Ohio 2nd Blog

Well.. I never thought it would happen but Jean Schmidt has actually blinked on Iraq.

When I first heard that the group “Americans Against Escalation In Iraq” was campaigning in the district to get Congresswoman Schmidt to drop her support for the invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, I thought to myself good luck with that one. I’ve never seen a more diehard supporter of President Bush’s policy in Iraq than Jean Schmidt.

Here’s what Schmidt was saying two years ago when she was running against Iraq veteran Paul Hackett:

I have been traveling around the district for the last four months, telling the folks that I’ve met that I stand shoulder to shoulder with President Bush on the war on terror, and as your representative in Congress I’ll work with Congress and the President to finish the job in Iraq and make sure we continue to take the battle to the terrorists, so they don’t create another 9-11 and bring that battle here.

And here’s what she’s saying now:

No one wants to be at war. War is an action of last resort. I was not in Congress when our country voted to go to war. Like most, I am not happy with our pace of progress. However, having now traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan twice and met with dozens of foreign diplomats the only current choice we have is to finish the mission. That is not the easiest choice but it is the only one that will lead to a safer region and world. I do not defend the mistakes that have been made in the past.

Hey… it isn’t her fault. It’s not like she would have voted for it if she was a member of Congress then. SNARK Suddenly Mrs Cowards Cut and Run is cutting and running for her own passionate support for President Bush. Talk about rats from a sinking ship.

I must say that I am impressed. In a few short weeks Americans Against Escalation in Iraq has gotten Schmidt’s chief cheerleader in the House to stab our President right in the back.

The group will be having an organization meeting 6:30pm this Thursday, July 12th at the Hyde Park Branch Library, 2747 Erie Street, Cincinnati.

Perhaps with a little work we can get Schmidt to put as much passion into bringing our men and women home from Iraq as she does in fighting the delays in her weekly commute.

Congresswoman Jean Schmidt is getting some real traction from her work on flight delays. This is a good example of how someone sitting in the minority position can use their office. While many Democrats are assuming that defeating her will be a cakewalk, I’m beginning to wonder if she’s getting a hang out of this whole politicing thingy.

She was recently quoted in Time magazine on the subject and yesterday she issued a press release documenting her getting tough with the administration over the issue:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Ben LaRocco

Thursday July 5, 2007 Phone (office) 202.225.3164

Schmidt Continues Work on Flight Data Reporting

Schmidt asks Secretary Peters not to wait for Congress to act

Washington, D.C. – With continued public outrage at airline flight delays, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt asked Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters to administratively implement H.R. 2662, her bill to collect data on cancelled and diverted flights.

Currently, flights which experience tarmac delays are not recorded as delayed if the flight is diverted to another airport, or the flight is cancelled before takeoff and returns to the gate. H.R. 2662 would require that all tarmac delays are reported to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. It is estimated that due to this reporting loophole, tarmac delays could be underreported by up to 50%.

“This is a serious problem that needs immediate attention. It seems every day a new story comes out about people who are trapped in a plane for hours on end or travelers who are stranded because of missed, delayed or cancelled flights,” said Schmidt. “Each one of those flights is full of parents trying to get home to their children, loved ones failing to connect, and thousands of dollars of lost commerce due reduced productivity or missed meetings.”

“While I am very pleased Chairman Oberstar included the language from my bill in H.R. 2881, the Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization bill, but Secretary Peters does not need to wait for this legislation to pass. We need to act now to begin compiling the data to solve this problem, and alleviate these stressful and inconvenient delays,” concluded Schmidt.

One does wonder if this is purely a selfless move on te Congresswoman’s part given how often a sitting member of Congress has to fly.

Nevertheless, Back early on in the special when I was researching then candidate Jean Schmidt, I remember finding occasional glimpses of a competent politician that she seemed to need to hide under a cover of jingoistic parroting of the Republican agenda cum nightmare.

The problem is that while she’s hitting hard on the after taste of the rampant free market she so passionately champions, thousands of American soldiers or fighting and dying in Iraq. If only she could be as hard hitting on that issue, instead of just pinning it to her dress.

Everytime I get out, she pulls me back in…

One of the things that veteran members of Congress recommend to newbies is that they specialize in certain topics close to them instead of trying to do everything. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt seems to have taken this advice to heart by becoming the House of Representative’s leading champion of toxic s**t.

First it was her struggle to have nuclear waste trucked by the tons into her own district. Now, as reported by Bill Sloat at The Daily Bellwether, the Congresswoman has become a cosigner of H.R. 4341, to amend the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act so that manure (aka “digestive emissions, feces, urine and other excrement from livestock”) wouldn’t be considered a “hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant”.

It seems that agribusiness’ (remember mega-farms?) are worried about getting hit from lawsuits related to the rivers of toxic animal s**t that they spew out. Last year Rolling Stone magazine gave us a glimpse into this wonderful world:

Smithfield estimates that its total sales will reach $11.4 billion this year. So prodigious is its fecal waste, however, that if the company treated its effluvia as big-city governments do — even if it came marginally close to that standard — it would lose money. So many of its contractors allow great volumes of waste to run out of their slope-floored barns and sit blithely in the open, untreated, where the elements break it down and gravity pulls it into groundwater and river systems. Although the company proclaims a culture of environmental responsibility, ostentatious pollution is a linchpin of Smithfield’s business model.

A lot of pig shit is one thing; a lot of highly toxic pig shit is another. The excrement of Smithfield hogs is hardly even pig shit: On a continuum of pollutants, it is probably closer to radioactive waste than to organic manure. The reason it is so toxic is Smithfield’s efficiency. The company produces 6 billion pounds of packaged pork each year. That’s a remarkable achievement, a prolificacy unimagined only two decades ago, and the only way to do it is to raise pigs in astonishing, unprecedented concentrations.

Smithfield’s pigs live by the hundreds or thousands in warehouse-like barns, in rows of wall-to-wall pens. Sows are artificially inseminated and fed and delivered of their piglets in cages so small they cannot turn around. Forty fully grown 250-pound male hogs often occupy a pen the size of a tiny apartment. They trample each other to death. There is no sunlight, straw, fresh air or earth. The floors are slatted to allow excrement to fall into a catchment pit under the pens, but many things besides excrement can wind up in the pits: afterbirths, piglets accidentally crushed by their mothers, old batteries, broken bottles of insecticide, antibiotic syringes, stillborn pigs — anything small enough to fit through the foot-wide pipes that drain the pits. The pipes remain closed until enough sewage accumulates in the pits to create good expulsion pressure; then the pipes are opened and everything bursts out into a large holding pond.

The temperature inside hog houses is often hotter than ninety degrees. The air, saturated almost to the point of precipitation with gases from shit and chemicals, can be lethal to the pigs. Enormous exhaust fans run twenty-four hours a day. The ventilation systems function like the ventilators of terminal patients: If they break down for any length of time, pigs start dying.

Veteran reporter Sloat offers the Congresswoman some excellent advice:

Schmidt, whose 2nd district is populated by mostly by urban and suburban residents, probably should have stayed out of this fight. She will face opposition in the Republican primary next year, and she has opened herself to being portrayed as a politician who thinks poop isn’t a pollutant. That’s a stinky spot to be in. Just imagine the attack ads with people holding their noses.

She really does blog herself.

• Portman’s Prospects
• Another Rat, Same Ship
• Portman Ships Out of White House, Could Sail Back Into Ohio Politics
• Portman resigns as budget director

His timing certainly is interesting.

The general consensus is that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that he’ll try to get his old seat back. Serving as an officer on the RMS Titanic isn’t the best location from which to further one’s naval career.

This must be a hard tease for local Republican faithfuls.

This year your humble editor has been slacking pretty bad when it comes to updating everyone with the latest news about the district. While much of it can be chalked up to I’ve got my own damned problems, part of it comes from the fact that the district is so hot as a target, and Schmidt so wonderful as a nemesis that it blogs itself. I’ve reached a sort of zen nirvana where by doing nothing everything happens. It is a thing of beauty.

You can tell that we are witnessing the blessed final collapse of the Reagan revolution by how voraciously Republicans are eating themselves alive. What in the 80s was cynical, masterful hypocrisy has two decades later become the moronic rantings of a horribly inbred lineage. Bereft of ideas, goals, or moral compass, those of us who have suffered through decades of being right now get to enjoy as the devil collects his interest on their collective Faustian bargain.

Case in point the perverse orgy of self cannibalism currently going on in Southern Ohio.

Lets start with The Banks project. Congresswoman Schmidt, desperate to be able to take credit for anything besides turning Jack Murtha into a household word, does what any good Representative does by trying to bring some much needed public works projects to her district. But instead of having the measly few billions rubber stamped like everyone else’s, she gets hit by a massive smack down by neighboring Congressman Steve Chabot, Minority Leader Leader John Boehner, and the White House itself in the form of the locally beatified Budget Director Rob Portman.

When an entity stands for nothing but power, it’s easy to interpret its actions. In the case of a loyal right wing trooper like Congresswoman Schmidt becoming the cheese that stands alone, it’s obvious that the action tells us that she is completely on the outs from her own Party. Believe what you will from the mouthpieces, but in 08 Jean Schmidt will be fighting this one without the help from the beltway black hats.

In terms of tactics, it’s pretty understandable. Ask yourself, would you rather dump another million dollars on the political sinkhole that Jean Schmidt has turned the 2nd district into, or instead invest it in knocking out a lightweight like Zack Space and gaining some much needed momentum?

The other example that I’ve been enjoying has been the falling out of Tom Brinkman with his once patron The Whistleblower. Brinkman’s crime? Voting for the Strickland budget. God forbid you try to actually accomplish something.

There has been every indication that Brinkman will take on Schmidt again since he’s being term limited from his gig as State Rep. A bloody, I’m more right wing than you, three way slugfest will be the perfect prelude for liberals looking forward to the general: Jean Schmidt once again the Republican standard bearer holding a cool quarter of a million dollars of additional debt.

Brinkman is one of the tragic figures of the 2nd district. There’s a fine line between being an idealistic maverick and an opportunistic gray hat. Time and time again Brinkman has overplayed his hand placing him squarely in with the gray hats. And any follower of westerns knows what happens to gray hats.

It will be interesting to see what sort of career opportunities an unemployed, ineffective professional homophobe like Tom Brinkman might have in Southern Ohio. I hear they might be hiring in Piketon.

My favorite con that a member of Congress has is that of “introducing legislation.” They can introduce a bill that advocates anything. They can take credit for fighting to cure cancer, saving cute little puppies, or providing us with shelter from global warming on the moon. The cool thing is that they can take credit for all this knowing full well that their bills don’t have to actually accomplish anything or even a snowballs chance in hell of actually passing. (I’m a big fan of creating performance metrics for politicians and government agencies.)

The key tell of the con is the fact that the Representative is bragging about it in the press before the legislation has ever passed. Case in point:

Enquirer > Rep. Jean Schmidt introduces bill on nuke waste

If anyone has any doubts about Rep. Jean Schmidt’s plans for the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, a bill she and two colleagues introduced on Friday should clear that up.

That bill – the Nuclear Waste Storage Prohibition Act – would ensure that no funds from the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) may be used for the creation of a permanent storage facility for spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste.

The complaint by Piketon community members has never been that they are planning to create a “permanent” nuclear storage facility in Piketon, but to instead to turn it into a “temporary” waste recycling and storage facility.

She knows this. This is a con. Congresswoman Schmidt has fought long and hard to bring nuclear waste to her district.

One does have to say that your humble editor is impressed that the Congresswoman has learned to use the power of any Representative to introduce any legislation even though they know that it will have no effect on anything and is just for show. Even better, she’s gotten Democratic Congressman Zack Space to join her in the con:

With such economic potential, it just makes sense to assure our Ohioans from the outset that this project will be a safe, secure facility – never anything like a Yucca Mountain-type nuclear-waste dump.

Well played, Congresswoman Schmidt.

The talk has never been about turning Piketon into a replacement for Yucca Mountain. The complaint has always been that they want to use Piketon as a “temporary” storage facility because they can’t find a permanent home for the junk. Since no one knows when a permanent home will be found the waste would be in Piketon for an unspecified amount of time… rusting away… just like it has been for decades on the existing cleanup site. Before they should ever consider bringing more nuclear waste to Piketon they should clean up the site that’s already contaminated.

The Enquirer is reporting that former Hamilton County commissioner Phil Heimlich is officially taking Jean Schmidt on in the 2nd district Republican primary. Heimlich lost his bid for reelection to David Pepper in 06. He’s claiming that he’s already raised $120,000 for the bid, compared to Schmidt’s $17,000 in the bank.

VikingSpirit thinks that he can take Schmidt if they go head to head. I’m not so sure. While I agree that the only way that he has a chance is if Schmidt’s opponents don’t split their votes, I still think she’s a tough nut to crack.

What issue is he going to run on? These days the only things Republican candidates seem to be able to talk about is how much they love Ronald Reagan. There’s no way he can outflank her on the right, and restoring dignity to the office hasn’t exactly been a winner over the last two races she’s won.

ADDED: My bet is Heimlich will be the only major primary challenger to the Congresswoman. He’s got enough clout to lock up the anybody but Schmidt monied supporters.

UPDATE Active threads on BSB and the Enquirer Politics Extra “blog”.

WCPO > Local Soldiers Must Pay Back Money

Local soldiers from the 216th Engineering Battalion were given notice they were overpaid by the government and must pay the money back.

Congresswoman Schmidt has reportedly launched another one of her infamous “investigations”:

A spokesman for Rep. Jean Schmidt said the Clermont County Republican has launched an investigation. “We called the Department of Defense and asked them to launch an investigation as to if this is a bureaucratic snafu or what is the source of the alleged debts, and they’re doing this as we speak,” said Schmidt spokesman Barry Bennett. Schmidt’s office expects to receive a reply from the Pentagon by the end of this week.

I don’t know… if you ask me calling up another branch of government and asking them to launch an investigation isn’t a very substantive investigation. I guess no one told her that Congress has power to launch their own investigations, and that it’s actually part of the job of being a member of Congress.

What cracks me up in all this is that the Pentagon is the most corrupt bottomless sinkhole of our tax dollars and the people they’re billing for overpayment are soldiers who’ve served in the nightmare that is Iraq instead of the contractors who rake in billions. Support our troops… what a laugh.

Also, the CQPolitics blog has picked up on the potential Schmidt / Wulsin rematch, but does some piss poor analysis of the race:

Wulsin’s campaign is an indication that she is not deterred by the district’s 64 percent vote share for President Bush in 2004 and is determined to give Schmidt yet another tough test. Yet Schmidt’s first campaign finance report for the 2007-08 campaign cycle does not suggest an overwhelming sense of urgency in her camp. She raised a modest $20,065 in this year’s first quarter and had $17,000 cash on hand as April began.

Guys, the reason why Schmidt has raised so little cash is that she is incredibly unpopular with Republican power brokers. The Ohio 2nd has turned from being one of the jewels in the Republican Congressional crown to an embarrassment that brings down the whole caucus.

The issue of abortion has taken center stage thanks to the Supreme Court. Given Jean Schmidt’s job as president of the Right-to-Life of Greater Cincinnati prior to joining Congress the 2nd will once again be the front lines in one of the most important political issues of the current election cycle.

In the past Schmidt’s gotten into trouble for hedging her extremist “100% pro life” position (That means not even in the case of rape or incest or risk to the mother). Now that the foot is in the door will she take her well earned place as a standard bearer in Congress for eliminating women’s controls over their own bodies, or will she again try to soft sell her position once primary time is over and she has to draw independent voters? Will the Democrat who runs against her call her out on her views or instead try to fudge the issue so as to play to the middle? Paul Hackett did very well with his powerful libertarian stance:

…I don’t need Washington to tell me how to live my personal life, or how to pray to my God. And I don’t need Washington to dictate to my wife the decisions that she makes with her doctor, any more than I need Washington to tell me which guns I can keep in my gun safe.

Will anyone play it Hackett-style? Does the Virginia Tech tragedy reduce the effectiveness of such a statement?

The political sports fan in me thinks that this will be an interesting fight with both sides facing many potential pitfalls. The human being in me wonders when we’ll focus on the reason’s why women feel the need to make these drastic choices (poverty, lack of education, lack of contraception, etc) instead of rewaging battles decided long ago.

UPDATE: Vic is already getting some traction from this.

From the rumor mill…

Word is that Wulsin already has some DCCC muscle working with her: one for message, and one for finance. It seems that she’s already working the phones hard locking up the prized early bird cash.

Also, many are giving Vic props for the early declaration move stifling primary competition. That hasn’t stopped several potential players from considering a stab at it. Personally, your humble editor feels that the state house races offer greater potential gains than a single term Dem in the House and wonders if some of the talent couldn’t be distributed all along the ticket. Ted could definitely use some help out there in Columbus.

The big question has to be about what the landscape will look like in a Presidential year. Turnout is going to be high… that means Republican turnout is going to be very high. Will the person the Dems serve up be able to draw away straight thinking Republicans? Will Republicans be thinking that the Schmidt they know is better than the…?

Finally, on the Schmidt front, word has it that a dark horse local blue blood is considering a run in an attempt to restore dignity to the house that Rob built. With Brinkman chumming up the waters it’s difficult to see how anyone can take the Congresswoman in the primary. Nevertheless, many Dems are concerned that their beloved foe won’t be available to kick around come November. One can only hope.

p.s. it’s good to see that Barry Bennett reads our humble little publication.