Sick of the Republicans Yet?

Gov. John Kasich's ties to lobbyists are strong.  You have to wonder if anything Kasich does is determined by what is good for the citizens of Ohio or the lobbyists and the corporations they represent. 

Cleveland.com:

A $5,000-a-year commissioner with the Ohio Turnpike resigned to take a $93,000-a-year job with the toll road. 

Adam Greenslade, a lobbyist and Republican activist from Sandusky County, will start as the turnpike's government-affairs director on Feb. 27. 

Greenslade's move follows the recent hiring of Dale Perram, a registered Republican and a $10,000 contributor to Gov. John Kasich's campaign. The semi-retired executive is the turnpike's new chief of operations with a salary of $103,000.... 

That hiring follows an earlier announcement:

StateImpact:

Ohio Gov. John Kasich is moving forward with a plan to revamp the state’s job training system, a plan that reaches far into Ohio’s K-12 and postsecondary education systems and would affect how billions of dollars in state and federal funds are spent.....

.....Yesterday Kasich signed an executive order creating the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation and an accompanying advisory board. The head of the new office, former lobbyist Richard Frederick, will report directly to the governor, Kasich spokesperson Connie Wehrkamp said.....

Kasich once talked about the "pigs in the trough" which most people viewed as lobbyists.  Kasich, unfortunately, has strong friendships with lobbyists and he appears to be guiding his agenda to keeping his buddies happy.

*** Republican Rick Santorum believes that health insurance should not cover the cost of birth control.  With birth control pills running as high as $100/month, any coverage would be helpful to women.  There is an interesting opinion written by Stephanie Coontz and posted at CNN International that details Rick Santorum's "Stone Age View of Women"-----

....Taken with statements Santorum made in his 2005 book, "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good," his opposition to contraception (as well as to abortion, even in the case of rape) seems part and parcel of a deep hostility toward efforts to empower women and enhance their status. He has shown nothing but contempt for what his book called the "radical" feminist "pitch" that "men and women be given an equal opportunity to make it to the top in the workplace." So perhaps it's not surprising that at the time of publication he did not list his wife as a co-author or contributor, although when asked last week about this and other comments on working mothers, he now says his wife wrote that part of the book.....

.....The Santorums' apparent hostility to women's educational and professional advancement is insulting and out of touch with today's world. But it is also odd in light of their purported interest in the welfare of children. It turns out that the most powerful single influence on a child's educational success is not the mother's marital status but her own level of education and her educational aspirations for her children, according to education researcher W. Norton Grubb.....

.....Every family must make its own, sometimes difficult, decisions about what best fits their particular needs and preferences. We don't need politicians like Rick Santorum -- or, as he now somewhat unchivalrously claims, his wife -- making those decisions more painful by suggesting that women who choose to pursue careers are worse mothers than those who do not.

Rick Santorum must live in a bubble because he is completely out of touch with our lives.


>>>>  Of course, Mitt Romney's claim that he has "severely conservative" views is hilarious.  When I read his repeated use of the words "severely conservative" in his speech, it made me think that perhaps his speech had speech had been written by a 6th grader with a thesaurus.

Speaking of Romney......
The "Puppetmaster" is a great nickname for Grover Norguist.  David Frum's article at the Daily Beast quotes some shocking things from Norquist from CPAC:

All we have to do is replace Obama. ...  We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

The requirement for president?

Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States. This is a change for Republicans: the House and Senate doing the work with the president signing bills. His job is to be captain of the team, to sign the legislation that has already been prepared.

This is not a very complimentary assessment of Romney's leadership....

Grover Norquist believes that Romney is a weak, easily manipulated, non-thinker that will do whatever he is told.  That is a great endorsement.  Norquist just revealed a lot about Romney and what he'd do as President.