Perhaps the Fans of Ohio’s Proposed Tobacco-Fund Securitization Can Explain Away This

From the most recent release of a periodic e-mail sent by John Becker of Clermont County (Becker is the one and only county official who voted against Bob Bennett’s ruinous continuance as Ohio GOP Chairman):

Tom Brinkman sent me the following:

Ohio’s settlement with the tobacco companies in 1998 set up six foundations to fund spending on several areas which benefit the entire state. Most people know about the work of the Ohio School Facilities Commission to build new school buildings. One of the other funds was the Southern Ohio Agriculture and Community Development Fund that served to persuade and support tobacco farmers as they transition from growing tobacco to other crops or products. This fund was scheduled to allocate $229 million this decade and is very important to river counties where most of Ohio’s tobacco is grown. Governor Strickland’s proposal to securitize the tobacco funds and then spend it on “giveaways” to his Democrat constituency will put an end to this Fund and leave many of our area farmers high and dry.

The “irony” is that if Brinkman is correct, many of the people getting the shaft will be those who live in and around the area where Ted Strickland was raised.

So is Tom Brinkman somehow wrong? Or does Ted Strickland really not care about the loss of promised monies in “his” area? (A related note — As revealed last year, Southeastern Ohio wasn’t even “his” area when Ted Strickland “represented” it in Congress from 2002 until 2006; informed observers know darn well that he lived in Columbus most of the time, and perhaps nearly all of the time, he was not in Washington.)