On Wednesday, the Detroit Free Press published the Mike Thompson cartoon seen at the top right. It shows a GM bigwig carrying a briefcase telling a recoiling Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and three other politicians that “We’re going to pay off the loan.” The cartoon’s caption is, “The Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say in Washington.”

At his blog, where a full-size version of the cartoon can be found, Thompson writes:

You have to wonder what those who opposed the GM bailout think about the loan repayment. …

It’s way too early for those who favored government aid for GM to break out in loud chants of “I told you so,” but if the good news out of GM continues, they might want to start thinking about warming up their vocal cords.

In his April 23 “Uncommon Sense” column at Forbes.com (HT Instapundit), Shikha Dalmia tells Thompson what he thinks, and suggests not scheduling the opera any time soon (bold is mine):

… before belting out their victory aria, GM-boosters ought to hear the whole story–not just the fairytale version about Government Motors’ grand comeback that Mr. (GM Chairman Ed) Whitacre is feeding them.

Uncle Sam gave GM $49.5 billion last summer in aid to finance its bankruptcy. (If it hadn’t, the company, which couldn’t raise this kind of money from private lenders, would have been forced into liquidation, its assets sold for scrap.) So when Mr. Whitacre publishes a column with the headline, “The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full,” most ordinary mortals unfamiliar with bailout minutia would assume that he is alluding to the entire $49.5 billion. That, however, is far from the case.

… when Mr. Whitacre says GM has paid back the bailout money in full, he means not the entire $49.5 billion–the loan and the equity. In fact, he avoids all mention of that figure in his column. He means only the $6.7 billion loan amount.

But wait! Even that’s not the full story given that GM, which has not yet broken even, much less turned a profit, can’t pay even this puny amount from its own earnings.

So how is it paying it?

As it turns out, the Obama administration put $13.4 billion of the aid money as “working capital” in an escrow account when the company was in bankruptcy. The company is using this escrow money–government money–to pay back the government loan.

GM claims that the fact that it is even using the escrow money to pay back the loan instead of using it all to shore itself up shows that it is on the road to recovery. That actually would be a positive development–although hardly one worth hyping in ads and columns–if it were not for a further plot twist.

Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research, points out that the company has applied to the Department of Energy for $10 billion in low (5%) interest loan to retool its plants to meet the government’s tougher new CAFÉ (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. However, giving GM more taxpayer money on top of the existing bailout would have been a political disaster for the Obama administration and a PR debacle for the company. Paying back the small bailout loan makes the new–and bigger–DOE loan much more feasible.

In short, GM is using government money to pay back government money to get more government money. And at a 2% lower interest rate at that. This is a nifty scheme to refinance GM’s government debt–not pay it back.

Dalmia concludes by asking, “surely it’s premature for its media boosters to pop open the champagne bottle without getting their story straight?”

Given how the establishment press has virtually ignored the criticisms of TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (noted Friday at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) I would guess not. It would be nice to see Mike Thompson or other media members own up to the fact that GM’s loan payment has no substantive significance, and that their gullible relaying of Whitacre’s spin — including the Wall Street letting the deceptive headline appear — has been irresponsible. You can rest assured that I won’t be waiting by my e-mail box 24-7 to see if this occurs.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

2: 45 p.m. – Originally posted at 8:15 a.m. Moved to the top for the rest of the day

__________________

Leftists have run out of arguments, while establishment Republicans in Ohio and elsewhere are running out of brains.

__________________

Note: This double-length column went up at Pajamas Media and was teased and extended here at BizzyBlog on Thursday. I have added subtitles PJM chose not to use to enhance readability.

___________________

THE BIGOTS

My e-mail program tried to warn me on a recent Sunday evening when I opened my latest message from the Democratic Party’s Organizing For America (OFA) group. But did I listen? Nooooo.

Silly me. Thunderbird thought the whole thing was a scam. It was absolutely correct.

The e-mail invited me to attend an OFA gathering on Monday, April 12 in Cincinnati “to celebrate the historic passage of health insurance reform — and your role in making it happen.”

So I went. What was supposed to be a “celebration” was marred first by an outrageous slander against the most important genuine grass-roots movement in at least two generations, and then sullied further by a Unites States congressman who bought into it. That congressman also revealed that his posturing before the legislation’s passage was really a substance-free show.

Congressman Driehaus

I went into the gathering thinking that Ohio First District Congressman Steve Driehaus’s purpose there would be to tell attendees what’s in store for them in the brave new world of state-run medical care.

Recall that Driehaus was a member of the so-called Stupak Six group of allegedly pro-life congresspersons, including the now retiring Bart Stupak of Michigan, who said they would not vote for state-controlled health care unless it included prohibitions on the use of federal funds for abortions at least as strong as those contained in the landmark Hyde Amendment. Henry Hyde’s greatest legacy became law in the mid-1970s and survived a 1980 Supreme Court challenge. Driehaus ultimately voted “yes,” so I expected to hear why he did so, and why he felt that pro-lifers should agree with his vote.

Keep in mind that the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported the following on Thursday, March 18, three days before the bill passed in the House:

Driehaus, a Democrat, supported last year’s House bill but has said he plans to vote no on the current bill because he worries it doesn’t go far enough to prohibit federal money from being spent on abortions.

Because the venue was a church and a congressman would be present, I thought that the speeches might be free of the hateful rhetoric that the left has brazenly and falsely directed at anyone and everyone opposing ObamaCare during the weeks since it became law. Uh, not exactly.

Light Turnout

There is good news. No more than 50 people other than the scheduled speakers were there. That’s really pathetic, given that the church is located within a half-hour drive of about 1.5 million people, and that the related OFA invite more than likely went out to at least 0.5% of the group’s e-mail list of 13 million (i.e., about 65,000 local residents). What’s more, a dozen or more of the 50 attendees appeared to be hardcore, longtime activists, who on any given day can usually be counted on to attend whatever area leftist event might be taking place.

If there is really a groundswell of support among Democratic Party voters for what Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the Democratic Party did to the nation last month, it was almost totally absent from the “celebration.”

The Rhetoric: Those “Carrying Tea Bags” are “The Modern-day Version of the KKK”

After opening the event with a prayer (separation of church and state was apparently on vacation), the moderator framed the gathering as a funeral, in the sense that years of “indecision, foolishness, and failure” were being buried. A Catholic nun then spoke, uttering the discomfiting and frequently expressed sentiment that the recently passed legislation is only “a step in the right direction” towards equity and justice.

A couple of speakers later, the Rev. Damon Lynch, whom the moderator described as “the president of us all,” spoke. Lynch’s claim to infamy is that in 2001, he more than anyone else in Cincinnati was responsible for fanning the flames of lawlessness that turned a tragic accidental death of a young African-American man at the hands of the city’s police into riots that made national news and sent the Queen City’s reputation into the tank for the better part of the next decade. Among other things, Lynch said that he prayed for a Driehaus victory against former First District congressman Steve Chabot in November.

Next came retired judge Nathaniel Jones. Jones’s civil rights activism and legal defense activities during the 1960s and 1970s before his 23 years as a judge were mostly commendable, but what he said on this day was despicable.

Jones asserted that the basic motivation behind the just-passed legislation was the same as what led to the Civil War, and was what the 1960s civil rights movement was all about.

Then, to at least a plurality of nods and “uh-huhs” from the audience, Jones said that those who are going around “carrying tea bags” are “the modern-day version of the KKK.” Yes, he did.

Driehaus Agrees with Jones, “Always Knew” He “Would Get to Yes”

Eventually, Congressman Driehaus stepped up to decent but non-rousing applause.

He said nothing specific about the legislation. He told us that in his mind it was fundamentally a civil rights bill, providing the previously undiscovered civil right known as “peace of mind.” He also said nothing about how he was won over on the abortion issue; based on what he said next, his alleged pro-life beliefs appear to have been a ruse to keep America and his constituents in artificial suspense.

He twice described his pre-passage mindset in terms totally different from what he and the press portrayed in the run-up to the vote. Early in the speech, he said, “I was fully confident we would get to ‘yes.’” In a later statement, it turned into “I knew I would get there.” Especially note the “I” in the second quote. There can be no reasonable doubt that Steve Driehaus always intended to vote as he did.

As to the Reverend Jones’s scurrilous characterization of ObamaCare’s opponents, Driehaus, who at the beginning of his speech described Jones as a “legend,” said that he agreed with him, and that those same forces opposed the stimulus, are against cap and trade, and are resisting the “realignment” that is occurring.

After telling the group that he needs them now more than ever during the next election campaign, Driehaus stepped away from the microphone to a standing ovation.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are your bigots on the left, who demonize any and all opposition in the harshest conceivable terms. It turns out that the Klan comparison I witnessed is not an isolated rant of a civil-rights veteran who has tragically lost his way, but is a meme that began the weekend before Jones spoke.

THE DINGBATS

Unfortunately, those who are in the best position to stop the nation’s descent into demgagogic statism are fighting against the very people who could be their salvation.

In California, activists report Ron Nehring, the state Republican Party’s free-spending chairman, who was booed at a Tea Party event a year ago, is determined to “take over the Tea Party or destroy it.” Nehring’s resolve seems based in fear turning into desperation. Across the country, sensible, principled conservatives are running against incumbents in normally uncontested races for state party seats — mostly but by no means entirely Republican Party slots — that would influence state party politics, and ultimately who might run the state parties themselves.

The smell of fear emanating from the Ohio Republican Party, which yours truly began calling ORPINO (the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only) six months ago, is palpable, both in the campaigns of its shakier candidates and the conduct of the party’s upper echelon.

Deeply Flawed Candidates

Not that it would have been an easy task, but once the Tea Partiers’ influential presence became an obvious element of the political landscape, ORPINO should have offered a comprehensive and heartfelt “We have been wrong, we are sorry” to Ohioans who have been consistently betrayed by a party that says it stands for limited government and low taxes but that has governed in the opposite manner since the mid-1990s. It would have been tough (“We’ve always wanted to be this way, but you haven’t voted that way. Where have you been? Come on down!”), but if they had really meant it, I believe they could have sold it.

It’s well past obvious by now that no such self-examination has occurred, and that the establishment GOP is more interested in gaining power to take their turn at milking the state than they are in putting its house in order. To be clear, half of the candidate’s on ORPINO’s slate are not that way (e.g., gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, his Lieutenant Governor running mate Mary Taylor, and Treasurer candidate Josh Mandel), and will if elected not govern that way. But two of the remaining three,  Secretary of State candidate Jon Husted, and Attorney General candidate and former U.S. Senator Mike DeWine, have career track records of selling out. The third, Auditor candidate Dave Yost, caved into party pressure (more on that in a bit), and by doing so instantly delegitimized himself with Tea Party activists.

Husted is currently a state senator who lives with his wife and children in a Northwest Columbus suburb. The problem is, the district he “represents” is in Metro Dayton, where he owns a house in which he and his family do not live. The main reason he hasn’t been disqualified from representing that district is his promise made in a court hearing to live there after he retires from public service. That doesn’t pass the stench test, let alone the smell test. Husted’s track record as a conservative, or even of being genuinely pro-life, is highly suspect. ORPINO still believes that voters will be willing to swap out Jennifer Brunner, the state’s current intensely partisan and ACORN-corrupted Secretary of State, for yet another it’s-all-about-me party operative.

DeWine, once praised by the gun-grabbing Brady campaign, is, in what must be one of the top ten all-time insults to voters’ intelligence, trying to make a big to-do over the fact that he and his wife Fran are working to get concealed-carry permits. His fiscal, energy, judicial (think Gang of 14), and immigration track records from 12 years in the Senate are absolutely pathetic. What’s more, ORPINO cleared away DeWine’s opposition by convincing early opponent Yost to run for Auditor instead of Attorney General. Up to that point, Yost had garnered some initial Tea Party enthusiasm; it summarily vanished.

While DeWine’s path to a primary “win” is free and clear, Husted and Yost have feisty challengers in Sandy O’Brien and Seth Morgan, respectively. ORPINO’s recent actions betray a genuine fear that their guys could lose, and conceivably lose big.

ORPINO’s and its challenged candidates’ paranoia and pettiness came into full view in early April. Husted began carpet-bombing the state with TV ads from his considerable war chest; why would he do this unless he was concerned about the largely invisible (except to activists) O’Brien? Yost’s campaign, alternately attacking “Small Towns, Ward Councilmen, Mandel, Kasich, Husted,” “County Parties and Grassroots organizations,” has run completely off the rails.

The “Tea Party Values” Mailings

The ORPINO-Tea Party rift erupted into open warfare when the state party, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars by some accounts, sent out a single-candidate mailing supporting the endorsed Husted, and a generalized mailing prominently supporting Husted and Yost, while less visibly promoting most other statewide candidates (but, notably, not DeWine). Both mailings included a logo representing that their candidates involved have “Tea Party Values.” The second mailing was further customized for each Senate District to include the names of supposedly “endorsed” incumbent State Central Committee (SCC) members, none of whom had actually been endorsed (I’m not kidding). Very few if any of knew that the mailing was even going out.

If there was ever any hope of reconciling ORPINO and Tea Party activists, those mailings ended it. About 50 Tea Party-supported candidates for the SCC’s 66 seats saw their values co-opted by many incumbent SCC members who do not share them, and who are in some cases openly hostile to them. It now seems more likely than ever that Tea Party sympathizers will gain control of the SCC and vote out ORPINO’s current power structure at their first opportunity.

Last week, one Tea Party-sympathetic SCC candidate hauled ORPINO and its Chairman Kevin DeWine (Mike’s second cousin) before the Ohio Elections Commission (OEC) with a complaint that the mailings “would lead a reader of typical information and intelligence” to believe that her opponent and other SCC incumbents “have obtained the endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party” in violation of Ohio law. Thursday, an OEC panel found probable cause to bring the matter before the entire Commission, but deferred the full hearing until after the May 4 primary election. How convenient.

An Historic Opportunity Slipping Away?

Regardless, serious damage has been done. Instead of using the spring to go after a Democratic governor whose policies have contributed to an 11% unemployment rate, tax increases, and general malaise, ORPINO’s dingbats have alienated the very people who could shake the state to its constitutional foundations.

I understand that similar but less visible conflicts are occurring in other states. If there’s a way to blow the electoral opportunity of a lifetime and put the lefts’ bigots in their place — out of power — it seems that the Republican Party is stubbornly determined to find it.

On April 13, at a dog-and-pony show with advertisers, CNN’s Jim Walton told participants: “We are the only credible, non partisan voice left, and that matters.” True comedy gold.

An accurate offer by Walton to the attending advertisers, in a variation on an old Soviet joke about the wonders of their communist system (“We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”), might have gone likes this: “We can pretend to do journalism, and you can pretend we have an audience.”

It’s gotten so bad that CNN’s supposedly weak sister Headline News is routinely walloping it during prime time. Here’s how the latest three available days as reported at Media Bistro (April 20, April 21 and April 22) turned out (all figures are in thousands):

During those three days, HLN beat CNN during prime time by an average of 57% in the age 25-54 demographic (59% during the four shows beginning at 7 p.m.) and by 21% in total viewers. The average CNN show listed above during those three days was viewed by fewer than 150,000 people in the the 25-54 demographic.

In terms of total viewers the only CNN “winner” over HLN was Anderson Cooper. Don’t get cocky, guy; your HLN competitor is a re-run of Nancy Grace’s 8 p.m. show.

It is current CNN U.S. President Jonathan Klein who, when he was at CBS, on one delicious day in 2004, at the height of the controversy over Dan Rather’s made-up report about then-President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service, said this:

“You couldn’t have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances [at '60 Minutes'] and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing.”

The problem is, Jon, that the guys and gals in pajamas were right. Dan Rather, Mary Mapes, and you were wrong.

In case readers are wondering, Fox News’s total audience on those three days was well over triple that of CNN’s.

Somehow, “How the mighty have fallen” just doesn’t seem to cut it — especially because the fallen so clearly don’t get it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Beaver Creek Minnesota:

Agricultural lender saves man trapped in grain bin
April 24, 2010

Everett Vande Voort says he knew better.

Today he’s grateful he survived.

Vande Voort, 74, climbed inside a grain bin to correct a problem with an auger on his farm in southwest Minnesota. Corn soon was up to his neck and rising until a Sioux Falls banker making a routine visit to the farm saved his life earlier this month.

“It’s pretty much a miracle I got out,” Vande Voort said Friday.

David O’Hara, an ag lender for U.S. Bank, found Vande Voort trapped in the bin and jumped in to shove corn away from his face. An air ambulance flew Vande Voort to a Sioux Falls hospital where medical workers treated him and released him the next day.

The incident reminded both men of how an emergency can influence someone’s judgment.

O’Hara, 28, who grew up on a farm northwest of Hartford, said he knew grain is like quicksand and didn’t think twice when he saw Vande Voort.

“He was buried. His whole neck was already covered,” O’Hara said. “Had I thought about it, I wouldn’t have jumped into the middle of it. That’s not the safest thing, either. I was just reacting at that point.”

The incident also reminded Vande Voort of the dangers of his trade. In his 52 years of farming, he’s lost a finger to a corn picker and a thumb to a power saw. He broke four ribs in a fall and had other scrapes and near misses that his daughter, Christy Yager, recounted for him Friday in the farmhouse kitchen.

Nothing matches the events from earlier this month. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Ed Whitacre, Chairman of Government/General Motors, took to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday to crow about repaying a loan (link may require subscription). Note the deceptive headline and its accompanying end-zone dance:

The GM Bailout: Paid Back in Full
The investment of U.S. and Canadian tax dollars worked.

Whitacre can try to make a case that the government’s loans have been repaid, but unless and until the government’s $43 billion equity investment is recouped, the company (and Uncle Sam) have no right to claim that “the GM bailout” has been “paid back in full.”

Further, this particular risible rendering in Whitacre’s op-ed would lead many a casual reader (and perhaps most journalists, ha-ha) to believe that GM was able to make the repayment out of cash flow:

Our ability to pay back these loans less than a year after emerging from bankruptcy is a sign that our plan for building a new GM is working.

Uh, not exactly.

There are a couple of influential folks who are calling out Whitacre and GM for misleading the public. But unless you watch Fox News, follow the news at its web site, dig deeply into the Journal, or stumble across the few blogs and other web sites that have noticed, you probably have no idea what TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley have been saying about all of this.

Grassley says that nothing of substance has transpired:

Lawmaker Calls GM Payment Misleading

A top Republican senator said General Motors’ announcement this week that it will repay its federal loans early is “nothing more than an elaborate TARP money shuffle.”

In a letter to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa said that the source of the funds for the $4.7 billion repayment is not GM earnings, but rather a Treasury escrow account. He chided GM and the White House for suggesting in recent statements that the money is from GM earnings.

Mr. Grassley wrote that GM’s early repayment of the federal loan is aimed at diverting attention from another uncomfortable issue—the big break the car company would get on a proposed tax to recoup TARP losses. GM is expected to generate some of the biggest losses in the TARP program, but it won’t have to pay any money under the so-called TARP tax the Obama administration wants to impose on large financial institutions.

Treasury and GM officials don’t dispute that the money to repay the loan is coming from TARP funds. But they said that’s been clearly disclosed.

No one on earth can possibly believe that what Whitacre wrote in his op-ed constitutes “clear disclosure.”

Barofsky clearly doesn’t (bold is mine):

Sen. Chuck Grassley’s charge was backed up by the inspector general for the bailout — also known as the Trouble Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Watchdog Neil Barofsky told Fox News, as well as the Senate Finance Committee, that General Motors used bailout money to pay back the federal government.

… But Barofsky told Fox News that while it’s “somewhat good news,” there’s a big catch.

“I think the one thing that a lot of people overlook with this is where they got the money to pay back the loan. And it isn’t from earnings. … It’s actually from another pool of TARP money that they’ve already received,” he said Wednesday. “I don’t think we should exaggerate it too much. Remember that the source of this money is just other TARP money.”

Barofsky told the Senate Finance Committee the same thing Tuesday, and said the main way for the federal government to earn money out of GM would be through “a liquidation of its ownership interest.”

One would think that a big corporation seriously misleading the public might be something that would interest the rest of the establishment press. Not in this case; this is GM the apparently untouchable we’re talking about.

Searches at the Associated Press’s main site done at noon today on Grassley’s and Barofsky’s last names come back with nothing relevant and nothing relevant, respectively. I also found nothing related to the GM repayment at the New York Times (searching on Barofsky, Grassley).

An April 21-23 search on “Barofsky” at Google News returned all of 34 items after sorting by date. Only six of them relate to GM; most the rest have to do with the administration’s intensely trouble mortgage assistance efforts.

The only other establishment outlet besides Fox and the Wall Street Journal to cover Grassley is the Detroit Free Press, where Justin Hyde’s piece is headlined, “GOP leaders renew attacks on White House over auto industry rescue.” But of course. Oh, and Hyde doesn’t mention Barofsky.

The virtually free press pass given to Government Motors continues.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

I received an e-mail this morning from Chris Littleton, President of the Ohio Liberty Council.

A slightly revised version is posted here at OLC’s web site, so I’ll go with that (bolds are same as at that post; the logo at the right is the one concocted by ORPINO, the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only; footnotes are mine, and are explained at the end of this post):

GOP Declares War on the Tea Party Movement

In recent weeks the Ohio Republican Party (ORP) begged primary votes for candidates of their choosing, sending mailers which contain a logo of, “Support Tea Party Values.” This new logo was used for Jon Husted and others. What’s wrong with this? Nothing, except leaders in the Tea Party movement, like myself, would hardly consider him or the ORP supportive of “Tea Party Values.”

The ORP also paid for mailers in State Central Committee races (basically the ORP Board of Directors). Why is this suspicious? Because the ORP broke its own rules by endorsing and funding candidates where an endorsement vote never happened. Equally suspicious, this loophole doesn’t apply only to incumbents since the ORP only funded candidates not associated with an actual Tea Party group.

In short, the ORP strategy is – use “Tea Party Values” when helpful in a race, but don’t let “Tea Party” people into the mix when it inhibits the ORP agenda.

Husted and the ORP have declared war on the Tea Party movement by stealing the brand of the Tea Party, leading voters to believe they have always supported “Tea Party Values.”

They are trying to make “R” synonymous with Tea Party. Well, it isn’t! The Bush administration proved it. Bob Taft proved it, and Jon Husted proves it. Spare me and every other Tea Partier the lip service. Character is defined by decisions made when no one is looking, and when the Ohio voter wasn’t watching, the GOP did just what the left does – tax, spend, increase government and destroy personal liberty.

Welcome to the new Ohio Republican Party. You’ve just been punked.

The Tea Party movement revolves around a focus on free markets, fiscal responsibility and limited government. And if this definition is correct, then Husted and the ORP linking themselves to “Tea Party” values is a laughable summation of their record.

Husted voting yes, as late as 2010, for the corporate welfare program called Third Frontier is clearly anti-Tea Party. I’ve heard it said that Third Frontier creates jobs in Ohio. Yes, under that reasoning a massive re-distribution of tax payer money in an attempt to engineer the economy can create jobs. Under what justification?

Or how about Husted’s other fiscally irresponsible or market inhibiting votes: increased regulation in the Mortgage Lending Bill, Short Term Loans, vote for Commercial Activity Tax (1), ridiculous budgets, etc, etc.

To clarify, look at some numbers from the Buckeye Institute:

From 2001-2009, while Husted was in the house, Ohio spending increased from $74.6 billion to $105.4 billion. During his time as speaker of the house, 2005 to 2009, spending increased an average of $3 billion per year – all this while the Ohio population decreased. (2) (3)

Over the last 20 years (mostly GOP controlled), they insured that Ohio became the 4th worst business friendly climate in America. Clearly the ORP was an unequivocal disaster when it comes to “Tea Party” values. To put this in perspective, over 20 years, Ohio has only created about 176,000 non-government jobs.

This is government expansion, spending and influence at an unprecedented rate while the only solutions offered have been more Keynesian style spend your way out-of-the problem policies.

This is the very thing that the, born again conservative, rhetoric only, GOP is now condemning in the Obama and Strickland administrations. Is this some kind of cruel joke? The GOP assumes the Ohio voter is an idiot. This isn’t just political positioning. It’s deceit of the worst kind.

With regards to funding of non-endorsed candidates, I hope the recently filed Ohio Election Commission complaint, Shoemake v. ORP (approved for probable cause), will shed light on this process. If true that organizational rules were ignored, it means this declaration of war came directly from ORP leadership.

Credibility? Principles? Those involved will need a dictionary to decipher these words. As one State Central Committee member told me – this has nothing to do with principles. It’s just politics.

Yes, ORP, that’s the problem.

I call on all Ohioans to investigate this process for yourself. I can’t imagine those voters who care about integrity in the campaign process will approve of these strategies.

As the Ohio Republican Party tries to get off its death bed by stealing an infusion of blood from the Tea Party movement, it will soon learn our blood types aren’t compatible. Only people who will stand on principles are worthy of Tea Party support. We don’t care about party anymore. I’d suggest learning this lesson sooner than later.

The Ohio Liberty Council is a coalition of liberty minded grass roots organizations in Ohio including Tea Parties, 9/12 Groups the Ohio Freedom Alliance and many others.

You go guy.

_____________________________________________________

Footnotes:

(1) - One underappreciated aspect of the Commercial Activities Tax (CAT), even beyond the fact that it encourages businesses to locate or expand elsewhere (e.g., in my opinion influencing Honda’s decision to build its next plant in Greensburg, Indiana instead of Ohio several years ago) is that the taxes the CAT replaced were shared with localities based on the presence of business equipment and inventories. CAT tax proceeds are meant to “reimburse school districts and local governments for the phase out of the tangible personal property tax,” but receipts are running about 10%, or $106 million, behind the state’s original estimates for the first nine months of the current fiscal year (from Page 12 of the state’s latest budget report; web page with link to report is currently here).

CAT tax collections are NOT included in receipts in Ohio budget reports (see Page 13 of the state’s latest budget report), nor are CAT tax payouts are included in disbursements in those reports. This treatment serves to understate the true size of Ohio government.

The CAT tax is nothing to be proud of, and Jon Husted should be ashamed of himself for effectively considering that among his “accomplishments.”

(2) – Census Bureau figures say that Ohio’s population during that period actually went from 11.475 million to 11.542 million in the four years ended July 1, 2009, an increase of less than 0.6%, while the nation’s population as a whole increased by 3.8%. Ohio’s out-migration, otherwise known as people “voting with their feet,” is clearly very significant, and it’s quite possible that the state’s population has gone down in the nine-plus months since the Bureau’s latest reported figure.

(3) – 2009 spending and the increase in spending since 2001 are both slightly understated because of how the CAT tax is presented in state budget reports as explained in Item (1).

From Indianapolis:

Indy Hospital Leads Way In Multivisceral Transplant

POSTED: 4:48 pm EDT April 12, 2010
UPDATED: 5:49 pm EDT April 12, 2010

An Indianapolis hospital is among the top in the nation for performing a rare and dramatic five-organ transplant credited with saving countless lives.

A multivisceral transplant replaces nearly everything in a patient’s abdominal cavity, including the stomach, pancreas, small intestine, large intestine and liver, 6News’ Trisha Shepherd reported.

The 12-hour surgery is often the only option for those suffering from severe abdominal conditions like Crohn’s disease and tumors.

Janet Eckhardt, 32, said she had all but given up hope when Crohn’s disease forced her digestive system into complete failure, her weight plummeting from 160 pounds to 77 pounds.

“I just felt there was nothing else,” she said. “I didn’t want to die.”

Eckhardt, who lives in Michigan, learned of Indianapolis’ Indiana University Hospital transplant surgeon Dr. Rodrigo Vianna online.

In 2009, his team performed close to 50 multivisceral transplants, with a one-year survival rate of more than 80 percent.

“Not many physicians know about this procedure,” he said. “I talk to physicians on a daily basis and I think only about half of them know about (multivisceral transplants).”

As a result, Vianna said many potential patients, like Eckhardt, don’t know the life-saving option exists until they do some research.

“I can tell them maybe I can fix you, and since I follow them, I can see what happens later,” he said. “I can see them going to work, getting married, going back to their families, so I think that’s the biggest reward.”

Eckhardt underwent her transplant on Sunday, and was listed in good condition on Monday. She called the multivisceral transplant a medical miracle. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

(Originally posted at 8:35 a.m.; carried to the top for the rest of the day)

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It’s here.

The sub-headline is: “Leftists have run out of arguments, while establishment Republicans in Ohio and elsewhere are running out of brains.” It’s two typical columns in length.

It will go up on Saturday morning here at BizzyBlog (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

The “Bigots” section builds around my attendance at a “celebration” of ObamaCare’s passage sponsored by the Barack Obama/Democratic National Committee’s Organizing For America group on April 12. Ohio First District Congressman Steve Driehaus was there, and was among the speakers.

The “Dingbats” section deals with the ongoing determination of OPRINO (the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only) to ram Jon Husted, Dave Yost, and incumbent State Central Committee RINOs down the Buckeye State’s throats.

______________________________________________________

Some Key Passages — Bigots on the Left (bolds are mine in both sections):

• “(Retired Judge Nathaniel) Jones … (told the audience) that those who are going around ‘carrying tea bags’ are ‘the modern-day version of the KKK.’ Yes, he did.”
• “As to the Reverend Jones’s scurrilous characterization of ObamaCare’s opponents, Driehaus … said that he agreed with him. He also said that those same forces that opposed the stimulus are against cap and trade and are resisting the ‘realignment’ that is occurring.”
• “(Driehaus) twice described his pre-passage (of ObamaCare) mindset in terms totally different from what he and the press portrayed in the run-up to the vote. Early in the speech, he said, ‘I was fully confident we would get to yes.’ In a later statement, it turned into ‘I knew I would get there.’ Especially note the ‘I’ in the second quote. There can be no reasonable doubt that Steve Driehaus always intended to vote as he did.”

Some Key Passages — Dingbats on the Right

• “The smell of fear emanating from the Ohio Republican Party … is palpable, both in the campaigns of its shakier candidates and the conduct of the party’s upper echelon.”
• “… the establishment GOP is more interested in gaining power to take their turn at milking the state than they are in putting their house in order.”
• “(Jon) Husted’s track record as a conservative, or even of being genuinely pro-life, is highly suspect. ORPINO still believes that voters will be willing to swap out Jennifer Brunner, the state’s current intensely partisan and ACORN-corrupted secretary of state, for yet another it’s-all-about-me party operative.”
• “While (Mike) DeWine’s path to a primary ‘win’ is free and clear, Husted and (Dave) Yost have feisty, tea party-backed challengers in Sandy O’Brien and Seth Morgan, respectively. ORPINO’s recent actions betray a genuine fear that their guys could lose, and conceivably lose big.”
• “If there’s a way to blow the electoral opportunity of a lifetime and put the left’s bigots in their place — out of power for many years — it seems that the Republican Party is stubbornly determined to find it.”

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DARKE COUNTY UPDATE (or, “A Dark Night in Darke County”):

Nate Nelson’s post last night at From the Rust Belt (“Yost, ORP, and Supporters in Fit of Utter Desperation”) is a must-read — a painful one, but a must-read nonetheless. It concerns what happened at a “Tea Party” meeting in Darke County, an West Central Ohio county that is one of the strongest GOP bastions in the state.

Here are key elements of that post:

Dave Yost badly needed a Tea Party endorsement. He finally got one.

Yes, Dave Yost got his Tea Party endorsement. He got that endorsement by a Tea Party formed only within the past couple of months, led by a man who is married to Yost’s Darke County campaign chair. He got that endorsement via an extremely fishy voting procedure, concealed by all accounts — even that of one of his supporters — under the cover of a counter. He got that endorsement despite questions raised, questions that were dismissed with bellicose profanity spewed by Al Bliss, in the presence of children, inside a church.

Dave Yost got his Tea Party endorsement. He got it through gangster tactics employed by his supporters in Darke County, and by a reckless disregard for truth and journalistic integrity on the part of his blogging supporter, Mr. Henry Hill. These are the same gangster tactics that the Ohio Republican Party has employed on behalf of Dave Yost all along. These tactics are sickening. They are an affront to our democratic republican values. These tactics, those who make use of them, and the candidate who turns a blind eye to it all should be utterly repudiated by conservative Republicans throughout the state.

… In the meantime, you and I should keep doing what we’ve been doing. We should keep supporting Seth Morgan, CPA for Ohio Auditor of State — the Tea Party candidate, the grassroots candidate, our candidate, and the most qualified candidate to serve as our next Auditor. Let them keep up their petty games and old politics. We’ll show them in May. We’ll show David Pepper in November. And we’ll have Kevin DeWine’s job by December, at the latest.

… Darke County T.E.A. Patriots also endorsed Jon Husted for Secretary of State and Mike DeWine for Attorney General last night. When was the last time you heard of a legitimate Tea Party group endorsing either Husted or DeWine? I rest my case.

These days, it seems that anything ORPINO touches, it corrupts.

I guess if you’re ORPINO, when you really don’t have Tea Party values, you go out and start something you decide to call a “Tea Party” and impose your lack of values on it.

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KEVIN DEWINE UPDATE: This is the final paragraph from a Kevin DeWine general-distribution e-mail earlier this week (bold is mine) –

Finally, I’ve seen and heard a lot of ridiculous accusations lately about the role of the Ohio Republican Party in this primary election. Understandably, much of it is motivated by the heightened emotions of political primaries and too often spread with little to no accountability through email, blogs, and social media sites. Unfortunately, most of it is flat out false, and it’s typically generated by people who find the truth just too inconvenient for their agenda. I want you to know you can always contact my office or email me directly if you want answers to any rumor or accusation about something we’re doing. This election is too important to let “noise” distract us from the real goal of winning in November.

Really, Kevin? Why don’t you come over here (or go to Nate’s place, or Matt Hurley’s, or Matt Naugle’s, or any one of several others) and tell any one of us where we’re wrong? You can’t, pal, and you know it. If you want to find someone who “find(s) the truth just too inconvenient for their agenda,” I suggest you start with the person you see in the mirror every morning.

GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media, working for its project partner the Associated Press, conducted a poll from March 3-8 about Americans’ car preferences and perceptions. The poll’s results were released earlier this week, and the wire service’s Dan Sewell reported on the results yesterday.

Why the 40-day delay? I’ll suggest the possibility that the poll was timed in hopes that the detailed results would hurt and humiliate Toyota at the height of its safety recall problems. But just as the poll was completed, Toyota revealed that its sales had rebounded dramatically, while the evidence that the expense of a full recall was necessary had seriously weakened under closer examination (the degree of need is separate from the issue of whether the company notified the government of the possible problem, concerning which the company has apparently agreed to pay a stiff fine).

Further, the poll’s detailed results contradict AP reporter Sewell’s sunny-side up contention that American carmakers in general have improved their perceived quality. It’s really only a certain American carmaker, as the graphic coming later will show.

But first, here are the opening paragraphs from Sewell’s sterilized statements:

AP-GfK Poll: Americans shifting to US cars

Buy American? That’s suddenly a good idea again to more car buyers. Toyota’s safety problems and a buffed-up lineup of offerings from Detroit’s Big 3 are rubbing the tarnish off car buyers’ perceptions of U.S. models. An Associated Press-GfK Poll shows that 38 percent favor U.S. vehicles while 33 percent prefer Asian brands, a significant improvement for U.S. automakers compared to four years ago.

“Really, the American car industry has opened its eyes,” said Jose Nunez, 24, a customer at Planet Dodge Chrysler Jeep in Miami on Wednesday. “And it’s really giving the people what they want, what they need. I think after all we’ve been through, definitely the three big companies are responding to it.”

The findings provide fuel for U.S. automakers who are getting sales and swagger back after a bleak period of huge financial losses, job cuts and market share declines. General Motors Co. and Chrysler LLC needed government help just to survive.

Watching an iconic American industry beaten down amid the Great Recession may be one reason Americans are giving U.S. automakers a closer look.

Man, I’m going to have to get taller boots if I have to keep wading through stuff like this. Here’s that graphic I referred to earlier from the full report (large PDF accessible at this link; only items relevant to this post are presented below):

In the Foreign category, the pollsters got the result they appear to have wanted, as Toyota dipped by 10%. The “problem” is that Ford picked up almost all of Toyota’s decline, while GM dropped and Chrysler stayed flat. It would also be nice to know the makeup of the mystery 5% “other” in the Domestic list. My guess is that it is makers whose headquarters are really overseas but whose operations are perceived as U.S.-based.

How Dan Sewell can generalize from the above that there is a big move to “buy American” is beyond me. The move is to “buy Ford,” and, to a lesser extent, in terms of U.S. companies, to “avoid GM.” The headline should have read, “AP-GfK Poll: Americans shifting to Ford.”

No wonder the AP held the results for 40 days.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

(link to earlier BizzyBlog post; related Pajamas Media column)

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The following came in an e-mail received this morning. Bold is mine.

+++++++

At the Beavercreek Liberty Group last night, Jason Mauk, E.D. of the Ohio Republican Party revealed this tidbit that threw Dave Yost right under the bus, just like we all predicted.

From the host of that meeting…

Additionally, when asked about the Dave Yost “switcheroo”, he (Mauk) says Yost came to the ORP wanting their backing for the Auditor’s race after some poll was taken that showed him losing to Mike DeWine in the AG race by 80-20 percent. Yost sure made it seem as though the ORP came to him, and Mr. Mauk even made the statement that “Dave wanted it to seem as though the ORP needed him, that he was doing them a favor”.

Frankly, I’m surprised Mr. Mauk would make that public, because it sure doesn’t paint Yost in any more favorable light. Of course, he tried to brush off the fact that Yost spent a year campaigning for AG then jumped to Auditor by claiming all candidates are opportunistic. He tried to say Mary Taylor did the same by deciding to run for Lt. Gov. and Seth Morgan did the same by leaving his probable re-election race for State Rep to run for Auditor.

Of course, that comparison falls flat because they were only leaving the seats they already occupied for another race. Yost is currently Delaware Co. prosecutor, decided to run for AG, then decided he couldn’t win and jumped to Auditor. Hardly the same as Seth or Mary Taylor’s decisions.

Somebody did need you Dave, we did, for Attorney General.

+++++++

So according to Mauk, Dave Yost really crawled to ORPINO on his hands and knees, begging for mercy.

Horse. Manure.

Without giving away anything confidential, I can emphatically state, based on correspondence I had with Yost himself at the time, that this is NOT how it went down.

What people used to say about Bill Clinton when he was in office seems to be true of ORPINO these days.

(link to earlier BizzyBlog post; related Pajamas Media column)

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J.P. Friere at the Washington Examiner transcribed a bit of the vitriol from Bigoted Bertha Lewis that was originally posted in video at BigGovernment.com:

Any of these groups that says, “I’m young, I’m Democratic, and I’m a socialist,” is okay with me. You know that’s no light thing to do — to actually say, I’m a socialist. You’ve got to know, actually, we are living in a time that’s going to dwarf the McCarthy era. It is going to dwarf the internment of World War II. We are right now in a time that is going to dwarf the era of Jim Crow and segregation.

They are coming. And they are coming after you. And they are going to be brutal and oppressive. They’ve already shown it. … This is not rhetoric or hyperbole — this is real. … This tea party so-called movement — a bowel-movement in my estimation — and this blatant uncovering and ripping off the mask of racism…

It’s more than a little interesting how so many who were saying, “No, they’re not socialists. How dare you call them that?” before the 2008 elections are openly embracing the term now.

Friere also has a nice riposte:

Even more ironic is the explicit Democrat support given to the causes she lists. Liberal icon Bobby Kennedy played no small part in Joe McCarthy’s efforts to investigate Communist infiltration in the U.S. government. Internment of the Japanese came under the original New Deal Democrat president Franklin Roosevelt. The era of Jim Crow laws was governed by southern Democrats like Alabama governor George Wallace and Mississippi senator Jim Eastland.

Inconvenient truths indeed.

From Tucson, Arizona:

After the pro-life student group at the University of Arizona was forced to contact a legal group for help, officials at the college reversed course and granted Students for Life official recognition. The decision gives the group equal access to university resources that otherwise would have been denied.

Students for Life saw its application denied by the University of Arizona’s student government because the group’s proposed constitution required members to support pro-life principles.

After the student government denied recognition to his group, SFL founder Jeremiah Lange went to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

“FIRE is pleased that the University of Arizona has recognized its obligation to uphold the First Amendment right to freedom of association guaranteed to its students,” FIRE Vice President Robert Shibley said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained.
(more…)