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.
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