ProgressOhio

 

More than 70 activists from across Northeast Ohio gathered at the North Olmsted Community Cabin to participate in the area's first America Votes / Progress Ohio issue forum Monday evening.   The event engaged progressive groups from around the region: Ohioans for Democratic Values, Westside Democrats, Drinking Liberally Cleveland Chapter, Blacks United in Local Democracy, Cuyahoga County Young Democrats, Lakewood Democratic Club, North Olmsted Democratic Club and the Bay Village Democratic Club.

 

For nearly two hours, attendees participated in an informative exchange over the 2007 Ohio Budget with Ohio General Assembly members and John Corlett from the Center for Community Solutions. 

 

Questions were asked about the nursing home lobby, property tax exemptions for the elderly, utilizing the line item veto, use of money raised by the state lottery, and funding of faith-based and community initiatives.

 

Judging by the poignancy of the questions proposed to the panel, it appears that a changing of the guard in Ohio's executive offices has brought a new level of interest and engagement to a process that was traditionally a mystery to most residents of the state.

 

Panelists for the evening's event included:

 

John Corlett:  Senior Fellow and Director, Public Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Community Solutions.  Mr. Corlett is an expert on the Ohio Budget process and issues.   

Representative Michael Skindell: Representative to Ohio’s 13th House District and serves as Ranking Minority Member on the Finance and Appropriations Committee.

 Representative Mike Foley: Representative to Ohio’s 14th House District and sitting member of the Public Utilities committee as well as Ranking Minority Member of Ways and Means Committee.

Representative Jennifer Brady: Representative to Ohio’s 16th House District and sitting member of the Commerce and Labor Committee as well as the Health Access and Affordability Committee.

 

The Congressional Record has the text of every speaker's comments from the Iraq Debate in the House. You can search the Record for your Representative of choice, or just start here:

Text

and plow ahead, starting at Page: H1492. This is the official start of the debate on the non-binding resolution, which started February 13. Click "Next Document" to go to the next page(s). Even though this is the official start to the debate, there was already pre-debate on Monday the 12th (see below).

The video for this is still up at c-span.org: Video

The search page for the Congressional Record of the 110th Congress is here:

thomas.loc.gov/home/r110query.html
Link

If you want to find Dennis Kucinich's remarks, for example, click on the above link and scroll down to Kucinich, highlight him, then select "Sort results by Date: Yes". Click "Search". The most recent remarks will be at the top of the Results page. Click on the page you want, then search for "Kucinich". Then click into THAT page, if you have to.

For the really adventurous of you, you can select the Congressional Record by day. Monday, February 12, 2007, in the House, starts here:

thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r110:H12FE7-0001:
Link

You can see that this is the "110"th Congress, The "H"ouse, the "12"th of "FE"bruary, the year 200"7", and this is page "0001":

The Senate discussion on this Resolution, on Saturday, February 17, is not up yet. However, there is very addicting stuff on Friday the 16th:

thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r110:S16FE7-0001:
Link

I've created groups for all 18 Ohio Congressional Districts and one group for the Next Ohio Senator.

I envision these groups as a clearing house for facts pertaining to Candidates' records, in order to cut down on the amount of reaearch we will need to do on candidates in the runup to the '08 election cycle ('10 for Senator).