Showing posts with label House Bill 5. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House Bill 5. Show all posts

4.19.2011

John Kasich, You're Fired!



There is no law on the Ohio books to allow for the recall of a sitting governor, but there should be. Six months after the perfect storm of the midterm November elections, the teabaggers have swallowed up the GOP and have begun to reshape America in their ultra conservative anti woman, anti black, anti gay, anti union, anti poor people image.

The perfect storm was created when Blacks, young people, many gays and lesbians and just about everyone else except old white people stayed home in droves from the polls, apparently thinking their vote wasn't really necessary or were disillusioned at the pace that Obama was working to change things.

Six months later, it has become painfully obvious that the freedoms and civil rights that we take for granted, are now on the chopping block. Conservatives have begun reshaping America state by state, just as they have done to the Federal Court system in the past several years, all the way to the Supreme Court.

Kasich's first act as governor was to privatize job creation in Ohio, by turning over the job creation function to a non profit corporation that he chairs. Of course this was after he cut administrative wages across the board in order to give his job board and personal assistants a pay increase. He labeled the decrease in wages as a cost saving measure for the state.

Then Kasich got to work on House Bill 5 which bans collective bargaining for unions and makes criminals of anyone daring to take part in a strike against their employer. More than 350,000 union members are affected by this...and I would suspect that many of them voted for the GOP during the midterms, never expecting the GOP to turn on its own....surprise!

A rider on this law also repealed domestic partnership law in Ohio doing away with a long fought for civil rights for the Ohio LGBT community.

Kasich has declared war on Cincinnati, by playing politics with the planned street car, and gambling casino. Kasich pulled the plug on promised state money for the project, effectively killing jobs and possibly the project itself. He has also thrown a monkey wrench into the casino project, hiring an out of state firm to oversee the project, doing away with the time frame for getting the Casino open next year. The street car would have enabled visitors to get around downtown Cincinnati without having to worry about a car or the need to buy gasoline.

Today comes word that he is going to cut the money for child care and head start for those who can least afford it.

None of this has anything to do with deficit reduction or job creation, rather the opposite.....Kasich is playing politics with the very lives and existence of Ohioans. He says he wants to make Ohio “cool”.....well....news flash.... this ain't it Bra....

Meanwhile....Across the country:

GOP/teabag electives are attempting to nullify any federal law with which they don't agree.

Women are being stripped of health care. Health care for women has never been equal to that for men. It is even less so now. Some states such as Virginia have passed laws literally shutting down women's health clinics. These clinics are being shut down, say conservatives, to keep federal money from paying for abortions...Well, here's some breaking news for conservatives....The Hyde Amendment that prohibits using federal funds for abortion procedures is still law....AND...abortion is still legal in America....

Gays and lesbians are in danger of losing recent hard won civil rights...reversing the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, losing domestic partner rights in Ohio (it was a rider on the bill that outlawed collective bargaining), as well as re-entrenchment of Defense of Marriage Acts.

By the way....Speaker of the House....Ohioan John Boehner is demanding the Justice Department reimburse Congress for the money it will use to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. This after Obama told Justice not to defend what is clearly a discriminatory law.

Concealed carry gun rights have come to college campuses in at least three states......nothing like a 19 year old drunken frat boy with a fully loaded gloc pistol strapped to his waist under his hoodie.

Congressman Paul Ryan has introduced and gotten passed in the House, a budget that will require senior citizens to pay $6,400 more when they qualify for Medicare, that is if they qualify. Ryan's plan eliminates the guarantee to provide Medicare and Medicaid to senior citizens, now defined as anyone over 55 years of age.

In fact, two thirds of Ryan's measure cuts low income programs...a balancing act on the backs of the poor. All this while expanding tax cuts for the rich and repealing regulations on business and wall street.

Ryan's bill also cuts Pell Grants for all 9 million college students, putting higher education further out of reach for many. One million, in fact, would be cut from the program starting next year.

Food stamps will be cut by $127 billion dollars over the next 10 years if Ryan gets his way.

100,000 kids will be cut from Head Start beginning next year.

At least 20 states are following Wisconsin and Ohio's lead to limit the rights of its citizens....to roll back long fought for job and collective bargaining rights.....to keep women from adequate health and family planning care.....and to rollback or install discriminatory laws aimed at gays and lesbians.

Public education and the environment are also under attack at a time when we can least afford it.

25 legislatures and 29 governor's offices were turned over to the GOP during the mid term election last November.

So tell me....How's that GOP/teabag “take back our country” thingey workin' for ya?

There is a recall petition circulating in Ohio and online, to throw Kasich out of office...If you happen to run across it...Sign it please....









2.18.2011

Wisconsin-A Call to Revolution

Wisconsin is in turmoil because the GOP has finally thrown back the curtain and revealed its plan for America.  And don't laugh, Ohio. John Kasich is pursuing the same plan for the Buckeye State and so has Florida's Governor in Thief. Here, it is called JobsOhio...which has already passed...and House Bill 5..which is working its way through the statehouse as we speak.

Firing union workers....stripping away collective bargaining rights....busting unions....Funny...I don't remember any republicans or teabaggers talking about this stuff while they were campaigning.

Sounds like something Lenin or Marx or Mussolini or Mao dreamed up back in the day when America stood alone against communism, socialism and fascism. America fought two world wars, several police actions and even today stands on the border between North and South Korea in order to keep this bad stuff...this bad form of governance away from America. But it has arrived anyway and its not coming from the alleged socialist-muslim-white race hating Black man in the oval office.

The plan is obviously what its been-provide cheap labor to American corporations through globalization of the labor pool by outsourcing jobs and production, and union busting to destroy the system that created the American middle class, forcing them into low paying service jobs, while the perpetual masters of the universe laugh all the way to the bank.

There is a reason why the GOP never tells you what they plan to do to the country, before they do it. For the past four years, the only plan the republican party has put forth is to destroy Obama at any cost. They attack the man and his programs designed to help the people regain their footing on this slippery economic slope that all of us have been inhabiting for the past few years, while telling us to wait...put them back in power and they will throw the bum out and return  us to their Norman Rockwell normalcy.

 Promises...promises!

They attack his family, his faith, his intellect, denigrating him at every opportunity, challenging his ability to lead, questioning his manhood, even lambasting him for programs such as the stimulus that was created by President Bush and approved by every GOP representative on Capital Hill before Obama embraced it and put it into action.

In his efforts to generate bipartisanship in governance, Obama has embraced much of what Bush created and was signed off on by the Republican Party, prior to Obama taking power. But you'd never know it. If you listen to the lock step talking points of the right, it's the Black man who is destroying America. It is the Black man who has turned to socialism and fascism. It is the Black man who has abandoned his own Black people and revealed a long simmering hatred of his mother's white race.

And amid all this talk, the masters of wall street, sit on the money, refusing to create jobs, or put it back into circulation, claiming distrust of government-read that Obama-policies. They still control the money, and as they say...money walks...bullshit talks...

Hell, he's not even an American, nor Christian to hear them tell it. Before he was elected, Obama was the wrong kind of Christian. Now he's been stripped of all beliefs.  Despite the evidence of truth, Obama is not one of them and never will be. He's a Black man who followed the fictional American dream and  decided he could lead this country out of the economic maelstrom in which it finds itself. Yet, it never occurred to even him, just how deeply embedded racism, bigotry and general lack of regard for anyone not white, is in this country. Bigoted talking points and lack of trust in the Black man and Black people in general, fueled the midterm change in 2010. The GOP backed up by its mini-me the Tea Party, successfully took control of the house and many governorships and legislatures.

And while the vote in 2010 was not a mandate. It was a power play from the right, manipulating their base like sheperds driving their sheep herd to slaughter. It was a cowardly reversal from many impatient progressives and it was a refusal of follow through to vote again, by many Blacks who voted in 2008 for change, but lack the courage of conviction that had previously powered all civil rights changes in America.

Maybe Earl Butts was right about American Blacks...give em some loose shoes, a comfortable place to sleep and a warm place to shit...and they'll be happy..won't vote nor care what the white man is doing. Must be true...Blacks stayed home in droves, once again failing to take control of their own destiny.

As for that protest going on in Wisconsin....I'd be willing to bet all the money in my pocket, that most of the protesters, who also voted in 2010, voted to put the GOP back in power this past election, never realizing that they aren't part of the GOP equation anymore than are minorities. Poor and middle class whites don't count either, but you'd never know it the way they continue to vote and trust the rich white guys of the GOP. They are now getting what they asked for again, as  will Ohio and New Jersey in the near future. Here, in Ohio Kasich has already promised to sign the legislation once it passes.

The union busting model comes from their mythic icon Ronald Reagan. The air traffic controllers have never recovered and America's flight system remains in shambles, much less safe to fly than it used to be. The real Ronald Reagan was a crook, who raised taxes, quadrupled the deficit and left America in very bad shape when he left office. The prosperity they remember actually came from a Democrat named Bill, not that the GOP will admit it. The blatant attacks on women and their rights, the refusal to rebuild American infrastructure, fund clean energy, stop climate change, or build high speed public transportation will be the death of America and the GOP doesn't care. There is no compassion for their fellow humans, no desire to share the pain or profit. There is only greed and greed is good. Yes, the actor showed em how to do it and like lemmings they are marching blindly toward the cliff.

The era of indentured servitude and slavery has  returned to America, thanks to a fully complicit electorate. I wish Americans cared as much as the people of Egypt, South Sudan, and the Middle East. We should be following their example and marching on our own state capitols. Democracy and freedom are the guiding lights behind everything going on in the Middle East and Africa. Peaceful change and revolution...not war, like what we've perpetrated on Iraq and Afghanistan. Not like what the NeoCons want to reign down on Iran. America created the dream that everyone else in the world wants to experience.  Yet we choose to ignore our  own creation letting it rot under the carnage of the past, the Patriot Act and the bigotry cloaking 9/11.

Time for a little Dancin' in the Streets...a song from Martha and the Vandellas that the bigots back in the day  banned from radio play claiming it was a call for Blacks to riot. Maybe not then, but it could be a clarion call for change today, if we listen hard enough.

As Tracy Chapman says..talkin' bout a revolution, ya'll...real Americans, patriots, compassionate, caring people of all creeds, colors religions and orientations are welcome to participate...