Brown Versus Moreno

Hey, guys, how about an Italian-American third-party candidate named Maronne? 😃

Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio will face MAGA Republican Bernie Moreno, and the common meaning of their surnames is just about all they have in common.  Brown is a traditional Hubert Humphrey liberal who supports a strong industrial policy to help workers and who backs unions and workers' rights.  Moreno is a Trump wannabe who has a big auto-dealership network, and that's all you need to know about him.  And being a MAGA man may be all he needs to win Brown's Senate seat in November.

Brown was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, the first - and only - Democrat to be elected to the Senate from the Buckeye State since John Glenn won his last term in 1992.  Ted Strickland was elected governor of Ohio in 2006, but since then no Democrat other than Brown has won statewide in Ohio, mainly because the national party keeps relying on a coalition of Ivy League ethnic-studies professors, Wall Street bankers, and latte drinkers with a running tab at their local Starbucks.  Democrats have become spectacularly toxic in Ohio because of all that, which is why Brown - who is neither an Ivy League ethnic-studies professor or a Wall Street banker and prefers a good ol' cup of diner coffee - has been able to distinguish himself from the national Democratic leadership.  

But this time, Brown's luck may have run out.  As the Democratic Party in Ohio has atrophied, Brown has found himself increasingly isolated from political trends in his home state as well as from the party elites in Washington.  Ohio has become so deeply Trumpist that not even a Democrat who runs on working-class concerns and issues and has his own blue-collar bona fides, like Tim Ryan, can win a statewide election.  This explains why Ohioans keep sending morons like Jim Jordan to the House and James David Vance to the Senate. 

I still can't understand how Ryan could have lost his 2022 Senate bid,  but it may be for the same reason Brown may lose his bid for a fourth Senate term; Ohioans are just plain sick of the Democrats. They're so full-blown MAGA that Brown will likely lose and (like Tim Ryan did in 2022 and like the Ohio Democratic Party did long before 2022) become politically irrelevant.  And if that happens, as I have said on this blog before, Ohio will be as Republican, as MAGA, and as hostile to Democrats as Florida.

And so having a university named Miami won't be the only thing the two states have in common.  

One and Done

Okay, I was wrong.

Ohioans voted not to pass Issue One, which would have required the state's voters to pass an amendment to the state constitution by a 60 percent majority, rejecting it by a vote of 57 to 43 percent.  Of course  I was surprised.  After all, this was a Republican idea designed to keep Ohio Democrats from amending the state constitution to enshrine abortion rights in the law, and this is the state that hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 2006 and just recently sent the insufferable James David Vance to the Senate.

But it turns out that many Republicans were against this measure too.  Former Ohio Republican governors Bob Taft and John Kasich opposed it, calling it undemocratic - well aware that changes to the state constitution that are popular with Republicans could just as easily fail to pass if this measure were to become law.   

So, the measure enshrining abortion in the Ohio state constitution should pass in November.  And Republicans have vowed to repeal it if and when it passes.

I give up on Ohio.

Nice flag, though. 

One?

Issue One, a referendum on the state constitution of Ohio that precedes a second referendum in November on whether to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution, is up for a vote tomorrow.   The abortion referendum is expected to get 58 percent of the vote.

However, the referendum up for a vote tomorrow - in literally the middle of summer, when a lot of people aren't paying attention - would raise the minimum majority for a referendum to change the state constitution to pass to 60 percent.

Republicans who crafted this referendum for a dastardly end run around the will of the people in the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus - whose domeless rotunda, as seen above, looks incredibly weird - are counting on their base to come out strong tomorrow while running misleading ads pertaining to transsexual issues and education issues related to non-heterosexual perspectives to get independents to vote for Issue One.  I haven't seen any polls showing where the vote to raise the bar for popularly amending the Ohio state constitution stands, but Democrats have their work cut out for them to fend off this referendum.  Organizing Democrats is like herding cats, whereas Republicans organize themselves like a K-9 police unit organizes its German shepherds - with ruthless efficiency.

We are indeed living in scary times.  The people who dreamed up this idea will do anything to prevent their right-wing agenda from being thwarted, so they can continue to do nasty things like criminalize abortion, scale back voting rights, privatize public amenities, and burn more of the fossil fuels that cause climate change, which causes severe weather.

Speaking of which, my area in New Jersey is expected to get thunderstorms today.  Thanks, Big Oil. 

P.S.  Hey, Ohio Republicans: Focus more on immediate concerns, like getting a dome for your Statehouse!   

The Redeye State

Florida Democrats suffered a literal death blow in November 2022 when Republican governor Ron DeSantis and Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio were resoundingly re-elected despite their numerous deficiencies.  Now it may be Ohio Democrats' turn to sink into total oblivion.

Ohio has always been something of a bastion of political conservatism.  Every U.S. President who was either an Ohio native or an Ohio resident, except for one, was a Republican . . . and the exception, William Henry Harrison - sometimes credited as a founding father of the American Midwest - was a Whig, the Whigs being the forerunners of the Republicans.  (William Henry Harrison's grandson Benjamin, though born in Ohio, established himself in neighboring Indiana before assuming the Presidency.)   Ohio's most famous U.S. Senator, Robert Taft, epitomized the party's conservative values so much he was called "Mr. Republican."  No Republican has never been elected President without carrying Ohio, though two candidates - Richard Nixon in 1960 and Donald Trump in 2020 - carried  Ohio and still lost. 

But while the state has long had a largely conservative rural population, it has, up to now, had a decent urban-oriented Democratic base - socially conservative white ethnics who belong to unions, and blacks in the state's major cities.  And there were enough voters statewide who could go either way and make Ohio a swing state in presidential and congressional elections.

Well, here's the stone cold truth - Ohio is becoming more solidly and reliably Republican, thanks to a declining blue-collar base and the belief among remaining blue-collar voters - often correct - that Democrats pander too much to coastal-state elitists to care about them. Democrats haven't controlled the Ohio State Senate since 1985, they've only controlled the Ohio State House of Representatives for one period - 2009 and 2010 - in the past thirty years, Republicans dominate the State's U.S. House delegation, and the state hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 2006.

And Ohio's two U.S. Senate seats?  Well, Tim Ryan thought he had the magic formula for winning back the state's Class 3 Senate seat - not won by a Democrat since John Glenn in 1992 - by talking up working-class issues and citing his own votes against national Democratic legislation while in the House.  But he voted with Obama and Biden more than he was willing to admit on legislation Ohio voters by and large opposed, and his attitude - "I'm an ass kicker, not an ass kisser!" - didn't jibe with Midwestern niceness.  (Also, his previous efforts at higher office - House Democratic leadership, the Presidency - made him look more like a show horse than a workhorse.)  Ryan ran a strong campaign on issues the voters in his state cared about, and he still lost - and the once-rising star is now a fallen hasbeen. That's how bad off Ohio Democrats are.

Their last man standing is Sherrod Brown, the state's Democratic senior senator, and he's up for re-election in 2024.  Brown has been able to win in an increasingly Republican state three times in the past, but the reality of Ohio's one-party politics may finally catch up with him.  And it's a pretty safe bet that if Brown goes down next November what's left of the Ohio Democratic Party - which includes gadfly-cum-loser Nina Turner - will go down with him.

That will be it. That will really . . . be . . . it. 😢

Off the Rails

It was on February 3 when a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and exploded in East Palestine, Ohio, near the state border with Pennsylvania on the eastern end of town, leading the town to declare a state of emergency.  In an effort to control and limit the resulting environmental fiasco that ensued, Ohio governor Mike DeWine demanded the evacuation of East Palestine to allow for "a controlled release" of vinyl chloride aso it could be burned in a nearby trench.

Now, vinyl chloride is perfectly safe in its finished form, known as polyvinyl chloride, as it is used to make wire coatings and packaging materials.  But in its raw, unrefined form . . . eh, not so much.

And when it burns and spews smoke into the air . . . well, it can be even deadlier than COVID.

And what burns on the ground stays on the ground . . .and contaminates soil, groundwater, streams, and anything else once it starts running off like Marjorie Taylor Greene's mouth.

Republicans are blaming the Biden administration for this disaster, with many of them faulting the President for pushing a big, expensive infrastructure bill that is obviously ineffective - except that the money hasn't been doled out yet, and besides, Norfolk Southern owns the track as well as the freight cars and locomotives.  And one one other thing - the derailment was caused by a brake defect in one of the cars.

Florida GOP congressman Byron Donalds even demanded that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg resign for letting this happen, suggesting that he is incompetent and the only got the job because he is gay.  If Buttigieg let it happen, it was only because he was unable to do anything to prevent it.  See, Buttigieg's predecessor, Republican Elaine Chao, inherited a regulation set by the Obama administration in 2015 that would have required upgraded braking systems for freight trains by, ironically, 2023 . . . but she had it repealed in 2018 because she said it was economically unfeasible.

Elaine Chao is living proof that ethnic and gender diversity is not always a plus.  She's also the best argument against nepotism in government, as her husband is Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Needless to say, Norfolk Southern is in deep doo-doo over this.  Some East Palestine residents have initiated a class-action lawsuit against the railroad and the Environmental Protection Agency has ordered the company to clean up the mess thoroughly . . . and if Norfolk Southern doesn't do it, the agency will.

Presidents like Obama and Biden have worked tirelessly to make life more fair and just for white working-class people like the resident of East Palestine and so many other blue-collar communities in Ohio.  And yet Ohioans voted for Trump twice and sent James David Vance to the Senate.  It's amazing how much Ohioans beg for - and get - abuse.

"Thank you, sir, may have another?" 😱

Buckeye Blackeye

Tim Ryan, after losing his bid for the open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, said he's unsure of what he will do next.  The truth is, he likely doesn't have a future in politics unless President Biden appoints him Assistant Secretary of  Labor. 

It says something about how reliably Republican Ohio has become when you realize that J.D. Vance was not just the only Trump-backed Republican Senate candidate to win, he won by 264,675 votes out of 4,031,121 votes cast - hardly the close race many of the polls were predicting.

I still feel that Tim Ryan could have won that open Senate seat if the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) had given him more money and more support, but DSCC Chairman Senator Gary Peters of Michigan had only so much money to spread out and he made a calculated decision to hold all Democratic-held seats and flipping as few Republican seats as necessary.  His strategy paid off; not one incumbent Democrat lost, and John Fetterman's Senate victory in bipartisan Pennsylvania was the only seat flipped by either party,  The Democratic strategy preserved the party's Senate majority no matter how the Georgia Senate runoff two weeks from today plays out.

But Ryan more or less made a pariah of himself with his own ambition.  His attempt to oust Nancy Pelosi as House Democratic Leader in 2016 ended in ridicule and scorn, as well as an outbreak of schadenfreude among Pelosi's most ardent supporters.  The new Democratic leadership emerging for the next Congress - Hakeem Jeffries, Katharine Clark and Pedro Aguilar - have been assistant leaders for the past four years and have been nurtured by Pelosi and her leadership team to take over.  The fact that Ryan felt compelled to run for President in 2020 - although no sitting House member has been elected to the White House since another Ohioan, James A. Garfield, pulled it off in 1880 - constitutes prima facie evidence that Ryan was frozen out of potential House leadership for his brazen act of rebellion.  Besides, the new leadership reflects the Democratic Party's bi-coastal, diverse base; Jeffries, from New York, is black,  Cark, from Massachusetts, is a woman, and Aguilar, from California, is Hispanic.  Ryan is just another white guy from Ohio.  

So of course Ryan, seeing no future in the House, decided to go for a Senate seat.  But Ryan's tried-and-true blue-collar liberal populism in his own district in the Mahoning region in eastern Ohio didn't translate very well statewide.

Ryan had the right stands on the issues and the right temperament to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate, but he was as out of touch with the more conservative, narrow-minded Ohio electorate as he was with the House leadership of his own party.  Not only would he likely lose a Senate bid in 2024 if Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown retires, but Brown himself might face an uphill battle if he runs then for a fourth term.  And if Ryan is a Senate candidate in 2024, there's no guarantee that the DSCC would support him in the interest of keeping a Democratic Senate seat Democratic.  There are twice as many Democratic Senate seats up for election in 2024 as there are Republican seats.  Perhaps the DSCC, likely being unable to save every Democratic Senate seat, will sacrifice Ohio if Sherrod Brown retires.  

Besides, I don't think Washington Democrats like Ryan very much.

Tim Ryan has a lot of political talent, and I hope he returns to public service in some form, but it won't be to an office he has to get elected to - least of all the Presidency.  I'm reminded by what Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck said of French film director (and son of painter Pierre) Jean Renoir, which Washington insiders and Ohio voters could easily say about Tim Ryan: "[He's] got a lot of talent, but he's not one of us." 

O-H! I-O!

You have to hand it to U.S. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio.  The Democratic lawmaker never gives up, even when the odds are against him and pundits and partisans are jeering him.  (Sound familiar?)  He ran against Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic leader in 2016 and became persona non grata with her and her chief deputies.  He ran for President in 2020 and never made it to the first caucus or primary.  Now's he's running for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, a state which Democrats haven't carried in a presidential election since 2012 and in which they've have only won two elections for statewide office since 2006 . . . and both were won by Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.

Now Ryan is running to serve in the U.S. Senate alongside Brown and have Ohio's U.S. Senate delegation embody proletarian Democratic centrism just as Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, as Massachusetts's Senate delegation, embody elitist Democratic progressivism.  Ryan is running as a working man's candidate, advocating more manufacturing at home and incentives to keep jobs here while siding with labor unions on workers' rights.  He's railed against President Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan for not acknowledging the struggle of lunch-pail workers who didn't go to college, and he's supported Donald Trump's tariffs.  What could possibly stand in Ryan's way?

The answer: J.D. Vance.

Vance, the author of the memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," is Ryan's Republican opponent an advocate of the forgotten working man who was left behind in the digital age. There's just one problem - though a native Ohioan, Vance has made a fortune as a venture capitalist in California's Silicon Valley, and he undoubtedly has lost whatever connection he had to midwestern proletarian culture that Ryan, who never left Ohio, still maintains.  Yet the polls show the race even.

Why?  Three reasons.  First, Vance, a man who once described Trump as a poisonous influence, sought and won his endorsement, which goes a long way with Trump supporters.  Second, Ohio is an increasingly Republican state, and even the least "woke" Democrat who understands the needs of the factory workers lucky enough to have jobs has trouble being taken seriously by voters simply because of his or her party affiliation.  Third, Ryan isn't getting any support from the national Democratic Party - which is focusing its attention on other Senate races - while Vance, after running such a lackluster campaign after winning the Republican Senate nomination,  is getting tons of money from the national  GOP.  Many pundits believe that, because Ryan won the Democratic Senate nomination with little effort and still has plenty of money, he doesn't need national Democratic support.  Others suggest that national Democrats see Ohio as a lost cause. I, however, suspect that national Democrats aren't supporting Ryan because, after trying to unseat Pelosi and distancing himself from Biden on student loan debts, Ryan's name is still mud in Washington.

Ryan still has a chance.  By all accounts, he's running a great campaign.  This election is one of many in the country that no poll can possibly predict.  If Vance wins, though, Ryan's political career is likely over.  He had to give up his House seat to run for the Senate, so there's no going back.  Having shot himself in the foot by challenging Pelosi's House leadership and having run a zombie presidential campaign, he must know that a loss in this Senate campaign would mean three strikes and out. 

One last thing: Some pundits have also suggested that the presence of Sherrod Brown in Senate hurts Ryan because Ohioans would prefer Vance to keep the Ohio U.S. Senate bipartisan after retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman leaves.  The best reason for vote for Ryan is this - Ohio doesn't need two senators who are going to cancel out each others votes.   

Kent State - Fifty Years

The only good thing you could say about the two major Americans wars of this century, the Iraq War  and the Afghanistan War, was that while you may have been be called unpatriotic for being against them, at least you won't get massacred for it. That's exactly what happened to four students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, fifty years ago today - Monday, May 4, 1970.

A massive protest on the Kent State campus had begun three days earlier after President Nixon widened the war in Vietnam by bombing Cambodia in an attempt to go after Viet Cong guerillas taking refuge over the border. In an attempt to maintain order in Kent, Ohio governor James Rhodes - who detested the antiwar demonstrators - sent the state militia onto the campus on May 2. University officials attempted to ban the protest set for the following Monday, but two thousand demonstrators showed up anyway. The militia tried to control the crowd with tear gas, which led to a riot. In short order, shots were fired at the demonstrators, and four students were killed with twelve wounded.  I wrote on this blog a more detailed account a decade ago of what happened on that spring day in 1970, and I only bring it up again today because, first of all, a fifty-year anniversary is a major milestone, and secondly, we now have someone in the White House who has a problem with public dissent and would go farther than Nixon or Rhodes ever would have gone in order to stamp it out.

I was only four years old when the Kent State massacre took place, but it always infuriated me that anyone even would even attempt to curtail the right of free speech with weapons in the United States of America.  And in the aftermath of Kent State,  the exercise of the right to protest fell by the wayside for a long time when it became apparent that speaking out could get yourself killed. :-(

Once again, remember today the fourth of May.

From The Front Porch

Joe Biden can't leave his house in Wilmington, Delaware while the nation is under lockdown because of the coronavirus, and he's thus confined to his basement TV studio putting out announcements that his detractors (including many Bernie bros, who literally hate him) have compared to a public-access show like "Wayne's World."  Trump's "disinjectant" manifesto has caused Trump himself to appear on TV less often, so Biden's problem isn't that serious right now.  But eventually, as the 2020 presidential campaign picks up steam, Biden is going to have to up his game, and there's still no indication that travel and economic restrictions are going to be eased even temporarily over the summer and early autumn before the second wave of the virus hits.  Biden's digital campaign is still a work in progress while Trump has been building up his for over three years.  So what's a Democratic presidential nominee who can expect nonstop ridicule from Trump and Fox News personalities supposed to do to reach the people?

How about, for 2020, a parlor trick from 1920?  How about a front-porch campaign?

In 1920, a year scarily like this one - a recession, a pandemic, a great deal of uncertainty - the Republican presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio, campaigned from his home in the small Ohio town of Marion while his Democratic opponent - the governor of Ohio, James M. Cox - toured the country.  As the country was just coming out of a Spanish-flu pandemic, this was a smart idea; Harding didn't have to risk getting sick, and he was much more comfortable greeting guests and supporters (who, I'm sure, were well-screened) coming to see him.

Joe Biden could do the same thing.  He could campaign outside his house and have people (and the media) come to see him in the flesh.  You wouldn't have a packed audience on his front yard like Harding, as shown above, was able to have, as the Spanish-flu pandemic was already easing by the fall of 1920.  Just bring enough people who could fit in front of Biden's house with six feet of space between them - and no masks, because you don't want the audience to look like a convention of gangsters.  Just figure out how to keep everyone six feet away from each other at all times.

The first front-porch campaign was actually waged in 1896 by another Ohio Republican, William McKinley, in response to his Democratic opponent William Jennings Bryan's campaign tour.  (The idea of a presidential nominee going on a campaign tour was a novel idea back then.)  McKinley, who ultimately won the 1896 election, knew that Bryan was a much better orator than he was, and he had no interest in taking Bryan's bait and competing on Bryan's terms when he preferred not to engage in any language he considered too flowery and empty. "I might as well put up a trapeze on my front lawn and compete against some professional athlete as go out speaking against Bryan," McKinley said. "I have to think when I speak."  Harding, though, employed the front-porch strategy for more cynical reasons.  Once he was the 1920 Republican presidential nominee, Republican U.S. Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania offered the following advice to Harding's handlers: "Keep Warren at home.  Don't let him make any speeches.  If he goes out on a tour somebody's sure to ask him questions, and Warren's just the sort of damned fool who'll try to answer them."  Harding defeated Cox in a landslide.  

I am not cynically suggesting a front-porch campaign for Biden to save him from himself.  No matter what public stage you put Biden on, he's still liable to say something and not have it come out right.   That can't be changed.  But with a front-porch campaign, at least you literally get him out of the house.

And if Biden's house doesn't have a front porch, someone had best build one.

(Incidentally, James Cox's vice presidential running mate - a fellow you probably never heard of, Franklin D. Roosevelt - also toured the country in the 1920 campaign, knowing the Democratic ticket wouldn't win but knowing also that he, then 38 years old, could build up a lot of political capital for his own future. Roosevelt had overcome the Spanish flu a year earlier; he became infected with polio in 1921.  I'm no medical expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if the flu compromised his immune system and made him more susceptible to catching the polio virus.  As for Harding, who never caught the Spanish flu, he had heart trouble that the pressure of the Presidency exacerbated, leading to his death in office in 1923 at the age of 57.  None of this has anything to do with Biden; this is just a bit of historical context.)     

The Elephants In the Room

What, the Republican presidential nomination contest still isn't over?

When it became apparent that Mitt Romney was going to have a good night on Super Tuesday, I pretty much expected the aura of inevitability to finally shine on him. But Rick Santorum came within a whisker of wining the Ohio primary, and he was also able to claim wins in North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Tennessee - highlighting Romney's problems in the South and the Plains states and revealing a remarkable acceptance these rednecks and yokels have for Italian-American Catholics like Santorum. Romney, going into upcoming contests in Mississippi and Alabama as well as Kansas, admitted he's going into "foreign territory." Conservative voters just aren't warming up to him - there'll be another Ice Age before they do.

That said, President Obama isn't out of the woods yet. He'll have to face negative ads from numerous right-wing super-PACs in the fall, plus a virulent Tea Party ready to turn out for the Republican presidential nominee even if it's a cow. Righties will gladly overlook the flaws of the eventual nominee (Romney) to get Obama out of office. The fact that Obama's poll numbers have improved is irrelevant, especially considering how marginal these improved ratings really are.

Meanwhile, the Republican power grab plot is in full force. A redistricting of U.S. House seats in Ohio, done by Republicans in Columbus with the blessing of Speaker John Boehner (who represents a suburban Cincinnati district) after Ohio lost one seat, forced liberal Democratic incumbent representatives Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur in a primary contest for the same seat, even though the distances between their respective home bases of Cleveland and Toledo are 120 miles apart. (Their new district snakes along the shore of Lake Erie.)  Kaptur won, ending Kucinich's political career - to the delight of Republicans who were sick and tired of his progressive policy initiatives and to the dismay of Republicans who will no longer have him to kick around anymore. But more Republicans are delighted than dismayed. Kucinich's forced retirement is the latest in a series of GOP efforts to establish a permanent majority in the House of Representatives by eliminating Democratic districts in states currently under Republican control that lost House seats as a result of the 2010 census even as Republican states in the Sun Belt are gaining seats.

Many of these states losing House seats have more Democrats than Republicans, so Democratic votes in Democratic states will be neutralized. In New Jersey, the Eleventh U.S. House District, where I live, was redrawn to include a good part of the liberal Essex County town of Montclair (which was divided between two Democratic districts), but the Eleventh District remains heavily centered in Republican Morris County. Starting in January, the Democratic voters in Montclair who now find themselves in Republican Representative Rodney Frelinghuysen's district can now look forward to a decade of having their positions and concerns underrepresented - or not represented at all.  

The era of Democratic dominance James Carville predicted back in 2008 ended before it even began, and the demise of the Democratic party can't be far behind. Even if Obama wins re-election, the Democrats can't possibly overcome in 2016 the built-in advantages Republicans are creating for themselves in terms of reapportionment and super-PAC money.

Walker and Kasich: Union of the Snakes

Judge Maryann Sumi blocked enforcement of the Wisconsin state law barring collective bargaining for public employees. This time she means it!

Governor Scott Walker had tried to implement the law, insisting that publishing it online made it official, but Judge Sumi made it clear that she wanted Walker and one of his top aides, Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebsch, to wait for the legal challenges against it to proceed. Walker agreed reluctantly, but he is confident that the legislation - passed in possible violation of the state's open meetings law - will be eventually upheld.

The law allows public workers to negotiate on wages, but it says no to allowing for negotiations over anything else - no bargaining for work hours, no bargaining for vacation time, no bargaining for almost all of their work conditions, etc. They are also being told to contribute more to their pensions and health care costs (negating the wage bargaining right), something they agreed to already despite it being tantamount to an 8 percent pay cut.

At least Walker's bill allows police officers and firefighters to collectively bargain. In Ohio, Governor John Kasich just signed a bill that prohibits even that. Policemen and firemen won't be able to bargain for pay rates, working conditions, or even equipment; police unions usually bargain for bulletproof vests, for example. Police and fire departments in Ohio are worried about the effect this will have on their security, and rightfully so.

Kasich insists that his $55.5 billion, two-year state budget is based on unspecified savings from repealing union protections to close an $8 billion gap. Most Ohioans aren't convinced. From the second Kasich signed the bill, protesters have ninety days to get a referendum on the ballot for Election Day on November 8 to have the bill repealed.

The referendum stands a good chance of being put up for a vote. Chances of passage are less clear. Kasich says that people just have to get used to this change, adding that he understands that such change is difficult . . . just as it was difficult for him to - I'm not making this up - get a new haircut.

You Might Recall . . .

Ed Schultz reported on MSNBC last night on some polls that aren't as irrelevant as they seem. Polls taken in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan reveal that if the gubernatorial elections Republicans won in these states back in November were held today, Scott Walker, John Kasich, and Rick Snyder would lose in their respective races. The suggested irrelevance comes from the fact that these financial fascists did win, and they're not up for re-election until 2014. These governors - and Rick Scott in Florida - remind me of abusive men who are as sweet as pie while courting their women, only to turn on them and treat them like dirt once they've gotten married.

The residents of these Midwestern states are likely to be stuck with these governors for awhile. But maybe not. Walker is thought to be a prime candidate for a recall election once he's eligible to be subjected to such a vote in January, and Rick Snyder could be up for a recall vote as early as June. This is happening even as a recall effort has started against Governor Jan Brewer in Arizona, which was mentioned here earlier.

Walker sold himself as a skilled budget planner without mentioning what he'd do to balance the Wisconsin budget (though anyone who was familiar with his record as Milwaukee County executive should have had a clue). In Michigan, Rick Snyder sold himself as a job creator by virtue of his experience as CEO of the Gateway computer company, only to leave out the fact that most of the jobs he created were overseas, the result of outsourcing. And even though Kasich sold himself as a job creator, he did, as you might remember, announce that he would cancel the high-speed rail project that would have bisected Ohio and linked Cleveland to Cincinnati by way of Columbus ("It's just more government spending," was Kasich's excuse) before he even took office. Thus, Kasich eliminated the jobs to build and maintain a rail line that would have had a positive economic impact on the communities it would have served along Ohio's I-71 corridor. Even if Kasich had allowed the Ohio high-speed rail plan to go ahead, of course, the workers who would have been hired to run the damn thing probably would have been denied a chance at unionization or been forced to work under dubious safety conditions. (I don't know if Kasich can be recalled, but his unpopularity is helping Ohio's progressive incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown in the polls as Brown prepares to run for re-election next year.)

The Republican governors' reversal of political fortune is indeed a strong turnaround from November, but by the time any of these rhymes-with-glass poles get thrown out of office, they will have likely done considerable damage to their states. I hope these recalls still happen. But of course, the people who are apparently wising up just a little too late did vote these jerks into office in the first place, and in a fit of passion without much reason. Elections have consequences. It figures that many voters in the Midwest would think of that only now.

More Derailings

If you're an American fan of passenger rail, it must feel like being an Irishman who likes erotic art; there's not much in your own homeland for you to appreciate. And thanks to two incoming Republican governors in the Midwest, there's going to be a whole lot less for rail fans in the United States to cheer about.

In Wisconsin, incoming Republican governor Scott Walker says he plans to refuse federal transportation money specifically meant for high-speed rail. Walker insisted that Wisconsin needs more money to fix existing roads and bridges, not build more railways. Walker plans to refuse $810 million for such a project, citing the burden between $7.5 million and $15 million it would place on taxpayers to pay for operating expenses. Walker sounds reasonable, though, in comparison to former congressman John Kasich, the governor-elect of Ohio. Kasich, who's also refusing federal rail money, also cited hard numbers - $17 million in taxes to pay for more than half of the $29 million cost of operating it - but added, "We don’t have any idea who would even ride the train. This is just the federal government wanting to spend money, and they've got it all wrong."

Kasich doesn't "have any idea who would even ride the train?" How about people who need to travel to Columbus from Cleveland or Cincinnati - or travel across Ohio - who don't want to put up with driving on Interstate 71 because it's too much of a hassle? How about people who want to take the train to transfer to an Amtrak train to take them to New York or Chicago? Mr. Kasich, do you have any idea about the cleaner air, less congested highways, and new jobs high-speed rail in Ohio would generate? Or how much more cost-effective it would by than more highway construction? Do you have any idea at all? About anything?

Kasich, a budget expert and former Wall Street executive, knows his numbers. But, like any other number cruncher, he knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Walker and Kasich would have gladly taken stimulus money for more highways, but Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a Republican, put his foot down. Trains or nothing. And nothing is what the residents of those two states are going to get. One Midwestern governor, Pat Quinn of Illinois, is happy to see his counterparts in Wisconsin and Ohio refuse the railroad money. Quinn, a Democrat who was just elected to a term in his own right after completing the infamous Rod Blagojevich's second term, is eager to get more money fort his state's high-speed passenger train program, and Illinois's senior senator, Richard Durbin, has said his state will be happy to take the money Wisconsin and Ohio don't want. LaHood, also from Illinois, might be happy to oblige.

It's enough to make me want to move to Chicago. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has killed the proposed passenger rail tunnel to Manhattan. And as if that weren't bad enough, negotiations between NJ Transit and Amtrak on a shared rail tunnel to New York City have broken down.

So, apparently, has common sense.