Feb. 21, 2019: Fran DeWine Meets the Underside of a Bus

Ohio looks at hemp legalization, online charter schools continue to fail students, and more.

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Mike DeWine loaned himself $3 million down the stretch of his gubernatorial race to bury Rich Cordray in negative ads. The gambit worked; however, it brought DeWine’s total skin in the game to $4 million.

What most people don’t realize about politicians “loaning” themselves campaign money is it puts them in debt to their donors to recoup that balance, which isn’t hard when you’re the most powerful elf in the state. Sound shady to you? Well, welcome to Ohio politics.

In typical DeWine fashion, he threw his wife under the bus when asked about how he’ll repay himself.

From Jim Siegel of dispatch.com:

DeWine also disclosed that he plans to pay himself back — rather than forgiving — $4 million in personal loans he made to his campaign, the most-expensive ever for governor at more than $35 million. Some have criticized the prospect of DeWine raising campaign cash while serving as governor to benefit his personal finances.

“You can have that conversation with my wife (Fran) and you can ask my wife if she would like the money paid back,” he said. “This is s not like this (the repayment of personal campaign loans) never has happened before ... we have done it before. Many candidates have done it before in the past.”

Few things more cowardly in politics than husbands shifting the blame of bad optics onto their wife. Your wife isn’t the governor, Mike, so why the hell would we ask her?

And since DeWine will rely on wealthy benefactors to recoup the debt accrued to realize his life’s dream of winning the governorship, he’s not in any position to raise taxes on the rich. Instead, Ohio’s poor and middle class will foot the bill to repair the state’s roads with a regressive 16-cent gas tax hike.

From Randy Ludlow of dispatch.com:

Gov. Mike DeWine will propose an 18-cents a gallon increase in the gasoline tax to maintain and upgrade Ohio’s roads and bridges in the transportation budget he submits to lawmakers Thursday.

DeWine disclosed the number in a Wednesday interview with radio host Mike Trivisonno on WTAM in Cleveland. He did not disclose if the amount would be phased in over a number of years to supplement the current tax of 28 cents a gallon.

The first-year Republican’s request represents an 64-percent or $1.2 billion annual increase in the gas tax, with DeWine billing the new money as vital to maintaining safe roads and protecting Ohio’s economy.

Republicans refuse to raise taxes in a timely fashion until everything goes to shit. Then they scramble to find a way to shift that burden onto people who actually have to work for a living.

Here’s how much extra you can look forward to paying at the pump, via cincinnati.com (blue is current level, black is new gas tax level):

If you listen carefully, you can hear John Kasich laughing from a CNN green room about sticking DeWine with a 64% tax hike while he’s off to role-play as a serious primary threat to President Adult Diaper. (The true threat, by the way, is Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.)

Ohio lost $200 million to a grifter who ran the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow that shuttered its doors and displaced thousands of students as soon as it came under scrutiny from the state. Ohio voters promptly promoted two central figures (then-Auditor Dave Yost and then-State Senator Keith Faber) in the last election.

It doesn’t appear the state has learned anything from that scandal. Online charter schools continue to fail their students.

From Jim Siegel of dispatch.com:

Overall academic performance at Ohio charter schools is a mixed bag, a new analysis released Tuesday says, but one fact is clear: Students at online charters are performing significantly worse.

Online charter school students in Ohio get 71 fewer days of learning growth compared with students at brick-and-mortar charters for reading, and 130 fewer days in math, according to a new study of charter school performance by CREDO, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.

“We’re for great schools for all kids,” said Margaret Macke Raymond, director of CREDO. “So the question for me is, where we see a few online schools doing really well for kids, why are we not diving into that and finding out what they’re doing?”

Approximately 22,000 Ohio students attend online charter schools.

The dilemma here is there are obviously students better served by a non-traditional environment. But obviously it’s not working for a majority of kids. Death threats from my mom were the only reason I went to high school most of the time. I can only imagine how easy it would have been to skirt my duties if I sat in front of a computer all day.

So, I’ll never be a believer in online education except for a small portion of obviously gifted students who have the drive to succeed in such an environment. Otherwise, kids’ educations is too important to gamble on something that’s clearly not working for a majority of their students.

The federal government legalized hemp as part of the Farm Bill in December. While other states, like Oregon, already have a booming hemp business, Ohio is dragging its feet in typical fashion.

From Jackie Borchardt of cincinnati.com:

COLUMBUS – Ohio lawmakers will for the first time this year consider lifting the state's ban on hemp cultivation and processing.

A bill introduced Tuesday in the Ohio Senate would legalize hemp within the framework of the 2018 farm bill. The new law, signed in December, lifted the federal prohibition on hemp but left regulation up to individual states.

Hemp is a cannabis plant that contains less than 0.3 percent THC, an intoxicating compound that generates the "high" associated with marijuana.

Ohio law does not differentiate between hemp and marijuana, so state regulators have said all hemp-related products are legal only through the state's new medical marijuana program. That position, publicly issued in August, has led to stores pulling hemp extracts from their shelves.

Ohio politicians love complaining about the lack of state funds. If only there were a weed that could be grown indoors or outdoors that we could regulate and tax like tobacco.

Legalizing hemp seems like a no brainer. Yet Attorney General Dave Yost is the only state-wide office holder that’s copped to toking the Devil’s lettuce in college, and he’s against marijuana legalization like the rest of his boring-ass cronies.

Hemp is a bit different, and given that Midwest farmers are going bankrupt faster than in the 2008 recession, perhaps it’s time to allow them to get into the business that’s making farmers millions in other states.

The Ohio High School Athletic Association recently released a letter begging parents not to be raging dickheads at Little Johnny’s athletic events. And now we know why: The organization lost 800 officials in the last year.

From Mike Dyer of wcpo.com:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio High School Athletic Association is down almost 800 officials for its junior high through high school varsity sanctioned sports compared to the 2017-18 school year.

The OHSAA has 14,060 officials as of Feb. 4 compared to 14,842 overall (as of May 31, 2018) during the 2017-18 school year.

Data is available going back to the 2010-11 school year when there were 16,629 officials – the most in the past nine school years. There are 1,679 member schools in Ohio including high schools and junior high schools.

The “alarming shortage” of high school officials is an ever-growing reality as adult behavior at games and events continues to be the primary reason for the overall shortage, according to the OHSAA.

This is why I laugh when Baby Boomers roll out the “Participation Trophy” trope against Millennials. Participation Trophies weren’t created for the children. They were created so rage-case boomers wouldn’t flip their shit and murder their child for coming home empty-handed.

Referees deserve hazard pay in this day and age. The only way I’d do it is they let me strap an AK-47 to my back in self defense.

Here’s your daily reminder that right-wing nationalists are America’s biggest domestic terrorism threat, and it’s not close.

From Lynh Bui of capitalgazette.com:

U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant and self-identified white nationalist has been arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons and ammunition in his Maryland home that authorities say he stockpiled to launch a massive domestic terror attack targeting politicians and journalists.

Christopher Paul Hasson called for "focused violence" to "establish a white homeland" and dreamed of ways to "kill almost every last person on earth," according to court records filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland. Though court documents do not detail a specific planned date for an attack, the government said he had been amassing supplies and weapons since 2017 at the latest, developed a spreadsheet of targets that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and searched the internet using phrases such as "best place in dc to see congress people" and "are supreme court justices protected."

"The defendant intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country," the government said in court documents filed this week, arguing that Hasson should stay in jail awaiting trial.

Hasson, of Silver Spring, is expected to appear before a judge for a detention hearing in federal court in Greenbelt on Thursday.

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about law enforcement’s inability to quell the nationalist threat. The problem is a lot of cops have nationalist sympathies.

Perhaps we should’ve taken the FBI’s 2006 warning about right-wing groups infiltrating police forces more seriously.

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