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Never let a political campaign serve as a fact-checker, especially one that lacks any transparency about who is funding it.
And especially when it apparently is so laughably wrong because what they claim is “truth” about a piece of legislation is refuted… by the same organization responsible for drafting the legislation at issue.
Today, the Ohio Ballot Board accepted the official arguments for/against the issues on the Statewide ballot. For the most part, the Ballot Board has no control over the arguments. So Jason Mauk, the spokesman for the “Building a Better Ohio” campaign rushed a press release [...]
Full Story... →Budish challenges Speaker Batchelder to back up their talk yesterday with action. He has asked the Legislative Service Commission (LSC) to draft a bill to repeal SB 5 and asked the majority to call the General Assembly to pass it in order to wipe the slate clean and give labor and the Republicans the opportunity to negotiate a compromise to Senate Bill 5 like Batchelder and Niehaus have indicated.
“If Gov. Kasich and Republican legislative leaders are serious about compromising on Senate Bill 5, they will take the first necessary step and reconvene the legislature to completely repeal this [...]
Full Story... →You may have read recently about a bill that would set limits for withdrawals of water from Lake Erie. The Ohio Environmental Council explains well why it’s a bad piece of policy, but in short, HB 231 allows massive, unregulated withdrawals of water by industry from the shallowest of the Great Lakes.
The bill has been so rushed and is so problematic to the integrity of the eight-state agreement known as the Great Lakes Compact (whose primary goal was to preempt against diversions of Great Lakes water to other states and countries), that former GOP governors [...]
Full Story... →Today, the Toledo Blade reported that a new campaign committee would be formed to defend SB 5 from the grassroots movement to place it for repeal by a referendum by the voters.
The pro-SB 5 campaign is going to be headed by Vaughn Flasher (is that your real name, sir?), a longtime GOP political consultant and current lobbyist for “tobacco, energy, telecommunications, and insurance industries.” Yet, despite this political power broker from the deepest recesses of the politics of the privileged, the campaign website boasts about being a “grassroots” campaign… even though Governor Kasich, Speaker Batchelder, and Senate President [...]
Full Story... →Yesterday, Ohio GOP Chairman Kevin DeWine sent out an email that is pretty standard fare for a State Party Chairman, promoting the upcoming State dinner, talking about how the Party is trying to put “ObamaCare” on the ballot.
And then there’s this:
You know, it’s probably not a great idea to have a white Chairman of a party known for, well, not exactly being a diverse group of people refer to the head of the Black Republicans as “Servant,” even if it is the person’s chosen e-mail handle.
Instead, what should go on is that Chairman calls this person [...]
Full Story... →Prepared to go inside the mind of a Republican when the world of taxes meets the world of privatization in which you need to be a quantum political physicist to comprehend what is occurring.
Today, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s “PolitiFact” examined Rep. Matt Lundy’s (D-Elyria) claim that the budget the House passed included tax breaks to “sweeten” the deal for the private companies the State is trying to sell six correctional facilities. They found the claim to be True, because, it is.
But first, we need to apparently correct something on the issue. Last week, the Dayton Daily [...]
Full Story... →Yesterday was a train wreck. Speaker Batchelder held a press gaggle in which he declared, definitively, that the CAT tax on gross receipts amendment that the House Finance Committee added on Thursday would be struck today:
Reporter: What about the CAT tax? There seems to be concerns on both sides.
It will be part of the changes, it’s out of the bill. We have a memo from LSC that language we put in is in the law. There have been meetings between the Governor and the industry. We are seeing a lot more action now. The budget will not say [...]
Full Story... →Yesterday, the Columbus Dispatch reported that the House Republicans were set to consider some 200 amendments submitted in response to the Substitute House Bill they introduced for the State’s budget Thursday afternoon. Now the fate of these amendments are far from certain, but among the things the House GOP is being urged to change are:
Their new provision that would give county commissioners authority to privatize county jails. It’s getting to the point where Ohio’s criminals may never actually be punished by the State, but out-of-state corporations hired to mete out punishment for profits. Some Cincinnati-area lawmakers want to [...]
Full Story... →In today’s Columbus Dispatch:
"I and several of my fellow colleagues are in favor of a right-to-work state. Unfortunately, that’s not what this bill does, but it sets the framework for conversations later on."- House Commerce and Labor Chairman Joe Uecker (R-Loveland)
Chairman Uecker finally admitted what the Republicans have long denied, that SB 5 is not about the State budget, it’s not about giving local government more flexibility, it’s about setting the stage to end organized labor in Ohio entirely. And this comes from Joe Uecker, a former police officer.
A political gaffe has been said to be [...]
Full Story... →Twenty-fours hours later and we’ve yet to see a single Republican publicly embrace Kasich’s “Jobs” budget. Seriously, this is odd. Ted Strickland would get some response from the Republican leadership by now.
Go over to the Ohio Republican Party website… nothing. Nothing on their Twitter account, either. (The Ohio GOP website does show more opposition by its users than support for SB 5, btw.) Nothing about the budget on its Facebook site. No press release from ORP Chairman Kevin DeWine.
House Republican caucus? Same thing. Nothing. Speaker Batchelder? Nada. Senate Republican caucus? [...]
Full Story... →Budget Watch
You call this progress? The 1st 100 days of the 129th Ohio General Assembly
The Ohio House Republicans ran in 2010 on job creation. They even had an entire platform of job-related bills they said they’d pass. As they self-congratulate themselves over their first 100 days in power, why is that 11 of the fifteen bills they highlight passing have nothing to do with jobs? And why did they spend more time on abortion than the budget or job creation?
Full Story... →