We in Ohio were lectured for months by Governor Kasich and media that Kasich’s union busting law was not about unions. It was about health insurance. It was about merit pay. It was about budgets. It was about balancing the state budget. Very few in Ohio believed that, because it was obviously not true.
The Republican base in Ohio are now going to push a constitutional amendment that will destroy both public sector and private sector unions. That’s what opponents of Governor Kasich like me told Ohio private sector union members. We said “they’ll go after you next”. What we didn’t know is that they would go after private sector unions members even if they failed in destroying public sector unions, but it really doesn’t matter. What we said they were planning is in fact what they’re now doing.
This wasn’t hard to predict. Governor Walker in Wisconsin told us all about it, way back in February:
Gov. Scott Walker claims that Ohio’s overwhelming rejection of anti-labor legislation modeled on the measures he developed and promoted in Wisconsin has no bearing on the debate about whether he should remain in office.
The governor is in full spin mode.
By any measure, last Tuesday’s election results from Ohio represented a devastating rejection of the agenda Walker and his allies have been peddling since February. Offered an opportunity to endorse a Walker-style attack on collective bargaining rights for state, county and municipal workers and teachers, Ohioans voted “no” by 61-39 percent.
Of Ohio’s 88 counties — with big cities, small towns and rural areas — 82 voted to defend public employees and their unions. More Ohioans took a pro-union position in 2011 than voted for the governor who promoted the anti-labor legislation, John Kasich, in 2010.
Faced with the facts, Walker’s political team claimed that comparisons of Wisconsin and Ohio were “ridiculous.” Funny, that’s not what Wisconsin’s governor was saying back in February, when he refused to negotiate with unions representing state employees, and when he and his aides tried to lock hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites out of the state Capitol.
“I talk to Kasich every day — John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio,” Walker told the caller he thought was David Koch. Walker said that Kasich was one of the new Republican governors who, like the Wisconsinite, “got elected to do something big.” “You’re the first domino,” the Koch caller said of Walker’s anti-labor push in Wisconsin.“Yes,” replied Walker. “This is our moment.”
Throughout the conversation, Walker portrayed himself as the quarterback of a national push to cut pay and benefits for teachers and other public workers, and to crush unions. And he suggested that Kasich was on his team, carrying out the same mission in Ohio that Walker has undertaken in Wisconsin. “Little did I know how big it would be nationally,” Walker chirped. “This is our time to change the course of history.”
People don’t change the course of history by assessing public workers 15% more in health care costs. People don’t change the course of history by balancing a state budget. Governor Walker isn’t telling the truth about his objectives or his plans, just like Governor Kasich wasn’t telling the truth about his objectives or his plans. That’s now become painfully obvious in Ohio, because conservatives are moving ahead to destroy both public and private sector unions.
The campaign to recall Walker kicked off. It will be harder in Wisconsin than it was in Ohio, because in Ohio John Kasich is so disliked and his campaign staff were so inept and incredibly arrogant that we thought at times they were on our side.
We also got some last minute help from the entire GOP 2012 Presidential field, who parachuted in to tell everyone in Ohio that Kasich had lied to us all for nearly a year, and all the GOP superstars were 110% on board with the union busting campaign Kasich had been vehemently denying he was conducting. That must have been awkward for the former Fox News personality. Wisconsin, invite Mitt Romney to visit with Walker volunteers the week before the vote, and then sit back and watch as the entire GOP Presidential field endorses the anti-worker agenda Walker will have just spent six months denying. It’s magical.
We’ll be watching in Ohio, and we’re pulling for you.
Zifnab
Why stop at Romney? Get the entire clown car parade in there. Perhaps we can do some kind of telethon marathon, where every GOP nominee gets on screen and rants about how they and their best buddy Scott Walker are going to finally bring an end to the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad unions.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
If the Republicans couldn’t count on their base to be idiots and the voters to the left of them to be (a)pathetic, everything they have been doing the last few years would be indicating that the party is trying to commit suicide.
geg6
@Zifnab:
This.
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
And this. Mind boggling, isn’t it?
The Moar You Know
Of course they will. They’re evil, like a really shitty movie villain come to life.
Is there not a federally recognized right to organize that would trump this bullshit?
General Stuck
lying shitweasels like Walker and Kasich have only one mission for doing ‘something big’, and that is to fatten the wallets of shameless greed merchants like Koch, Inc, et al.
Everything was proceeding as planned, until democracy got in the way and spoiled their day.
Paul in KY
I’d want the real crazies like Bachmann & Satanum & the like to show up too. The more crazy, anti-99 percent comments the better.
cat48
Hi Kay, The GOP is running a “bait and switch” and the Senate is on the line next time. I think the DNC needs to let folks know about this before the 2012 election. The WashPost called them out via an editorial about the VA Congress that is equally divided/tied; but the GOP LtGov can break the tie for Legislation now & they consider this a “mandate”. It’s really outrageous!
kay
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
I know it’s Romney, so in a sense it doesn’t matter, but he’s been running around Michigan for a year (maybe longer? since 2008?) acting like a moderate Republican.
He is aware that Ohio borders Michigan, right? That states aren’t cordoned off from each other, and it is likely people in Michigan will become aware of the what he says in Ohio?
I recognize he has no real positions or integrity or “self”, but surely he has to pick ONE side at some point?
Villago Delenda Est
“Right to work”…as a serf.
That’s what’s proposed in Ohio.
kay
@cat48:
But that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter, at all, what state they’re governing. These agendas and laws have nothing whatever to do with the individual states or people in those states.
Mississippi is Virginia is Texas. There’s a national agenda and they’re going to carry it out. Maybe this is the inevitable result of a dogma that depends on states’ rights. They simply impose a national conservative agenda on any state they happen to land in.
Of course, the idiots got it backward.
Linda
Oh, they’ll push for this crap, but in 2013. I don’t think they want this toxic crap on the 2012 ballot, which would draw Democratic voters during a presidential election. They’ll just wait. Hard right wingers, like rust, never sleep.
Paul in KY
@Villago Delenda Est: We need to get everyone to stop referring to it as ‘Right to Work’. That’s some Orwellian phrasing there.
I like the tacking on ‘as a serf’. Maybe make a sticker that has that on it that can be added to any sign saying ‘Right to Work’.
Otherwise, a new slogan is needed. Maybe something like: ‘Lower Pay for Workers’ or ‘No High Wages’ or something like that.
kay
@Linda:
I think so too, and that makes me sad. I would completely enjoy an out-in-the-open fight on this. We could save a lot of time if they’d stop lying.
It’s completely fascinating how they hand off between the “Tea Party” and the “GOP”, though. That’s so transparent, it’s great. The “GOP” loses, so we go to the “Tea Party”, for Round Two.
“They’re not the same thing! One wears tricorner hats, Kay, and the other does not“.
Jesus. How long do I have to listen to that nonsense? Can’t we just cut to the chase?
cat48
@kay:
Romney & Perry both want Right to Work USA; a National law. That’s why I’m worried about the Senate so much if the House doesn’t turn over. I read yesterday that Axelrod & the Campaign gang met last Wednesday with Bill Clinton for advice and message coordination, etc. so hopefully they can come up with a coherent message & the Big Dawg is itching to start campaigning. I’m not accepting that Obama will lose b/c of the u/e rate like so many Dems are. I’m fighting to the bitter end. They’re coming for ALL our stuff we believe in if they win is my message sorta!
Edit: Also,too the GOP will control EVERY Branch if we don’t fight!
kay
@cat48:
FWIW, I don’t think Obama’s going to lose and I don’t know anyone here who thinks Obama is going to lose, or is “accepting” that. I don’t get that here. Maybe they’re not telling me of their grave concerns, but I doubt it. We all complain incessantly. I don’t know why this would be any different.
cat48
@kay:
Salon Mag & a few Blogs have gone that route with a lot of their contributors. The commenters I’ve noticed are largely antiObama so maybe they’re just serving their customers. It was jarring for me to read b/c it’s too early to cede an election, regardless. I haven’t noticed it at BJ, except for the occasional troll. I don’t cede until the election is called. It started when Obama hit the high 30’s in the Gallup poll after the debt ceiling. He’s managed to bring it up to 40 to 45 now though. Too early to cede people!
El Cid
They’re just trying to bring to their state the excellent quality of life seen in the original “Right to Work” states in the American South.
Can you imagine the pain suffered day after day after day for people in Ohio and Wisconsin to wake up knowing that they could instead be enjoying the conditions of the people of Alabama or Mississippi?
Or, at least, the state which founded the “Right to Work” movement — via a Dallas newspaper columnist — Texas?
I think it’s awesome that people have no idea where the phrase “right to work” gained prominence or how it came to formally bar labor unions from messing up the South’s fine labor force situation during those pesky New Deal war contract years where all the Negroes and poor hicks were getting all uppity and greedy, wanting some of the pay and benefits and conditions of their lazier competitors in the non-segregated, non-Southern states.
I mean, what could be wrong with a movement about libertarian freedoms launched by a Southern white right wing newspaper pundit? What’s more American than that?
Let’s just let everyone keep using these phrases like “right to work” and these laws without knowing it was an earlier Fox pundit hack job.
Funny thing — try discussing the “right to work” without using it in the context of “right to work” anti-union (and, I guess, really sort of ‘anti-Union’) laws.
Ask your good fellow conservative if people have a right to work. You know, you’re out of luck, you can’t pay your bills — don’t we have a right to work?
And they’ll tell you that no one has a right to a job, you have to earn it, blah blah blah. And then ask them what’s up with all those “right to work” laws?
Oh, oh, you mean “right to not have unions”. But what does that have to do with a person’s sacred right to work, ‘with or without a union’?
Because Ruggles — like all good small businessman America loving hard work cherishing decent libertarian capitalist freedom likers — was really, really big on the ‘without a union’ part, but not so much the ‘right to work’ part.
kay
@cat48:
Right. It’s fairly common. I don’t really get that. I’m fine with it, but I don’t get it. It’s almost immaterial to me. I’m either going to do X, Y and Z, or I’m not, and if I was going to do X, Y and Z anyway, the outcome would’t matter until it was over.
Maybe it’s the specific situation. Obama and Sherrod Brown are both up here, and I can’t imagine someone who was half-way paying attention splitting a ticket between Mitt Romney and Sherrod Brown, or vice versa, a GOP Senate candidate and Obama. Sherrod Brown is a liberal, populist Democrat. If they’re voting at all, are they really voting Romney/Brown? WTF would that be all about?
These are two very different sets of candidates :)
It’s sort of all or nothing here. We go hard Right conservative, or everything stays the same. There is no real middle ground for the mythical “independents” to stake out. I also think (know) the Ohio Republican Party is in disarray, although I cannot prove that or point to anything tangible yet. You’ll see it come clear though. They’re at each others throats. It’s a matter of time.
Willard
In response to the Cleveland.com article:
1) Issue 3 was horribly misleading in how it was presented on the ballot. It could’ve been titled the “Do you love puppies?” amendment. What does denying affordable insurance to those with preexisting conditions (i.e. the sick) and kicking 26 year old jobless college grads off their parent’s insurance have to do with “Healthcare Freedom?” What is the freedom we are fighting for; the choice for the sick go bankrupt or die?
2) I think the if the TEA Party does put a Right-To-Work amendment on the ballot in 2012 it can only be good news for John McCain.
JR
Part of how FDR saved democracy from the right-wing both here and abroad was by making it ILLEGAL to stop unions from organizing.
Ever since the right-wing has been chipping away at the rights of workers to organize and their unions from being powerful enough to shut down businesses who won’t negotiate in good faith.
My spouse was sec-treasurer of a small union local. Immediately after the Reagan right-wing took over the government she got a call from a clearly delighted to have power to mis-use labor department middle manager who gleefully informed my wife that “We can take your house!” if the union slipped up on a paperwork or reporting requirement.
Obviously, the union had a bookkeeper AND and an accountant (who specialized in union reporting) but in the end the Sec-Treasurer signs that paperwork they prepared. Just as obviously, any inadvertent error was going to be used to punish everyone they could find to attach to that error.
The union movement has gradually been strangled by NLRB appeals that take years to wind out, all the while some poor union guy is unemployed (and unemployable, what baron of industry would hire a known unionist?!) because he had the unmitigated gall to sign a union card. This along with court decisions ALWAYS in favor of management’s right to screw workers regardless of transparent (illegal) anti-union intent.
People have forgotten that before the union movement everyone worked 60-80 hours a week for starvation wages, that kids went to work at 12 or so, so that their little sisters wouldn’t starve. There was no job safety, these kids were working on dangerous machinery with no safety equipment and no training.
There were whole regions where most (MOST) people were missing fingers or limbs from working in mills and in the timber industry, or fishing, or farms, or mines.
Unless we restore the unions to become a power balance with industry we will become serfs again, back where management and republican leaders believe we deserve to be. If we let them get away with it, we will deserve it.
Now even Democratic mayors and governors are denying us the 1st amendment right to free assembly and right to petition our (Our!) government to do what we need it to do.
No 4th amendment, no 5th amendment, now no 1st amendment (at least the parts that count in politics! Hey! You bums, get out of our park, it isn’t yours!) the 10th has never been applied, we’re down to a 5 or 6 item “bill of rights” already.
This is pretty much a stream-of-consciousness rant. I just don’t have time to reread it for typos, so excuse me for that.
kay
@JR:
I think it’s important to mention that this is targeted. Conservatives went after the states that have a union tradition. A ‘core value”. If they kill unions here, unions are done.
What I find interesting is the constant drumbeat from national pundits (both ‘liberal’ and conservative) that unions don’t matter, because they’re archaic and olde timey.
Someone should tell conservatives that, because the fact that unions exist at all , anywhere, seems to scare the shit out of them. Would they be fighting this so ferociously if it didn’t matter? Seems to matter a lot to the Koch Bros. They bought two governors and are pouring money into propping them up. Walker is running ads. They think that’s a good investment. Why is that? I thought unions were irrelevant?
Villago Delenda Est
@kay:
Kay, I’m reminded of Bruce Hornsby’s “That’s Just the Way it is”.
People assume that the 40 hour work week, time and a half for overtime, the minimum wage…all those things have been around forever.
People fought, bled, and died for the 40 hour work week. The 40 hour work week was not “the way it is” 125 years ago. Just like “the way it is” used to be chattel slavery in this country.
“The way it is” is not static. “The way it is” changes. It can change for good, or it can change for bad. Men like the Koch brothers want it to revert back to the old, bad ways that meant grinding poverty for most even if they have a job, but a job where they work 12-16 hours a day for the most meager of wages.
These gains will not be relinquished easily. They must be fought for every single day, and expanded upon. It seems like they’re secure, but they are not. Men like the Kochs want to take us back to feudalism, ultimately. That’s their goal. They want to undo centuries of human development for the sake of their own sick egos.
Paul in KY
@El Cid: Thanks for the post. Learned something about that nasty phrase’s origination.
Dave N.
Walker’s supporters in Wisconsin already have their marching orders. They want to gather recall petition signatures and destroy them. A felony, but that pesky ‘rule of law’ is just a liberal buzz word…
http://www.politiscoop.com/us-politics/wisconsin-politics/570-tea-party-plans-premeditated-felony.html
kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, all of that is true, but I also think “men like the Koch Brothers” want to get unions out of the way so they can privatize and turn a profit off public services. In Ohio, I think they want public schools. There’s a lot of money there. Second graders are a freaking cash cow. Cram 40 into a room with a free-market temp, and bill taxpayers 8 grand a year per student-unit. Call it “market-based reform”.
The Other Chuck
“Right to Work” you to death.
Joseph Nobles
I’ve been hearing “right to work for less” from union leaders recently.