bad guys in this historic melodrama of good versus evil)is being hunted down by a growing army of Americans who no longer fall for or swallow their preposterous declarations that the sky is falling (terrorists are coming to get us) and to prevent that from happening we must attack (fight them over their so we don't have to fight them here).
The New York Times (subscription) hits a high note here on why young adults are turning away from Republicans to Democrats, which can only spell further heartache for them in 2008, when a Democratic president will be elected and Democrats enlarge their numbers in Congress and in more state legislatures like Ohio, which need to do so so Ted the Good and make good on his journey to Turnaround Ohio.
As the War in Iraq continues to implode each day with more dead Americans, throngs of Shiite Muslims fearlessly marching and chanting for the White House to withdraw its occupying army and sandal-wearing teenagers downing American and British helicopters, Planet Bush careens further a field from its once solid orbit around its central energy source, terrorism.
As Bush goes, so go the hopes of Republicanoids, who have walked lock step with him in the past, never once breaking ranks in defending and justifying his reckless actions and cynical policies. Bush publicly disdains government while simultaneous relishing fattening it up with endless borrowing so special interest "hunter-vendors" can feed at will on the fatted calf of big Republican government. Ronald Reagan called this privatization. But under Bush its called kleptocracy, government by thieves. Stealing the nation's present and future, the Bushies will continue to loot our treasury by throwing one American soldier after another into harm's way to justify their cynical and deceitful pogrom against America, its constitution and Bill of Rights.
As Americans and Ohioans wake up to the theft of their taxes and their future by Republicanoids, their recoil vote will accrue to Democrats, who now have the opportunity to show that good government is a direct function of good people working on good things, like an affordable health care system, for example, among other people centric policies.
In a recent NYT article, the growing disquiet among Republicanoids that they suffer more of the election-year beatings next as that they underwent last year, when statewide offices, governorships and legislatures returned to Democratic control.
Republican leaders across the country say they are growing increasingly anxious about their party’s chances of holding the White House, citing public dissatisfaction with President Bush, the political fallout from the war in Iraq and the problems their leading presidential candidates are having generating enthusiasm among conservative voters.
I just don’t know how they can run hard enough or fast enough to escape the gravitational pull of the Bush administration.
OHIOANS WON'T BE FOOLED AGAIN
Steve Hoffman, a Beacon Journal editorial writer notes that even office workers in the suburbs are increasingly jittery. He says that many are swing voters who could be swayed into the Democratic fold based on economic issues.
Strickland's 60 percent victory last year exposed the fragile nature of Bush's re-election victory in Ohio, based on social issues and the projection of leadership against terrorist threats. It is about whether workers in places such as North Canton can find a way forward for themselves and their families in a competitive economy whose prime requirement is a highly skilled, highly knowledgeable work force.
Marilou Johanek, a (Toledo) Blade commentary writer added her take on why Ohioans are turning Blue this way:
Karl Rove is the GOP's guiding light, finessing fallacy into acceptable political framework. And the propaganda patented by the esteemed political operative of the Bush Administration has gone largely unchallenged. Until now. The fingerprints of the master schemer are all over the latest White House push to bolster the President's Iraq war strategy. But now people see through the charade.
And even Joe Klein, a Time Magazine columnist concedes that even he is starting to rethink confronting Bush and the Bushies head on. Here's a small excerpt from his recent column:
...in referring to the president, that he (Klein)has "tried to be respectful of the man and the office" but now he recognizes that the "defining sins" of his administration "are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.
Earlier in the column, Klein hits Bush's "adolescent petulance" and "indifference to reality in Iraq" and charges that his "hyper-partisanship" amounts to "a travesty of governance." He declares that the three major Bush problems of the year "precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history:
Arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys)