Shale, jobs, budgets and films
Posted March 17, 2015 in eNews
In this e-news: A fracking conference; Ohio regains lost jobs; state budget in the crosshairs; Hanauer at the film fest
#WhatTheShale – This Thursday’s one-day conference on shale drilling will help communities cope with development and leverage wealth for public benefit. The Shale Symposium will be in Wheeling, West Virginia, but you can live stream the event starting at 10 a.m. Register for the link. Follow on Twitter using #WhatTheShale. The Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank and the Multi-State Shale Research Collaborative sponsor the event and our own Amanda Woodrum was a lead organizer.
Jobs grow! – Ohio had a great month for job creation, adding more than 25,000 jobs in January. We now stand just 24,000 jobs short of the jobs we before the most recent recession. The nation as a whole surpassed its pre-recession job totals last April and has added two million jobs since. Even with this excellent month, the nation added about twice as many jobs (2.3 percent) as Ohio did (1.2 percent) last year. Check out researcher Hannah Halbert’s most recent job report for the deets.
Tax madness – Income tax cuts proposed by Gov. John Kasich are bad for Ohio, Research Director Zach Schiller says in a new report. Schiller also testified to lawmakers that the budget is no recipe for prosperity. It would dole out $11,906 more per year to the wealthiest Ohioans, while most earners would pay more in state and local taxes. Such cuts have failed to deliver job growth as promised. Instead, we should choose a balanced approach that restores essentials to our schools and communities.
Baby steps – Kasich’s proposal to boost childcare assistance is a baby step that falls short of what’s needed, Senior Project Director Wendy Patton said in a new report. We should help working families by making it easier to qualify for childcare – only three states make it harder now.
At the movies – Executive Director Amy Hanauer will speak on a panel after The Hand that Feeds, a stunning documentary at the Cleveland International Film Festival. The film captures a New York City café where immigrant workers face sub-legal wages and poor conditions. Risking their livelihoods and deportation, the workers team up to form a union. The discussion after the Monday, March 23, 6:20 pm. showing at Cleveland’s Tower City Cinemas will ask who pays the cost of low prices in our economy. Get tickets here and see why critics called it “a captivating David & Goliath story” and said “You’ll never look at your deli server the same way again.”
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