Buckeye RINO

Please remember to vote NO on Issue 3.  We shouldn’t amend Ohio’s Constitution to give a few out-of-state people special rights that are denied to all Ohioans.

Ohio’s absentee voting has begun.  Or should I call it the early voting?  After all, any registered Ohio voter can use the absentee voting method, even if you don’t plan to be absent on Election Day, November 3, 2009.  Here’s what the Ohio Secretary of State’s website has to say about absentee voting, FYI.

I’m pleased to say that the Ohio Supreme Court has determined that the people of Ohio may hold a referendum on Gov. Ted Strickland’s lottery expansion plan that would have introduced Video Lottery Terminals to Ohio’s horsetracks.

Here’s a report on the story from Cleveland’s Plain Dealer.

Had the decision gone the other way, the checks and balances that the people have, to hold the state accountable for how it raises revenue, would have been . . . obliterated!

I’m glad somebody besides me is starting to connect the dots, even though the proposed remedy is garbage.

Please read this article about a proposal from state senator Keith Faber (R-Celina) from The Daily Briefing section of The Columbus Dispatch.

There is finally an acknowledgment that the various gambling cartels (lottery vendors, casino tycoons, race track owners, off-track betting parlor operators, etc.) routinely buy up politicians.  It doesn’t matter whether you are Democrat, Republican, or even Libertarian, campaign money donated by gambling interests is shaping your political party and shaping Ohio’s elections.  For the most part, those politicians that are the most ethically-challenged are the ones that are able to retain office thanks to gambling contributions to political coffers.

So, if you, voters, would like to “clean house” of the corrupt rascals that reside in the halls of government, you’d do well to size up how politicians have aligned themselves on the issue of gambling.

Faber’s bill would limit contributions to candidates for state offices from the gambling industry to just $500.  This is well-intentioned, and shows, like I said, that someone besides me is connecting the dots, but this “remedy” would be a huge flop, much like McCain-Feingold in the federal campaign finance arena.  Just as there are gaping loopholes in McCain-Feingold that you can drive a truck through, Faber’s bill would be just as flimsy.

The Issue 3 crowd has the Fraternal Order of Police stumping for it.  Even if candidates could only accept $500 from the gambling industry, the FOP could leverage considerable influence in election races on behalf of the gambling industry.

So many officeholders of both major political parties favor one gambling faction or another (completely out of proportion to the allegiances of Ohio voters who’ve rejected the past four gambling issues that appeared on statewide ballots) that one ought to question whether the gambling industry already picks and chooses the frontrunners in primary contests.

Don’t believe me?  Please read this Mark Naymik article from the Plain Dealer (read the WHOLE THING), and ask yourself, what’s Bob Bennett doing, calling Republican operatives all over the state asking for support for Issue 3?  Are you starting to get the picture?  Is it dawning on you yet?  And what would Faber’s bill do to the flow of donations from the gambling industry to political parties?  It would increase it, since the direct flow to candidates, themselves, would be restricted.  This adds to the gambling industry’s leverage of party insiders who anoint and appoint.

But, like I said, this isn’t just a Republican Party phenomenon.  Read this article about interim Ohio Treasurer Kevin Boyce’s campaign from the Dayton Daily News.  The gambling industry, under Faber’s bill, would only be able to contribute $500 to the Boyce campaign, but Charlie Luken, former Democrat mayor of Cincinnati and current lobbyist for Key Bank who hosts fundraisers for Boyce, also happens to be a chairperson for the Issue 3 campaign.  Faber’s bill does nothing to address this.

Do you see the many tentacles extended just by one gambling faction, the cartel that is pushing Issue 3?

What if I started showing how far the tentacles of MTR, a rival gambling faction, stretched?  The spouse of Democrat Party chair Chris Redfern purportedly lobbies on behalf of MTR.  Strickland’s betrayal of his campaign pledges stand to benefit MTR as the vendor of the VLT slot machines that would be installed at racetracks on behalf of the Ohio Lottery.

Sandy Theis works as a spokesperson for both TruthPAC (mostly funded by MTR) and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner.  When it came time to choose the pro and con arguments of Issue 3 that would be presented to Ohio voters, TruthPAC got the nod for the con side, while Ohio Roundtable, a truly anti-gambling organization, was shut out of the debate by Brunner.

MTR owns one of the Ohio horse tracks, and the horse track industry, in addition to it’s Democrat supporters, named above, has, in the past, also been backed by Republican heavy hitters like former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder.  The bio of state representative Terry Blair (R-38) clearly places him in the horse track camp.

Let’s not forget past gambling issues, and who was involved in supporting those efforts, too.  Prominent Cuyahoga County Republican Jim Trakas was a backer for last year’s failed Issue 6.  In 2006, Ohio Chancellor and prominent Cuyahoga County Democrat Eric Fingerhut was ushering another Issue 3, “Ohio Learn and Earn,” to the ballot.

A complete and exhaustive list of which Ohio politicians are bankrolled by which gambling factions would be difficult to compile due to length (and also due to the fact that some politicians play their cards close to the vest, hiding the gambling allegiances they have).

Do you see how wide the gambling industry has spread their nets to reel in politicians?  Or do I have to keep connecting dots?

All of this leads to the question:  What is inherently wrong about government favoring gambling? This is a question Libertarians are prone to ask, but many Republicans and Democrats ask the same question.

Some long answers to that question, from the perspective that gambling shrinks the economy, can be found here, here, here, and here.

The short answer is that the ethically-challenged politicians charged with the task of being gambling’s gatekeepers are able to consolidate their power through gambling’s redistribution of wealth.  I’ll let this sign from the 9/12 rally in DC spell it out for you:

Remember that the gambling industry produces nothing. It exists just to plunder and redistribute wealth. The wealth is redistributed to help entrench the political status quo.

Also remember that just as we can’t tax our society into prosperity, we also can’t gamble our society into prosperity. Tax proceeds and gambling proceeds are used by elites for the same purposes: To consolidate, hold, and wield power and to subjugate the people.

Final question:  What do we do about it if Faber’s proposal won’t work?

We vote against Issue 3, we get a referendum for Strickland’s VLT plan on the ballot and vote that down.

We clamor for full transparency of political finances.  We inform voters.  We identify which politicians back gambling.  We recruit and support candidates who oppose gambling to challenge the candidates that back gambling.

Ideally, the state stops propping up the horsetracks and OTB parlors, allowing them to fail if they can’t remain profitable, and, finally, we put the Ohio Lottery, itself, back on the ballot for reconsideration, and urge voters to repeal it.

If we do these things, we will have empowered the people, toppled the status quo, improved the state’s economy, and put a huge dent in political corruption.

Collecting My Thoughts, a right-of-center blog appearing in my blogroll under the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance heading, has posted an excerpt of an email discussion about Issue 3, the casino issue that Ohioans will see on the November ballot.  The right-of-center bloggers of Ohio are not of one mind on the gambling issue, and the excerpt shown was an attempt, on my part, to advocate against this and other gambling issues.

Another fairly recent blog entry against Issue 3 appeared at Writes Like She Talks, wherein JMZ points out that this year’s Issue 3 contains many of the same shortfalls as the Issue 3 (Learn and Earn) of 2006.

Madrigal Maniac has also fairly recently posted an entry against Issue 3, highlighting friction between proposed casinos and charitable organizations that raise funds via bingo.

Glass City Jungle has posted multiple Issue 3 entries.  Blog author Lisa Renee Ward has made a conscious effort to report the issue fairly, and her posts are generally quite newsy.  The charitable bingo angle is covered at GCJ, too.  The pro-casino lobby likes to recycle FOP endorsements, but mixed in with that coverage is opposition from Catholics and opposition from a rival gambling organization that calls itself TruthPAC.  Among the GCJ entries that struck a nerve with readers was one that noted a former supporter of the issue is now an opponent.

Kyle Sisk’s blog has also contained entries that have attempted to allow both sides to have their say (three installments to date.)  Also making an appearance on the blog was a guest post by yours truly, pointing out that gambling is akin to piracy.

My own blog, has a history of opposing gambling, and my most-viewed blog entry of all time dates back to last year’s failed Issue 6 casino issue, examining the shortfalls in terms of the microeconomics principles of opportunity cost and multiplier effect.  Prior Buckeye RINO coverage of this year’s Issue 3 includes  a post consisting of my email communications with casino spokespersons, a post showing the Issue 3 proposal is far inferior to the principles that led to the founding of the famous Monte Carlo casino, a post that points out the special rights that would be granted by the Ohio Constitution to special people who are not Ohioans, a post containing a rebuttal from casino proponents with my reply, a repeat of the post that appeared on Kyle Sisk’s blog, and a post questioning the massive amount of fraudulent signatures appearing on the petitions that the casino proponents filed.

Oral arguments were made before the Ohio Supreme Court over whether the voters will have any say on the matter of Video Lottery Terminals at racetracks.

The Ohio Channel has a video clip of the oral arguments.

The lottery slots proponents argue that the people do not have the right to a referendum in the matter because appropriations are immune from referendum, and that the slots proposal is an appropriation because the money provided by slots has already been spent on education.  Furthermore, the slots proponents argue that under Ohio’s Constitution, the lottery commission has always possessed the authority to implement the slots plan.

Referendum backers argue that the slots proposal is not an appropriation.  It is a mechanism for raising revenue, and thus is not immune from referendum.  The referendum backers deny that the Ohio Constitution, alone, grants the authority to implement the slots plan, and the evidence cited is that the authority is only granted by way of HB1, the biennial budget, thus, without explicit legislation granting that authority, the lottery commission does NOT possess the authority.  Appropriations laws are temporary, because they expend money only for a biennium.  The portion of HB1’s legislation that authorizes the slots, however, is a permanent change, not a change that lasts only for two years, highlighting the point that the slots proposal is not an appropriation, and is therefore not immune from referendum.

I was particularly struck by an exchange between Justice Judith Lanzinger and slots attorney Benjamin C. Mizer that occurred 32 minutes and 5 seconds into the oral arguments, wherein Justice Lanzinger suggested that Mizer was adding language to the Ohio Constitution for the sake of advancing his argument about appropriations.  What struck me is how the referendum rights of the people of Ohio are limited pertaining to appropriations.  At 33:18, Mizer said that Constitutional limitations on referendum power were enacted because:

” . . . we didn’t want the power of the purse to be infringed by the referendum power, and, specifically, above all, the people did not want the referendum power to be used to create fiscal instability and fiscal crisis and to tie up appropriations.”

And Mizer reiterates at the 34-minute mark the danger of allowing a referendum:

” . . . what would happen in this case is the gumming up of the works of the budget bill and tying up a 2.3 billion-dollar appropriation.”

Oh horrors!  We can’t have the people stop government spending!  Why, uh, . . . that could lead to  . . . fiscal instability!  Crisis!  Mass hysteria!  The Apocalypse!  The extinction of humanity!  The end of the world as we know it!  Annihilation of the Universe!

So, we, the people, under Ohio’s Constitution, already have the deck stacked against us when it comes to checking and balancing the legislature’s fiscal policies.

The attorney for the referendum backers, Michael A. Carvin, warns that if the court accepts the argument that the slots provisions are an appropriation because the money has already been spent on education and is therefore immune to referendum, then going forward, any money-raising mechanism that the legislature can imaginatively devise can be rendered immune to referendum by spending the money on a specific line item before the money is even collected.

If that were to happen, I would find that an extremely dangerous precedent to set, as the people would have no check or balance whatsoever on whatever money the legislature chooses to confiscate from the people by whatever method.

I sincerely hope that LetOhioVote.org, the plaintiff represented by Mr. Carvin, prevails in this case.

From other blogs on this issue, for, against, and indifferent:

Madrigal Maniac

Southeastern Ohio Conservative Thoughts

The Pullins Report

Ohio Daily Blog

Glass City Jungle