Like the proponents of Ohio’s Issue 2 tried to point out before the November vote, keeping the status quo for Ohio public union salaries, benefits, and pensions was unsustainable.

A yes vote would’ve kept Ohio Senate Bill 5 as law, and tried to reign in the runaway spending and debt being heaped on the state. Unions spent over $50M to defeat Issue 2, as evidenced by the utter proliferation of “No on 2″ signs that sprouted all over the state.

As was warned, the budget realities must now be faced. Cities across the state are running out of money and are now being forced to lay off fire and police employees (e.g. Portsmouth, Lancaster, Middletown). Without SB5, the only options left to the cities are higher taxes or less employees.

The main scare tactic by the “No on 2″ crowd was that fire and police employees were going to lose their jobs and communities were going to be less safe. As it turns out, not ALL of the police and fireman are getting fired (as the dire warning went during the run up to the vote), just the ones on the bottom of the seniority totem pole.

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Former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) struggles to explain why the same Ohio voters who rejected public sector labor reforms also rejected ObamaCare’s individual mandate:

Could it be that ObamaCare is unpopular even among voters who support public sector unions?

Or is it that Ohio voters make logical choices when not bombarded by millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of union propaganda? (more…)

In Ohio, as union bosses have embraced Occupy Wall Street’s (OWS) class war between the “99 percent” and the “1 percent,” it has becomes increasingly difficult not to ask an obvious question:

Aren’t union bosses basically the 1 percent?

Throughout the run-up to Ohio’s Issue 2 election on November 8, in which voters will consider a referendum on the state’s new public sector labor reforms, I’ve met pponents of the bill at Occupy Columbus who say they are fed up with “the rich taking from the middle class.” They direct their class warfare energies at the abstract Wall Street anathema, but the scenario is literally accurate–and not in some obtuse, Marxist form–as a description of the fiscal dynamic between union bosses and rank-and-file members.

I asked one teacher how, being an Occupy demonstrator and opponent of Ohio labor reforms, she justified the $210,000 annual salary of Larry Wicks, executive director of the Ohio Education Association (OEA), of which she is a dues-paying member. She paused for thought–understandably, since that fact would seem to justify class warfare against the “rich” Mr. Wicks. Ultimately, she concurred with my criticism, and even condemned her very own OEA.

Other Ohio teachers are even less hesitant to criticize their union. One teacher (who wished to remain anonymous for her own safety) shared that she had requested a waiver to opt out of paying the union’s political assessments, to which the response was, “We’ll get back to you.” They didn’t. (more…)

Folks, the Democrats and We Are Ohio unions will stop at NOTHING to preserve the government union advantage over the officials we elect to manage our tax dollars. They will say, and do, absolutely ANYTHING to stop the reasonable reforms in Issue 2 from taking effect.

• They lied to you about being able to bargain for safety equipment.
• They continually wage class warfare by asserting that unionized government employees are the entirety of Ohio’s middle class, when in fact, they are actually a tiny single digit percentage.
• The Plain Dealer and Politifact reported that they lied to you when they said Issue 2 would make it harder for nurses to care for patients, and also about legislators writing a supposed “loophole” into the law.
• Disgustingly, they somehow brought race into the debate by saying that Issue 2 would take us back to the days of Jim Crow laws.
• The continually cite a compensation report written by a questionable “researcher” who was caught on tape agreeing to “kill” information that didn’t meet the Ohio teachers’ union’s desired outcome.

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As Ohio’s SB5 (collective bargaining reform) goes to a vote on November 8th, pressure is being ramped up in the final week and a half. According to the Columbus Dispatch, unions and their fellow reform opponents have bankrolled the We Are Ohio anti-SB5 campaign to the tune of $19,048,680, dwarfing the pro-reform Building A Better Ohio’s $7.6 million.

Democrats and their union cronies have dominated Ohio for decades and the collective bargaining reforms signed into law earlier this year pose a very real threat to their continued base of power. As a result, the Democrats did something incredibly arrogant on Thursday afternoon when the official Twitter account for the Ohio Democratic Party released the names of several businesses that have contributed to SB5, then told their 4,000 followers to “contact them.”

Although the Ohio Democrats promised to tweet the names of the businesses and outside organizations “bankrolling unfair attacks on Ohio’s middle class,” they only listed three businesses before removing all four tweets. (more…)

We have been warning about the bad news in the recent polls on Issue 2, and stated why the huge wins they show for the anti-reform side won’t be as big as the polls suggest.

Now, the Washington Post is reporting on a leaked memo from liberal mob Progress Ohio to the “We Are Ohio” union front group. They also believe it’s a LOT closer!

An internal memo from a key labor-backed group in the state is flatly warning that the polls are “flawed” and that a big win for labor is not even “remotely possible.” It adds that the right’s messaging has “worked,” and that there’s good reason to suspect that a “massive amount of voter confusion remains,” suggesting the fight could still go either way.
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Yesterday on Third Base Politics, we shared with you how the anti-Issue 2 group “We Are Ohio” is made up of organizations that have given their full endorsement to a movement that seeks to overthrow the entire American economy, by violent means, if necessary.  In fact, 74% of the money behind We Are Ohio comes from the unions who have publicly praised a movement that consists of radical Marxists.

Occupy Wall Street and its various offshoots in other cities seems not to be satisfied until the society that has produced the most mass prosperity, the most advancements in technology and freedom, in human history, is replaced by the model more like the failed and deadly Soviet model.  And We Are Ohio is fully on board with that!

But not only do they support the socialists behind the Occupy movement, they even employ one.

Meet Will Klatt. He is a self-described “community organizer” and claims on his Facebook page to be the “Statewide Youth Outreach Coordinator” for We Are Ohio.

Since it appears often on his Facebook wall, and he is officially the Youth Outreach Coordinator, he is presumably the brains behind the Facebook group “We Are Ohio Students.” So, how is young Will reaching out to Ohio’s youth? By organizing and attending “Occupy” protests around Ohio, of course! Here is a part of his wall highlighting that We Are Ohio Students is directly endorsing, attending and organizing the Occupy Columbus protests.

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