Monday, September 20, 2010

What were the years like with Bob Taft as Governor?

*  Remember when Republicans in the Ohio Legislature pushed for tax cuts that favored the rich?

Dispatch (12/30/2008)
....with the state facing a possible $7.3 billion budget shortfall, critics say Ohio can't afford the estimated $450 million in forgone revenue from the tax cut in fiscal 2010, which starts July 1, and $468 million in fiscal 2011.
 

Zach Schiller of Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal-leaning research group, said that the cuts disproportionately favor the wealthy -- and that the state's economy, which continues to hemorrhage jobs, would be better served by maintaining current levels of government spending... 

....Republicans, who still control the Ohio Senate, remain solidly behind the tax cut and say the job situation would be worse without it. Outgoing House Speaker Jon Husted, R-Kettering, even suggested recently that the cut could be considered an economic-stimulus package.....


Was this another example of Republican  "trickle down economics" that Republicans pushed?  What did Husted's tax cut do for you?


What did the Republicans do to help Ohioans during the 8 years of the Taft administration?
The Columbus Dispatch, the right-leaning, Republican-loving newspaper, had this to say about the Taft administration on December 31, 2006:


....Economically, it can be argued, not much. Ohio's unemployment rate is higher and a greater percentage of the state's residents are now living in poverty than in 1995. During the period of GOP control, Ohio has had the 48 th lowest rate of job growth among the 50 states, has lost 226,700 manufacturing jobs, is 46 th in per-capita income growth, and 47 th in population growth. Since 2000, in-state undergraduate tuition at Ohio's four-year universities has increased 73 percent. 

But the legacy of Republican reign is far more complex, at once embodying landmark changes in the ways Ohioans are taxed and their children are educated along with scandals that wrought the demise of total GOP rule. Over the 12-year period, business interests and social conservatives have had their way, while unions, trial lawyers and advocates for open government have chafed.... 

......Controversially, the Republicans seeded with state money an explosion of privately operated charter schools, growing from 15 such schools with 2,245 students costing the state $11 million in 1999 to 293 schools with 72,053 students costing $485 million in 2006.....

 In 2006, Husted helped to give Ohio tax money to charter schools.  After that, money started to flow from the state treasury to charter schools at a rapid rate.  David Brennan, of White Hat Management and owner of the largest charter schools operation in the state, has continued to reward Jon Husted with boatloads of campaign money from himself, and nearly everyone in his family but the family pet.  (Now John "I worked on Wall Street" Kasich is also getting some of that valuable campaign money.)

How have those charter schools done compared with Ohio's public schools?  Visit the Ohio Department of Education for information for the state report cards:
http://education.ohio.gov/GD/Templates/Pages/ODE/ODEDetail.aspx?page=3&TopicRelationID=115&ContentID=50598&Content=89808