(Ben Sargent at gocomics.com)
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Besides the Saturday statehouse rallies, what’s on for everybody’s weekend?
Enhanced Protest Techniques
A Witness to the Lock Out
I’ve been getting emails from people who went to the Ohio statehouse in Columbus to oppose SB 5, the Ohio bill that strips collective bargaining rights.
I wrote yesterday how Ohio Governor Kasich’s public safety director locked out the opposition. This is a first-hand account sent by a Balloon Juice reader:
Yesterday I was in Columbus to join in the rally against SB 5, the Ohio GOP’s implementation of the assault on collective bargaining. Even before we got there it was clear Republicans were trying to discourage attendance: as the bus approached Columbus we were told the doors to the Senate building had been locked.
The trooper presence was overwhelming; far beyond what public safety required. There was a riot truck, canine, and a couple troopers were actually wearing full riot gear.
Since our trip was sponsored by the county Democratic party our trip coordinator was in contact with a few of the state senators. Getting inside from the front was not going to happen, so we were directed to the parking garage. Once we got there we were turned away by state troopers. Phone calls ensued; we were told to go to the rear of the building for admittance.
We slowly started up the stairs, and as the first of our group got to the top we were greeted by security. This was in an outdoor area; it was on the way from the parking garage to the outdoor entrance of the building. Yet we were stopped on a single flight of outdoor concrete steps and told we would have to turn back. When we got to the top of the stairs there was another delay as troopers told us no one was allowed to go in. More phone calls, this time around fifteen minutes.
Finally State Representative Teresa Fedor, the most fabulous person in the world, showed up, opened the doors, and told the troopers “This is the people’s house. Lobbyists use this door. Arrest me if you want.”
One other note. Here’s Governor Walker in Wisconsin issuing directives on Ohio:
“I talk to Kasich every day. John’s going to stand firm in Ohio.”
Governor Kasich seems to be avoiding us:
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — The Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s luncheon Thursday featuring Gov. John Kasich has been relocated to Youngstown-Warren Regional airport — apparently in reaction to widespread calls for labor protests at the event.
The sold-out luncheon, originally scheduled to take place at Leo’s Ristorante in Howland, was relocated to the Vienna Township airport at the request of the Kasich administration, according to news reports. An official announcement about the change of venue is expected today.
Locked Out
Yesterday, 5200 people arrived at the Ohio Statehouse from all around the state, and found the doors locked.
The State Highway Patrol limited access to the Statehouse today as thousands of protesters stood outside in the cold, many angry they could not get inside to register their opposition to a bill that would eliminate collective bargaining for state employees.
Unless the members of the State Highway Patrol have gone rogue and are occupying the statehouse, someone gave them an order to lock the doors. Presumably, Ohio Department of Public Safety Director and Kasich appointee Thomas Charles did.
Since the statehouse is huge, and the building was all but empty, I’m wondering why Governor Kasich’s appointee kept 5200 constituents standing out in 26 degree cold with no objections from the bold and brave lawmakers who make up the conservative caucus.
With a SWAT vehicle stationed across Third Street from the Statehouse and heavy security across the grounds, the patrol allowed only about 750 inside the Capitol. Seats were placed in the Atrium so the protesters could listen to the scheduled testimony of about 15 opponents to the bill at a Senate committee hearing.
Nothing says “lively debate” like a SWAT vehicle and a heavy police presence. Janitors, teachers, firefighters and clerks are, of course, terrifying. Maybe that was the reason for the lock-out. If they had been able to feel their hands and feet they may have rioted.
If you live in Ohio, call Governor Kasich and ask him if he was aware that 5200 people traveled to their statehouse and were locked out by his appointee, until Democratic lawmakers intervened and threatened an injunction.
(614) 466-3555
Governor Kasich may not be the best contact, as he told CNN yesterday that SB5 is “not my bill”. The buck stops elsewhere.
In the alternative, try this potted plant, Shannon Jones.
She’s the conservative lawmaker who put her name on SB5, but couldn’t find her voice yesterday to stand up and object when dissenters were locked out. Call her up and ask if she’s (now) ready to defend her work.
Shannon Jones (R)
614 466 9737
The Inexplicable Conservative Assault on Collective Bargaining
Gets curiouser and curiouser…
First, (and thank you to commenter morzer for this) Governor Walker seems to be spreading some confusion on collective bargaining:
And yet on the morning of Feb. 18, 2011 — a day after Democratic state senators fled to Illinois to prevent a vote on the bill — Walker made a startling declaration in a Milwaukee radio interview. Walker then added: “Those fully remain intact. Civil service does not get altered by the modest changes we’re talking about here. Collective bargaining is fully intact. You’ve got merit hiring, you’ve got just cause for termination and for discipline. All those things remain.”
Collective bargaining would remain “fully intact”? But let’s take a look at what was said.
In contending that collective bargaining would remain fully intact, Walker mixed civil service protections with collective bargaining rights. They are not the same.Walker himself has outlined how his budget-repair bill would limit the collective bargaining rights of public employees. To now say now say collective bargaining would remain “fully intact” is not just false, it’s ridiculously false.
On to Ohio, and the excellent Ohio political site, Plunderbund. Walker’s proposal really is radical, which may be why he’s spreading misinformation about it.
The Canton Repository, a newspaper that endorsed Kasich:
The collective bargaining process in Ohio isn’t broken. It does need to be tweaked. But state employees don’t need to be stripped of collective bargaining rights.
The collective-bargaining law has been an asset in providing a vehicle for settling disputes that many times had turned ugly. Now the law requires updating and repair. Must that include the elimination of collective bargaining at the state level? Proponents still haven’t offered a persuasive answer. Take such steps, and the impression builds of a party more interested in ideological warfare than responsibly solving a problem.
A bill on a fast track in the Ohio Senate would outlaw the use of binding arbitration to resolve contract disputes that involve police officers and firefighters, who are legally barred from striking. John Kasich and the General Assembly are using the bare cupboard in the Statehouse as a pretext to roll back decades’ worth of labor law
Cleveland Plain-Dealer, another paper that endorsed Kasich:
That said, it’s unfortunate the GOP approach has been to set a maximalist tone on an issue that should be looked at carefully —-before discarding a system that has brought decades of labor peace to the public sector, just as it was intended to do. On one front, the Jones bill is incontestably radical. It would flat-out abolish collective bargaining for employees of the state government and of state-aided colleges, and would abolish longevity pay and “step” increases.
“Decades of labor peace”. So why launch a preemptive assault, conservatives? What’s going on here?
Conservatives in the Ohio legislature cannot make a rational argument that connects their actions on collective bargaining to the budget. Ohio has a long history with collective bargaining, and the negotiation process works. They cannot explain why they refuse to sit down with workers, or why they seek to write the negotiation process out of law permanently and deny employees a seat at the table. Until they can do that, I have to assume they have some national political objective that is unrelated to the state budget. I wonder when they’ll get around to telling Ohio newspapers or their state constituents what that national objective might be?
The Inexplicable Conservative Assault on Collective BargainingPost + Comments (41)
Ohio
Dear Ohio BJ’ers
If you’re not on the ODP list:
There will be a major mobilization this coming Tuesday at 1pm at the Ohio statehouse. This is when the next hearing and possible committee vote will take place on SB 5, the GOP bill to repeal collective bargaining. We’d like all of you to join and send as many activists, friends and family, to join the public employees for what will be the biggest show of force yet. I’d ask you to also consider organizing and coordinating buses or vans from your county to bring people en masse to the capital. Folks should wear the uniform they wear at work if applicable (ie scrubs) or wear red. It is crucial that we turn out even larger numbers this Tuesday than we did this past week to build momentum and ensure our voice is heard.
Please come to the Ohio Statehouse (1 Capitol Square, Columbus Ohio 43215) this coming Tuesday, February 22 at 1:00 p.m. Your presence will send a strong message and help our efforts to defeat Senate Bill 5 and the rest of our opponents’ anti-middle class agenda.
Please come. If you can’t make it, can you make calls and organize one group of four or five to commit to go on Tuesday, today? I can’t go so that’s what I’m doing. Those of you who have done this before know the drill: fewer cars, more people, so at least 4 per vehicle.
I won’t be able to respond to individual questions in the comments or emails today, but thanks in advance.
“Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it”
Per the Washington Post, “Judge throws out Padilla suit over alleged torture“:
CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge on Thursday threw out a lawsuit brought by a man convicted of plotting terrorism and who alleged he was tortured at a Navy brig in South Carolina, saying a trial would create “an international spectacle.”
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U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel ruled Jose Padilla, arrested as an enemy combatant, had no right to sue for constitutional violations and that the defendants in the case enjoyed qualified immunity.
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Padilla claimed he was illegally detained as an enemy combatant and then held in a brig near Charleston where he was tortured. His lawsuit named government and brig officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
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Padilla alleged he was tortured by being kept in darkness and isolation, deprived of sleep and religious materials, and kept from family and attorneys
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“A trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America’s present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges,” [Gergel] wrote.
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Wizner [litigation director for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation] said the court has ruled “that Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it.”
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But he warned “if the law does not protect Jose Padilla, it protects none of us, and the executive branch can simply label citizens enemies of the state and strip them of all rights — including the absolute right not to be tortured.”
I can remember when the American judicial system at least pretended that the shanda fur die goyim, the source of disgrace in front of our global neighbors, was grabbing and torturing people on suspicion of thought crimes… and then not even having the basic decency to admit that those people (even the ones guilty of, at a minimum, bad thoughts and violent intentions) might be entitled to a public airing of their grievances.
But, hey, Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs are getting distinctly unfriendly reviews, which some of the Media Village Idiots would no doubt argue means he’s suffered just as badly as some off-white slum kid condemned to a Supermax facility.
“Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it”Post + Comments (62)
Remember the Spokane Bomb?
The NYTimes reports on “A Mystery With No Good Solution“:
… Nearly a month after a cleanup crew found the live bomb along the planned route of a large downtown march honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the F.B.I. is investigating the incident as an act of domestic terrorism. And Spokane has cycled from shock to relief to reassessment: have the white supremacists who once struck such fear here in the inland Northwest returned at a new level of dangerousness and sophistication?
“We don’t have that kind of intelligence level to make that kind of explosive,” said Shaun Winkler, a Pennsylvania native who recently returned to the region to start a landscaping company and a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan…
That hadda sting, whether or not it’s the truth. Much more information at the link, including what seems to me like a potential reason for planting a bomb at that particular time:
… “We have had issues in Spokane, but primarily they have been in northern Idaho,” Ms. Feist said. “We kind of get painted with the same brush.”
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The two areas largely function as a connected region, and they are demographically similar. Spokane County is about 91 percent white and less than 2 percent black. Kootenai County, just across the state line in Idaho, is 95 percent white and less than 1 percent black.
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A week before the bomb was found, the Spokane City Council approved a contract to build a new road that will be the city’s first street named for Dr. King. Previous efforts to rename existing streets were rejected. The application for the street name was submitted by Ivan Bush, the former director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center in Spokane and one of the organizers of the Jan. 17 march.