What Ohio can’t afford is more abuse from Strickland’s party. At the national level, the Democratic economic agenda is set by Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, whose fantasies about green jobs and hostility to trade are doing no favors to struggling Rust Belt economies. Meanwhile, Strickland’s own program is fundamentally at loggerheads with the economic-development strategy currently being pursued by the very Ohio Department of Development the governor was so eager to praise.
Currently, the department works from a model that emphasizes the comparative advantages of Ohio’s major cities by designating them “centers of excellence” or “hubs” of various industries. So far, seven such hubs have been named, the most recent being Columbus, which was designated the Ohio Hub of Advanced Energy Manufacturing and Storage. The other centers are the Youngstown Entrepreneurial Hub of Advanced Materials Commercialization and Software Development, the Akron Biomaterials Commercialization Hub, the Cincinnati Consumer Marketing Hub of Innovation, the Toledo Northwest Ohio Solar Energy Innovation Hub, the Cleveland Health and Technology Corridor Hub, and the Ohio Aerospace Hub in Dayton.
Without exception, every single one of the industries attached to these “hubs” has been handicapped or soon will be handicapped by either the Democratic legislative agenda or Strickland’s own actions.
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