In a move that was quickly contested by Democrats, Republicans on May 15 attempted to add another controversial policy to John Kasich’s mid-biennium budget review: drug testing for welfare recipients.   

Dwelling on any presidential aspirant’s personal history, proposals and promises invites accusations of bias that mainstream news media fear most. That might explain reluctance to hammer Ron Paul for views he espouses now or previously published.    

The latest findings of the U.S. Census show the gap between the richest and poorest Americans is at its widest since records tracking household income have been kept, and is the highest among all industrialized Western nations. As reported by the Associated Press and others, the top 20 percent of Americans (those earning above $100,000 annually) received almost 50 percent of total income.  

With Ohio’s 20 electoral votes — more than Nevada, Utah and Colorado combined — presidential candidates work hard to win over the state’s modest, workman-like and pragmatic voters. Last year both presidential campaigns spent so much time here their team could probably order at Skyline Chili without even glancing at the menu.  

It’s a sorry fact that political party leaders in Hamilton County like to undermine voters when it suits their own interests, but now some Cincinnati City Council members are jumping on that bandwagon. People who follow local politics remember the odious deal struck last year between the local Democratic and Republican parties regarding the two separate Hamilton County Commission races.  

Wrapping up my first full year of writing a weekly opinion and analysis column, I’ve come to appreciate the absurdity of politics in a way I couldn’t fully fathom as a news reporter. Oh, sure, I’ve always realized that politics — both locally and nationally — really represents the human drama in microcosm, with all of the assorted hopes, fears, foibles and quirks that go along with it  

Like their national counterparts, Hamilton County Republicans often preach about how they dislike government and want to reduce its size. The truth about county government, however, is that it’s been rife with wasteful spending for decades, a period in which the local GOP had a lock on virtually all of its elected positions.  

Whom do you trust to fix the problems facing the federal government: the Republican members of Congress who, backing President Bush’s every hair-brained move, led the U.S. into the dead end in which he find ourselves? It’s difficult to imagine how intelligent people could decide to re-elect incumbents who caused the very problems we need to fix.   

One major party candidate - the incumbent Republican - is known more for her frequent public flubs, like calling a disabled former Marine 'a coward' for disagreeing with her on the Iraq War, than for offering any sort of coherent legislative agenda.  

There's an old saying: "All politics are local." The phrase, attributed to longtime House Speaker Tip O'Neill, emphasized his belief that a politician's success is directly tied to an ability to understand and influence the issues of his constituents.