After similar reforms failed in Ohio thanks to a smear campaign exceeding $30 million, Ohio’s public workers are enjoying the sort of union victory that’s often accompanied by a pink slip.
A month ago I shared stories from around the state of firings caused by the same union bosses who screeched against Governor Kasich’s “attack on workers.” To the surprise of neither of my website’s readers, this avoidable trend continues.
Marion Police say they are committed to answering the city’s 9-1-1 calls but come the [sic] January 1st, callers could see delays in response times.
That’s because the [sic] 15 officers are being cut from the department. Another position is expected to be eliminated in 2012.
Emphasis mine. Delayed response times were one of the many unexplained evils that would have allegedly resulted from making public employees a little more accountable to the public.
The cuts would be in addition to laying off 18 teachers and nine teachers’ aides, which was approved Wednesday night by board members and would save $1.5 million. The layoffs take effect Jan. 23.
The district, like many, has faced difficult financial times. It had $1.2 million of deficit spending last fiscal year and is projected to spend $1.6 million more than its annual revenue this year.
Shelli Jackson, the union’s “Labor Relations Consultant,” was paid $111,811 in member dues last year. An Ohio Education Association-orchestrated strike against a struggling district would be one small notch in her class warfare belt, and one giant kick in the pants for taxpayers.
Gallia County Schools Superintendent Charla Evans told WSAZ.com the board has made several offers they believe to be fair. She said the school system is spending more than it is taking in. The teachers and support staff have rejected both offers.
That offer included a two-year contract that freezes teacher salaries this year, with a 1.12 percent raise in the 2012-13 school year.
Teachers who are on the single health care plan are also required to pay more toward benefits.
Threatening to strike when asked to pay slightly more towards insurance is a common public union tactic because it works. For Exhibit A in the National Education Association’s top-down mastery of class warfare, refer again to the results of the Ohio union reform campaign.
Exit survey: How un-frozen has your salary been over the past few years? When is the last time you heard a public employer suggest a pay cut? What do you expect will happen to teachers without seniority when local unions squeeze school boards into contracts they cannot afford?
Don’t get your hopes up; Sherrod’s lifetime American Conservative Union (ACU) rating is 7.77.
1999: Sherrod voted against impeachment proceedings, a broad tax cut package, medical savings accounts, and education block grants. He voted to delay missile defense implementation, and to continue funding the United Nations without demanding UN reforms. ACU Rating: 0
2000: Sherrod voted against banning partial-birth abortion, eliminating the death tax, and cutting taxes to alleviate the marriage penalty. He voted to lift the embargo on Cuba, increase the federal minimum wage, and impose the federal minimum wage on the states. ACU Rating: 4
2001: Sherrod voted against making it a crime to kill an unborn child while committing another crime. He voted against school vouchers. He voted to allow taxpayer funding for abortions in federal prisons, lift the embargo on Cuba, tighten SUV mileage standards, and maintain the ANWR oil-drilling ban. ACU Rating: 4
2002: Sherrod voted against extending welfare reform, eliminating the death tax, banning partial-birth abortion, capping medical malpractice suits, and a broad 1% domestic spending cut. He voted to limit free speech in the months preceding an election, and to allow Homeland Security employees to unionize. ACU Rating: 4
2003: Sherrod voted against a partial-birth abortion ban, medical malpractice reform, class action lawsuit reform, death tax repeal, and DC school choice vouchers. He voted to fund abortions at military hospitals, keep ANWR closed from drilling, allow human cloning, and allow negligence suits against gun manufacturers when a gun is used to commit a crime. ACU Rating: 16
2004: Sherrod again voted against making it a criminal offense to kill an unborn child while committing another crime. He voted against medical malpractice reform, allowing small businesses to buy health insurance as a group, drilling in ANWR, and a 1% cut in non-defense discretionary spending. He voted to fund abortion at military hospitals, block “bunker-buster” development, and cut military spending in favor of green energy programs. ACU Rating: 4
Based on Sherrod’s 1993-2004 record, he was one of America’s worst representatives on pro-life issues, taxes, school choice, entitlements, and national defense. During his first 12 years in Congress, Sherrod Brown proved himself a worthy torch-bearer for the Progressive cause.
Think he’s improved in the years since? We’ll see next week!
But when Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and puts people at risk, I have an obligation as President to do what I can without them. I have an obligation to act on behalf of the American people. I will not stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve.
Emphasis mine. Obama’s “do what I can” seems to get redefined daily. The proletariat cannot wait for the machinations of Wall Street swine and their purchased politicians!
From a safe distance, Sherrod strummed the same class warfare strings in a press release:
Ohio families deserve a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – complete with a Director – that can stand up to the special interests and look out for Ohioans’ interests. We asked for a fair up or down vote on Richard Cordray’s nomination. But too many senators are willing to stand instead with Wall Street, blocking a qualified nominee for the first time in the history of the Senate based on opposition to an agency’s very existence.
While avoiding an event where he might be photographed next to an unpopular leftist, Sherrod is a leading spokesman for the president’s most contemptible Progressive policies.
Obama justified the illegal appointment of a new czar by citing regulations that should be pursued by the legislature. Remember the legislature? It’s one of those other branches of the federal government… but unfortunately for President Obama, not every senator is a radical statist like Sherrod Brown.
Regardless of geographic proximity, Sherrod Brown and President Obama are peas in a Progressive pod. Based on his love for stifling central government, we might assume Sherrod learned the wrong lessons from the Russian Studies program at Yale!
Though Buerck was never prosecuted, seeing money funneled from ORP to his Florida firm - $1.8 million in 2008, $1.7 million in 2010 - sets off alarm bells. Couldn't ORP find a vendor with a less clouded history?
During the flood of uniformly annoying December 31 fundraising mailers, Kevin DeWine and the Ohio Republican Party (ORP) sent an email titled, “Every Dollar Raised in Ohio, Stays in Ohio.” Does this mean ORP has severed ties with Brett Buerck and his Florida consulting firm, Majority Strategies?
Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine wouldn’t address whether the comeback of Buerck and Sisk was controversial for the party. But he and a spokesman for the Romney campaign separately vouched for the work of Buerck’s firm.
During the 2010 statewide campaign, the state party paid Majority Strategies about $1.8 million. It also paid $3.3 million for direct-mail services to King Strategic Communications, a firm owned by Joe King, a former Ohio GOP official who also did campaign work for Gov. John Kasich — who tried to depose DeWine.
“We were quite pleased with the performance of both vendors,” DeWine said of the Buerck and King firms.
Emphasis mine. Is Majority Strategies of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida still an ORP vendor? If so, it’s awfully misleading to say “every dollar raised in Ohio, stays in Ohio” when what you mean is that every dollar is spent on Ohio campaigns.
A screencap of the complete message follows; there are several references to donations remaining in-state, starting with the subject line. In the first paragraph:
Every generous dollar you donate to the Ohio Republican Party stays right here in Ohio.
In the fourth paragraph:
Every dollar goes toward ensuring we work together to advance conservative policy and support Republican candidates right here in the Buckeye State.
In the closing:
Remember, every dime you give to the Ohio Republican Party, stays in Ohio!
Out of four references to donations staying in-state, one asserts only that money will be spent on Ohio races and three suggest money will not leave the state.
I ask again: is Majority Strategies still an ORP vendor? If DeWine is still sending big bucks to a Florida consultant, this email represents unacceptable dishonesty to donors.
I’ve covered the reasons Ohio conservatives should be leery of Buerck, whose contracts with ORP appear to have resumed in 2008 before DeWine became party chairman. Unfair as it may be, there’s no statute of limitations on a blotted record – even though criminal charges were never leveled against Buerck following the scandal several years ago.
The Dispatch story quoted above mentions DeWine wouldn’t discuss whether working with Buerck had caused a stir in the Central Committee. I wonder what sort of input Committee members have had since November, whether they are willing to send millions to Buerck’s firm today, and how they feel about this email!
As we kick off 2012, we end Sherrod Brown’s second decade in Congress. Senator Brown (D-OH) served 7 terms in the House – starting in 1993 – before his election to the Senate in 2006. I’m 28, and Yale graduate Sherrod Brown has been peddling his blue-collar class warfare elixir in Washington since I was in 4th grade.
1995: Sherrod voted for “family planning” funding ultimately given to Planned Parenthood, and for enforcement of vast EPA and FDA regulations. He voted against the partial-birth abortion ban, welfare reform, tax & domestic spending cuts, and the “Mexico City Policy” restricting U.S. dollars spent on abortion in foreign countries. ACU Rating: 32.00
1996: Sherrod voted to increase the minimum wage and in favor of killing school choice vouchers. He voted against the GOP budget, welfare reform, repealing the assault weapons ban, overriding Clinton’s partial-birth abortion ban veto, and making English the official language of the U.S. government. ACU Rating: 0.00
1997: Sherrod voted for national education testing and B-2 bomber budget cuts. He voted against the Hyde Amendment, tax & domestic spending cuts, school choice, and converting federal housing programs into block grants. ACU Rating: 12.00
1998: Sherrod again supported national education testing, and voted to allow a minor to be transported across state lines by a non-parent for an abortion. He voted against tax cuts, the partial-birth abortion ban, D.C. school vouchers, opening impeachment hearings, and ending racial preferences. ACU Rating: 4.00
With a few commendable lapses, Sherrod Brown spent 1993-98 as a foe of fiscal prudence, the Second Amendment, and national defense. Sherrod was an equally consistent supporter of Big Labor, bigger central government, and the abortion lobby.
Next week we’ll look at Sherrod’s record from 1999-2004 to see if the late ’90s and early 2000s prompted any shift towards common sense. I hope my previous mention of his lifetime 7.77 ACU rating doesn’t wreck the surprise!
Is Majority Strategies of Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida still an ORP vendor? If so, it's awfully misleading to say "every dollar raised in Ohio, stays in Ohio" when what you mean is that every dollar is spent on Ohio campaigns.
As brutal election results reflected, the Ohio Republican Party (ORP) was a scandal-plagued outfit circa 2006. I don’t relish the current ORP leadership fight, but if we don’t want second terms for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown we must avoid repeating our mistakes. Party chairman Kevin DeWine’s old-guard ways – combined with his public betrayal of Governor Kasich – make it hard to believe ORP can be effective with DeWine in charge.
$753,680 spent in the incredibly close Kasich-Strickland race
$1.3 million spent in the secretary of state race, for DeWine ally Jon Husted – including $375,245 in the GOP primary
$1.5 million spent in the attorney general race, for Kevin DeWine’s cousin Mike DeWine
If those figures don’t raise your eyebrows, there’s more. In the early aughts, Brett Buerck was a recognized name in Ohio Republican circles. Then, suddenly, he was known more widely… and not for a good reason.
Brett Buerck (BYOO-rik) is president of Florida-based Majority Strategies. In 2004, he was fired as an aide to former House Speaker Larry Householder after a federal grand jury began subpoenaing records on Householder’s fundraising practices. The U.S. Justice Department later declined to prosecute Buerck.
“Team Householder,” renowned/reviled as brass-knuckle politicos, became synonymous with “corruption” in 2004. Buerck joined Rep. Bob Ney, Governor Bob Taft, and Tom Noe on the list of Ohio GOP persona non grata (or at least persona not-terribly-grata) and by all assumptions that was the end of that.
Though Buerck was never prosecuted, seeing money funneled from ORP to his Florida firm – $1.8 million in 2008, $1.7 million in 2010 – sets off alarm bells. Couldn’t ORP find a vendor with a less clouded history? Maybe the party could even spend its money in Ohio, if DeWine contracted with people not banished from the state!
“The speaker talks to me through his lawyers,” said [Secretary of State] Blackwell, the darling of anti-tax conservatives and the state’s highest ranking black elected official.
“We now stand in a Statehouse awash in scandal, a scandal that was born under loose rules and grew under blind eyes,” Blackwell said recently.
Householder calls Blackwell a “Rodney Dangerfield of Ohio politics” trying unsuccessfully to get respect.
It seems clear that Brett Buerck’s ORP money stream would run dry without DeWine & Co. manning the pumps. After all, it’s a simple task to pull the gory Cleveland Plain Dealer and Toledo Blade coverage from Team Householder’s heyday, and the Ohio Democratic Party’s affinity for ORP leadership will last only as long as DeWine is arguing with the governor.
DeWine’s public complaints of victimhood, in addition to feeding the leftist narrative about Mean King Kasich, are downright ironic in light of his relationship with Buerck. Ken Blackwell had the right idea in 2004, per this Washington Post account:
Ohioans have been treated to regular servings of leaked strategy memos and e-mails written by Buerck, Sisk and others in Householder’s camp. With a swaggering tone, the documents suggest an approach to politics that borrows equally from H.R. Haldeman and Barney Fife.
[...]
“People have gotten caught up in having power for power’s sake,” said J. Kenneth Blackwell, the Republican secretary of state, who has clashed bitterly with Householder and is investigating the consultants’ dealings. “When people don’t feel passionate that Republicans can and will make a difference, that makes the president’s job that much more difficult.”
Without a break from the people and practices who helped sink Republicans here in 2006, 2012 could be ugly for conservatives in Ohio and across the nation. The question now is whether Kevin DeWine wants the upcoming election to be about him.
Last week The Columbus Dispatch reported on what has been a recurring theme all year: Ohio conservatives are evil extremists!
Richard Gunther today called the new congressional map signed into law last week by Gov. John Kasich “stunning” for its representational unfairness, saying it is twice as unfair as the next-worst democratic systems in the world.
“This is a very, very bad map,” said Gunther, a scholar of world democracies. “This is extremely unfair to the citizens of Ohio.”
Based on Gunther’s unbiased calculations, the elected Republicans who drew districts according to the standards of the Ohio Constitution are turning us into Russia!
Even the Duma, the lower house of parliament in Russia – a questionable democracy – earns a score of 7 against Ohio’s 24 on the scale. [Higher numbers are worse]
Gunther said any fair congressional district map should include three principles: competitiveness, compactness and keeping intact communities of interest.
“This map brutally violates all three of those principles,” Gunther said.
Gunther is clearly exercised that Republicans haven’t drawn a map beneficial to Democrats. Let’s hear a competing opinion:
Referring to Ohio’s new congressional districts, Tokaji said, “This is the worst example of elected officials serving their own craven partisan interests of anywhere in the country.”
Like much of the Midwest, Ohio’s electoral landscape is dotted with several big, blue cities surrounded by red-voting yokels. Whether you want the Democrat voters split into as few or as many districts as possible depends on whether you’re hawking unicorn rides.
The citizens’ commission had pledged to create districts based on testimony from the communities themselves, not from parties or statewide political players. To get around that, Democrats surreptitiously enlisted local voters, elected officials, labor unions and community groups to testify in support of configurations that coincided with the party’s interests.
Neither party likes to lose, and both complain as loudly as practicable when at a disadvantage. Crying about cheating is a glass house proposition for the average Democrat, but look for the Ohio Democratic Party to add this to their 2012 violin concerto just the same!
Where would these folks get the idea J Street welcomes their radically anti-Israel beliefs? From a J Street founder, for one:
If we’re all wrong, if we’re all wrong and a collective Jewish presence in the Middle East can only survive by the sword, it cannot be accepted, it’s not about what we do. Sound familiar? They hate us for what we are, not what we do. If that’s true, then Israel really ain’t a very good idea.
Emphasis mine. That obscure quote suggesting Israel shouldn’t exist if she has to defend herself is from… the 2011 J Street conference.
Jennifer Rubin reports that Sherrod has already received more than $86,000 from J Street in a summary at her Washington Post blog:
This is the outfit that called on President Obama not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel, organized 54 of the most virulently anti-Israel House members to sign the “Gaza 54” letter urging a lifting of the Gaza blockade, provided assistance to Richard Goldstone (and opposition to a congressional resolution condemning the Goldstone Report) and voiced support for continued funding of UNESCO despite its admission of “Palestine” as a member state.
For America to have any hope of averting fiscal collapse, the GOP presidential nominee will need to win Ohio in less than 11 months. Each day of Ohio Republican Party (ORP) infighting improves the odds for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown, redistributionist extraordinaire.
I’ve already given my two cents on the conflict between ORP chair Kevin DeWine and Governor Kasich, so I won’t belabor this point: DeWine should step down. I do not assume Kasich’s team is blameless, but the criticisms Ohio House Speaker Batchelder shared earlier this month cannot be discounted. Whoever threw the first stone, a public disagreement of this scope between a governor and a party chairman doesn’t leave many options.
My position was affirmed by an Ohio News Network (ONN) interview airing yesterday and covered in Friday’s Columbus Dispatch. The Dispatch story ran under the headline “Kasich’s staff used in effort to oust DeWine,” which says everything you need to know about how destructive a prolonged fight would be:
In an exclusive interview, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Kevin DeWine revealed that members of Gov. John Kasich’s staff were used in an ongoing effort to oust DeWine as head of the party.
So now Ohio’s Republican chairman is conducting opposition research against the sitting Republican governor and using it to criticize the governor’s staff on television. This makes a great headline and terrific fodder for leftists dying to smear Governor Kasich, even though the political activity in question was conducted on the staffers’ time off.
Boiled down to the essentials, union backing of leftist politicians is good business: Democrats push policies that benefit union bosses at the expense of employers, customers, and often the unions’ own members. This is doubly true of public unions; of course someone who gets rich taking money from government workers wants bigger government!
The case for union reform is tough to make due to Big Labor’s dishonestly political nature. Claiming to speak for all teachers/mechanics/factory workers/Middle Class Americans, unions have a rhetorical curtain thick enough to hide tens of millions in partisan spending. Democrats gain loyal constituents, union bosses get to make unsustainable promises, and corporations take the blame when jobs are cut or shipped overseas.
They’re in good Big Labor company, with 76% of SEIU (5) donations given to Democrats and each of these unions giving more than 85% of their contributions to Democrats: IBEW (9), Laborers Union (10), Teamsters (12), Carpenters & Joiners (13), CWA (14), UFCW (17), UAW (18), IAMAW (20).
Union bosses outspend by millions the corporations whose political influence they get rich demonizing. Democrats are expected to toe the union line as a matter of principle, while any Republican attempt at reform is framed as political payback. When GOP leaders are cowed into silence by this ridiculous double standard, union bosses win – and everyone else loses.
The chart above is one angle of what the GOP presidential candidate will be up against next year. Whenever you hear a Democrat complain about the corrupting influence of money in politics, agree with them – and then present this chart.
Wednesday, 01-11-12, 11:00:38am 
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