John Kasich's Part-Time Job At Ohio State U. Pays $1,388.88 Per Hour: Average Cincinnatian Earns $21.37 Hourly Holding Down A Full-Time Gig

Wage Data For Cincy Area

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Former Wall Street investment banker John Kasich, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, makes more in a year as a part-time lecturer at Ohio State University than most Cincinnatians earn in full-time jobs.  Kasich gets $50,000 for 36 hours of talking -- or $1,388.88 per hour.  He takes money for speaking to college classes, something many prominent Ohioans are glad to do for free.  Former U.S. Sen. John Glenn -- a Marine fighter pilot who became an astronaut and was the first American to orbit the Earth -- comes to OSU gratis.  Comparing paychecks to Kasich's, you will see that a cop in SW Ohio -- which includes the Cincinnati area -- makes $25.21 per hour.  A fast food worker makes $8.58.  A high school teacher earns $39.59 hourly -- that is an average for public, private, parochial and charter school wages (see accompanying chart).  Kasich's pay is 35 times as much per hour as dedicated teachers -- both union and non-union -- who spend their entire days in classrooms trying to prepare Ohio kids for college classes.  Kasich has had the OSU gig for the past seven years, so it is not like he is getting a fat one-time speaker's fee.  This is a part-time position on the state's biggest campus.  Kasich has not opened up his income tax records to public view.  He is the only candidate for Ohio governor since the mid-1980s who has refused to reveal his tax data.  The OSU payments are public record.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks hourly earnings for hundreds of jobs, and 63 pages of data for the Cincinnati metropolitan area is available (pdf) by clicking here. The Cincy metro covers a wide swath of SW Ohio, including Hamilton, Clermont, Butler and Warren counties. Employers rely on the stats to make sure the salaries they are paying their workers are in line with area norms. Payroll data for the Columbus metro area is available in this labor statistics report (pdf).  The per hour earnings reports for Cincinnati and Columbus are from October 2009, and its is the most recent data available.  The Daily Bellwether looked over the Cincinnati numbers for full-time workers and found some examples to compare to Kasich's $1389 an hour part-time gig:

Accountants and auditors -- $27.55 per hour.
Engineers -- $36.79 per hour
High school teachers -- $39.59 per hour
Post secondary teachers -- 36.85 per hour (this post would equate to Kasich's OSU job)
Registered nurse -- $36.61 per hour
Fast food worker -- $8.58 per hour
Janitors -- $11.99 per hour
Plumbers -- $26.83 per hour  
Machinists -- $25.14 per hour
Factory foreperson (supervisor) -- $23.39
School bus driver -- $18.66
Tractor-trailer driver -- $26.30

Across the board, the mean salary for all workers was just over $20 an hour.  For a part-time job, the pay was $12.27 an hour.  The Cincinnati area data covers about 940,800 workers.

In Columbus, the hourly pay data shows that post-secondary (college level) teachers earn $59.64 an hour.  But if the wage rates are examined closely, they show $35.33 an hour for college level instructors in the arts, humanities and communications.  Kasich has a political science contract, which is a comparable position.  He made nearly 40 times the average in the Columbus wage market.

Ohio Daily is wondering today if Kasich got a sweetheart deal. Ohio Daily has gotten info from an e-mail circulating recently among faculty members on the Ohio State University campus:

"In an Oct. 19th email, Gunther said he and other faculty members were pressured to keep inviting Kasich back, and said he called Kasich’s salary 'obscene,' especially when compared to other part-time faculty. From the email:

"Let's look at this from another perspective. According to his own official report, Kasich was paid an average of $1,389 per hour for these occasional lectures. Instructors at OSU who are simply hired to teach a course (i.e., they are not regular faculty, but they often included Emeritus faculty) were paid between $2,500 and $5,000 for an entire 10-week course. That works out to something ranging from $63 to $125 per hour of lecture time, and that does not include the additional time required for grading and holding office hours with students. Even a full professor making $100,000 per year would be paid only about $200 for a 2-hour lecture (when research, grading and office hour requirements are factored in). Kasich’s pay, which averaged about  $2,778 per lecture, is simply obscene."

War Hero David Hackworth Had Low Opinion Of John McCain: Saw Ohio's John Glenn As Greater Figure

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Some veterans are doubtful about Sen. John McCain's status as a war hero. And David Hackworth -- who died in 2005 -- was among the sharpest critics. Hackworth received several awards for valor in Korea and Vietnam, and is considered one of the nation's greatest warriors. Before his death, he wrote that McCain is not in the same league as former Democratic Sen. John Glenn, a Marine pilot from Ohio who became the first American to orbit the earth:

"John McCain is being hailed in the press as a 'genuine war hero.' But is he a war hero in the conventional sense like Audie Murphy and John Glenn?"

Hackworth went on to answer the question in a column. Bottomline: He found McCain lacking, and noted the Republican presidential candidate actually spent less than 20 hours over the battlefields of Vietnam. McCain, of course, was held for more than five years as a POW in the Hanoi Hilton prison camp. Hackworth was unimpressed. His words -- and other criticisms of McCain -- are turning up on a low-budget Web site called Vietnam Veterans Against McCain. It appeared earlier this year as the creation of a former supporter of the Swiftboat Veterans For Truth, a group that attacked John Kerry's service in Vietnam. That group formally disbanded and shut down its online portal five weeks ago.

So far, the Vietnam Veterans Against McCain haven't attracted much attention. And at the moment they are little more than a fringe organization. Can they metastasize? Or become influential? At this point, it looks like they will be fighting a losing battle. McCain's status as a war hero is a fixture in the popular imagination. His POW years and service as a naval aviator are key to his image and powerful during a time of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. But some former soldiers and sailors clearly seem determined to seize upon and carve up McCain's role in Vietnam, which they contend has been made grander than reality. Even though Hackworth is gone, his words live on. And it looks like some vets who agree with him are signing up to enlist in the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain.

John Glenn In TV Ad For Hillary: She'll Fix NAFTA

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Former U.S. Sen. John Glenn, the Ohio icon who was the first American to orbit the Earth, appears in a new ad for Hillary. You can watch the ad here, or read the script:

John Glenn: "Hillary and I both come from middle class families in the middle of America. As long as Annie and I have known her, Hillary's fought for working people. She'll end 55 billion dollars in giveaways to corporate special interests and invest that money to create jobs in research and innovation to rebuild the middle class.

"And Hillary will fight to change trade deals like NAFTA. She's been doing that for years. I'll be proud to call Hillary my president."

Starry Eyed Over NASA? Both Obama And Clinton Support Manned Spaceflight

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The first American to ride a spacecraft into orbit -- former Sen. John Glenn -- hopes to launch Hillary into the White House with his endorsement in Ohio today. NASA's Glenn Research Center near Cleveland is a massive lab that pumps about $1.1 billion into the state's economy each year. It accounts for 7,360 jobs. John Glenn's new role in the Democratic presidential race is bound to highlight the space policies of Clinton and Barack Obama -- policies that could loom more important as the March 4 primaries draw near. Ohio is the birthplace of aviation and has a huge economic stake in the industry; Texas, which votes the same day, has Houston and NASA's Johnson Spaceflight Center where the astronaut corps is based.

Both Hillary and Obama have issued position papers expressing support for manned space flight and next generation vehicles that will replace the 1970's technology space shuttle fleet by the end of this decade. Both favor staffing and flying the International Space Station. Their words indicate they want Americans to return to the moon -- where Ohioan Neil Armstrong was the first human visitor in 1969 -- and eventually explore further into cosmos. Hillary, perhaps, has more enthusiasm. Obama says:

"The retirement of the space shuttle in 2010 will leave the United States without manned spaceflight capability until the introduction of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) carried by the Ares I Launch Vehicle. As president, Obama will support the development of this vital new platform to ensure that the United States' reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period. The CEV will be the backbone of future missions, and is being designed with technology that is already proven and reliable. The International Space Station is an example of what we can accomplish through international cooperation. Barack Obama is committed to the completion of the International Space Station."

Clinton says:

"Hillary is committed to a space exploration program that involves robust human spaceflight to complete the space station and later human missions, expanded robotic spaceflight probes of our solar system leading to future exploration, and enhanced space science activities. She will speed development, testing, and deployment of next-generation launch and crew exploration vehicles to replace the aging space shuttle. And in pursuing next-generation programs, Hillary will capitalize on the expertise of the current shuttle workforce and will not allow a repeat of the 'brain drain' that occurrred between the Apollo and shuttle missions."

Popular Mechanics has looked into the space policies of all the presidential candidates, GOP and Democratic, and found that
the Republicans haven't said much, if anything, on the topic. The Democrats appear to own this issue, and probably have ever since John Kennedy pledged the USA would put a man on the moon.

John Glenn to Endorse Hillary: Today in Columbus

The Clinton campaign says that former Sen. John Glenn -- the astronaut and war hero -- will endorse Hillary today in Columbus. This is a major development because Glenn is an icon in his home state.

NASA Posts Help-Wanted Ad: Needs Another John Glenn Or Neil Armstrong

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration today posted a help wanted ad seeking up to 19 new astronauts. The job tops out at $130,257 a year and offers great views of the planet Earth. NASA says a lot of travel is involved, including the possibility of a trip to the moon.

More details are here. Interested Ohioans might have a solid chance of getting hired. The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn, was a Buckeye. And the first human to stand on the surface of the moon, Neil Armstrong, was a Buckeye. They followed an aviation tradition that dates back to 1903 when two Ohioans, Orville and Wilbur Wright, invented the airplane and took mankind's first powered flight. That development eventually gave birth to NASA in the mid-20th Century.

NASA officials in Houston said applicants for the 2009 astronaut candidate class "could fly to space for long-duration stays on the International Space Station and missions to the moon." Applications have to be turned in by July 1, 2008. Ellen Ochoa, NASA's chief of flight crew operations, said:

"We look forward to gathering applications and then being able to select from the largest pool possible. Continuing our impressive record in successfully carrying out challenging human spaceflight missions depends on maintaining a talented and diverse astronaut corps."

A bachelor's degree in engineering, science or math is required. Experience flying high-performance jets is a plus. But there is nothing mentioned about having the Right Stuff.