Tag: ohio

Union Reform bills pass in Ohio, Indiana Houses.

In Ohio, the final vote on SB 5 was 53-44; it’s already passed the Ohio Senate, but changes made to the bill require another quick vote on the legislation either today or tomorrow. This particular legislation goes a bit farther than the groundbreaking Wisconsin union reform bill; it redefines collective bargaining privileges for public sector union employees to cover wages only, institutes merit pay for public sector union workers, and makes strikes by public sector employees illegal. Most interestingly, it extends collective bargaining reforms to police and firefighter unions, which is quite possibly a reaction to the rather contemptible activities and passive-aggressive threats done and made by Big Labor in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, in Indiana the final vote on HB 1216 was 54-44: this reform bill will raise the threshold for union payscales for public work projects from $150,000 to $350,000, and will also no longer require non-union companies to guarantee union jobs on projects in order to bid on them. Entertainingly, this was one of the ostensible reasons that Indiana state representatives hid in Illinois for a month. Short version: it did not end well.

And, of course, a few days ago the Florida state House passed HB 1021, which bans the automatic collection of public sector union dues. Slowly but surely, reform is coming to help embattled states fight the entrenched partisan interests strangling trade and wealth generation from within…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

John Kasich’s (R) Ohio budget unveiled today… [UPDATED]

…and the technical term for what it promises to be is “doozy.”  There’s an $8,000,000,000 hole in the budget that needs to be filled (Ohio requires balanced budgets), and despite polling suggesting that Kasich could get away with raising taxes to fill it the Governor apparently won’t.  It’s expected that the budget will cover the gap by privatization programs (including selling some prisons), leasing out state highways, large budget cuts across the board, and projected revenue increases.  This is not going to be popular – according to the above poll, Kasich is already at 40% – but, as the Intelligencer/Wheeling News-Register bluntly puts it, “The money has run out.”

I know that some Democratic politicians (and their sycophants, particularly their New Media ones) are licking their chops at the idea of watching their political opposite numbers do unpopular things to fix the economy.  Not to ruin their mornings – oh, this is a lie; this is totally about ruining their mornings – but said politicians and sycophants may wish to consider the larger implications of recent elections.  Put bluntly: the country has put in power on the state level a lot of people who do not care if they are loved for their actions.  These people have internalized two lessons (one from the Democrats, and one from the Republicans):

  • (Democrats) It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t take political survival into consideration. Sure, Obamacare’s a monstrosity of a bill that’s waiting its turn at the Supreme Court unconstitutional buzzsaw – but it did pass, and we do have to deal with it now.  Imagine what can be done with that kind of sheer political will if it was used for good.  Well, a lot of Republican state legislators already have.
  • (Republicans) If you’re going to be hated for what you do anyway, you might as well put your backs into the effort. I suspect that in twenty, thirty years the prevailing wisdom among political historians is going to be that the one election that the Democrats absolutely needed to win and didn’t in this time period was the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial race.  Chris Christie’s example of in-your-face-with-a-happy-smile has been at minimum an inspiration for Republicans over the last two years.

Continue reading John Kasich’s (R) Ohio budget unveiled today… [UPDATED]

Collective bargaining reform passes Ohio Senate.

The bill is SB5, and it will limit future collective bargaining for Ohio state employees to base salary: it passed the Ohio Senate with a one-vote margin (all hail the power of having a strong enough majority to allow you breathing room: elections matter, folks*).  The bill now goes to the House, where the GOP has a 59-40 advantage: and a simple majority constitutes a quorum in the Ohio legislature, which means that the bill will likewise almost certainly pass there with sufficient margin to permit a defection or two.  Governor Kasich will of course sign the bill once it is law.

While this is all of course good news for advocates of reform generally, it does also have a bearing on the specific situation in Wisconsin.  The time has come for union leadership and other Democrats in that state to ask themselves what they want to do.  To wit: do they want to start an armed insurrection against the legitimate government of Wisconsin?  Or do they want to start preparing their supporters for what promises to be a crushing defeat of their (misguided) hopes?  Continue reading Collective bargaining reform passes Ohio Senate.

Gov. Kasich (R, OH) Chews iron, spits nails…

…on public sector unions.  Gov. Kasich is unamused at the notion that it’s somehow unacceptable to even note that public employees are getting great deals on healthcare at taxpayer expense – and by great deals I mean ‘Ohio public sector employees are paying between one half and three-quarters what Ohio private sector employees pay:’

The 9%/23% number there*, by the way, is one of the better ratios out there for private sector employees. And by ‘better’ I mean ‘better for the tax payers.’ To give an idea: one large part of the sturm und drang being witnessed in Wisconsin right now is over public sector employees having been told that they will be expected to double their contributions to their own health care plans from 6% to 12% – which is half the Ohio number (or, for that matter, the Wisconsin number of 20%-23%), and even worse when you look at national ones.  I understand that people are upset that their unsustainable sweetheart deals are about to go belly-up.  I do, truly.  But they are sweetheart deals, and they are unsustainable, and the country can no longer afford to ignore the fact that government employee unions have been raiding the public treasury in exchange for tawdry partisan  political patronage.  So as a practical matter the subject’s kind of closed. Continue reading Gov. Kasich (R, OH) Chews iron, spits nails…

Next Live Action sting video: Ohio?

If my pet theory is correct, then very possibly: Ohio legislators will be unveiling today the Heartbeat Bill, which would ban abortions where a fetal heartbeat can be detected (H/T: Weasel Zippers).  This would effectively put the cap on abortions in Ohio at being absolutely no later than six weeks, and quite possibly earlier: pro-choice agitators are already simultaneously claiming that the proposed law is intolerably restrictive and that almost nobody in Ohio needs later term abortions anyway.  That these claims are at least potentially contradictory to each other is… pretty much standard for pro-choicers, actually.

At any rate, this bill has a decent chance of passing.  Ohio abruptly flipped over to full Republican control of the state government last November, with the GOP taking control of the General Assembly and the governorship (we already had the state Senate): the sponsor of the Heartbeat Bill (state representative Lynn Wachtmann) has 40 (out of 99) of her fellow-representatives already signed on.  And, of course, Governor Kasich is pro-life.  But it’s a very serious and meaningful piece of pro-life legislation; which means that there’s going to be significant push-back on it.  The question is, does Live Action have something to push back on the push-back?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

#rsrh America’s most technically skilled politician in danger?

I refer, of course, to Dennis Kuchinich; a man who has managed to spend the last fourteen years and two Presidential elections as a household name and respected* figure in American politics, despite the fact that by any objective standard he is a dead ringer for a Keebler Elf having a midlife crisis.

Seriously:

Tell me that you don’t want to score some tollhouse cookies off of the guy.  Tell me.  Yet he thrives in our political environment, with power, money, and marriage levels… somewhat above what one might expect.  I say this respectfully; Kuchinich, like the World War II Canadians, punches above his weight class.  That’s something to respect, even if he’s a dolt in terms of his political views.

Continue reading #rsrh America’s most technically skilled politician in danger?

Is Charlie Wilson (D, OH-06) aiming for a NOW endorsement*?

Not the patriotic Charlie Wilson from Texas.

Judging from what that group has been tolerating in its endorsees lately, surely a little wife-beating won’t be a disqualification. Or not so little, at that. From Charlie Wilson’s (D, OH-06) 1990 divorce proceedings:

Charles admits that early in the marriage he kicked and struck Plaintiff and accused her of adultery (Defendant’s Desposition, pp. 190, 192, 194). Clara shall confirm the beatings, slappings, and kicking at the early stage of her marriage to the point where she was afraid to anger the Defendant and instead yielded to his demands. She also lied to third parties as to the causes of her injuries. Mrs. Wilson was the typical battered wife.

…And Mrs. Wilson eventually ended up in the emergency room as a direct result of her attempts to finally assert herself (all of this is admitted to by Charlie Wilson, by the way). Her attacker went on to have a ten-year career in the state legislature, prior to being elected to Congress in 2006. No word of whether he regretted anything; the campaign clammed up the second this document came to life. Still, if the female members of Wilson’s staff were in the habit of wearing sunglasses indoors and long sleeved shirts all the time surely we would have heard by now; so that’s something at least, right? Continue reading Is Charlie Wilson (D, OH-06) aiming for a NOW endorsement*?

#rsrh Democratic Death Panel Watch: OH-01.

The New York Times reports that Steve Driehaus has had his DCCC advertising cut.  This more or less confirms his impending DOOM at the hands of Steve Chabot; but I want to note something else from the same article.  In it, local Democratic party chair Ed Good reports on OH-06 & OH-18 (two more districts where the NRCC is starting ad buys on behalf of the Republican challengers):

“They are going to try to pick off what they think is low-hanging fruit,” Mr. Good said. “But the only way Charlie [Wilson] or Zack [Space] can lose is if our party does not get out and vote.”

Yup.  The locals are playing the GOTV will save us! card, three weeks before the election.  Not a good sign for them; and the lack of any evidence that the DCCC will be matching the NRCC’s expenditures is an even worse one*…

Moe Lane

PS: Bill Johnson for OH-06; Bob Gibbs for OH-18.

*As it stands now, and if I understand the article correctly, the DCCC can allocate existing ad time to Space’s race.  If they don’t, then Ohio Democrats have even more of a problem than they do now, and right now they have a very bad problem.

Meet Rich Iott (R CAND, OH-09).

This is Marcy Kaptur’s seat, and Rich is pretty determined to win it.  Rich is a businessman who’s running for the first time – which seems to be a theme for Republican nominees these days, along with military veterans and medical doctors; go figure – and we talked about the race for a bit:

Rich’s site is here.  Nice guy; check him out.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)