Let me guess. The pro union faction will declare the new report that Andrew Biggs from the American Enterprise Institute just released is false, which states clearly that public sector workers are being paid 43.4% more than private sector positions, and that many of the costs are the type of secondary costs that many in the private sector don’t even consider because they are only known in public sector service. The unions instead will declare that all the information contained in that report is somehow misleading and concocted by the “evil John Kasich” from his throne of power. (This shows what a poor grasp on reality those people function from)
That’s why I’m putting up the original video of Andrew Biggs where he explains how he arrived at the information and discusses how other information that had been floating around prior to this report is fundamentally wrong due to several errors of judgment, which this report corrected.
Public workers even if they gave back half of all their benefits to the taxpayers in order to be more equal would STILL be out ahead of everyone who pays their salary. That is where all the hidden costs of state budgets are. They get lost in the chaos of big government and explain why those employees are so expensive. The more government workers there are, the less efficient they are, because personal accountability is decreased. That is the subject of this Doc Thompson discussion on 700 WLW in a recent broadcast where he reveals how inaccurate states have been in issuing unemployment insurance. Doc continues on to discuss the new AEI report after this stunning revelation. The terrible performance discussed in this broadcast could be translated to virtually any form of government. This is the problem with politicians who “create” jobs just for the sake of filling seats with bodies without any concept on performance.
For your own reference, feel free to read the whole report for yourself. You can read it at the link below:
• Ohio public employees receive nearly the same wages as comparable private workers (2.5 percent less, although that’s an average disguising some of the education professions with lower level administrative work, such as those who issue the insurance payments. Teachers along with police and firefighters are very guilty of uncontrolled overtime payments, and double-dipping retirements which are paying the same employee twice and driving up the cost of staffing those positions.)
• Fringe benefits for Ohio public workers are more than twice as generous as those paid in the private‐sector, meaning that when pay and benefits are taken into consideration public workers receive 31.2 percent more in total compensation than private‐sector counterparts.
• Ohio Public employees enjoy significantly greater job security than private‐sector workers. That job security has an economic value equal to approximately 10 percent of compensation.
• Even if the provisions of SB 5 were implemented in full, it is very likely that Ohio public‐sector workers would continue to enjoy a substantial compensation premium over private‐sector Ohioans.
The Day of Rage that was so aggressively talked about turned out the way I thought it would. Watching the “call to arms” videos such as this one below is an indication of all the same old communist stuff. These young people were simply taught these static patterns of thinking by their teachers in school. Those teachers are the types who look to the grand old “60’s” as their shining moment. None of these people have a clear understanding of what they are doing or why they do it. They were simply taught to think certain things, and they do so without any further inquisition. To understand some of the science behind this foolishness, CLICK ON THIS HOT LINK FOR MORE INFORMATION.
A number of years ago I scurried the planet looking for a book called The Skeleton Key to Finnegan’s Wake, by Joseph Campbell, for I had been trying to decipher the book Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce for years, and since this was the pre-days of Amazon.com, I had no way to get the Skeleton Key, so I never found it in a used book store or even a yard sale. It had become a book lost to time. So I worked out my issues with that very elusive book Finnegan’s Wake on my own, and then moved on to my next literary pursuit. (Someday I’ll return back to that project now that getting such books is easier than ever) I enjoyed Finnegan’s Wake to such an extent that I named my lead character in my own book The Symposium of Justice after Finnegan’s Wake. (to learn more about Finnegan’s Wake check out this link:
To provide testimony for everything you will read and see in this article I would like to present to you a simple game called, “The Answer is C,” presented by Doc Thompson of 700 WLW. Listen to this short little contest and study the questions and answers by the public.
When Van Jones talks about the success of Germany and China taking care of their people what he fails to mention is that China is not exactly a free country. They do not share the same values as the United States. You are not even allowed to have more than one child per family, let alone decide all other aspects of their life. And Germany is just now recovering from the fall of the Berlin Wall where the West was finally able to merge with the Soviet controlled East. Once capitalism was able to work in Germany their country began to produce again. In China it was when Hong Kong was transferred back to China from the Capitalist tendencies of England in the year 2000. Back then there was a lot of fear as to what would happen to Hong Kong under Chinese rule. Would China bring down Hong Kong into a communist province or would the communists attempt to accept Hong Kong and the great economy that was flourishing there? China decided to adapt, reluctantly, and their economy is flourishing.
But not everyone is falling for it. More and more young people are leaning in the direction of conservatism. I would say that in social representation, they are the 2 out of 5 who answered right. These people have the ability to see that there are serious errors to the social patterns that have formed around them and they are beginning to emerge, which was the topic of a recent discussion on GBTV.
This is the terrible condition people like Matt will always suffer from. Matt is a smart young man, but so are people who are progressives. I would venture to say that George Soros is smart, after all he’s a billionaire so he did something right. Van Jones is smart. Barack Obama is probably smart taken one on one. But all those people are suffering from a failed understanding built within their static patterns. Their failure comes from their education to begin with. So it’s not a matter of intelligence. I know a lot of smart people who are really, socially stupid. Some of them suffer from having traditional parents and a stable household, but try desperately to merge those values with the values they learned in public education and college and what happens is a mess of personal ideology which prevents them from seeing the obvious, because their static patterns are fundamentally broken.
Matt Clark however managed to come out of college recently much like the young people on GBTV, and they are fully aware of what is wrong and can see it clearly even if the rest of the world can’t. Even without a life of experience behind Matt, he can see the error of what Nancy Pelosi’s progressive philosophy is advocating, even though Nancy seems oblivious to her hypocrisy even as she says it.
The trouble here is that many police and firefighters seem to lean in a conservative direction politically, unlike teachers who overwhelmingly are liberal, yet all fall under the category of public service and are all guilty of the kind of explosive growth shown by Nick Gillespie from Reason Magazine.
The work rests on the 2 out of 5 to do all the work anyway. They must carry the whole burden of this failed philosophy called progressivism and replace it with what worked before progressives brought their nonsense to the whimsical Victorians of early New York City, to culturally launch the nation into a static pattern of degradation much to the pleasure of our enemies.
One of the great things about Glenn Beck is that he’s spent the money he’s made off his books, his subscriptions, and his shows and reinvested it back into the message he’s been committed to. You won’t find Glenn Beck running around with some stripper in a New York hotel,or find that he has used any of his money to abuse anybody in society. Regardless of whatever mistakes he may have made in the past, I sincerely believe the person he is today is a good person who just wants the truth, the same as me, and millions of other Americans who simply don’t like the progressive direction of our country.
A sign that Beck is achieving that success can be seen in President Obama’s new Attack Watch website, which I find disgusting, but also revealing, for it shows just how juvenile politicians as high-ranking as The President of the United States truly is. Listen to Beck discuss it from the set of his new show, totally free of any editorial censoring, which I believe has triggered this move by the president and his staff.
After I saw this episode with Beck I checked out the website for myself and the very first thing that came to my mind was the way that East Berlin used to engage in similar propaganda to prevent its people from trying to escape over into West Berlin. Obama is actively looking for dissidents to his administration so those dissidents can be targeted. Of course people like Beck will be targeted, but as I read the intent of that website it became clear that the goal of Attack Watch wasn’t so much after Glenn Beck, but it’s intended to target people like me and the material I publish on this site, which I stand behind proudly. But the nature of this type of information set my blood into a boil, so I contacted Attack Watch and turned myself in with the note shown below, which is the exact text that I sent to Barack Obama and his minions running Attack Watch.
Dear Attack Watch:
I will have to report myself. I am embarrassed at this administration and his support of public unionized labor. And he has put himself on the front line of Ohio’s Issue 2 and is very responsible for his own attacks and false information. The fact that he supports this site says everything about the guy.
Rich
Shortly after I did this I heard that Doc Thompson was covering this very issue on 700 WLW so I called in at about the 11 minute mark and confessed what I had done, that I had turned myself into Attack Watch. Doc and I had some fun at the expense of the President over his Jobs Bill and this tyrannical Attack Watch website, which the President deserves. CLICK TO LISTEN:
With the recent news that Chiquita is considering a move from Cincinnati to Charlotte, North Carolina, it has left Cincinnati in a state of panic as to why Chiquita or any other business would desire to do such a thing. Doc Thompson covers this issue with Cincinnati Magazine Executive Editor Linda Vaccariello in an illuminating broadcast about what Cincinnati has to offer, then considers why Cincinnati has a problem attracting and keeping business in the city.
Well, I have a bit of experience with doing business in Cincinnati that I’ve touched on before, but this topic lends itself to a bit more detail. Well before there was ever a Paul Brown Stadium or even a Great American Ball Park I was with a group who was trying to win the design for the riverfront development project. In fact, the guy I was with presented a wonderful plan to the city council of Cincinnati of which Dwight Tillery seemed to like, (Dwight was the mayor at the time). The plan included paving over completely the various roads that connect the highway system downtown, and put them underground to connect Cincinnati’s downtown with the riverfront. On that paved-over section would be a grassy park, various restaurants, movie theaters, shopping centers, new stadiums, and a plan for including Longworth Hall as a Historic District connected to everything else which would wrap around to join with Union Terminal. The plan received a rousing applause from the people attending this meeting. I thought at the conclusion that the group I was with would undoubtedly be the lead design team which would head the development of the riverfront development.
After the meeting found it odd that none of the city council members, or the media wanted to speak to anyone from our group, after all, we just had the best presentation without question, but we also didn’t have “formal” relationships with any members of city council. By formal that means “friendly” in the world of politics. I knew every member of council through my work at city hall where a friend of mine and I were at that monstrosity every day trying to get the Cincinnati Building Commission to approve plans for a development we were working on which required a simple change of use on an existing building.
Getting information out of any member of the CBC was like pulling teeth from a 4-year-old kid. I can’t even begin to illustrate without writing an entire book on the matter of how many engineers we fired for not moving at the speed we demanded, which was the speed of business. In fact I remember vividly a conversation I had with our architect and investor at the time. This guy had liked our business plan so much he put some of his own money into the project. Then one day he gave us a call and said, “I heard you guys were down at City Hall yelling at the guys in the CBC for dragging their feet. I want you to know that I have a good standing with those guys, and I find it offensive that you’d chose to do business this way.”
Our response was, “Hey, you’re our architect, you work for us. You don’t work for the CBC. If you are friends with them, that’s not our problem.”
The architect then said, “But you guys are trying to cut too many corners. They are telling you what you need to do and you are bucking them at every issue. They told you the type of HAVAC unit you had to install. They told you what the structural improvements were going to be. They told you how many restrooms you were going to have to install and on and on, and you guys seem to want to argue every fact!” “Buddy, you are supposed to be working on our behalf. You are supposed to do this arguing for us. We’re not supposed to even be involved in this kind of thing. We’re doing it because you aren’t. Anyone can just say ‘spend more money,’ which is what you are saying, and it’s what they are saying. They want a larger fee for the cost of the project. That is all they are after. They are deliberately driving up the cost to receive the larger fee, why can’t you see that?”
“It’s the cost of doing business and you guys don’t want to pay it. It’s cheap and classless. I’m embarrassed to be associated with you guys. I’ve known those people for years and I don’t know what to tell them when you won’t follow their guidance.”
“Who are they but a bunch of pencil-pushing government workers? If we did what you and the CBC are suggesting you guys would add a million dollars to the cost of this project, and that’s just not in the budget.”
“So put it in the budget!” Said the architect. “Just go raise more money. Isn’t that easier than all this?”
That’s why nobody would speak to us after the riverfront development meeting. We were in that class as, “radicals”who didn’t want to pay off their friends around the city. The result of course was that we took our business across the river to Covington. My meeting with their building division went something like this.
“You guys want to do what? Well, Ok. Sure, no problem.”
My friend and I looked at each other. “But don’t you want to contest HAVAC units, fire escapes, access ramps, structural improvements and fire easements.”
The man laughed, “Hell no, it’s your business. We want you guys over here. Give me a call when you’re ready to move on this project.”
This is why Cincinnati is in a state of decline, because it has been overrun by these types and all the people with bright ideas and money will take it someplace else, for all the same reasons that companies don’t want to be limited with unionized labor or to deal with companies who are driven by unionized labor. It’s not because they want to hurt a worker’s rights. Most companies don’t want to worry about that kind of thing, that’s why they hire human resource managers, so they can advise the company how to take care of the employees. Because the men and women of this world with ideas and the money to spend on them do not want to be tied down to the speed of complacency and network friendships. They want to move at the speed of business, which is what drives communities and countries to greatness, and is what the looters of the world simply slow down.
It has been a difficult couple of weeks, the worst of which was the news that my editor had been particularly affected when Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast. She was so affected that she was unable to continue on with the task of editing my new book, since she needs time off to recover from the damage. So the publisher is assigning me someone else, which in the world of publishing is kind of like a “blind date,” you aren’t sure how much common ground you’ll have, and whether or not the relationship will be fruitful. But that’s the nature of business. When devastation strikes people you respect and care about, your heart goes out to them, but the objectives of business must march on.
This is why ISSUE 2 is such an important law. Diana Frey was not the first and certainly not the last union leader or politician who will take advantage of their power position to enrich themselves. And she is not the first to use the static patterns of society to hide their true intentions. In fact, many of the school levies on the ballot this year are using the static patterns of social education perception, sports, college prep, real estate value to disguise the labor union looting of the public treasury where the real intent are excessive wages and benefits for their members. It has nothing to do with the education of children. ISSUE 2 will allow the dynamic elements of society, to question things that aren’t right, and bring it to the attention of those who are stuck in static thinking, which simply can’t see it.
One of the most popular art forms which exemplify this static and dynamic tendency is the film series Star Wars. When people talk about Star Wars most people will say that they enjoy the older films more than the newer films. The complaint is that the new films are boring and discuss politics too much. Well, I don’t think that’s the real reason. The real reason that people like the older films over the newer films is by design. If Lucas had come out with the new series first, Star Wars would have never been popular.The series would have died off a long time ago. The original series, episodes 4 through 6 are all about Dynamic Quality. The rebellion is a dynamic static pattern confronting the static pattern of the Evil Empire. It’s the classic struggle, the David versus Goliath principle. Goliath did not expect David to simply launch a rock to hit the much larger man in the forehead. Goliath loses because in his static pattern thought there would be a great battle, where he would use his size against the much smaller David to defeat the little man. In Star Wars the small rebellion fires one small torpedo into the giant Death Star to blow it up and end the tyrannical super weapon of the Empire. It’s all the same stuff.
But in Episodes 1 through 3, known as the Prequels, the story is all about the rise of that Empire to power. Those films are about how the good guys, stuck in a static pattern of their own, failed to see the evil of Senator Palpatine who would become Emperor of the growing Empire in his power grabs which occurred right under the noses of the well respected Jedi.
The Jedi Council with all their wisdom and sage-like understanding rooted in thousands of years of defending the Old Republic from aggressive enemies, with the ability to even read the minds of people, could not see the actions of Senator Palpatine who had befriended the Jedi Council and used that relationship against the Jedi to hide his true intentions; the destruction of the Republic and the creation of an Empire of which he would lead.
Lucas knew from experience that the public would reject the Star Wars films if he started with the collapse of a static pattern looked after by the socially good and the evil dynamic was the actual protagonist, Star Wars would not have been so accepted and loved, so he began his story with the collapse of an evil static pattern to be replaced with a dynamic good pattern. Once he had a captive audience hungry for more, he had a portion of society who was prepared to hear his message. This is the message he tried to tell in films like Apocalypse Now, and American Graffiti as well, but never quite hit the mark until he moved the story to Star Wars, a world of his own making to create the tapestry in which to tell such a complex tale that worked at many psychological levels.
Why is it our obligation as a tax paying base to subsidize bad decisions made by politicians who have long since left office, leaving in their wake a turbulent chaos of bureaucracy, so that their puny minds could relish in the creation of a job, when in fact the merit of those jobs add little to the overall society? It would seem that politicians like Obama are so emotionally attached to certain jobs like teachers, police, firefighters, BMV workers, administrators and the like that they never measure the productivity of those positions against the taxes it takes to maintain them, and that is a catastrophic error.
The trouble with government is every time someone like Obama wants to make a name for himself, and history has produced millions of those types, they “create” a job and expand government just a little bit more. And the cost of that expansion is what drives our taxes higher and higher in order to maintain the growth. This is why politicians are in such a panic over the sudden desire from the public, of which I am a proud part, to reduce government, because those expansions are part of a politicians “legacy.” To a politician removing a government program is similar to taking away their tombstone once they’ve been laid to rest in a cemetery.
My family explored a cemetery hidden away in the hills of Eastern Ohio a few years ago which was supposedly haunted. As we sat in the dark with cameras and other recording equipment waiting for a ghost to come up out of the ground and dance with the evening mist which engulfed us, I looked at the tombstones laying all about, mostly eroded away beyond recognition. The cemetery itself was about 150 years old and the town which housed the residents had long ago disappeared. This cemetery no longer had relatives who came to visit. These people were simply forgotten by a town that no longer existed. (TO SEE SPECIFICS ON THIS TYPE OF STORY SEE MY ARTICLE ON THE GHOST TOWN KERR CITY) CLICK THE LINK:
To the people of a ghost town, all the activity of the town seemed so important while the town lived. My daughter and I looked at the tombstone of “The Brakeman” in the misty, haunted night where civilization wasn’t even remotely connected. The night air called out no hints of mankind’s existence from this place, as we waited for the ghost ofThe Brakeman to walk the cemetery at night, as legend said he does occasionally.
The Brakeman worked the railroad of the nearby town and had an affair with the wife of his card playing friend who was in charge of all the freight which left the town. When the friend found out about what the brakeman had done with his wife, he challenged his friend to a card game where he got The Brakeman drunk to the point of passing out. At that point the estranged husband laid his friend “The Brakeman” across the railroad tracks to be killed by the passing train, which happened within the hour, decapitating completely The Brakeman. Now legend has it that the ghost of the headless Brakeman roams the cemetery at night, and that’s what we wanted to see for ourselves in spite of all the reports from people who did exactly what we were doing, but suffered from being driven insane by curses that the angry Brakeman casts upon anyone who disturbs his grave. That’s the story anyway.
Strange things did happen that night, but not the expected “strange stuff.” But as we sat there waiting I thought about how important sleeping with that man’s wife had been to The Brakeman. How important all their jobs had been to the people of the town, even how important the man’s marriage to the cheating wife had seemed to the killer. Now here we were 150 years later waiting for a ghost to appear from that time and show us some hint to a mystery which occurred so long ago. And all the things that seemed so important to the people of this graveyard back when they lived were no longer even relevant to the order of the universe. The people were all decayed away and forgotten. Even the tombstones proving their existence was nearly gone. In another hundred years nobody would even know this graveyard ever existed.
This is the secret behind government expansion, and what is truly behind the words of politicians like Obama. Government programs and created jobs are the “tombstones” of the politician. They hope that when they are long gone, dead to the world that society will remember that they were good people once, and that their legacy will live on in some way. Social Security is the tombstone of FDR. Medicare is the tombstone of LBJ. I am 100% convinced that when those presidents signed those government programs into law that they thought to themselves, “people will remember me when I’m gone. These programs will outlast a tombstone.”
That is what is behind almost every government program created. It’s behind nearly every law created, every building built, every bridge that spans a river; it is in the infantile mind of the spiritually cumbersome which seeks some measure of immortality in the form of something that will carry their memory beyond the tombstones of a cemetery. And this is the mentality behind the President’s Jobs Bill, and the anger of many who think like him that people would “dare” to reduce the size of government by eliminating government programs, or even entire branches of it, because to them, this would be equivalent to desecrating the grave of the dead, for the impact, is the same. The fear is to be forgotten so nobody ever knew they lived. People like Obama understand this at a primal level and will protect those who came before him in hopes that someday someone will protect his tombstones in the form of created legislation. Isn’t that what Obama Care is after all, a memorial to Obama for all eternity?
When I was a very small kid, I actually took a tombstone from a graveyard and hid it in the basement of our house. I wanted to study it. My mother was aghast and demanded I put it back where I found it, which was an old cemetery I had found deep in the woods near our house. She told me the ghost of that man would track me down all my life, that God would be angry with me for desecrating the grave of this poor man. I was confused by her anger so I drug that tombstone the 2 miles back to the graveyard and put it back the best I could, wondering why my mother was so upset about it. I found out later that she had done the same thing when she was a little girl and her parents, my grandparents had put the fear of God into her, and she never did such a thing again. I asked her if she actually believed the Earth would swallow her up and she’d be damned to hell for all eternity if she took a tombstone, a simple rock with writing on it that the process of natural erosion would destroy within a few hundred years anyway. Why did human beings think such things are actually sacred?Well, the only answer she had was that it was wrong to do such a thing. And the rationality is just as simple when speaking about reducing a government program, or a law. All those things are just memorials to the deceased when taken down to their most elementary function.
I’ve explored graveyards all over America since then and seen and done things that many would consider sacrilegious to the religions of the Earth. I have done these things with the view toward science, not just belief, and this lends itself to the proper perspective in understanding the nature of a problem. And this is the case of government. It grows and expands not out of necessity, but out of fear……..fear of the lives that make up that government growing old and dying off to be forgotten by the world. This is the fundamental error behind many of the human beings who roam this Earth. They are living their deaths by planning for it their entire lives, wondering how they will be remembered instead of living the life that is before them one day at a time and when the time comes to leave this world of the living honorably to join with the greater mysteries of existence, most of mankind clambers with the fingers of both hands dug deep into roots of the living and while they hope that there is an afterlife, they don’t truly believe it. So they seek to be remembered for “something.” And this is the catastrophe of politics. It allows the small-minded to use tax money to build memorials in their honor, and that is not the role of government. And it is not the responsibility of the tax payer to make people who view themselves inwardly as “worthless” to project an outward appearance of “worth” long after death robs them of life and confines their Earthly bodies to a cold, decaying grave.
Every politician ever known or yet created will suffer the same fate as The Brakeman, and no amount of money, of government program can protect them from the fact that they are living a death and their ghost will soon come to claim their bodies erasing their footprint from the mind of mankind forever.
One of the questions I get a lot is…………..What right do you have to say the things you do? Who do you think you are? The next is, if you’re such a great writer, why aren’t you writing for organizations like American Thinker,or other conservative publications. Well, the answer to that question is that I have. My preference however is to have creative control over my content, and when you present that material without a lot of middlemen involved, then the material has the opportunity to be more authentic.
But, for those readers here who would like to see a sample of my work from before I started this forum, here is an article from American Thinker, from back when Governor Kasich was just getting ready to run for the office in Ohio. I was reminded of this article recently, and thought it prophetic given the current battles over Issue 2 that we are all facing. So for brevity, I provide the link below to that article for your enjoyment.
Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinborough , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior.
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. From bondage to spiritual faith; 2. From spiritual faith to great courage; 3. From courage to liberty; 4. From liberty to abundance; 5. From abundance to complacency; 6. From complacency to apathy; 7. From apathy to dependence; 8. From dependence back into bondage.”
With the tragedy of 9/11 occupying almost every broadcast and social event of the weekend, the common theme which came to my mind was that I felt that the tragedy of 9/11, as terrible as it was, fails in comparison to attending a memorial service for your own country while it still lives.
As the NFL did its tribute, and the firefighters climbed to the psychological heap to lift the flag high about their heads, I thought of the unions behind those firefighters, concoctions of socialism hidden behind a mask of American Pride and I could only shake my head. “They don’t even know what they are,”I would think to myself in disgust. They have no concept of history. Their rituals are only a few generations deep and keep them stuck into a ritual that reminds them of the greatest defeat inflicted on American soil, an attack that went far deeper than buildings falling in the financial district of New York City, or even the terrible deaths which occurred there. The tragedy of the 9/11 attack is that it forced America to change, to become too introspective, and to meditate on the tragedy itself in a vain attempt at recollection.
I looked at the guy shifting gears, because the memorial event was touching and my mind was on it. “Yes, that’s right. I am that guy.”
“Well, I want to tell you, I grew up with firefighters, I’m friends with firefighters, and I stand with firefighters.”
I looked out the window as he spoke and looked at the long lines of firefighters gathered around their trucks and a group of motorcycles all propping up the American Flag from the backs, the riders showing AFL-CIO stickers on their windshields and fenders. “So because you grew up with them you have to think like them?”
The man looked at me with a challenging gaze. “I’m not looking to dispute you with a bunch of ‘fancy’ words. I just want you to know where I stand.”
The firefighters at the service I was at, along with all the armed forces personnel gave me the same feeling that I thought watching the start of all the NFL games, that the memorial we were all attending was not one for 9/11, it was for ourselves. And the events which led to that death was an elusive quality that nobody even saw coming. It is like a death by cancer as opposed to a gruesome death by a visible enemy on a remote battlefield. The death by cancer just eats you from the inside out and the death just happens quietly in a bed.
The men I was looking at were good people, but they are carrying within them something that is destroying their spirit without them even knowing it. It’s rotting them using their static patterns as camouflage. Many of them have no idea they even carry it within them, within their belief patterns which govern their lives.
On 9/11 the tragedy of The World Trade Center was just the needle which injected into the body of our American Culture a disease which would topple our society with apathy. For while we attend memorials and contemplate whether or not firefighters and police should be attached to communist philosophies in the form of labor unions, the enemy moves against us. It runs through the blood of our cultural bodies and is turning the elements of our body against itself, with the aim of destroying it.
The sad thing is, such as in the case of what that guy said to me, that he “stood with firefighters,” as though the prerequisite for supporting firefighters, teachers and police means you must support unionized labor. My question is, why can’t I support those public workers without supporting unionized labor, which is rooted in socialism? I wanted to tell that guy that, but he didn’t give me the chance. He walked off too quickly, and even if he didn’t it would have taken hours of conversation to even arrive at a place where his mind could accept what I was telling him. He is functioning from a static pattern that he spent over 40+ years forming, and that wasn’t going to change in an afternoon conversation with me.
As I watched the guy and his firefighter friends, I thought of the AIDS virus, how as HIV it attacks the immune system of the human body by disguising itself as a friend, then when it is near, it destroys the body’s ability to fight it off the virus, until it’s too late.
America has been infected, and the events of 9/11 has paralyzed America’s immune system and allowed the virus of our enemies to attack us, to overwhelm us, to turn friend against friend on a premise that was a virus to begin with.
So when I want to demonstrate precision, power, effectiveness, management of resources, I often use the whip.I’ve used my bullwhips to explain to businesses how to function more efficiently, so it only makes sense to me to use a bullwhip to explain how Issue 2 can be effective in controlling the costs of communities all over Ohio. And I do it by showing that Issue 2 will allow communities to “target” their costs specifically, just as I do by targeting the flame of a candle, putting that flame out without disrupting the content of the candle. In this case it is the wax that makes up the candle and it is the flame that consumes it. If I want to save the candle from consumption by the flame, I must blow out the candle. Putting the candle out with at whip demonstrates how incredible force can be applied “precisely” without harming the rest of the candle. So the political metaphor is appropriate. See for yourself.
Who are the flames in society, the “public employees” who consume the “system?” What flames would I target with Issue 2? Well, what comes to my mind immediately is a situation we had at Lakota where a teacher Ryan Farhenkemp just plead guilty to taking inappropriate pictures of a young student while on an out-of-town field trip. That teacher had a serious case of pedophilia, where he desired sex with children, boys specifically, and should have never been allowed to teach. Because the teachers union is so radical, they prevented a proper investigation into this behavior, and did not allow any management to even investigate the matter, until it’s too late. Read more about this situation here:
Just one school district over in Mason another teacher was having sex with the football team, while her boss, the assistant principal was sending pictures of his penis to the teacher’s phone. Many people, including the Superintendent knew that things were not all well and good among his staff, but the teachers union has made investigations into this kind of business nearly impossible, so the bad teachers out there, “and there are many” are allowed to continue on with bad behavior because they are “protected” by a union. Issue 2 will allow performance based evaluations which will help root out this kind of trouble by “allowing” the discussion to initially take place, where now it doesn’t happen at all, because legally, it can’t. Read more about the Mason situation here:
And to understand how out-of-control the union contracts are, listen to Scott Sloan of 700 WLW read the Lakota Teachers Contract, the more complex something is, the more money it costs. The Lakota contract is not unique, but is pretty standard all over Ohio.
Those are examples of the kinds of “targets” that we as taxpayers must remove from our public employee system to control the out-of-control tax increases that are coming at us. Only in a community do we know what our problems are, and our school boards, city councils, and trustees are there to represent our interests. But often if you go to a community meeting, you will find that even if you speak, those elected representatives won’t listen to you, because the deals are already solidified in the chaos of Columbus. It is the union lobby power that has twisted the arms of legislators and passed legislation like the “double-dipping” provision while the tax payers were busy “working” those lobbyists and politicians, all paid for by us, were having lunch together in Columbus and writing laws to enrich themselves in the chaos they initiated.
But the video below will give you a basic understanding:
Those who are in favor of Issue 2 could provide fact after fact, after fact on why it’s a great law. Basically we have a system that is currently in chaos, and there are a lot of people working in the public sector who fully intend to enrich themselves in the midst of that chaos. What you will find is that those groups who wish to take advantage of that chaos against the tax payer will attempt to divert the attention away from the details of an argument to an emotional one. In recent radio broadcasts we have begun to call this the Wookie Defense. Click here to read all about it:
You can see supporters of Issue 2 pick apart the recent “Firefighter” ad put out by We Are Ohio here, which will demonstrate unequivocally just how the system is flawed. If these guys won’t tell the truth about things right out in the open, what will they lie about behind closed doors? The answer to that is why things in government cost so much money, and why Issue 2 is so important. The savings doesn’t come from a literal figure on paper. It comes from decentralization in Columbus so people like me can help manage the costs in our communities, where they should be negotiated.
Now, this next video which was put out by a bunch of Firefighters working with a local school is using the same tactics that most public employees use to pass new levies, shows the kind of game they want to play. Now, when I saw this video I laughed hard for a long time. In fact my stomach still hurts almost 24 hours later from laughing at it. It’s not that the people in the video did a bad job. Actually, I think it’s a good effort at a dance routine. What I laughed so hard at is the level of manipulation they are employing in plain sight. They are basically expecting the voter to vote against Issue 2 because they can dance, and that is hilarious.
My stomach hurts again………………………………………………hold on…………Ok. How are the communities going to be weakened if we give the communities more power to handle their costs? Instead of the fire chief talking to his union people and then the union lobby going to Columbus to create a new law that then comes back to our community as an unfunded mandate, how about that fire chief talk to the people in the community about their staffing levels, their pay, and their equipment. That seems like it would create a stronger relationship, not a weaker one. If taxes needed to be increased, then the community could decide, but as it is now, the tax increases are “dictated” by the state through chaotic legislation, which is just how the union likes it. You see these emotional types won’t deal with facts they’ll instead rely on emotion to convince you to throw money at them.
However, in this next video the firefighters attempt to “look” like they are dealing with facts by letting you listen in on one of their picnics. I laughed hard at this one too but for an entirely different reason. In fact, this has been a running joke among my wife and me now for an entire day. We will probably make fun of this one for years to come.
Oh my goodness! “Our forefathers and firefighters tried to do back in the 70’s?” Thanks for that, Joe. In case you missed it that remark is at the 7:45 mark. Dude, the history of Ohio goes back a lot further than the 70’s! Also, hey, Joe you must not have met the mayor of Toledo. He’s for Issue 2. You should get out more, you’d meet more people than a bunch of bobble heads waiting for you to tell them what to think.
The next question that arises from this is, even these “honest” firefighters are not willing to address the facts, and instead peck around the parameters of truth, relying on manipulation instead of out-right presentation, then what are they hiding? Well, I published the wage rates of the police and firefighters from my community in the below article. It’s pretty standard stuff all over Ohio. As you will see, they are making very good livings, and as I’ve said before, if the public thinks that level of income is acceptable then fine. But my inclination is that these public workers are very aware that they are making approximately 30% more than the people who are paying their salaries, and they’d rather keep that bit of information out of the discussion, out of fear that the public might turn on them and actually question their actual value. See my article on what these guys make in my community: (the spreadsheet with all the costs is toward the bottom)
I have been in management for a while now so I understand this issue from many angles. I’ve worked at all levels of a company, and I have dealt with unions. I’ve been in actual fights in parking lots with shop stewards so I know the mentality of these people. Taken individually, most people are good citizens who just want to do the right thing. I once worked with a guy who was a major union supporter yet had a fascination with airplanes and considered himself very patriotic. I thought of him when I heard Joe speak in the above video. He used to say to me, “You are building those units too fast. You have a rate of 120%. You are making us look bad.”
I’d say to him, “You make yourself look bad by holding back. We have a contract deadline and you are jeopardizing it by not filling the production requirements. You could build at least three times faster than you are, but you and your friends won’t do it. So I’m picking up the slack so we don’t miss our deadline.”
“Kid, this whole union thing doesn’t work if we don’t stick together. It takes all of us, in solidarity.”
I’d smile at him, because he knew what my reaction would be. We got along in a friendly way because we both shared a love of airplanes even if we differed politically. “Now why would I want to do that when I can work extra overtime, make more money, by doing the work you and your fat ass friends won’t do?”
He’d chuckle and say, “You know back when we walked the picket line we’d call you a SCAB. In fact, I’d tell you that behind your back, they’re calling you a SCAB around here because you are up the ass of management.”
At this point I would turn down the radio and lay down my wrenches and all the guys working nearby would stop to see if a fight were about to break out. “Dude, to me a SCAB is something that heels a wound. When your body is cut open, you better pray a SCAB forms to heal it. If I am a considered a SCAB around here, because I like this company from head to toe, I like the people in management, and I like the people on the paint line, then that’s a compliment. I like them all to some extent, and I’m not picking sides to suit the needs of your unions political position, which I adamantly disagree with. If I’m a SCAB it’s because I’m here to heal all the wounds you union fools inflict upon yourselves with your adversarial relationship with management in an attempt to bleed the company dry in order to garner more money for yourselves.”
He’d put his hands up defensively as the union stewards would come in closer for a listen. “Hey, I’m just trying to help you out. They (management) will use you against us, to break down our solidarity, brother.”
“I’m not your brother or any of you other guys. I’m here to make a living for my family, and if you idiots want to produce at a 40% efficiency rating, I’ll do my work and your work and take your money in overtime so I can take my wife to nice movie, or out to dinner. It’s your loss.”
Then the union steward would step in. He was a guy who clearly didn’t like me and I didn’t like him. So confrontation was inevitable. “You jeopardize everything we stand for.”
“Then you are standing for the wrong things.”
“You are too young to know what you are talking about. We worked hard for every right the people in this company have. You are ignorant, you have no idea. Someday you’ll want us, and we won’t be there for you, because you wouldn’t stand with us, and by then we will have collapsed.”
“Is that the kind of talk you use to get your wife to sleep with you? Because you’re wrong, this contract must be met. If you make yourselves a pain in the ass to the customer, they won’t give you another one, and you’ll be out of a job and all your union bullshit won’t mean anything then. “
At this point the union steward waved me off and said, “Forget it guys. He’s a puppet for management. He’ll never stand with us.” The crowd broke up and went back to work. For that day, all the workers improved their efficiency by about 15% points on average. Then the production values fell the next day back to what they were.
The public unions are at that point. They have negotiated themselves out of value. Their services are too costly taken collectively, and they have built a system where much abuse is taking place, such as the double-dipping issues. If they were a private business, they’d be going out of business. But these are public employees, and we need those services. We need teachers, we need firefighters, and we need police, and we will have them regardless of Issue 2 or not. We will have strong communities too. But we won’t be used and abused as tax payers by greedy unions who force upon us a system that is rampant with undisciplined spoils. Ohio is at a point where we must have the ability to remove with surgical precision the trouble areas, and no politician in Columbus can do that. Only the members of the community know where the real trouble is, and Issue 2 gives our communities the tools to remove those trouble spots that are both costly financially, but also ethically.
Issue 2 will change things for the public unions. It will force them to deal with the tax payer more evenly. But this notion that Joe has…..that firefighter who thinks our forefathers are from the 70’s….. that Issue 2 will take away his “seat at the table” he is just sadly mistaken.Issue 2 puts the tax payer at the table equally with the unions, because right now, the only people at the table are the unions and their friends, the people we elect, yet they control, because of how the law was before Issue 2.The public is outside the door and when we ask to come in we get some stupid dance like you saw above. And when we ask what’s going on, we get the Wookie Defense and many of us are tired of it. Issue 2 brings everyone to the table equally, and that is what the public unions are afraid of, because once we get there, we’re going to find out just how much they’ve been screwing management, (ALL OF US). And they know that we will be mad when we find out. That’s what they are really scared of in regard to Issue 2. That is a wrath they aren’t prepared to deal with.
The Overmanwarrior 