YouTube:
Rachel Maddow gets it right. If you live in Ohio, send this video to everyone you know who is concerned about the power grab and political payback that the Republicans and Kasich are waging against unions in our state:
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The state has started the cuts and the layoffs:
ChillicotheGazette:
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has cut a $1.8 million grant to the Licking-Muskingum Community Correction Center, a treatment facility that gives local judges an option between sending nonviolent felony offenders to prison and releasing them to the streets.
Unless staff can find the money from another source, the community-based correctional facility will close June 30, the end of the state's fiscal year, Director Marian Skeen said.
Judges send convicted male felons to the center for treatment, counseling and skill development in addition to or instead of incarceration. LMCCC, 119 E. Main St., Newark, has operated for almost 17 years, employs 30 people and serves Licking, Muskingum, Knox, Richland and Coshocton counties....
Ohioans should expect more cuts. Unfortunately, our governor and his Republican party extremists have falsely placed the blame of job losses on public employees who are unionized. The Examiner explains that the collapse of the Ohio economy started looooong before Ted Strickland came into office-------it started under the Republican governors who had preceded Democrat Strickland:
...So while the loss of all those jobs under Strickland was indeed true, Kasich shut his eyes to all the sliding that took place under Republican rule and GOP policies that focused more on corporate balance sheets than on their Ohio workers, who saw jobs and companies head to other states and other countries, where profits could be maximized because they could pay their workers less or operate under fewer so-called burdensome regulations. What ever the reason, Ohio corporations got the best of both worlds, their state tax burden declined precipitously as a result of friendly governors and lawmakers who believed that tax cuts created jobs, and that the free market was always right.....
....A report prepared in conjunction with Prof. Michael E. Porter’s presentation before the National Governors Association Winter Meeting on February 26, 2011 shows the climb Kasich has ahead of him in Ohio. The report, "Ohio Competitiveness: State and Cluster Economic Performance," prepared for Ohio Governor John Kasich, doesn't paint a rosy picture for Ohio going forward.....
....For example, Ohio ranks 23rd on scale of State Traded Wage versus National Average, which means an Ohioan makes $9,766 less than the average national worker...
Kasich and his Republican followers continue to try to lower wages for Ohio's public employees, eliminate collective bargaining, wipe out regulations that protect workers and consumers, drill in Ohio's state parks, gut aid to schools, remove the elderly poor from Medicaid, all so that the rich can get more tax cuts and state workers can be paid minimum wage.
Those of us who knew of Kasich's record before he won his election as governor (by only 2%), were aware of his cold, heartless, anti-middle class worker mindset. In the 1990's when he tried to gut college loans and grants, his congressional office in Columbus was the scene of a major demonstration. Kasich simply doesn't care about working people, struggling families, public education, and the environment. Any person that calls a police officer an "idiot," shows that he doesn't respect the person or the badge, no matter how many ways he apologizes.
Check out the audio from yesterday's WOSU discussion on collective bargaining: (scroll down the page until you see the "Collective Bargaining" and play the broadcast.)
11:00 AM - Collective Bargaining
Legislation to limit collective bargaining rights of public employees is moving through the Ohio General Assembly. We’ll hear from Ohio Public Radio Statehouse News Reporter Bill Cohen, who is covering the legislative process, and we’ll hear two points of view about the legislation from Democratic political consultant Dale Butland and Republican political consultant Terry Casey.
http://streaming.osu.edu/wosu/allsides/030311b.mp3