Why I hate Kaisch and how his "balanced budget" is hurting our people and kids in Ohio

[smitty22]

How John Kasich Rewrote Welfare Laws and Is Keeping Food Off Family Dinner Tables

In Congress, he wrote the law to limit food aid to families. Now his rules are hurting minorities in Ohio.

—Hannah Levintova on Mon. September 21, 2015 5:00 AM PDT

Ohio Gov. John Kasich speaks during the GOP primary debate on September 16, 2015. Mark J. Terrill/AP
In 1996, then-Congressman John Kasich cosponsored a welfare reform bill that, for the first time ever, put a time limit on recipients' access to food stamps. Healthy, childless adults would be able to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for no more than three months in any three-year period, unless they were employed or in a training program for at least 20 hours a week. When Congress balked at a rule that would cause an estimated 1 million people to lose food aid each month, Kasich added an exception that would allow states to seek time-limit waivers for areas with especially high unemployment.

Twenty years later, in his second term as Ohio's governor, the GOP presidential hopeful is taking advantage of these waivers, as most governors have done. But Ohio civil rights groups and economic analysts say Kasich's administration is using the waivers unequally: It applies for waivers in some regions of the state but refuses them in others, in a pattern that has disproportionately protected white communities and hurt minority populations.

"The Kasich administration could have addressed the racial inequity in 2016," says Wendy Patton, a senior project director at Policy Matters Ohio, an economic policy research nonprofit, who has written extensively on the state's recent food stamp waiver policy. "The Kasich administration chose not to. The state should broaden its request to encompass all places and regions where jobs are scarce and people are hungry."


In 2014, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) had the option to waive time limits on food stamps for the entire state. Due to a struggling economy and high unemployment, Ohio had qualified for and accepted this statewide waiver from the US Department of Agriculture every year since 2007, including during most of Kasich's first term as governor. But this time, Kasich rejected the waiver for the next two years in most of the state's 88 counties. His administration did accept them for 16 counties in 2014 and for 17 counties in 2015. Most of these were rural counties with small and predominantly white populations. Urban counties and cities, most of which had high minority populations, did not get waivers.

"The Kasich administration could have addressed the racial inequity in 2016...The Kasich administration chose not to."
The decision would result in a drastic downsizing of food aid in the state, but the administration moved with surprising speed given the enormity of the impact. "It was really fast," says Kate McGarvey, deputy director of the Legal Aid Society of Columbus. In August 2013, she says, the legal services community had heard that Ohio qualified for a statewide waiver, and was setting up meetings with the ODJFS to discuss how the state might proceed. "Within a week or two, we were told, 'It's going to be a partial waiver, it's already been submitted, it's done,'" McGarvey says. "No advocates that I know of were given a chance to give feedback on the wisdom of the partial waiver."

The policy went into effect in October 2013. By January—the three-month mark where those without waivers began losing their food stamps if they couldn't meet the work requirement—it had become clear that the policy had spawned a stark racial disparity in food aid. Across the 16 counties the state had selected for waivers, about 94 percent of food stamp recipients were white. Overall in Ohio in December 2013—immediately before the new policy's effects began to surface—food stamp recipients were 65 percent white.

By March 2014, six months into the new system, the six counties with the highest rate of terminating food stamps for able-bodied, childless adults were all counties populated mostly by minorities.

Within a few months of the system's implementation, food pantries began to see an increase in their numbers of clients. "Nearly 140,000 people have been removed from the food stamp program since October 2013," says Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Food Banks, which has gathered data on thousands of adults in Ohio who have lost their food stamps. "We believe that the majority of them were removed for inability to meet the work requirement. And they are turning to our agencies to get food. More people are going to soup kitchens and homeless shelters, begging, panhandling, and dumpster diving. It's not a good scene."

Six months into the new system, the six counties with the highest rate of terminating food stamps for able-bodied, childless adults were all counties populated mostly by minorities.
A USDA study released earlier this month ranked Ohio among the worst states in the nation for food security. The state has the highest rate of food insecurity in the Midwest and the sixth highest rate nationally.

In the summer of 2014, several legal organizations, including Columbus Legal Aid, filed a civil complaintagainst Ohio with the USDA, formally alleging that the state's rejection of waivers across the state disproportionately hurt minority populations. "Without any compelling reason, this decision, and its approval by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)…has unfairly made access to nutrition assistance more difficult for many minority Ohioans," the organizations wrote in their letter.

The ODJFS' waiver decision seemed to have little basis in math. Seventy-five percent of Ohio's minorities live in just eight of the state's 88 counties. None of those counties got a waiver, even though several of them have higher unemployment rates than counties that did get waivers, notes the civil complaint. "I've never seen the math that illustrates how they came up with these 16 to begin with," says McGarvey, one of the authors of the civil complaint. "When we looked at the data, what we saw was that if they were just cutting it off at the 16 highest unemployment counties, purely using a mathematical formula, those would not have been the 16."

"I've never seen the math that illustrates how they came up with these 16 to begin with."
"It was not a mathematical selection," says Patton. She explains that in 2016, the ODJFS said it would give waivers to counties whose two-year average unemployment rate was greater than 120 percent of the national unemployment rate during the same period. But the agency rounded county unemployment rates to two decimal points instead of one, as the USDA requires, effectively eliminating some counties from eligibility by mere hundredths of a point.

When asked to clarify the ODJFS method for selecting counties over the last three years, ODJFS spokesman Ben Johnson told Mother Jones, "The employment and training requirement does not deny anyone SNAP benefits. Rather, the requirement ensures that able-bodied adults without dependent children receive both SNAP benefits and education, job training, or volunteer or work experience...We have used the same methodology and calculated unemployment rates the same way each year."

In 2016, Ohio will continue its narrow waiver policy. Though the state will no longer be eligible for a statewide waiver of food stamp time limits because its overall unemployment has improved beyond the eligibility threshold, up to 34 counties and 10 cities will remain eligible. The state excluded the cities from its request and will waive time limits for just 18 counties—most, again, in places that are rural and white.

It's unclear whether Kasich's administration is turning a blind eye to the racial disparity intentionally. But the policy continued even after its disparate impact was revealed over the last two years.

"I haven't seen any evidence to show that it was intentional," McGarvey of Legal Aid says. "But certainly at this point they know what the impact has been."

 

[smitty22]

Under John Kasich, Ohio's Charter Schools Became a "National Joke"

The GOP presidential candidate expanded a system that's bred failing schools.

—Allie Gross on Mon. August 24, 2015 5:00 AM PDT

John Kasich: David Becker/ZUMA; Imagine Columbus Primary Academy: Google Maps; Charter school students: Maryland GovPics/Flickr
When Leon Sinoff was asked to sign off on a building lease for Imagine Columbus Primary Academy in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 2013, he had little reason to be skeptical. Before Imagine Schools, one of the nation's largest for-profit charter management companies, asked him to join the new charter school's board, Sinoff, a public defender, had no education background or experience. "I relied on their expertise and thought to myself, 'Well, who am I to say no to this proposal?'" Sinoff says.

But by the start of the second school year, he was having doubts. The school received an F grade for achievement on the 2013-14 state report card. Only three teachers had returned after the first summer break; within two years, two principals and one vice principal stepped down. The school—which serves a high-poverty, low-income community—lacked arts, music, and foreign language classes, and whenever the board inquired about adding them, Imagine said there wasn't enough money. Then Sinoff discovered that the $58,000-a-month lease—consuming nearly half the school's operating budget, compared with the national standard of 8 to 15 percent—was for a building owned by a subsidiary of Imagine, Schoolhouse Finance LLC.

"It clicked for me. Aha! This is self-dealing. That's why we are massively overpaying for the lease," says Sinoff, who resigned with the other board members this summer. He adds, "Imagine is perfectly happy cranking out low-quality schools and profiting off them. They don't care particularly about the quality of the kids' education."

Before Imagine Columbus Primary Academy opened, a different Imagine school operated in the building for eight years. Its story was nearly identical: The struggling school was paying enormous sums to Schoolhouse Finance while languishing on the state's "academic emergency" list—a designation reserved for F-rated schools—before its board voted to shut it down. One member of that board was David Hansen, who shortly after the school's closing was appointed by Gov. John Kasich to a newly created position: executive director of Ohio's Office of Quality School Choice and Funding. Kasich tasked Hansen with overseeing the expansion of the state's charter schools and virtual schools, which are online charter schools typically used by homeschoolers.

"Imagine is perfectly happy cranking out low-quality schools and profiting off of them."
In July, Hansen resigned after admitting he had rigged evaluations of the state's charter school sponsors—the nonprofits that authorize and oversee the schools in exchange for a fee—by not including the failing grades of certain F-rated schools in his assessment. Specifically, he omitted failing virtual schools operated by for-profit management companies that are owned by major Republican donors in the state.

Kasich, now running for the Republican presidential nomination, has waved off the Hansen scandal. "I mean, the guy is gone. He's gone," Kasich told reporters on the campaign trail. "We don't tolerate any sort of not open and direct communication about charter schools, and everybody gets it. So that's kind of the end of it."

But Kasich can't distance himself from the problems so easily. He appointed Hansen to his role, and Hansen's wife is Kasich's current presidential campaign manager and former chief of staff. He presided over an expanded charter regime with loosened oversight. Troubled charter schools like those operated by Imagine, which had 17 schools in Ohio at its apex in the 2013-14 school year and 14 schools last year, have proliferated in this environment. Schools with D or F grades receive an estimated 90 percent of the state's charter school funding. Virtual schools, which have an even worse academic track record and insufficient quality controls have been permitted to flourish.

In the four yearsthat Kasich has been in office, funding for traditional public schools has declined by almost half a billion dollars, while charter schools have seen a funding increase of more than 25 percent. Much of that funding appears to have been misspent. When State Auditor David Yost visited 30 charter schools unannounced this past fall, he found that in more than half of them, attendance was drastically lower than the schools had reported to the Department of Education. Because the state typically dispenses funds based on student enrollment, inflated classroom numbers can mean extra dollars for a school.

It wasn't until this winter, after Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes released a report finding that achievement in Ohio's charter schools fell significantly below the state's regular public schools, that Kasich began speaking about the need for reforms. "We want to clean up these charter schools that are not doing a good job," he said in February. He laid out a plan to get serious about charter sponsor evaluations—the same evaluations Hansen was overseeing and later rigged.

"Kasich's talked a good game about it," says Stephen Dyer, a former Democratic state legislator and current education policy analyst at Innovation Ohio, a Columbus think tank. "He's done some public posturing that's been positive, but when you look at the actual results under his watch, our charter schools have become a national joke, and he hasn't been able to get through any meaningful sort of broad-based reform."

"You have big political contributors who have really driven the school-choice movement in Ohio"
Even Ohio organizations that support school choice, such as the Fordham Institute and the state chapter of StudentsFirst, founded by Michelle Rhee, have called for greater reforms. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers, a Chicago-based organization that coincidentally hired Hansen in 2009 to oversee external affairs, referred to Ohio as the "Wild, Wild West" of charter schools.

In his first year in office, Kasich lifted the state's cap on the number of charter schools that could operate, and the following year he signed a bill ending a decade-long moratorium on new virtual schools. That same year, Kasich signed legislation that relieved virtual schools of any responsibility to report how much they spend on classroom instruction. The bill also stipulated that virtual-school students would be automatically re-enrolled each year so that there would be "no interruption in state funding." Given that virtual schools have some of the highest attrition rates and funds are allocated on a per-pupil basis, the measure gave funds to virtual schools before they even knew what their true enrollment would be.

"It doesn't make sense unless you look at it through a political prism," says Dyer.

When the national charter school discussion began in the early 1990s, the conversation centered largely on the idea of small, innovative schools that matched the specific needs of a particular student demographic. Early advocates hoped charter schools would become laboratories for innovative teaching methods that would one day be integrated into traditional public schools. Terms like "competition" and "portfolio model," associated today with charter schools, were in many ways the antithesis of the original design. But the model began to change in the late 1990s, when, according to National Education Policy Center researcher Gary Miron, people from the business sector decided they wanted to test market theories on education.

Ohio's charter law went into effect in 1998, and corporate interests were all over the state's school-choice blueprint. "It was a political movement, not an education movement," says Dyer. "You have big political contributors who have really driven the school-choice movement in Ohio for a long time."

The two central figures in Ohio's corporate charter movement, David Brennan and Bill Lager, have donated a combined $6.4 million to state legislators and committees, more than 90 percent of which went to Republicans, who have dominated the state House and Senate. Their donations have paid off. Since 1998, the state has given $1.76 billion to schools run by Brennan's White Hat Management and Lager's Electronic Classrooms of Tomorrow, accounting for one-quarter of all state charter funds.

"Why do we accept this for our kids? It's not good enough for kids in Missouri, but it's okay for kids in Ohio?"
F-rated virtual schools run by White Hat Management were among the charters Hansen purposely omittedfrom sponsor evaluations this summer, resulting in an "exemplary" grade for the Ohio Council of Community Schools, which sponsors many White Hat virtual schools. Another sponsor that benefited from Hansen's flawed math, Buckeye Community Hope Foundation, oversees 51 charter schools, including another struggling Imagine school on whose board Hansen previously sat.

The majority of the Ohio Department of Education's elected board members—other members are appointed by the governor—have called for an investigation into Hansen's manipulated evaluations and for the resignation of State Superintendent Richard Ross*. Kasich has brushed off both requests, instead proposing a restructuring of the board to provide greater gubernatorial control. "I don’t like the structure of it," Kasich told the Columbus Dispatch. "I don’t like the infighting."

Tim Pingle, a former Imagine Columbus Primary Academy principal, is frustrated that schools like his old one are allowed to remain open. "Why do we accept this for our kids?" he asks, noting that Imagine Schools was kicked out of Missouri after years of financial and academic concerns. "It's not good enough for the kids in Missouri, but it's okay for kids in Ohio?"

In June, the Ohio Senate approved bipartisan legislation to reform the state's charter schools, but the measure stalled in the state House. And so last week, Imagine Columbus Primary Academy opened its doors for its third year—with its third principal and second school board.

"I'm sure [Imagine's new board] is even more oblivious than we were, given that we caused a lot of trouble in the end," says Sinoff, who resigned after Imagine refused to re-negotiate the high-priced lease. "I think that they are not entirely happy that we squeaked through the filter to make life difficult. I'm sure they haven't made that mistake again, and they have folks even more oblivious than we were."

 

[smitty22]

Kasich’s private prisons plan saving Ohio money… in the worst possible way
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When Kasich unveiled his first biennium budget in March 2011, he called for selling five State prisons to “save money” by privatization. By the time the budgetary legislative sausage making process was completed, the Kasich Administration reversed course and instead sold only one prison, privatized the operation (but not ownership) of another and took one privately operated prison back under State control.

At the time, the Kasich Administration claimed that only the bid by Corrections Corporation of America (the former employer of Gary Mohr, Kasich’s Rehabilitation and Corrections Director) for the Lake Erie Correctional Institution made sense for the State to accept. Ironically, most of the spending from Kasich’s revised plan, according to the Kasich Administration itself, was from taking the privately operated prison back into a public institution.

So how’s Lake Erie Correctional been doing under private ownership? Not well, according to this story from the Dayton Daily News, which has reviewed audits of the facility by the State’s Correctional Institution Inspection Committee. Those inspections found:

• Padlocked fire exits;
• Meat slicers without safety guards and other food safety violations;
• Likely falsification of food service records;
• Clogged water fountains;
• Moldy showers;
• Unsecured cleaning chemicals;
• No guards monitoring “pill call” — when inmates receive medications;
• Two inmates painting a mural in the entry building that were ineligible to work in that area because they are convicted killers;
• Unacceptable living conditions of inmates being housed inside recreation areas, with no immediate access to running water for hydration, showers or the use of a toilet.

And here’s the State’s response to CCA’s unconsciousable breach of its contract with the State of Ohio:

The state docked payments to CCA this year by more than $573,000 for leaving positions vacant and violating terms of the contract.

We saved more money by paying less to CCA for operating a prison that is below Ohio’s required standards for prisons. Imagine the shock we had in discovering that a prison owned by a for-profit company would try to cut corners to turn a profit! And remember, as a result of Kasich’s privatization efforts, these companies got to rehire the state prison workers but not honor their union contracts. The savings, the Administration claimed, would come from having a profit motivated company operate a prison without having to use union labor. So, thanks to Kasich, the employees there are getting paid less and have crappier benefits for the same job they used to have. But that’s not all they face:

Under CCA control, inmate complaints about prison gangs, assaults and other problems have doubled since the state turned over control, staff turnover has been more than 20 percent and violent incidents increased 21 percent inside the medium-security prison, according to public records.

Less pay and worse benefits while working with more gangs, more violence, deplorable inmate conditions and shocking breaches of security? It’s no wonder they have large turnover there.

Just imagine how much worse it would have been if Kasich had proceeded with his original plan.

This story should be treated as a front page news and a Kasich Administration scandal all on its own. But’s it’s also a ticking time bomb. It only a matter of time before these small cut corners add up to a big disaster.

Ohioans should be embarrassed that Kasich is letting CCA lock up our fellow citizens in a facility like this and ashamed that he’s letting Ohioans work in a dangerous, shoddily-run prison owned by a for-profit corporation that appears to be more concerned with its own bottom line than the safety of its employees.

The State of Ohio should stop simply fining CCA and should look for a way to retake ownership and operation of Lake Erie Correctional Institution.

It’s time for Governor Kasich to admit that his privatization experiment has been a horrific failure, before it’s too late.

 

[smitty22]

POLITICS
Students Confront Kasich On Defunding Planned Parenthood
BY EMILY ATKIN FEB 22, 2016 5:13 PM

CREDIT: EMILY ATKIN

Students with the GMU College Democrats protest John Kasich outside of his town hall event at the university on Monday.

FAIRFAX, VIRGINIA – Last week, Republican presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich called single women with children “the real heroes” in American society. He promised, if elected president, to declare an “all out war” on violence against women. He remarked on the importance of creating safe spaces where women feel empowered to speak out about alleged sexual assaults.

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And at a town hall event in Virginia on Monday, Kasich said that his support for women was mutual. It went all the way back to 1978, he said, when women “left their kitchens” to go out and “put yard signs up” to support his election to the Ohio state Senate. “Now you call homes and everybody’s out working,” he said. “But at that time, early days, it was an army of women that really helped me get elected to the state Senate.”

defunding Planned Parenthood in Ohio.

“First off, I want to say about your comment earlier about the women came out of the kitchen to support you, I’ll come to support you, but I won’t be coming out of the kitchen,” the woman — a nursing student — began, to laughs from the audience.

“As a future nurse, I recognize that primary care and prevention is the most cost-effective health care for our nation,” she continued. “But we are also facing an STD epidemic. Planned Parenthood’s largest percentage of services are toward STD treatment and prevention. Can you please tell me the economic and public health benefit of defunding an organization that has treated over 4 million people seeking STD services this last year?”

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The bill Kasich signed on Sunday was introduced after an anti-abortion organization released sting videos claiming Planned Parenthood was selling “aborted baby parts.” Though a grand jury recently cleared Planned Parenthood of any unlawful acts, the lawmakers who authored the legislation used the videos as the main evidence for defunding the organization.

On Monday, Kasich also appeared to use the videos as reason for defunding the organization, saying Planned Parenthood had “discredited itself” and that other women’s health centers would be funded instead.

“We consider women’s health to be critical,” he said, “but you don’t have to be captive towards delivering it through an organization that frankly is largely discredited.”

Joe Russell, 20, protests John Kasich outside of his event at George Mason University in Virginia on Monday.

CREDIT: EMILY ATKIN

The nursing student was not the only attendee disagree with Kasich’s rhetoric surrounding the women’s health organization. Outside, a small group of students with the GMU College Democrats held up signs in protest of Kasich’s stance on abortion. “As governor of Ohio, Kasich restricted access to abortion and Planned Parenthood,” one sign read. “Fun facts about John Kasich: YESTERDAY he signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood,” read another.

Lauren Ammerman, 19, was holding the sign calling out Kasich for restricting abortion access, and told ThinkProgress that that was the main reason she was protesting the event.

“I believe health care should be a right for everyone, instead of a privilege, no matter what your income is,” she said, noting that Planned Parenthood provides subsidized birth control and other services for low-income women.

Planned Parenthood also took a swipe at Kasich on Sunday, shortly after he signed the bill defunding the organization in Ohio — taking specific aim at his purported support for women.

“If single mothers raising children ‘are the real heroes in America,'” Planned Parenthood tweeted, “why do you cut programs that would help them, John Kasich?”

 

[smitty22]

TAMIR RICE CASE BEING DELAYED BY GOVERNOR KASICH
May 12, 2015 8:14pm EDT by Osmosis is best
Two of the most egregious Police execution actions in the United States happened in The State of Ohio in 2014. The execution of John Crawford while he was shopping for a toy gun at Walmart, and the murder of Tamir Rice who was playing in a community park with a toy gun. The CRAWFORD investigation was handled by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) who works for the Governor and covered up the Murder for the state. News reports that the BCI is deeply involved investigating and guiding the Cuyahoga County Sherriff dept in the Tamir Rice case.

The BCI stonewalled the investigation on the CRAWFORD killing in order to stop momentum of the Public Protest, evidently the strategy worked so well that it was employed in the Tamir Rice case. As a result Tamir Rice was cremated last week because the Government has delayed telling us what we already know, which is TAMIR RICE was Illegally Shot and Killed at the age 12 for being black with a toy gun.

The Republican Presidential Convention is coming to Cleveland in 2016 and it just wouldn't do to have a city in full riot mode over Tamir Rice ala Ferguson , New York , Baltimore. Governor Kasich wanting a home field advantage to run for president doesn't want protest in the streets and burning and looting. So the lid has been slammed on the Tamir Rice case and in the end, the officers will be exonerated. In the mean time The Rice family had to cremate Tamir due to the extraordinarily long delay of the report from the government. Cleveland? We shall see....

 

[Serious]

Subs....

 

[JahFocus CS]

 

[hashmander]

he always scared me more than the rest of the republican field (and i've posted that before) because he could actually win in the general election.

 

[smitty22]

he always scared me more than the rest of the republican field (and i've posted that before) because he could actually win in the general election.

He most certainly could.

 

[BucciMane]

There are many anti-Trump, anti-Clinton, anti-Cruz, anti-Rubio, and anti-Sanders people, but I have to give you credit with your anti-Kasich crusade. You're like a lone wolf.

 

[smitty22]

There are many anti-Trump, anti-Clinton, anti-Cruz, anti-Rubio, and anti-Sanders people, but I have to give you credit with your anti-Kasich crusade. You're like a lone wolf.

Can't stop won't stop

 

[Good Guy Guevara]

And he's supposed to be the sane one

 

[Scoop]

You hate balanced budgets because it doesn't give you enough free stuff

 

[duncanthetall]

There are many anti-Trump, anti-Clinton, anti-Cruz, anti-Rubio, and anti-Sanders people, but I have to give you credit with your anti-Kasich crusade. You're like a lone wolf.

And it's crazy, being from Ohio, how he's considered to be the "most Presidential" of the republican candidates and what not.

Like....fukking a. What does that tell you?

 

[smitty22]

And it's crazy, being from Ohio, how he's considered to be the "most Presidential" of the republican candidates and what not.

Like....fukking a. What does that tell you?

Been screaming this breh