The Columbus Dispatch
Ohio Republicans go
off the rails
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Republican state legislators’ Trash Ohio plan is moving along smartly,
given two lunatic votes Wednesday (joined in by a few Democrats who
evidently think the word principle is just a typo for someone who leads
a school).
The Senate, run 23-10 by Republicans, gave its final approval to a
House-passed bill that’ll allow oil and gas drilling in state parks.
The only Republican to vote no was Sen. Timothy Grendell of
Chesterland, who - give Mr. Weathervane this - has long fought oil and
gas drillers. The one Democrat to vote yes was Sen. Jason H. Wilson of
Columbiana.
Athens-area Republican Sen. Jimmy Stewart abstained from the vote
because he’s becoming president of the Ohio Oil and Gas Association.
The Statehouse is a very small world.
Time was when Ohio Republicans were like Teddy Roosevelt - they
advocated conservation. In 1912, as a convention rewrote the Ohio
Constitution, T.R. told delegates: “This country, as Lincoln said,
belongs to the people. So do the natural resources which make it rich.
... Preserving them ... is not merely a state but a national duty [and]
we must not forget that monopoly is based on the control of natural
resources.”
Maybe that’s why the 1912 convention proposed, and voters ratified, a
constitutional amendment that empowers the legislature to “provide for
the conservation of the natural resources of the state.” Too bad
today’s (Republican) General Assembly snubs “the people” and
sweet-talks the very monopolies T.R. despised.
As senators pillaged the parks, the House, also run by a GOP majority,
was doing its all to make Ohio one big firing range. By a 56-39 vote,
House members gave all-but-final approval to a Senate bill making it
legal to carry concealed handguns in bars. A more lunatic idea can
hardly be imagined. Republicans, as drunk on power as boozed-up barroom
shooters may soon be, are endangering everyone else to flatter the gun
lobby.
That’s what Ohio gets for making most General Assembly seats safe for
one party or the other. Lopsided districts mean the real legislative
election isn’t November’s but rather spring primaries, when nominations
are decided by right-leaning Republicans or by (assertedly) liberal
Democrats. That gives the handgun lobby more heft than it deserves
among Republicans (and reciprocally kooky lobbies more heft than they
deserve among Democrats).
Voting yes on the guns-in-bars bill were 53 House Republicans plus
Democrats Lou Gentile of Steubenville, Sean O’Brien of Brookfield and
Debbie Phillips of Athens. House Republicans who rose above GOP caucus
antics and said no to the guns-in-bars bill were Nan Baker of Westlake;
Mike Duffey of Worthington; Richard Hollington of Hunting Valley; Kirk
Schuring of Canton; and Gerald L. Stebelton of Lancaster.
In fairness, a Statehouse majority’s preening arrogance isn’t exactly
new; 20-year Democratic House Speaker Vernal G. Riffe Jr. made it clear
who ran the place. But this session, Republicans seem be taking things
to a new level. And the curse of General Assembly term limits means
legislators aren’t in office long enough to learn a lesson history has
taught time and again about Ohio politics.
Ohio voters don’t stay up late watching reruns of conservative
economist Milton Friedman’s PBS series Free to Choose - or reading
books on what a bunch of white guys in powdered wigs argued about in
Philadelphia 224 years ago. Maybe voters should, but they don’t.
Instead, Ohioans want jobs, decent roads and fair taxes. And that’s
what they expect from legislators - not pollution at parks or gunplay
in bars.
Read it at the Columbus Dispatch
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