>>>At the Huffington Post, David Sirota, writes about Mike DeWine. Here are a few excerpts:
....Brown running against the out-of-touch, lobbyist-in-politician's clothing - Sen. Mike DeWine (R). The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently documented how DeWine has racked up a record as one of Corporate America's most obedient puppets on Capitol Hill. On all sorts of issues, DeWine has pocketed tens of thousands of dollars from Big Money and then gone down to the Senate floor to sell out his constituents - all while claiming with a straight face that the huge wads of special interest cash hanging out of his pocket have nothing to do with his votes. Trade is no exception for DeWine. For example, he's running around Ohio telling people that NAFTA has been a "big success from Ohio's point-of-view." He's making this claim in a state that has lost hundreds of thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs since NAFTA passed. In fact, he's saying this less than two years after studies were released showing Ohio has lost at least 45,000 jobs specifically because of NAFTA alone. But that's Mike DeWine - a guy so totally out of touch he thinks its a good campaign strategy to insult voters intelligence with lobbyist-packaged dishonesty.
Make no mistake about it - DeWine's defense of America's sellout trade policy will be backed up by his Big Money donors, media pundits and editorial boards. And Sherrod Brown will likely be the target of more hit pieces like this Associated Press story. Why? Because Sherrod Brown is a threat to the Establishment that is making a killing off the status quo. That makes him a target - but it also shows why his candidacy is so important.
Sherrod Brown is a guy who has made his career standing up to the corrupt forces in both parties, even when it means a political risk for him personally. He's a guy running in the biggest Senate race in the country in the most politically important state in America, and running openly as an unabashed progressive populist who is willing to go up against Big Money interests even on an issue like trade, where these interests are unified. He's not hiding from the word "progressive" by pretending to be Republican lite. In fact, he's doing the exact opposite. As he told the Washington Post, he's going to "show a progressive Democrat can win in a state like Ohio."
We need more Democrats like this - because in their courage, they speak to the deeper issue of character and conviction. They define themselves as actually standing for something, even when it might be politically difficult. If Democrats had more Sherrod Browns, we would have more winning campaigns, and more winning legislative fights that would change this country for the better.
>>>The Republicans have really ruined Ohio. The Akron Beacon Journal has an article about Ohio's problems:
...In the last five years, Ohio's population grew less than 1 percent. Each year, 31,000 more moved out of the state than moved in.
But why are they fleeing? The economy is sputtering. Household income isn't keeping up with other states. And the overall tax burden has skyrocketed to one of the highest in the country....
• Ohio's median household income in 2004 was $42,240, ranking the state 25th. Ohioans earned nearly the same amount as they did in 1989 and lost ground since 1999 when inflation is factored in.
• The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Ohio's real gross state product -- the measure of the total value of goods and services produced -- grew just 1 percent between 2004 and 2005, ranking the state 47th in growth. Despite that meager rate, Ohio continues to be an important part of the U.S. economy, ranking sixth in the nation for gross state product.
• Ohio's unemployment lost pace with the rest of the country. While the national unemployment rate for 2005 was 5.1 percent, Ohio's was worse, at 5.9 percent. The state's unemployment ranking dropped from 22nd in 2001 to 43rd last year.
• Fewer jobs are available in Ohio than there were in 2000. The number of people working in the state dropped by more than 150,000 between 2000 and September 2005, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor's Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.
More than 210,000 -- one in five -- manufacturing jobs were lost during that time....
For the rest of the depressing life style that the Ohio GOP has given us, read the rest of the article HERE.
If Ohioans want to move forward, we've got to vote for change.
