Carnival of Ohio Politics #168

Welcome to the 168th edition of the Carnival of Ohio Politics!

There are 168 hours in a week. Most Carnival readers and most Carnival bloggers are very busy productive people. There aren't enough hours in the week for them to do all that they have to do. Me, on the other hand, I get to use nice long arrows to block out large numbers of consecutive hours for leisurely things like sleeping and partying. Aah! The life! Don't you envy me? One big exception to the sleep schedule started at 11 PM Tuesday and carried over through the early morning hours of Wednesday, and that time is blocked out for compiling this Carnival. To compensate, I'll begin sleeping right after work on Wednesday. After all, I can't let things like the Carnival, no matter how important it is (and it is important, you know!) deprive me of my beauty rest (and those of you who've seen me know that it will take much more beauty rest to rehabilitate my ugly visage). I don't block out time for most household tasks, like laundry and washing dishes, because I don't plan to do them. Let them pile up. I don't want to squander my time on mundane chores. The exception is taking out the garbage. If I don't put it on the schedule, I'll totally forget to put the trash bins at curbside before garbage pickup. The health department has been getting on my case about all the fleas, flies, fungus, rats, mice, wild pigs, vultures, and foul odors emanating from the house, so I can't afford to keep skipping trash day. Though putting the trash out at curbside takes all of 5 minutes, I figure I'll allow myself a leisurely three hours to get it out there. I hope the health department will make note of all the trouble I'm going to in order to get the place ship shape. I get tired of all the "CONDEMNED" notices being tacked to the door, and I want them to park that crane with the wrecking ball in somebody else's yard. Well, enough for the rant against the health department, and on to bloggy goodness from the Carnival of Ohio Politics!

With a name like Bizzy Blog, I'm sure Tom Blumer is among those who may not feel there are enough hours in the week. He still finds the time to post some gems, though. How about this story, detailing a Ravenna native saving lives as a member of the Coast Guard? Also, the statewide GOP ticket for the 2010 elections, and Tom has some thoughts to share with John Kasich about Jon Husted. Josh Mandel will vy for Ohio Treasurer on that statewide GOP slate.

I happen to have the prototype model of the JMZ action figure. They still haven't worked the bugs out of it, so it hasn't hit store shelves yet. The main hangup with the JMZ action figure is that it's programmed to be just as active as the real Jill Miller Zimon, of Writes Like She Talks, and that just burns the batteries out within minutes. With her hectic schedule, Jill still manages to keep up, but I bet she wishes there were more hours in the week. Josh Mandel's candidacy announcement for Ohio Treasurer doesn't excite Jill.

Roland Hansen Commentary alerts us that the elected officials of Lucas County have a blog. Roland hopes that the elected officials are using their hours away from work for their blogging. He wouldn't want them blogging on the county's time with the taxpayers' dime.

If the Lucas County officials feel compelled to blog, then Tim Higgins can teach them a few things about the language of Blenglish, at Just Blowing Smoke. If you're a blogger, chances are you already know some Blenglish terminology. Also, lawmakers appear to squander all the hours of the week devising a needless protection racket. They think they we need them to protect us from ourselves. Don't they have better things to do with their time?

Ben Keeler, at Keeler Political Report, chimes in on the same notes as Tim Higgins about the protection racket. Matt Lundy, state representative for the 57th Ohio House District in Lorain County, has apparently been devoting his hours toward stifling payday lender clones.

I can think of worse things that elected officials can do with the hours allotted to them than blogging or devising protection rackets--like hatching new schemes to rip us off with more taxes. I'm afraid Harold Thomas, of The Ohio Republic, has bad news for us. Yep. Our politicians in Washington DC are contemplating enactment of Value Added Taxes. GRRRRR!!!!!

John Michael Spinelli, at Spinelli on Assignment, notes that Ohio workers may soon have too many hours of free time if the unemployment rate keeps getting bumped upward. The possibility exists that if tubular rail gets off the ground, some components required for its construction may be manufactured right here in Ohio. That would be nice, for a change. The Strickland Administration has finally been briefed on tubular rail proposals.

Justin Jeffre at the Cincinnati Beacon questions whether Cincinnati should be allocating any man-hours toward secretly monitoring the police. The topic came up during a question and answer segment (video is available) of a mayoral candidates' forum hosted by the NAACP. The Cincy mayoral candidates who addressed the NAACP (more video) were Dr. Brad Wenstrup, who indicated that he'd monitor police, and Jason Haap, who also blogs at Cincinnati Beacon using the nickname of The Dean of Cincinnati.

After all the hours the Strickland has committed to changing the school funding formula, the Ohio Senate has balked, requiring many more hours, maybe even months, maybe even never, to change the way schools are funded. While Beacon Journal reporter Dennis Willard thinks this latest development absolutely stinks, The Boring Made Dull is glad that the icky Strickland plan went nowhere. Also from The Boring Made Dull, Bedford school board member Andrew Mizsak has been put on notice to "man up," clean his room (at his parents' house), and maybe even get a job and his own place like any normal 28-year-old man would do. OOOOHHH!!! I'd better keep TBMD away from my house. I'd really be in trouble, then.

With all the hours I had available to me this week, I only came up with one post at Buckeye RINO. I've revisited the topic of creating School Enterprise Zones to conveniently locate an array of low-cost, low-risk supplemental learning opportunities that can occupy the hours of your schoolkids without gobbling up more of your own hours being the children's taxi driver.

Aha! I wrapped up the Carnival in a shorter amount of time than I allotted! I guess I can get more beauty rest!!!