By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  February 11th at 02:58 PM  | 

Governor John Kasich worked with the far-left Universal Health Care Action Network of Ohio (UHCAN Ohio) to build his case for Medicaid expansion, a central piece of President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Washington Post blogger Sarah Kliff detailed Kasich’s strategy in a February 6 Wonkblog entry. “Rather than having to convince the governor, Obamacare supporters were asked to focus their efforts on convincing | Read More »

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  February 7th at 02:00 PM  | 

Ohio Governor John Kasich Governor John Kasich has defended his decision to expand Medicaid eligibility in Ohio with logic he rejected when killing a “high-speed rail” project barely two years ago. Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat, emphasized the need to goose Ohio’s economy using our “fair share” of federal funds – an argument Kasich, a Republican, is now employing to justify Medicaid expansion. The 2010 | Read More »

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  February 5th at 01:00 PM  | 

Governor John Kasich’s proposal to expand Medicaid eligibility in Ohio after years of criticizing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as Obamacare, means a total collapse in Kasich’s credibility on Washington spending. Kasich, a Republican, was elected in 2010 due in part to his record as a fiscal hawk in the U.S. House of Representatives. This Heritage Foundation chart depicts entitlement | Read More »

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  January 24th at 04:00 PM  | 

The Ohio Education Association (OEA), union campaign arm We Are Ohio, and other labor groups hope to convince Ohioans that workplace freedom kills workers. Ohio union bosses are desperate to keep mandatory union dues in place across the state following the December 2012 adoption of a right to work law in neighboring Michigan. Confronted with evidence that letting workers choose whether to pay a union spurs | Read More »

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  January 15th at 12:55 PM  | 

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  January 11th at 01:30 PM  | 

The Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA) announced in a January 9 release that over 1,000 educators have applied for its partner foundation’s Armed Teacher Training Program first publicized December 20, 2012. Applications are still being accepted via online survey. “The original intent was to simply offer free firearm training to 24 teachers in order to show that teachers could be an effective deterrent to mass murder in | Read More »

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  December 19th at 02:30 PM  | 

Ohio Education Association (OEA) President Patricia Frost-Brooks was paid $267,916 in dues taken from Ohio teachers during fiscal year 2012, according to the union’s latest staff and officer data submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor. More than a hundred OEA employees and officers were paid six figures during the same period, as the union gave $77,500 to progressive groups who demonize “the rich” in the name of bigger government.

Frost-Brooks, the Ohio Democratic Party’s “Democrat of the Year,” was one of seven OEA employees and officers paid more than $175,000 from September 1, 2011 to August 31, 2012.

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  December 12th at 01:00 PM  | 

Michigan became the second workplace freedom state neighboring Ohio on December 11, less than a year after Indiana implemented right to work. The abrupt, lame-duck passage of “freedom to work” legislation by Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature and Governor Rick Snyder prompted renewed speculation that Ohio needs to follow suit to stay competitive.

Already union front We Are Ohio and other labor groups have worked to tie workplace freedom to Senate Bill 5 (SB 5), the complex collection of public employee union reforms overturned by Ohio voters in 2011 following a $40 million union smear campaign.

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  December 11th at 01:00 PM  | 

We Are Ohio recently published an infographic of AFL-CIO talking points from 2002, presenting decade-old union spin against workplace freedom as current facts. The infographic, which contains four claims and lists no source, is easily debunked with public records and an understanding of what “right to work” means.

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  December 7th at 02:30 PM  | 

We Are Ohio reacted furiously to the Michigan state legislature’s passage of a workplace freedom law, comparing the move to Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. We Are Ohio posted a branded graphic and a series of Facebook updates bearing this theme, the latest in the union front’s already vicious campaign to protect the flow of forced dues from Ohio workers into union coffers.