The House also announced it would delay final action on the budget until after its spring break, pushing expected passage from late March into mid-April. The spending plan has to make it through both the House and Senate before July 1.

One frustrated member of the House Finance committee, Republican Seth Morgan, filed a second public records request with Gov. Ted Strickland seeking a road map to understanding his “evidence-based” school-funding formula.

Morgan’s first request was met with an almost 400-source bibliography of studies and reports upon which the formula is based.

For as long it would take for a child to be born and advance all the way into junior high school, Republicans were in charge of both houses of the Ohio General Assembly.  They had the Governor’s Office for four years longer than that.  What did they do about public education in Ohio?  Not a freaking thing.

Ted Strickland has been all over the state and worked with groups interested in fairly funding public ed and providing a 21st century curriculum for two years.  He’s put his plan out there.  If you’ve got particular issues, bring them up.  But guess what Seth? Evidence-based study is not some right wing home schoolin’ methodology.  It means the Governor and others have gone through an intellectual process.  The road map is that bibliography.  You might want to get reading …

(Source: White House Press Office – Partial Transcript Below)

QUESTION:  Mr. President, yesterday you called for eliminating restrictions on the number of charter schools while enforcing some vigorous standards. In Ohio, the Governor has called charter schools a destructive influence on public education, a few years ago tried to have a moratorium on new charters, now wants to cut state spending by about 20 percent for charter schools and restrict some other funding. I’m wondering whether you’ve ever talked with him about this, and is this just a fundamental disagreement between the two of you?

THE PRESIDENT: You know, I haven’t had a conversation with Governor Strickland. I know that part of his concern was prompted by some bad experiences with charters in Ohio that weren’t up to snuff. And if you looked at my statement yesterday, what I said was not only should we lift the cap on charters, we should also shut down charters that aren’t meeting standards. I don’t think that’s inconsistent with Governor Strickland’s position.

My goal here is to create laboratories of innovation so that in the public school system, we are on a race to the top as opposed to stuck in the old ways of doing things. And we’ve got to — we’ve got to do that. In your home town of Cleveland, I don’t know off the top of my head what the dropout rate is, but I’ve got to assume that it’s hovering around 50 percent. If you look at the number of children going through the Cleveland public schools who are actually prepared to go to college, it’s probably one out of seven or eight or 10. And that’s just not acceptable. It’s not acceptable for them, it’s not acceptable in terms of America’s economic future. And so we’ve got to experiment with ways to provide a better educational experience for our kids, and some charters are doing outstanding jobs.

So, the bottom line is to try to create innovation within the public school system that can potentially be scaled up, but also to make sure that we are maintaining very high standards for any charter school that’s created.

Justin Huggins Displays His Posse Comitatus Membership Card

Meet Justin Higgins, a 19 year-old Ohio State University college Republican who’s got things all figured out.  I mean if it weren’t for Constitutional provisions against one so young holding the nation’s highest office, we could put young Justin there in the White House, hold him in high esteem like a young Dalai Llama and he could point us all along the path to political and economic enlightenment.

For now, though, we’ll have to settle for Saturday, March 14 at the Statehouse in Columbus where Higgins will be the master of ceremonies for The Columbus Tea Party.  The party begins at 11 a.m. and is sponsored by College Republicans and Americans for Prosperity.  (Do you know any Americans who are not for prosperity?)

Higgins and others are wigging out over the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the Stimulus Bill.  The notion that the need for this bill rests in part on the unregulated economic behavior of most of the world’s major banks, investment houses and insurers is completely lost on them.  While Justin no doubt luxuriates in his college boy lifestyle subsidized by Mom and Dad, he’s got the time for contemplation to say stupid things like this on 610-WTVN radio today:

We’re going to protest and basically tell Governor Strickland that we don’t want him taking this stimulus money because the last thing we need is more unfunded mandates and more ridiculous spending on the state level.

When these funds run out, we have to pay for it.

Allow me to get right to the point with young master Higgins:  What the hell are you talking about?

Governor Strickland?  Direct aid to for state budgets was partially his idea – borne from the extraordinary circumstances within which the U.S. economy is mired.  How many prisons can we close?  Are we going to offer no mental health services?  Do we close state parks?  This is a national problem and the federal government is helping the states get through the next couple of years.  Oh, and Justin – should Gov. Strickland not take the money to shore up the state’s unemployment compensation fund, or the money that will keep small rural or urban hospitals from closing their doors or the funding to fix or improve highways or bridges?

Unfunded mandates?  Who are you Higgins – a Newt Gingrich staffer circa 1994?  An unfunded mandate is when the federal or other government imposes a rule or law on a subservient political entity that will cost said entity resources to implement – which are not provided.  Whatever you think of the stimulus bill, you can hardly call it a vehicle for unfunded mandates.  The majority of the money within the legislation moves through already existing federal funding streams.  Medicaid is a good example.  There are not new Medicaid programs in the bill, but there are large increases in funding to states to keep services going while the economy is in the tank.  The federal government is not saying, “build more highways.”  The federal government is increasing the dollars available to states for transportation projects.  Bringing up “unfunded mandates” is inane in this situation and either shows the party organizer’s stupidity or that he got his sets of talking points mixed up.

Finally, “When these funds run out, we have to pay for it.”  Huh?  Dude, the state of Ohio is not on the hook for paying this back.  I don’t believe Higgins and the other Tea Partiers understand what they’re talking about.  Their own Republican Party failed them and the rest of the country for eight years, six of which they controlled Congress as well as the White House.  We’re suffering for their mistakes.  This economic stimulus is known as priming the pump and it’s what responsible governments do when the private sector economy is coming down around them.

What’s really going on is that the 2010 governor’s race is beginning to get on Ohio Republican Party leaders’ minds.  Ted Strickland has been nothing but a responsible steward of the executive branch of state government.  He has the support of Ohio’s business community because of common sense regulatory reform and electrical generation legislation which he wrote.  He’s not raising taxes to pay for the recession or fixing education.  Bringing him into the whole Tea Party thing is just thoughtless politics.

Interestingly enough, there are philosophical points which the Tea Partiers could argue regarding the economy and the Obama Administration’s policies.  The problem is, those philosophical underpinnings have either been tested or failed or conservative leaders failed their movement.  The only thing this country has going for it politically right now is Barack Obama and governors like Ted Strickland.  These times call for action and they call for government investment.

One thing you probably won’t hear at the Tea Party on Capitol Square next Saturday is an alternative.  You’ll hear more about conspiracy theories regarding the president’s place of birth than you’ll hear about alternatives.

In answering questions regarding what are the largest problems in Ohio, Strickland told CBS’ Bob Schieffer that unemployment and foreclosures were huge issues, and continued about the importance of the auto industry – domestically and foreign-owned:

SCHIEFFER: What if one of the auto companies goes under?  How will that impact out in your state?

STRICKLAND: Hugely — hugely. And it will not only impact the Big Three; it will impact all auto
companies, including Honda and Toyota and all the others, because they have the same supply network.
And this supply chain is very fragile, and if it starts to collapse, it could have a cascading effect that could, quite frankly, cripple an industry that has been so vital to the economy of our entire nation for so long. So it’s very important that the auto industry get the help it needs to survive.

And I’ve had officials from the Honda corporation come to me, say to me, Governor, we’re not usually in
the business of advocating for our competitors, but it is so important that the auto industry and the Big
Three be preserved.

Otherwise, the economy of this country will suffer perhaps irreparable harm, and we just cannot let that
happen.

Governor Strickland’s fears are also dealt with by the Economist in the Feb. 19th edition.  In an article with the subhead, GM and Chrysler Say the Need Help, So Do Their Suppliers, the author says there are three large problems facing President Obama’s new U.S. Auto Industry Task Force, including, “The third is what help should be given to the car-parts industry, which receives far less attention than its famous customers, but which is facing acute problems of its own.”

One of the hallmarks of our current economic crisis is the constant unwinding of problem after problem.  Too many foreclosures turned into failed mortgage backed securities turned into uncapitalized credit default swaps.  In the case of the auto industry, failure of one or more of the Big Three turns into parts suppliers belly up turns into problems for the foreign-owned U.S. car plants.