Saturday, May 12, 2012

Support for SB 5 was anti-veterans


A veteran's letter to the editor in the PlainDealer explains how Josh Mandel abandoned veterans and, in particular, has ignored violence against women in the military.

Plain Dealer:

....While I respect his service, we were not taught in the military to abandon our fellow citizens when we left active duty. Not only did Mandel support Senate Bill 5/Issue 2, which stripped veterans' preference for teachers, who are mostly women, he has not expressed his clear support for the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act......

......Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said violence against women is a serious problem that can't be ignored and that military leaders have a responsibility to address. Mandel is ignoring it.

Sen. Sherrod Brown led the fight in reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act in the Senate. He is a consistent advocate through legislation like the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill and Hiring Heroes Act. That's why I will support Sherrod this fall. He has proven he will protect veterans and Ohio's women. 

When Josh Mandel and Ohio Republicans supported SB 5, they pushed for legislation that would have stripped veterans of their current rights.  Plunderbund provided this example of what SB 5 did to veterans that went into teaching:

We’ve been talking a great deal about SB5 lately and how this union-busting bill impacts Ohio’s middle class workers. But there’s another group of hard-working, dedicated and very deserving Ohioans who is also going to be hurt by Senate Bill 5: Veterans.....

.....And since SB5 completely does away with any kind of minimum salary requirements based on years of experience, if you want to go from defending our country to teaching our children, you might have to start right back at the bottom again.....

So, just to be clear, Ohio’s Republican state Senators just sent a bill over to the House that screws Ohio’s veterans who want to be teachers out of a well-deserved 20% salary increase based on their military service. 

In other supporting evidence on how military veterans would lose the bonus for jobs is presented at Ballotpedia.org, which shows, in Sec. 3317.13, the section that removes the bonus for veterans:

(d) All years of active military service in the armed forces of the United States, as defined in section 3307.75 of the Revised Code, to a maximum of five years. For purposes of this calculation, a partial year of active military service of eight continuous months or more in the armed forces shall be counted as a full year.


In supporting SB 5, Josh Mandel supported taking a bonus away from veterans. Yet Josh Mandel said that by taking away rights from veterans and workers, he was showing respect for them.  See YouTube.