“Both sides, especially Kasich, have overreached and overplayed their hands,” Cook said. “It’s a power play by the governor’s staff, and it’s a bit like Joe McCarthy. ‘Trust me little girl, we know best.’ ”

Apart from her hackish McCarthy reference and the implication of sexism – which is doubly stupid because all three candidates are women – Maggi Cook is unsuited for a Central Committee seat because she is a plagiarist. I know because she plagiarized me less than a year ago (view PDF printed 01/17/2012):

Bruce Wyngaard, Associate Executive Director, AFSCME Local 11, had a salary of $94,337 in 2009.  Also in 2009, the eleven local staffers of this Public Employee Union were paid more than $5.8 million.  All 30,870 members of AFSCME  paid approximately $190 each for their local staff.

AFSCME Council 8 President John Lyall was scheduled to testify against Senate Bill 5 today.  Lyall was paid $155,482 in 2009. Excluding payments to officers such as Lyall – and $148,265 for First VP Robert Mitchell – AFSCME Council 8 employees were paid more than $5.7 million in 2009. Annual disbursements to union employees equaled more than $155 per member.

The unions spent less than half as much on benefits – pensions, medical insurance, etc. – as on union pay in 2009. AFSCME Local 11 spent a little over $2.5 million on benefits; AFSCME Council 8 spent less than $2 million.  Do you really believe that Lyall, Wyngaard and Mitchell are concerned about  shops, stores, gas stations and other merchants in communities across this state or do you think they are concerned about their incredibly generous paychecks?

Maggi Cook lifted these three paragraphs without attribution from one of my posts, which had been published at that hero, Third Base Politics, The Buckeye Institute’s Liberty Wall, and the Columbus Tea Party site before “her” piece went up. My version:

Public union boss Bruce Wyngaard has a good job – to the tune of $94,337 in 2009. Lots of other American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 11 staffers have good jobs, too: the union paid its employees over $5.8 million in 2009. Taken from 30,870 members, that’s the equivalent of nearly $190 per member.

AFSCME Council 8 President John Lyall will testify against Senate Bill 5 on Thursday. Lyall was paid $155,482 in 2009. Think he’ll mention that while he’s railing about spending cuts? Excluding payments to officers such as Lyall – and $148,265 for First VP Robert Mitchell – AFSCME Council 8 employees were paid more than $5.7 million in 2009. Annual disbursements to union employees equaled more than $155 per member.

For context, the unions spent less than half as much on benefits – pensions, medical insurance, etc. – as on union pay in 2009. AFSCME Local 11 spent a little over $2.5 million on benefits; AFSCME Council 8 spent less than $2 million. Is it unreasonable to conclude the primary service provided by government unions is the enrichment of union bosses?

Clearly, Maggi Cook had plagiarized my research – both on her own site and at Examiner.com – and failed to cite me. Trying to give the benefit of a doubt, I sent her a tweet requesting attribution… and received no response. Another tweet, and still nothing, although her Twitter account was active in the intervening time.

My fellow Third Base Politics (3BP) admin Bytor had communicated with Maggi briefly about an unrelated topic, so I gave him a heads up: this lady plagiarized me, ignored my good-faith effort to reach out, and should probably be avoided in the future.

Bytor sent Maggi a friendly email asking that she cite and link to 3BP when using 3BP content. Maggi plead ignorance. Bytor sent further clarification, including my writing side-by-side with her mangled copy of my writing. Maggi bizarrely insisted he was mistaken. He emailed her a third time, going to even more painstaking lengths to explain she had obviously plagiarized me and obviously should publish quotes as quotes instead of changing a few words and pretending it’s her own work.

She never replied.

That was last February. I was happy to ignore Maggi Cook until I learned she’s the “Tea Party” candidate for a Central Committee seat. If you’re unable to meet 9th-grade requirements for writing and unwilling to admit when you’ve made a simple mistake, I don’t want you anywhere near a leadership position in the Ohio Republican Party.

Of course, I’m in no position to endorse a candidate in the District 7 Central Committee race, but I can affirm Maggi Cook is a plagiarist. If you want a central committee representative who lifts work from fellow Ohioans and plays dumb when called on it, look no further!

As recently as November 2, 2011, The Columbus Dispatch covered ORP’s Buerck connection:

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 do not like writing about ORP infighting; if you’re wondering why I’m bothering to follow this Democrat-fodder story, allow me to defer to Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog. During the 2010 primary I foolishly assumed I could trust the Ohio Republican Party, but Kevin DeWine taught me the error of my ways.

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!

Click for the full size image:

Quick hits: this fall, a consultant with ties to Chairman DeWine produced $179,000 in advertising for one of the Big Labor fronts smearing Kasich’s union reform bill. A glance at last year’s ORP campaign expenditures reveals -

• $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!

I volunteered briefly for Ken Blackwell’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, so there are familiar tones in the current fight with Governor Kasich:

“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.

Cross-posted at RedState and Big Government.

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.”

Emphasis mine. Humorous background: in 2009 Secretary of State Husted, then a member of the state senate, proposed a plan to replace Ohio’s partisan redistricting process… and Democrats killed it.

The Dispatch story doesn’t provide this context, nor does it mention that world democracies scholar Richard Gunther is a registered Democrat who has given $950 to Democrat candidates and causes since 2005.

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.”

The Dispatch fails to note that election law professor Daniel Tokaji is a registered Democrat who has contributed $350 to Democrats since 2005. Leftist college faculty hate it when Republicans win elections? Stop the presses! Here’s a snapshot of the new map:

No, wait – that’s Chicago, the most democratic place on earth! Compare this to Ohio’s new map and see which looks more Russian (consider also Maryland districts 2, 3, and 4).

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.

What do Gunther and Tokaji recommend? A citizens’ commission for drawing legislative districts, like the one recently gamed by Democrats in California:

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!

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.

From the ONN segment:

Jim Heath, ONN: Even if Kasich’s team receives a majority of the seats in the central committee next March, DeWine says he will not step down.

DeWine: I’m going to be the chairman of the party through January 2013.

With three years remaining in his first term, Governor Kasich has already balanced a miserable state budget without raising taxes and shown a keen ability to make Ohio more employer-friendly. Another year with Chairman DeWine is a less exciting prospect for anyone interested in showing Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama the door.

Cross-posted at RedState and Big Government.

Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama would love nothing more than an Ohio divided, so let’s get this over with.

Even without the laundry list of inside-baseball complaints cited by House Speaker Bill Batchelder, it makes more sense than you might expect to oust DeWine despite ORP’s success riding the 2010 tea party wave.

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.

ORP nudged Dave Yost into running for auditor instead of attorney general, bumping Seth Morgan out of the picture to make room for Attorney General DeWine. DeWine narrowly defeated Richard Cordray – now President Obama’s Vital Bureaucrat of the Week – but DeWine family maneuvering contributed to lingering distrust between ORP and Ohio conservatives.

Chairman DeWine has also taken heat for his allegiance to Jon Husted. Husted, a former speaker of the Ohio House, positioned himself as a conservative during the 2010 secretary of state campaign only to kneecap election reform a year later. When the House tried to pass a photo-ID voting requirement, Secretary Husted opposed the measure, handing a rhetorical victory to the Ohio Democratic Party’s race-baiters and class-warriors.

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.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from Big Government.

Every year, Ohio’s government unions pay themselves handsomely with millions of dollars taken from public workers. It’s a decent gig, considering that taxpayers (and even union members) suffer as a result of unsustainable union demands.

Whenever you hear a union apologist slamming fat-cat Republicans or corporate villains, keep in mind what union bosses are paid. Senate President Niehaus’s Chief of Staff – the focal point of a recent controversy – pulls down about $139,000. Does that sound like too much?

View data (pulled directly from U.S. Department of Labor reports) in Excel format.

What’s the difference between statehouse staff and union employees? Statehouse staff work for Ohio’s entire population, while government unions take dues from public workers for the service of fighting taxpayers.

If you decide Governor Kasich is a jerk or your state senator is a boob, you can vote for someone else. If you’re disgusted by the way government unions take and spend dues… too bad. Current law enables unions to siphon money from public employees with no recourse from the public.

Union bosses have had too much control over Ohio’s government for far too long. This fall, vote for sensible reforms to government union power: Vote Yes on Issue 2!

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics.

Here’s the president’s Treasury Secretary on the need for an extension that runs through Obama’s reelection campaign:

“The most important thing is that we remove this threat of default from the country for the next 18 months,” Geithner said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “You want to take this out of politics.”

Emphasis mine; this could be the Freudian slip of the year. Democrats don’t want to take the politics out of the debt ceiling fight – they want to take the debt ceiling fight out of the nation’s political conversation. Eventually, voters will realize President Obama’s fix is higher taxes, and Senator Reid’s fix is gutting the military.

Isn’t it funny how, time and again, the adults in Washington demand policies identical to the far left’s? Let’s review:

• World ends without debt ceiling increase
• House Republicans pass Cut, Cap & Balance bill
• Reid, Obama say Cut, Cap & Balance is DOA
• Obama pushes for tax hikes
• Reid suggests slashing defense spending
• House Republicans pass Budget Control Act of 2011
• Reid, Obama say Budget Control Act of 2011 is DOA

As I said this morning, compromising sucks when the other side is nuts, but this is what House Republicans have to deal with.

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. I’m glad Speaker Boehner, my parents’ representative, worked to create a bill the shameless demagogues in the Senate and White House might be forced to pass.

Official releases on the Budget Control Act of 2011 follow. From Stivers:

“I supported Speaker Boehner’s bill because it cuts spending and changes the way that Washington works. It puts caps on spending and moves America toward a balanced budget.  A default could result in economic disaster including higher costs for car, student and business loans as well as mortgages; it could result in lower stock prices; higher gasoline and import costs and higher unemployment.  This scenario is unacceptable and moving forward Members of both parties need to work together toward reaching an agreement on the debt ceiling to prevent a default.”

From Boehner:

Thanks in part to your support, this evening the House passed an important bill to cut trillions in spending and end our debt limit crisis.

It’s the second time in the last two weeks that the People’s House has spoken. Twice now, we’ve passed legislation to cut trillions in government spending, avoid a job-crushing national default, and advance the cause of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

In contrast, Washington Democrats have done nothing. They refuse to put a plan on the table. In fact, it’s been 821 days since the Democrat-run Senate has passed a budget.

Let me be clear, our bill isn’t perfect, but it’s a positive step forward, carefully negotiated in a good faith effort to find a solution to the current crisis.

Now it is time for the Senate to act. The Senate must pass the House bill and send it to the President for him to sign into law. There is no excuse for inaction.

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics and Columbus Tea Party.

In the debt ceiling debate the GOP is fighting demagogues who live and breathe class warfare, and would sing the virtues of increased spending to the point of bankruptcy. It’s understandable that, given the circumstances, tensions have been high between conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) leader Jim Jordan and Speaker Boehner.

Was it dumb for an RSC staffer to send out a list of Republicans targeted for supporting Boehner? Probably; I’ve seen some annoyingly divisive GOP vs. GOP messaging the past couple of days. But, I doubt it would be easier for Boehner to sell a compromise if Jordan and fellow conservatives were quick to abandon Cut, Cap & Balance.

I can say confidently that feeding anonymous quotes like these to reporters is a bad call:

Two Republican sources deeply involved in configuring new Ohio congressional districts confirmed to The Dispatch  today  that Jordan’s disloyalty to Boehner has put him in jeopardy of being zeroed out of a district.

“Jim Jordan’s boneheadedness has kind of informed everybody’s thinking,” said one of the sources, both of whom spoke only on condition of anonymity. “The easiest option for everybody has presented itself.”

[...]

“He doesn’t know it, but he solved a problem for Republican line-drawers by (figuratively) standing up and saying, ‘I’m a jerk and I deserve to be punished,’ ” said one of the sources.

[...]

“The downside of being in an uber-safe district is you often don’t develop the strategic skills you need to survive in the arena and in this case that is going to be painfully evident to Jim Jordan.”

Are there really two GOP insiders who don’t realize this plays perfectly into the leftist narrative of principled conservatives as extremist cranks? Fortunately, Boehner and Jordan appear capable of acting like adults after the RSC email debacle:

“Jim Jordan and I may not always agree on strategy, but we are friends and allies, and the word retribution is not in my vocabulary,” Boehner said. “I look forward to continuing to serve with him in the U.S. House after the redistricting process in Ohio is complete.”

Meghan Snyder, Jordan’s spokeswoman, said, “We would hope that standing strong in favor of lowering spending and balancing the federal budget would not be a reason to eliminate the district of a sitting member of Congress.”

Yes, compromising sucks when the other side is nuts, but the Senate and the White House would be happy to keep spending until the whole contraption caves in. Let’s not rush to shoot ourselves in the foot while Harry Reid and Barack Obama have America’s military over a barrel!

[Update: Corrected a (boneheaded?) typo in paragraph two.]

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics and Columbus Tea Party.

Earth, as seen from Policy Matters Ohio HQ

On the bright side, the Kasich budget’s disastrous final passage gave Ohio leftists an opportunity to talk about what they hate most: tax cuts. Unlike The Columbus Dispatch, where political bias varies by writer, topic, and day of the week, The New York Times gave predictable support to big-government advocates:

Mr. Kasich said at the news conference that the budget restored fiscal responsibility to Ohio by closing an $8 billion budget gap. But his opponents argue that it accomplished that through deep cuts in spending on schools and local governments, which will be hard pressed to make up the difference. It also repeals the estate tax in 2013, which applies to the most affluent Ohioans and is another important revenue source for local governments.

Forget for a second how much a free citizen ought to despise “the most affluent,” and remember what the estate tax is. Dare to make more money than Progressives think your loved ones deserve, and the government takes a portion of your wealth when you die – even if you paid taxes on wages and paid taxes again when those wages earned you investment income. This sounds bad; is there no one brave enough to defend triple-taxation in the interest of more government spending?!

“There are clear winners and losers in this budget,” said Wendy Patton, senior associate at Policy Matters Ohio, a liberal economic research group in Columbus. “Wealthy families and businesses benefit. School kids and communities don’t.”

Policy Matters Ohio, reliable champions of class warfare, released a study in June about why death taxes on the rich are so important. Synopsis: leftists know best how Ohioans’ money should be spent.

The Times also quoted Senator Seitz, one of several Ohio GOP figures who often votes with the Evil Conservative block but rarely misses a chance to undermine conservative policies:

“It’s easy to spend other people’s money, and that is essentially what this budget does,” he said. “Local governments will likely be in a position to ask voters for additional resources. It’s pay me now or pay me later.”

Actually it’s “pay the state so Columbus bean-counters can shovel money to local governments as they see fit, or pay your local government as local voters see fit.” Plus, what government budget in the history of government hasn’t spent other people’s money?

Seitz, like self-proclaimed moderate Republicans throughout Ohio and the nation, puts the “central government” in “centrist.” Sadly for the well-funded heroes at Policy Matters Ohio, Progress Ohio, Innovation Ohio, and all the other leftist institutions that would see more power in the hands of bureaucrats, Seitz voted for the budget when it counted. He’ll share the blame when Ohio goes belly-up without an omnipotent government leading the way!

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics.

The public is best served by public employees whose first loyalty is to their job, not to a political party. In the public sector, collective bargaining insulates employees from politics and patronage.

But – you knew there was a but coming, right? – explain statements like this one from American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 8:

Rather than move forward on a solution, Rep. Camp and his colleagues pulled a stunt to show that they’ll only pass a debt limit increase if it includes damaging cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, like those contained in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget.

Like nearly every other position staked out on AFSCME Council 8′s website, this debt ceiling commentary sounds mysteriously like… a certain political party’s. As does anti-budget railing from the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association:

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate rejected 40-57 a house budget plan that included a controversial provision to overhaul Medicare. The dangerous budget plan, the brainchild of conservative U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), would have ended Medicare as we know it, an outright attack on seniors, children, [Ed: and kitties, and babies, etc. etc.]

And complaints about voter ID reform from the Ohio Association of Public School Employees:

“No matter what the Republicans say, this legislation limits the rights of voters and will negatively impact the poor, the elderly and students, among others,” said Randy Weston, OAPSE director of political action and legislative affairs.

And encouragement from the Ohio Education Association (OEA) to turn children into lobbyists for green energy boondoggles:

Perhaps, the most important thing our schools can do is to teach our students to be active in petitioning local and state governments to do more to save our environment [...]

The unions don’t need to control the Democratic Party, and vice versa: both slam any (non-defense) spending cut as “extreme,” offer (non-specific) tax increases as the solution to every problem, and insist all conservative arguments are driven by vicious racism because they think the same way. The Ohio Democratic Party and Ohio’s public unions are lead by like-minded Progressives who believe a few benevolent eggheads should define “fair” boundaries for the rest of us. And they’ve got just the benevolent eggheads for the job!

That’s why the AFSCME and OEA attack Republican proposals with the ferocity of beaten pit bulls, and tinkle like excited puppies when a Democrat speaks. It’s also why Progressive dweebs parrot union talking points as if the unions had a monopoly on their favorite crackers, however weak the union position or compelling the arguments against it.

When the House proposed stronger voter identification rules this spring, Speaker Batchelder et al. took fire from the usual quarters, with the race card played early and often. Secretary of State Jon Husted (R, by Ohio standards) opposed the bill’s photo ID requirement, based on the assumption that it’d take more than a friend’s utility bill and 5 minutes at your computer to forge an AEP statement.

The gentle, moderate legislation passed last week by the Ohio Senate enjoyed effusive praise from Cleveland Democrat Shirley Smith:

“This bill in its current form is oppressive. It is racist. It is discriminatory,” Smith said.

Of course, the House requirement for photo ID was coupled with the guarantee of free cards for indigent Ohioans, but the Senate’s even-less-demanding legislation is still racist. Any bill that requires any likely Democrat voter to put forth even the tiniest effort is “racist,” as far as totally non-racist Democrat senators like Shirley Smith are concerned… yet these are the colleagues Ohio GOP senators feel compelled to please.

As soon as the House budget arrived in the Senate, the Senate began adding water to the original bill’s cuts and reforms. Senators decided the transparently wasteful policy of multiple-prime contracting should be tweaked instead of eliminated. First steps to a merit pay system for public employees are apparently something GOP senators will oppose with the public unions:

What’s more, rigorous performance evaluations in these states are not just in place to help determine which teachers to let go. They also will help identify and reward highly effective teachers and tailor professional development in ways that help improve instruction. Ohio should do the same, and the teacher-evaluation language presented to the Senate achieved just that.

Unfortunately, the Senate has dropped these provisions from its version of the budget, preferring instead to maintain Ohio’s status as a laggard state with archaic laws that force districts to consider only seniority when making layoff decisions.

The budget fight leads to the same question as Senate Bill 5: are voters serious about getting government out of our way? Forget the hitch – the Ohio Democratic Party’s entire wagon is class warfare, leaving the GOP to make a case for smaller, cheaper state government. Though every budget is a biennial tug-of-war, a union victory this November would mean Ohio politicians dare not challenge the unions’ costly influence again.

Voters ought to have a clear choice come referendum time – bow to leftist demands for higher taxes, or support reforms that empower the taxpayer for a change. Mercifully, enough Republican state senators voted for SB 5 to give us the second option!

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics and Columbus Tea Party.

The Democrat rode a wave of voter discontent over the national GOP’s plan to change Medicare and overcame decades of GOP dominance here to capture Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional District.

Well, that settles it – the American people want limitless entitlement spending and are willing to accept the necessary punishing tax increases. At least, that’s the narrative donkey Democrats will ride to next November.

Don’t read past the second paragraph, and the NY-26 special election paints a dire picture for the GOP. As sometimes happens, though, all the good news for the left is loaded into the first few sentences…

Hochul defeated Republican state Assemblywoman Jane Corwin on Tuesday night, capturing 47 percent of the vote to 43 percent for Corwin, to win the seat vacated by disgraced Republican Chris Lee. A wealthy tea party candidate, Jack Davis, took 9 percent.

Democrat Kathy Hochul “rode a wave of voter discontent” over GOP budget proposals… to a 4 percent victory with a conservative* third-party candidate taking 9 percent. In a special election necessitated by an outrageous sex scandal involving the previous GOP congressman. But we know Medicare is the reason, because the Democrat’s supporters say so!

The special election that became a referendum on the health care plan for the nation’s seniors may serve as a warning shot to further GOP efforts to cut popular entitlement programs.

“The three reasons a Democrat was elected to Congress in the district were Medicare, Medicare and Medicare,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel, D-N.Y., said in an interview.

This stuff goes both ways. When Scott Brown won in Kennedyland, conservatives made a fuss about what it meant for the future. In that case, the GOP victory was surprising. In this case, the Democrat’s victory is surprising. In neither case does a single issue tell the whole story – though it’s worth noting that Scott Brown took the seat of America’s most beloved leftist dynasty, didn’t have a tabloid scandal on his side, and didn’t have a third-party candidate pulling 9 percent of his opponent’s likely voters.

At least Hochul has some bold ideas for New York’s future!

“How about ending big handouts for Big Oil?” she said. “How about making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share? We can do all that and not decimate Medicare.”

The victory of another Democrat who’s wrong about nearly everything isn’t good news, but the only tragedy here for conservatives would be accepting the left’s hollow rhetoric.

* Update – Apparently the “tea party” candidate was a Democrat? Stay classy, New York.

Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern today called the bill “a piece of manure.”

“It’s destined for a referendum,” he said. “The disrespect and contempt shown toward safety forces these past few months will long be remembered.”

You remember Chris Redfern! In addition to being the official spokesman of the Ohio Democratic Party, he’s an expert on disrespect and contempt.

Also on the topic of contempt, what have the Democrats in the General Assembly done throughout this process to represent the huge majority of Ohioans who aren’t in unions? That’s right: nothing, because apparently the Ohio Democratic Party attends the Michael Moore school of thought, where robbing Peter to pay Paul creates an economic perpetual motion machine.

Meanwhile, the House GOP provided amendments that make the bill stronger:

• Allow the government employer to continue to deduct union dues from a worker’s paycheck, but no longer could it take out money the worker wants to give to the union’s political action committee.
• Ensure that workers who strike illegally are not subject to jail time. However, Democrats argue this option is still possible if a judge finds an employee violated a court injunction.
• Clarify that safety forces, nurses and others can bargain for equipment.
• Eliminate the bill’s current prohibition against employees speaking to public officials during negotiations. Some lawmakers raised First Amendment concerns about the issue.

The first item on this list is a good step, even if it doesn’t go far enough. The others address specific complaints from GOP senators. Taking these new amendments (and others that make it harder for unions to squeeze government workers for dues) into account, what’s SB 5 about?

Speaker Batchelder says it plainly:

“The schools, municipal governments and townships have not really had the ability to stand up to certain bargaining practices that have occurred as a result of the 1983 legislation,” Batchelder said.

It’s easy for the unions to rally a chorus of far-left defenders against the GOP’s dreadful mathematics, making it all the more important for taxpayers to review AFSCME spending and talking points. Review OEA spending and talking points, too, and feel free to look through the source documents in case I’m a terrible conservative liar (or, as Chairman Redfern would say, a f***er).

When the GOP refuses to treat them as selfless partners for efficient government, the unions feign concern for “the children,” “the middle class,” or even small businesses. But they can’t deny the numbers: Union bosses pay Democrats millions, pay themselves even more, and demand that we pick up the ever-growing tab. With Ohio’s budget the way it is, each voter should consider a simple question: can we afford this?

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics.

Politically, the GOP is in a tight spot because the unions, Ohio Democratic Party, Socialist Party, and Communist Party form a unified bloc willing to chain itself to a taxpayer-subsidized tree in defense of a public worker’s “right” to have a percentage of his pay whisked into union bosses’ pockets and Democrat campaign coffers. And, as always, “conservatives” in the Ohio Senate are happy to side with the Democrats if it means a few minutes in front of a camera.

To balance the odds, here – at its fair market price – is my advice for the House:

• Exempt police, firefighters, and the highway patrol from most – or all – provisions of the bill
• End automated payroll deduction of union dues

Most of the squishes in the Senate mention police and fire as concerns – which is fair, considering that police and fire unions serve workers with far more demanding vocations. Payroll deduction of union dues is an indefensibly bad idea, and there’s no reason Ohio taxpayers should offer it. Since the unions haven’t paused in their routine of demanding increased taxes under the guise of “good jobs,” conservative leaders should continue to push for the most serious bill they can pass.

Government unions make a mint convincing workers they’d starve without collective bargaining, and make Ohio less competitive by demanding compensation taxpayers cannot afford. If the House incorporates my recommendations as enthusiastically as the Senate did, we’ll be in business!

Background: Startling Numbers

Researching government unions after I first noticed shenanigans from a union candidate last year, the simplicity of the problem was shocking: public unions work against the taxpayers. Union bosses ignore spending trends, the average Ohioan’s tax burden, and proof that big-government policies drive citizens away. Look at the numbers, and it’s tough to conclude Ohio’s government unions care about anything besides their own power. Consider AFSCME pay:

• Joseph Rugola, OAPSE Executive Director: $216,939
• Gary Martin, OAPSE Associate Director: $200,163
• Charles Roginski, OAPSE Regional Director: $164,239
• John Lyall, AFSCME Council 8 President: $155,482
• Andy Douglas, OCSEA Executive Director: $151,392

That’s only the top five. Ohio’s three largest AFSCME affiliates spent 31%, 32%, and 41% as much on member benefits as they spent on union pay in 2009. The Ohio Education Association may be even worse:

• 117 union employees paid more than $100,000
• 12 union employees paid more than $150,000
• Executive Director Larry Wicks paid $208,469
• Executive Director Dennis Reardon paid $202,997

In 2009, the OEA – a group that gets agitated about “the children” when you start to talk about limiting their clout – spent less than 36% as much on member benefits as on union pay.

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics and Columbus Tea Party.

Yours truly suspects that the Republican caucus decided that it had to give John Kasich what he wanted, and then got into discussions over who could “safely” vote no. It’s not like they haven’t done this kind of thing before (see: cynical maneuvering, Ted Strickland’s retroactive 2009 tax increase).

Even I, with my wild-eyed ravings about government unionization, willingly concede that aspects of SB 5 may be flawed. Like the average union boss, I’m not a budget expert! But the Democrats offered no amendments, and six is a lot of Republicans to lose on a bill targeting groups who take public workers’ pay and funnel it to the leftmost causes imaginable.

The disappointing thing – I grew up in Speaker Boehner’s district, so forgive my expectation that Republicans have backbone – is the angst several GOP senators are displaying. Again, I don’t assume the bill is perfect, but the only hope of taxpayers and public employees finding sustainable middle ground starts with getting the unions out of the picture. Senator Bill Seitz might not agree:

“What a deal,” Seitz said, as he and Grendell questioned why a legislative body would ever pick the union’s offer over its own. Seitz called it a “heads I win, tails you lose solution.”

Senator Seitz misses the point: if the unions ask for more than an agency can afford and the agency meets them halfway, it’s often “heads the taxpayers get hosed, tails the union sticks it to the public.” That’s assuming the agency isn’t managed by a Democrat who is happy to give the union bosses whatever they want.

Senator Kevin Bacon, a pretty reliable voice the past few weeks, breaks it down:

The conversations I’ve had with many individuals on what post-Senate Bill 5 will look like, a lot of it comes down to do you trust your council, your school board, your township trustees, your local elected officials who will appear on the ballot again.

Exactly. Elected officials answer to the public for everything, including the way they treat their employees. Despite what the unions would have you believe, government workers would still be able to communicate with one another, their bosses, and their neighbors without a union rep siphoning dues away for political contributions and his own salary.

Senator Jim Hughes – who received over 20% of all the donations from AFSCME Local 11 to Ohio Republicans in the past decade – also criticized SB 5′s contract settlement process:

I have some concerns with that because as I read it, and I’m an attorney, the legislative body that would be deciding (the final contract) is the same management that is in negotiations with labor.

As opposed to the current arrangement, where the unions spend millions to elect the people who will sign off on their contract demands. Sadly, Senators Seitz and Hughes may not be the most egregious examples of Republicans defending the unions instead of the taxpayers:

And now there’s going to be a backlash in Ohio. People in the public believe that this collective-bargaining bill was a Republican overreach, and now you’re going to see a sort of slap-back reaction.

Fewer people would see SB 5 as Republican overreach if the Ohio Senate could form consensus around a solid conservative argument once in my lifetime. And now Senator Tim Grendell should expect a primary challenge from someone who wants to empower the average Ohioan, instead of parroting union talking points in The Washington Post.

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics.

SB 5 pays back the Ohioans who voted for a fiscally-responsible Senate. It’s payback to the hypocrites at the AFSCME and OEA who pay themselves millions of dollars every year to fight Ohio’s local governments, school districts, and state agencies. It’s payback for parents, teachers, and taxpayers whose voices are muted by the bullhorns of national organizations dedicated to failed Progressive policies.

GOP Senators, please review Matt Mayer’s testimony from the Feb. 15th SB 5 hearing and consider my humble suggestions:

1. Remove any impact on police, highway patrolmen, and firefighters
2. Revoke collective bargaining rights from all other state and local government employees

These changes would leave room to debate pay, insurance, and pension policies, undermining union rhetoric by creating a distinction between unionization and other rights. The 1983 law allowing government employees to unionize was a mistake, and only by removing the largest unions from the equation can Ohio hope to find a fair, sustainable middle ground. As I said last fall:

All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.

Wait, that was another detestable small-government conservative – Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Academics hot for unionization should be challenged to list the protections a union offers which couldn’t be extended through legislative means. Leftists quick to foist higher taxes on “the rich” should be asked to explain why union bosses – whose businesses chiefly produce lobbying, higher labor costs, and their own salaries – deserve taxpayer support. Government employees should explain why their benefits should remain insulated amid $8 billion in deficits and an unemployment rate above 9%.

If they’re demanding even more of our tax dollars, shouldn’t government unions be able to justify why they exist in the first place?

Cross-posted at Third Base Politics and Columbus Tea Party.

“If they want to strike they should be fired,” Kasich said last week. “I really don’t favor the right to strike by any public employee. They’ve got good jobs, they’ve got high pay, they get good benefits, a great retirement. What are they striking for?”

Stories of Kasich’s resolve abound, from the Dayton Daily News to The Toledo Blade to The New York Times. Lest readers assume John’s wandered off the reservation, Speaker Batchelder offers little reassurance to union enthusiasts:

Ohio House Speaker-elect William G. Batchelder, a Medina Republican who voted against the 1983 law, said he opposes the right of public-sector employees to strike.

”It’s difficult to make a case for the existing system,” Batchelder said. ”It’s difficult to argue that the government’s coercive power to tax ought to pay for a service that isn’t being rendered.”

Predictably, the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, AFSCME, and every Progressive group under the sun have leapt to the defense of ORC 4117, a bad idea that’s as old as me. Their bleating is familiar: Republicans hate working Americans; unions protect helpless grunts toiling in the mines; unions aren’t to blame for out-of-control spending.

These were weak excuses back when President Obama was bailing out the UAW, and they’re completely pathetic when applied to government unions. One look at The Grand Bargain is Dead, The Buckeye Institute‘s report on public employee compensation, and the pro-union position disintegrates.

What do the AFL-CIO goons, Progressive policy advocates, and Democratic Party reps all have in common? Their position is indistinguishable from the Socialists’. Yes, that’s Socialist with a capital S:

The 23 labor and movement activists from cities throughout Ohio created the Buckeye Socialist Network (there will soon be a BuckeyeSocialist.org website). The Network’s first campaign is called DEFEND OHIO and will focus on defending public employees’ jobs and public services.

“Governor Kasich has unleashed a class war in Ohio,” said Dan La Botz. “And we intend to fight back. Kasich’s inauguration is the ideal occasion for Ohio’s working people to protest at the Capital in Columbus and to show the governor that he is going to face four years of fierce resistance by unions and social movements.

Ohio is $8 – $10 billion in the hole, but leftists from here to the moon will defend government bloat to the last. The Buckeye state could continue its slide in the direction of California, Illinois, Michigan, and New York – adding bureaucracy and driving out business until we go bankrupt – and the sort of people who were just steamrolled on November 2 would scream that “tax cuts for the wealthy” were to blame.

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.

I won’t pretend it took much convincing, but I’m with Matt Mayer of The Buckeye Institute: ORC 4117 should be repealed. Updates and revisions to Ohio’s civil service law – which itself occupies hundreds of pages – would ensure that all types of public worker are fairly treated and reasonably compensated. Just don’t expect the leeches who make themselves rich on member dues, or the interest groups they fund, to tell you anything resembling that simple truth.

“We need to become the party of liberty and freedom,” Ryan argues. “We’re not doing enough. We can do better, and we will — because we have no choice. If we’re going to offer the country a completely different vision, we can’t be Democratic-lite or resign ourselves to be slightly more efficient managers and tax-collectors for the welfare state. We have to break with that and give people a clear and distinct difference.”

Hope and change as defined by President Obama are exactly what all of us wild-eyed conservatives said they’d be – schlocky advertising and accelerated government growth. That’s clearer today than at any other point this past year. Obama has demonstrated no interest in transparency, no patient bipartisanship, no meaningful variation from the leftist playbook of demonizing private employers while promising unsustainable entitlements to “the middle class.”

Congressman Ryan has been at the forefront of the GOP for months, suggesting solutions to America’s domestic problems that don’t require more spending, more IRS agents, more regulation and taxation. The Democrats’ solution to every domestic problem is to throw more of our money at it, which fits perfectly with a foreign policy of shrinking defense spending as yet another way to show our enemies how cuddly and disinterested we are.

Ryan’s speech yesterday on the House floor is an important summary of what the entire Republican Party ought to stand for:

In November we’re going to have very clearly defined options – I hope Ryan means what he says, and I hope he finds no shortage of trustworthy allies in D.C. over the coming months and years.

Ricochet’s a great listen if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a game of Filler 2 on Kongregate.com! Or to a commute, if you have one of those Empee-three Players and a car that knows how to talk to it…