At a September 2009 Organizing for America rally in Columbus, Ohio, Sherrod promised to pass a health care bill with a public option — because Saint Teddy knew it was good for us:
As we saw last week, Sherrod Brown’s take on Christianity features a central government equal parts asphyxiating and unaffordable. If citing Ted Kennedy is Sherrod’s idea of bolstering a faith-based argument, Sherrod is not a person we should defer to on “moral issues.”
Aside from the implication that Jesus hates limited government, why should we resent the Ted Kennedy standard for socialist healthcare? Teddy himself said it best after the 1969 drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne: “I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately.”
Ted Kennedy was a contemptible man whose name yielded Progressive victories logic and basic mathematics should have rendered impossible. Whether his failings are glossed over by the likes of Sherrod Brown out of Christian forgiveness or partisan convenience, Kennedy should serve as a moral gauge for no one.
SENATOR SHERROD BROWN: But, what struck me is the kind of life that Ted Kennedy could live and was living… and he didn’t need to stay in public service for 47 years. He easily could have walked away. But, you know, like Pastor [??], Ted Kennedy understands that Progressive government and social justice and economic issues and health care are moral issues.
And as Pastor [??] hap– he and I happen to same, uh, share the same faith, as Lutherans – Pastor [??] talked about, Senator Kennedy understood that part of his faith was the question, the moral questions, and the issue of equal justice, and the issue of health care for all. That’s why he never quit, that’s why nobody in this crowd is quitting, that’s why we’re gonna get health care with a strong public option.
A debt ceiling compromise beats the prospect of a second Obama term by a landslide the size of Texas. I'm glad Congressman Stivers, my representative in the House, voted for the Budget Control Act of 2011.
Too many ORP leaders from the Taft era (concluded in 2007 amid scandal, scandal, scandal, and more scandal) were unprincipled go-along-to-get-along “moderates,” and signs abound that Kevin DeWine falls into that category. How could DeWine expect to chair an effective party in 2012 – to say nothing of 2014 – given his fracas with Governor Kasich? Why should anyone in the POTUS field trust that campaign stops with DeWine will reach the voters they need to reach?
Case in point, Romney and DeWine’s botched October visit to a Cincinnati call center, where Romney failed to endorse either of the issues volunteers were working to pass. Commentators speculated that Romney was being used as part of an ongoing DeWine/Kasich feud – not exactly the press coverage you want in a key swing state.
In early 2010, solid conservative candidates lined up for the attorney general and auditor races. ORP had other plans: enter Mike DeWine, Chairman DeWine’s cousin and a former US senator (lifetime ACU rating: 79.8) unseated by Sherrod Brown in a 2006 election fraught with Iraq war fatigue and aforementioned Taft-era scandals.
Whatever DeWine’s merits or Kasich’s mistakes, Ohio needs Republican leaders on the same page going into 2012. DeWine should step down, Kasich should offer a replacement conservatives can rally behind, and we should all get back to work against Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama.
A month later, how are local governments celebrating the union victory on Issue 2?
Middletown is laying off 9 firefighters, despite the city’s police and fire budgets both increasing by nearly 1/3 in the past decade. In Hamilton, a $5.9 million death tax haul will delay the inevitable:
Inflation coupled with new technology costs and the significant rises in health care costs have contributed to the rise in safety services budgets [...]
The Hamilton fire union contract contains a minimum staffing clause, which means overtime if people are out sick or on vacation. When staffing dipped to 106 between 2008 and 2010, overtime was a significant factor in the fire budget increase, city officials have said.
With labor costs making up the majority of school budgets, the district has sought to make up much of that ground through negotiations with unions representing Cleveland school employees. Negotiations with the teachers union have continued since March, with the district seeking significant pay concessions.
Officials from the teachers union have said the plan also would cut about 175 teaching positions.
The proposed cuts follow a Nov. 8 levy defeat in which 61 percent of voters rejected a combined income-tax and property-tax request.
In Lancaster, where income- and property-tax issues also failed:
One of Lancaster’s three city firehouses was closed last month after the mayor laid off 13 firefighters to help balance the budget. The 68 firefighters remaining have predicted response times will increase in the city of about 37,000, but they could not say by how much.
The state Controlling Board has approved an advance payment of more than $1.9 million to help the Liberty Township school district pay its bills.
The reforms in Issue 2 would’ve helped localities control health & pension costs, ended last-in-first-out layoffs, instituted merit pay, and equipped elected leaders with some flexibility at the expense of union bosses. Good thing we avoided that miserable fate!
The sun will keep rising in the east, and union apologists will continue blaming local budget troubles on reduced state spending. It’s true that Governor Kasich cut spending to cover a deficit estimated at $8 billion when Governor Strickland left office. It’s also true that the Progressive solution is Obamanomics at the state level: out-of-control unions, bigger government, and higher taxes to pay for both.
Sherrod Brown (D-OH) isn’t merely the most extreme Progressive in the U.S. Senate, he’s also a religious scholar. Week in and week out, Sherrod preaches the Gospel of Progressivism: Greater love hath no man than he who gives generously from his neighbor’s purse.
In order to meet the week’s quota, Sherrod was obligated to say government union reform goes “against workers on behalf of the richest people in our country.” Too invested to stop at his usual class warfare, Sherrod had the audacity to attack Governor Kasich, Governor Walker, and Governor Christie for failing to meet what he claims as a Catholic standard.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Sherrod’s sermon about “fairness, and equality, and egalitarianism” has nothing to do with any of these things – and everything to do with union power.
This clip only gets more outrageous with additional context: Sherrod Brown is an ardent supporter of government-funded abortion. Paraphrasing Sherrod, I’m not gonna judge his faith – but I’m appalled at my senator’s willingness to cite Catholic literature for a partisan attack on conservatives. A certain carpenter would have something to say about the blameless guy throwing the first stone.
I don’t recall adherence to the AFL-CIO line as part of my Methodist confirmation. My maternal grandparents’ Lutheran church has never mentioned unsustainable government spending as a moral obligation (though in fairness I’ve only been there for Christmas Eve services).
Help me out, Catholic readers: Does Sherrod have a point, or is this just another low in a career of union pandering?
Transcript of the above C-SPAN 2 clip:
SHERROD BROWN: The Bible talks a lot about poverty, and a lot about fairness, and equality, and egalitarianism, if you will, and for them to go against workers on behalf of the richest people in our country – and that’s really what they’re doing in the governor’s office in Columbus, in Madison, in, in Trenton and other places. It runs counter, at least to my faith; I’m not gonna judge their faith, they can – they worship what god they worship, and they read what scripture they read – but, when you look at what, what my faith means, and whether – I’m, I’m, as I say, I’m a Lutheran, I’m not a Catholic, but you look at Leo the 13th and, and, and what he said about what Catholicism means for workers and fairness, uh, you know it’s, it’s, it’s uh, point, match, whatever – point, set, match.
By analysing ancient algae found in deep-sea core samples, Professor Matthew Huber and his colleagues determined that the mile-thick ice which now covers the south polar continent formed around 34 million years ago. At that stage the atmosphere held much more CO2 than it does now, some 600 parts per million (ppm) as opposed to today’s level of 390 ppm.
Although the Antarctic ice sheet formed while CO2 levels were more than 33% higher than today, Washington spends heaps of cash on CO2-reduction boondoggles each year. Antarctica isn’t the only icy show in town, but Prof. Huber described the threat of CO2 melting an ice sheet in terms that would make Al Gore spew brimstone:
“If we continue on our current path of warming we will eventually reach that tipping point,” he says. “Of course after we cross that threshold it will still take many thousands of years to melt an ice sheet.”
Evidence or not, President Obama, the EPA, and congressional Democrats know their priorities: We have seen the enemy, and his name is Carbon Dioxide. Evil activities like “producing energy,” “building things,” and “going places” need to be taxed and regulated further, or Carbon Dioxide wins! If this means the sort of government control Progressives wanted anyway, well, shucks, we’ll just have to make government bigger.
How well are “deniers” countering the decades-long drumbeat from global warming alarmists? A 12/01 Pew Research Center report tells the sad story:
Few, including skeptics, want to confront the problem that temperature increase precedes CO2 increase in absolute contradiction to the major assumption of the AGW hypothesis. [...] Science must be about skepticism, otherwise the science is settled, but then it isn’t science.
Always happy to attack Big Labor’s enemies, Sherrod Brown (D-OH) did so from the Senate floor during the debate over Craig Becker’s appointment to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). After being placed during a recess, Becker has driven NLRB’s lurch to the Progressive fringe, shoring up the power of key Democratic Party donors at the expense of workers and businesses across the country.
Whining that conservatives call his Socialist beliefs Socialist is a well Sherrod visits often, and Becker has helped Sherrod look ridiculous yet again. Poor, moderate, sensible Becker, before his recess appointment and subsequent bureaucratic rampage, was described thus by The Hill:
He is an adamant supporter of card-check legislation — a proposal that allows unions to form more easily, supported by the White House — and has done considerable work for the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union.
Republicans pointed to Becker’s glaring conflicts of interest, and Sherrod Brown’s rebuttal was to cry foul and call names. Anyone following the NLRB for the past two years knows how that turned out.
C-SPAN 2 clip transcript:
SHERROD BROWN: If, if no arguments work, it’s time to trot ACORN out and tie Craig Becker right to ACORN, whatever ACORN is. And, it’s just, it would be amusing if they didn’t use it time, after time, after time. “He must be a bad nominee because he worked with somebody from ACORN,” or, “He worked with somebody from the Service Employees International Union,” or, “He worked with Governor Blagojevich in Illinois!” That’s, that’s the kind of guilt-by-association that I thought this institution stopped doing 55 years ago when Joe McCarthy was censured.
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) doesn’t have a voting record ranked as far left as Socialist Bernie Sanders by accident; Sherrod thinks a bigger central government is the answer to every problem. In this video, Senator Brown applies his trademark class warfare to the issue of Medicare, instructing a gathering of teachers’ union members to indoctrinate their family, friends, and students against cruel conservatism:
Like the first half of Sherrod’s answer to a question about whether privatization of government programs is a Wall Street conspiracy, there is so much stupid in this clip that it’s tough to begin. To his credit, Sherrod Brown is consistent! Sherrod consistently glosses over exploding federal deficits, consistently attributes the worst motives to anyone who tries to limit government’s power, and consistently brags about the wonders of failed Progressive governance.
Sherrod’s mathematically outrageous and transparently political scare tactics are, like most every policy Sherrod has ever pursued, wrong for Ohio and wrong for America. Next November, Ohio should send Obamacare champion Sherrod Brown packing… along with the guy that awful legislation is named for.
The landslide loss of Issue 2 this month prompted glee from Ohio leftists, whose contribution to the state in the past year has been to smear and sue conservatives at every turn. The Ohio Democratic Party, the unions, and Progressive fellow-travelers want desperately to believe their $30 million anti-reform campaign killed Governor Kasich’s entire agenda so they can resume demanding tax hikes.
Elevated discourse at the first We Are Ohio rally.
Although Governor Kasich is frank about the need for public union reform, he has not blamed Ohio’s problems on public workers. Again and again, Kasich portrayed Senate Bill 5 as one piece of the puzzle – a tool to enable local officials to deal with the cuts necessary for a balanced state budget. For proof, just look at the governor’s YouTube channel: Kasich made this case during a Feburary event, a February Fox News segment, a March presser, an April 700WLW appearance, and on dozens of other occasions in the past 10 months.
Crippling the ability of public unions to hold Ohio taxpayers hostage will not solve Ohio’s budget crisis – and, though you wouldn’t know it from listening to his detractors, Governor-elect Kasich has been clear about that. Nonetheless, it’s an important step to fiscal sanity. Faster, please… there’s plenty more to do.
Political opponents use Kasich’s landmark budget as a foil for their caring (and idiotically unaffordable) policies, but this isn’t the governor’s first budgetary rodeo. During his time in Congress, Kasich wrote a deficit-cutting bill that garnered only 30 votes and then a bipartisan plan that narrowly failed before shepherding a balanced budget as House Budget Chairman in 1997. He didn’t quit then, and we shouldn’t expect him to now – regardless of how Progressives slam Kasich’s woefully unicorn-deficient agenda.
If you’re keeping score at home, here are a few things the Ohio Democratic Party has failed to block:
A budget balanced without raising taxes
Repeal of the death tax
Support for and simplified regulation of shared local services
Reform to “multiple-prime” and “prevailing wage” laws for construction projects
Development of a teacher evaluation system
A loss for Ohio is a loss for Governor Kasich, and Issue 2 was certainly a loss for Ohio. With a little luck, voters will realize government unionization is inherently wrong and always expensive. With a little more, the General Assembly will continue doing their jobs in the face of opponents who get rich misinforming their members!
Cross-posted at Big Government, where you can laugh at my typing “in” in place of “is” in the next-to-last sentence.
We must not overlook the truly significant blow that Ohioans dealt Obamacare last week, with a mix of 2.2 million Democrats, Republicans and Independents rejecting this intrusion on individual liberty and family control over health care decisions.
Indeed, you would be pressed to find a statist boondoggle Sherrod Brown doesn’t love. Check out this rant from a Q&A session Sherrod held this spring with Ohio’s largest government union:
According to Senator Brown, privatization is always driven by “greed” and always makes “the services get worse.” Hearty red meat for a government union crowd, but keep in mind this was an unscripted response. Bigger government, higher taxes, and demonizing The Rich are the only things Sherrod knows.
Sadly for Sherrod, every county in Ohio voted to amend the state constitution against Obamacare’s individual mandate – even after a $30 million Progressive smear campaign against union reform. With huge turnout for an off-year election, the citizen-driven Health Care Freedom Amendment passed by a wider margin than the union issue failed! Brown claims the amendment was “confusing,” which would be a great explanation for the opposite result.
Think class warfare will convince Ohio to retain America’s most liberal Senator, a freshman who rode into Washington on a 2006 Democrat wave in the Buckeye State? Not if I have anything to say about it.
Ohio’s government unions claim to represent simple, positive principles. Good jobs. Workers’ rights. Progress. The reforms in Issue 2 were voted down because union bosses warned dramatically, expensively, and dishonestly how dark Ohio would be with elected officials controlling local governments. If voters realized union power leads to higher taxes, they may not have been as quick to torpedo reform.
The agitators at the top of the union pyramid can now justify for awhile longer “earning” six figures by taking it directly from public employees’ paychecks. However, the scare tactics that worked for Issue 2 weren’t so effective when local voters considered higher tax levies. This means the gravy train will leave the rails a bit faster than expected – but the unions have a solution!
Somewhere along the way Ohio’s “safety net” wound up around our necks, which isn’t especially comfortable for those of us unwilling or unable to flee. It’s hard to argue Ohio’s taxes should be higher, so the unions and fellow Progressives focus on attacking Governor Kasich:
It’s Kasich’s fault for discarding the Strickland school funding model! (Never mind that most districts are in the red, not just a handful on the margins.)
It’s Kasich’s fault for cutting local spending in the state budget! (Ignore those Strickland-era forecasts that prove local deficits have been on the horizon for years.)
In both cases the alternative is cloaked in Obamaesque euphemism about needing a “balanced approach,” if an alternative is mentioned at all. There’s not enough state money because of evil Republicans and racist mathematics, and Ohio’s union bosses need us to refill the tank. Until we do, they’ll force local governments to slash jobs and services, with the occasional face-saving concession for the sake of the Progressive cause. Over the next few months I’ll highlight districts forced into layoffs by untenable union contracts!
This is the system we have. Thanks to the Ohioans who let a cynical union campaign cloud their judgment, this is the system we’re stuck with for the foreseeable future. Ohio can still pull out of this tax-and-spend tailspin, but local and national unions won’t make it easy!
Monday, 12-12-11, 08:30:20am 
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