1582

Frankly, the reality is that he flat out SAID that the ACA isn’t getting repealed. Again, if you dig ONE level deeper into that PBS story you find it. A few months back, Kasich said this:

“That’s not gonna happen,” Kasich reportedly told the AP when asked about a repeal of Obamacare, something many GOP candidates for president and Congress favor.

“The opposition to it was really either political or ideological,” Kasich added, again, as the AP cast it, presumably talking about Obamacare as a whole. “I don’t think that holds water against real flesh and blood, and real improvements in people’s lives.”

Now, since then, he’s kind of walked it back, and said that he’s for “repeal and replace”, because RAR OBAMACARE BAD. But when Kasich is actually talking about this stuff, you can see what HE thinks. And again, it’s freaking reasonable shit.

And for the ACA, I would expect him to be reasonable. Because, the reality is that the ACA probably is gonna start showing some problems now that they are actually implementing parts of it.

And you know what “repeal and replace” actually means? Idiots think it means that somehow it undoes obamacare and removes some horrific stain of obama from the soul of the nation. But, in reality, all Congress can do is pass more laws. So, they’d end up just passing laws that modify things.

And given Kasich’s statements, and the fact that he freaking wrote a law just like the ACA in the 90’s, I would suspect that any “repeal and replace” under him would actually be minor modifications which would probably just improve the law… and maybe give the republicans some victory that they can wave in front of the frothing imbeciles on the far right so they can finally think they “won” and finally stop bitching about it.

Because here’s the reality: The ACA isn’t just gonna “go away” at this point. Because now it would constitute literally removing insurance from MILLIONS of people. NO ONE IS GOING TO DO THAT, because it would be the end of their party.

It’s all just talk.

1583

it is an ideal they are working towards Timex. And yes, i view “Repeal and Replace” as just “Repeal.” How can i not when their whole plan is to go back to what was broken and then maybe think up something some later. Remember, they were dead set against ANY changes before, even when democrats bent over backwards trying to get any republican support. It would also help if they actually tried to fix the things that were not working well rather than trying to torpedo it since before it was even on paper.

I can only believe what i hear them officially say and if what i hear them say is pandering to their base, of course i’m going to be concerned. Why should i believe they will stop pandering to their base when they get in office, even if they personally believe differently? They are politicians after all.

1584

And yes, i view “Repeal and Replace” as just “Repeal.” How can i not when their whole plan is to go back to what was broken and then maybe think up something some later.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s stupid, but just think about it. It’s too late at this point. The ACA is never getting “repealed”. You can’t just remove insurance from millions of people. It’d be political suicide.

And Kasich basically said exactly that… Although he went even further, saying that the opposition to it was purely ideological and political, and not based on any kind of real principled view. Because it actually made shit better.

Regardless, the ACA isn’t getting repealed, because you can’t rip the insurance out from under millions of people. This is why with the recent supreme court ruling, that all the actual republicans holding office breathed a huge sigh of relief… because if the ACA had actually been ruled unconstitutional, it would have REQUIRED that they pass a replacement law immediately, and they had no possible way of doing it. It would have ended the republican party, as they would be blamed for making millions of Americans uninsured.

1585

That’s my whole point. These are standard Republican positions, dictated largely by the tea party which has dragged the party even further right than its pre-TP neocon-crazy days. Whatever Bush and Kasich actually believe about policy is no longer possible for them to speak out loud if they want the nomination. The party is insane.

1586

I agree that the idea that no one can question those ideas is insane, but like I posted there, when you actually look at what Kasich says, it’s a lot more moderate and reasonable. Some of the things he’s needed to change the “tone” of, like his position on the ACA, but ultimately it’s crystal clear that he wouldn’t just repeal it.

And for things like the environment, he’s certainly not extreme at all. He’s probably the most reasonable republican in the field on this, and even when viewed from outside the party his position is extremely moderate. He’s not denying climate change, and he’s specifically stating that it’s a problem that must be addressed. The fact that he merely points out that we can’t destroy our economy in the process isn’t a weakness here.

His cuts to education may seem questionable, but when you dig into the actual cuts they seem a lot more reasonable.

The thing is, something that needs to be accounted for here is that if a republican came into office with these positions, shit might actually get done. It wouldn’t spur the knee-jerk rejection that we see against so much of Obama’s stuff, and his positions are tenable by Democrats as well. Because they’re all fairly middle of the road stuff. That’s what we need, because neither extreme is able to actually accomplish anything, despite making big promises to their base.

1587

The question becomes, what happens if a republican, any republican, is president with the GOP in charge of both houses of Congress. That’s a distinct possibility, and it probably means we’d get the whole, unfiltered tea party agenda. Kasich may not want all the crazy, but do you think he’d veto it?

1588

Here’s my problem with Kasich. As Timex points out, the guy seems to have opinions that are reasonable concerning a lot of issues. At the same time, he’s had to “walk back” or modify those statements to court the GOP nutso base.

At that point, he loses my respect.

If he knows he won’t be able to repeal the ACA, then just stick to that position. Be blunt and up front about it.

1589

Yeah, I think so. He veto’ed crap in Ohio that came from Republicans.

But honestly, what I think would actually happen is that without the idea that they needed to “defeat Obama”, you’d be able to actually enact normal, reasonable stuff. You’d basically take the air out of the crazy tea-party balloon.

And let’s be clear here… the tea-party doesn’t really call the shots any more. They had some oversized influence a few years back, and they ended up losing a bunch of elections due to their bullshit. They aren’t the driving force any more. They’re just really loud.

1590

To be fair, every single piece of legislation that passes in Ohio comes from Republicans. They have complete domination of both legislative houses. Despite being a swing state split fairly evenly between democrats and republican voters, the state legislature is 23R/10D in the Senate and 65R/34D in the House.

On the education point, Kasich has actually cut education spending in the state of Ohio. Full stop. If you look at Governing.com’s education spending data, you’ll see the state per pupil spending (not adjusted for inflation) has declined from $5,940.22 in 2011 (when Kasich was elected) to $5,571.00 in 2013 (the latest data that’s available). Education spending overall in Ohio has taken a smaller hit, largely because Kasich just shifted the tax burden from the state to localities – their per pupil spending has gone from $6,293.60 to $6,829.00 in the same timeframe. The net result is a slight decrease in both total and instructional spending per student since 2011.

I have to admit I don’t remember the particulars of the issue you raised (in terms of not renewing a spending increase), but my limited recollection is that failing to renew it at the state level just shifted the cost of educating students to localities. This is a huge problem, overall, because it hurts high poverty areas the worst and perpetuates inequalities in the educational system.

Note that these figures aren’t adjusted for inflation, so the decline in state spending is actually slightly worse, in real terms, than those figures would indicate.

1591

On the education point, Kasich has actually cut education spending in the state of Ohio. Full stop. If you look at Governing.com’s education spending data, you’ll see the state per pupil spending (not adjusted for inflation) has declined from $5,940.22 in 2011 (when Kasich was elected) to $5,571.00 in 2013 (the latest data that’s available). Education spending overall in Ohio has taken a smaller hit, largely because Kasich just shifted the tax burden from the state to localities – their per pupil spending has gone from $6,293.60 to $6,829.00 in the same timeframe. The net result is a slight decrease in both total and instructional spending per student since 2011.

So, with those numbers, you have:
State = 5940 -> 5571 = -369
Local = 6293 -> 6829 = +536

So that would suggest a net INCREASE in spending per student, of $167, unless I’m reading something wrong in what you just posted (which I may be).

I have to admit I don’t remember the particulars of the issue you raised (in terms of not renewing a spending increase), but my limited recollection is that failing to renew it at the state level just shifted the cost of educating students to localities. This is a huge problem, overall, because it hurts high poverty areas the worst and perpetuates inequalities in the educational system.

Well, with the most recent budget, it wasn’t about renewing increases. The items he vetoed were new spending, designed to replace revenue from tax cuts. And he didn’t veto all of them, so the overall state spending increase for the most recent budget seemed to be around $500 million.

As I pointed out though, the idea of trying to distill things down to the level of “education” funding kind of precludes any rational budget planning. Because it’s not just some bucket you’re dumping money into that gets poured into students’ mouths and makes them learn. Cutting spending on education isn’t always bad, and increasing it isn’t always good, because it matters how you spend the money. Giving more state money to wealthy school districts isn’t something you need to do, because those districts can afford to pay for their own schools, and generally have more involved parents. Cutting that kind of spending is a legitimate move on the state’s part, because then you can use that money for other causes. And yeah, tax cuts can be a legitimate cause.

1592

Here’s a short list of some changes my high school in Ohio has implemented recently because of budget issues - admittedly in part because the past treasurer was cooking the books but also because of tax cuts:

  • Cutting German, Latin, Japanese, and any other languages offered I’m not aware of except for French and Spanish
  • Reduction in the number of AP courses
  • No activities in the school after 4pm (I believe the big productions such as spring musical were given a pass on this because the school has a fairly good music program)
  • Pay to play for extracurriculars

I’m sure there are more, but without being involved in the system anymore I don’t get all the details.

Citizens have historically voted for levies as they’re put forth, but there is only so much you can ask from the local community. The town is pretty squarely middle class and the main building is nearing 100 years old; another local tax bump is coming to raise funds for a new campus. Would you be shocked if I told you that performance vs metrics has dropped as well?

1593

Interesting – looks like they’re factoring in some additional expenses, as revenue and spending don’t quite line up. If you look @ the link, however, you’ll see per student spending went from $11,222.82 to $11,197.00 – the the local component increasing and the state component decreasing. This is 2011 - 2013 data, so perhaps that’s changed in 2014-2015, but under Kasich Ohio definitely cut state level education spending 2011-2013. I don’t see newer data, but would welcome it.

1594

If they are shifting from state to local funding, did they mandate that the localities make up the difference, or did they just say, “hey, we’re cutting state taxes, so you ought to have more leeway to up your local taxes to pay for schools, good luck”?

That’s the big deal that will affect the kids: rich counties already would have been spending more per child than poorer ones, so if state funds decreased it that would mean that the local government would either have to make up the difference or simply cut spending per student. And depending on how the locals view education, that might mean different things.

1595

But they didn’t cut the funding equally across all of the districts, I do not believe. It looks like they ended up giving the poorer districts more money than the richer ones, and the wealthy districts had their state funding cut more.

Which, again, makes total sense.

1596

Some interesting math and a calculator to play with numbers at Real Clear Politics regarding voter demographics.

Some interesting bits inside include the observation that if there really is a turnout/interest gap between presidential elections and mid-terms (and that seems to be an observable pattern over the last 30 years), then things get interesting for the GOP.

First, note the limited electoral impact of Hispanic voters. All other things being equal, Republicans would have to fall to 8 percent of the Hispanic vote before another state flips to the Democrats (they would lose the popular vote by almost 10 points in this scenario). For all the talk of Texas potentially voting Democrat, that doesn’t happen until Republicans drop to 5 percent of the Hispanic vote.

On the other hand, Republicans would have to win 49 percent of the Hispanic vote to win the popular vote (with other vote shares and turnout rates being equal to 2012), but they would still lose the Electoral College, 289-249. Republicans would have to improve to 63 percent of the Hispanic vote before they would win the Electoral College. This is, incidentally, similar to findings from FiveThirtyEight in 2013.

They’d better get on that…

1597

Except there is still a possibility of a government shutdown this fall. (over the Planned Parenthood war).

1598

The whole fiasco with planned parenthood bugs me. Abortion is one of those issues that is super prominent all the time, which i also happen to not really care at all about. At least not in the vast majority of cases. It’s not something which i find important enough to bring everything else to a screeching halt.

1599

Are you including federal stimulus spending in the 2011 number? Some money might have been fed stimulus money that was scheduled to expire.
The big fighy in OH was kasich shifting money from rich education districts to low income districts. But that went nowhere due in part to dumb kasich planning (see Molly ball kasich profile in Atlantic) that has this vignette.

1600

Washington Post piece on Kasich education policy:


And another one from Mother Jones (so take that FWIW):

For profit charter schools IMO is just wrong. We see what happens when health is turned into a commodity; treating kids as a commodity is, arguably, worse. Not everything has a market solution.

Completely anecdotal observation on charter schools. I work at a SIS (school information system) software company. Most of our clients are public schools but we have a fair number of charter schools (primarily from PA). With few exceptions, whenever I talk(ed)* with anyone from a charter school I have no idea how they are able to function on a daily basis. I don’t know how to say this but they are just … really incompetent. It’s one thing to be computer illiterate but to lack the capacity of basic understanding of how software works when it’s your job to understand that is astounding. I’ve seen extreme examples where they have set up and calculated their GPA’s incorrectly and have done so for years. But I guess you get the staff you pay for.

*I no longer do support.

1601

The reality is, Kasich is a conservative. He does stuff Democrats don’t like, especially when it comes to cutting spending, because let’s be honest… Lots of Democrats like the government spending money. But Kasich’s budget planning has always seemed pretty well done, and not driven by blind ideology. He’s consistently shown that he actually cares about people, probably stemming from his origins as a blue collar kid near Pittsburgh.

And the fact is, the guy has a track record of successful governance. In every political office he’s held, from state legislature, to the US Congress, to governor of a large state, he’s consistently done a good job. His approval rating is huge in Ohio, and he won his last reflection by 30 points, including winning hard core democratic districts. And a full 72 percent of people in Ohio believe that Ohio is on the right track.

On some level, you need to acknowledge his success. This isn’t a guy who is winning based on appealing to crazy right wing ideologues. He’s winning based on appealing to everyone. His policies are making things better for folks on Ohio, and they like it.