in Ohio ask if I ever miss the state where I was born, raised (with the exception of a few childhood years in South Dakota) and lived until my forties before moving to South Dakota, I simply point to the capitol, the state legislature and state agencies and give a resounding NO. The ONLY thing I miss about the state are the family and friends I left behind. And whenever I return for visits, I'm damn glad that I don't have to stay there for very long. They seem to think I traded down by moving to the "sticks", i.e., the prairie, but I'll take the "hicks in the sticks", the republicans and the politics of this state, as annoyingly red as it is, over that of Ohio any day. Ohio is now such a cesspool shit hole thanks to these fucks that I don't know if it will ever fully recover. And to be fair, the milquetoast, lily-livered Dem party didn't stand up to things the way they should have and also allowed corruption in their ranks in the Northern part of the state, where I'm from, to fester and go on for too long before even attempting to clean it up.
My parents are retired teachers who worked damn hard all of their careers, and my stepdad is now in a nursing home with most of their pensions being taken each month to pay for it so that mom barely has anything to live on; Medicaid pays the rest and hardly allows her any allowance at all. I was physically ill when I heard KaSUCK had gotten in over Strickland, not just because of all the horrors it meant for the state but because he was, and remains, determined to stick it to public employees and their pensions, that they worked very hard for and paid into all those years (I know, because I grew up with teachers and saw what they went through), and he hated Medicaid.
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