I avoid writing about myself because I realize I’m boring, but something I read yesterday merits an exception. I was disappointed to learn Maggi Cook is a candidate for the Ohio Republican Party Central Committee in the 7th District. Cook has complained of being pressured to drop out of the race:

“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!

During the flood of uniformly annoying December 31 fundraising mailers, Kevin DeWine and the Ohio Republican Party (ORP) sent an email titled, “Every Dollar Raised in Ohio, Stays in Ohio.” Does this mean ORP has severed ties with Brett Buerck and his Florida consulting firm, Majority Strategies?

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:

As brutal election results reflected, the Ohio Republican Party (ORP) was a scandal-plagued outfit circa 2006. I don’t relish the current ORP leadership fight, but if we don’t want second terms for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown we must avoid repeating our mistakes. Party chairman Kevin DeWine’s old-guard ways – combined with his public betrayal of Governor Kasich – make it hard to believe ORP can be effective with DeWine in charge.

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.

Last week The Columbus Dispatch reported on what has been a recurring theme all year: Ohio conservatives are evil extremists!

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!

For America to have any hope of averting fiscal collapse, the GOP presidential nominee will need to win Ohio in less than 11 months. Each day of Ohio Republican Party (ORP) infighting improves the odds for President Obama and Senator Sherrod Brown, redistributionist extraordinaire.

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.

A month after an election with mixed results for the small-government cause, Ohio conservatives are suffering through a very public GOP power struggle. Governor Kasich’s push to replace Ohio Republican Party (ORP) chairman Kevin DeWine has national implications: the Issue 2 campaign proved how low Democrats, Progressives, and unions (but I repeat myself) are willing to go to win the Buckeye state.

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.

Class warfare is the only song We Are Ohio knows. So, for another four weeks they’ll keep playing the same tune, hoping voters don’t realize the outrageous truth.

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.

Not that it matters to the handout-junkies and bureaucracy-lovers who make up the Democratic Party’s base, but the House has passed a second bill to extend the federal debt ceiling. In case you’ve forgotten, the House is controlled by the Grand Old Party of No, and the world is going to end if the debt ceiling isn’t raised by Tuesday.

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.

Since I cheered on Speaker Boehner a week ago, I feel compelled to offer some support to Congressman Jordan today – although, to paraphrase a great motivator, my support and a nickel will get you a hot cup of jack squat.

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.

Did you feel a rumbling last Thursday? The earth shook as Ohio’s budget – spending cuts! lower taxes! – was signed into law.

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.