Issue 9- follow the money- and tax shifting

While everyone is all excited about CareSource building a new building on the old Patterson High School site that they bought from the Dayton Board of Education for a cool million, just be aware that it’s probably the last money DPS will see from that property.

Because, of course, they sold it to the tax exempt Port Authority, who will then build the building for CareSource, and pretend to own it- or the City Commission will flat out abate it, or CareSource will claim non-profit status, despite paying their CEO $3 million plus a year.

Note- all of CareSource’s revenue comes from Federal money that is targeted to the poor. Instead of the government administering the distribution of money for health care, we’ve “privatized” it because, well, we don’t trust the government to spend our money wisely. That’s why the President of the United States only makes $400K a year, and generals make about half that. Pam Morris, CareSource CEO is worth more- and you wonder why your health care premiums keep going up?

Moving on- CareSource is in the campaign finance report for “Neighborhoods for Dayton’s Future” ^[1] a sham Political Action Committee that is doing a great job of raising money and spending it outside our community- “for our future.” On 10/6/16 they wrote a check for $25,000 to raise taxes on their employees by .25% to help fund the city. Remember, they don’t pay property taxes that fund the schools, but they are willing to charge their employees- who are paid with Federal funds.

And- in another twist, to help your medical bills skyrocket- the Greater Dayton Hospital Association tossed in a cool $30,000 on 9/15/16. This is the organization that helps the two major health care operations in the area collude and maintain high prices for less than optimal care as reported by the New York Times earlier this year. If I was paid as much as their director to write this blog, I’d get you the link – and more. Note, CareSource’s CEO’s salary is set by her board, which has people from the hospitals on it, and CareSource in turn spends their money with the hospitals in one gigantic mutual admiration and back patting and wallet padding society.

This campaign has contributions from some strange places- but, before we get to those, if you look down the list- if you are a vendor with the city, you wrote a check, if you are a high level staffer, you wrote a check, if you are a city commissioner, you or your campaign wrote a check, if you are labor and you do contracts with the city you wrote a check, if you receive funding from the city- you wrote a check.

Remember how they keep selling Issue 9 by telling us that for the average person making $35K the cost is only dollars a week and how the tax is mostly paid by people who work in Dayton but don’t live in Dayton (taxation without representation)- note, the people who can vote, aren’t donating to this campaign at all. This is being sold to people as if they are stupid.

And, the only guaranteed by the legislation winners- Learn to Earn Dayton- donated $8,000 which is chump change to pay for a potential $4 million coming into your organization a year- of which 20% will go to pay their overhead and salaries.

This is anything but a “grassroots campaign,” the average donation from 150 donors was $1873.

Compare that with almost any other campaign in this community- that’s probably 10x the average.

If you wrote a check for $100 or less, you are one of a very small group of cheap-skates, most likely, low level party people who felt pressured to show support, or who thought it might help their career advancement in the Monarchy of Montgomery County.

Usually I point out donors of $1000 or more in this kind of article- but I think in this case- $2,000 is the starting point, since it’s over the average, and people from out of the area:

• M.O. and Nancy Diggs Jr. $5,000
• Jerome and Patricia Tatar $2,500
• Crown Services $3,000
• Sandy’s $5,000
• Friends of Nan Whaley (as if she really has any) $5,000
• Ohio Council 18 AFSCME $5,000
• Learn to Earn Dayton $3000 (why wouldn’t they buy their future sugar daddy some campaigning?)
• Moodys of Dayton  $2000
• Susan Woodhull $2000
• Huntington National Bank $2500
• Roger Glass $10,000
• Copp Integrated Systems $2000
• Weston PAC 1101 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC $1500
• Malt Products Corp (of NJ) $2500
• Shook Construction $5000
• MV Commercial Const. $10,000
• 34 N. Jefferson LLC $2500
• The aforementioned Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association $30,000
• First Financial Bank $2500
• CH2M Hill Engineers of Englewood CA $5,000
• Hollywood Gaming $2500
• Woolpert Inc. $10,000
• Danis BLDG Constr. Co $2000
• LWC $5,000
• Passero Assoc LLC of Jacksonville FL $5,000
• HMV Hoot of Brethesda MD $1000
• SPT of Chicago IL $1000
• Lyn Leibowitz of CO $250
• Dayton Business Cors? $5000
• Realtors Political Action Com. $2,500
• Learn to Earn Dayton – another contribution $5,000
• DP&L $25,000
• CareSource $25,000
• Hazen and Sawyer of NY NY $3,0000
• Arcadis of Highlands Rance CO $2,500
• Richard Lapedes and Maureen Lynch $2,500
• John Scott $2001
• Larry Taylor $2000
• Michael Emoff $2500
• Charles Simms $4500
• John Stafford $2500
• Tina Bustillo $3500
• Peter Haley $2500
• Crawford Hoying $50000
• Fund Raising Net $4629

If that doesn’t make you queasy about this campaign- note that they also spend their money in strange places, much of it outside this community:

• LJR Custom Strategies of New Orleans LA for polling- $11953
• Politech of Las Vegas NV for consulting $2,800  plus aother $2,800
• Rust Belt Strategies of Columbus – Program MGT Russ Joseph- $5000
• Stand up for Ohio – Youngstown- program MGT $1750
• Community BLDG Strategies of Kent Oh for consulting $5,0000 + another $5000
• Burges & Burges of Cleveland for consulting $20,000 + another $10,000 + another $10,000- $40K total.
• Ohio Organizing Campaign of Youngstown for Consulting $3,400
• Angle Mastagni Mathews of Ft Worth TX $10,795 no purpose listed
• The New Media Firm Inc of Washington DC for media placement- digital ads- $35,000

and their printing provider- seems odd, Spark Space Creative ^[2]– of Dayton. This organization has the same name as a Columbus firm, but runs out of a house on Peters Pike by a former Lexis employee Errin Siske. Her website is a holding page. Yet, they spent $4830- no purpose given, $18,422.27 for printing, $9273.97 for printing, $10,409.42 for printing. That’s a lot of printing ($42,935.66) to be doing out of your house.

There are a lot of talented local firms that could have been hired- but, instead, they chose to bypass the Dayton talent. They spent $218,478.19

That’s a lot of money.

And, as always, in politics, follow the money.

Note- the whole report is here: neigborhoods for-daytons future 2016 pre-election finance report ^[3]. It’s filled out by hand- so that it can’t be compliant with the ADA or easily readable by google or those with disabilities ^[4]. Good way to cover things up.

Here is another video- shot on Tuesday, of Mayor Whaley and Jeff Mims trying to sell this tax hike at a forum sponsored by Alpha Phi Alpha. I didn’t ask a question, because of the format of the questioning- and maybe because the last time I asked a political question in a church I was thrown out (although I was assured that wouldn’t happen here).