“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,”he said in Hawaii, where he is spending his vacation. “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”
My wife was getting some items for our family New Year’s Eve Party, as she proudly showed me a bottle of bourbon called Old Dan Tucker distilled in Kentucky. She told me she had gotten it because it reminded her of Mr. Edwards from her favorite television show, Little House on the Prairie when she was a little girl. That brought to my mind the thought of Mr. Edwards in that old show about westward expansion and remembered that Mr. Edwards used to sing the song Old Dan Tucker whenever he was happy:
Old Dan Tucker was a fine old man He washed his face in the frying pan He combed his hair with a wagon wheel And died of the toothache in his heel
My wife showed me the bottle and read off the list of menu items she planned to prepare then went delightfully back into the kitchen to begin cooking. She had a pop to her step that was fun to watch and I realized that it was part of her personal culture from her childhood that had put her in such a good mood. Thinking of Old Dan Tucker requires me to explain a bit further what I alluded to yesterday in my declaration of the difference between a producer of wealth and a simple whore. Not that Old Dan Tucker was either one, but rather it’s that spirit behind such characters that can either create a person of self-reliance or a social parasite. The video below best exemplifies what I have been saying for quite some time regarding the real solution to most problems that exist all around us right here, right now, and that most of the peril the human race faces is self-induced and rather silly. To review my article from yesterday click here:
The hold up of this wealth is what triggers massive conspiracies like the Bilderberg Group and the Illuminati and pawns like Communist Party USA leader Jarvis Tyner to play right into the hands of these speculative conspiracies by executing their designed role. Tyner stated over the recent Christmas break that he draws a clear right/left battle line and the communist’s commitment to Party ‘friend’ President Barack Obama and to the Democratic Party cause by saying:
“2012 is a big election year and as we know the stakes are very high. The right-wing Republican opposition unashamedly defends the wealth and privilege of the 1% over the 99% that includes tens of millions who are struggling to survive. These self-proclaimed patriots are willing to wreck our country in order to defeat Barack Obama in 2012 elections. Our party and youth league are an active part of the great democratic mass that is standing”
You can read the rest of that article for yourself at this link:
This sort of control isn’t isolated to small countries in Africa, but are easily seen in places like North Korea as the death of Kim Jong Il spawned worldwide concern over what kind of “leader” the son would be, who is not yet 30 years of age.
What makes people stand along those snow packed roads mourning the loss of a man who controlled every aspect of their lives? What keeps them in line while just a few soldiers guard the funeral procession? What prevents the people from overrunning the government from the communist elite and taking their freedoms back? The answer is the static pattern of culture. The people you have seen in Ethipoia and the people of North Korea are a beaten people because their culture was taken from them and is controlled by their rulers.
And as to Old Man Tucker—oh he’s alive as Bruce Springsteen will show you here from a 2007 concert in Italy. Listen to the audience, they know the song……and I think it’s about time America stop apologizing for being good and focus on playing Old Man Tucker to the people of Ethiopia, North Korea, and the girls on K-Street and hang the tyrants of communism, progressivism, and the political class atop a flag pole by their pant legs.
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war. 2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war. 3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength. 4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war. 5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites. 6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination. 7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N. 8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N. 9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress. 10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N. 11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. 12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party. 13. Do away with all loyalty oaths. 14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office. 15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. 16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. 17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks. 18. Gain control of all student newspapers. 19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack. 20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions. 21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. 22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.” 23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. 24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press. 25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV. 26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.” 27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.” 28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.” 29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. 30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.” 31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over. 32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc. 33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus. 34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. 35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI. 36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. 37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business. 38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat. 39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals. 40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce. 41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents. 42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems. 43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government. 44. Internationalize the Panama Canal. 45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
To understand what is going on behind the scenes of the puppet show I would refer you dear reader to the great film by Stanley Kubrick called Eyes Wide Shut, starring Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman. You can see a previous article I wrote about this very important film by clicking on this link:
The world has gone mad. The proof is in all the people who spoke in that video that have lost the ability to tell right from wrong. All their concern is whether or not Jerry Sandusky should have spoken to the media. Not on the actions he committed. How much proof do you need after all this?
Who are “THEY?” When you say in a sentence, “they say this isn’t fashionable,” or “they say that’s unhealthy for you to eat,” who are “THEY?” Well, “they” are our subconscious acknowledgment of a shocking realization exhibited in the video below, where we are all slaves to the masters of our static patterns. It’s a condition that the human mind seems prone to submit to, and has always been so even though there are periods of our history where human beings have rebelled against the tendency of compliance.The undercurrent to any rebellion has always returned to compliance for a general culture once safety is made the priority over freedom. This is especially true in our American culture where our Declaration of Independence and Constitution was an attempt at freedom from the “they’s” who seek to rule us.
It is in these types of people who became our farmers. They are the ones who have set up our pens and heard us about as “they” desire. “They” set up our jobs through regulation. They take our profits from our work, and the profits of the businessman who falsely believes they are earning their freedom by becoming a business owner. The corporation only succeeds if they make an alliance with the “farmers” of the “elite ruling” class. Most business people are every bit if not more encumbered by the chains of the “farmers” than the workers simply because the farmers need the businessman to provide the options to the citizens, so the businesspeople do get a bit more food to enjoy. But they are not in control of their own freedoms–far from it.
This morning an employee came up to me and said, “You’re for Issue 2, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m a tremendous supporter of Issue 2.”
“Well, I think it’s just terrible. They want to take away our collective bargaining rights.”
I said to them, “Nobody has a right to collective bargaining. What makes you think it’s a right?”
“It’s in the constitution!” They were very angry when they said this.
I took a breath. “No, it’s not in any constitution either federal, or state wide. Collective bargaining for public employees was created by corrupt, progressive politicians to ‘purchase’ voting blocks for themselves. It has nothing to do with actual rights. FDR started this discussion and Kennedy finished it off as a favor to the mobs in 1962 with Executive Order 10988. That’s when public unions were allowed to form and it was a mistake. Unions have NO natural rights to anything I have. They do not have a right to collectively bargain for the tax money I toss in the pot to spend on our government services.”
“But they pay taxes too!” They said.
“Yes, but the difference is for the public employee, they pass the hat around, they all contribute and at the end, they divide up among themselves what they put in, because their wages come out of the hat. I put money in the hat and it never comes back to me. I don’t get money back out of the hat. It goes around, I contribute, and I get back an employee for public service, and I have a limit on what I’m willing to pay for those services. Collective bargaining in my opinion should have been abolished in Issue 2, along with the idea that public employees should be in a union. It doesn’t go far enough in my opinion! I see Issue 2 as a very fair reform that is ESSENTIAL to the future of Ohio.”
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.
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.
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 