While John Kasich Cuts Education And Children?s Health Funds, He Spends Millions On Casino Consultants
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on May 17th, 2011 4:36 am by HL
A deal struck by Gov. John Kasich (R) could cost Ohio taxpayers as much as $15 million over the next year, according to the terms of a state contract with a Los Angeles-based consulting firm that is advising Kasich on his policies regarding the state’s casinos.
Despite forcing widespread cuts on various state programs — including education and children’s health programs — Kasich entered into the agreement with Moelis & Co. in order to help the state “maximize its gaming revenues,” the Columbus Dispatch reports:
Moelis, which along with Spectrum Gaming was hired to advise Kasich on casinos and other gambling-related issues in Ohio, will be paid a monthly retainer fee of $200,000 over the year-long contract. Additionally, the Los Angeles-based company can earn up to $13 million in incentives fees.
According to the contract, which was provided to The Dispatch by the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, Moelis is owed 3.25 percent of the state’s added estimated revenue from gaming – capped at $13 million.
Kasich’s spending on casinos comes while he continues to preach fiscal austerity and shared sacrifice to Ohioans. Kasich’s budgetary moves have included deep cuts to education and children’s health programs, a union-busting bill that ended collective bargaining for public workers (including teachers, firefighters and police officers), and privatization efforts that, among other things, would leave prison guard towers unoccupied.
Unfortunately, it seems Kasich’s dubious decisions with taxpayer dollars is becoming a trend. Despite the “shared sacrifice” rhetoric, Kasich used the state-owned airplane more in his first three months in office than his predecessor — Ted Strickland (D) — did in 13 months. He’s also paying his staff more than Strickland paid his, and exempted his own office from much of the pain felt by the state’s austerity measures.
Instead of spending money on vital programs like education and children’s health, Kasich has apparently decided to pin his economic hopes to booze and gambling.
Trump Picks $50 Million Entertainment Career Over Presidential Race
Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy Gage Skidmore.
Announcing that he wouldn’t run for president on Monday, Donald Trump said in a statement that “business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.” It’s not surprising that he didn’t choose to run a campaign that he almost certainly would have lost. But Trump’s decision was probably based as much on an ultimatum from NBC, the network that runs The Apprentice, Trump’s one undisputed business triumph, as it was by any particular love of business.
Mike Huckabee’s contract with Fox News pays him $500,000 a year, a sum that’s been quoted often in discussions of his decision not to run for president. But that contract pales in comparison to Trump’s take from his entertainment ventures: in its list of the wealthiest entertainers in 2009 and 2010, Forbes estimated that Trump makes $50 million annually from his entertainment ventures.
Trump might not have to sacrifice all of that income if he ran for president, because some of it comes from speaking fees, books, and products like a menswear line. There are no prohibitions on candidates receiving money for services rendered, so Trump probably could continue doing product endorsements as long as he wasn’t being paid unusually high rates for them, though he might have dropped some clients in order to avoid conflicts of interest or to appear more substantive. And NBC’s president for programming, Bob Greenblatt, told entertainment reporters that if Trump ran for president, the network would replace him but continue the show with a new host, a move they’d likely have been required to make to comply with equal time rules. That very public announcement left Trump with the unpleasant prospect of a campaign that could strip him of the most legitimate business enterprise in his portfolio.
Trump’s brief, incendiary campaign may have long-term negative implications for his brand, especially given how much he harped on President Obama’s citizenship. But continuing The Apprentice, one of the few things NBC knows works in the current lineup, gives Greenblatt desperately-needed breathing room to roll out an ambitious new programming schedule. Trump’s pseudo-run may have set the bar low for ugliness in the 2012 Republican primary, but in the short term, he’s still good business for NBC.
