A Summation of Ohio's Problems and How We Got Here

On the Miami Valley Conservative Alliance group message board, Martin Arbagi wrote a very good piece that I asked if I could share with you all...

As a long-time Republican and member of the Montgomery County GOP Central Committee, I must agree in part with the comments on Mr. Finn's _Wall Street Journal_ column. (For non-Ohioans who read this, Montgomery County is in SW Ohio, not far north of Cincinnati.) The Republican political pros with whom I come in contact almost on a daily basis are basically re-arranging the deck chairs on a sinking cruise ship.

The other side of the coin, however, is that many of Ohio's troubles have no remedy. The state, willy-nilly, is going through a wrenching re-adjustment as it moves from an economy based primarily on manufacturing to one based on ... what? And unfortunately, it is politically impossible for politicians in all but the safest GOP districts to say publicly what I have written above.

I have no set answers, only observations and recommendations:

1. Quietly and without fanfare, the GOP should encourage Ohio's remaining strengths. What are these? Well, one is agriculture. We are entering a boom time for farmers. Although the "population bomb" is a myth (the world's population is no longer growing significantly), living standards are rising. That means literally billions of newly middle-class Chinese, Indians, and others will want their bacon and eggs each morning, and steak dinners once a week. Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa are not the only agricultural states in the U.S. Ohio, with its abundant water, can and should expand its agricultural sector. And speaking of "abundant water," what about targeting industries other than agriculture whose manufacturing processes are water-intensive? I'm sure some other member of this group will point out the apparent contradiction. I just finished writing that manufacturing will never again play the role it once did in Ohio's economy. True. But it will continue to make some contribution, and low-cost water should play a role in this.

2. The emigration from Ohio may not be entirely unhealthy. We need fewer Ohioans, but richer ones.

3. Education is a real problem, and Governor "Taxin' Ted" Strickland is not solving it. The focus should be on K-12, not on higher education. Recall that one fundamental error African countries made as they became newly independent in the 1950s and '60s was to emphasize higher education. This helped cripple them. Most newly-independent Asian nations, however, spent their meager resources on K-12 schools. Their best and brightest could always attend college in the USA. Ohio's public higher education system is bloated, redundant, and inefficient. And, unfortunately, efforts to reform K-12 education have, as Mr. Finn noted in his original column, become mired in psychobabble and bureaucracy.

I'm not sure that I agree with Martin's second point (I'd love to hear more on that subject, actually), but the first and third are exactly on point...

The takeaways...as I see them...for the Ohio GOP and its candidates, are these:

Focus on Ohio's strong agricultural prowess.

Devise plans to expand the occupational areas in which Ohio can compete.

Hammer home the idea that Ohio's public K-12 educational institutions are fundamentally flawed and in dire need of attention.

Note that in that last item I did NOT say that K-12 public education needed more dollars...

Here's a few ideas that I would add to the list that Martin didn't address:

Ohio ought to become a leader in alternative energy by building nuclear power facilities.

Ohio ought to reduce the tax burden facing the business community and property owners.

Specifically, the Commercial Activities Tax needs to be publicly executed in a particularly gruesome display of cruel and unusual punishment.

Feel free to throw your ideas in to the comments section...

UPDATE: I inserted the link to Mr. Finn's WSJ column.