February is a busy month! Valentines Day is on the 14th, of course, but there are many other reasons to celebrate in February.
Feb. 2nd is not only Groundhog Day – it is also World Play Your Ukelele Day. Feb. 3rd – the 15th and 16th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified (not in the same year).
Feb 7th is Wave ALL Your Fingers at Your Neighbor Day and Feb 17th is Random Acts of Kindness Day. Feb 28th saw the beginning of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692 and we can’t forget Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday on the 12th and George Washington’s on the 22nd.
To top it off, February is National Hot Breakfast Month – so start each of your 28 days off right.
A few high profile Republican U.S. Senators introduced S. 182, Learning Opportunities Created at the Local (LOCAL) Level Act, on January 16th, which would amend the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (EASA) to prohibit federal education mandates. The bill has been referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. Sponsored by Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) and co-sponsored by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), James Inhofe (R-OK) and Ohio’s Rob Portman, S. 182 […] 
While Governor Kasich talks of renewing Medicaid expansion for abled bodied adults, his Department of Developmental Disabilities (DODD) is quietly reducing Medicaid services for Ohio’s developmentally disabled population. The DODD released its Final Report of the Strategic Planning Leadership Group in late December which calls for a 50 percent reduction in beds for Intermediate Care Facility homes that provide skilled nursing and personal care as well as community access to school, day services, and recreation […] 
The time is fast approaching when Governor Kasich will release his proposed budget for the 2016-2017 biennium. When he does, he is expected to include a two year renewal of Obamacare Medicaid expansion – the expansion you will remember which Kasich forced through the Controlling Board against the wishes of the state legislature. Kasich has been beating the drum for the renewal of expansion for some months talking again about his faith driving him to […] 
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Governor Kasich plans to travel the country in 2016, not to get a jump on a presidential campaign, but to push for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Ohio is one of 24 states which has called for a constitutional convention. Ten more states are needed to convene the convention and 38 states are needed to ratify an amendment. The stops Kasich plans to make on his […] 
Obamacare’s second annual open enrollment period has been underway for approximately two weeks, but even before it began, the Obama administration downplayed expectations by lowering its projected 2015 enrollment figure by 30%. The Congressional Budget Office orginally predicted there would be 13 million Obamacare customers in 2015, but that figure has now been lowered to between 9 and 9.9 million when taking into consideration returning customers and new enrollees. Fox News indicates that the administration […] 
How much more obfuscation and misinformation about Obamacare will Americans be subjected to? Bloomberg reports that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee discovered that the Obama administration has been misreporting the number of people enrolled in Obamacare by approximately 380,000. The administration was double accounting for consumers who were enrolled in both a medical and dental plan through the federal and state health care marketplaces in order to get the enrollment numbers above 7 […]