First, the good news:
Labor is poised for a big victory in Ohio next month- PPP’s newest poll of the state finds that voters intend to reject Senate Bill 5 by a 56-36 margin. Although that margin is consistent with what we found in the state earlier this year, when we polled Ohio in August the support for repealing SB 5 had tightened to 50-39. These numbers suggest that momentum is back on the side of the groups trying to kill the bill.
Labor. That’s refreshingly blunt. Accurate, too.
Next, the bad news:
The essential battle for organized labor in America this fall is in the state of Ohio, where voters will go to the polls in just three weeks to decide whether to overturn anti-labor legislation that Governor John Kasich and a Republican-controlled legislature forced on the state last spring. If the anti-labor law is upheld, Kasich will be thanking Liz Cheney. The daughter of the former vice president has—along with former White House political czar Karl Rove—taken a leading role among the out-of-state groups that are raising money and implementing media campaigns to support the law.
This was never about balancing a state budget or public employee benefit packages. It is now and was always about destroying organized labor in both the public and the private sector. If conservatives can eradicate unions in the Rust Belt states, they can kill them anywhere.
Liz Cheney, Karl Rove and the media personalities at Fox News don’t go to war over teachers in Ohio paying 10% more out of pocket for health insurance. None of them live here. Why on earth would national conservatives be pouring all this energy and all these assets into a state budgeting issue? That’s nonsense, and an insult to the intelligence of the voters in this state. Unions, both public sector and private sector, represent their members in Ohio and nationally, hence their (huge) presence here, during this campaign. Who are Cheney and Rove working for, and why?
The Ohio newspapers who are going along with this elaborate charade should be ashamed. They had a duty to tell us the truth, and the truth is this was never about the state budget. Hopefully, a majority of voters figured that out all by themselves.
If you’re in Ohio, and you’re not buying that Liz Cheney has taken time out of her busy international war-mongering schedule to focus on health insurance cost-sharing by public employees in Ohio, start here, with No On Two.
Let’s send her packing back to wherever the hell she lives.
trollhattan
Mordor is full, but there’s Somalia.
People so crass and well-funded are a danger to democracy, which I guess falls into the “feature, not bug” category. I hope they lose, and lose big.
lawguy
Ohio newspapers tell the truth? Be honest about labor issues? Truely you are capable of comedy gold.
maya
I thought that the Cheney spawn, like Halliburton, now salute the flag of Dubai. I don’t know how the anthem goes but I’m sure it’s a catchy tune.
Paul in KY
I think she lives in one of the circles of Hell. 666 Asmodeus Way, I believe.
I’ll be throwing a party when she finally retires there permanently.
Loneoak
@trollhattan:
Wherever it is she lives, we can bet that it’s blacked out on Google Earth.
smintheus
I haven’t been paying enough attention lately to Liz Cheney. Has she redirected her attention from war crimes back to war mongering?
dj spellchecka
my slogan
“say NO to Kasich, vote NO on issue 2”
kay
@lawguy:
This was weird, because it started out truthful. It was plain as day it was targeted at organized labor, and nearly everyone admitted it.
Then, they did a 180, and started this strange budgetary narrative where “labor” and “collective bargaining” went missing.
It’s like they all got an email, or something :)
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
The list of co-conspirators includes Aerica’s Worst Newspaper which endorsed a Yes vote on Issue 2 calling SB 5 flawsed but saying “Let’s preserve the law and then hope the wingnuts agree to modify it, rather than repeal it and force them to go back to the drawing board.”
Yeah, right. There were protesters in the capitol for weeks and Kasich locked the doors and called the police. Didn’t hear the Plain Dealer complain about that. Right now there isn’t a peep about the redistricting, but they’re prepared to shit bricks if the wingnut map– which combined Dennis Kucinish’s district with Marcy Kaptur’s– gets overturned.
Today they’re upset because Occupy Cleveland might inconvenience the Chamber of Commerce’s plan to put up Christmas decorations this Friday (which, gotta give it credit, is a new wrinkle on why the protesters need to leave).
You really would think they’re located in Alabama, the way they talk, rather than a place with 40% of a blue state’s Democrats.
cpinva
satan doesn’t want her back, says she always leaves the place in a bloody mess:
geez, you’d think ms. cheney would have her plate full just defending her indefensible father, however does she find the time?
kay
@Woodrow L. Goode, IV:
They can’t be that stupid, so it must be malicious. Either that or they’re too arrogant to admit they got completely played by Kasich, during the campaign, and they’re doubling down on him.
NonyNony
August – when normal people don’t give a flying rat’s ass about politics because it’s AUGUST!
I was hoping that the blip in August was mostly due to the fact that people hadn’t gotten the message (or adequately processed the message) that Senate Bill 5 and Issue 2 were the same thing. Looks like that might be the case.
@kay:
Ah yes. When they sent out the feelers to the Police and Fire unions asking “how can we do this and have you on board with us killing the rest of public sector labor unions” and the answer they got back was “don’t do it”.
That seems in my recollection where it suddenly became a budgetary issue rather than just a way to attack teachers unions. It’s one thing to go after the teachers unions for no reason, it’s another to attack cops. You need some kind of flimsy rationale if you’re going to attack the cops and so they had to find one.
fasteddie9318
Where’s the foreign special forces raid on DC to capture the Cheneys and haul their asses before the ICC? I’ve been waiting for going on three years now.
NonyNony
@kay:
The Plain Dealer turned into a conservative rag during the Bush administration – I think they got bought. They were slightly better (though only slightly) in the 90s but somewhere around ’00 or ’01 they nosedived.
They didn’t get played – they’re one of the players. Like the Wolf family here in Columbus and their rag of a newspaper. It’s just not as expected because the Plain Dealer used to be a bit better than the Disgrace.
(I object to the classification of the Plain Dealer as America’s Worst Newspaper though. I’m fairly certain that the Columbus Dispatch is still worse by any objective measure you want to throw up against it.)
kay
@NonyNony:
The deputy sheriffs here are becoming savvy union members. When they organized, which wasn’t a long time ago, they went with the FOP instead of the Teamsters, against (local) advice.
Now they’re mad because they think the Teamsters fight harder :)
I think it’s hysterical, all these rock-ribbed Republicans suddenly allying with “union thugs”. “More thuggery! That’s what we need!”.
Strange days indeed. Who knows how this will shake out.
smintheus
@NonyNony: When I lived in Columbus, anytime I read the Dispatch my hands wouldn’t feel entirely clean for a few weeks afterwards.
Roger Moore
The same way a rancher cares about his cattle.
Hawes
Yes. Hell. That’s where she lives.
But the joke’s on her; her mortgage is with BofA.
Poopyman
Well, historically speaking, that’s what it took. With a body count. History seems to be repeating itself in so many areas these days, it’d be easy for this fight to go old school too.
/Eeyore
NonyNony
@Hawes:
I’m fairly certain that BofA is too evil to operate in Hell.
Even Satan has his standards. And he doesn’t like competition either.
Origuy
Have they always put up Christmas decorations before Halloween, or did they just decide to do that this year? People ought to be protesting that!
kay
@Poopyman:
Well, they probably never anticipated they’d be up against Liz Cheney, since they all voted for her father, and her entire career is based on nepotism.
I’d want an army, too, if I were them. They’ll need one.
cpinva
@NonyNony: clearly, you’ve never read “The Washington Times“.
TenguPhule
Satan already threw the Cheneys out, complained they were lowered property values in the neighborhood.
TenguPhule
Nov 3rd, 2012. Obama gets his big FU on the Dicks and Bushes.
mark
They have no shame because the are fascists, pure and simple. I know thats shrill but until we start using the F word, they will keep on lying with impunity. They have no remorse and you gotta quit thinking they do.
Imo, some Democrat there needs to go full Godwin and tell the voters “The first thing the Nazi party did in Germany was destroy the unions”. Shrill but true.
TenguPhule
So High explosives then just to be sure?
kindness
Guillotine yet?
eemom
the bitch lives in my state, I believe. Together with Cantor, Cuccinnelli and innumerable other worst-of-the-worst republican scum.
Anybody wants to obliterate this particular circle of hell, be my guest. Just give me enough warning so me and eedad and the eekids and eedogs can flee to Maryland in time.
RobertB
I’d agree with that. No way the Plain-Dealer is worse than the Dispatch.
Jay in Oregon
@eemom:
This sounds like something that Steve Jobs would have done a “One More Thing” about…
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@kay: I assume that was evil, because of the obvious disconnect– it would be just as work to amend a law as to pass it. But read the editorial and decide for yourself.
I will say this. I have been reading that rag for almost 40 years, and dealing with their senior staff for 20, and I honestly don’t know if they’re stupid or evil.
Yhe newspaper is violently Republican, and had been trying to break the Democratic hammerlock on county government for decades. But they failed to notice that almost every Democrat in city or county government was corrupt (they’re all out of office or in jail) for about two decades. Even though they’ve been trying to win awards, they missed the story until the FBI went public.
They’ve been scooped on major stories on corporations headquartered in Cleveland. When BP decided to move from Cleveland to Chicago, the Chicago Tribune, not the PD broke it. The sports department didn’t know LeBron James was leaving– the web site had to credit ESPN in the story.
I would prefer to have truly evil people, because at least the New York Post, the Washington Times or the old Manchester Union-Leader covered the stories they were willing to cover capably.
Judas Escargot
@kay:
MSM is trying to frame OWS with the mythology of “The Sixties”, but IMO that’s not quite correct: White Labor didn’t like those anti-war DFH’s one bit, and went all-in for Nixon and later Reagan and the Bushes. The Nixonland threads awhile back covered all that in gruesome detail.
This time, it’s different: The DFH’s, the intellectuals, and labor are all on the same page (at least for now). I’m no expert on the history of labor movements, but as far as I can tell that’s something that hasn’t been true since the 1930s.
Villago Delenda Est
How I long for a Molly Weasley type to come along and dispose of the daughter of the Dark Lord properly.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@NonyNony: Well, the Columbus Disgrace is a rag, but at least they are a very efficient propaganda organ, and the city of Columbus has grown under the Wolfs.
The Plain Dealer has championed basically every colossal mistake the region has made, and has actively helped the population become smaller and the city get poorer.
Plus, they have Sam Sheppard to live down. And they are the paper that told Seymour Hersh, in writing, that his story on My Lai didn’t seem to have ‘general appeal’. Not that they didn’t want to print bad things about Vietnam– they didn’t realize anyone would care about it.
Try not to read this on a full stomach.
Frankensteinbeck
@TenguPhule:
It’s a surprisingly similar situation. Yemen is also sitting on 27% of their population that will explode if they took the action themselves to capture or kill Al-Anwi and his rebel buddies. So they gleefully let the US do it.
We should totally do the same thing with France or Germany or some other civilized country. I don’t think we will, but man, it would be AWESOME.
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
How do you dispose of the undead?
I seem to recall chainsaw and fire but there may be other ways.
kay
@Judas Escargot:
Right, but this was prior to OWS, and it’s less “liberal” than that. The labor groups that ran this here kept it deliberately and carefully non-partisan (they use the word “politician”), and, really, not ideological. It’s narrowly focused on labor issues. They use (and have used) the Wall Street frame, but only as a comparison on the lack of “shared sacrifice” and in terms of “fairness”.
I think OWS is much bigger and broader than what we’re doing here.
I’ve seen and done what we’re doing here once before, actually. Labor did the same thing to raise the (state) minimum wage. Same approach, slightly different audience (low wage, non-union workers, that time around). They used the word “fair” over and over and over, and it passed handily.
This is much more of a traditional labor campaign than OWS. Unions simply replicated a strategy they had used successfully before. The fact that there are police officers involved now is incidental. It was a GIFT, as it turns out, but I don’t know that it was a PLAN. Your point is perfectly valid re: OWS, but I don’t think it applies here, in this shot-gun “marriage”, not yet, and maybe not ever.
We’ll see.
artem1s
@NonyNony:
I have to agree that the Dogpatch has been on my list of vile rags for decades now. Unless of course you need daily 20 page spreads of all Buckeyes all the time.
The Brookpark Plain Dealer did pretty much sell out during Poppy’s administration, about the time they moved the main printing facility out of the city.
I gave up on them when the editorial board folded to the owners and declined to endorse a Presidential candidate in 2004. At least they were ashamed to endorse Shrub. I’m sure come November there will be no blushing at all when they endorse whatever loon the GOP nominates.
artem1s
@Ruckus:
dragon glass
rikryah
thanks for keeping us informed
lawguy
@NonyNony: I believe that is the best thing to do concerning the Dispatch “throw up against it.”
...now I try to be amused
If Liz Cheney gets her way, she should be forced to live in Ohio and experience the consequences of her handiwork firsthand. (Sorry your house burned down!)
debbie
There will be a televised debate between anti- and pro-Issue 2 representatives on Tuesday, October 25 from 7 to 8 pm. Only journalists will be asking questions, but it will be televised on every NBC-affiliate in Ohio.
Chris
@mark:
I’m okay with that, if only because frankly, I don’t see too many other things that this level of psychotic, reality-disconnected, identity-based bloody-mindedness can lead to.
LosGatosCA
FTFY
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
@artem1s: What happened on 2004 as that the board voted 7-2 (Larkin and O’Brien dissenting, naturally) to endorse Kerry. Machaskee (the publisher) refused to accept the vote and told them to write an editorial supporting Bush. Two people threatened to resign from the board, word leaked and the negotiated compromise was “No endorsement”