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Final Argument: Why You Must Break The Chabot Habit

Here we are, on the precipice of one of the most important elections this country has ever seen. So we can respond to all the Chabot lies, the ones The Enquirer, Politifact and other objective sources have had to debunk again and again and again, but I think we’ll just point out why it is so very important that you vote against Steve Chabot on November 6th.
As many of you have probably figured out from all the lies he tells (probably one for every hair he’s lost on his head) Chabot lacks the basic character to represent us in Washington. Whatever he once was–perhaps he was once a more reasonable, approachable person back at some point during the 40 years he’s been running for office and quarter-century since he’s been a creature of Washington DC–he no longer is.
You can tell this right away by what happened this weekend. Members of Congress are supposed to, first and foremost, revere the Constitution, and care about the culture and governance of this great country. This would include not making baseless charges against your opponent you know to be bunk, just to inflame the passions of the most unstable people out there.
The same week we had the largest mass-assassination attempt in U.S. History, with bombs sent to two former Presidents, a former Secretary of State, philanthropist, actor/director, news organization targeted for murder, and when others were murdered just for the color of their skin or way they choose to worship, we were learning that all of Chabot’s loose talk about Aftab Pureval going to jail was exactly what you would think it was: Slander.
Pureval was fully cleared by the Board of Elections–save a $100 fine for a clerical error–even though Chabot spent months being a drama queen, saying Pureval had done something illegal (he didn’t) and would go to jail (laughable). Especially during these times, this is not the kind of person we should have representing us in Washington.
Of course, Chabot’s record only gets worse from there: He used his campaign account to launder $170,000 to his son-in-law for a non-existent website. Both federal and state authorities are actually looking into the potential illegality of this. He has spent over $1,000,000 of our money, according to the Dayton Daily News–more than any other member of Congress from Ohio–to travel the world. He claims it was to visit troops and war zones, but I don’t remember the front lines being in such non-hot spots as Australia, New Zealand, and Paris. Good wine, food, weather, sure! Not so much on the troops.
He, from his perch on The Judiciary Committee, launched politicized, slanderous attacks against American law enforcement, those who put their lives on the line to protect us, because they dare do the job he refuses to do checking the power of a President many Americans think have overstepped his bounds.
Chabot also refuses to have anything to do with his actual constituents. He refuses to conduct town halls, a basic feature of our democracy, where those who represent us actually listen to the views of those whom they govern. Chabot has not had one in 1900 days–there are first graders born since Steve Chabot deemed his constituents worthy of hearing from directly. He claims his tele-town halls are the same thing, which of course is patently ridiculous when you have your aides screen what questions are allowed to be asked, who is allowed to join in and you don’t have to look into the eyes of the people who’s healthcare you just cavalierly killed.
Maybe this is why Chabot can vote for a ridiculous tax bill that gave 83% of its benefits to the wealthiest one percent and large, multinational corporations, often not even headquartered in this country, much less in the state or district from which he hails. That this tax cut has driven our deficit up 17%, and will lead to $1.9 TRILLION more in debt overall, unprecedented during good economic times, seems to be A-OK with Chabot.
Let’s put it this way: Chabot’s colleague, Congressman Vern Buchanan, bought an Ocean Alexander Yacht worth at least $3.25 MILLION the day the tax cut passed, but Chabot wouldn’t even deign to attend a question-and-answer event with the NAACP or even fill out the form they sent to him regarding his views. He can’t even explain why he would do such a thing as vote against funding for the Violence Against  Women Act (VAWA). Who do you think he represents, the Vern Buchanan’s or people who live in his district and work every day to pay the bills and give their family a piece of The American Dream?
Regular people drive on roads and bridges, and it actually matters to them that the Brent Spence Bridge and Western Hills Viaduct do not come crashing down on their families.  55,000 people travel over the Western Hills Viaduct each day, and ironically (or perhaps not) no major repairs have been done on it since 1977, or the first year Chabot started running for political office. A piece of debris came crashing down on a driver’s car last year, and it’s been rated structurally deficient. Meanwhile, The Brent Spence Bridge was declared “functionally obsolete,” meaning it could no longer handle its traffic, in 1998! Chabot had already been in Congress two terms then–what the hell has he been doing all this time while not getting money to fix these dangerous thoroughfares? Oh, that’s right, that flight to Australia is a day each way, isn’t it?
Finally, there is the saga of Chabot and our healthcare. This one should be well known to you by now, but we can repeat it one, last time. Steve Chabot voted 56 times to rip healthcare away from 304,600 of his constituents, 4.8 million Ohioans and 130 million Americans who have pre-existing conditions. He continues to promise to do it again while offering vague and bogus assurances that people with pre-existing conditions will be protected.
Do you believe a guy who already voted 56 times to eliminate your healthcare when they say “no, really, this time I’ll protect you!”? He would also eliminate Medicaid funding with these votes, which would confiscate healthcare from 700,000 Ohioans.
As if this were not irresponsible enough, that same vote that got his buddy Vern a yacht, also eliminated the individual mandate, #Chabotaging healthcare for all Americans, and leading to a nearly 17% spike in premium rates for Ohioans. So even if you got the pathetic $800 many of those who are not members of Chabot’s country club managed to eke out of his tax cut, you’d better save it for the extra $1000 a year in premiums he has now made sure you have to pay. What a deal! His 56 votes against healthcare also included an age tax for those over 55, and his tax vote actually raised taxes on many Ohioans. Tell me again whose side Chabot’s on?
We finish the way we started–by pointing out that whatever Chabot once was, living the high life in Washington has changed him. He doesn’t represent actual, regular people anymore. He won’t meet with you, answer your questions, he definitely won’t protect your healthcare or fix your bridges. Unless you max out a donation to his campaign, that is. We can do better, Southwest Ohio can do better, than Steve Chabot.
On November 6th, send him into the retirement he so richly deserves by voting against Steve Chabot. 

Steve can dish it out, but he sure can’t take it

Steve Chabot provided us with another one of his patented “whiny/I’m a victim/where’s my fainting couch” blog posts this past week. Who knew Steve was such a little snowflake who is obviously deeply hurt because someone defaced one of his signs–something that happened to signs I had in my yard at least a half dozen times last campaign cycle, but I didn’t take to the internet to cry about it. Also because he can’t lie his way out of having voted again and again and again to eliminate protections for the 306,400 folks in his district with pre-existing conditions, which would have left them with zero insurance and put their families at peril. 

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Steve tries to play up the “civility” talking point too because he can tell a joke insulting “liberals” onstage with his BFF Donald Trump, but God forbid anyone says anything back to him. Then, he gets pouty.
Steve, of course, doesn’t mention:
Civility only matters to Steve when he’s trying to stop people from pointing out his record of trying to cut everyone’s healthcare, creating a $1.9 trillion hole in our budget with his ridiculously flawed tax plan that gave 83% of its benefits to big corporations or the richest 1% who donate to Steve’ campaign, his 1900+ day without a town hall, laundering campaign funds to his son in law for a nonexistent website or using our money to take millions of dollars worth of trips to known war zones like Australia and New Zealand.
  . 
I guess this is what we should expect from a do-nothing, 22-year DC-dweller, who is desperate to hold onto the perks and power of his job. But we can and should expect more from the person in Congress representing us, which is Mr. Chabot is in great need of being retired at the ballot box in a few weeks, so he can take long, pensive walks and take more creepy pictures of himself eating ice cream alone.

I’ve been framed! And other Chabot nonsense

I’ve been framed! This is what Steve Chabot’s most recent attempt at a blog could be called. Woe is him.
Anyone who criticizes him–be it media outlets, Politifact, other Republicans, all are just being biased. By definition, if they’re saying he’s lying, it must be a liberal conspiracy or fake news because, of course, we know Steve Chabot couldn’t actually be lying.
First Steve toots his own horn for supposedly inventing the phrase “politics is a contact sport.” Congrats.
Then he goes into the meat of his post, that he’s being unfairly blamed for voting for congressional pay because it was part of a bigger bill. Yet, he has voiced public support for ads attacking his opponent for working at a law firm that came to an agreement with a foreign a country that he sees as distasteful–even though his opponent was just one of 2,000 lawyers in 29 countries working for the firm in question, and never had anything to do with this specific deal like 1,997 other lawyers at the firm.
The kicker: Congress (e.g. Mr. Chabot) unanimously voted this it into law, and Republican President George W. Bush signed it. That’s right, Chabot thinks it’s fair to attack his opponent for a deal he had nothing to do with, and that he, Chabot, voted for.
He goes onto whine about how he is hit in ads by an independent group for traveling to 79 countries and spending our money to do it–and mentions having to go to war zones and refugee camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Darfur, Sudan.
Great, now about the other 73 countries he didn’t mention, any chance one of them is Monaco, Italy Ireland, Australia or New Zealand? In fact, as The Dayton Daily news pointed in 2013, Chabot forgot to mention some of these in disclosure forms because of “clerical oversight.” Uh huh.
The article goes on to point out that Chabot traveled the fourth most out of 435 members of Congress, and the most of any member of Congress from Ohio.
Reminder: He spent a quarter of a million dollars of our taxpayer money on these trips. Any wars going on with US ground troops in New Zealand of which we were unaware?
Finally, Chabot gets very defensive when various objective outlets point out he has been in Congress for 22 years and has done nothing. On this one, I guess I have to agree.
He has also voted for a tax bill that has helped sabotage–or #Chabotage–healthcare premiums for residents of his district so they will pay $650 more per individual and $2070 per family, managed to create a projected $1.9 trillion–with a T!–more in debt for us to have to repay while reserving 83% of its benefits for his wealthiest donors and multinational corporations. 
So, Chabot did manage to do that. We should give him proper credit.

A Letter To Steve Chabot–Let’s Try The Truth, OK?

Congressman Chabot, once again this week in your blog you attempt to hide your record, misdirect the gaze of weary voters and pretend you have their best interests at heart.

Why not just unburden yourself and tell the truth. Honestly, you’ll feel so much better. Not sure, ok, I’ll help.

After some impressive caterwauling about your electoral predicament to start, you once again try and tout a tax dodge passed by GOP partisans, also taking credit for our currently robust economy again. Well, the public has caught on to what a mess your tax plan is, which is why by 2:1 margin they have concluded that it really benefitted the rich with scraps for everyone else.
Your own polls are saying this!
To be exact, 83% of the benefits went to multinational corporations and the wealthiest 1%: your donors. Not the middle class or the impoverished and certainly not small business. But your pal and fellow Congressman Vern Buchanan did get to buy himself a shiny, new yacht the day you passed it. So you got that going for you.
As for the economy, we have enjoyed the most consecutive months with job growth since they started measuring the statistic in the 1930s.
Donald Trump’s policies—such as they are—have only been in place since late January of last year. I’ll do the math for you.
He’s been in office for a year and eight months, and this trend has been going since October 2010. In case your memory has blocked who was President the rest of that time, may I introduce you to someone named President Barack Obama.
Your tax plan, meanwhile, has left wages flat, or even declining, unlike your blog about how wages “are starting to increase.” Is that kinda like how you are “just getting started” in office even though you’ve been running since 5 years before LeBron James was born?
Finally, you boldly attack Obamacare again, which is good. It reminds people you voted 56 times to dismantle the Affordable Care Act with no alternative plan in sight. 56 times you would’ve deprived 306,400 people in your district of healthcare because they have a pre-existing condition—pregnancy, anxiety, acne, or one of  MANY other conditions that affect 130 million Americans.
Of course, that was also 56 times you would have kicked young people under 26 off their parents’ healthcare without a second thought. 56 times you would have ended Medicaid for up to 700,000 Ohioans.
You’re not a victim of your economic success, Congressman. You’re someone who’s been in Congress for two and a half decades with nothing to show for it. Which has led you to lie in your ads, and take weird, desperate, lonely pictures of yourself eating ice cream in your campaign T-shirt.
You’re not just getting started, Congressman. You’re just getting ended.

Congressman Steve Chabot: Still Lying, Clearly Panicking

In today’s blog ramblings of a panicking Steve Chabot, we have what else, but the red-faced, irrational screams that  “the mean Dems are going to impeach!!”

The part he leaves out is that it’s not Washington that is crying out for change. But his own constituents! Why is this, you might ask?

Many reasons. To begin, Congressman Chabot’s constituents are paying $1,480 more for their health care premiums because of his #Chabotage and have seen almost zero benefits from his tax bill unless they’re among the yacht-owning class. 306,400 of us will lose their healthcare altogether if we have pre-existing conditions because the Trump Administration’s suing to do just that–and Chabot, of course, lacks the courage to utter a single word about it, as he bows before a President he votes with 96% of the time.

So Chabot thinks he can dazzle with smoke & mirrors, hopefully redirecting attention from this record of cutting your healthcare so he can cut corporate taxes by yelling “but they want impeachment(!!)” at the top of his lungs while stomping his feet.

Chabot, of course, is throwing out these lame attacks because 538 just moved his race to Lean Democrat, and he’s scared:

The Congressman, who has basically been running for office or in office his entire adult life (nearly 40 years), doesn’t know what he’ll with himself when he loses. He’s got a cold sweat congealing just above his brow, thinking about how he might even have to get a real job! Basically, much like Brooks in Shawshank Redemption, Chabot’s been in Washington so long he’s been institutionalized.

He also knows you might actually read objective sources that make clear he’s lying about how he voted 50+ times to cancel your healthcare if you have pre-existing conditions–not to mention if you’re on Medicaid, or under 26 and on your parents’ insurance. This isn’t debatable. He voted for a plan to rip away our health insurance. No alternative existed when he did this. The end.

But perhaps funniest, is when this guy whose entire career has been funded by the worst kinds of special interests, including The Koch Brothers,  Big Oil and the NRA–the latter of which has given him more rubles…or dollars than all other member of the House from Ohio—yet in his blog he whines about liberal, interest-group money like he’s some kind of victim.  Then has the audacity to ask for money from whomever actually reads his blog.

To pick just one industry that’s bought and paid for Steve Chabot’s record, we give you Big Pharma. While an opioid crisis largely of their making is raging in Ohio, Chabot’s taken over $115,000 from big drug companies. What did they get for this? They got $14 billion back from his sham of a tax bill. What did you get back? A 200% increase in the prices of 20 of the most needed prescriptions. It would seem the Pharma Bros made out better than the rest of us.

Don’t fall for Chabot’s act. He knows he’s on the clock now, and his time doing the bidding of foreign corporations and his wealthy donors, while he and his buddies laugh at the rest of us, will soon be at an end.

Fact Checking Steve Chabot’s Fact Checking…Or, Steve Chabot’s Lying Again

Congressman Steve Chabot can’t do a lot of things. He can’t seem to hold town halls. Or pass a tax cut where more than scraps go to most of his constituents. Yet clearly one thing he’s rather adept at is reading polls—especially the ones that say health care is the most important issue this election. This is why he has a new blog and TV ad, both trying to pass off the same phantom claim as truth—that he somehow supports requiring protections for those of us with pre-existing conditions.
Spoiler alert: He doesn’t.
Chabot voted over 50 times to rip health care away from the 306,400 of his constituents who have pre-existing conditions (this includes over 41,000 children). These votes took place with no alternative offered by Chabot and his colleagues. So yeah, he voted over 50 times to take away your health care if you’ve been pregnant or have arthritis, asthma, cancer, unusual menstrual cycles, acne, obesity, anxiety or any number of other conditions.
When it comes to the healthcare bill he actually supported—Trumpcare—Chabot conveniently forgets to mention The McArthur Amendment that was part of the bill. Ya see Chabot’s Three-Card Monte game here was that while you had to technically be covered if you had a pre-existing condition, the bill removed ACA protections so insurers could charge you a ton more because of your pre-existing condition. So just as you’re not forbidden from buying a Lamborghini, you were guaranteed the right to buy care under his bill. You just would have absolutely no way of affording either–the latter, because, you guessed it, your pre-existing condition.
Finally, as he pushes his false line, the President who Chabot quotes in his blog, Donald Trump, is suing in federal court to overturn pre-existing condition protections under the Affordable Care Act. Have you heard your Congressman, Mr. Chabot, utter a single word of criticism for or disagreement with this craven action by the Trump Administration?
If you did, you’d have to have ESP. Much like how he’s a no-show at town halls or in holding Trump accountable for anything he says or does, he’s also a no-show when it comes to protecting health care for those of us with pre-existing conditions.

Factcheck: Steve Chabot’s Blog Misleads The Public

Congressman Steve Chabot, in his latest blog post at stevechabot.com, is doing everything he can to avoid admitting the simple truth: He has voted to gut your health care every single time he’s had the chance, with absolutely no alternative plan of any kind to provide you with coverage. He’s done this because he needed funds to pay for the massive tax dodge for his donors, including foreign corporations lacking any presence in OH-1. 
We’ll get into the details further down, but it’s important to note that Chabot begins his dark tirade by charging that Democrats are “desperate for power.” This claim, mind you, comes from someone who is 65-years old, and with the exception of two years after he lost his reelection in 2008, has clung to political office like a lifeboat since 1985, or over half his life. He started running for office (Cincinnati City Council) in 1979 when hostages were being held in Iran, Disco was popular and live programming on cable tv was yet to be created.
Who’s desperate for power, again?
Chabot goes on to claim that “the truth is becoming a casualty of their desire to win at any cost.” With the exception of the fact he should have used “my” instead of “their,” I agree. So let’s get into the truth, vs the claims Chabot makes in his mini-diatribe.
Chabot starts by trying to claim his tax cut has been a huge success. Well, not so much for most of us. For his colleague, multimillionaire Florida Congressman, Vern Buchanan, the day Chabot passed this awful tax bill was indeed a great day. He got himself a shiny new 73-foot Ocean Alexander Yacht he named “Entrepreneur.” With borrowed funds. From a foreign bank–BMO Harris, a subsidiary of The Bank of Montreal–that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for and would benefit mightily from this large-scale tax dodge.
The average resident of South Lebanon, Cheviot or Cincinnati, to put it kindly, did not see these tax benefits. They saw $629. Of course, with the average spike in insurance premiums of $1,480 for Ohioans, because of this tax bill and the elimination of the individual mandate contained therein, most of us end up paying an $851 more. Let’s call it The Chabot Tax. Meanwhile, Chabot’s dark-money donors and foreign, corporate friends got the real tax cut, the one averaging $148,260 more in their pockets for earning over $5 million per year. Meanwhile, this added $1.9 trillion to our debt. That’s right, Chabot, who has run over the years by labeling himself a “fiscal conservative,” just added $1,900,000,000,000 to our debt.
Then there’s health care. Chabot claims he planned to not just repeal the Affordable Care Act,  which included voting to force the 306,400 residents of the district he supposedly represents who have pre-existing conditions to pray for divine assistance if they get sick. To “replace it with a better health care plan.” Have you seen that plan?
He had seven years to put it together while he voted over 50 times to take away your protections if you have a pre-existing condition–such as having been pregnant or having arthritis—and if that plan existed he sure didn’t share it with anyone during that time. He did vote, however, to kill Medicaid funding for the 700,000 Ohioans who rely on it, including 200,000 who need Medicaid for mental health and addiction services to combat the opioid plague that has swept our region and much of the country. He also voted to crush your guarantee that you can stay on your parents’ health care until you are 25. And his aforementioned vote to purposely damage, or #Chabotage, the Affordable Care Act, has led to a 17% spike in premiums for all of us.
Add in the flat, and often declining wages for most workers delivered by Chabot’s full embrace of Trumpenomics, including jobs leaving the region they were promised would still be here. All while 200,000 people making over $1 million per year eat up 44% of the tax breaks promised to small businesses, and we see $1 trillion in stock buybacks to enrich big corporate executives by the end of this year.
I’m guessing now you’ll understand why Chabot, like President Trump, is bobbing, weaving, deflecting and denying in his blog post. He knows it’s better than to share the truth about his record (this may also be why he is too scared to hold real townhalls where he might have to talk to actual humans not pre-approved by his staff).
So, how do you like Chabot now? According to The Cook Political Report, it seems not so much.