Tag Archives: Ohio

News

Meet the young conservative running against a Democrat senator in Ohio

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Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel
Ohio Senate candidate Josh Mandel

Although Republicans have the House, Senate and White House now, there are still a lot of very liberal senators who need to be defeated in 2018. In Ohio, there is a very liberal and very old senator named Sherrod Brown who faces a challenge from a much young conservative candidate.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Josh Mandel, Ohio’s 39-year-old Republican state treasurer, is making his second attempt to unseat Democrat Sherrod Brown in the U.S. Senate by running as a conservative and defender of the Constitution.

Mandel, a former Marine who served as a state representative before winning election to two terms as state treasurer, spoke with the Washington Free Beacon about his 2018 campaign to “transfer the power from the politicians to the people.”

Among Mandel’s goals as a senator would be instituting term limits to “clean out” veteran politicians who have stayed too long in Washington, torching political correctness in the fight against Islamic extremism, and rolling back federal government regulations that have squeezed entrepreneurs and small businesses. He is also passionate about enforcing immigration laws and protecting Ohio’s oil, gas, and coal industries.

“I think that everyday taxpayers are fed up with the feeling that Washington is rigged on behalf of special interests and lobbyists and I think there is a hunger for a new generation of leaders to come shake this place up,” Mandel said in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.

The 2018 Senate race will pit the young conservative against Brown, a liberal politician 30 years Mandel’s senior who has been in Washington for more than two decades. The way Mandel sees it, Ohio voters will have a clear choice between a veteran politician who has stayed in Washington to “do well” and a leader from the next generation who is unafraid of standing up for conservative principles.

“I think the voters of Ohio are going to have a choice of do they want someone who ran on term limits and then changed [his] mind so he could spend his entire adult life in Washington like Sherrod Brown, or someone like me who is going to come here to Washington, do as much good as possible, and then go home and live under the budget and laws that I created,” Mandel said.

[…]The young Republican likely faces a fierce battle against Brown, who he unsuccessfully challenged in 2012. Brown defeated Mandel by six points to win reelection to the U.S. Senate.

Brown has served in the Senate since 2007 and represented Ohio’s 13th district in Congress for 13 years before that. The Democrat has had a long career in politics, serving as Ohio’s secretary of state and a member of the state’s general assembly before coming to Washington.

Accomplishments:

When asked about his accomplishments as state treasurer, Mandel pointed to his work releasing the Ohio checkbook online, which gives taxpayers a look at how the state spends its money, and improving Ohio’s rating on government transparency. Mandel also helped dig the state out of an $8 billion budget hole; Ohio’s finances have moved from 43rd to 7th in national rankings since 2011.

Under Obama (and Sherrod Brown), the US national debt went from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in 8 years.

Here is Mandel’s 2018 Senate race ad:

Sherrod Brown has a conservative rating of 7% from Heritage Action. Ohio is a purple state. I think Ohio can do better than 7% in 2018.

News

Republican governor of Ohio signs bill banning abortions when babies feel pain

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I'm Scheming Unborn Baby, and I approve this study
I’m Scheming Unborn Baby, and my sneaky plan worked perfectly! Excellent!

Wow, I’m so shocked and surprised by this – John Kasich is barely a Republican.

Life News reports:

Today, Governor John Kasich signed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (Sub. S.B. 127), landmark legislation which would ban late-term abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.  And, citing concerns it would be overturned in court, Kasich vetoed a ban on all abortions after the heart of an unborn baby begins to beat.

“I agree with Ohio Right to Life and other leading, pro-life advocates that SB 127 (a 20-week ban) is the best, most legally sound and sustainable approach to protecting the sanctity of human life,” Kasich said in a statement.

Because the heartbeat-based abortion ban will not likely survive a legal challenge in court, pro-life legislators approved the 20-week abortion ban with the hope of saving as many babies as possible under Roe v. Wade.

Why is this “20-week” legislation important? It’s important because when the national news media cover this law, they are going to put the focus where it belongs – on the unborn baby:

“On behalf of Ohio Right to Life and our statewide members, we sincerely thank Governor Kasich for his unwavering support for the unborn and our pro-life mission. By signing S.B. 127, the 20-week ban, Governor Kasich will save hundreds of unborn lives each year and he positioned the state of Ohio to directly challenge Roe v. Wade,” it told LifeNews. “The 20-week ban was nationally designed to be the vehicle to end abortion in America. It challenges the current national abortion standard and properly moves the legal needle from viability to the baby’s ability to feel pain.”

The incremental approach is realistic, and effective. In no way is the pro-life movement required to settle for this victory, either. They will take down the pro-abortion status quo one piece at a time if they have to.

So what about that premise – unborn babies feeling pain at 20 weeks. Is it really true?

Yes – this is another case where the science is all on the side of the Team Pro-Life:

One leading expert in the field of fetal pain, Dr. Kanwaljeet S. Anand at the University of Tennessee, stated in his expert report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice, “It is my opinion that the human fetus possesses the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation, if not earlier, and the pain perceived by a fetus is possibly more intense than that perceived by term newborns or older children.”

“The neural pathways are present for pain to be experienced quite early by unborn babies,” explains Steven Calvin, M.D., perinatologist, chair of the Program in Human Rights Medicine, University of Minnesota, where he teaches obstetrics.

Indeed, that’s why the line is set at 20 weeks, and now we can ask the Democrats why they want to hurt babies. That’s what this is really about. I have lived a long time on this planet, and I have never, ever hurt a baby. It’s not hard, you just avoid getting drunk, and chose relationships based on reason instead of feelings. Then you will never be in a position where you are tempted to hurt a baby to preserve your own happiness.

Here’s what a baby is like at 20 weeks:

You are 20 weeks pregnant. (fetal age 18 weeks)

  • Baby now weighs about 11 ounces and is roughly 7 inches long.
  • Baby is 17 cm long crown to rump, and weighs about 310 grams.
  • The baby can hear and recognize the mother’s voice.
  • The mother will probably start feeling the first fetal movements.
  • The toenails and fingernails are growing.
  • The growth of hair on the rest of the body has started.
  • The skin is getting thicker.
  • The heart can now be heard with a stethoscope.

Your baby may react to loud sounds. Baby can actually hear noises outside of the womb. Familiar voices, music, and sounds that baby becomes accustomed to during their development stages often are calming after birth. This is an important time for sensory development since nerve cells serving each of the senses; taste, smell, hearing, sight, and touch are now developing into their specialized area of the brain.

Your baby now weighs about 11 ounces and at roughly 7 inches long they are filling up more and more of the womb. Though still small and fragile, the baby is growing rapidly and could possibly survive if born at this stage.

I understand why Democrats would vote to allow abortions on unborn children at this age. The abortionists make money off of these procedures, and they make more money off of the sale of organs, sometimes cut from babies who are still alive. Some of that money makes it’s way back to the Democrats in the form of political contributions. It’s similar to the way that slavers made money off of slaves… except they didn’t torture the slaves and cut the organs out of them to sell. I guess someone standing in a slave plantation might have said to a slaver “you can’t do that, they can feel pain”. And Republicans are standing outside abortion clinics and saying “you can’t do that, they can feel pain”. But in both cases, the slavers and the abortionists are making money from their barbarism. So it doesn’t make a difference to them whether they unborn can feel pain. The important thing to them is that they are making money. And the money being made by abortionists makes its way into the coffers of Democrat politicians running for re-election. This is working as designed, according to Democrats.

Just for completeness, I must mention that even the radically leftist New York Times admits that unborn children are viable at 22 weeks. Democrats are not in favor of limits on abortion at any number of weeks. And the later the better, as far as they’re concerned – more developed babies have parts that can be sold for big money.

News

Ohio union employees paid twice the average salary of Ohio teachers

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Ohio union officials make much more than Ohio teachers
Ohio union officials make much more than Ohio teachers

Striking story from the Daily Signal.

Excerpt:

Ohio’s largest labor union is in the business of selling worker “solidarity,” and for union bosses, business is good.

Ohio Education Association president Becky Higgins was paid $209,039 to preside over a union that took member dues and mandatory fees from 121,625 teachers during the fiscal year ending Aug. 31.

Regular OEA dues for full-time teachers are $504—$42 a month—in addition to local OEA chapter dues and $183 in National Education Association dues sent to NEA’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

Union staff and officers working for OEA’s Columbus headquarters were paid an average of $109,789 with money taken from teachers’ paychecks; Ohio teachers were paid an average of $55,916 during the 2013-14 school year, according to the Ohio Department of Education.

For some reason, Ohio, under liberal governor John Kasich, has not yet followed other midwestern states and enacted a right to work law. Right to work laws allow teachers to work without being forced to pay dues to labor unions.  Although Ohio doesn’t have a right to work law yet, one is being drafted now. Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and other states all have right to work laws already. Kentucky and West Virginia have laws in the works.

Right to work laws 2015
Right to work laws 2015

Why should Christians and conservatives care about all the money that is taken from the paychecks of teachers for their unions?

Most unions donate almost exclusively to Democrats

This Wall Street Journal article explains that unions donate mostly to Democrats.

Excerpt:

Corporations and their employees… tend to spread their donations fairly evenly between the two major parties, unlike unions, which overwhelmingly assist Democrats. In 2008, Democrats received 55% of the $2 billion contributed by corporate PACs and company employees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Labor unions were responsible for $75 million in political donations, with 92% going to Democrats.

So how much money are we talking about?

Total political contributions in 2014 election cycle
Total political contributions in 2014 election cycle (click for larger image)

To see how much unions control government, take a look at this story from National Review, written by economist Veronique to Rugy.

It says:

  • The top campaign donor of the last 25 years is ActBlue, an online political-action committee dedicated to raising funds for Democrats. ActBlue’s political contributions, which total close to $100 million, are even more impressive when one realizes that it was only launched in 2004. That’s $100 million in ten years.
  • Fourteen labor unions were among the top 25 political campaign contributors.
  • Three public-sector unions were among the 14 labor groups: the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; the National Education Association; and the American Federation of Teachers. Their combined contributions amount to $150 million, or 15 percent of the top 25’s approximately $1 billion in donations since 1989.
  • Public- and private-sector unions contributed 55.6 percent — $552 million — of the top 25’s contributions.

Where does the money go? The Daily Caller notes:

“Nearly all of labor’s 2012 donations to candidates and parties – 90 percent – went to Democrats,” the report from CRP concluded. “Public sector unions, which include employees at all levels of government, donated $14.7 million to Democrats in 2014.”

Although unions helped a great deal in the past to protect workers from unfair practices, their primary function now seems to be to confiscate money from their members to give to themselves and to Democrats. When we make the collection of union dues optional, then unions will have to be more responsive to their members, and less responsive to their Democrat allies.