Flipflops have been in style and considered by many to be appropriate regardless of location and occasion for some time lately. Remember the furor over a college basketball player’s choice to put her best foot forward wearing them in a visit to the White House a few years ago?

 

While certainly not exclusive to the Ohio statehouse, it would seem the comfortable but revealing and informal thongs for the feet are also appropriate for Ohio politicians, figuratively if not literally.

 

Ohio has been in a fiscal crisis for quite a while and is currently hamstrung by a budget deficit of some $3.2 billion to the point of operating state business on a week-to-week basis so far in July.

 

I guess the good news is the state legislature and Governor Ted Strickland can agree on weekly budgets if not the two-year kind mandated by the state’s Constitution. And come to think of it, at least we Buckeyes aren’t paying the state’s bills with IOU’s like that one on the Left Coast. Wonder if Governor Terminator “vill be bach.”

 

But I digress. Back to the matters at hand.

 

The latest political tug-of-war in Columbus is over putting slot machines at the state’s race tracks as a means of dealing with that massive deficit the state’s Constitution says isn’t permissible. In other words, the state’s politicians aren’t allowed to spend money they don’t have, unlike their bigger brothers and sisters in Washington, D.C.

 

If one was hesitant for fear of a fashion faux paus, we know now that flipflops are politically stylish because they come in two colors that we know of: blue for Democrats and red for Republicans.

 

It was just last fall when Gov. Strickland addressed gambling in Ohio right here in our own backyard while he was busy stumping the state for then candidate Barack Obama instead of doing his homework on the budget.

 

Strickland was asked at a campaign stop in Upper Sandusky about his position on the gambling issue on the November ballot that would have permitted casinos in the state. Strickland unequivocally stated that he was personally opposed to permitting gambling in Ohio, but he would abide by the voter’s decision and would not campaign one way or the other on the issue.

 

Clear enough.

 

Fast forward about nine months later and the Governor wants to install slot machines without the voters’ consent and against their wishes they clearly stated at the ballot box on the exact proposal on an earlier occasion.

 

The reason for the flipflops instead of wing tips is obvious: Strickland is in political trouble and the slot machines provide political as well as monetary capital. When much-needed money is on the line, Strickland’s stated personal values don’t seem to count for much.

 

But the Governor isn’t the only one who came to the budget party in flipflops. So did the Republican President of the Senate, Bill Harris of Ashland. When the slot machine issue was on the ballot, Harris was loud and clear about being in favor of them.

 

But now that those same slot machines could give a political opponent some breathing room, Harris refuses to give the one-armed bandits a foot in the door.

 

Harris is more than aware of which way the political winds are blowing and the Governor’s approval ratings are heading: South.

 

The comical side of this – we may as well laugh, the rest of the country is – is that the amount projected to be raised even by the most generous estimates is one-third the amount need to balance the budget so the issue is really moot because it still doesn’t solve the problem.

 

But then that’s the way it is with hypocrisy and flipflops – no matter how good it looks and feels at the beginning, it just ends up rubs you raw.

 

That’s how it is here on The Other Side. Thanks for joining me.

 

goggle@wbcowqel.com

419-562-2222

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