WOSU 06/27/2012

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2012/06/27/commentary-kasich-not-helping-ohio-tuition-increases/

The U.S. Department of Education released its 2012 list of the top 25 most expensive public universities. Four of those top 25 are Ohio schools, including two in the top ten, The Ohio State University and Miami University.

That puts Ohio in second place overall for most expensive public universities, beaten out only by our neighboring rival Pennsylvania, for this dubious honor.

So, umm, go Bucks?!

And go they will, OSU leadership recommended a 3.2 percent increase in undergraduate tuition and fees for the 2012-2013 school year just weeks ago.

This tuition increase was announced on the heel of a Dayton Daily News story stating that last year the university’s salary bonuses increased by 89 percent.

In that article, Ohio University economics Professor Richard Vedder said, the scale of these bonuses are “not the norm in higher education,” and that he has “never seen anything like this – never.”

Fortunately (at least for those bonus recipients) the school has gotten the support it needs to produce results – at least that’s what OSU President Gordon Gee said.

During a press event in January, Governor Kasich said, “I can tell you Gordon Gee said that this administration is more friendly to higher education than about any place in the country, and Gordon says that now that we have what we need we better produce for the governor.”

But what was the context of that quote?

Kasich was speaking about a new minority jobs program he’s piloting at three community colleges and how those are being funded. At one of the colleges, the Lorain County Community College, the program will be funded through tuition revenue, which is increasing by another 3.5% due to diminished state funding, according to the LCCC Board.

Kasich’s patent response to complaints about reduced funding? He said that the LCCC should “better husband their resources and have a focus.”

Kasich went on to say that he wouldn’t raise taxes to help the situation, that raising taxes would make the state less competitive, that it would “kill the state.”

So what exactly would raising taxes do to kill Ohio? Nothing Kasich isn’t already doing, himself, by pushing tax increases down to the local level, where the cost is born upon the smallest group of people, often across those who are most hurting.

And according to a recent Institute for a Competitive Workforce, U.S. Chamber of Commerce report, Ohio universities rate below the national average on almost every measurement.

Which brings me back to the top 25 most expensive public university list.

When Kasich said he wants to keep our state competitive is he referring to lists like this? Because if we keep reaching for the top of that list, the only students our universities will have will be the ones whose parents received $1 million bonuses.

But, like those administrators taking bonuses while doling out tuition hikes, Kasich’s attempts at Union busting and defunding of education means his actions against Ohioans ring truer than his words.

WOSU 5/9/2012

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2012/05/09/sexual-orientation-is-no-big-deal-in-gay-rugby-league/

Standing in the hail and rain, alongside fourteen other men, we await the kick-off. The ball spiraling through the air while fifteen hulking monsters run toward us, looking to pummel whoever receives the ball.

As in life, there are no pads in rugby, and few moments to rest. Broken bones and black eyes are par for the course. That alone makes most people think we’re all a bit nuts to play this sport, and maybe we are.

In the best-case scenario we’re thought of as men’s men. And in more ways than one we may be that too.

Until a couple months ago I hadn’t played rugby for several years. Part of why I stopped playing was that I didn’t feel the sort of camaraderie with my old team that I do now.

That was mostly because many of my old teammates, like so many teammates on so many different sports teams in my past, felt comfortable making the same tired old jokes about being gay or denigrating women.

And sadly, instead of telling them to stop, that I was offended, I quit.

But now, the rugby team I play for is part of the IGRAB league, the International Gay Rugby Association and Board.

And if I were gay that would seem obvious, however I’m a hetero man, playing in a gay rugby league because, even though it is defined in part by sexual orientation, it is somehow less filled with sexual politics than a straight league.

So what is it that in this day and age, where you would be hard pressed to find a sports league based on race, you still have sports leagues based on sexual orientation?

Most of my teammates have some experience playing on mostly straight sports teams. They said in that environment they usually felt they couldn’t be honest, and needed to test the waters before coming out. That coming out process is hard enough as it is, so to do it simply for a recreational sports team can be a tough decision to make.

Of course I can imagine what some of you are saying, well don’t ask and don’t tell.

But when you’re first getting to know someone, particularly in a social setting, like adult sport leagues, after talking about the weather, how long does it take before the conversation strays into the realm of work and more to the point, family.

And that’s the subtle, or maybe not so subtle, difference between the leagues. Joining a straight rec league generally means people will make the assumption that you’re straight. With gay rec leagues there just doesn’t seem to be an assumption, whoever you love is all right.

So can we finally stop with sexual orientation being used as a political football, and instead just get back to playing some football?

The one conceit I’ll give is that for all of my talk about peace and love, it’s never alright to love the other team, especially not in rugby.

WOSU 02/07/2012

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2012/02/07/commentary-fracking-not-a-panacea-for-ohio/

What the frack is going on in Ohio?

Eleven earthquakes over the past year – that’s what’s going on.

While fracking may sound like ringing cash registers to the ears of gas executives, it sounds more like Carol King to the rest of us – “I feel the earth, move, under my feet…”
Shale gas drilling, as President Obama referred to it during his State of the Union speech, is in boom times right now. And like most politicians he wants to capitalize on it. Of course it’s possible that boom is coming from someone’s house blowing up.

According to endless YouTube videos of homeowners lighting their tap water on fire, but more importantly, according to several Duke University researchers, who completed a peer reviewed study in 2011, fracking has been linked to water pollution, and other researchers say the disposal wells, like those near Youngstown, have been linked to earthquakes and exploding homes due to methane build-up.

Perhaps rebranding it as shale gas drilling will make the flammable tap water taste better, especially since the drilling isn’t the problem, it’s the use of water to pressurize the ground below us and force natural gas out of the earth for collection – not to mention the then storage of that polluted water.

The move for greater domestic fuel production, spurred on by turmoil in the Middle East, has consequences. For politicians and industry leaders those consequences include increasing already astronomically high profits and using a small portion of them to, ahem, support candidates.

However for the rest of us those consequences hit more than just our wallets.
Those consequences include disasters – like the gulf coast oil spill, too many dead West Virginia coal miners, the Japanese nuclear plant meltdown, and, those eleven Ohio earthquakes.

But maybe you’re thinking, aw, he’s just a crazy environmentalist picking on Big Oil.
I’ll admit, even renewable energy has repercussions. Wind and water turbines kill birds and alter fish migration patterns, solar arrays take up a significant amount of space, and those potato-powered-clocks just aren’t going to solve all our energy needs.

Maybe those consequences aren’t quite the same as creating oceanic dead zones or turning soil radioactive – but they’re still consequences.

So why not power everything with renewable energy? Why not forget about oil, nuclear and especially fracking? Because our ability to produce enough renewable energy doesn’t exist yet.

But it will if we choose to change the status quo.

I believe the answer is to focus on lowering energy consumption through a combination of carrot and stick methods, rewarding low consumption and penalizing higher consumption. Until industry and individuals learn to control their energy appetite we’ll never satisfy our needs, and those hazards of fossil fuel production won’t go away, they’ll just creep closer and closer into our own back yards.

WOSU 12/07/2011

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2011/12/07/new-ohio-drivers-licenses-has-commentator-seeing-pink/

JobsOhio head Mark Kvamme must be the god-send that Governor Kasich told us he would be. You see, clearly Ohio’s financial and employment recovery is complete. I mean, Kvamme’s got so much freetime governor Kasich asked him to redesign our drivers’ licenses. I’m sure Kasich wouldn’t ask Kvamme to waste his time on something so trivial if there was real economic work yet to be done, right?

Earlier this year I laughed at Kasich’s insecurity about his manhood. It was funny when he suggested he’d look into changing out the pink from the drivers’ licenses because it somehow offended his tough guy image – but now that he’s actually doing it – changing the color to blue – suggests a significant flaw in our governor.

By his pursuit of a personal agenda at the state’s expense, instead of dealing with the real pain Ohioans are facing, Kasich continues to add insult to injury.

Consider the cuts to the local fund Kasich championed. He asserted that municipalities could then make their own choices about their own money (what money?!) so state funding wouldn’t be necessary.

And how’d that one work out? Well, in Kasich’s own school district, Westerville, there are at least 62 fewer jobs due to cuts after the most recent school levy, meant to shore up budgets against those cuts, failed.

You might think that would wake Kasich up, given that he lives in the district – but Kasich isn’t worried, he sends his daughters to private school.

And those jobs? Kasich doesn’t fear adding more people to unemployment, Kvamme will find them jobs.

Of course JobsOhio is claiming it’s created jobs – unfortunately the jobs it’s referring to came about before Kvamme’s organization existed. Even the Columbus Dispatch hypothesized that JobsOhio has yet to actually do anything, that current successes were achieved without them.

But I digress. What about those drivers’ licenses?

The current State driver’s license contract, according to public records, is with a company out of Massachusetts for an estimated cost of about $14 million – no small change. How much is this design change going to cost the state? I mean, just consider the recalibration of every drivers’ license printer statewide alone; what about reprogramming the system, etc.? And since this is a Massachusetts company doing the work, how many of those dollars are staying in Ohio?

Which brings me back to Kvamme. Let’s tally up his record so far. Kvamme claims credit for jobs saved or created by the Department of Development – which according to Kasich is broken – thus the need for JobsOhio, now, instead of hiring an unemployed professional, Kvamme got free labor from a college student for unnecessary design work, and may be sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to Massachusetts, just to change the gender of our drivers’ licenses.

Phew! Personally, I hope Ohioans give Kvamme and Kasich another pink to worry about – a pink slip.

WOSU 11/16/2011

http://beta.wosu.org/news/2011/11/16/what-columbus-needs-a-little-less-bickering/

What does Columbus need?

It’s the question Columbus Monthly Magazine recently posed to more than 100 community leaders from across the social-economic-political spectrum.   For how divided our country currently seems the answers were surprisingly similar.

The top ideas from the survey respondents about what Columbus needs :

Transportation, the Scioto, arts and jobs – particularly downtown jobs.

I couldn’t agree more with most of the suggestions.

A majority of respondents said we need improved public transportation. Specifically they suggested improvements to sidewalks and bicycle lanes, light-rail, and direct transportation from downtown to the airport, where international flights in-and-out of Port Columbus need to be a reality.

Many of the respondents also said we need to clean up the Scioto River. Make it an inviting recreational feature – instead of allowing it to continue to serve as  Central Ohio’s cesspool.

They also saw public art, and the strengthening of creative cultural in general, as an extremely important part of Columbus’ success.

Of course the list went on and on and included some extreme diversity, ranging from dress shops downtown to Democrats and Republicans singing Kumbaya. They were all great ideas.

However, most interesting was the final majority response.

Columbus.  Needs.  Jobs.

Of course we do, the whole world is suffering right now due to economic downturn. A staggering percentage of our population is sitting on their hands, wondering where the next paycheck – or worse – next meal is going to come from. And so far all attempts to change that fact have either failed or been stalled by constant partisan bickering.

So it’s odd.   All these people with different backgrounds, incomes and political feelings agree on what Columbus needs, but they fail to see just how many jobs these projects would create  – if only they actually tried to implement them.

Imagine if, instead of people occupying the statehouse, or holding tea parties, what if those people were given the opportunity to work on these public projects to help themselves and the whole community?

Think about what type of complex organization it would take to make just one of these ideas a reality?

That complexity represents a worthy challenge, not a roadblock. That’s because the people out of work today are not just laborers; they are executives, project managers, engineers and artists – they are the full litany of people who have the skills necessary to implement the complex changes  Columbus needs.

And what about me – what do I think Columbus needs?

I think Columbus, and the whole country, needs one thing more than anything else. We need to stop bickering and start working. Because working together, to accomplish great things, is what has always made our country exceptional – and I believe we need that now more than ever.