A chance of improvement

Obviously the political landscape is much different here than it is in my native state of Ohio, but there are times I still get missives from the Buckeye State because I’m still on a number of mailing lists.

One such case was today, and although I deleted the actual message the gist of it was a local chief of police calling out the opponents of Issue 2 – a measure that would roll back gains made against the overly powerful unions in the state – for misleading the public into thinking they’d be less safe if it passed. On the contrary, passage of Issue 2 would allow him more funding for hiring police officers since his other overhead costs would be reduced.

It’s the same scenario being played out in Wisconsin, where fears of teacher layoffs and other dreadful occurrences due to the passage of a sweeping labor reform package haven’t panned out. Instead, school districts are finding they have more money to spend in the classroom because they’re not spending it on benefits. One school district claimed that a $400,000 deficit turned into a $1.5 million surplus based simply on these reforms.

Unfortunately, here in Maryland there’s not much chance of that help arriving any time soon and Big Labor is working hard to restore their ill-gotten gains in both Ohio and Wisconsin – in Ohio by putting Issue 2 on the ballot through a referendum process and in Wisconsin via the state’s recall process for elected officials. In fact, here in Maryland we have a governor who’s bending over backwards to grease the skids further for unions – just ask the thousands who now have to pay a “service fee” even though they don’t belong to a union local.

So it’s obvious we are in the midst of an important cycle here. You may remember that the first wave of the recall process in Wisconsin eroded the GOP advantage in their Senate from 19-14 to 17-16. A defeat of Issue 2 in Ohio will only embolden union fatcats to demand more concessions in order to punish those who favored the issue.

You know, it’s amazing that such a small minority can be so demanding. Remember, unions only represent a small portion of the overall labor force – although that proportion is much larger in the public sector than private enterprise. I have no beef with collective bargaining at a factory or group of factories – such as all the Ford plants, for example – but I believe the union’s overall policies are detrimental to the nation’s well-being.

We can see what the policies backed by Big Labor have done to the state of Maryland, as it persists in a constant state of deficit spending. Of course, the solution which they always come back to is increasing revenue on business owners and investors while trying to exempt the working families. Problem is these increased costs always trickle down to the middle class but as long as the union leaders get theirs that’s fine with them.

The voters of Ohio can send a loud and clear message to Big Labor next week if they see through the lies being told to them. It’s time to put a stop to rampant union abuse of the taxpayers, so I encourage those of you who have friends in Ohio to tell them to support Issue 2. If I were still there I know I’d have a big sign supporting Issue 2 in my front yard – but I also know I’d have to keep one or two spares around because union thugs are prone to making them disappear.

That’s just the way they play. It will take some guts to stop them, but stop them we must.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.