Legacy not just of Strickland, but also of Bob Taft and Jean Schmidt
Ohio unemployment figures for December were 10.9%, one of the worst performances in the nation. It would be easy to blame this on Ted Strickland and the democrats that presently control Columbus, and Republican leaders are rejoicing in doing so. But from COAST’s perspective, the news is the bitter fruit of the bloated government embraced by both the Taft administration and the Republican legislature.
“It took more than three years of Ted Strickland to ruin Ohio’s once-vibrant economy,” said COAST Chairman Jason Gloyd. “Ohio is uncompetitive for jobs, and the fault for that falls squarely on the shoulders of Bob Taft and Jean Schmidt who voted for his high-tax proposals.”
Actually, Ohio is quite competitive for business. This is very much why it hasn't seen unemployment on the scale of Nevada, California, or Michigan during this downturn.
ReplyDeleteSite Selection magazine even gave it a fourth-place ranking (http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2009/11/ohios_business_climate_earns_a.html for 2009. The state jumped from 17th to 8th place among corporate site-seekers, a change that reflects the FACT that Strickland's policies are paying off. Sure, this is one ranking, but there have been many others over the past two years that have been a considerable improvement over the Taft years.
Noted also, is your lack of including Chabot in that list, who also should be to blame, as his COAST-leaning ideology cost this county countless federal grants that would have created jobs and maintained or improved infrastructure.
However, considering you couldn't even get off your lazy rear to do any real work for this story, and decided to self-quote your own armchair opinion to prove your point just exposes your ignorance.
First you waste time finding decades-old pictures of steam engines, cable cars, and old trollies caught in snow to somehow argue that means rail should never be built, even in a city where major snowfall occurs roughly one out of every four years. Now you self-cite to argue that Ohio is uncompetitive for jobs, when all the ranking organizations out there give it pretty high marks (in spite of our state income tax).
No, Ohio wasn't some magical fluke state that escaped the recession. It is unrealistic to assume that it could be. It is childish to use this fact to slander the current administration. Ohio is part of the national economy, just like Texas, California, Michigan, and New York. Ohio sells to the rest of the nation and buys from the rest of the nation. It is impossible for it to be immune to a national recession.
It's the economy, stupid, and it was screwed up long before the Democrats came back into power in 2006. If you can understand that, then you can't understand anything.
Coleman,
ReplyDelete"Quite competitive"?!? We're obviously not acquainted with your definition.
Honda located their US headquarters and many manufacturing plants here in Ohio for decades while Republicans ruled the roost. But under this Democrat administration they found our economy so "competitive", they decided to build their latest plant over in Indiana.
NCR started in Dayton, OH in 1884, and grew to dominate their industry. There have been ups and downs, but after 126 years, the business climate of this Democrat-controlled administration drove them completely out of Ohio and into Duluth, GA.
We can bore you with such stories all day long. Or if you like, we can talk about how when jobs leave, people leave with them. That's why we're almost certain to lose one of our seats in the US House of Representatives.
In another post we talk about how Ohio's estate tax drives retirees out who don't want to punish their survivors with excessive taxation. Florida has made billions by creating tax policies that welcome wealthy retirees.
Strickland's policies are paying off all right. But not for us. Florida, Georgia, Texas, Kentucky, and others are eating our lunch, and we're handing it to them on a silver platter.
We quite properly lay blame with Taft, Schmidt, and their ilk. But Strickland has taken a bad situation and found a way to make it worse. Kasich can't be sworn-in soon enough.
Coleman -
ReplyDeleteGet off the internet! We need you to salt our driveways in case it snows. The places where we chose to live once we got off City Council require us to keep our sidewalks and driveways snow-free.
As you know, we fled the Democrat controlled City of Cincinnati for lower-tax, safer, Republican controlled Green and Anderson Townships.
We put our money where are mouths are, and so are Ohio businesses.