While doing all this she has fulfilled a leadership role within the Lebanon Tea Party, worked to advance “School Choice” as a viable option in Ohio, and maintained very close relationships with key politicians to advance legislation key to much-needed education reforms in Ohio.
For all those reasons and more, Sharon Poe is a “warrior” that if others did half of what she does in her commitment to justice, this world would be a free and wonderful place.
I’ve said it many times, I read a lot. A whole lot. And over 2010 one of the books that most jumped out at me was Glenn Beck’s The Overton Window. My daughter had bought it for me for Father’s Day and I read it in one day.
I hear people like Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO talk about the “RIGHT WING” and you hear what comes out of his mouth and you have to wonder about his sanity. As far as a union leader, and a person close to the White House, which he says he speaks to daily, I would be ashamed if that guy where my boss or leader. He clearly doesn’t understand basic economics and its people like him that create the message that millions of union workers chant.
Here is Trumka speaking in March of 2009. He has no idea how the bill he’s speaking about will “expand” the middle class, and he doesn’t have any idea how this will drive up the labor costs. He just makes statements that people seem to blindly following without question. Something he accuses Beck and other people primarily on the political right of doing.
America is supposed to be a group of individuals, not a unified collective sum like Trumka speaks about. The Federalist Papers, which went on to become The Constitution were written to protect American from people like Trumka, and Obama. Those people and people like them taken by themselves are not bad people, but they have a dangerous ideology and they disguise it with a message the masses can understand. So it is not a far stretch to say that when I saw Trumka speak on February 26, 2011 that the best way to create jobs was to raise taxes, which I know from economics is false, yet people chant and cheer in approval, and I witnessed the union protests all across the country, it reminded me of Jim Jones, of the Jonestown massacre from 1978. Jones had several thousand supporters that followed him from Indianapolis Indiana, to San Francisco, then to Guyana South America. Jones was an admirer of Marx, Lenin, and Mao. That’s why they chanted this song at their church rallies in the early 70’s.
Jim Jones is a tough story to swallow. Because it is the extreme example of what collectivism can inflict on people. Jones was a proud socialist. What you are about to hear is the actual death tape from the Jonestown Massacre. Jones turned on a tape recorder and gave a final speech while his thousands of followers drank poisoned drink to their deaths. He calls it “revolutionary suicide” to an inhuman world. You will actually hear people perishing in the background, so if you have a soft stomach, don’t listen to this. This behavior is far from a joke. If you listen you will hear several people step forward and speak about the greatness of Jim Jones, their “Daddy,” and of the merits of socialism and communism.
The following clip is from the film The Guyana Tragedy and is a reenactment of what you will hear below.
Here is the actual death tapes. Now consider as you listen to this, these people speaking are just moments from their death. They know it. Listen to their thoughts and what they intend.
So what is the lesson here? Well, madmen have a way of lying to themselves and distorting the reality of the world around them. And such people are attracted to socialism, communism, progressivism and all those collective “ism’s.” At that point it no longer becomes a simple argument about economics and the best way to handle economic issues. It evolves into a struggle between good and evil.
That’s where I start seeing startling comparisons from people in the modern labor movement. What they are saying are simply the words their leaders speak. Richard Trumka is a powerful union leader and in this recent case involving these labor protests, what he says in public, over a microphone, ends up coming out of the mouths of his followers.
Trumka, like many people attracted to those “collective ideologies” are prone to climb for power. History shows that it happens in every case. I don’t know of a single instance of a collective society that survives outside of a tribal village. The individuality inherit in the human being seems to break down true collectivism, and social experiments to water this tendency down in our youth have failed with terrible results. This is the reason the Tea Party has risen as a permanent movement, because many people are just tired of the “social experiments.” Many want to return to the original blue print that paved the way for the greatest nation on earth.
Whether or not he is aware of it or not, Trumka’s actions show that he is power-hungry and idealistic, and is essentially no different from someone like Jim Jones. It is quite possible that if that congressman from California had not went to Jonestown and been killed, Jim Jones and his followers would have lived for years without a mass suicide. But the scary thing about it is that Jones had to retreat to South America to have his utopian society. And the congressman was doing in that society much of what the Tea Party is trying to do in American Society. They are intervening and attempting to break up the dangerous collectivism that is consuming the nation.
Progressives are insistent in the modern age to not leave the country for their utopian society. They instead are intent to change the country itself. Here Trumka reveals what he is all about, which concerns me a great deal. It concerns me because watching his followers on Saturday; they seem to think he truly believes in this whole “middle class” protection. Yet he states otherwise.
Watch and listen to these clips from the Saturday Protests. And compare the behavior to what you heard from Jim Jones’s Congregation.
This brings me back to the Overton window concept introduced in Beck’s book. People can say what they want about Glenn Beck, but from what I know about the guy, he genuinely wants to get at the truth. His agenda is the truth. And that’s why he wrote his book, The Overton Window.
The Overton window, in political theory, describes a “window” in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on a particular issue. It is named after its originator, Joseph P. Overton.
At any given moment, the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office. Overton arranged the spectrum on a vertical axis of “more free” and “less free” in regards to government intervention. When the window moves or expands, ideas can accordingly become more or less politically acceptable. The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as:
The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to persuade or educate the public so that the window either “moves” or expands to encompass them. Opponents of current policies, or similar ones currently within the window, likewise seek to convince people who these should be considered unacceptable.
Other formulations of the process created after Overton’s death add the concept of moving the window, such as deliberately promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous “outer fringe” ideas, with the intention of making the current fringe ideas acceptable by comparison. __________________________________________________
What these extreme left groups have done over time is they pulled the Overton window radically to the left with key phrases like, “workers’ rights” and “tax the rich.” Or “all conservatives are Hitler.” 100 years ago at the start of the progressive movement these ideas were considered radical. But in the election of 1912, Eugene V.Debs had doubled the Socialist vote from 500,000 in 1908 to 1 million in 1912. This wasn’t some guy from Europe; he was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. In fact, the Socialists had their 1912 Convention in Indianapolis; the same place Jim Jones started his socialist church. Ronald Reagan toyed with joining the socialist party when he was a young man in Hollywood. It was after he traveled to England and witnessed what socialism had done to England through the Labor Party that he turned far to the right, out of fear for his country. But those people, those 1 million people who voted socialist in 1912 are out there, and they attached themselves to progressive ideas, they had children, raised families and found themselves drawn to the Labor Movement in America on the backs of the unions. Now many of those people aren’t bad people, but they are attracted to the collectivism of socialist concepts by their family culture and genetic make-up, because let’s face it, some people are more comfortable hiding in the masses and are not inclined to stand on their own.
Those poor, unfortunate souls are the people who end up following someone like Jim Jones in the extreme circumstance. And to a lesser degree, they find themselves repeating word for word what someone like Richard Trumka utters, without any care as to the relevance of his words. Trumka knows he can’t talk to an economist about how he represents the “middle class” or how “increasing taxes on the rich,” “creates jobs.” Those are just buzz words to stir up the followers. What Trumka is really after is moving the Overton window far to the left as was the trend during the entire 20th century. It happened because people weren’t aware of the threat and it just crept into our culture subtly. Trumka said it himself; he’s not in the labor movement for wages and benefits. He’s using the labor movement as a platform to change society, and that isn’t any different from Jim Jones who wanted to change the world through religion.
The real threat and real money being poured into politics isn’t coming from Rupert Murdoch, or the Koch Brothers. George Soros, and all the Hollywood left has poured far more money into political manipulation so there isn’t any room to talk. Yet if Trumka says “the conservative right is for the rich, and we are for the working man!” Look at all these contributors to the radical left! Yet all these people point to the right and say it’s “Wall Street, the rich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, all are blamed for manipulating the American people when in fact it is these people that have committed the act of their accusations.
“The working man” is another false premise captured by the labor movement and placed into the minds of Americans by the Overton window. In Ohio 655,000 people work for a union, both public and private. That’s only 13.7 percent of the 4,787,000 million people who are employed in the state. That leaves over 4 million people not represented by a union, and don’t particularly want to be represented by a union. And most of those people are not in management. Most of those people are the real workers, and is proof that such extreme rhetoric as exhibited by people like Trumka to an army of people built on entitlement. Yet, because of the Overton window, the media, and the regular everyday people accept that “workers’ rights” represents union work, because that’s how the term was marketed.
I never had illusions that S.B.5 would avoid a referendum. After all, when it comes to union activity, they have a history of pushing and shoving until they get what they want, so a referendum that is well financed by the union is a certainty one way or the other.
If I’m wrong, which is about as rare as an eclipse, I’ll be happy to buy Cunningham a hot fudge sundae from UDF. But my bet is that these new elements that exist in the political landscape will tip the balance of power in a new direction not to the liking of the public sector unions.
To display this argument I submit exhibit “A.” Witness David Letterman talking to Rand Paul and you can see how the world of yesterday “thought” and how the world of tomorrow will “think.”
This interview with Doc Thompson below is especially potent. If you have any doubt about impropriety among the public sector employees, then listen to this broadcast. If you want to continue walking around blind and gullible, than only read the latest news from Lakota also below. If you want the whole story then read the article and listen to the broadcast together, so take a break from your schedule and enjoy the broadcast. While you listen compare what you hear to the news released from Lakota, as reported by Lindsey Hilty, about the specific cuts announced by the Lakota Administration. I will save my closing comments for the end of that article.
By Lindsey Hilty, Staff Writer Updated 8:22 AM Thursday, February 24, 2011 LIBERTY TWP. — Tensions ran high at Lakota East High School Wednesday night as more than 200 concerned parents and community members listened to how cuts would impact students next year. “We’ve looked at all areas of our budget — everywhere,” interim Superintendent Ron Spurlock said. “…We have to start living within our means.”
Many of the budget cuts, he said, likely could be permanent even with the passage of a levy. “It’s not a pretty picture,” Spokeswoman Laura Kursman said. “And it’s hard to communicate bad news.” Another meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Lakota West High School to hear about how $12.2 million in proposed cuts to the operating budget may be implemented pending school board approval. Parents who can’t attend sessions are asked to fill out a survey on the district’s web site to help with some of the future tough choices.
“I’m very worried,” parent Tricia McCaffrey said. “The Lakota School District I moved in to eight years ago is not the school district I have now when it matters for my son. Losing electives and going to state minimums is not why I chose to pay Lakota taxes.”
Elementary reductions: $3 million, 50 employees cut The goal is to maintain reading supports, supplemental classes taught by specialists, media center access and an accelerated gifted programs. To be cut: sixth-grade band; third-grade gifted program and services for grades four through six; gym, art, music and library time to 30 minutes each per week for grades one to six; one reading specialist per school; three media specialists sharing 14 schools; literacy coaches and two fewer English as a Second Language instructional aides.
Junior school reductions: $1.7 million, 25.5 employees cut Reduce day from eight bells to seven with 26-minute study hall, four core content classes and two electives. Programs eliminated include wood shop, English double block, band team teaching, jazz band, an intervention math class and department performance supplemental contracts. There will be two fewer media specialists. High School reductions: $1.9 million, 28 employees cut
Elective classes to be based on enrollment numbers with limited options, elimination of seventh bell; class size increases and 23.5 credits possible with 21 needed to graduate.
Special Services: $858,500, 19 employees cut Six fewer special education aides, one counselor per junior school and reduced nursing aids. Athletic reductions: $1 million cut
No funds for junior school athletics; $550 per high school athlete per sport with no family cap; supervision supplemental and sports information directors positions eliminated, and decreased transportation budgets. Central Office: $874,143, 5.5 employees cut
Elimination of an assistant superintendent and several central office support positions. Changes to contracted services and a hold on filling positions also led to savings. Transportation: $2.8 million cut
Already implemented in part, but in August, no student within two miles of school will receive transportation. This will impact half of Lakota’s student population.
They don’t have one. They are going to have to think differently. Because asking for more revenue to feed wages they’ve allowed to escalate irresponsibly is not going to work. It’s a complete lack of management.
It’s time for a new plan, or to step away and let people who know what they’re doing to manage the situation. The old way won’t work because the community isn’t poised to pass another levy no matter how they chose to spin it with their new spokesman. “Lakota hasn’t passed a levy since 2005.” What will never be forgotten, because I’ll never let people forget it, is that after that levy was passed, in 2008, the LEA bent the community over backwards for increased wages which drove up the costs we are seeing today. So we won’t be traveling back down that path again, no matter how it gets manipulated to the public.
For the latest on what’s happening regarding School Choice up at the capital, here is some testimony from Representative Matt Huffman from Lima, Ohio given on February 16th, 2011. There are plans to expand the voucher program which is an encouraging sign for those of us that are pushing for 100% eligibility in the state.
My good friend Ray Warrick from Mason testified on Collective Bargaining in Columbus on February 17th, 2011. Since I have video of his testimony I put it here to be watched instead of read. Listen to the rumble of the crowd outside who were able to watch the proceedings on a screen and hear what was going on in the chamber.
This is what it looked like outside that chamber.
Even though many union workers took the day off to be there, “paid for I might add,” there were some who managed to go up to Columbus and show public support for the bill. Mixed in with the chanting on this next video, “kill the bill,” are people yelling, “Pass the Bill.” It is easy to ascertain that many supporters of the bill are not present. They are the silent majority, while the many of the people against the bill were encouraged by their unions to take off work and protest. This shows the fundamental difference in philosophy.
While these union protestors drive around listening to FM radio and following the current pop culture music trends, and watching popular TV shows like Two and a Half Men and laughing like fools at the adolescent humor of that show, they are ignoring the vast wealth of evidence that has emerged about the unsustainable path that America is on, and which they are participating in by practicing open extortion.
Many of my friends, some of them are seen in these pictures taken at the Rally at the State House on February 17, 2011, read a lot too. That’s why we’re friends because we enjoy learning things and we spend our spare time talking about the things we learn. My friends in the Tea Party are informed, speak for themselves, and are generally grounded people. The reason the Tea Party does not have a leader, is because that is not what the Tea Party is. America does not have leaders! The Tea Party does not have a leader!
The Tea Party Movement has been born because the people that don’t think with a “hive” mentality have been getting “stung” for years by the working bee union types that just keep scooping up the nectar of tax money and “coughing” it up for the queen, or whoever is their union leader. That money has then been used to buy political power that works against those original tax payers, so many of us have caught on to the scam.
American society was never intended to be a “hive” of any kind. It was supposed to be as the Tea Party is taking things, which is a society of individuals free of any queens or kings or leaders that are drunk on power.
So the Tea Party isn’t going away folks. If you are one of those “hive” workers, I’d advise you to use this site to your advantage. Listen to the radio broadcasts, read the material, watch the videos. I put them here to help you learn how to be self-reliant. I’m offering to help you break away from a “hive” mentality to save you from yourself. You’d be advised to use the material to your advantage.
But if you want to continue to be in the “hive” because you think there’s safety in numbers, you are betting on the wrong horse.
Unions think collective bargaining reform is about revenge, or it’s some conservative conspiracy. Yet this is what the union opposition say is happening. A guy sent me this comment while I was writing this article.
I listen to Doc’s show on 700; he is clueless on Labor and the issues that surround labor. Unions and collective bargaining have built the middle class in this country. What you’re seeing is big corporate interest trying to tear it down. Fire, Police, Teachers and all public workers should be getting a big thank you everyday for the job’s they perform. When you have a Gov that is bought and paid for by Wall ST. this is what you get.
Below is my own testimony for the record that I’ll include here in its entirety. It can’t be stressed enough how important this bill is to Ohio and the future of our financial strength. As the union groups attempt to fluff their feathers to appear larger than they truly are while real working people continue on with their jobs, too busy to attend such protests, feel free to make your voice in favor of this bill known by sending your support to Senator Bacon at the email address displayed.
Senator Kevin Bacon Ohio State Senate Columbus, OH
Re: SB 5 – For the Record
During the year of 2010 I was heavily involved in a resistance group to oppose the requested levy increases by the school district of Lakota, from South Western Ohio located in Butler County.
There are many reasons that I can see for the implementation of a collective bargaining reform bill such as Senate Bill 5. It is obvious to me and many of the voters that participated in defeating the Lakota Levy on both 2010 occasions that unions under the collective bargaining bill of 1983 have done what they accused business of doing, and that is acting greedily and knowing no limit to the impositions of their demands. Nor did they show any sign of caring what the cost off those impositions where to the tax payer. The result has been an unfair system that has formed between the public sector worker and the tax payer.
My focus of this testimony is on what I consider to be the most pertinent of the many benefits of S.B.5 and that is the elimination of “step increase” as a hidden cost that is deceiving communities all across Ohio. As much of the talk from Fire and Police Unions has centered on their lack of ability to strike, teachers can, and do. “Step Increases” are an ominous appeasement to those potential strikes that is largely hidden from the eyes of tax payers.
In October of 2008 the LEA (Lakota Education Association) threatened to strike and staged a demonstration against the school board. Their reasons for the strike were increased wages and benefits. In the small hours of the morning on the final day of contract talks a settlement was reached, and the LEA achieved its objective.
Two years later Lakota had an operating budget of $160 million dollars even with the declining revenue imposed under the Strickland Administration which favored allocation of state funds to poorer districts. Lakota saw a decline in state funding but through their property taxes, which saw approximately $11 dollars per $1,000 in home evaluation going directly to the schools, still maintained the large budget mentioned.
In the spring of 2010 again the LEA was pushing for a renewed contract and threatened to strike. They did this just months before a new levy request was being placed on the ballot in May. This was a reckless enterprise on their behalf and showed incredible arrogance in an economy that was already weakened. The residence of the Lakota District easily defeated that levy in May.
By August the LEA had announced that they would take a “pay freeze” in order to work with the school board on bringing down their costs as the announcement came from that same board that another levy attempt would be coming in November.
As I looked at the financial situation I realized that the reason the Lakota District was in trouble was because nearly 80% of their budget allocation was tied up in salaries and benefits, so it was obvious to me that the LEA should renegotiate their contract to fit the needs of the community. The average salary of a teacher at Lakota had been during much of 2010 $59,000 per year. As the new school year started that fall, those salaries on average had crept up to $62,000, and this was a baffling statistic. After all, the LEA had just agreed to a pay freeze.
I had loosely understood what “step increases” were but didn’t really give it much thought as to the impact on community budgets. I learned through the campaign that fall how devastating they truly are to financial forecasts. The reason is that often communities only consider the finances of their local districts. They don’t concern themselves with the affairs of their neighboring districts. However, the teachers unions do. The LEA is an arm of the OEA (Ohio Education Association) and they do have a statewide strategy that they impose district by district. It’s a game communities have been unaware was occurring, until now.
Knowing the game was larger than just the situation at Lakota I took my story to WLW radio in Cincinnati and engaged in many debates on the air hoping to get input from school districts around the region, and that’s how I learned about the terrible cost and manipulative nature of “step increases.”
As the facts that are known to many of the law makers that have graced Columbus for many years became apparent to me and a small army of tax protesters that were gathering in Southern Ohio and pockets all over the state, it became evident that communities were being selfishly misled intentionally and action would be needed to return real management power to the district where we elect members of the community to manage our resources.
School Boards under the current system have no choice but to just keep asking for increases in funding because they are so constrained by legislation lobbied and secured by the same forces that have collected themselves to protest this bill S.B.5 and the people who fund this activity have been manipulated and outright lied to regarding the intentions and motives of collective bargaining agreements.
This education funding issue that has plagued Ohio for decades is an unsustainable path, and collective bargaining is at the heart of the problem. I have planned to stand in the way of every single levy initiative for every district that wants my help until true reform is initiated from our State Representation. I consider any further property tax increases for any district in Ohio to be as good as throwing money on a fire. The money will not go to improving test scores for kids, or making children more comparable to students in the international stage. The entire nation is seeing the same story from its public education system, and it has failed in its current form. No amount of union rhetoric can hide that fact now. A majority of the voting public is now ready to admit it to themselves. Putting this bill on the table for discussion is a bold move by this legislative body and hopefully is a sign of things to come, for I do not believe if S.B.5 goes far enough. Many, many reforms will need to be implemented to give the State of Ohio the competitive advantage it needs to step out in front of the nation in education.
There are programs available that could save the State of Ohio a lot of money and make it a premiere state of education reform in the country. Representative Bill Coley from my district has started that process in the last session of congress with a technology bill which allows students to use technology to greater effect, and take away some of the “brick and mortar” costs imposed on school districts currently. There is also “School Choice” which is a phenomenal program utilizing all the best traits of competition to make education better, that will trickle down to the culture of the children attending those education systems.
But all those programs will take courage and they start by dealing with the type of resistance organized by groups like SEIU who have flown in protestors to lobby against this bill. They are applying their work to Wisconsin also where the governor there is also trying to reform their collective bargaining issues, only to be degraded as the villain from the Austin Powers films.
Such actions have taken our state through the collective bargaining process to extort millions of dollars from the intended target of those dollars and it has been to a loss of the entire state not only in being disingenuous to the tax payer, but to the competitive nature of the state as a whole. Over the next decade, the states which become swifter or most innovative will become the guardians of prosperity. Collective bargaining is a failed system that does nothing but help the people on one side of that bargaining, which leaves everyone else feeling depleted and used.
Innovation in most every category is available to Ohio ripe for the picking. But we have to have the courage to reach beyond the fence of collective bargaining to pick our harvest and unleash the true potential that resides among the true labor of Ohio.
The Overmanwarrior 