Progressive loon Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has argued time and again that unemployment benefits are a great way to create jobs. As Big Government readers know, Pelosi isn’t the only congressional Democrat to build a career coaxing the masses into Washington’s crushing embrace.

Where there’s a Progressive economic fallacy, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is never far away. Sherrod seems to think the U.S. economy performs best with bureaucrats working all the levers. This is his 20th year in Congress, so maybe we should forgive his ignorance of how a free market works!

During the 2010 debate over extending the Bush tax cuts, Sherrod made one of his frequent MSNBC appearances to share his rendition of the broken window fallacy:

As an Ohioan, Chris Matthews fawning “you’re the best there is on this argument” is not what I hope for from my senator.

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News broke Wednesday that Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was delinquent on his property taxes due September 2011 until last week. Sherrod, who angrily demands bigger central government and higher taxes from “The Rich,” paid the nearly $900 in taxes, penalties, and interest due for his $222,000 D.C. condo only after being questioned by a reporter.

Pathetic as Sherrod’s story was early in the day, things got worse for America’s most Progressive senator in the afternoon. His conference call to defuse the situation must have been one of the week’s most hilariously uncomfortable:

“I was late,” he said on a conference call with reporters when asked about the recent delinquency. ”I misplaced the bill and I paid it as soon as I found out. I paid a penalty for being late, and it won’t happen again.”

Senator Brown lost a tax statement and forgot to pay until a reporter came calling months later, but there’s no cause for alarm! He paid the penalty for his delinquency, and it won’t happen again.

When a reporter noted that it also happened five and six years ago, Brown said, “I misplaced it then. This is a small apartment. I’m not in D.C. nearly every week, I’m here when the Senate’s in session, I’m here three or four nights a week. I paid the penalty. And in no way, obviously, was I avoiding taxes.”

Because “the dog ate it” worked so well the first time around, Sherrod tries the same excuse for three consecutive property tax bills in 2006 and 2007. With no reporters reminding him, Sherrod actually fell so far behind on property taxes his condo was listed for public auction! Odd that a U.S. Senator would forget the existence of taxes for months on end, springing into action only when his property is on the line.

I love Sherrod’s volley of additional excuses. It’s a small apartment! He’s there less than 57% of the time! He’s been serially delinquent with payments, but was in no way avoiding taxes by not paying taxes! Obviously.

Since his election to the Senate, Sherrod has paid over $850 in penalties and interest for his failure to submit D.C. property taxes on time. That’s peanuts for a millionaire who promises trillions to interest groups and insists soaking the rich & slashing the military will pay for it.

Remember, Sherrod is a Progressive who thinks a republic of 300 million can – and should – be ruled by a few thousand bureaucrats in Washington. He’s unable to keep track of his mail and pay his taxes on time twice a year, but that doesn’t stop Sherrod from making big plans with your money!

• Sherrod Brown wants more federal regulations and federal spending to control America’s manufacturing and energy industries.
• Sherrod Brown, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street, wants Washington bureaucrats to make America fair.
• Sherrod Brown wants illegally appointed czar Richard Cordray to enforce undefined rules on the nation’s banks.
• Sherrod Brown wants socialized medicine even more sweeping than Obamacare.

Demanding bigger government while failing at his most basic civic duty: one more way Sherrod Brown resembles President Obama’s worst cabinet appointees and staff.

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

I’m relieved Obama for America is pushing every class warfare chip to the middle of the table. If Americans get a better look at Progressivism’s ugly mug and still vote Democrat in November, the country deserves to go bankrupt!

To simplify mockery of their candidate for those of us with apolitical day jobs, Obama for America has assembled “Truth Teams” – Attack Watch in more sheepish clothing – in a handful of swing states. At the Ohio Truth Team announcement, it was suggested that crashing GOP events may be on the Obama cheerleaders’ agenda.

It's ruff defending a failed president!

Leveraging deranged protestors for the Progressive brand of populism is nothing new for Ohio Democrats, so The Columbus Dispatch tried to confirm the insinuation:

“We’ll do it in an appropriate, mindful way, recognizing the importance of the conversation,” said Ohio Democratic chairman Chris Redfern, also a truth team member. “The truth team, we envision, will be more of a rapid response, taking a message directly at locations where those individuals who align with super PACs or organizations in support” of GOP presidential hopefuls are present.

Emphasis mine. Given his history, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern is a hilarious addition to an Obama group allegedly aiming for mature conversations. In the waning days of the 2010 campaign:

[...] the camera was rolling as Redfern leveled the expletive at critics in the Tea Party, who, in his words, believe health care is a privilege, not a right.

“If your kids are going to graduate from college, now he or she gets health care, your heath care, while he or she looks for a new job,” Redfern said. “It’s in the very base terms we win these arguments. Every time one of these (expletive deleted) says, excuse my language…”

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When Sherrod Brown (D-OH) spoke at the Ohio Education Association Representative Assembly last spring, he had a receptive audience for his class warfare routine. Since Sherrod is the most extreme leftist in the U.S. Senate and must face Ohio voters this fall, the state’s public union fight was a perfect chance to remind Big Labor he’s their man.

At the same event where he told horror stories about privatization and the Republican scheme to ruin Medicare, Sherrod rolled the NEA affiliate’s war against union reform into a theme of conservative “attacks.”

By the end of his 40-second detour into the Progressive causes and glorious federal programs conservatives are attacking, Sherrod had built up a 9x attack multiplier! This sort of word power makes Sherrod Brown a rhetorical king, so long as no one ever asks how to pay for the bankrupt boondoggles he adores.

Similar to the speech where he slammed the faith of the governors on Big Labor’s enemies list, Sherrod gets so wound up talking about conservative attacks that he forgets to explain his alternative! It’s a shame, because Sherrod Brown has had decades in Congress to cook up the perfect tax-and-spend formula.

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Are Wisconsin and Ohio still presidential swing states? Republicans swept to power in the Badger State and the Buckeye State in 2010. During the past year, Governor Walker and Governor Kasich have refused to settle for taxation & spending trends that drove away hundreds of thousands of jobs between 2000 and 2011.

If Midwestern voters see the benefits of free-market reforms at the state level, it’ll be bleak news for Barack Obama’s 2012 class warfare roadshow.

Early results for Walker and Kasich have been mixed, as they’ve both been demonized relentlessly by Big Labor. Wisconsin Democrats fled to protect their union financiers, but Walker and the Wisconsin GOP prevailed. How’s that working for taxpayers?

According to a report by the MacIver Institute, as of September 1, “at least 25 school districts in the Badger State had reported switching health care providers/plans or opening insurance bidding to outside companies.” The institute calculates that these steps will save the districts $211.45 per student. If the state’s other 250 districts currently served by WEA Trust follow suit, the savings statewide could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

If Big Labor’s failure in Wisconsin Senate recall races is any sign, voters can do the math.

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For Ohio Governor John Kasich, Tuesday’s annual State of the State address offered an important venue to talk up his administration’s achievements and goals. Kasich gave this year’s speech at Wells Academy, a school in Steubenville, instead of the traditional Statehouse venue.

The Ohio Democratic Party is led by Chris “Tea Party F***ers” Redfern, best known for a profane 2010 outburst against Obamacare opponents. Based on their behavior in Steubenville, even November’s Big Labor victory against fiscal reality hasn’t improved the attitudes of Ohio leftists!

State Rep. Bob Hagan (D – Youngstown), a Progressive kook’s Progressive kook, bused in 35 protestors for the event. Worse, Hagan handed out several tickets for Kasich’s speech to Occupy protestors ranting outside.

Rep. Bob Hagan (second from left) is thanked by Occupy protestors for tickets to the State of the State address.

Why would Hagan give tickets for a taxpayer-funded speech to obnoxious Occupy protestors? From The Columbus Dispatch’s live coverage of the speech, shuffled into chronological order:

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Last April, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took a few minutes from his schedule to talk to a Planned Parenthood group from Cleveland about Ohio Republicans “going after women, and reproductive rights.” Sherrod went to great lengths to make abortion sound like a reason America needs bigger government.

For pro-life Ohioans like myself, the “Heartbeat Bill” to ban abortions after a baby’s heartbeat can be heard sounds like a great idea. According to pro-choice Ohioans, it’s terrible. Surely a U.S. senator with a diploma from Yale and two master’s degrees can dissect the legislation on its merits and explain why abortion on demand is a vital “reproductive right” …right?

Sherrod Brown being Sherrod Brown, what we get instead is a jumbled diatribe making frequent nods to Big Labor. He treats any conflict with his cartoonish Progressive mindset as an example of conservatives “going after” the rights of men, women, and children (wait, scratch that last one) everywhere.

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Based on the fact that you’re reading this online, I assume you’ve seen the online outcry over Komen for the Cure cutting off grants to Planned Parenthood. In the words of CBS News:

Many suspect the cutoff is linked to the abortion debate. Komen has been under fire by anti-abortion activists, after its connection to the pro-choice organization was publicized.

I’ve ruined the trademark CBS subtlety by marking in bold the network’s refusal to frame the debate as “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice,” or “pro-abortion” vs. “anti-abortion.” Pro-lifers should be glad the reporter didn’t label Live Action and its allies “anti-choice,” I guess!

Unyielding sympathy for Planned Parenthood isn’t limited to fossilized media outlets and your NPR-loving Facebook friends. Many of the senators and representatives up for reelection this fall support abortion so strongly, they’ve voted repeatedly to make you pay for it.

The following Senate incumbents’ races are rated Toss Up or Lean D by The Cook Political Report.

All five of these incumbent Democrat senators are rated 100% by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

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When not attacking American companies, President Obama gets downright romantic about the grand things American companies do with 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!

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When Governor Rick Snyder (R) and Republicans in Michigan’s state legislature implemented reforms to the state’s broken public school system last year, the Michigan Education Association (MEA) cried foul. The tone of MEA “leaders” trying to bolster their Middle Class credentials should sound familiar to anyone from Wisconsin or Ohio:

[MEA President Iris] Salters joined about 1,000 union members protesting at the state Capitol on Tuesday, saying the bill is “again a way to say to labor, you don’t count. It’s a way to say to employees, get back. I believe it’s just like being in the slave days.”

Why such desperate race-baiting against reforms that would modestly limit public union power? MEA bosses, following the example of higher-ups at the National Education Association, extract a tidy living from their members’ pockets.

Michigan occupational averages are from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. MEA staff and officer pay comes from the Department of Labor. While the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers estimate average annual wages in Michigan at $43,280, average pay for MEA staff and officers is $96,373.

Crazy, isn’t it, how angry public unions get about reforms that would threaten their monopoly? MEA bosses must truly care about their underpaid, unappreciated members!

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The National Education Association (NEA) and its state affiliates push an agenda that benefits union bosses at taxpayer expense. In America’s 28 forced-unionism states, teachers in NEA-organized schools who opt not to join must still pay dues, creating a huge pot of money for NEA to spend portraying teachers as victims and union bosses as their only friends.

NEA calls its political action committee “The NEA Fund for Children & Public Education.” Subtle, right? But NEA doesn’t stop at spending tens of millions on Progressives who will shovel money at public education without demanding reform for broken tenure and compensation policies. The nonpartisan materials on NEA’s member-funded website include, to sample a few recent items:

• Why School Choice Fails
• The ‘Right to Work’ Assault on the Middle Class
• The Case Against Vouchers

Given the union’s claim to stand for Middle Class workers, a casual observer might expect the salaries of NEA officers and staff to resemble the average working stiff’s. That casual observer would be very, very wrong.

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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:

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Cranking their class warfare up to eleven, House Democrats submitted a “windfall tax” bill on Wednesday that would increase taxes on some oil and natural gas company revenues to 100%. As The Hill reported:

According to the bill, a windfall tax of 50 percent would be applied when the sale of oil or gas leads to a profit of between 100 percent and 102 percent of a reasonable profit. The windfall tax would jump to 75 percent when the profit is between 102 and 105 percent of a reasonable profit, and above that, the windfall tax would be 100 percent.

"Hello, Congress? We must act quickly -- someone's earning a profit!"

Don’t ask what constitutes a “reasonable profit” – the bureaucrats will work it out! From the text of the bill:

The term ‘reasonable profit’ means the amount determined by the Reasonable Profits Board to be a reasonable profit on the sale.

To guarantee oil barons get the soaking they deserve, no one with a financial interest (read: no one with actual industry knowledge) would be permitted a seat on the new Reasonable Profits Board, whose members would be nominated by the president. Think of the National Labor Relations Board, but instead of union lawyers regulating unions we could have union lawyers regulating energy companies!

A panel of eggheads deciding how much profit a corporation is allowed to earn is socialism, plain and simple. This is no shock considering the bill’s primary sponsor, Progressive tool and potential Ron Paul cabinet member Dennis Kucinich (D-OH). Kucinich appears to be taking a break from UFO spotting to show voters in his newly redrawn deep-blue district he’s the Democrat of choice in the upcoming primary. He aimed for “populist” and landed on “socialist,” but don’t expect his cosponsors to split hairs.

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However they market themselves, public unions are political by nature, brimming partisanship that goes beyond their skewed campaign spending. Every Republican teacher, public safety worker, and government employee forced to pay “fair share” dues should be outraged.

My state’s National Education Association (NEA) affiliate, the Ohio Education Association (OEA), takes millions in fees from non-members each year. Operating on NEA’s model, OEA insists all teachers be forced to pay for the union’s non-political business. This would be well and good, if OEA conducted any non-political business.

From the union’s mission statement:

OEA believes that for those whose business is public education, activism is an obligation.

OEA has the same definition of “activism” as every garden variety leftist group: Demand bigger government under the guise of fairness and equality. For example, ACORN’s 2005-06 Political Program (hat tip: Publius’ Forum) lists OEA as a “Coalition Partner” -

We see the combination of these efforts as key to maintaining and expanding the level of electoral participation by more progressive voters in the state, along with playing a role in pushing voter alignment along axes of community concerns and economic security.

In other words, OEA worked with ACORN to push the entitlement mindset and get entitlement-minded voters to the polls. For… the children?

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Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) hasn’t been rated America’s most liberal senator two years running by accident, nor as a result of some sudden leftward shift. If Sherrod’s votes from 1993-98 and 1999-2004 weren’t convincing enough, take a gander at recent reasons he should be a single-term senator.

Following are some of Sherrod’s notable votes from the list tracked by the American Conservative Union (ACU).

• 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

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In Wisconsin, Governor Walker’s public union reforms are pummeling the Big Labor narrative by saving taxpayer dollars and teachers’ jobs. Meanwhile, the professional class-warriors who get rich pushing “solidarity” force districts into layoffs by refusing to revisit unaffordable contracts.

After similar reforms failed in Ohio thanks to a smear campaign exceeding $30 million, Ohio’s public workers are enjoying the sort of union victory that’s often accompanied by a pink slip.

A month ago I shared stories from around the state of firings caused by the same union bosses who screeched against Governor Kasich’s “attack on workers.” To the surprise of neither of my website’s readers, this avoidable trend continues.

Voters who opposed reform have caused the very problems Big Labor insisted reform would create:

Marion Police say they are committed to answering the city’s 9-1-1 calls but come the [sic] January 1st, callers could see delays in response times.

That’s because the [sic] 15 officers are being cut from the department.  Another position is expected to be eliminated in 2012.

Emphasis mine. Delayed response times were one of the many unexplained evils that would have allegedly resulted from making public employees a little more accountable to the public.

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Last week we looked at the first 6 years of Senator Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) time in Congress. His early House voting record should alarm fiscal and social conservatives alike, but let’s see whether the decisions he made from 1999-2004 were better!

Don’t get your hopes up; Sherrod’s lifetime American Conservative Union (ACU) rating is 7.77.

• 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

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When President Obama pronounced the Constitution legally dead at a Cleveland campaign stop, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was nowhere to be found. Did the president reach a partisan bridge Sherrod refused to cross? Or was Sherrod’s “scheduling conflict” as politically motivated as President Obama’s latest stunt?

The president has a 41% approval rating in Ohio, where Sherrod Brown faces reelection this fall. Last November, Ohioans voted to block Obamacare – for which Sherrod was the deciding vote – by a margin of more than 1 million.

In other words, Sherrod’s absence didn’t indicate a change of heart from the class warfare he spewed on the Senate floor when Republicans blocked Rich Cordray’s appointment to CFPB:

Chris Dodd and Barney Frank could hardly ask for a more devoted apologist! Sherrod’s “cop on the beat” quip wouldn’t be disgustingly deceptive if police also made up laws as they went along.

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As we kick off 2012, we enter Sherrod Brown’s second decade in Congress. Senator Brown (D-OH) served 7 terms in the House – starting in 1993 – before his 2006 election to the 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.

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 19-year voting history gives someone a record left of Dianne Feinstein and Harry Reid?

Here are some of the lowlights of Sherrod Brown’s first 6 years in Congress, accompanied by his ACU ratings:

• 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

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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.

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