Letter to The Columbus Dispatch
Some Questions for John Kasich and The Columbus Dispatch

by Carl Skrade

Currently here in Ohio TV ads are running which present the suggestion that the Kasich cuts to health care facilities for the elderly and the indigent put these people at increased risk---possibly lethal risk.

Kasich not only is fighting back but is, as usual, fighting back using his primary tools---spin, deception, diversion, as well as his trademark arrogance and bombast. He focuses on the question of who is funding the ads. What he is not doing is offering account of who will pay for the cuts and who will benefit from them---nor is he discussing who funds his political life. And as usual the Columbus Dispatch provides Kasich its carte blanche support but is not analyzing the issues and alternatives.
The deficits---federal, state, local and personal---what are the root causes? Might they include such high dollar items as tax cuts for those who need them least, bank bailouts and bonuses, an enormously bloated military budget, failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now being supplemented by the embarrassing imperial blundering in Libya? And the Kasich’s health care cuts---what will they cost and who will pay? And who will benefit? As we tackle our cultural meltdown---financial and otherwise---we must dig into alternative views of root causes and solutions, not look for diversions nor offer an opinion validated by an opinion. The focus should be on analyzing alternative views of responsibility, costs and benefits

Shouldn’t Kasich and the Dispatch address these issues clearly and carefully and thoroughly, assessing responsibilities and analyzing (not the Dispatch’s strong suite) alternative solutions? How does the Dispatch readership benefit from the paper’s unquestioning adulation of Kasich? What does Kasich eternal self-serving spin obscure?
For starters consider the following:

---Going back to the mid-1970’s, American worker productivity has increased (see, e.g. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve Board statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, etc.) about 94% over the following three decades. During this same time worker compensation went flat or declined while taxes on the moneyed elite decreased (who was taxed to pay for this, the wars, the bailouts and bonuses, etc.?) as their “compensation” increased from 8% of the nation’s total income to 23% and rising.

---Also consider the claim that the financially ignorant, the irresponsible and the deadbeats bear primary blame for the financial collapse in view of the following: The amount of their indebtedness amounts to about $300 billion, now about 2% of household net worth. Measure this against the realization of casinos and run the same toxic scenarios over again, that about $1.3 trillion of toxic debt developed. Our tax money (and remember that many major corporations along with their welfare subsidies pay no federal taxes) is being used to cover this so that the losers, the moneyed elite, will not lose their money but can take it back to Wall Street’s financial casinos and run the same toxic scenarios over again. Socialism for the rich; privatize benefits and socialize costs. If we are to get serious about assessing responsibility and creating measures to prevent a rerun of the financial collapse, a question needing scrutiny is “How did that $300 billion of deadbeat bad debt grow into the trillions of toxic debt, part of which was used to prevent losses for the financial elite and part of which still hangs like Damocles’ sword over the financial well-being of the nation and the globe?”

A footnote on Kasich. (1)He worked for and was rewarded with nearly $450,000 from Lehman Brothers, a company who in spite of their entourage of financial geniuses like John, misread the risks of CDO’s, CDO”s squared and cubed, credit default swaps and various other ludicrous scams, marched lemming-like to their demise. (2) This same John worked for Fox News, the proudly admitted masters of scam and deception. Maybe John caught their virus.
Keep these and numerous other failures of business in mind as you hear John tout the business model for education, health care and all else. What makes anyone think that Kasich is up to the tasks of leadership in these difficult days? His primary successes are in the area of self-promotion, vacuous self-promotion. And the Dispatch is his more-than-willing handmaiden.

Carl Skrade
cskrade@sbcglobal.net
May 10, 2011