Monday, March 7, 2011

Blackmail in OH

Blackmail in OH: Don’t Call Union Firemen If House On Fire

UnVarnished Show
i
2 Votes
Quantcast

What else do you call "Don't call us if your home is on fire because you disagree with us"?

I want everyone to understand – I believe teachers, police and firefighters should be paid and paid well. One teaches our future, the other two protect our safety.

I keep hearing about how much trouble the kids are today, and frankly that’s grist for another mill – one about parents, schools, school boards and political correctness. Teachers should be able to teach and thugs are thugs – whether school kids or union people threatening public officials who are responding to issues and problems that are real and must be dealt with.

First – collective bargaining. I had someone tell me that it wasn’t about collective bargaining and that wasn’t all they had lost.

No – but that was the main thrust of it – the ability to bargain every year or whenever they want no matter the cost to the state, the students or the people they are protecting.

When you look at the benefits and the cost to the state multiplied by 200-300 thousand people – there has to be a reckoning at some point. The pensions are overpromised and set up to fail like a ponzi scheme. The pay is good on average and not unreasonable – but there can’t honestly be increases when there is nothing left to pay them with in the first place.

The ability to strike is another big sticking point and one of the biggest issues in their hearts. But herein lies a perfect example of thuggishness and brutal lowbrowheadedness being shown. But we’ll come to that in a moment.

I would say – pay them well and abolish unions as a whole. Make the pay raises based on economic growth of the community and that the cuts during bad times can’t exceed the state cuts overall. Pay goes up during good times and neutral or drops a little during bad times. Reasonable pay and economic ties ins would be fair to the people giving up the unions, and fair to the community considering that there are two things that you need to take into account about unions:

1. Unions can’t be replaced if they go on strike in many cases on state levels. They can hold a town hostage to their kids not going to school and the parents having to miss work or costing more money for sitters to garbage not being picked up or even worse threats – we’ll get to those.

2. Not only can the taxpayers not get competitive bids due to the monopoly of state unions for, lets say, privitization of services – they don’t get a seat at the table. The politicians, before these brave leaders, weren’t even willing to tackle the manpower, money and votes that the unions represent – they would willingly court those votes and dollars by giving raises even when they were irresponsible – like now. The unions would go out and court tax hikes, fees, licensing increases or whatever, and the whole cycle would start over. New revenue would come in, raises would follow, more new taxes as the labor costs hit, and so on.

Now – the fact is we are broke. Most states are in negative numbers. A large part of the cost of doing government isn’t raw materials for building something. It isn’t shipping finished product. It isn’t assembly plants having to be modernized. It isn’t for something that returns value – it is mostly labor.

In some areas, the labor costs are over 60-80% of municipal budgets, and frankly, that is a huge burden to bear for millions who are barely holding on to their homes right now. This is a time to be reasonable and bring logic back into the mix.

Governor Walker is looking to slash the state education budget by 9% – just a hair over the entire budget being cut 7.8% statewide with almost every single budget getting hit – including some getting hit 100%.

This is a necessary thing – we don’t have the ability to pay more and more and more to keep raising benefits and pay for a few over the backs of the majority of the workers the unions claim to be fighting for.

We are seeing that all but a few states are in the red, and the nation can’t and has already said that D.C. won’t bail them out. With that and even though pension shortfalls might be 1.5 TRILLION underestimated nationwide – the unions are hardlining this argument.

No cop shopping instead of no stop shopping.

Here is the part that really burns me and most conservatives, and I believe independents up. Here is where your vote, your voice, your wallet, your struggles, your burdens don’t matter. Here is where some people who lead and are the voices of the unions well and away cross the line.

The Ohio politician who cast the deciding vote in the Ohio Senate has already come face to face with union supporters who accosted him and other Senators in a restaurant

- and on top of that, according to reports from the Daily Caller:

Newly-elected Ohio Republican State Sen. Frank LaRose has received several distasteful threats from his state’s union members, including a high-ranking official in the police officers’ union.

LaRose, a 31-year-old Iraq war veteran, was the tiebreaking vote in Ohio’s Senate, which just sent a bill similar to Wisconsin’s budget bill to the State’s House of Representatives. That caused Michael Piotrowski, the general counsel for the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), to siege LaRose’s Facebook page.

“Funny thing about cops,” Piotrowski posted on LaRose’s Facebook wall, “they hold a grudge.” In another comment responding to someone’s criticism of his comment, Piotrowski wrote: “Nick, with all due respect, I don’t care about your views. You don’t know what you are talking about.” {real respectful, eh? PUBLIC servants – right?}

[....]

The folks who discovered Piotrowski’s comments and identity were College Republicans from the University of Akron. Joe Manno, the chair of the student group, told The Daily Caller that Ohio’s bill had some provisions that are “even more anti-union than Wisconsin, so the unions around here have been going kind of crazy, similar to what’s going on in Wisconsin. But, it’s starting to get a little moreviolent and a little more hostile environment here in Ohio.”

[....]

“The three of us went on Frank’s [LaRose’s] wall defending him, and he [Piotrowski] was actually directly addressing and threatening the three of us as well,” Manno said in a phone interview. “We didn’t know who we were dealing with at first. We Googled his name and got to his LinkedIn page. He’s been General Counsel since 1999 for the state FOP.”

“Comments like Mr. Piotrowski’s are alarming to say the least,” said Rob Lockwood, a spokesman for the College Republican National Committee. “If his words are true, it’s scary to think that there would be a double standard in law enforcement practices that would be detrimental towards anyone based purely on their political preferences. We thank Senator LaRose for his leadership on helping reform government, and we are proud of the Ohio College Republicans for helping bring this public display of corruption to light.”

That’s not the only nasty commenter Manno had to defend LaR

ose from. Another commenter, Peter Marinos, wrote: “Judas got 30 pieces of silver. What did YOU get Frank? Then Judas hung himself. You hung yourself politically. Plan an exit strategy.”{attack the character – then threats}

To LaRose’s defense came Tim Monaco, who wrote: “Frank, got my vote for life, and as I’m in his district, unlike you, that matters.” But, Monaco’s comment didn’t stop them either.

In a response to him, another union-supporter, likely a firefighter given his comment, Robert Hoch, said: “Tim you must be a coward just Laposer. We live in his district and lots of blue collar workers won’t be voting for him. Oh and one more thing Tim, next time ur house is on fire call a tea bagger. They have all the answers.”

Could this happen? Standing and just watching?

And that, my friends, is all the reason I need to stand behind getting rid of public safety unions. That last comment – a direct threat and one I have talked about on my show is what I have been very afraid of. The whole “Oh yeah? Can you fight fires/burglars without us?”

This ferocious threatening attitude of fear, hate and anger because the bill takes away the unions’ ability to strike.

Thanks for making the case for us folks – keep up the good work union members.

Going to let my house burn are we? Fine. I’ll save what I can and file insurance.
Burglar? I’ll shoot the bastard.

Who will be judged appropriate for this threat and censure?

Anyone with a Kasich or LaRose bumper sticker I assume?

Fine – personally – I would put a sign in your yard – I support Kasich and (Congressperson’s name) and I won’t be calling the police – break in and be killed.

Support your Governor and Congresspeople for just this reason. If these people are going to sink to the threatening level to MAKE you not voice YOUR opinion – train new fire and police and put these lawbreakers on the street.

Last time I checked – threats were indeed illegal.

The situation is – if they don’t care about the law and your right to speak or vote as you see fit – to the level that they are sinking to – you don’t need them. You don’t want them. You shouldn’t respect them because their mouthpieces are running around attacking anyone who dares disagree with them.

Bluntly put – if you union members don’t agree with this tactic – get rid of the people who are doing it. There are bound to be people who know who’s behind the comments and threats. Put them on leave until they cool their jets.

Who do you think you work for – just curious?

Expose them.

Your pay will go back up, you will still have jobs, you will have benefits and the governor and legislature will work with you over time. The reasonable people in the union rank and file need to step up and show the rest of the country that unions aren’t all bad and that the bad seeds who can’t be logical and responsible enough to realize that their neighbors are dying on the vine are the distinct minority.

I understand it’s hard to take a cut in pay, or have to pay more for benefits but really – this?

Workers of the world unite – I got the phrase, but I don’t see some workers helping others in need right now. Solidarity with whom? Your tax attorney?

The people spoke on election day and frankly – democracy (or a Representative Republic in reality) spoke and now your leaders and vocal members don’t want to live with the results.

Let me ask you this – how would you like it if a pee wee team that was always winning in a sport suddenly got beaten, and then the team assembled in front of the stands with your kids in their clutches and told you that if they didn’t get more time to play or get more points they would beat your kids that defeated them until you gave in. How mad would you be?

When do you make a stand folks? When do you get mad enough to realize that YOUR rights to disagree, vote, speak out and make a stand are being taken away from YOU.

With fear and blackmail.

This is homegrown terrorism – pure and simple – why should you feel afraid of the people you hired to protect you?

Don’t let it happen.

You can see the threat screen cap at the Daily Caller at the link below. I didn’t take it out of context at all.

No comments:

BLOG ARCHIVE