Very seldom do I agree with these two, but....

Here Thomoas Suddes suggests that Ohio Constitutional changes might be in order. While I don't agree with change just for change's sake, Suddes has one good argument.

Rid ourselves of our self imposed term limits on House and Senate members. He says: "First and foremost would be repeal of General Assembly term limits, which curse Ohio with a legislature always looking for its next job rather than finishing the job at hand." I think the larger reason would be that the voters can't vote for who they want. The voters should decide a term limit on the elected member's merits by voting intelligently. However, since the voters know they can't / don't / won't vote intelligently, they limited themselves with term limits. Seems rather childish to me.

Here's an idea for the voters that don't trust themselves to make the correct choices when voting.........don't vote!

Here, Jim Phillips thinks it is a big deal for law enforcement to fake evidence. I do too. I'm not sure why Sheriff Kelley insists on employing this individual.

Previous post on this subject

Athens County Sheriff Office move

A few comments on this Athens News story and this Athens News story:

1. We currently have new property between Canaanville and Athens that is owned by the county. The County Engineer is using part of it. Why not move the Sheriff's office there?
2. Hockingport and Torch are currently the farthest away from our Sheriff's office. Now we want to move our Sheriff's office even further away, to The Plains? Why, when we could move the Sheriff's office to a more central locale that is already owned by the county?
3. I'm disappointed in Mark Sullivan suggesting a temporary sales tax increase. Right now, when people need to keep their money the most.
   
4. Don't ever trust the government when they want to "temporarily" raise the sales tax. If the county is anything like the state government, when it's time for the "temporary" sales tax to end, they'll just cut it in half and tell you that you just got a tax cut.
5. I'm glad Lenny is against a sales tax. However, what does he think issuing a bond does? It's borrowing money and then we have to repay it. The payments with interest take money away from other priorities. Sometimes, the shortages caused by having to repay bonds are excuses to raise taxes. Which, if we were not repaying our bonds, we'd have the money to begin with. Here's an idea, if we see a cost / need coming in the future, why don't we start setting aside money now to pay for this future need. Instead of running to lenders every time we "need" something.
   
6. Larry Payne gets it. Now is not the time to raise taxes. The only thing I'd add is, there is never a good time or reason to raise taxes. the less government we have, the better we are. One way to force less government is not feeding it.
   

Priceless

The Athens News' Terry Smith has finally come to the realization that having good intentions doesn't qualify one to be Governor.

At least he's honest. Here's today's Athens News and Terry's column.

"After all this, the people of southeast Ohio who had long tolerated schools with minimal financial resources, always seemingly on the verge of insolvency, excitedly awaited the governor’s reform plan. It had been a long trek through the desert, but finally, the promised land was at hand.
Um, well, no. In the district-by-district breakdown released last week by the governor’s office, here’s how Athens County’s school districts fare under the Strickland education plan:

• Alexander Local School District: No increase in money in fiscal year 2010 and a 2 percent reduction in 2011.
• Federal Hocking School District: 0 percent change in 2010 and 2 percent reduction in 2011.
• Nelsonville York City School District: 0 percent change in 2010 and 2 percent reduction in 2011.
• Trimble Local School District: 0 percent change in 2010 and 2 percent reduction in 2011.
• Athens City School District, (the most prosperous school district in the county): 0 percent change in 2010 and 1 percent increase in 2011.

We’re going to hear a lot of statistical hocus-pocus to explain this but there’s no getting around the fact that schools that have always been considered the ones most unfairly treated under the old system won’t get any new money under the new one, and actually will have to absorb 2 percent reductions.

This is an outrage, and Appalachia Ohio’s native son Ted Strickland should be forced to come up with an explanation."

What must hurt Terry even more is the fact that the Athens News endorsed Strickland and one of the main reasons was his promise of "improved support for education."

"Strickland would accomplish some of his goals -- including more early-childhood education, a focus on science and math instruction, a more effective system of public-private college savings accounts, guaranteed tuition rates -- through tinkering with the funding system. He would try to make it fairer and simpler"

"Strickland is a good man with a sincere desire to improve Ohio's sorry state"

One has to wonder now, that since the Athens News endorsed Strickland and he's turned out to be a disappointment, who else did they endorse that has failed them?

How about Debbie Phillips? Here's The Athens News endorsement of her State Representative candidacy.

"Education is Phillips’ strong suit, as the founder and executive director of the Ohio Fair Schools Campaign. She has an intimate working knowledge of the complex ins and outs of Ohio’s ineffective system for funding schools, and can be depended upon to apply that knowledge in Columbus. She will work with the governor, and hopefully a Democratic majority House of Representatives, to finally reform our unfair system for funding schools."

The Athens News was wrong about her also.

Yes, she's only been a State Representative for a short time, however, Strickland's education funding "plan", looks like it came from Debbie Phillips and her Ohio Fair Schools Campaign, which she was the founder and executive director. It looks like Strickland and Phillips were holding hands while putting this plan together. Take a look at the Ohio Fair Schools Campaign website and see how many initiatives have made it into Strickland's proposal. (It looks like the Ohio Fair Schools Campaign website hasn't been updated since last year, which would lead one to believe that it was purely a vehicle in which Debbie Phillips rode to a State Representative seat.)

While many of the districts she represents are getting funding cuts, see list above, the school she attended (Upper Arlington) is getting 15% and 16% increases over the next two years.

Phillips and Strickland are equally responsible for this debacle of a "school funding plan". The dems have been demagoguing this issue for the past 12-15 years. After all this time, this is the best they could come up with?

While Phillips and Strickland are responsible for this mess, it's up to the voters to hold them accountable on election day.

After this track record of endorsements from the Athens News, one would think that voters should vote against those they've endorsed....for the most part. They get 1 or 2 out of 100 right.


And yes, Terry, you are a liberal.

We've finally found a good place for Chris Crews

Elsewhere!

OU Post story

This guy has protested more issues than our new State Representative Debbie Phillips.

He's against coal, cutting trees, new buildings, now, I have no idea what he's protesting, but at least it's not in Ohio. I wonder just how many jobs this one person has cost southeastern Ohio?

""We felt the student voice was consistently getting marginalized and the faculty weren't necessarily representing student views," when negotiating with administrators, Crews said." What is it about college students that make them think that their views matter? Maybe they should spend more time studying? You're right, of course not!

Written by Crews defending anarchy.

Here's a story where he helped sue the Federal government over logging because it might harm a bat. ""This little bat is the modern 'canary in the mine.' It indicates a serious ecological imbalance in our forests that is tied to a management bias towards commercial logging," says Chris Crews, from the Buckeye Forest Council, an Athens, Ohio organization. "The bat needs large trees in the forest, and they are being cut down.""

Here he's getting a grant for the "progressive Appalachian education center" for "arts access" from the Ohio Arts Council. Sounds like a good program to cut.

CITY : Athens - FY2008
Arts Access Grant $1,167
Crews, Chris Grants Administrator
Appalachian Progressive Education Center
132 W State St
Athens OH 45701 2245
Title: Jasmine and Juniper Musical

I thought San Fransisco would have been a better fit for him than New York, but whatever works!

Someone with common sense in Athens?

Sean Jones wrote a recent letter to the editor about the insane requirement that landlords inform renters of certain information. But, more than that, they have to provide the city paper documentation stating that this has been completed. If the landlords do not comply, they are in violation and can be fined.

We suggested a common sense fix for this here a few weeks ago.

Here's Sean's letter to the editor.

"For example, quarter-page advertisements in the local papers once or twice a year would reach the general populace, and surely this would be less expensive than the personnel required to process, record and store thousands of three-page forms every year. Moreover, given that the majority of renters in the city of Athens are university students, would it be possible to work with the university to send an announcement via e-mail?"

Of course we are falling in the trap by giving alternative compliance options of actually giving this dumb resolution credibility. Why does Athens even need such a resolution to begin with?

Race an issue for the Media, not Appalachians

As Athens votes for Obama, Appalachia votes for McCain

Even in this balanced story from the Athens News (yes, they have some) the reporter could not help himself from asking the race question......you know, these people are from Appalachia, so they must be racists, right?

Asked if race could have played a factor in Appalachian counties voting for McCain, Tribe said, “probably a little bit, but I don’t think it’s a whole lot.”

Then as if once wasn't enough to make his point (or maybe he didn't get the answer he wanted), he had to ask another interviewee the same question:

"Asked about race, he said that it also could have played a role.
“I would also argue that the issue of familiarity played a part in the amount of support that McCain did get,” Miller said. “Part of that familiarity does have a racial element to it.”"

It's the media that keep the racial tensions burning, not the residents of Appalachia.