ProgressOhio

Did you know that:

• Ohio received (and hopefully buried) 21.9 million tons of trash - mostly from New York and New Jersey - during 2008 while exporting only about one million tons to its neighboring states, according to the Akron Beacon-Journal.  http://www.ohio.com/news/83768352.html 

If this is Ohio's new "growth" (or gross) industry, let's be thankful that the mess is covered right now by snow.  And while we're talking about weather:

• Cleveland rates first (and Columbus 8th) in a Forbes magazine ranking of the nation's "worst winter weather cities." (AP) 

Or they're among the "best" winter weather cities if you enjoy the white stuff.

• Congressman John Murtha, D-PA, who died this week, was the first combat veteran from the Vietnam War elected to Congress.  And then he went on again to show his bravery by opposing George Bush's disastrous adventure in Iraq.
• In a complicated series of votes on Feb. 4, both Democratic congressman Zack Space and Republican congressman Pat Tiberi voted NO on increasing the federal debt limit to $13 trillion and change.  Both represent parts of Licking County.

On a related measure, Space the same day voted YES to adopt pay-as-you-go rules barring Congress from approving new spending without offsetting spending cuts or tax increases.  Tiberi voted NO on pay-as-you-go.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/votes/?votenum=48&chamber=H&congress=1112

Let the congressmen speak for themselves:

Space: http://space.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=20&sectiontree=8,20&itemid=897

Tiberi: http://tiberi.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=169307