Today, Diana Frey the former President of CODE, a public sector union she started, submitted a plea of guilty to stealing over $750,000 from her members. Without question, Frey represents what’s wrong with public sector unions, and reveals the tip of an iceberg of the amount of money that gets swallowed up by chaos, confusion, and centralized bureaucracy centering on public sector unions. More often than not, these union leaders do not get caught, and it is the tax payer who replaces the money lost with increased taxes.
American Thinker recently published an article I wrote about the situation surrounding Issue 2 in Ohio, which seeks to correct this public union mess. For a review on what Issue 2 is CLICK on this hot link to learn more. I am happy with the article, and even more pleased that I received positive comments and email from as far away as South Africa, and Nigeria. People living in those places can see how the situation in America is shaping up. To understand what exactly that situation is, CLICK HERE to learn the specifics. To read the original article I wrote for the American Thinker click the link below.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/the_barbarians_of_issue_2.html
What I found fascinating was the comments accumulated over the first 24 hours. American Thinker is widely read all over the nation, and apparently all over the world so it was interesting to get some outside perspective on how they view Issue 2, so I am posting the comments obtained over the course of the first day, because they say a lot about how a vast majority of the people truly feel. I include those comments in their entirety below. They appear as they do at the link above, but I feel they deserve their own isolation as a study specifically unique to the topic of Issue 2.
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COMMENTS ON AMERICAN THINKER
Showing 23 comments
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kentfromohio Yesterday 06:55 AM
Quartermaster Yesterday 08:02 AM
Questioning Yesterday 09:12 AM
Keith Vlasak Yesterday 09:41 AM
Keith Vlasak Yesterday 12:38 PM
Patriotsharon Yesterday 04:27 PM
NoHyphenJustAmerican Yesterday 10:25 PM
inthisdimension Yesterday 11:49 PM
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The sum of what I read among those contributors is that most everyone agrees that Issue 2 is something that is necessary for the health of Ohio, but most are skeptical as to whether or not Ohioans can overcome the Public Union Empire to hold on to the law. The public unions clearly do have an empire that actually involves a large sector of the media. The discussions about the Dayton Daily News should come as no surprise. James M. Cox who was the founder of the Dayton Daily News, and was born in the same county (Butler) as I currently reside and was a major progressive who ran for President on the Democratic ticket and even supported Woodrow Wilson and FDR, so it is no surprise that publications under Cox support his politics, just as union members tend to vote in favor of their pay checks, even if their position is wrong.
Read more about James Cox here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Middleton_Cox
People like Cox, who would go on to become Governor of Ohio are the architects of this Public Union Empire, and yes, the media does not want to learn that their leader was wrong, just like members of the media have a hard time understanding that Walter Lippmann was out-of-his-mind wrong on many of the progressive ideas he advocated. Those media types carry much of the blame because they stood behind the expansion of public unions, and helped perpetuate the current crises.
But without question, regardless of how those in a public union feel about it, the state of Ohio cannot afford to carry the number of employees that it has who are making 43.4% more than everyone else with overall compensation, the math just doesn’t add up. The more government employees there are, the harder it gets to compensate them what they expect. The fault rests on all members of the Public Union Empire who advanced a progressive agenda without considering what would happen when the whole house of cards started to collapse. They never thought that far ahead to their peril.
That leaves those of us with reason to vote in November to keep a law that will allow us to manage the costs of this massive Empire. Of course the members of that Empire won’t be happy. They would like that Empire to continue forever. But it can’t.
The only question is when the Empire gets dismantled, do we get the opportunity to manage it or does it collapse under its own weight? If Ohio votes to keep Issue 2, then we can avert a major economic disaster this year, while there is still time to save the structure of the services we employee in those sectors. If we do not maintain Issue 2, and lose it to the Public Union Empire, then financial catastrophe is on the horizon for every single tax payer in Ohio, because it will either require massive layoffs of public sector jobs, or major tax increases. There isn’t any middle ground.
So what will it be? I can say for myself, I will vote YES, and regardless of the outcome, I will know that I did the right thing, even if it is hard to do.
For the answer to everything, CLICK THIS LINK:
Rich Hoffman
https://overmanwarrior.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/ten-rules-to-live-by/
http://twitter.com/#!/overmanwarrior
www.overmanwarrior.com

