Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.
I've tried with varying degrees of success to live up to that jounalistic mission in my 22 years as a reporter and with this blog. Blogging has been one of the few pleasures of unemployment, but I'm suspending this blog to avoid the apperance of a conflict of interest in my new job at a Northeastern Ohio newspaper.
I'm grateful to my new employers and to have found a job in this wretched economy in which there are five unemployed Americans for every job. http://workplacepsychology.net/2010/07/21/5-unemployed-americans-competing-for-1-available-job/ Given the "burn the village to save it" economy strategy of Republicans and the acquiescence of many top Democrats, things are only going to get worse and I have tremendous empathy for unemployed people.
However, this is a bittersweet moment for me. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love being a reporter. I was the 8-year-old who ran home to watch the Watergate hearings on television, hung out at court trials on my summer vacations as a teenager and drove around with my portable scanner on days off while a crime reporter.
Unemployment was frightening and frustrating but this blog was a respite. It freed me from the constraints of conventional journalism and allowed be to be an activist/ journalist. Some people say you can't be both, but I disagree.
Some bloggers piggyback off the work of mainstream journalists to take cheap shots and pontificate. I believe the role of a blogger is to offer fact-based analysis and opinion that too often gets lost in the daily mainstream media cycle of he said/she said, who's up, who's down?, journalism.
As a blogger I didn't have to walk the fine line between writing analytical, fact-based journalism that offers context and perspective and editorializing. Reporters don't have that luxury, but too often they either play it safe or become co-opted by the people they're supposed to be holding accountable.
A reporter has an obligation to be fair, but I don't believe that should stop us from crusading against injustice no matter how lofty that goal may sound. I've had the pleasure of working with some outstanding editors and reporters during my career, but also too many reporters who were essentially stenographers.
Our job is to hold the powerful accountable. Not the "manufacture of consent" for them, a phrase coined by the rightwing journalist Walter Lippmann who belived the elite needed to control the masses. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Walter_Lippmann
As I grew more experienced as a reporter I began to understand that being fair is not always being balanced. If I wrote about a Holocaust survivor I didn't feel the need to insert a quote from a Holocaust denier. While seeking quotes from child molesters and neo-Nazis when writing about them, I didn't feel that I needed to approach the story with " an open mind" about them, just treat them fairly.
Too often reporters draw false equivalents between two sides either in a mistaken attempt at balance or out of fear of offending powerbrokers and losing access to them. That can often lead to a trip to the unemployment line.
Pretending both sides are equally to blame for an issue is also a convenient way to avoid taking sides. A good example is America's deficit and national debt.
Ronald Reagan, aka St. Reagan, ran up astronomical deficits and national debt with huge military spending and tax cuts for the rich. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26402-2004Jun8?language=printer
Bush II inherited an approximately $260 billion surplus from Bill Clinton and left Barack Obama with an approximately $1.3 trillion deficit. The deficit was primarily due to tax cuts for the rich, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and the Medicare Part D prescription drug giveaway to Big Pharma. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/08/deficit_numbers.html
In fairness, most Democrats supported the war and a handful voted for the tax cuts, but by and large the deficit was created by Republican initiatives. Yet the mainstream media's refusal to state the obvious has helped fuel the perception of tax and spend Democrats and thrifty Republicans.
Journalism should not be about false narratives. Whether you're a blogger or a reporter, good journalism is about rocking the boat which is how I came up with the name of this blog. But when you rock the boat, you better be prepared to swim for your life.
As a reporter I've challenged that conventional political wisdom and taken heat even though I had my facts right. Usually it was local powerbrokers protecting their turf, readers who'd become conditioned to he said/she said stenography, or cowardly bosses protecting their jobs.
While I confess to enjoying raising a little hell, my only agenda was accountability. Whether it was cops, corporations or politicans. I've questioned Democrats as fiercely as Republicans when they deserved it.
I grew up and spent most of my early career as a journalist in Connecticut where Democrats hold sway.
I angered Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd by questioning his ties to the insurance industry and Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro for supporting sending helicopters made in her district to the Colombian military despite it's atrocious human rights abuses documented by our own State Department. Then Republican Gov. John Rowland didn't appreciate my questions about his role in a deal with Enron that cost the state some $200 million (Rowland later went to jail for corruption unrelated to the Enron deal).
Anyone whose read this blog knows my feelings about Obama, aka The Great Capitulator, aren't much different than about Bush II. But that doesn't mean I won't acknowledge that Obama inherited a mess from Bush or that Republicans have been obstructing him since his election to the detriment of America.
While I've always tried to be fair and usually succeeded, writing a personal opinion blog while a working journalist could create the appearance of a conflict of interest. It's tricky ground.
Some journalists believe we shouldn't vote or make political contributions. Or get involved in any kind of political activity like attending antiwar or pro-war rallies, aka Support the Troops rallies.
I don't believe you should sacrifice all your duties or rights as a citizen when you become a journalist or paint yourself into a corner with restrictive rules. I think you should take it on a case by case basis.
I believe voting is not only a right, but a duty. And that journalists have a right to donate to causes or politicians they believe are worthy in the same way a citizen does.
But sometimes we have to take a step back. For instance, I strongly believe in the rights of all workers to collectively bargain. But I understand how a supporter of Ohio's new union busting law known as Senate Bill 5 could question my objectivity if I continued to blog critically about it and then had to report on it. I would honor my responsibility to be fair, but it could unfairly draw heat on my employer.
Ideally, I would be a columnist and get paid to give my opinions. But that isn't my new job.
I want to thank the people who have taken the time to read this blog. Your comments online and in person have made all the time I've put into it worthwhile.
I'll continue to to try to ask hard questions and tell hard truths as a journalist whatever the consequences. That's what we're supposed to do.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Burn the Village
We must burn the village to save it.
That was the American strategy for victory in Vietnam and a good description of the Republican economic strategy for America and Ohio which many Democrats, including our impotent president, are caving in to.
The $38 billion in federal cuts proposed by Republicans and agreed to last Friday by President Obama, aka The Great Capitulator, will severely punish Americans for a deficit and national debt they are not responsible for. The proposal, expected to be approved this week by Congress, is economic and environmental assault. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/us/politics/12congress.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24
Among the cuts are $1.6 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency, which will make it even more of a lapdog to industry than the watchdog it is supposed to be. The budget cuts $47 million for climate change reduction and $10 million for food safety and inspection.
It eliminates $1 billion in proposed spending for high speed rail which would have increased jobs and decreased pollution and plays into the hands of Republican governors like Ohio's Gov. John Kasich who have rejected federal high speed rail money. Their hollow argument that their states couldn't afford to pay their share of the projects further addicts Americans to oil as gas prices inch toward $4 per gallon.
The shameful budget cuts clean energy programs and Pell Grants for summer school students. It even cuts $4 billion for compensation to crime victims.
Ohio's budget is just as bad. "The jobless budget," is how Democratic State Rep. Dennis Murray of Sandusky described it in a Monday night budget presentation.
The biennial budget will force county and local government leaders to take the blame for raising local taxes to compensate for cuts. Erie County, the county I live just outside of in Sandusky County, will see a 21 percent cut in state funding in 2012 ($400,000) and a 36 percent cut in 2013 ($510,498), according to Murray.
The budget paves the way for oil drilling in state parks and privatization of the Ohio Turnpike. It privatizes five state prisons with the $200 million in one-time revenue, in no way compensating for the private prisons never having to pay local or property taxes. Hospital funding will be cut by $597 million while nursing home funding will be cut by $472 million.
Meanwhile, in true reverse Robin Hood fashion, there are $800 million in tax cuts with 40 percent going to the wealthiest 5 percent of Ohioans, Murray said. And over $7 billion in tax breaks for businesses. http://www.policymattersohio.org/pdf/TaxExpendituresReportESum2011.pdf
"These budget cuts are about people," Murray told the audience of about 50 people at the Erie County Office Building. "Living in a civilized society has a cost and it (the budget) worsens it."
Sadly, the cuts are just the beginning as the assault on America escalates to economic and environmental rape. About two-thirds of the $4 trillion in cuts proposed in Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin's "Path to Prosperity" budget plan over the next 10 years would impact disadvantated and poor Americans including $2.9 trillion in Medicare cuts. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3451
And putting a lie to talk by Democrats and Republicans of shared sacrifice, the Ryan plan cuts about $2.9 trillion over 10 years for corporations and the superrich. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=2969&DocTypeID=5
Don't count on Obama to fight hard against the Republicans. Obama is the kind of guy who would expect you to be grateful for him getting you a tent after the Republicans threw you out of your house. Rather than debate whether cutting spending after the worst recession since the Great Depression is a good idea, Obama has allowed Republicans to frame the debate over how much to cut.
In a budget speech Wednesday, Obama is expected to champion the recommendations of the chairmen of his Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform nicknamed the Catfood Commission because that's what the elderly will have to eat with the cuts in Medicare and Social Security the commission recommends.
Two-thirds of the plan by Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, the committe co-chairs, recommends cutting costs rather than raising revenue. It reduces the tax rate while raising the retirement age and includes spending freezes that will handcuff government's ability to provide essential services. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3325
Someone asked Murray what could be done to fight the cuts. He suggested letter writing to politicians and local newspapers which is a good idea, but just a first step.
Talk to everyone you interact with each day about why the cuts are bad and how it will affect them. The clerk at the convenience store or supermarket. The mechanic who changes the oil in your car. Your co-workers, friends and neighbors.
Keep it simple. Compare deficit spending to taking out car or college loans or second mortgages. Compare cutting spending in this morbid economy to conserving water when you're house is burning down.
Groups of us will also have to confront our politicians at events. Not in a nasty way like the Tea Party, but in a contstructive, forceful way. Non-violent resistance or sitdown strikes are also an option.
Agitate, educate and organize. But first get mad. Outrage breeds resistance.
That was the American strategy for victory in Vietnam and a good description of the Republican economic strategy for America and Ohio which many Democrats, including our impotent president, are caving in to.
The $38 billion in federal cuts proposed by Republicans and agreed to last Friday by President Obama, aka The Great Capitulator, will severely punish Americans for a deficit and national debt they are not responsible for. The proposal, expected to be approved this week by Congress, is economic and environmental assault. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/us/politics/12congress.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha24
Among the cuts are $1.6 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency, which will make it even more of a lapdog to industry than the watchdog it is supposed to be. The budget cuts $47 million for climate change reduction and $10 million for food safety and inspection.
It eliminates $1 billion in proposed spending for high speed rail which would have increased jobs and decreased pollution and plays into the hands of Republican governors like Ohio's Gov. John Kasich who have rejected federal high speed rail money. Their hollow argument that their states couldn't afford to pay their share of the projects further addicts Americans to oil as gas prices inch toward $4 per gallon.
The shameful budget cuts clean energy programs and Pell Grants for summer school students. It even cuts $4 billion for compensation to crime victims.
Ohio's budget is just as bad. "The jobless budget," is how Democratic State Rep. Dennis Murray of Sandusky described it in a Monday night budget presentation.
The biennial budget will force county and local government leaders to take the blame for raising local taxes to compensate for cuts. Erie County, the county I live just outside of in Sandusky County, will see a 21 percent cut in state funding in 2012 ($400,000) and a 36 percent cut in 2013 ($510,498), according to Murray.
The budget paves the way for oil drilling in state parks and privatization of the Ohio Turnpike. It privatizes five state prisons with the $200 million in one-time revenue, in no way compensating for the private prisons never having to pay local or property taxes. Hospital funding will be cut by $597 million while nursing home funding will be cut by $472 million.
Meanwhile, in true reverse Robin Hood fashion, there are $800 million in tax cuts with 40 percent going to the wealthiest 5 percent of Ohioans, Murray said. And over $7 billion in tax breaks for businesses. http://www.policymattersohio.org/pdf/TaxExpendituresReportESum2011.pdf
"These budget cuts are about people," Murray told the audience of about 50 people at the Erie County Office Building. "Living in a civilized society has a cost and it (the budget) worsens it."
Sadly, the cuts are just the beginning as the assault on America escalates to economic and environmental rape. About two-thirds of the $4 trillion in cuts proposed in Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin's "Path to Prosperity" budget plan over the next 10 years would impact disadvantated and poor Americans including $2.9 trillion in Medicare cuts. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3451
And putting a lie to talk by Democrats and Republicans of shared sacrifice, the Ryan plan cuts about $2.9 trillion over 10 years for corporations and the superrich. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=2969&DocTypeID=5
Don't count on Obama to fight hard against the Republicans. Obama is the kind of guy who would expect you to be grateful for him getting you a tent after the Republicans threw you out of your house. Rather than debate whether cutting spending after the worst recession since the Great Depression is a good idea, Obama has allowed Republicans to frame the debate over how much to cut.
In a budget speech Wednesday, Obama is expected to champion the recommendations of the chairmen of his Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform nicknamed the Catfood Commission because that's what the elderly will have to eat with the cuts in Medicare and Social Security the commission recommends.
Two-thirds of the plan by Democrat Erskine Bowles and former Republican Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson, the committe co-chairs, recommends cutting costs rather than raising revenue. It reduces the tax rate while raising the retirement age and includes spending freezes that will handcuff government's ability to provide essential services. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3325
Someone asked Murray what could be done to fight the cuts. He suggested letter writing to politicians and local newspapers which is a good idea, but just a first step.
Talk to everyone you interact with each day about why the cuts are bad and how it will affect them. The clerk at the convenience store or supermarket. The mechanic who changes the oil in your car. Your co-workers, friends and neighbors.
Keep it simple. Compare deficit spending to taking out car or college loans or second mortgages. Compare cutting spending in this morbid economy to conserving water when you're house is burning down.
Groups of us will also have to confront our politicians at events. Not in a nasty way like the Tea Party, but in a contstructive, forceful way. Non-violent resistance or sitdown strikes are also an option.
Agitate, educate and organize. But first get mad. Outrage breeds resistance.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
A Great Fight
A day after our impotent president refused to fight Republican blackmail by agreeing to $38 billion in devastating budget cuts to avoid a government shutdown, several thousand brave Ohioans refused to give in to Republican union busting.
Saturday's rally outside the statehouse in Columbus was the unofficial kickoff of a petiton drive for a November referendum to overturn Ohio's new union busting law that forbids strikes and collective bargaining over healthcare and pension benefits and workplace rules by public unions. The law, signed last month by Republican Gov. John Kasich who pushed it through the legislature, also allows local governments and schoolboards to decide on disputed contract negotiations rather than an neutral arbitrator virtually ensuring that union final offers will be rejected.
The public workers and their supporters refuse to be scapegoated for Ohio's approximately $8 billion shortfall which was mainly caused by tax cuts to the rich and corporations and Wall Street legalized theft that triggered the Great Recession.Unlike Obama, aka The Great Capitulator, public workers are willing to fight to prevent the middle class from being eviscerated and our nation turned into the have-nots and the have-a-lots.
They understand that when Congress approves tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans in December increasing the deficit by some $700 billion over 10 years, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/us/politics/11tax.html calls for "shared sacrifice" or Obama's Friday comment that, "we all must live within our means" are a joke. And the joke is on us.
"These policies that they are putting down our throat are the policies that led directly to the Great Depression," the Rev. Rod Kennedy, senior pastor at The First Baptist Church in Dayton, told the crowd. "They're not just trying to destroy collective bargaining, they're trying to turn you into indentured servants all over again."
Kennedy understands America is being transformed from The New Deal to The New Steal. That the new law, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 5, is just the latest in 30 years of reverse Robin Hood economics and taxation.
Speaking as if from the pulpit, Kennedy called the law part of a "century old grudge" by Republicans against unions. Recalling the bloody battles unions fought for child labor laws, a 40-hour work week and decent pay and working conditions, Kennedy called for a new fight.
"This is a great fight to be part of," he said. "This is our moment. Our chance to prove who we are and why we believe in the common good."
Kennedy was one of several inspiring speakers. Like the Columbus police officer paralyzed from the waist down after a 1998 shooting who noted that the new law forbids officers from negotiating over safety equipment like bullet proof vests or staffing.
The prison guard who supervises 120 prisoners in a pod at the maximum security prison in Mansfield with just one other guard. and worries about more cuts. Kasich is planning to privatize some of Ohio's prisons, a recipe for more violence and an incentive to keep prisons full rather than opting for far less expensive alternatives to incaceration.
There was a teacher who spoke of how eliminating teacher's seniority for a merit pay system will turn an atmosphere of "collaboration and cooperation" into one of "retalition and litigation." An Ohio Jobs and Family Service worker spoke of being foreclosed on and living paycheck to paycheck after an illness. "Life is not fair, but there is right and there is wrong and (Senate) Bill 5 is wrong," she said.
The woman mentioned that her union has endured two years of wage freezes and has give up 10 furlough days per years. Don't count on the past concessions unions have made getting much media coverage.
Sunday's misleading Op-ed in the non-union Sandusky Register by Managing Editor Matt Westerhold was typical of the editorials in most Ohio newspapers, most of which are non-union. (Full disclosure:: I was a reporter in 2005-06 for Register.)
Westerhold said a requirement that unions pay 15 percent of health benefits would be "locked in." Does he really think that percentage is in perpetuity? With unions unable to bargain over healthcare, what's to stop the state from increasing the percentage in future years?
Westerhold also employs a race to the bottom, split and divide mentality reasoning that since private unions were forced to make huge concessions years ago, so should public unions. Instead of calling for decent pay and benefits for all workers, whether they are unionized or not, Westerhold's logic is that since private union workers and non-union workers don't have decent pay and benefits, neither should public union workers.
Westerhold never mentions that the reason cities and states are cash strapped is because of financial deregulation voted for by people like Kasich when he was a congressman and public pension fund mismanagement by companies like Lehman Brothers, which Kasich worked for.
Westerhold mentions the high cost of healthcare, but never mentions this is due to our for-profit medical care system and that a single-payer system, essentially Medicare for all, would save some $400 billion per year by eliminating insurance companies from the health care equation. http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources
Instead, Westerhold writes that, "the days municipal unions demanded and received concessions almost at will are undoubtedly over." I've been a reporter for 20 years and I don't remember those days.
Whenever I wrote about public union contracts, unions were lucky to get 2 or 3 percent wage increases - barely enough to keep pace with inflation - and sometimes agreed to wage freezes and health benefit concessions.
Opponents of union busting have never recieved much media support, so negative editorials are nothing new. And in fairness, corrupt union leaders and the decisions of some union leaders to fight the firings of incompetent workers has damaged the reputation of the rank and file.
The truth is there is always deadwood, whether in a newsroom or a union shop. But the majority of union members are hardworking people who aren't getting rich, just like reporters. Government workers are our friends, family and neighbors and they deserve our support. Think about that when the petitions circulate.
Saturday's rally outside the statehouse in Columbus was the unofficial kickoff of a petiton drive for a November referendum to overturn Ohio's new union busting law that forbids strikes and collective bargaining over healthcare and pension benefits and workplace rules by public unions. The law, signed last month by Republican Gov. John Kasich who pushed it through the legislature, also allows local governments and schoolboards to decide on disputed contract negotiations rather than an neutral arbitrator virtually ensuring that union final offers will be rejected.
The public workers and their supporters refuse to be scapegoated for Ohio's approximately $8 billion shortfall which was mainly caused by tax cuts to the rich and corporations and Wall Street legalized theft that triggered the Great Recession.Unlike Obama, aka The Great Capitulator, public workers are willing to fight to prevent the middle class from being eviscerated and our nation turned into the have-nots and the have-a-lots.
They understand that when Congress approves tax cuts for the richest 2 percent of Americans in December increasing the deficit by some $700 billion over 10 years, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/us/politics/11tax.html calls for "shared sacrifice" or Obama's Friday comment that, "we all must live within our means" are a joke. And the joke is on us.
"These policies that they are putting down our throat are the policies that led directly to the Great Depression," the Rev. Rod Kennedy, senior pastor at The First Baptist Church in Dayton, told the crowd. "They're not just trying to destroy collective bargaining, they're trying to turn you into indentured servants all over again."
Kennedy understands America is being transformed from The New Deal to The New Steal. That the new law, commonly referred to as Senate Bill 5, is just the latest in 30 years of reverse Robin Hood economics and taxation.
Speaking as if from the pulpit, Kennedy called the law part of a "century old grudge" by Republicans against unions. Recalling the bloody battles unions fought for child labor laws, a 40-hour work week and decent pay and working conditions, Kennedy called for a new fight.
"This is a great fight to be part of," he said. "This is our moment. Our chance to prove who we are and why we believe in the common good."
Kennedy was one of several inspiring speakers. Like the Columbus police officer paralyzed from the waist down after a 1998 shooting who noted that the new law forbids officers from negotiating over safety equipment like bullet proof vests or staffing.
The prison guard who supervises 120 prisoners in a pod at the maximum security prison in Mansfield with just one other guard. and worries about more cuts. Kasich is planning to privatize some of Ohio's prisons, a recipe for more violence and an incentive to keep prisons full rather than opting for far less expensive alternatives to incaceration.
There was a teacher who spoke of how eliminating teacher's seniority for a merit pay system will turn an atmosphere of "collaboration and cooperation" into one of "retalition and litigation." An Ohio Jobs and Family Service worker spoke of being foreclosed on and living paycheck to paycheck after an illness. "Life is not fair, but there is right and there is wrong and (Senate) Bill 5 is wrong," she said.
The woman mentioned that her union has endured two years of wage freezes and has give up 10 furlough days per years. Don't count on the past concessions unions have made getting much media coverage.
Sunday's misleading Op-ed in the non-union Sandusky Register by Managing Editor Matt Westerhold was typical of the editorials in most Ohio newspapers, most of which are non-union. (Full disclosure:: I was a reporter in 2005-06 for Register.)
Westerhold said a requirement that unions pay 15 percent of health benefits would be "locked in." Does he really think that percentage is in perpetuity? With unions unable to bargain over healthcare, what's to stop the state from increasing the percentage in future years?
Westerhold also employs a race to the bottom, split and divide mentality reasoning that since private unions were forced to make huge concessions years ago, so should public unions. Instead of calling for decent pay and benefits for all workers, whether they are unionized or not, Westerhold's logic is that since private union workers and non-union workers don't have decent pay and benefits, neither should public union workers.
Westerhold never mentions that the reason cities and states are cash strapped is because of financial deregulation voted for by people like Kasich when he was a congressman and public pension fund mismanagement by companies like Lehman Brothers, which Kasich worked for.
Westerhold mentions the high cost of healthcare, but never mentions this is due to our for-profit medical care system and that a single-payer system, essentially Medicare for all, would save some $400 billion per year by eliminating insurance companies from the health care equation. http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources
Instead, Westerhold writes that, "the days municipal unions demanded and received concessions almost at will are undoubtedly over." I've been a reporter for 20 years and I don't remember those days.
Whenever I wrote about public union contracts, unions were lucky to get 2 or 3 percent wage increases - barely enough to keep pace with inflation - and sometimes agreed to wage freezes and health benefit concessions.
Opponents of union busting have never recieved much media support, so negative editorials are nothing new. And in fairness, corrupt union leaders and the decisions of some union leaders to fight the firings of incompetent workers has damaged the reputation of the rank and file.
The truth is there is always deadwood, whether in a newsroom or a union shop. But the majority of union members are hardworking people who aren't getting rich, just like reporters. Government workers are our friends, family and neighbors and they deserve our support. Think about that when the petitions circulate.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Piece Now
This week I applied for my Ohio permit to carry pistols and I believe law-abiding citizens have a right to carry guns because police cannot always protect us. However, the lax gun laws in this nation are insane and the gun industry and the politicians who support it have blood on their hands.
Annually, some 31,244 Americans die from gun violence including 12,632 who are murdered. http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence#NCIPC Yet even the Jan. 8th Tuscon massacre in which six people were killed and 13 people, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, were wounded, hasn't spurred change. Like renewing the assault weapons ban which expired in 2003 and banned sales of high capacity magazines like the 33-round clip used in the Tuscon shooting.
Commonsense tells you that you don't need 33 rounds to defend yourself and inconviencing shooters at shooting ranges by making them have to load more clips is a small price to pay to reduce the kind of carnage that occurred in Tuscon or in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that killed 33.
Another reasonable law would be to require all gun purchasers to obtain permits by undergoing criminal background checks and taking the education and gun safety class I attended on Sunday. In Ohio, everyone seeking to carry a concealed handgun must take the 12-hour class which includes demonstrating an ability to shoot safely and learning self-defense laws.
But instead of national requirements, states have a patchwork of laws. In Indiana, where I have a lifetime permit, no classes were required and all I had to do was pass a criminal background check.
Requiring purchasers of all types of guns to get permits and take the classes would discourage frivolous purchases. It would weed out people who literally can't shoot straight and would be a danger to themselves and others if allowed to purchase guns.
Many people have heard of the "gun show loophole" which allows purchases of guns without undergoing a criminal background check. But how many people are aware that in 45 states including Ohio, individuals who are not licensed gun dealers can sell guns to people without making the buyers undergo a criminal background check.
That's right. A licensed gun dealer has to jump through hoops, but not someone who “makes occasional
sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or
for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.” http://www.lcav.org/content/private_sales.pdf
The only exception in Ohio is in Columbus where private sellers must have a "weapon transaction permit."
Columbus, Ohio, Code §§ 2323.20, 2323.21 However, the Ohio legislature in 2006 passed a law saying state gun laws supercede local laws.
Since private transactions require no paperwork or identification verification, sellers aren't even required to check the buyers driver's license enabling underaged people to buy guns. The Columbine shooters used guns bought by a friend from a gun show dealer. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/opinion/27tue2.html?_r=1&ref=dylanklebold
Kevin Randleman, the suspect in the March 19 fatal shooting Sandusky, Ohio police Officer Andy Dunn, is a career criminal. It's unclear how the .38 caliber pistol used in the shooting was obtained by the shooter, but under Ohio's laws and the majority of other states, criminals like Randleman can buy guns with no questions in private sales. A 2000 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report found unlicensed sellers were involved in a fifth of the agency's gun trafficking investigations and linked to 23,000 diverted guns. http://www.lcav.org/content/private_sales.pdf
Republicans will fight the increases tooth and nail because they are completely subservient to the National Rifle Association. Here in Ohio, Republican US Sen. Rob Portman received the third highest NRA contributions - nearly $42,000 - in the last election. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=q13
However, President Obama aka The Great Capitulator, isn't much better. At the memorial to the Tuscon massacre victims, Obama waxed about 9-year-old victim Christina Green splashing through rain puddles in heaven. But he made no mention of banning the high capacity magazines used in her killing or did he mention gun control in his State of the Union speech.
The best Obama could do was a tepid editorial in the Arizona Star that while calling for faster and more thorough background checks made no mention of renewing the assault weapons ban or closing loopholes involving gun show or private sales of guns. http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_011e7118-8951-5206-a878-39bfbc9dc89d.html
The guys I took the gun class with are responsible gun owners who aren't looking to be vigilantes. They were told to call the police if there's a problem and that they only have the right to shoot as a last resort when their lives, or the lives of others, are endangered.
"At the end of the day, it's all about safe gun handling," our instructor told us. "The people who take this class aren't looking for problems. They're looking for protection."
The instructor made a legitimate complaint about businesses that post no gun signs making it illegal for licensed gun owners to carry in their establishments. Our instructor called them "criminal protection zones" noting criminals aren't likely to obey the signs.
But the instructor also said he believed requiring the class was, "an infringement on our rights." That's part of the problem: a belief by many gun owners that the Second Amendment means no restrictions whatsover on gun ownership. And that any laws are a slippery slope to government confiscation of all guns.
The NRA plays on this paranoia. I let my membership expire in disgust when during the pro-gun Bush II administration, the organization continued to stoke fears of confiscation.
The NRA's answer to gun violence is always to call for stricter sentencing of criminals without supporting laws to keep guns out of hands of criminals before they commit crimes. The carnage isn't just in the US. The majority of the guns seized in the horrendous Mexican drug war that has killed some 30,000 people since December of 2006 came from Texas and Arizona. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202663.html
Prior to the Giffords shooting, the Obama administration was planning to cut the BATF budget before reversing course and proposing increases. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/02/AR2011020205779.html
But it's not enough. Besides renewing the assault weapons ban and requiring all gun buyers to obtain permits, the BATF needs huge increases agents. The underfunded and the underfunded agency only has about 600 inspectors to check on the more than 100,000 licensed gun dealers who make some 8 million sales per year. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1618392,00.html
When I asked Sandusky Police Chief Jim Lang whether he supported renewal of the assault weapons ban he said yes, but that it wouldn't stop guns from getting into the hands of criminals. That's true, but his logic is flawed.
Airbags and seatbelts and stricter drunken driving laws didn't stop automobile deaths, but they reduced them. The same way stricter building codes and sprinkler systems reduced deadly fires. Reasonable laws that don't infringe on law-abiding gun owners like myself would do the same.
Yes, the NRA and the gun industry are powerful, but few things worth doing are easy. It's the least we owe Officer Dunn and all the other gun victims.
Annually, some 31,244 Americans die from gun violence including 12,632 who are murdered. http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence#NCIPC Yet even the Jan. 8th Tuscon massacre in which six people were killed and 13 people, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, were wounded, hasn't spurred change. Like renewing the assault weapons ban which expired in 2003 and banned sales of high capacity magazines like the 33-round clip used in the Tuscon shooting.
Commonsense tells you that you don't need 33 rounds to defend yourself and inconviencing shooters at shooting ranges by making them have to load more clips is a small price to pay to reduce the kind of carnage that occurred in Tuscon or in the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre that killed 33.
Another reasonable law would be to require all gun purchasers to obtain permits by undergoing criminal background checks and taking the education and gun safety class I attended on Sunday. In Ohio, everyone seeking to carry a concealed handgun must take the 12-hour class which includes demonstrating an ability to shoot safely and learning self-defense laws.
But instead of national requirements, states have a patchwork of laws. In Indiana, where I have a lifetime permit, no classes were required and all I had to do was pass a criminal background check.
Requiring purchasers of all types of guns to get permits and take the classes would discourage frivolous purchases. It would weed out people who literally can't shoot straight and would be a danger to themselves and others if allowed to purchase guns.
Many people have heard of the "gun show loophole" which allows purchases of guns without undergoing a criminal background check. But how many people are aware that in 45 states including Ohio, individuals who are not licensed gun dealers can sell guns to people without making the buyers undergo a criminal background check.
That's right. A licensed gun dealer has to jump through hoops, but not someone who “makes occasional
sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or
for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.” http://www.lcav.org/content/private_sales.pdf
The only exception in Ohio is in Columbus where private sellers must have a "weapon transaction permit."
Columbus, Ohio, Code §§ 2323.20, 2323.21 However, the Ohio legislature in 2006 passed a law saying state gun laws supercede local laws.
Since private transactions require no paperwork or identification verification, sellers aren't even required to check the buyers driver's license enabling underaged people to buy guns. The Columbine shooters used guns bought by a friend from a gun show dealer. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/opinion/27tue2.html?_r=1&ref=dylanklebold
Kevin Randleman, the suspect in the March 19 fatal shooting Sandusky, Ohio police Officer Andy Dunn, is a career criminal. It's unclear how the .38 caliber pistol used in the shooting was obtained by the shooter, but under Ohio's laws and the majority of other states, criminals like Randleman can buy guns with no questions in private sales. A 2000 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report found unlicensed sellers were involved in a fifth of the agency's gun trafficking investigations and linked to 23,000 diverted guns. http://www.lcav.org/content/private_sales.pdf
Republicans will fight the increases tooth and nail because they are completely subservient to the National Rifle Association. Here in Ohio, Republican US Sen. Rob Portman received the third highest NRA contributions - nearly $42,000 - in the last election. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=q13
However, President Obama aka The Great Capitulator, isn't much better. At the memorial to the Tuscon massacre victims, Obama waxed about 9-year-old victim Christina Green splashing through rain puddles in heaven. But he made no mention of banning the high capacity magazines used in her killing or did he mention gun control in his State of the Union speech.
The best Obama could do was a tepid editorial in the Arizona Star that while calling for faster and more thorough background checks made no mention of renewing the assault weapons ban or closing loopholes involving gun show or private sales of guns. http://azstarnet.com/news/opinion/mailbag/article_011e7118-8951-5206-a878-39bfbc9dc89d.html
The guys I took the gun class with are responsible gun owners who aren't looking to be vigilantes. They were told to call the police if there's a problem and that they only have the right to shoot as a last resort when their lives, or the lives of others, are endangered.
"At the end of the day, it's all about safe gun handling," our instructor told us. "The people who take this class aren't looking for problems. They're looking for protection."
The instructor made a legitimate complaint about businesses that post no gun signs making it illegal for licensed gun owners to carry in their establishments. Our instructor called them "criminal protection zones" noting criminals aren't likely to obey the signs.
But the instructor also said he believed requiring the class was, "an infringement on our rights." That's part of the problem: a belief by many gun owners that the Second Amendment means no restrictions whatsover on gun ownership. And that any laws are a slippery slope to government confiscation of all guns.
The NRA plays on this paranoia. I let my membership expire in disgust when during the pro-gun Bush II administration, the organization continued to stoke fears of confiscation.
The NRA's answer to gun violence is always to call for stricter sentencing of criminals without supporting laws to keep guns out of hands of criminals before they commit crimes. The carnage isn't just in the US. The majority of the guns seized in the horrendous Mexican drug war that has killed some 30,000 people since December of 2006 came from Texas and Arizona. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/12/AR2010121202663.html
Prior to the Giffords shooting, the Obama administration was planning to cut the BATF budget before reversing course and proposing increases. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/02/AR2011020205779.html
But it's not enough. Besides renewing the assault weapons ban and requiring all gun buyers to obtain permits, the BATF needs huge increases agents. The underfunded and the underfunded agency only has about 600 inspectors to check on the more than 100,000 licensed gun dealers who make some 8 million sales per year. http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1618392,00.html
When I asked Sandusky Police Chief Jim Lang whether he supported renewal of the assault weapons ban he said yes, but that it wouldn't stop guns from getting into the hands of criminals. That's true, but his logic is flawed.
Airbags and seatbelts and stricter drunken driving laws didn't stop automobile deaths, but they reduced them. The same way stricter building codes and sprinkler systems reduced deadly fires. Reasonable laws that don't infringe on law-abiding gun owners like myself would do the same.
Yes, the NRA and the gun industry are powerful, but few things worth doing are easy. It's the least we owe Officer Dunn and all the other gun victims.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
One Day Longer
Forty-three years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, his name was invoked Monday as I stood out in a downpour in solidarity with striking US Tsubaki workers in Sandusky, Ohio.
King died in Memphis in 1968 supporting striking garbage workers and while the circumstances were different, the fight for decent wages and working conditions is the same.
"Dr. King's dream is alive today and his mission is necessary today," speaker Jack Baker told the crowd of about 75 people. "This is not a black thing or a white thing or a global economy thing. This is an us thing. It's a right or wrong thing."
King has been mytholiged and sanitized over time. His non-violent movement was splintered by the time he was killed and the constant FBI harassment and death threats had taken a deep emotional toll on his psyche. His first march on behalf of the striker had ended in a riot and he had been urged by supporters not to return as author Hampton Sides documented in his recent book on the King assassination. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/books/22book.html
However, King felt obligated perhaps in part because the strike touched on both the racial and economic equality he had pushed for in the last years of his life. The Memphis strike was triggered by a garbage worker being mutilated after falling into an aging, unsafe truck. It was the last straw for the all black garbage workers who later became part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Conditions are not as harsh for Tsubaki workers, but that in no way makes their cause any less just. The workers - who make chains for conveyor belts and rollercoasters - are among the few Americans with decent manufacturing jobs in the 30 years since the deindustrialization of American began. After making wage concessions in the past, they refused to make huge healthcare concessions and struck in January with the company vowing to permanently replace them with strikebreakers.
The strike took courage. The deck is stacked against the workers with a lengthy complaint process with the National Labor Relations Board about whether replacing the workers is legal. And the Japanese-based company could eventually opt to close the plant.
But the workers, who weren't getting rich on wages of less than $20 an hour, have made a stand.
"I commend you for sticking together," Barbara Clark, a Tsubaki worker and local head of the Sandusky NAACP, told the workers. "It might get a little hard, but nothing worthwhile ever comes easy."
The Tsubaki worker's fight is our fight. As King wrote in a Letter From a Birmingham Jail, "an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. "
If we don't push back we're going to get rolled.Whether it's Ohio's new union busting law signed last week by Republican Gov. John Kasich which eviscerates collective bargaining rights http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/31/31-kasich-sign-sb5.html or the Republican's new federal budget proposal which shreds the social safety net and privatizes Medicare while cutting taxes for billionaires and millionaires http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12128/04-05-Ryan_Letter.pdf the middle class and the poor are under siege.
Like the Tsubaki strikers, we're the underdogs due to the enormous political clout of the corporations and superrich which severely undermines one person, one vote. But like the strikers, we can fight back.
Like the ballot initiative to overturn Ohio's union busting law. And local iniatives to recall politicans.
By confronting politicians in writing and in person - constructively challenging them with facts, not irrationally like the Tea Party - and letting them know that not only will we vote against them, but we'll support opponents. By getting our apathetic friends, family and neighbors to register to vote. And, if necessary, by getting arrested in non-violent protests like King.
"We'll be out here one day longer then they will be," Andy Campbell, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 54 assistant director, told the crowd.
Achieving economc and social justice is a neverending battle, but we can win if we're in it for the long haul. Together. One day longer.
King died in Memphis in 1968 supporting striking garbage workers and while the circumstances were different, the fight for decent wages and working conditions is the same.
"Dr. King's dream is alive today and his mission is necessary today," speaker Jack Baker told the crowd of about 75 people. "This is not a black thing or a white thing or a global economy thing. This is an us thing. It's a right or wrong thing."
King has been mytholiged and sanitized over time. His non-violent movement was splintered by the time he was killed and the constant FBI harassment and death threats had taken a deep emotional toll on his psyche. His first march on behalf of the striker had ended in a riot and he had been urged by supporters not to return as author Hampton Sides documented in his recent book on the King assassination. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/books/22book.html
However, King felt obligated perhaps in part because the strike touched on both the racial and economic equality he had pushed for in the last years of his life. The Memphis strike was triggered by a garbage worker being mutilated after falling into an aging, unsafe truck. It was the last straw for the all black garbage workers who later became part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Conditions are not as harsh for Tsubaki workers, but that in no way makes their cause any less just. The workers - who make chains for conveyor belts and rollercoasters - are among the few Americans with decent manufacturing jobs in the 30 years since the deindustrialization of American began. After making wage concessions in the past, they refused to make huge healthcare concessions and struck in January with the company vowing to permanently replace them with strikebreakers.
The strike took courage. The deck is stacked against the workers with a lengthy complaint process with the National Labor Relations Board about whether replacing the workers is legal. And the Japanese-based company could eventually opt to close the plant.
But the workers, who weren't getting rich on wages of less than $20 an hour, have made a stand.
"I commend you for sticking together," Barbara Clark, a Tsubaki worker and local head of the Sandusky NAACP, told the workers. "It might get a little hard, but nothing worthwhile ever comes easy."
The Tsubaki worker's fight is our fight. As King wrote in a Letter From a Birmingham Jail, "an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. "
If we don't push back we're going to get rolled.Whether it's Ohio's new union busting law signed last week by Republican Gov. John Kasich which eviscerates collective bargaining rights http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2011/03/31/31-kasich-sign-sb5.html or the Republican's new federal budget proposal which shreds the social safety net and privatizes Medicare while cutting taxes for billionaires and millionaires http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12128/04-05-Ryan_Letter.pdf the middle class and the poor are under siege.
Like the Tsubaki strikers, we're the underdogs due to the enormous political clout of the corporations and superrich which severely undermines one person, one vote. But like the strikers, we can fight back.
Like the ballot initiative to overturn Ohio's union busting law. And local iniatives to recall politicans.
By confronting politicians in writing and in person - constructively challenging them with facts, not irrationally like the Tea Party - and letting them know that not only will we vote against them, but we'll support opponents. By getting our apathetic friends, family and neighbors to register to vote. And, if necessary, by getting arrested in non-violent protests like King.
"We'll be out here one day longer then they will be," Andy Campbell, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 54 assistant director, told the crowd.
Achieving economc and social justice is a neverending battle, but we can win if we're in it for the long haul. Together. One day longer.
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Community Dialogue
When I saw the George W. Bush "Miss Me Yet?" and "Where is John Galt?" bumper stickers on the van outside the Sandusky Bay Cigar shop I visited Saturday in Sandusky, Ohio, I had a feeling I was in for a fight.
Inside the van owner was watching the Cleveland Indians game and calling for the New York Yankees, baseball's wealthiest team, to pay into a fund that could be used by poorer teams like the Indians, whenever the Yankees spend extravagantly on a baseball player. While a Yankee fan, I told the guy that I agreed with his idea since the Yankees - who benefit from being in a huge television market that enables them to consistently buy the best players, including former Indians - don't operate on a level playing field.
While the proudly libertarian guy was fine with redistributing the wealth of baseball's richest team to help the poor teams gain equality, sort of a sports version of socialism, it was a different story when I suggested we needed the superrich to pay their fair share of taxes. This was after the guy accused public workers of being lazy and overpaid.
I explained to the guy that as the son of a single mother who worked as a metermaid to put food on the table for me and was a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, I know that union benefits and wages are often the difference between being poor or middle class. And that having no union means being at the mercy of bosses who can make up the rules as they go along including trying to make workers do unpaid overtime or endure sexual harassment.
When he said that workers are free to hit the bricks if they don't like their boss, I noted that there are currently five Americans for every job http://workplacepsychology.net/2010/07/21/5-unemployed-americans-competing-for-1-available-job/
When he said that there would be more jobs if there were lower taxes I noted that the highest federal income tax rate was about 90 percent after The Great Depression and about 50 percent in 1981 when St. Reagan took over. During that time the US built a middle class and an infrastructure that were the envy of the world and rich people didn't starve. The top income tax rate now is 36 percent and Americans in 2009 paid the lowest amount of federal income tax since 1950. http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm
Things deteriorated from there. The guy said corporate CEOs deserved to be rewarded with bonuses for shipping jobs to China even if China uses child labor and prison labor. Despite the golden parachutes received by many of the CEOs responsible for the Wall Street crash, he insisted they would "pay for their mistakes." He said Donald Trump got rich from hard work.
I said relying on corporations to to police themselves was as effective as voluntary speed limits and that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a disciple of libertarian goddess Ayn Rand, was one of the biggest a-holes in the world and helped trigger the crash. By this time my $3.50 cigar had been smoked and strongly resisting the urge to threaten to kick the guy's fat libertarian ass all over the parking lot - in fairness he might have kicked my flaming liberal ass - I departed.
While I never could've changed the guy's closed mind, if I'd been more diplomatic, maybe I could've at least gotten him to agree that not all of us unemployed people want to be jobless and that most librarians and teachers aren't rich or lazy. Instead of talking to each other, we were talking at each other.
That's a shame because despite his worship of dog eat dog capitalism I don't doubt that the guy works hard and pays taxes, however reluctantly. Liberals like me don't want to take anything away from people like him, we just don't think it's fair that the wealthiest 1 percent, who earn about $1.137 million annually, just got a tax cut. And that the budget deficits in Ohio and around the US are largely due to the massive redistribution of wealth to the rich http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
I wish the libertarian guy and I communicated the way the people at a community meeting in Sandusky did a couple hours earlier. The meeting was called in the wake of the March 19 fatal shooting of Sandusky police Officer Andy Dunn. Dunn was white and the shooting suspect, career criminal Kevin Randleman, is black. That death unleased underlying racial tension in Sandusky, a mostly white city of about 26,000 in northwest Ohio.
The mostly black group of about 60 people talked about black and white churches working together to decrease violence by addressing issues like absentee parents and dysfunctional children. About volunteering in schools to provide children with the guidance and values they may not be getting at home.
They spoke about how police need to be respected, but also how all officers also need to show respect.
"The Officer Friendly you see on TV is not always the officer you see on the street," said one woman. "Authority needs to be tempered with a little compassion."
I spent a few minutes talking about the importance of pushing for stricter gun control and said it was the least we could do to honor Officer Dunn's memory. I told the audience that as a reporter I've seen the result of gun violence firsthand having visited dozens of homes of families whose loved ones were victims of gun violence. Dunn was one of about 31,244 who die of gun violence annually, 12,632 of whom were homicide victims.
I noted that criminals can't legally buy pistols like the .38 revolver used to kill Dunn meaning someone bought the gun legally and it was either part of a straw purchase, or stolen. I neglected to mention that in individual gun purchases not involving licensed gun sellers, the seller is not legally required to check if the buyer has a criminal background. That gives criminals a blank check.
Of course there will always be gun violence, but I pointed out that if all gun purchasers were required to go through the same one-day education and safety class required in Ohio to obtain a permit to carry pistols, it would discourage frivolous puchases and reduce the likelihood of guns ending up in the wrong hands.
As a gun owner who has pistol permits in Indiana and Michigan, I stressed that I'm not anti-gun, but that the lack of gun laws and lack of enforcement of them in this country is insane. I said they should lobby their politicians to renew the assault weapons ban which would reduce the kind of high capacity ammunition magazines used in the Virgina Tech and Tuscon massacres.
I told the audience they should go to Ohio US Sen. Rob Portman's area office and demand to speak to him about why he accepts donations from the National Rifle Association, an organization funded by the gun industry and dedicated to ensuring as many guns as possible are sold. Portman recieved the third highest contribution of Senate candidates in 2009-10. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=q1
Although the people who take part in these kinds of community meetings are well meaning, not a lot usually comes out of them. Nonetheless, it's important to keep the dialogue going because it's the first step to affecting postive change. I wish the libertarian guy had been there.
Inside the van owner was watching the Cleveland Indians game and calling for the New York Yankees, baseball's wealthiest team, to pay into a fund that could be used by poorer teams like the Indians, whenever the Yankees spend extravagantly on a baseball player. While a Yankee fan, I told the guy that I agreed with his idea since the Yankees - who benefit from being in a huge television market that enables them to consistently buy the best players, including former Indians - don't operate on a level playing field.
While the proudly libertarian guy was fine with redistributing the wealth of baseball's richest team to help the poor teams gain equality, sort of a sports version of socialism, it was a different story when I suggested we needed the superrich to pay their fair share of taxes. This was after the guy accused public workers of being lazy and overpaid.
I explained to the guy that as the son of a single mother who worked as a metermaid to put food on the table for me and was a member of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, I know that union benefits and wages are often the difference between being poor or middle class. And that having no union means being at the mercy of bosses who can make up the rules as they go along including trying to make workers do unpaid overtime or endure sexual harassment.
When he said that workers are free to hit the bricks if they don't like their boss, I noted that there are currently five Americans for every job http://workplacepsychology.net/2010/07/21/5-unemployed-americans-competing-for-1-available-job/
When he said that there would be more jobs if there were lower taxes I noted that the highest federal income tax rate was about 90 percent after The Great Depression and about 50 percent in 1981 when St. Reagan took over. During that time the US built a middle class and an infrastructure that were the envy of the world and rich people didn't starve. The top income tax rate now is 36 percent and Americans in 2009 paid the lowest amount of federal income tax since 1950. http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2010-05-10-taxes_N.htm
Things deteriorated from there. The guy said corporate CEOs deserved to be rewarded with bonuses for shipping jobs to China even if China uses child labor and prison labor. Despite the golden parachutes received by many of the CEOs responsible for the Wall Street crash, he insisted they would "pay for their mistakes." He said Donald Trump got rich from hard work.
I said relying on corporations to to police themselves was as effective as voluntary speed limits and that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a disciple of libertarian goddess Ayn Rand, was one of the biggest a-holes in the world and helped trigger the crash. By this time my $3.50 cigar had been smoked and strongly resisting the urge to threaten to kick the guy's fat libertarian ass all over the parking lot - in fairness he might have kicked my flaming liberal ass - I departed.
While I never could've changed the guy's closed mind, if I'd been more diplomatic, maybe I could've at least gotten him to agree that not all of us unemployed people want to be jobless and that most librarians and teachers aren't rich or lazy. Instead of talking to each other, we were talking at each other.
That's a shame because despite his worship of dog eat dog capitalism I don't doubt that the guy works hard and pays taxes, however reluctantly. Liberals like me don't want to take anything away from people like him, we just don't think it's fair that the wealthiest 1 percent, who earn about $1.137 million annually, just got a tax cut. And that the budget deficits in Ohio and around the US are largely due to the massive redistribution of wealth to the rich http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
I wish the libertarian guy and I communicated the way the people at a community meeting in Sandusky did a couple hours earlier. The meeting was called in the wake of the March 19 fatal shooting of Sandusky police Officer Andy Dunn. Dunn was white and the shooting suspect, career criminal Kevin Randleman, is black. That death unleased underlying racial tension in Sandusky, a mostly white city of about 26,000 in northwest Ohio.
The mostly black group of about 60 people talked about black and white churches working together to decrease violence by addressing issues like absentee parents and dysfunctional children. About volunteering in schools to provide children with the guidance and values they may not be getting at home.
They spoke about how police need to be respected, but also how all officers also need to show respect.
"The Officer Friendly you see on TV is not always the officer you see on the street," said one woman. "Authority needs to be tempered with a little compassion."
I spent a few minutes talking about the importance of pushing for stricter gun control and said it was the least we could do to honor Officer Dunn's memory. I told the audience that as a reporter I've seen the result of gun violence firsthand having visited dozens of homes of families whose loved ones were victims of gun violence. Dunn was one of about 31,244 who die of gun violence annually, 12,632 of whom were homicide victims.
I noted that criminals can't legally buy pistols like the .38 revolver used to kill Dunn meaning someone bought the gun legally and it was either part of a straw purchase, or stolen. I neglected to mention that in individual gun purchases not involving licensed gun sellers, the seller is not legally required to check if the buyer has a criminal background. That gives criminals a blank check.
Of course there will always be gun violence, but I pointed out that if all gun purchasers were required to go through the same one-day education and safety class required in Ohio to obtain a permit to carry pistols, it would discourage frivolous puchases and reduce the likelihood of guns ending up in the wrong hands.
As a gun owner who has pistol permits in Indiana and Michigan, I stressed that I'm not anti-gun, but that the lack of gun laws and lack of enforcement of them in this country is insane. I said they should lobby their politicians to renew the assault weapons ban which would reduce the kind of high capacity ammunition magazines used in the Virgina Tech and Tuscon massacres.
I told the audience they should go to Ohio US Sen. Rob Portman's area office and demand to speak to him about why he accepts donations from the National Rifle Association, an organization funded by the gun industry and dedicated to ensuring as many guns as possible are sold. Portman recieved the third highest contribution of Senate candidates in 2009-10. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=q1
Although the people who take part in these kinds of community meetings are well meaning, not a lot usually comes out of them. Nonetheless, it's important to keep the dialogue going because it's the first step to affecting postive change. I wish the libertarian guy had been there.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Thanks Gov. Kasich
Thank you Gov. John Kasich and your fellow Ohio Republicans for passing the union busting Senate Bill 5.
In the same way that you only stop a schoolyard bully by standing up to him, people have realized that they must fight back. Getting the 231,149 signatures for a referendum to overturn SB 5 will be an uphill battle, but it's better to go down fighting than let them take our lunch money forever.
We've been beaten down for a long time. Most Americans are apathetic and brainwashed into believing that government is always inept and a bogeyman rather than people like our postal workers, police soldiers and teachers. The idea that both political parties are corrupt and the power of corporations and the superrich trumps one person, one vote, has been too long used as an excuse to do nothing.
Juggling work and family responsibilites and struggling to make end's meet, it's understandable that most people don't know the minitiaue of politics nor should they be expected to. But the average American's political ignorance is stunning.
While most can rattle off the latest dirt about Hollywood celebrity train wrecks or sports trivia, less than a third know that a member of the House of Representatives serves two years and a US senator serves six years. About half of Americans think foreign aid is a major part of the federal budget rather than 1 percent of it.
During the impeachment of Bill Clinton, only 11 percent could identify the Supreme Court chief justice, as authors and political science proferssors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson documented in their book on how Republicans have dominated politics in the last 30 years. http://www.amazon.com/Off-Center-Republican-Revolution-Democracy/dp/0300108702
The pols, powerbrokers and pundits count on our ignorance and apathy. The idea that government is always bad and tax cuts are always good has been ingrained in our culture since the presidency of St. Reagan in 1981.
And our worship of celebrity and entertaiment has intensified just like the gap between the rich and poor. It would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. President Obama's Monday speech justifying taking us to war with Libya was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. to avoid interrupting Dancing With the Stars.
Apathy and ignorance also make us more gullible. That makes it easier to frame the debate. Instead of questioning whether the government should be making cuts after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the debate is over how much to cut.
Most of us nod are heads in agreement when politicians, including President Obama - AKA The Great Capitulator - tell us we need to tighten our belts and run the federal government like a household. As if households print money like the federal government and as if families don't do deficit spending in the form of bank, car and college loans, credit card purchases and second mortgages.
Despite the number of Americans living below the poverty line surging to 44 million http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17poverty.html the poor are almost never mentioned by politicians of either party. Attacks on the poor and middle class are camouflaged as fiscal austerity. And austerity is seen as virtuous even though deficit spending in the form of economic stimulus would create jobs, improve the infrastructure and increase tax revenue reducing deficits in the long term.
But Kasich and his fellow Republicans around Ohio and the nation overreached with their union busting. They counted on the tried and true split and divide tactics of class envy to pit neighbor against neighbor. But even if you don't know the Inside Baseball of economics, you know Wall Street banksters caused the Great Recession, not overpaying librarians and teachers.
And while just 11.9 percent of Americans are unionized, most know somebody who is in one or was in one. We may not be taught much in school about how unions fought for child labor laws and the 40-hour work week, but we know that our firefighters, police and school bus drivers aren't living large.
And that Wall Streeters get bailed out while we get sold out. Some of us are realizing that complaining that we're getting scewed while being content to spend our leisure time in front of a computer or television isn't enough.
As a reporter, I've had to temper my political beliefs and full rights as a citizen to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of them. But one of the few benefits of being an unemployed journalist is being freed from those constraints.
Now I can do the small things we all can do that addied up together make a difference: networking, attending protests,writing letters to lawmakers and lobbying them in person when possible. Gathering petition signatures. Writing letters to the editor.
Individually, we are powerless to stop SB 5 and the transformation of our democracy to an oligarchy. But collectively we have power.
And not just to overturn SB 5. We need to fight for a living wage and equitable taxation like Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky's proposed Fairness in Taxation Act which would raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires. http://schakowsky.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2877&catid=22
We need to educate, agitate and organize. Not with the know-nothing, us-against-them mentality of the Tea Party, but with compassion as well as passion. Waging a principled fight based on common values.
People before profits. Social welfare rather than corporate welfare. Foreign policy committed to leading by example, not at the barrel of a gun.
The idea that we're all in it together. Even the richest 1 percent who control some 23.5 percent of the wealth and must be made to pay their fair share of taxes before the politicians they've bought can talk about "shared sacrifice."
So thank you Gov. Kasich. For making us realize that we're down, but we're not out.
In the same way that you only stop a schoolyard bully by standing up to him, people have realized that they must fight back. Getting the 231,149 signatures for a referendum to overturn SB 5 will be an uphill battle, but it's better to go down fighting than let them take our lunch money forever.
We've been beaten down for a long time. Most Americans are apathetic and brainwashed into believing that government is always inept and a bogeyman rather than people like our postal workers, police soldiers and teachers. The idea that both political parties are corrupt and the power of corporations and the superrich trumps one person, one vote, has been too long used as an excuse to do nothing.
Juggling work and family responsibilites and struggling to make end's meet, it's understandable that most people don't know the minitiaue of politics nor should they be expected to. But the average American's political ignorance is stunning.
While most can rattle off the latest dirt about Hollywood celebrity train wrecks or sports trivia, less than a third know that a member of the House of Representatives serves two years and a US senator serves six years. About half of Americans think foreign aid is a major part of the federal budget rather than 1 percent of it.
During the impeachment of Bill Clinton, only 11 percent could identify the Supreme Court chief justice, as authors and political science proferssors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson documented in their book on how Republicans have dominated politics in the last 30 years. http://www.amazon.com/Off-Center-Republican-Revolution-Democracy/dp/0300108702
The pols, powerbrokers and pundits count on our ignorance and apathy. The idea that government is always bad and tax cuts are always good has been ingrained in our culture since the presidency of St. Reagan in 1981.
And our worship of celebrity and entertaiment has intensified just like the gap between the rich and poor. It would be laughable if it weren't so pathetic. President Obama's Monday speech justifying taking us to war with Libya was scheduled for 7:30 p.m. to avoid interrupting Dancing With the Stars.
Apathy and ignorance also make us more gullible. That makes it easier to frame the debate. Instead of questioning whether the government should be making cuts after the worst recession since the Great Depression, the debate is over how much to cut.
Most of us nod are heads in agreement when politicians, including President Obama - AKA The Great Capitulator - tell us we need to tighten our belts and run the federal government like a household. As if households print money like the federal government and as if families don't do deficit spending in the form of bank, car and college loans, credit card purchases and second mortgages.
Despite the number of Americans living below the poverty line surging to 44 million http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/us/17poverty.html the poor are almost never mentioned by politicians of either party. Attacks on the poor and middle class are camouflaged as fiscal austerity. And austerity is seen as virtuous even though deficit spending in the form of economic stimulus would create jobs, improve the infrastructure and increase tax revenue reducing deficits in the long term.
But Kasich and his fellow Republicans around Ohio and the nation overreached with their union busting. They counted on the tried and true split and divide tactics of class envy to pit neighbor against neighbor. But even if you don't know the Inside Baseball of economics, you know Wall Street banksters caused the Great Recession, not overpaying librarians and teachers.
And while just 11.9 percent of Americans are unionized, most know somebody who is in one or was in one. We may not be taught much in school about how unions fought for child labor laws and the 40-hour work week, but we know that our firefighters, police and school bus drivers aren't living large.
And that Wall Streeters get bailed out while we get sold out. Some of us are realizing that complaining that we're getting scewed while being content to spend our leisure time in front of a computer or television isn't enough.
As a reporter, I've had to temper my political beliefs and full rights as a citizen to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of them. But one of the few benefits of being an unemployed journalist is being freed from those constraints.
Now I can do the small things we all can do that addied up together make a difference: networking, attending protests,writing letters to lawmakers and lobbying them in person when possible. Gathering petition signatures. Writing letters to the editor.
Individually, we are powerless to stop SB 5 and the transformation of our democracy to an oligarchy. But collectively we have power.
And not just to overturn SB 5. We need to fight for a living wage and equitable taxation like Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky's proposed Fairness in Taxation Act which would raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires. http://schakowsky.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2877&catid=22
We need to educate, agitate and organize. Not with the know-nothing, us-against-them mentality of the Tea Party, but with compassion as well as passion. Waging a principled fight based on common values.
People before profits. Social welfare rather than corporate welfare. Foreign policy committed to leading by example, not at the barrel of a gun.
The idea that we're all in it together. Even the richest 1 percent who control some 23.5 percent of the wealth and must be made to pay their fair share of taxes before the politicians they've bought can talk about "shared sacrifice."
So thank you Gov. Kasich. For making us realize that we're down, but we're not out.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Political Pressure
Sometimes politicians do the right thing and pushing them in the right direction helps.
Erie County commissioners passage of a resolution Monday opposing Ohio's union busting Senate Bill 5 is an example of effective political pressure from citizens. Sure, the resolution is symbolic and SB 5 will probably pass in the House of Representatives this week. And there was some political calculation in the vote.
Commissioners Thomas Ferrell, Bill Monaghan and Patrick Shenigo - all Democrats - were certainly aware they would've taken more heat from their constituents who are union members than from Republican Gov. John Kasich. Nonetheless, they deserve credit.
The resolution undercuts the primary premise of SB 5: that local leaders need a law outlawing strikes and severely restricting collective bargaining because the bargaining playing field isn't level and unions don't negotiate in good faith.
"Erie County has maintained sound labor relations and has found that, even when we disagree, we have shown that we can work toward common goals respectfully and professionally," the resolution reads in part. "Even during the worst economic times since the Great Depression, Erie County public employees worked with their commissioners and supervisors to maintain (the) highest quality services with minimal staff disruptions."
Besides paving the way for privtization and accelerating the race to the bottom, SB 5 could disenfranchise voters in a political power grab masquerading as fiscal discipline. By declaring an "economic crisis" Kasich could appoint emergency financial managers and strip local elected officials of their power.
I personally witnessed this last year while a reporter covering the city of Benton Harbor, an impoverished town of about 10,000 in southwestern Michigan. Among the first moves the Benton Harbor EFM made was to propose eliminating the already understaffed Benton Harbor Fire Department.
In fairness, Benton Harbor local leaders had mismanged money for years, but new Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder this month got a law passed that could make financial takeovers the rule, not the exception http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/michigan-governor-signs-emergency-managers-bill/c87e78330ebf4bb6a2b631b088395ff1
Ferrell worries about SB 5 causing state financial takeovers in Ohio.
"It doesn't even state who declares the economic crisis," Ferrell said. "We feel the county commissioners are the ones that (should) state what an economic crisis is. Not someone from the state of Ohio, not the Erie County auditor. Because, basically, we control all the budgets. We vote on the budgets."
The commissioners also recognized that while they might make short-term gains at the bargaining table, the long-term effect would be less tax revenue. Exorbitant increases in benefits is essentially a wage cut meaning workers have less to spend.
That means less sales tax revenue which is already down in Erie County and around the nation. This thanks to the Great Recession which was caused by tax cuts, tax caps and financial deregulation which Kasich voted for while a congressman.
The approximately $8 billion shortfall in Ohio that Kasich has used as cover to bust public unions and privatize public jobs and the shortfalls other Republican governors are manipulating, weren't caused by overly generous wages and benefits. While healthcare benefit premiums had double digit increases in the past decade, last year total benefit increases were 0.6 percent for local and and state government workers. Total compensation rose just 1.8 percent for local and state government workers compared to 2.1 percent for private sector workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm That's down from 2.3 percent in total compensation in 2009.
Rather than regressive measures like SB 5, local politicians like the commissioners need real tools to dig out of the financial hole caused through no fault of their own. Economist Jack Rasmus makes several good recommendations http://ko-kr.connect.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=170570316324343
I detailed some of them to commissioners during the public speaking portion of Monday's commission meeting and in a Monday letter sent to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The proposals include reintroducing the Build America Bonds subsidy to reduce municipal bond borrowing costs. A bank tax would pay for it.
The Federal Reserve Bank - which had no problem lending trillions to the big banks which crashed the economy - should provide $500 billion in bridge loans over the next two years to state and local governments with pension fund gaps below 85 percent. The Pension Fund Act of 2006 should be amended to prohibit investments in hedge funds and other risky speculative deals like financial derivatives.
And to prevent corporations from pitting communities against one another, I asked Brown to sponsor legislation with three-year tax penalties to companies who relocate for lower taxes with the penalty being the equivalent of the tax difference. Corporate welfare extorted from communities to entice companies in or keep them from moving out is robbing cities and states of revenue for essential services and improving their crumbling infrastructure.
There's some truth to the old saying that, "we get the government we deserve." But because of the enormous financial clout that corporations have over politicians, one person, one vote, doesn't have the power that it should.
But we can influence politicians by involvement rather than using the convenient excuse that they're all corrupt to do nothing. Assuming SB 5 passes, we'll have 90 days to gather 231,149 signatures in 44 Ohio counties to get an initiative on the ballot in November to overturn SB 5.
What happened Monday with the Erie County commissioners shows it can be done. It's the first step in a long journey.
Erie County commissioners passage of a resolution Monday opposing Ohio's union busting Senate Bill 5 is an example of effective political pressure from citizens. Sure, the resolution is symbolic and SB 5 will probably pass in the House of Representatives this week. And there was some political calculation in the vote.
Commissioners Thomas Ferrell, Bill Monaghan and Patrick Shenigo - all Democrats - were certainly aware they would've taken more heat from their constituents who are union members than from Republican Gov. John Kasich. Nonetheless, they deserve credit.
The resolution undercuts the primary premise of SB 5: that local leaders need a law outlawing strikes and severely restricting collective bargaining because the bargaining playing field isn't level and unions don't negotiate in good faith.
"Erie County has maintained sound labor relations and has found that, even when we disagree, we have shown that we can work toward common goals respectfully and professionally," the resolution reads in part. "Even during the worst economic times since the Great Depression, Erie County public employees worked with their commissioners and supervisors to maintain (the) highest quality services with minimal staff disruptions."
Besides paving the way for privtization and accelerating the race to the bottom, SB 5 could disenfranchise voters in a political power grab masquerading as fiscal discipline. By declaring an "economic crisis" Kasich could appoint emergency financial managers and strip local elected officials of their power.
I personally witnessed this last year while a reporter covering the city of Benton Harbor, an impoverished town of about 10,000 in southwestern Michigan. Among the first moves the Benton Harbor EFM made was to propose eliminating the already understaffed Benton Harbor Fire Department.
In fairness, Benton Harbor local leaders had mismanged money for years, but new Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder this month got a law passed that could make financial takeovers the rule, not the exception http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/michigan-governor-signs-emergency-managers-bill/c87e78330ebf4bb6a2b631b088395ff1
Ferrell worries about SB 5 causing state financial takeovers in Ohio.
"It doesn't even state who declares the economic crisis," Ferrell said. "We feel the county commissioners are the ones that (should) state what an economic crisis is. Not someone from the state of Ohio, not the Erie County auditor. Because, basically, we control all the budgets. We vote on the budgets."
The commissioners also recognized that while they might make short-term gains at the bargaining table, the long-term effect would be less tax revenue. Exorbitant increases in benefits is essentially a wage cut meaning workers have less to spend.
That means less sales tax revenue which is already down in Erie County and around the nation. This thanks to the Great Recession which was caused by tax cuts, tax caps and financial deregulation which Kasich voted for while a congressman.
The approximately $8 billion shortfall in Ohio that Kasich has used as cover to bust public unions and privatize public jobs and the shortfalls other Republican governors are manipulating, weren't caused by overly generous wages and benefits. While healthcare benefit premiums had double digit increases in the past decade, last year total benefit increases were 0.6 percent for local and and state government workers. Total compensation rose just 1.8 percent for local and state government workers compared to 2.1 percent for private sector workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics http://www.bls.gov/news.release/eci.nr0.htm That's down from 2.3 percent in total compensation in 2009.
Rather than regressive measures like SB 5, local politicians like the commissioners need real tools to dig out of the financial hole caused through no fault of their own. Economist Jack Rasmus makes several good recommendations http://ko-kr.connect.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=170570316324343
I detailed some of them to commissioners during the public speaking portion of Monday's commission meeting and in a Monday letter sent to Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The proposals include reintroducing the Build America Bonds subsidy to reduce municipal bond borrowing costs. A bank tax would pay for it.
The Federal Reserve Bank - which had no problem lending trillions to the big banks which crashed the economy - should provide $500 billion in bridge loans over the next two years to state and local governments with pension fund gaps below 85 percent. The Pension Fund Act of 2006 should be amended to prohibit investments in hedge funds and other risky speculative deals like financial derivatives.
And to prevent corporations from pitting communities against one another, I asked Brown to sponsor legislation with three-year tax penalties to companies who relocate for lower taxes with the penalty being the equivalent of the tax difference. Corporate welfare extorted from communities to entice companies in or keep them from moving out is robbing cities and states of revenue for essential services and improving their crumbling infrastructure.
There's some truth to the old saying that, "we get the government we deserve." But because of the enormous financial clout that corporations have over politicians, one person, one vote, doesn't have the power that it should.
But we can influence politicians by involvement rather than using the convenient excuse that they're all corrupt to do nothing. Assuming SB 5 passes, we'll have 90 days to gather 231,149 signatures in 44 Ohio counties to get an initiative on the ballot in November to overturn SB 5.
What happened Monday with the Erie County commissioners shows it can be done. It's the first step in a long journey.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Showing Solidarity
Symbolism won't stop the Ohio's union busting Senate Bill 5 from passage, but it could help overturn it in a statewide referendum. Convincing local lawmakers like members of the Erie County Commission to pass a resolution opposing SB 5 matters because one of the main premises of the bill is that local politicians like the commissioners don't have a level negotiating playing field with public unions and need more power.
By approving an anti-SB 5 resolution the commissioners will be saying that unions bargain in good faith and they don't want a bill that would criminalize strikes and restrict collective bargaining for issues such as healthcare, pensions, privatization and workforce levels.That passage of SB 5 will lead to wage and benefit cuts and privatization that would have a tidal wave effect on their county sharply reducing already falling income, property and sales tax revenues.
"People have died for their right to withold their labor," Robert Warner, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades president, told the commissioners at their Thursday meeting. "Don't sit on the fence fellas."
SB 5 proponents will always cherrypick to find cases where unions defended an incompetent or corrupt worker who deserved to be fired or incidents of union members receiving overly generous benefits. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. The majority of public unions have been making concessions for years as have their private sector counterparts.
As liberal economist Jack Rasmus writes quoting US Department of Labor statistics, total health benefit increases for local and state government workers rose just 0.6 percent in the last year while health care premiums had double digit rate increases between 1997 and 2007. http://ko-kr.connect.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=170570316324343
Pension contributions make up just 2.9 percent of state spending, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators with The Center for Retirment Research putting the figure at 3.8 percent. And pension underfunding is not due to overly generous pensions, but the Wall Street piracy that triggered the Great Recession. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/06/109649/why-employee-pensions-arent-bankrupting.html
"This is ridiculous. We have 28 years of good collective bargaining," said Mark Horton, Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters, secretary/treasurer. "We have no bankruptcies because our employees have made the concessions they need to make."
Commissioner Bill Monaghan, a former Teamster who seems to favor the resolution, said none of the local municipal commissions in Erie County favor the resolution. They're probably afraid of offending Republican Gov. John Kasich and feel they have nothing to gain from passing a resolution that could make it harder for their communities to recieve state money or services.
But as local pols need to show which side they're on. Kasich or their constituents who elected them. Political courage is often an oxymoron, but now is the time for local politicians to show some.
"When folks get elected they're expected to be leaders, not followers," said Joe Thayer, North Central Ohio Buildings Trades executive board member. "This isn't a union, non-union issue. It's a standard of living issue."
The commissioners are expected to vote on the resolution at their Monday meeting. Hopefully they'll show solidarity and set a standard for other local leaders.
By approving an anti-SB 5 resolution the commissioners will be saying that unions bargain in good faith and they don't want a bill that would criminalize strikes and restrict collective bargaining for issues such as healthcare, pensions, privatization and workforce levels.That passage of SB 5 will lead to wage and benefit cuts and privatization that would have a tidal wave effect on their county sharply reducing already falling income, property and sales tax revenues.
"People have died for their right to withold their labor," Robert Warner, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades president, told the commissioners at their Thursday meeting. "Don't sit on the fence fellas."
SB 5 proponents will always cherrypick to find cases where unions defended an incompetent or corrupt worker who deserved to be fired or incidents of union members receiving overly generous benefits. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. The majority of public unions have been making concessions for years as have their private sector counterparts.
As liberal economist Jack Rasmus writes quoting US Department of Labor statistics, total health benefit increases for local and state government workers rose just 0.6 percent in the last year while health care premiums had double digit rate increases between 1997 and 2007. http://ko-kr.connect.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=170570316324343
Pension contributions make up just 2.9 percent of state spending, according to the National Association of State Retirement Administrators with The Center for Retirment Research putting the figure at 3.8 percent. And pension underfunding is not due to overly generous pensions, but the Wall Street piracy that triggered the Great Recession. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/06/109649/why-employee-pensions-arent-bankrupting.html
"This is ridiculous. We have 28 years of good collective bargaining," said Mark Horton, Ohio Association of Professional Firefighters, secretary/treasurer. "We have no bankruptcies because our employees have made the concessions they need to make."
Commissioner Bill Monaghan, a former Teamster who seems to favor the resolution, said none of the local municipal commissions in Erie County favor the resolution. They're probably afraid of offending Republican Gov. John Kasich and feel they have nothing to gain from passing a resolution that could make it harder for their communities to recieve state money or services.
But as local pols need to show which side they're on. Kasich or their constituents who elected them. Political courage is often an oxymoron, but now is the time for local politicians to show some.
"When folks get elected they're expected to be leaders, not followers," said Joe Thayer, North Central Ohio Buildings Trades executive board member. "This isn't a union, non-union issue. It's a standard of living issue."
The commissioners are expected to vote on the resolution at their Monday meeting. Hopefully they'll show solidarity and set a standard for other local leaders.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Community Police
Hundreds of us turned out Sunday night for a candlelight vigil in Sandusky, Ohio in tribute to slain Sandusky police Officer Andy Dunn and his family, but Chanel Harper was one of the few in the crowd who could really understand what the Dunn family was feeling. Like Dunn, Harper, brother, Calvin Harper Jr., was murdered.
While the circumstances were different, Harper's death was drug related, while Dunn's was in the line of duty, all lives have value and nobody deserves to be murdered, something Chanel Harper understands.
"I feel so bad for them," Harper said about Dunn's family, which includes Officer Matt Dunn who spoke to the crowd.
Like most of us in the crowd, Chanel Harper saw a family hurting over their son being fatally shot in the line of duty, not race. But because Dunn was white and shooting suspect Kevin Randleman was black there been some racial animosity over the shooting in Sandusky, a mostly white city northwestern Ohio city of about 25,000 by Lake Erie. Harper, one of dozens of black people who attended the vigil, said she got some dirty looks.
Officer Matt Dunn also picked up on it. In emotional and eloquent comments, Dunn told the crowd his son's killing wasn't about race and that it should make the community come together, not divide it.
But the circumstances help fuel misperceptions and distory reality. While have been a lot more shootings in the last couple years than when I covered crime for the Sandusky Register in 2005-06, Sandusky is not a violent community.
Dunn was the first police officer killed in the line of duty in a century in Sandusky and while there have been a series of high profile killings of police officers nationwide of late, overall they are rare. Any homicide is one too many, but in a nation of 310 million, just 48 police officers were murdered in 2009 http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2009/feloniouslykilled.html
And while you would never guess it from watching T.V. where every other show is about glamorous cops tracking serial killers and solving homicides, violent crime in America has been at record lows in recent years. http://romenewswire.com/2010/05/25/fbi-violent-crime-rate-in-the-u-s-drops-for-third-year-in-a-row/
Randleman, 50, was a career criminal who fatally shot a man in a 1990 bar fight, but was found not guilty of murder and involuntary manslaughter. Obviously, if he's found guilty of killing Dunn, he should face a minimum of life imprisonment. But there's no reason to rush to judgement.
While circumstantial evidence indicates Randleman's guilt, the Register wrongly convicted him in print in a news story and editorial by saying that Randleman fatally shot Dunn rather than attributing the statements to police, which is standard journalistic practice. The Register editorial by Managing Editor Matt Westerhold (full disclosure: Westerhold was briefly my boss before I left the Register to take another job) wrote that the criminal justice has a "revolving door" that contributed to the circumstances that led to the shooting.
That implies that our justice system is lenient. The reality is that the US, with some 2.3 million people imprisoned, leads the world in incarcerating it's own citizens despite recent declines in state prison populations. http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Prison_Count_2010.pdf?n=880
Prison overcrowding, due to stiffer sentencing and increased drug laws ballooned the prison population from about 450,000 in 1980 to the current 2.3 million. If we legalized drugs, there would be more room in prison for violent criminals like Randleman. And more money for mental health treatment that might have helped Randleman who reportedly is borderline mentally retarded.
But don't count on the Register, or law enforcement officials, who rely on money from drug seizures for a percentage of their budgets, to call for an end to the drug prohibition which fuels the violence in our communities. It's also a political third rail for politicians who can't even agree on legalizing marijuana for adults which would help decrease budget deficits by taxing sales of it.
With tension over the Dunn killing what we need is full disclosure. As Supreme Court justice William Brandeis said, "Sunlight is always the best disinfectant."
However, police are refusing to provide the Register with the video of the shooting from Dunn's police cruiser in an apparent violation of Ohio Freedom of Information laws. The Register has a right to the video, but it is being hypocritical by saying if it obtains the video it will not post the video online for the public because it's too gruesome. So the Register has a right to see the video, but the public doesn't? If people find it too gruesome, they shouldn't view it, but the video is public property and people should have the right to view it.
Sad, when a newspaper, which is supposed to fight government censorship engages in self-censorship because it fears losing advertising and reader subscriptions. This will also contribute to conspiracy theories that Dunn acted improperly when he attempted to question Randleman who was riding his bicycle at 3 a.m.
Unlike some police officers who don't live in the communities they serve and act more like occupiers than partners with residents, Dunn, a 30-year-old husband and father of two sons, lived in Sandusky and grew up there.
Dunn had a good record in his three years as a Sandusky police officer and friends and family say he cared about his community and wanted to protect it. We should try to live up to those same ideals not tarnish them with censorship and racism. As Matt Dunn said, let's use this tragedy to come together as a community.
While the circumstances were different, Harper's death was drug related, while Dunn's was in the line of duty, all lives have value and nobody deserves to be murdered, something Chanel Harper understands.
"I feel so bad for them," Harper said about Dunn's family, which includes Officer Matt Dunn who spoke to the crowd.
Like most of us in the crowd, Chanel Harper saw a family hurting over their son being fatally shot in the line of duty, not race. But because Dunn was white and shooting suspect Kevin Randleman was black there been some racial animosity over the shooting in Sandusky, a mostly white city northwestern Ohio city of about 25,000 by Lake Erie. Harper, one of dozens of black people who attended the vigil, said she got some dirty looks.
Officer Matt Dunn also picked up on it. In emotional and eloquent comments, Dunn told the crowd his son's killing wasn't about race and that it should make the community come together, not divide it.
But the circumstances help fuel misperceptions and distory reality. While have been a lot more shootings in the last couple years than when I covered crime for the Sandusky Register in 2005-06, Sandusky is not a violent community.
Dunn was the first police officer killed in the line of duty in a century in Sandusky and while there have been a series of high profile killings of police officers nationwide of late, overall they are rare. Any homicide is one too many, but in a nation of 310 million, just 48 police officers were murdered in 2009 http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/killed/2009/feloniouslykilled.html
And while you would never guess it from watching T.V. where every other show is about glamorous cops tracking serial killers and solving homicides, violent crime in America has been at record lows in recent years. http://romenewswire.com/2010/05/25/fbi-violent-crime-rate-in-the-u-s-drops-for-third-year-in-a-row/
Randleman, 50, was a career criminal who fatally shot a man in a 1990 bar fight, but was found not guilty of murder and involuntary manslaughter. Obviously, if he's found guilty of killing Dunn, he should face a minimum of life imprisonment. But there's no reason to rush to judgement.
While circumstantial evidence indicates Randleman's guilt, the Register wrongly convicted him in print in a news story and editorial by saying that Randleman fatally shot Dunn rather than attributing the statements to police, which is standard journalistic practice. The Register editorial by Managing Editor Matt Westerhold (full disclosure: Westerhold was briefly my boss before I left the Register to take another job) wrote that the criminal justice has a "revolving door" that contributed to the circumstances that led to the shooting.
That implies that our justice system is lenient. The reality is that the US, with some 2.3 million people imprisoned, leads the world in incarcerating it's own citizens despite recent declines in state prison populations. http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Prison_Count_2010.pdf?n=880
Prison overcrowding, due to stiffer sentencing and increased drug laws ballooned the prison population from about 450,000 in 1980 to the current 2.3 million. If we legalized drugs, there would be more room in prison for violent criminals like Randleman. And more money for mental health treatment that might have helped Randleman who reportedly is borderline mentally retarded.
But don't count on the Register, or law enforcement officials, who rely on money from drug seizures for a percentage of their budgets, to call for an end to the drug prohibition which fuels the violence in our communities. It's also a political third rail for politicians who can't even agree on legalizing marijuana for adults which would help decrease budget deficits by taxing sales of it.
With tension over the Dunn killing what we need is full disclosure. As Supreme Court justice William Brandeis said, "Sunlight is always the best disinfectant."
However, police are refusing to provide the Register with the video of the shooting from Dunn's police cruiser in an apparent violation of Ohio Freedom of Information laws. The Register has a right to the video, but it is being hypocritical by saying if it obtains the video it will not post the video online for the public because it's too gruesome. So the Register has a right to see the video, but the public doesn't? If people find it too gruesome, they shouldn't view it, but the video is public property and people should have the right to view it.
Sad, when a newspaper, which is supposed to fight government censorship engages in self-censorship because it fears losing advertising and reader subscriptions. This will also contribute to conspiracy theories that Dunn acted improperly when he attempted to question Randleman who was riding his bicycle at 3 a.m.
Unlike some police officers who don't live in the communities they serve and act more like occupiers than partners with residents, Dunn, a 30-year-old husband and father of two sons, lived in Sandusky and grew up there.
Dunn had a good record in his three years as a Sandusky police officer and friends and family say he cared about his community and wanted to protect it. We should try to live up to those same ideals not tarnish them with censorship and racism. As Matt Dunn said, let's use this tragedy to come together as a community.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
In It Together
Facing the privatization of Akron, Ohio's sewer system and the potential loss of their jobs, Akron public workers in 2008 used the slogan Save Our Sewers and focused on potential water contamination in their successful campaign to defeat the plan.
The focus of the campaign was not on saving their jobs, but what privatization would mean for the entire community. The idea being that we're all in it together.
The Akron effort was cited this Saturday in Bellevue at a workshop held by organizers from the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees who are battling Ohio's union busting Senate Bill 5. The bill would criminalize strikes and drastically reduce collective bargaining rights of public sector unions including the right to negotiate about the kind of privatization the Akron workers fought.
"Our message has got to be, 'Save our community,'" George Embleton, an AFSCME field education coordinator from Boston, told the audience of about 30 public and private union members. "We are now in a fight back mode."
AFSCME organizers recognize that while there is sympathy for public workers given the heavy-handed tactics being used against them in Ohio and around the nation, there is also resentment. Many non-union workers are unsympathetic after years of wage stagnation and givebacks on healthcare and other benefits.
Just 11.9 percent of American workers are unionized and just 6.9 percent in the private sector.http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
Most workers under 30 have never been in a union. As a journalist, I remember a 20-something co-worker at a Connecticut newspaper asking me, "What's a scab?" when we were discussing a strike at a local business.
Pensions have become a thing of the past for most workers. They're lucky if they can get 401 (k) plans which are subject to the Wall Street rollercoaster and have never lived up to the promises made when they were introduced as replacements for pensions some 30 years ago.
"You brothers and sisters in the private sector have been feeling this for 20 years," Embleton said. "Right now there are 27 states where right to work laws or anti-labor laws are being proposed. I don't like to hear about conspiracies, but it sure sounds like a conspiracy."
Republican governors like Ohio's John Kasich, Wisconsin's Scott Walker and New Jersey's Chris Christie have used budget deficits their party helped create with tax cuts and tax caps as an excuse to eviscerate unions. AFSCME, the Service Employees International Union and the National Education Association are the among the top 10 donors to politicians and nearly all of their money goes to Democrats.
Busting unions would eliminate the last counterweight to corporations and the Republicans who do their bidding. "We're in the way," Embleton said.
Of course Democrats, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, to Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer also shill for corporations and Wall Street, but not to the extreme degree of Republicans. And Democrats like the Indiana and Wisconsion state senators who left their states to prevent passage of union busting bills, have shown the spine that national Democrats like Obama lack.
Embleton and Dan Ford, an AFSCME political coordinator from Toledo, are helping organize a petition drive for a ballot initiative to defeat SB 5 which narrowly passed in the Ohio State Senate and is expected to pass soon in the House of Representatives where Republicans have a majority. Ford said he's confident SB 5 opponents can get the approximatel 260,000 signatures - 6 percent of the votes cast in the 2010 election -necessary for the ballot initiative. The signatures must come from at least 3 percent of voters in 44 of Ohio's 88 counties, Ford said.
Getting a ballot initiative and overturning SB 5 will require improving communication with an often apathetic and easily swayed public. It will mean breaking down stereotypes of corrupt union leaders and lazy, overpaid union workers. The kind of stereotypes reactionaries have sucessfully used to split and divide the public in the past.
It can be a tough sell. How do you convince someone that their tax dollars should help pay for decent healthcare for public workers when that person doesn't have a pension or decent healthcare? "The answer is you should have it too," Embleton said.
The emphasis should be on increasing wages and benefits for all workers, not decreasing them for the few workers who have decent wages and benefits. We need to stress that union wages help improve wages for non-union workers in the same way the minimum wage helps raise wages for everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats.
We need to stress that that public workers aren't overpaid. They actually earn slightly less in total compensation than their private sector counterparts. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/debunking_the_myth_of_the_overcompensated_public_employee
And most important, we must debunk the myth that government is always bad or incompetent. Embleton analogized it to an iceberg with the public only seeing what's above the water. That most people don't comprehend that government is bridges, roads and street lights. And that government is people: cops, firefighters, nurses, postal workers, soldiers and teachers.
Mock coupons were handed out to give to local business people to show how much public workers spend in the community and the ripple effect slashing their wages and benefits will have on the local economy. The audience was urged to write anti-SB 5 letters to local politicians and local newspapers.
Defeating SB 5 will be an uphill battle. As Embleton noted, Washington D.C. lobbyists like Grover Norquist, the anti-tax zealot who bragged about drowning government like a baby in a bathtub http://www.1-love-quotes.com/quote/925045about meet with politicians each day to push for dismantling government and unions.
"We're sitting in front of our 50-inch T.V. enjoying the game while they're eating our lunch," Embleton said.
Despite the odds, the audience left energized. If it takes going door to door for signatures, talking to our neighbors, writing letters to the editor or facing off with politicans, we'll do it. If we go down, we go down fighting.We're all in it together.
The focus of the campaign was not on saving their jobs, but what privatization would mean for the entire community. The idea being that we're all in it together.
The Akron effort was cited this Saturday in Bellevue at a workshop held by organizers from the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees who are battling Ohio's union busting Senate Bill 5. The bill would criminalize strikes and drastically reduce collective bargaining rights of public sector unions including the right to negotiate about the kind of privatization the Akron workers fought.
"Our message has got to be, 'Save our community,'" George Embleton, an AFSCME field education coordinator from Boston, told the audience of about 30 public and private union members. "We are now in a fight back mode."
AFSCME organizers recognize that while there is sympathy for public workers given the heavy-handed tactics being used against them in Ohio and around the nation, there is also resentment. Many non-union workers are unsympathetic after years of wage stagnation and givebacks on healthcare and other benefits.
Just 11.9 percent of American workers are unionized and just 6.9 percent in the private sector.http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm
Most workers under 30 have never been in a union. As a journalist, I remember a 20-something co-worker at a Connecticut newspaper asking me, "What's a scab?" when we were discussing a strike at a local business.
Pensions have become a thing of the past for most workers. They're lucky if they can get 401 (k) plans which are subject to the Wall Street rollercoaster and have never lived up to the promises made when they were introduced as replacements for pensions some 30 years ago.
"You brothers and sisters in the private sector have been feeling this for 20 years," Embleton said. "Right now there are 27 states where right to work laws or anti-labor laws are being proposed. I don't like to hear about conspiracies, but it sure sounds like a conspiracy."
Republican governors like Ohio's John Kasich, Wisconsin's Scott Walker and New Jersey's Chris Christie have used budget deficits their party helped create with tax cuts and tax caps as an excuse to eviscerate unions. AFSCME, the Service Employees International Union and the National Education Association are the among the top 10 donors to politicians and nearly all of their money goes to Democrats.
Busting unions would eliminate the last counterweight to corporations and the Republicans who do their bidding. "We're in the way," Embleton said.
Of course Democrats, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, to Chris Dodd and Chuck Schumer also shill for corporations and Wall Street, but not to the extreme degree of Republicans. And Democrats like the Indiana and Wisconsion state senators who left their states to prevent passage of union busting bills, have shown the spine that national Democrats like Obama lack.
Embleton and Dan Ford, an AFSCME political coordinator from Toledo, are helping organize a petition drive for a ballot initiative to defeat SB 5 which narrowly passed in the Ohio State Senate and is expected to pass soon in the House of Representatives where Republicans have a majority. Ford said he's confident SB 5 opponents can get the approximatel 260,000 signatures - 6 percent of the votes cast in the 2010 election -necessary for the ballot initiative. The signatures must come from at least 3 percent of voters in 44 of Ohio's 88 counties, Ford said.
Getting a ballot initiative and overturning SB 5 will require improving communication with an often apathetic and easily swayed public. It will mean breaking down stereotypes of corrupt union leaders and lazy, overpaid union workers. The kind of stereotypes reactionaries have sucessfully used to split and divide the public in the past.
It can be a tough sell. How do you convince someone that their tax dollars should help pay for decent healthcare for public workers when that person doesn't have a pension or decent healthcare? "The answer is you should have it too," Embleton said.
The emphasis should be on increasing wages and benefits for all workers, not decreasing them for the few workers who have decent wages and benefits. We need to stress that union wages help improve wages for non-union workers in the same way the minimum wage helps raise wages for everyone. A rising tide lifts all boats.
We need to stress that that public workers aren't overpaid. They actually earn slightly less in total compensation than their private sector counterparts. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/debunking_the_myth_of_the_overcompensated_public_employee
And most important, we must debunk the myth that government is always bad or incompetent. Embleton analogized it to an iceberg with the public only seeing what's above the water. That most people don't comprehend that government is bridges, roads and street lights. And that government is people: cops, firefighters, nurses, postal workers, soldiers and teachers.
Mock coupons were handed out to give to local business people to show how much public workers spend in the community and the ripple effect slashing their wages and benefits will have on the local economy. The audience was urged to write anti-SB 5 letters to local politicians and local newspapers.
Defeating SB 5 will be an uphill battle. As Embleton noted, Washington D.C. lobbyists like Grover Norquist, the anti-tax zealot who bragged about drowning government like a baby in a bathtub http://www.1-love-quotes.com/quote/925045about meet with politicians each day to push for dismantling government and unions.
"We're sitting in front of our 50-inch T.V. enjoying the game while they're eating our lunch," Embleton said.
Despite the odds, the audience left energized. If it takes going door to door for signatures, talking to our neighbors, writing letters to the editor or facing off with politicans, we'll do it. If we go down, we go down fighting.We're all in it together.
Friday, March 18, 2011
The Sleeping Giant
I'm getting screwed so you should too.
That's the split and divide mentality backers of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio and similar union busting measures around the nation are counting on. Since most Americans bosses decide their workers pay and benefits and just 11.9 percent of workers are unionized, why should non-union workers care if unionized public workers lose their voice?
It's the taxpayers versus those greedy union workers as if the union workers aren't taxpayers and they're really living large on the modest pay and benefits most receive. The truth is public workers are actually under compensated compared to their private sector counterparts.
Public workers average $49, 072 in wages compared to $55,132 for comparable private sector workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For total compensation, public workers make $69,108 compared to $71,109 for comparable private sector workers. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/debunking_the_myth_of_the_overcompensated_public_employee
But this is in an America where there are five unemployed workers for every job. Where wages have stagnated for a decade. Where food and gas prices are skyrocketing and pensions are a quaint thing of the past for many workers.
So the idea of public workers making decent wages and benefits is resented by some. Throw in the lie that public unions are busting local and state budgets - the reality is deficits are due to corporate welfare, tax cuts for the rich and The Great Recession, not government overspending - and you have a recipe for class resentment.
Not the deserved resentment of the 90 percent of American households earning an average of $31,244 and wondering why the richest 1 percent who average $1,137 milllion just got a tax cut. Or those who resent Wall Street profits increasing 720 percent while unemployment goes up 102 percent and American's home equity decreases 35 percent. Or those bothered by the average CEO earning 185 times more than their workers. http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph#
No, the kind of class resentment politcal leaders - many of whom get to vote themselves pay raises - are counting on is the kind of resentment that pits neighbor against neighbor. The kind of illogical and unproductive belief that if I'm suffering and your not that we both must suffer. Instead of believing that rather than resenting one another we need to work together to prosper.
When people are hurting as badly as they are, it must have seemed like a winning strategy to pit them against each other and the Republican midterm landslide set the table. But not everybody is buying it.
After 30 years of tax cuts for the superrich and corporations that shipped jobs over the border and overseas while making record profits, people who normally suffered in silence are speaking out. I heard their voices Saturday at a town meeting in Norwalk, Ohio hosted by Republican State Rep. Terry Boose, a supporter of SB 5.
I give Boose credit for standing on a stage and taking the heat from some 200 angry workers for over two hours. But his disingenuous rhetoric didn't help matters.
Boose said, "there's nothing in the the bill that says it will cut anybody's wages" and SB 5 " was not set up to bash unions." That was like urinating down the backs of the audience and telling them it was spring rain.
SB 5 says "health care benefits, pension pick-ups, privatization of services, workforce levels and other provisions" are not subject to collective bargaining. It criminalizes the right to strike and lets local governments decide on union contracts rather than neutral mediators in binding arbitration.
"Collective bargaining will become collective begging," Sandusky firefighter Adam Butler told Boose who said it would be a conflict of interest for teachers to be elected to schoolboards. Yet Boose saw no conflict with school boards deciding whether to choose a union's best contract offer or the school board's best offer.
And if teachers lose seniority rights and are at the mercy of school boards for merit pay, "It's going to come down to 'isims," Norwalk resident Bill Foltz told me. "Nepotism and favoritism."
With Republican Gov. John Kasich this week announcing a budget that cuts state funding to local governments by 25 percent, local and state workers will soon be asked to make major concessions and privatization of their jobs is likely on the horizon with Kasich already planning to privatize five Ohio prisons.
So technically Boose is right that SB 5 probably won't cut union salaries. But if contributions for benefits and pensions are drastically hiked it's effectively a pay cut like what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is forcing Wisconsin state workers to do after handing out $137 million in corporate tax cuts.
Boose said SB 5 was necesary due to "new economic realities" but they don't include making the rich and corporations pay their fair share. Unlike some in the audience, I told Boose I didn't want to see him or other legislators take a pay cut anymore than I wanted to see union workers take one. But when I asked him whether he would support raising taxes on Ohioans earning $250,000 or more, or reinstituting Ohio's corporate income tax or creating a windfall profits tax for Ohio's wealthiest corporations, Boose cut me off.
Boose said he wasn't in favor of raising taxes and that corporations pay taxes. I reminded him that Exxon-Mobil paid no federal income taxes in 2009 despite earning a record $45 billion in profits http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-tax/
But while Boose wasn't in favor of raising taxes he said he supports taxpayers footing the bill for school vouchers which could be used to send students to parochial or charter schools. Charter schools usually aren't unionized and can cherry pick the best students while not having to provide English as a Second Language or special education classes. Despite the advantage, charter schools perform no better than public schools http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0629/Study-On-average-charter-schools-do-no-better-than-public-schools
Boose, who admitted SB 5 wouldn't solve Ohio's $8 billion projected shortfall, said it would provide more transparency. But he also said he would consider privatization - although not of Ohio roads - which would eliminate transparency since private companies records aren't public information.
The Republican playbook is to restrict government's ability to raise revenue with tax caps and tax cuts, then use the deficits their policies created as an excuse to dismantle government. But the audience wasn't falling for the "we're broke and we all need to tighten our belts" through "shared sacrifice" argument.
"I would've hoped Wall Street would not run this country into the ground, but they did!" teacher Vince Marsala told Boose. "The system is not broke. This will break it. I'm a father of three children and if you ruin their education it's on you, not me."
Of course none of the emotional pleas will sway Boose and with SB 5 passed in the State Senate and the Republicans holding a majority in the House of Representatives, SB 5 will likely become law soon. But a ballot initiative could overturn it.
And SB 5 and other union busting legislation have been a long overdue wakeup call to working people who are realizing we're not powerless and their is strength in numbers. So Boose got one thank-you from the audience.
"Gutting unions, that's what's going on in the state of Ohio," David J. Childers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1194 president, told Boose. "Thanks you for waking up the sleeping giant."
That's the split and divide mentality backers of Senate Bill 5 in Ohio and similar union busting measures around the nation are counting on. Since most Americans bosses decide their workers pay and benefits and just 11.9 percent of workers are unionized, why should non-union workers care if unionized public workers lose their voice?
It's the taxpayers versus those greedy union workers as if the union workers aren't taxpayers and they're really living large on the modest pay and benefits most receive. The truth is public workers are actually under compensated compared to their private sector counterparts.
Public workers average $49, 072 in wages compared to $55,132 for comparable private sector workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For total compensation, public workers make $69,108 compared to $71,109 for comparable private sector workers. http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/debunking_the_myth_of_the_overcompensated_public_employee
But this is in an America where there are five unemployed workers for every job. Where wages have stagnated for a decade. Where food and gas prices are skyrocketing and pensions are a quaint thing of the past for many workers.
So the idea of public workers making decent wages and benefits is resented by some. Throw in the lie that public unions are busting local and state budgets - the reality is deficits are due to corporate welfare, tax cuts for the rich and The Great Recession, not government overspending - and you have a recipe for class resentment.
Not the deserved resentment of the 90 percent of American households earning an average of $31,244 and wondering why the richest 1 percent who average $1,137 milllion just got a tax cut. Or those who resent Wall Street profits increasing 720 percent while unemployment goes up 102 percent and American's home equity decreases 35 percent. Or those bothered by the average CEO earning 185 times more than their workers. http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph#
No, the kind of class resentment politcal leaders - many of whom get to vote themselves pay raises - are counting on is the kind of resentment that pits neighbor against neighbor. The kind of illogical and unproductive belief that if I'm suffering and your not that we both must suffer. Instead of believing that rather than resenting one another we need to work together to prosper.
When people are hurting as badly as they are, it must have seemed like a winning strategy to pit them against each other and the Republican midterm landslide set the table. But not everybody is buying it.
After 30 years of tax cuts for the superrich and corporations that shipped jobs over the border and overseas while making record profits, people who normally suffered in silence are speaking out. I heard their voices Saturday at a town meeting in Norwalk, Ohio hosted by Republican State Rep. Terry Boose, a supporter of SB 5.
I give Boose credit for standing on a stage and taking the heat from some 200 angry workers for over two hours. But his disingenuous rhetoric didn't help matters.
Boose said, "there's nothing in the the bill that says it will cut anybody's wages" and SB 5 " was not set up to bash unions." That was like urinating down the backs of the audience and telling them it was spring rain.
SB 5 says "health care benefits, pension pick-ups, privatization of services, workforce levels and other provisions" are not subject to collective bargaining. It criminalizes the right to strike and lets local governments decide on union contracts rather than neutral mediators in binding arbitration.
"Collective bargaining will become collective begging," Sandusky firefighter Adam Butler told Boose who said it would be a conflict of interest for teachers to be elected to schoolboards. Yet Boose saw no conflict with school boards deciding whether to choose a union's best contract offer or the school board's best offer.
And if teachers lose seniority rights and are at the mercy of school boards for merit pay, "It's going to come down to 'isims," Norwalk resident Bill Foltz told me. "Nepotism and favoritism."
With Republican Gov. John Kasich this week announcing a budget that cuts state funding to local governments by 25 percent, local and state workers will soon be asked to make major concessions and privatization of their jobs is likely on the horizon with Kasich already planning to privatize five Ohio prisons.
So technically Boose is right that SB 5 probably won't cut union salaries. But if contributions for benefits and pensions are drastically hiked it's effectively a pay cut like what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is forcing Wisconsin state workers to do after handing out $137 million in corporate tax cuts.
Boose said SB 5 was necesary due to "new economic realities" but they don't include making the rich and corporations pay their fair share. Unlike some in the audience, I told Boose I didn't want to see him or other legislators take a pay cut anymore than I wanted to see union workers take one. But when I asked him whether he would support raising taxes on Ohioans earning $250,000 or more, or reinstituting Ohio's corporate income tax or creating a windfall profits tax for Ohio's wealthiest corporations, Boose cut me off.
Boose said he wasn't in favor of raising taxes and that corporations pay taxes. I reminded him that Exxon-Mobil paid no federal income taxes in 2009 despite earning a record $45 billion in profits http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-tax/
But while Boose wasn't in favor of raising taxes he said he supports taxpayers footing the bill for school vouchers which could be used to send students to parochial or charter schools. Charter schools usually aren't unionized and can cherry pick the best students while not having to provide English as a Second Language or special education classes. Despite the advantage, charter schools perform no better than public schools http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0629/Study-On-average-charter-schools-do-no-better-than-public-schools
Boose, who admitted SB 5 wouldn't solve Ohio's $8 billion projected shortfall, said it would provide more transparency. But he also said he would consider privatization - although not of Ohio roads - which would eliminate transparency since private companies records aren't public information.
The Republican playbook is to restrict government's ability to raise revenue with tax caps and tax cuts, then use the deficits their policies created as an excuse to dismantle government. But the audience wasn't falling for the "we're broke and we all need to tighten our belts" through "shared sacrifice" argument.
"I would've hoped Wall Street would not run this country into the ground, but they did!" teacher Vince Marsala told Boose. "The system is not broke. This will break it. I'm a father of three children and if you ruin their education it's on you, not me."
Of course none of the emotional pleas will sway Boose and with SB 5 passed in the State Senate and the Republicans holding a majority in the House of Representatives, SB 5 will likely become law soon. But a ballot initiative could overturn it.
And SB 5 and other union busting legislation have been a long overdue wakeup call to working people who are realizing we're not powerless and their is strength in numbers. So Boose got one thank-you from the audience.
"Gutting unions, that's what's going on in the state of Ohio," David J. Childers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1194 president, told Boose. "Thanks you for waking up the sleeping giant."
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Shut 'em Down
The doomed Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan reminds me of my last time in a nuclear power plant where a plant spokesman in southwestern Michigan said a meltdown could never happen, even in an earthquake. What happened after the dog and pony show Palisades Power Plant spokesman Mark Savage gave me last year confirmed my fears that nuclear power plant operators can't be trusted.
I was writing for The Herald-Palladium, a small daily newspaper in St. Joseph, Mich. about how efforts by the nuclear power industry to build a new generation of plants might affect the two power plants in the paper's circulation area. A week after the tour, I called an anti-nuclear activist who mentioned Palisades had an unplanned shutdown due to water leaking from a faulty control rod.
The shutdown occurred about an hour after my tour, but Savage never mentioned it to me despite numerous questions I had asked him about the history of leaks of radioactive tritium - a form of hydrogen and nuclear byproduct - and other problems at the plant. Palisades is owned by Entergy, a corporation with a troubling track record of running nuclear plants including the Vermont Yankee plant shutdown last year due to radioactive water leaks http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/vermont_yankee_nuclear_plant_s.html
As I told my editors after the incident, if Savage couldn't be trusted to notify me about a relatively minor problem at the plant on the day I was touring it, how could we trust him to notify us about something serious?
With the newsrooms shrinking as the newspaper industry goes extinct there aren't a lot of reporters to do investigative reporting especially at smaller papers like the H-P. That leaves journalists and the public at the mercy of the industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which, like most federal regulatory agencies, is more a lapdog than a watchdog.
The Union of Concerned Scientists documented 47 incidents between 1979 and 2008 where the NRC failed to address safety problems that forced shutdowns http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/how-we-almost-blew-ohio#
Before he became president and a proponent of nuclear power, Sen. Barack Obama noted that the NRC is funded by nuclear industry fees and called it "moribund" and "captive of the industries it regulates." http://www.thenation.com/article/zombie-nuke-plants
The comments were prompted by tritium leaks from an Illinois plant owned by Exelon, whom Obama's presidential campaign later took donations from. President Obama has proposed $36 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans to build up to 20 new nuclear plants. Like my former congressman in southwest Michigan, Rep. Fred Upton, Obama sees no conflict of interest in accepting money from an industry he supports despite their troubling track record.
Upton, whose district includes Palisades, supports recycling nuclear fuel to help keep old plants like Palisades running. The top contributor to Upton's re-election campaign in the last election cycle was Energy Solutions, a Utah-based nuclear recycling company which donated $38,000 through its political action committee.
What goes on in Michigan with nuclear power happens all around the country. I grew up and spent most of my early reporting career in Connecticut, home of the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Connecticut near Long Island Sound, a plant with a history of problems. I remember in 1997 touring the three-reactor plant with then-Gov. John Rowland who emerged from the tour saying safety concerns had been exaggerated. Shortly thereafter, the NRC temporarily closed the plant after finding management ignored the safety concerns raised by workers http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E5DF1239F937A15756C0A96E958260&pagewanted=all
In the event of a meltdown of all three reactors, an NRC-commissioned study estimated some 54,000 radiation exposure deaths within a year and 89,000 eventual cancer deaths. Even the conservative Rowland, who would later go to jail for accepting gifts unrelated to Millstone, admitted Millstone officials lied to him. In a 2007 complaint, anti-nuclear activists alleged radiation emissions from Millstone had caused high rates of cancer among area children http://www.mothballmillstone.org/news2007d.html
I now live in northwestern Ohio about an hour away from the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station located outside Toledo. In 2002, the plant came within a third of an inch of melting down due to a "pineapple-sized" hole to the reactor caused by acid corrosion. Two employees and a contractor were accused of falsifying safety reports, but there are accusations, that plant owner First Energy scapegoated one of the indicted employees to coverup their own profit-motivated transgressions http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/how-we-almost-blew-ohio#
With catostrophic climate change on the horizon due to fossil fuels like coal and oil, it's natural for people to look to nuclear power as an alternative, but what's happening in Japan shows it's an accident waiting to happen. Industry backers will always insist that there are safeguards in place for worst case scenarios while cutting corners to make more money. In the wake of Japan's earthquake and tsunami and subsequent partial meltdown at at least one of the four troubled plants, American nuclear power supporters are circling the wagons http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/science/earth/14politics.html?hp
They offer false choices that dodge the need for American sacrifice. We need to drastically conserve energy - the US has about 2 percent of the world oil reserves, but uses a quarter of all oil - and focus on solar and wind energy and natural gas when it can be drilled safely. We should be investing in mass transit and high speed rail and electric cars, not driving sport utility vehicles and complaning about high gas prices.
Existing nuclear plants should be phased out when their licenses expire. New nuclear plants cost up to $12 billion to build.
The financial cost of building a new generation of plants is colossal. So is the danger.
I was writing for The Herald-Palladium, a small daily newspaper in St. Joseph, Mich. about how efforts by the nuclear power industry to build a new generation of plants might affect the two power plants in the paper's circulation area. A week after the tour, I called an anti-nuclear activist who mentioned Palisades had an unplanned shutdown due to water leaking from a faulty control rod.
The shutdown occurred about an hour after my tour, but Savage never mentioned it to me despite numerous questions I had asked him about the history of leaks of radioactive tritium - a form of hydrogen and nuclear byproduct - and other problems at the plant. Palisades is owned by Entergy, a corporation with a troubling track record of running nuclear plants including the Vermont Yankee plant shutdown last year due to radioactive water leaks http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/11/vermont_yankee_nuclear_plant_s.html
As I told my editors after the incident, if Savage couldn't be trusted to notify me about a relatively minor problem at the plant on the day I was touring it, how could we trust him to notify us about something serious?
With the newsrooms shrinking as the newspaper industry goes extinct there aren't a lot of reporters to do investigative reporting especially at smaller papers like the H-P. That leaves journalists and the public at the mercy of the industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which, like most federal regulatory agencies, is more a lapdog than a watchdog.
The Union of Concerned Scientists documented 47 incidents between 1979 and 2008 where the NRC failed to address safety problems that forced shutdowns http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/how-we-almost-blew-ohio#
Before he became president and a proponent of nuclear power, Sen. Barack Obama noted that the NRC is funded by nuclear industry fees and called it "moribund" and "captive of the industries it regulates." http://www.thenation.com/article/zombie-nuke-plants
The comments were prompted by tritium leaks from an Illinois plant owned by Exelon, whom Obama's presidential campaign later took donations from. President Obama has proposed $36 billion in taxpayer-guaranteed loans to build up to 20 new nuclear plants. Like my former congressman in southwest Michigan, Rep. Fred Upton, Obama sees no conflict of interest in accepting money from an industry he supports despite their troubling track record.
Upton, whose district includes Palisades, supports recycling nuclear fuel to help keep old plants like Palisades running. The top contributor to Upton's re-election campaign in the last election cycle was Energy Solutions, a Utah-based nuclear recycling company which donated $38,000 through its political action committee.
What goes on in Michigan with nuclear power happens all around the country. I grew up and spent most of my early reporting career in Connecticut, home of the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Connecticut near Long Island Sound, a plant with a history of problems. I remember in 1997 touring the three-reactor plant with then-Gov. John Rowland who emerged from the tour saying safety concerns had been exaggerated. Shortly thereafter, the NRC temporarily closed the plant after finding management ignored the safety concerns raised by workers http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E5DF1239F937A15756C0A96E958260&pagewanted=all
In the event of a meltdown of all three reactors, an NRC-commissioned study estimated some 54,000 radiation exposure deaths within a year and 89,000 eventual cancer deaths. Even the conservative Rowland, who would later go to jail for accepting gifts unrelated to Millstone, admitted Millstone officials lied to him. In a 2007 complaint, anti-nuclear activists alleged radiation emissions from Millstone had caused high rates of cancer among area children http://www.mothballmillstone.org/news2007d.html
I now live in northwestern Ohio about an hour away from the Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station located outside Toledo. In 2002, the plant came within a third of an inch of melting down due to a "pineapple-sized" hole to the reactor caused by acid corrosion. Two employees and a contractor were accused of falsifying safety reports, but there are accusations, that plant owner First Energy scapegoated one of the indicted employees to coverup their own profit-motivated transgressions http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/how-we-almost-blew-ohio#
With catostrophic climate change on the horizon due to fossil fuels like coal and oil, it's natural for people to look to nuclear power as an alternative, but what's happening in Japan shows it's an accident waiting to happen. Industry backers will always insist that there are safeguards in place for worst case scenarios while cutting corners to make more money. In the wake of Japan's earthquake and tsunami and subsequent partial meltdown at at least one of the four troubled plants, American nuclear power supporters are circling the wagons http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/14/science/earth/14politics.html?hp
They offer false choices that dodge the need for American sacrifice. We need to drastically conserve energy - the US has about 2 percent of the world oil reserves, but uses a quarter of all oil - and focus on solar and wind energy and natural gas when it can be drilled safely. We should be investing in mass transit and high speed rail and electric cars, not driving sport utility vehicles and complaning about high gas prices.
Existing nuclear plants should be phased out when their licenses expire. New nuclear plants cost up to $12 billion to build.
The financial cost of building a new generation of plants is colossal. So is the danger.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Kasich's Warped Record
Shortly after I first moved to Ohio in 2005 in the midst of the first Bush II recession, I remember hearing then Gov. Robert Taft brag during his State of the State speech about shedding state workers. As if putting people on the unemployment line in a recession was a good idea or that residents didn't need the services those state employees provided.
I'm reminded of that willfull ignorance when I read new Gov. John Kasich's State of the State speech delivered Tuesday. If you didn't know about Kasich's record as a Republican nine-term congressman and Lehman Brothers executive, it would be a lot easier to take the concens he expressed about Ohio's joblessness, homlessness and poverty seriously.
Kasich in 1999 voted to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act (http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=8065&can_id=27017) the FDR-inspired 1933 law designed to prevent another Great Depression by preventing the merger of commercial and savings banks with investment banks. The kind of law that would've prevented the bankruptcy of Lehman and the ensuing Great Recession http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/taste-glass-steagall-lash-lehman# Of course, Kasich had a soft landing departing Lehman with a $432,000 golden parachute while Ohio's pension fund took a nearly $500,000 hit thanks to Lehman's financial shennanigans http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/2010-election-wall-street-factor-ohio-governors-race/story?id=10586618
The Great Recession drastically decreased federal revenue for states like Ohio and increased personal bankrupticies, but Kasich also voted to make it harder for working people to declare bankruptcy, http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=7939&can_id=27017 The kind of people who don't get billions in taxpayer bailouts and interest free loans from the Federal Reserve like Kasich's Wall Street buddies.
And in 1998 Kasich voted to make life easier for millionaires and strip the treasury of more revenue by raising the exemption for estate taxes to $1 million http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=8257&can_id=27017
In his speech, Kasich lamented the loss of jobs and population in Ohio and talked about bringing Bill Clinton into the state. Perfect, the criminals returning to the crime scene. In addition to supporting the overturning of Glass-Steagall, Clinton supported North American Free Trade Act and China's admission to the World Trade Organization both of which Rep. Kasich voted for.
The NAFTA vote paved the way for corporations to exploit cheap labor and non-existent environmental and labor laws in Mexico costing the US some 1 million jobs by 2006 including nearly 50,000 in Ohio http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp173/ Between China's admission to the WTO in 2001 and 2008, about 2.4 million US jobs were lost or displaced including nearly 92,000 in Ohio http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp173/
Kasich said Ohio isn't just "under seige" from China and India, but neighboring states like Indiana who he accused of pirating jobs by offering tax breaks, forgetting that Ohio ended all corporate taxes in 2005.
"The higher our costs are, the more opportunity another state has to come in here and offer a better deal," Kasich said. "That's why we can't raise taxes."
The truth is companies relocate primarily because of the things that the tax cuts Kasich advocates are destroying: a solid infrastructure, good schools and an educated workforce. The corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks is just the cherry on a sundae. However, companies have sucessfully been pitting states like Ohio against one another in a race to to give out the most tax breaks for decades and taxpayers are the ones who end up getting burned http://www.greatamericanjobsscam.com/pages/book.html
Just as Kasich thinks the only way to draw in businesses to Ohio is to bribe them he thinks that's the only way to keep Ohioans from moving out of the state. You're not leaving because you lost your job, it's because of those pesky estate taxes. The reailty is estate taxes affect only a fraction of Ohioans, those with estates worth at least $338,333. http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/ohio-news/gop-effort-to-repeal-ohio-estate-tax-raises-debate-1067554.html The $55 million in revenue is minimal in the context of Ohio's approximately $120 billion budget and affects only one in 14 Ohio estates, but that's what's killing the state, according to Kasich.
Kasich also wants to save money by having your elderly parents to stay at home with you rather than go to a nursing home implying that children put their parents in nursing homes because they don't love them, not because they can't take care of elderly people with serious medical conditions or Alzheimer's disease.
"We need to think outside the box on Medicaid," said Kasich whose party wants to overturn healthcare reform which would increase the deficit by $230 billion http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/cbo-health-care-repeal-deficit_n_805192.html and deny coverage to between 111,000 and 282,000 in our congressional district including between 8,000 and 35,000 children http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/health_2011/OH9.Kaptur.pdf
Kasich also spoke of giving parents more choice in schools, code for busting teachers unions as part of the union busting Senate Bill 5 and making taxpayers pay for vouchers for charter schools. Unlike public schools, charters can cherry pick top students and don't have to provide English as a Second Language classes and special education.
Kasich also said Ohio needs to enter the "international uranium market." Perhaps we can sell some uranium to Japan so they can build new nuclear power plants as if they don't have enough problems with the old ones since the earthquake.
And Kasich said we need to make more ethanol which costs more to produce than the gas savings and increases pollution, erosion and world food shortages http://motherjones.com/environment/2007/10/ethanol-effect-when-alternative-fuels-go-bad#
Kasich who previously warned we need to "get on the bus or get run over by it" said that we're all Ohioans and we'll, "climb the mountain and make Ohio great." The reality is Kasich's split-and-divide policies will drive us off a cliff.
I'm reminded of that willfull ignorance when I read new Gov. John Kasich's State of the State speech delivered Tuesday. If you didn't know about Kasich's record as a Republican nine-term congressman and Lehman Brothers executive, it would be a lot easier to take the concens he expressed about Ohio's joblessness, homlessness and poverty seriously.
Kasich in 1999 voted to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act (http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=8065&can_id=27017) the FDR-inspired 1933 law designed to prevent another Great Depression by preventing the merger of commercial and savings banks with investment banks. The kind of law that would've prevented the bankruptcy of Lehman and the ensuing Great Recession http://motherjones.com/politics/2008/09/taste-glass-steagall-lash-lehman# Of course, Kasich had a soft landing departing Lehman with a $432,000 golden parachute while Ohio's pension fund took a nearly $500,000 hit thanks to Lehman's financial shennanigans http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/2010-election-wall-street-factor-ohio-governors-race/story?id=10586618
The Great Recession drastically decreased federal revenue for states like Ohio and increased personal bankrupticies, but Kasich also voted to make it harder for working people to declare bankruptcy, http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=7939&can_id=27017 The kind of people who don't get billions in taxpayer bailouts and interest free loans from the Federal Reserve like Kasich's Wall Street buddies.
And in 1998 Kasich voted to make life easier for millionaires and strip the treasury of more revenue by raising the exemption for estate taxes to $1 million http://www.votesmart.org/issue_keyvote_detail.php?cs_id=8257&can_id=27017
In his speech, Kasich lamented the loss of jobs and population in Ohio and talked about bringing Bill Clinton into the state. Perfect, the criminals returning to the crime scene. In addition to supporting the overturning of Glass-Steagall, Clinton supported North American Free Trade Act and China's admission to the World Trade Organization both of which Rep. Kasich voted for.
The NAFTA vote paved the way for corporations to exploit cheap labor and non-existent environmental and labor laws in Mexico costing the US some 1 million jobs by 2006 including nearly 50,000 in Ohio http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp173/ Between China's admission to the WTO in 2001 and 2008, about 2.4 million US jobs were lost or displaced including nearly 92,000 in Ohio http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp173/
Kasich said Ohio isn't just "under seige" from China and India, but neighboring states like Indiana who he accused of pirating jobs by offering tax breaks, forgetting that Ohio ended all corporate taxes in 2005.
"The higher our costs are, the more opportunity another state has to come in here and offer a better deal," Kasich said. "That's why we can't raise taxes."
The truth is companies relocate primarily because of the things that the tax cuts Kasich advocates are destroying: a solid infrastructure, good schools and an educated workforce. The corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks is just the cherry on a sundae. However, companies have sucessfully been pitting states like Ohio against one another in a race to to give out the most tax breaks for decades and taxpayers are the ones who end up getting burned http://www.greatamericanjobsscam.com/pages/book.html
Just as Kasich thinks the only way to draw in businesses to Ohio is to bribe them he thinks that's the only way to keep Ohioans from moving out of the state. You're not leaving because you lost your job, it's because of those pesky estate taxes. The reailty is estate taxes affect only a fraction of Ohioans, those with estates worth at least $338,333. http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/ohio-news/gop-effort-to-repeal-ohio-estate-tax-raises-debate-1067554.html The $55 million in revenue is minimal in the context of Ohio's approximately $120 billion budget and affects only one in 14 Ohio estates, but that's what's killing the state, according to Kasich.
Kasich also wants to save money by having your elderly parents to stay at home with you rather than go to a nursing home implying that children put their parents in nursing homes because they don't love them, not because they can't take care of elderly people with serious medical conditions or Alzheimer's disease.
"We need to think outside the box on Medicaid," said Kasich whose party wants to overturn healthcare reform which would increase the deficit by $230 billion http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/cbo-health-care-repeal-deficit_n_805192.html and deny coverage to between 111,000 and 282,000 in our congressional district including between 8,000 and 35,000 children http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/health_2011/OH9.Kaptur.pdf
Kasich also spoke of giving parents more choice in schools, code for busting teachers unions as part of the union busting Senate Bill 5 and making taxpayers pay for vouchers for charter schools. Unlike public schools, charters can cherry pick top students and don't have to provide English as a Second Language classes and special education.
Kasich also said Ohio needs to enter the "international uranium market." Perhaps we can sell some uranium to Japan so they can build new nuclear power plants as if they don't have enough problems with the old ones since the earthquake.
And Kasich said we need to make more ethanol which costs more to produce than the gas savings and increases pollution, erosion and world food shortages http://motherjones.com/environment/2007/10/ethanol-effect-when-alternative-fuels-go-bad#
Kasich who previously warned we need to "get on the bus or get run over by it" said that we're all Ohioans and we'll, "climb the mountain and make Ohio great." The reality is Kasich's split-and-divide policies will drive us off a cliff.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Run Sherrod Run
An open letter to one of my US senators.
3-7-11
Evan Goodenow
Bellevue, OH 44811
Sen. Sherrod Brown
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Sen. Brown,
I recently returned to Ohio after losing my job as a journalist in Michigan and have been meaning to write and thank you for showing courage on issues like healthcare reform, ending tax cuts for the rich and ending the Senate filibuster which effectively allows gridlock and tyranny of the minority.
On Sunday I spoke with your State Director John W. Ryan who addressed a rally of striking Tsubaki workers in Sandusky. I told John I was pleasantly surprised with you.
Having not been familiar with your record in Congress when I first moved to Ohio in 2004, I was afraid that you were the kind of Clintonian, centrist, corporate Democrat who sold out working people, like the Tsubaki strikers, years ago. Instead, you have been an eloquent defender of working people showing far more spine than President Obama.
I cannot comprehend the enormous amount of money you would have to raise and organization you would have to form to run against Obama - AKA The Great Capitulator - in 2012, but I can tell you that I would volunteer to knock on doors on your behalf. I recognize a primary challenge would split the Democratic Party, but if it were mounted it should be to defeat Obama, not an effort to push him leftward.
The Tsubaki strikers and the thousands of Ohioans I protested with in Columbus last week against the union busting Senate Bill 5 don't want Republican Lite from Democrats like Obama whose watered down healthcare and financial reforms, inadequate stimulus and failure to push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act represent a failure to capitalize on the momentum he had when elected.
We need a president who remembers why he was elected, not one preoccupied with getting re-elected. While a run by you in 2012 might be quixotic, perhaps 2016 isn't out of the question although I shudder think of the state of our nation in 2016 if Obama continues to appease the right.
In the meantime, I ask you to push for a financial transactions tax on hedge fund and other risky, speculative trading, a windfall profits tax on corporations like Exxon-Mobil and General Electric which failed to pay any corporate income tax in previous years and a one-year foreclosure moratorium until the failed Home Affordable Mortgage Program can be reformed. The revenue from the taxes should go for preserving local and state public sector jobs and to repair our crumbling infrastructure.
I would also ask you to courageously support our troops by voting against appropriations for the disastrous and unwinnable Afghanistan War. Voting for money to keep our troops in harm's way is the equivalent of funding flame retardant clothing for people in a burning house rather than getting them out of the house. It is morally and financially bankrupting us.
If you were to articulate that to voters they would understand as well as explaining that for every civilian we kill in Afghanistan – as well as the illegal, secret wars being waged without our consent in Pakistan and Yemen – we create 10 more enemies. The blowback inevitably leads to terrorism like 9/11 and homegrown terrorism like the Fort Hood massacre and the attempted Times Square bombing.
I also ask that you push for new climate change laws and defend abortion laws and Planned Parenthood which is being defamed by Republican anti-abortion zealots. And please continue to defend Medicare and Social Security from the hypocritical deficit hawks who have no problem increasing the deficit with tax cuts for the superrich.
Being unemployed, I have a lot of time on my hands. If I can be of any help to you and your staff in pushing for the initiatives I described, please contact me.
Sincerely,
Evan Goodenow
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)