Shared Sacrifice

While rallying with some 10,000 at the state capitol in Columbus, Ohio Tuesday against the union busting Senate Bill 5, I got another example of the myth of shared sacrifice. It was in a conversation with Republican State Sen. Karen L. Gillmor, who represents me.

Gillmor is the wife of the late U.S Rep Paul Gillmor, a Republican, who was worth at least $6 million from his family's bank holdings when he died in 2007 of an apparent heart attack. In 2006, Gillmor was ranked the 43rd richest congressman with between $15 and 25 milllion in stock holdings, according to Roll Call, the congressional newsletter.

So it was no surprise when Gillmor blanched when I suggested that instead of making it impossible for public sector union workers to negotiate decent wages and benefits, Ohio raise the income tax rate for residents who earn $250,000 or more to 70 percent, the approximate federal rate in 1945. The rate was about 47.7 percent when Ronald Reagan took office as president in 1981, according to the Tax Foundation.

Gillmor looked at me like I was nuts.

"Once you tax someone once, it's all gone," Gillmor told me. "I pay $27,000."

It was ironic that Sen. Gillmor would bring up taxes on her residence. Besides voting for lowering taxes on capital gains while raising the age rate 25 to 35 for eligibility for food stamps - despite this voting record the Gillmor's New York Times obituary described him as a "moderate Republican" - Gillmor was notorious for flouting Ohio's residency law by maintaining a sham residence in his district while primarily living in Dublin, a suburb of Columbus http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/05/comedy-in-ethics-even-if-rep-paul.html

Karen Gillmor was accused of the same unethical behavior and cleared in a ruling that essentially said  legislator's primary residence is where they say they vote and where they plan to retire http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2009/12/16/gillmor-residency-status-upheld.html So Gillmor can continue to collect some $3,400 in taxpayer mileage reimbursments for traveling from her home in Tiffin, Ohio because she says she lives there more than the second home 50 miles away from the capitol.

It's people like Gillmor who say we need to have shared sacrifice to deal with the budget deficit created by lawmakers like her husband starving the government of revenue for essential services for citizens and passing financial deregulation that allowed Wall Street to crash the economy and rob the taxpayers blind in bailouts. Before he was elected governor, John Kasich was a nine-term congressman helping pass laws that handcuffed financial policing of Wall Street before getting rich at Lehman Brothers, a company that helped cause the recession with risky financial trading that robbed pension funds like Ohio's http://www.seiu.org/2010/09/john-kasichs-work-at-lehman-brothers-connected-to-hit-that-ohio-seniors-have-taken-in-new-tv-ad.php

Gillmor, who to her credit was gracious enough to speak with me for about 20 minutes despite me not having an appointment, told me that part of the state's economic problems was that some people don't want to work or can't pass drug tests to get hired. This is classic blame the victim Republicanism: the poor and unemployed are the deadbeats, not the fat cats getting billions in corporate welfare and taxpayer bailouts.

Besides the myth that most poor and unemployed people are deadbeats is the myth that public sector workers are overpaid. I told Gillmor that Ohio workers earn 5.9  percent less in total compensation than their private sector counterparts, according to a February study by the Economic Policy Institute http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/news_from_epi_epi_study_finds_ohio_public-sector_workers_under-compensated/ Nationally,  public sector workers earned 3.7 percent under compensated than their private sector counterparts.

I also reminded Gillmor that the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 8 percent of all wealth in 1974, but it was up to 18 percent in 2007, according to IRS statistics. The top 0.01 percent of American families earned  an average of $27,342,212 in 2008 and the top 1 percent averaged $1,137, 684, according to University of California-Berkley economist Emmanuel Saez who analyzed IRS statistics.

The top 10 percent averaged $164,647 while the bottom 90 percent averaged $31,244. Wall Street profits increased 720 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics while unemployment rose 102 percent and American's home equity dropped 35 percent. So much for shared sacrifice.

I informed Gillmor that SB 5 is a race to the bottom neighbor against neighbor tactic. But just because I'm an unemployed journalist who doesn't enjoy decent union benefits and wages doesn't mean I want to see them taken away from others. And I'm not the only one who isn't being duped by the split and divide tactics.

For hours, thousands of us were kept out of the capitol for several hours by state police and left to chant  and wave signs in below freezing temperatures. "Stop the War on Workers. Billionaires get Tax Cuts, Peasants get Pay Cuts" read one sign. "Corporate America Hands off our Government" read another.

The message wasn't getting through to Gillmor. She said she opposed SB 5 in its current form, but planned to write her own version which would include a provision removing workers right to strike. I told her I understand why firefighters and police officers are forbidden to strike - SB 5 would remove their right to binding arbitration as an alternative to striking - but workers need the right to strike as a last resort leverage.

I know Gillmor will eventually vote for SB 5 no matter how much we protest and appeal to her sense of decency. Nearly all politicians serve special interests, not the voters.

The corporations have the money, the power and the pols. But there's a lot more of us than them. And maybe, just maybe, the union busting occurring in Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, New Jersey and the rest of the nation will help end the political apathy that has been such a badge of honor for most Americans now that they're wallets are threatened.

We have to keep agitating, educating and organizing. If we go down, we go down fighting.