Main Street

Word on the Street: Game On

Dan O’Malley — Cleveland, Ohio

John Kasich had two words this week for Ohioans who were counting on the innovative 3-C rail program coming to our state: Forget it.

In fact, in the week since he was elected governor of Ohio, Kasich has been on quite a tear. On Wednesday he vowed to send thousands of good-paying Ohio jobs to New York; on Thursday he jeopardized $400 million in public education funding, and yesterday he named a Wall Street good-ole-boy with a public corruption conviction to lead his Inauguration Committee.

I know what you’re thinking, but now is no time to shrug our shoulders and say “we told you so.” Now is the time to fight like dogs against an agenda that threatens working families all across the Buckeye State.

When George Bush was re-elected in 2004, he claimed a mandate from the people, and set his sights squarely on privatizing Social Security. With a fresh term in front of him and Republican control of both houses of Congress, some thought his privatization plan was a done-deal. But progressive activists – with the American people on their side – fought back, and won, and millions of seniors were spared the misery of watching their retirement squandered in the Wall Street collapse.

For those of us who worked so hard for a different result last Tuesday, it’s understandable to feel exhausted, frustrated, and even defeated.But now it’s time to get up off the mat. In just a week’s time, John Kasich has shown us that we’ve got some mighty battles on the horizon. He thinks a narrow victory last week was all he needed to ram his agenda through. He’s counting on us feeling weakened. He’s counting on us staying down.

Let’s tell John Kasich that we’ve got two words of our own: Game on.