Allright, I am not sure how to begin this post.  I am fit to be tied with Ohio politics.  Two major events happened recently, that bother me a great deal, and I feel the need to try to shoe-horn them both into this post.

The Mark Dann Plea Deal

So let me see if I understand this one.  Mark Dann resigned in disgrace.  Almost everyone in the upper echelons of his administration has pled guilty to something serious.  All were required to cooperate with a prosecution against him for his felonious misdeeds, and a misdemeanor plea deal is all Ron O'Brien and his staff could put together?  The man made the attorney general's office his own personal play ground, and misspent who knows how much money from the public treasury.  He lived like a head of state from a foreign nation, and the best that the prosecutor could manage was a slap on the wrist?

Really?  Are the Ohio taxpayers supposed to swallow this bile?  The deal did not include repayment for the frivilous spending of tax payer monies on travel, meals, and the like.  It did not require that he identify with the Auditor's office every  bit of profligate waste and repay it.  It did not require that he apologize to the electorate of Ohio for breaking their faith and trust.  It did not require a full mea culpea for his wantonly arrogant and ignorant behavior.  It did not include a requirement that he surrender his law license.  It did not include a permanent ban on his seeking elective office in the future.  The deal didn't even require that he enter a guilty plea to anything.

It leaves me asking, how is this justice?  How does this help restore the electorate's faith and trust?  How does this serve as calling this individual to account for his rediculous behavior that was beyond the pale?  How does this call him to some measure of meaningful accountability for using a transition fund as his own personal checking account?  The deal did not require he refund every penny in that account to the people that gave it to him under the belief that he would use it for legitamite purposes.  It didn't even require him to restore the misspent funds to the transition account.

In short, Mark Dann got off light.  He got a deal that he shouldn't have been able to get.  He should have been forced into the dock, been forced to completely make amends for his behavior, and admit that he was guilty.  Failing that...  He should have been tried, and found guilty by a competent jury of legally enforceable standing.  Anything less, doesn't repair the breach of faith with the electorate.  Anything less doesn't serve as the cautionary tale to would-be corrupt politicians in waiting considering his course in some way, shape, or form.

Mark Dann gets to walk away scot free.  He gets to go before a disciplinary board of the legal profession, where he will get less punishment than he received from the criminal justice system.  He might face a small fine, or short suspension of his license to practice law, but nothing more.  And the really really really ridiculous part is this: he can run for office anytime he likes.  He could show up on the ballot in any election, at any time he wants in the future.  How is this turn of events fair?  How is it justice?

Would a thief get treated this way if he stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from someone?  Would a thief be allowed to enter an alford plea and walk away with a couple of misdemeanor counts, and no requirement to repay the stolen funds?  The answer is no.  Any other criminal would not be given this treatment.  So why in the name of all things holy, do we let a politician get away with this?  The breach of faith is much more serious when someone that holds the public trust commits larceny.  Why is Dann not in jail right now?

Simply put...  I just don't get it!

New Strickland Ad

Just after the election a new ad began running from the Strickland camp.  The ad is a pure attack ad, and goes out after Kasich for of all things earning a living.  It takes him to task for supporting NAFTA, and MFN for China.  The ad trully distorts Kasich's record, and paints him of being guilty of the Wall Street debacle, because he worked on Wall Street.

In short, its a disgusting ad that is absolutely negative, and disengenuous at the same time.  It seeks to set the terms of the debate on something other than the results of the Strickland economy in Ohio.  The governor's team is throwing a strong punch below the belt to try to fend off a serious accounting of his performance as governor. 


Simply put, Ted Strickland doesn't want to talk about his record on job creation in Ohio.  The prison psychologist from Tar Hollow doesn't want to talk about the pathetic job he has done at creating jobs, improving the economic climate in Ohio, or making Ohio a palatable place for economic investment.  Both governor Strickland and his staff refuse to be held accountable for their performance.  They constantly blame everyone but themselves for the economy that the average Ohioian faces today.  They blame the Taft administration, the Bush administration, and its fair to say they would blame mickey mouse too in order to avoid being held responsible for this economy.

They don't want the campaign to boil down to the following question; "Are you better off today than you were before Ted Strickland became your governor?"  They are fighting like hell to avoid that being the geography of the campaign.  I suppose I can't blame them, with a record on job creation, and economic growth as horrible as his I would be doing everything I could to prevent it.  At the end of the day, I think the average Ohio voter is smarter than that.  I think they will seek to blame the current occupant of the governor's office for this current landscape.  At least, I hope they do.

The reason for my hope is simple, Kasich is the right man to be our governor right now.  Under his leadership, the US government was under a balanced budget.  Under his chairmanship of the House budget committee, budgets were produced that were in balance.  Sure those were different economic times, but does anyone honestly believe that John Kasich isn't up to the task of rationally rectifying the train wreck that governor Strickland's policies have led this state into?  John Kasich is capable of making hard choices, even downright unpopular ones in order to set the ship of state on an even keel.

Our current governor has based his budgets on one time money that won't be there in the next budgetary cycle.  He has steadfastly refused to change the climate of State government.  In his entire tenure as governor, he hasn't done anything to relieve the stress in Ohio's economy.  He hasn't moved to aggressively bring in new investment into Ohio.  He hasn't moved to create new sources of jobs, and new prosperity to our state.  And under his tenure, the economic output of Alabama has been greater than Ohio.

In short, the ad left me apoplectic!

So both issues really left me fit to be tied and angry!

Under the vast majority of circumstances, my views regarding economic theory could be described as very much in agreement with Milton Freedman.  I believe in limited government as the best method of propelling the economy forward.  I believe in free trade, as when markets are trully free they do a better job of deterring aggression than any formal treaty ever will.  I believe that protectionism always fails utterly, and usually harms the country that implements it in ways that cannot be foreseen at the front end when it is enacted.

Having said all that there are two areas in which my hackles get raised instantly, and I become an angry populist.  And those two areas are Wall Street and Corporate Management.  I despise both with a visceral hatred that burns with a white hot fervor.  And the reasons are many for this, but they all boil down to the inverse relationship to reality that they both have.  When something turns out to be good for the worker, better pay, better working conditions, better benefits, Wall Street always views that as a negative item.  It seems that always when workers get a better share of the economic pie, that Wall Street sees that as a bad thing.

I despise this mentality and every manifestation of it.  Wall Street doesn't see the ridiculous bonus structure for Corporate Management as a bad thing.  They don't see the Board of Directors Golden Parachutes as a bad thing.  They don't view the stunningly out of touch pay packages that top managers receive to be a bad thing.  Wall Street analysts don't downgrade a stock offering from a company purely because the CEO is making a large mountain of cash regardless of how he or she performs.  Wall Street typically reserves the downgrade for when the employees do better.  When they get a better deal, Wall Street cautions people from buying the stock.  As if buying the stock of a company that values its employees is a bad thing.

Wall Street rewards the companies that do poorly by their employees with better ratings on the stock and bond offerings.  They tend to write nice things about these companies.  Their analysis tends to be favorable when they are treating their employees like Scrooge treated his at the outset of A Christmas Carol.  And honestly, its ridiculous.  Honestly, it doesn't work for the long term betterment of our democracy.  It artificially holds down wages, and keeps people in poverty that shouldn't be.

Truth be told, I wouldn't be so hard on Wall Street, if they were fair.  If they downngraded a stock or bond offering equally as to the extravagance of the board room and top manager's total compensation package as when the average employee on the line of the company gets an additional $.10 an hour paid out over the next three years.  If Wall Street would gauge the healthcare cost of the top echelon of a company on the same scale that they grade the employee healthcare packages, I would be pleased as punch.

The problem is that they can't do that.  If they do that, then their hypocrisy would be evident for all to see.  The traders that make tens of millions in bonuses, even when the company experiences a loss.  The CEO's of banking firms that make massive bonuses even if their company ends up in bankruptcy.  The company that pays the managers that lead them into the abyss of bankruptcy still get paid monster bonuses.  All of these would be front and center for all to see.  People would point and laugh.  People would wonder why our nation has annointed these dolts to run the financial sector, when they can't manage their own houses any better than a crackhead on a bender.

Our nation's most recent meltdown had more to do with Wall Street's inability to properly manage and discipline it's own than anything that happened on Main Street.  The sheer ignorance and wanton arrogance of the Wall Street loons has caused massive pain for everyone the world over. 

And yet, where is the bill from our Congress to more closely scrutinize Wall Street?  Where is the bill that would clean up the regulatory mess of this sector?  Where is the bill that would prevent finanical firms from becoming too big to fail, or at least regulate firms that get into this category more closely?  Where is the bill that criminalizes the perpetration of accounting fraud, that lowers the burden of proof in a prosecution of accounting fraud, and tightens accounting rules such that companies would no longer be allowed to keep tens of billions of debt off their balance sheets?

The recent meltdown cost average investors billions of dollars.  And I am left wondering, where is their bailout?  We sent hundreds of billions of dollars to huge financial firms that caused this mess, and what has it really gotten us?  Unemployment is still in double digits, and job growth right now is nonexistent.  The American taxpayer would have been better served if everyone had received a $5,000 stimulus check. 

The end result would have been the same amount of public debt being pilled up, but it would have benefitted the people that make America work everyday.  Our economy might have seen a few more financial firms fail, but on some level our economy could have absorbed it, especially if we all had that extra money in our hands.  The banks that were sound would have survived, and it would have sent the right message to Wall Street.  The message would have been, "Your role in our economy doesn't come with a government backed pry bar into the wallets of the American Treasury.  When you take shockingly ridiculous risks you have to pay the price for those risks."