When not attacking American companies, President Obama gets downright romantic about the grand things American companies do with the Washington’s guidance. China is frequently a source of envy (see: passenger rail boondoggles), because China’s statist capitalism-lite floats Obama’s boat. As America’s most statist senator, Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is on board for anything involving more government!

Sherrod asked President Obama about his plans for a federal manufacturing and energy policy during a February 2010 Democrat meeting:

President Obama knows what’s best, and seems annoyed by the democracy blocking his path. For all his worries of “falling behind” autocratic China in the race to throw money at unmarketable products, we have to wonder how much of the New York Times coverage he was briefed on the week before!

In the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.

[...]

As in many other industries, China’s low labor costs are an advantage in energy.

Emphasis mine. Impromptu poll: Do you think Sherrod Brown or President Obama comprehend how expensive capital is, or realize China’s population and infrastructure are different from ours? Do you think they would cross Big Labor in order to compete with Chinese manufacturing in a meaningful way?

What the average person might call “reality” is only a cloud of pesky details for Barack Obama and Sherrod Brown to wave aside. Green energy is A Good Thing, so taxpayers should happily spend money on green energy while coal & oil companies take their medicine and ask for more. Pipelines are right out. Sure, we’ll lose the occasional half billion or so funding the endeavors of Obama donors, but that’s part of the fun!

If you suffer through the complete hour-and-fifteen session on the White House YouTube channel, you’ll hear both Sherrod and the president mention glowingly Ron Bloom, Obama’s former “Car Czar.” Bloom, instrumental in bringing the UAW out on top of the Chrysler and GM bailouts, is both an SEIU alum and a Mao enthusiast. Forget about the jobs lost to China; the ghost of Chairman Mao draws in Obama appointees like a siren!

In matters of manufacturing and green energy – as with most everything else – Sherrod Brown is a cheerleader for Obama’s worst Progressive tendencies. For a Senate seat the GOP can retake this November, look no further than Ohio!

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero and Big Government.

Back in October, Sherrod Brown (D-OH) made one of his frequent MSNBC appearances to chat with Chris Matthews about the hot new show in town: Occupy Wall Street. Matthews and Brown seemed equally enthusiastic about the left’s answer to the Tea Party movement.

Here are two of the most telling exchanges from the segment, which you can view in its entirety courtesy of YouTube user toddfein:

My favorite part of this clip is Sherrod’s self-contradicting statement, “this isn’t a liberal/conservative, left or right, it’s whose side are you on?” Sherrod is a Progressive, you see, so he’s not divisive – he just wants you to pick a side, and if you pick the wrong side he’s going to demonize you.

As reported in November at Third Base Politics, an Ohio conservative blog I help manage, Sherrod Brown’s campaign site even used the Occupiers’ “stand with the 99%” rhetoric for an email-harvesting web petition. Occupy Wall Street’s whiny demands that government do everything are a perfect match for Sherrod’s pitiful class warfare, and it seems obvious Sherrod had high hopes for the movement.

In an October 2010 USA Today editorial titled “How to fight Tea Party’s faux populism,” Sherrod was less excited about organized protest:

Tea Party populism is driven by anger at our government and at our country. Real populism fights for all Americans, while Tea Party populism divides us.

Republicans have always been good at coming up with catch phrases and slogans that traffic in fear and misinformation.

What changed between 2010 and 2011? Rallies against Obamacare’s unconstitutional overreach – for which Sherrod Brown was the deciding “Yea” vote – were replaced by riots against The Rich. Where is Sherrod’s editorial decrying the rampant violence and hatred we’ve seen from the Occupiers he endorsed on television not 4 months ago?

By December, Occupy camps across the country had racked up more than 400 criminal incidents – leading the movement to win coveted Time “Person of the Year” recognition and the illustrious Breitbart “Ambiguous Entity of the Year” award. Last week, even Nancy Pelosi walked back her support for Occupy Wall Street.

Search for evidence of Sherrod Brown’s disapproval, and the best you’ll find is a snarky PolitiFact Ohio hit piece against his Republican opponent, Josh Mandel. As of this writing, Sherrod’s “Stand with the 99%” petition is still online.

It’s odd that Sherrod took to the pages of USA Today to wag a finger at Tea Party anger but is now giving the Occupiers a pass, don’t you think?

For the entire miserable picture, you can watch the full Hardball segment, review the transcript, and read Sherrod’s tea party smear in USA Today. When you’re done, I suspect you may want to send a few bucks to Josh Mandel’s campaign.

For more from Ohio, follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero and Big Government.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) served 7 terms in the House – starting in 1993 – before his 2006 election to the U.S. Senate. I’m 28, and Yale graduate Sherrod Brown has been peddling his blue-collar class warfare elixir in Washington since I was in 4th grade.

Does his record merit reelection this November? If you have any vaguely conservative beliefs, the answer is a resounding “NO.” Ranked as the leftmost senator in 2009 and 2010 by National Journal, Sherrod has a lifetime 7.77 rating from the American Conservative Union (ACU). What sort of voting history puts someone to the left of Dianne Feinstein and Harry Reid?

Here’s a compilation of Sherrod Brown’s most notable votes, accompanied by his ACU rating for each year!

• 1993: Sherrod voted for the Brady Bill, D.C. statehood, missile defense cuts, preventing employers from replacing strikers, and Clinton’s “Emergency Stimulus” spending and tax hike package. He opposed school choice funding and missed a debt ceiling vote. ACU Rating: 9.00
• 1994: Sherrod voted for the assault weapons ban, a $30 billion Omnibus Crime Bill jammed with pork, and a motion to kill the House Post Office ethics investigation. ACU Rating: 14.00
• 1995: Sherrod voted for “family planning” funding ultimately given to Planned Parenthood, and for enforcement of vast EPA and FDA regulations. He voted against the partial-birth abortion ban, welfare reform, tax & domestic spending cuts, and the “Mexico City Policy” restricting U.S. dollars spent on abortion in foreign countries. ACU Rating: 32.00
• 1996: Sherrod voted to increase the minimum wage and in favor of killing school choice vouchers. He voted against the GOP budget, welfare reform, repealing the assault weapons ban, overriding Clinton’s partial-birth abortion ban veto, and making English the official language of the U.S. government. ACU Rating: 0.00
• 1997: Sherrod voted for national education testing and B-2 bomber budget cuts. He voted against the Hyde Amendment, tax & domestic spending cuts, school choice, and converting federal housing programs into block grants. ACU Rating: 12.00
• 1998: Sherrod again supported national education testing, and voted to allow a minor to be transported across state lines by a non-parent for an abortion. He voted against tax cuts, the partial-birth abortion ban, D.C. school vouchers, opening impeachment hearings, and ending racial preferences. ACU Rating: 4.00
• 1999: Sherrod voted against impeachment proceedings, a broad tax cut package, medical savings accounts, and education block grants. He voted to delay missile defense implementation, and to continue funding the United Nations without demanding UN reforms.  ACU Rating: 0
• 2000: Sherrod voted against banning partial-birth abortion, eliminating the death tax, and cutting taxes to alleviate the marriage penalty. He voted to lift the embargo on Cuba, increase the federal minimum wage, and impose the federal minimum wage on the states.  ACU Rating: 4
• 2001: Sherrod voted against making it a crime to kill an unborn child while committing another crime. He voted against school vouchers. He voted to allow taxpayer funding for abortions in federal prisons, lift the embargo on Cuba, tighten SUV mileage standards, and maintain the ANWR oil-drilling ban.  ACU Rating: 4
• 2002: Sherrod voted against extending welfare reform, eliminating the death tax, banning partial-birth abortion, capping medical malpractice suits, and a broad 1% domestic spending cut. He voted to limit free speech in the months preceding an election, and to allow Homeland Security employees to unionize.  ACU Rating: 4
• 2003: Sherrod voted against a partial-birth abortion ban, medical malpractice reform, class action lawsuit reform, death tax repeal, and DC school choice vouchers. He voted to fund abortions at military hospitals, keep ANWR closed from drilling, allow human cloning, and allow negligence suits against gun manufacturers when a gun is used to commit a crime.  ACU Rating: 16
• 2004: Sherrod again voted against making it a criminal offense to kill an unborn child while committing another crime. He voted against medical malpractice reform, allowing small businesses to buy health insurance as a group, drilling in ANWR, and a 1% cut in non-defense discretionary spending. He voted to fund abortion at military hospitals, block “bunker-buster” development, and cut military spending in favor of green energy programs.  ACU Rating: 4
• 2005: Sherrod voted to block oil drilling in ANWR, hike fuel efficiency standards, and spend taxpayer funds on embryonic stem cell research. He voted against bankruptcy law reform, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac reform, tying UN funding to UN reforms, and requiring parental notification to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion.  ACU Rating: 4
• 2006: Sherrod voted to impose Net Neutrality. He voted against a capital gains tax cut, a death tax cut, and ending the offshore oil & gas drilling moratorium.  ACU Rating :25
• 2007: Sherrod voted to ban incandescent light bulbs, expand SCHIP, and spend tax dollars on embryonic stem cell research. He voted against death tax repeal, Alternative Minimum Tax repeal, extension of the Bush tax cuts, and improved earmark disclosure.  ACU Rating: 0
• 2008: Sherrod voted for more risky Fannie & Freddie lending, two separate $4 billion Fannie & Freddie bailouts, the auto industry bailout, TARP, and a tax hike on energy companies. He voted against missile defense, an earmark moratorium, and a discretionary spending cap.  ACU Rating: 8
• 2009: Sherrod voted for Obama’s “stimulus,” Cash for Clunkers, Obamacare, and Eric Holder’s confirmation as Attorney General. He voted against medical malpractice reform, D.C. school choice, and de-funding ACORN.  ACU Rating: 0
• 2010: Sherrod voted for New START, the DREAM Act, and Craig Becker’s appointment to the NLRB. He voted against an earmark moratorium, D.C. school choice, death tax repeal, and a fence on the southern border.  ACU Rating: 0

With a few commendable lapses, Sherrod Brown has spent two decades as a foe of fiscal prudence, the Second Amendment, and national defense. Sherrod is an equally consistent supporter of Big Labor, bigger central government, and the abortion lobby.

Sherrod Brown is easily one of the worst senators up for reelection this November. Share his shameful record with every Ohio voter you know!

You can find Sherrod Brown’s Republican opponent, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, at JoshMandel.com.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Compiled from my series at Big Government. Cross-posted at Third Base Politics.

On Wednesday, we told you about how Senator Sherrod Brown was nowhere to be seen when Barack Obama spoke in suburban Cleveland.

Sherrod can’t use Senate business as an excuse. He is in Ohio today.

What Sherrod and Obama WANT you to believe is that he had pre-existing appointments. But we are talking about the President of the United States here. Most members of Congress are eager to be seen with the leader of the free world in front of their constituents.

And when you look at Sherrod Brown’s history of attending Obama’s visits to Ohio, his excuse makes even less sense.

We then shared with you the list of Obama’s visits to Ohio and Brown’s excellent attendance of those visits that…suddenly changed about 4 months ago.

The President was at the high school from roughly 12:45 to 2:15. Where was Sherrod Brown, who is also up for reelection this year, during that time period?

Eating steak.

Watch the video below, where Senator Brown was seen entering Mitchell’s Steakhouse at 12:15 and hiding out from Obama in there until 1:30.

Sherrod Brown votes with Obama’s positions 98% of the time. So, why is he so afraid to stand publicly with the president in front of his fellow Ohioans?

http://twitter.com/Bytor3BP

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.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at that hero.

Sherrod Brown (D-OH) isn’t merely the most extreme Progressive in the U.S. Senate, he’s also a religious scholar. Week in and week out, Sherrod preaches the Gospel of Progressivism: Greater love hath no man than he who gives generously from his neighbor’s purse.

Sherrod delivered a stirring speech on the Senate floor during the smear campaign against public union reform in Ohio:

In order to meet the week’s quota, Sherrod was obligated to say government union reform goes “against workers on behalf of the richest people in our country.” Too invested to stop at his usual class warfare, Sherrod had the audacity to attack Governor Kasich, Governor Walker, and Governor Christie for failing to meet what he claims as a Catholic standard.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Sherrod’s sermon about “fairness, and equality, and egalitarianism” has nothing to do with any of these things – and everything to do with union power.

This clip only gets more outrageous with additional context: Sherrod Brown is an ardent supporter of government-funded abortion. Paraphrasing Sherrod, I’m not gonna judge his faith – but I’m appalled at my senator’s willingness to cite Catholic literature for a partisan attack on conservatives. A certain carpenter would have something to say about the blameless guy throwing the first stone.

I don’t recall adherence to the AFL-CIO line as part of my Methodist confirmation. My maternal grandparents’ Lutheran church has never mentioned unsustainable government spending as a moral obligation (though in fairness I’ve only been there for Christmas Eve services).

Help me out, Catholic readers: Does Sherrod have a point, or is this just another low in a career of union pandering?

Transcript of the above C-SPAN 2 clip:

SHERROD BROWN: The Bible talks a lot about poverty, and a lot about fairness, and equality, and egalitarianism, if you will, and for them to go against workers on behalf of the richest people in our country – and that’s really what they’re doing in the governor’s office in Columbus, in Madison, in, in Trenton and other places. It runs counter, at least to my faith; I’m not gonna judge their faith, they can – they worship what god they worship, and they read what scripture they read – but, when you look at what, what my faith means, and whether – I’m, I’m, as I say, I’m a Lutheran, I’m not a Catholic, but you look at Leo the 13th and, and, and what he said about what Catholicism means for workers and fairness, uh, you know it’s, it’s, it’s uh, point, match, whatever – point, set, match.

Cross-posted from Big Government and that hero.

Always happy to attack Big Labor’s enemies, Sherrod Brown (D-OH) did so from the Senate floor during the debate over Craig Becker’s appointment to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). After being placed during a recess, Becker has driven NLRB’s lurch to the Progressive fringe, shoring up the power of key Democratic Party donors at the expense of workers and businesses across the country.

The Progressive fringe is Sherrod Brown’s wheelhouse (he is, after all, America’s left-most senator), so here is Sherrod’s response to complaints about Becker’s work for the union bosses NLRB oversees:

Whining that conservatives call his Socialist beliefs Socialist is a well Sherrod visits often, and Becker has helped Sherrod look ridiculous yet again. Poor, moderate, sensible Becker, before his recess appointment and subsequent bureaucratic rampage, was described thus by The Hill:

He is an adamant supporter of card-check legislation — a proposal that allows unions to form more easily, supported by the White House — and has done considerable work for the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union.

Republicans pointed to Becker’s glaring conflicts of interest, and Sherrod Brown’s rebuttal was to cry foul and call names. Anyone following the NLRB for the past two years knows how that turned out.

C-SPAN 2 clip transcript:

SHERROD BROWN: If, if no arguments work, it’s time to trot ACORN out and tie Craig Becker right to ACORN, whatever ACORN is. And, it’s just, it would be amusing if they didn’t use it time, after time, after time. “He must be a bad nominee because he worked with somebody from ACORN,” or, “He worked with somebody from the Service Employees International Union,” or, “He worked with Governor Blagojevich in Illinois!” That’s, that’s the kind of guilt-by-association that I thought this institution stopped doing 55 years ago when Joe McCarthy was censured.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero and Big Government.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) doesn’t have a voting record ranked as far left as Socialist Bernie Sanders by accident; Sherrod thinks a bigger central government is the answer to every problem. In this video, Senator Brown applies his trademark class warfare to the issue of Medicare, instructing a gathering of teachers’ union members to indoctrinate their family, friends, and students against cruel conservatism:

Like the first half of Sherrod’s answer to a question about whether privatization of government programs is a Wall Street conspiracy, there is so much stupid in this clip that it’s tough to begin. To his credit, Sherrod Brown is consistent! Sherrod consistently glosses over exploding federal deficits, consistently attributes the worst motives to anyone who tries to limit government’s power, and consistently brags about the wonders of failed Progressive governance.

Even with crippling tax hikes, the government programs whose praises Sherrod sings will bankrupt the nation by mid-century. Even if Medicare did amazing things for every American it served, only a fool or liar would fight reforms to a collapsing system.

This is why I ask, earnestly, my question from the end of the video: Is Sherrod Brown an idiot, or a dishonest idealogue? The brutal effects of Washington spending on America’s economy are plain to see, and unfunded entitlement liabilities total in the tens of trillions. Yet, as our fiscal canoe sloshes toward the falls, Sherrod Brown attacks with a straight face anyone who dares paddle backwards.

Sherrod’s mathematically outrageous and transparently political scare tactics are, like most every policy Sherrod has ever pursued, wrong for Ohio and wrong for America. Next November, Ohio should send Obamacare champion Sherrod Brown packing… along with the guy that awful legislation is named for.

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero and Big Government.