Recess Equals Playtime

So, in the ongoing saga of Pat Tiberi's love/hate relationship with pork, he's holding his annual hog roast this Saturday, an event at which the newly formed Central Ohio Republican Women will be a Hog Sponsor. I found out about it from Sara Marie Brenner's blog. Sara's a hoot. I'd like to link to her picture, so you could see how she looks like a wannabe Alaskan governor. Then I'd link to her blog post where she compares her personal experience with baselesss persecution to that self-same Ms. Palin's. But I won't, because she includes in the basic description of her blog a prohibition against doing things like linking to any of her posts or quoting her, etc.. A prohibition which, for obvious reasons, I can only summarize. I could, instead link to her husband's campaign site, which she designed, as the profile (that I'm guessing she wrote) of him gratuitously includes her resume (including her involvement in a non-existent state senate campaign??), but I won't.

The CORW appears to have been her idea, so it's only fitting that she's the president. "Singer, Educator, Avon Rep" Cheli Turner is the VP. Renee Seeley, who unfortunately is probably not the PUMA Renee Seeley who stated that : "Obama is just another Bush. Stealing votes is the Bush Way. To win caucuses by bussing in college students and his church friends is cheating the Bush Way," is Secretary. Evangelical Reverend/NRA shooting instructor Sue Antolik is Treasurer. (Gina Baker is Assistant Secretary/Treasurer, with a less amusing Google trail, although the sec/treas combination title is one she has no doubt grown used to while holding it in her husband's company.)

Their marketers at Constant Contact would have you believe that the group looks like this, rather than other generic womens groups like this, or this (to be fair, 2 of their 140 Facebook fans are in fact African American females, compared to only 29 who are white males).

While I can only dream of seeing Tim Russo interviewing the CORW table at the Tiberi Hog Roast, a more realistic hope is audio from the Tiberi Tele-Town Hall on Tuesday:

"Constituents who want to be on the call should call Tiberi's district office by 5 p.m. Monday, at 614-523-2555, according to his office."

I'll be out of even cell-phone contact at the time, but if any other constituents would care to ensure that Pat gets a more representative view of his district's feelings regarding health-care reform, please do so and keep me informed.

Lurching into the present...

1) This is bound to get ugly someday: If you've ever worried about the source code for touch screen voting systems, and the things that could go accidentally or intentionally awry as a result of modifying that code, would it make you feel better to know that Franklin County has purchased the source code for its voting machines, and Matt Damschroder and the Franklin County BOE will now exclusively maintain and support that software in-house?


2) Pat Tiberi has been trying to convince people that it doesn't matter that he's much more conservative than his district, because of what he does for his constituents. At the same time, he's been trying to convince his buddies that he really is that conservative, by gradually ceasing to bring any federal money back into the district. It appears that he's getting even more cute about it. He hates pork. He loves pork.

3) Speaking of Pat, he'll be featured at an "energy summit" in Columbus on Sept. 2. I'll be in a tent on an island at the time, but somebody should show up to fight the crazy: the other featured participants include Jean Schmidt, John Boehner, Steve Austria and Mike Pence. All of their talking points are available here. I'll give you the short version: The biggest problem with American Energy is that we're not producing enough carbon/fossil-fuel energy. The second biggest problem is that we're wasting time by trying to figure out a workable disposal system for nuclear waste first, and then worrying about building new reactors. We should be building reactors while we figure out if there's a way to make Yucca Mountain and recycling viable. The third biggest problem is that Bush/Cheney proposed a bunch of things that Obama hasn't chosen to follow through with. We need to make Obama follow Bush/Cheney energy policy. And the fourth biggest problem is that people keep finding problems. If we make it nearly impossible for citizens to take energy companies to court, gut the Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act, and turn environmental policies over to the states, it'd be a lot easier to solve the first three problems. Oh, and by the way, anthropogenic climate change? Not in the top 20. If you're the type that's been jealous of unruly right-wing protestors in recent weeks, the OSU/Nationwide/Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H center event at 10 a.m. (and 11:30 a.m.?) Sept. 2, 2009 "will be open to the public and press." Just fyi.

4) I've updated my ActBlue page, so that readers can now easily donate to Jennifer Brunner's U.S. Senate campaign, or Paula Brooks' U.S. House campaign.

5) If you value the future of the Democratic Party in Ohio, a pretty darn good argument could be made for donating to Marilyn Brown, sooner rather than later. Of course, unlike donations to Brunner or Brooks, donations of up to $50 to Brown are refundable if you haven't made a similar donation so far in calendar 2009. At the moment, I don't have Brown on my ActBlue page, although her on-line donations appear to be handled exclusively through ActBlue. A strange interpretation of campaign finance law by the OEC in 2006 effectively eliminated ActBlue as a viable method for contributing to state-level campaigns in Ohio (including disqualifying your contribution for the aforementioned tax credit). I'm assuming something has changed, and I'll let y'all know when I get clarification. Of course, I'm sure that checks made out to 'Brown for Ohio' and sent to 309 S. 4th St., Ste. 100, Columbus, OH, 43215 would be perfectly acceptable on all fronts.

6) A nice non-partisan debunking of 5 big lies in the health care reform debate. One of them even comes from a Democrat.

7) More later on Bexley's City Council election. Three incumbents and one challenger are running. The challenger, Richard Sharp, applied for the vacant council position when Helen MacMurray left in 2007, a vacancy which was eventually filled by Hanz Wasserburger. The cover letters and resumes for all applicants at that time, including Sharp's, are available here.

8/14/08 - In which I'm disappointed.

There are some who see no difference between Republicans and Democrats. If I believed that, this blog would never have existed. Or I'd be posting more these days instead of less. Given the way our system works, putting a "bad" Democrat into office rather than a "good" Republican is the only way to allow the "good" Democrats to get anything done and prevent "bad" Republicans from doing much damage.

Given this, when Republicans controlled the Presidency, the U.S. House, The U.S. Senate, the Ohio Governorship, the Ohio House, and the Ohio Senate, my personal mission was clear: vote for Dems and convince others to do likewise.

We've flipped five of six. So what's the new mission? That's tougher. Let's start at the Federal level:

Obama is banking his presidency on health-care reform and environmental/energy policy reform. I'm pretty sure that he figures that if he can get these things done, nobody will begrudge him things like extending and defending the state secrets privilege, meeting in private with lobbyists and stonewalling requests for visitors logs, refusing to consider prosecuting or even investigating possible crimes against the citizenry by an overzealous executive branch and against foreigners by interrogators, treating gays like whiny children, and placing a justice on the Supreme Court who has been reliably conservative on issues like defendants' rights.

Perhaps he's right. But that assumes he gets those first two things done. On health care, he has no policy or plan. From a political standpoint, it might have made sense to insist that Congress come up with a plan and present it to him. What we have right now, though, is a situation in which some folks are arguing against any change (a coherent position), and the rest of us in the position of arguing that some sort of change would be better because it would have some subset of possible improvements compared to the current system, although we don't know for sure which improvements we should expect (an incoherent argument). Unless one believes that there is no such thing as a "bad" health-care reform bill, we're pretty much reduced to playing defense and ad hominem attacks. And losing. Given that I do believe that a "bad" bill is a possible outcome, I don't even enjoy playing defense. This coming from a guy who has always said that health-care reform is the number one issue at the federal level.

If Obama can't get health-care done, climate-change legislation is dead. Which is why it's not unlikely he'll compromise on cap-and-trade/alternative energy to get some form of health-care reform done. Obama was quoted today as saying (about health-care reform):

"if it makes me a one-term president, I'm going to, we're going to take it on because the country is in need of us taking this on."

On the one hand, I admire that greatly. On the other hand, it's not as if he has much choice at this point.

If I had to do it all over again, would I vote for Obama/Biden over McCain/Palin? In a motherf***ing heartbeat. Will I vote for them against whomever the GOP nominates in '12? Of course. Which is why my opinion counts for nothing.

Same goes for Ted here in Bexley/C-Bus. I think he's overseen a disturbing consolidation of power into the governor's office. I think he wimped out on education reform. I think he's sincere in his socially conservative tendencies, which is not exactly an endearing trait. I keep trying to come up with a reason to not unconditionally endorse today's Dispatch editorial, but for the first time in memory I agree with them completely. I normally think of Tim at Blogger Interrupted as pushing the envelope to pull the mainstream, but as mean/speculative as it is, I think that his post yesterday is going to become the consensus opinion of mainstream rank-and-file Ohio Democrats, if it isn't already.

My mind cannot fathom how bad the state would have fared under J.K. Blackwell. Neither can I imagine not doing whatever I can to keep John Kasich out of office. So really now, why would anyone care about what I have to say?

There are such things as primaries, and there is still work to be done. You can thank Jennifer Brunner, Marilyn Brown, and Paula Brooks for my renewed interest in blogging (not that any of them would likely endorse anything I've written today). I believe Ohio will be a better place when they assume their new offices in 17 months, and I'm committed to seeing that happen.

So I'll just finish up with this statement to my dearly elected Dem officeholders who have been dealing with state budgets and national health care: If you do things in office that could possibly cause swing voters to switch allegiances, then you won't survive to be able to do anything at all in the future. I get that. But if the alternative is not doing anything that could alienate swing voters, then ability is obviously not the issue, character is. Republicans were voted out in droves because they tried their policies and the policies failed. But, give them this: they tried, didn't they?

Paula Brooks for OH-12

While I was writing that last post, the high-powered candidate for the Dems announced that she was running. So at least I wasn't crazy.

And, by the way, I'll take credit for the idea.

Can someone please tell me what has caused Tiberi's sudden "weakness?"

Okay, so I was never that connected and these days I'm totally out of the loop. But I'm still interested, and I'm hoping somebody can tell me what's going on...

During the last two election cycles, a major focus of this blog was putting pressure on Pat Tiberi, and if possible, defeating him and getting a Dem to represent OH-12. One of the major frustrations I had was that the national players were helping out significantly in dozens of other races (e.g. OH-1,2,15,16, etc.), but OH-12 was treated as a lost cause. As it turns out, even in years of huge Democratic gains, Tiberi won re-election by a solid enough margin to justify the decisions to allocate resources elsewhere.

But somehow, that thinking has obviously changed:

The DCCC (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) is the key party source for assistance in winning house elections. They are targeting 8 "vulnerable" GOP congressfolk with radio ads and 25 with live/robo calls dealing with health care reform. Pat is one of those being targeted by both campaigns.

The AFSCME and the affiliated lobbying group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) already have been targeting Tiberi and 6 others with television ads.

While the healthcare ads have been going on for the last two weeks, they've been joined by an even more targeted campaign by EDF (the Environmental Defense Fund), which is spending $150k on radio, tv, on-line and print ads criticizing 3 total GOP congressmen - Holden from PA, Souder from IN, and our friend Pat.

These ads are supposed to put lawmakers in a position where they change their position, or pay a price in lost votes next election year. When a lawmaker is likely to be in a tight race, the lawmakers position runs counter to the typical swing voter in his/her district, and the legislators vote could really swing a bill's passage, this is a no-lose strategy for the advertiser. Is that the situation here? I submit to you Tiberi's recent statement on healthcare (missing spaces preserved from original):

“Once again I’m baffled.President Barack Obama again repeated his refrain that if Americans liketheir current healthcare plan, they can keep it, if the Democrats governmenttake-over of healthcare becomes law. Irespectfully say, ‘Read the bill, Mr. President. Your claims simply aren’t true.’ Right there on pages 16 and 17 of the HouseDemocrats bill, the legislation says if healthcare plans don’t meetrequirements described by a government-appointed commissioner, they must changeor be fined. If your employer providesyou with the healthcare plan, and it doesn’t meet the commissioner’s approval,your employer will be taxed and you must enter the government exchangeprogram. It’s time the president readthe bill and quit misleading the American people. The Democrats’ plan is really a governmenttake-over of healthcare and Ohioans deserve real healthcare reform thatpreserves their choices. No one shouldbe forced into a government-run plan where bureaucrats, not doctors andpatients, make an individual’s personal healthcare decisions.”

He might say that "Ohioans deserve real healthcare reform," but it's clear from his rhetoric that he's not going to vote for any plan written by House Dems. So how about the energy bill, which seeks to drastically cut carbon emissions? Here's Pat with another one of his Newark Advocate op/eds:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi's energy bill is intended to make the planet greener, but it will leave Ohioans and other Midwesterners seeing red. The Waxman-Markey bill, also known as Cap and Trade, should be known as Cap and Tax. In an answer to the liberal left's demands, Pelosi and Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman have tied climate change legislation to energy reform mandates that have resulted in the Democrats proposing a national energy tax increase that would impose unprecedented energy mandates that result in higher costs for nearly every good and service individuals need...

Once again, I think Pat's made his position pretty clear.

Which means that all of this ad money is a waste, unless folks inside the beltway think they can win this seat in 2010. Given that they're in the loop and putting their money where their mouths are, I have to assume that there is new evidence that he can be beat. Is it a fantastic candidate they've recruited to run? Is it a possible scandal? Do they think that large numbers of African Americans will finally turn on him if he can be portrayed as anti-Obama? Is there new and unprecedented polling? Or is it simply that the Dems have already plucked all the low-hanging fruit among pickup opportunities?

Something has changed peoples minds. Seriously, email me if you know or can guess what it is.