While doing all this she has fulfilled a leadership role within the Lebanon Tea Party, worked to advance “School Choice” as a viable option in Ohio, and maintained very close relationships with key politicians to advance legislation key to much-needed education reforms in Ohio.
For all those reasons and more, Sharon Poe is a “warrior” that if others did half of what she does in her commitment to justice, this world would be a free and wonderful place.
I’ve said it many times, I read a lot. A whole lot. And over 2010 one of the books that most jumped out at me was Glenn Beck’s The Overton Window. My daughter had bought it for me for Father’s Day and I read it in one day.
I hear people like Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO talk about the “RIGHT WING” and you hear what comes out of his mouth and you have to wonder about his sanity. As far as a union leader, and a person close to the White House, which he says he speaks to daily, I would be ashamed if that guy where my boss or leader. He clearly doesn’t understand basic economics and its people like him that create the message that millions of union workers chant.
Here is Trumka speaking in March of 2009. He has no idea how the bill he’s speaking about will “expand” the middle class, and he doesn’t have any idea how this will drive up the labor costs. He just makes statements that people seem to blindly following without question. Something he accuses Beck and other people primarily on the political right of doing.
America is supposed to be a group of individuals, not a unified collective sum like Trumka speaks about. The Federalist Papers, which went on to become The Constitution were written to protect American from people like Trumka, and Obama. Those people and people like them taken by themselves are not bad people, but they have a dangerous ideology and they disguise it with a message the masses can understand. So it is not a far stretch to say that when I saw Trumka speak on February 26, 2011 that the best way to create jobs was to raise taxes, which I know from economics is false, yet people chant and cheer in approval, and I witnessed the union protests all across the country, it reminded me of Jim Jones, of the Jonestown massacre from 1978. Jones had several thousand supporters that followed him from Indianapolis Indiana, to San Francisco, then to Guyana South America. Jones was an admirer of Marx, Lenin, and Mao. That’s why they chanted this song at their church rallies in the early 70’s.
Jim Jones is a tough story to swallow. Because it is the extreme example of what collectivism can inflict on people. Jones was a proud socialist. What you are about to hear is the actual death tape from the Jonestown Massacre. Jones turned on a tape recorder and gave a final speech while his thousands of followers drank poisoned drink to their deaths. He calls it “revolutionary suicide” to an inhuman world. You will actually hear people perishing in the background, so if you have a soft stomach, don’t listen to this. This behavior is far from a joke. If you listen you will hear several people step forward and speak about the greatness of Jim Jones, their “Daddy,” and of the merits of socialism and communism.
The following clip is from the film The Guyana Tragedy and is a reenactment of what you will hear below.
Here is the actual death tapes. Now consider as you listen to this, these people speaking are just moments from their death. They know it. Listen to their thoughts and what they intend.
So what is the lesson here? Well, madmen have a way of lying to themselves and distorting the reality of the world around them. And such people are attracted to socialism, communism, progressivism and all those collective “ism’s.” At that point it no longer becomes a simple argument about economics and the best way to handle economic issues. It evolves into a struggle between good and evil.
That’s where I start seeing startling comparisons from people in the modern labor movement. What they are saying are simply the words their leaders speak. Richard Trumka is a powerful union leader and in this recent case involving these labor protests, what he says in public, over a microphone, ends up coming out of the mouths of his followers.
Trumka, like many people attracted to those “collective ideologies” are prone to climb for power. History shows that it happens in every case. I don’t know of a single instance of a collective society that survives outside of a tribal village. The individuality inherit in the human being seems to break down true collectivism, and social experiments to water this tendency down in our youth have failed with terrible results. This is the reason the Tea Party has risen as a permanent movement, because many people are just tired of the “social experiments.” Many want to return to the original blue print that paved the way for the greatest nation on earth.
Whether or not he is aware of it or not, Trumka’s actions show that he is power-hungry and idealistic, and is essentially no different from someone like Jim Jones. It is quite possible that if that congressman from California had not went to Jonestown and been killed, Jim Jones and his followers would have lived for years without a mass suicide. But the scary thing about it is that Jones had to retreat to South America to have his utopian society. And the congressman was doing in that society much of what the Tea Party is trying to do in American Society. They are intervening and attempting to break up the dangerous collectivism that is consuming the nation.
Progressives are insistent in the modern age to not leave the country for their utopian society. They instead are intent to change the country itself. Here Trumka reveals what he is all about, which concerns me a great deal. It concerns me because watching his followers on Saturday; they seem to think he truly believes in this whole “middle class” protection. Yet he states otherwise.
Watch and listen to these clips from the Saturday Protests. And compare the behavior to what you heard from Jim Jones’s Congregation.
This brings me back to the Overton window concept introduced in Beck’s book. People can say what they want about Glenn Beck, but from what I know about the guy, he genuinely wants to get at the truth. His agenda is the truth. And that’s why he wrote his book, The Overton Window.
The Overton window, in political theory, describes a “window” in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on a particular issue. It is named after its originator, Joseph P. Overton.
At any given moment, the “window” includes a range of policies considered to be politically acceptable in the current climate of public opinion, which a politician can recommend without being considered too “extreme” or outside the mainstream to gain or keep public office. Overton arranged the spectrum on a vertical axis of “more free” and “less free” in regards to government intervention. When the window moves or expands, ideas can accordingly become more or less politically acceptable. The degrees of acceptance of public ideas can be described roughly as:
The Overton Window is a means of visualizing which ideas define that range of acceptance by where they fall in it. Proponents of policies outside the window seek to persuade or educate the public so that the window either “moves” or expands to encompass them. Opponents of current policies, or similar ones currently within the window, likewise seek to convince people who these should be considered unacceptable.
Other formulations of the process created after Overton’s death add the concept of moving the window, such as deliberately promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous “outer fringe” ideas, with the intention of making the current fringe ideas acceptable by comparison. __________________________________________________
What these extreme left groups have done over time is they pulled the Overton window radically to the left with key phrases like, “workers’ rights” and “tax the rich.” Or “all conservatives are Hitler.” 100 years ago at the start of the progressive movement these ideas were considered radical. But in the election of 1912, Eugene V.Debs had doubled the Socialist vote from 500,000 in 1908 to 1 million in 1912. This wasn’t some guy from Europe; he was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. In fact, the Socialists had their 1912 Convention in Indianapolis; the same place Jim Jones started his socialist church. Ronald Reagan toyed with joining the socialist party when he was a young man in Hollywood. It was after he traveled to England and witnessed what socialism had done to England through the Labor Party that he turned far to the right, out of fear for his country. But those people, those 1 million people who voted socialist in 1912 are out there, and they attached themselves to progressive ideas, they had children, raised families and found themselves drawn to the Labor Movement in America on the backs of the unions. Now many of those people aren’t bad people, but they are attracted to the collectivism of socialist concepts by their family culture and genetic make-up, because let’s face it, some people are more comfortable hiding in the masses and are not inclined to stand on their own.
Those poor, unfortunate souls are the people who end up following someone like Jim Jones in the extreme circumstance. And to a lesser degree, they find themselves repeating word for word what someone like Richard Trumka utters, without any care as to the relevance of his words. Trumka knows he can’t talk to an economist about how he represents the “middle class” or how “increasing taxes on the rich,” “creates jobs.” Those are just buzz words to stir up the followers. What Trumka is really after is moving the Overton window far to the left as was the trend during the entire 20th century. It happened because people weren’t aware of the threat and it just crept into our culture subtly. Trumka said it himself; he’s not in the labor movement for wages and benefits. He’s using the labor movement as a platform to change society, and that isn’t any different from Jim Jones who wanted to change the world through religion.
The real threat and real money being poured into politics isn’t coming from Rupert Murdoch, or the Koch Brothers. George Soros, and all the Hollywood left has poured far more money into political manipulation so there isn’t any room to talk. Yet if Trumka says “the conservative right is for the rich, and we are for the working man!” Look at all these contributors to the radical left! Yet all these people point to the right and say it’s “Wall Street, the rich, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, all are blamed for manipulating the American people when in fact it is these people that have committed the act of their accusations.
“The working man” is another false premise captured by the labor movement and placed into the minds of Americans by the Overton window. In Ohio 655,000 people work for a union, both public and private. That’s only 13.7 percent of the 4,787,000 million people who are employed in the state. That leaves over 4 million people not represented by a union, and don’t particularly want to be represented by a union. And most of those people are not in management. Most of those people are the real workers, and is proof that such extreme rhetoric as exhibited by people like Trumka to an army of people built on entitlement. Yet, because of the Overton window, the media, and the regular everyday people accept that “workers’ rights” represents union work, because that’s how the term was marketed.
That’s the reason the teachers are protesting. Because their union knows the scam that they’ve been playing against the tax payer is falling apart now that their cost to society has reached a breaking point. Their strategy all along was to continue to push for higher taxes to pay for their scam and they had full confidence based on their track record over the last two decades that they’d achieve that goal. Now, compare what you’ve learned here about step increases, and the imposed cost to the tax payer, and the amount of money teachers are making on average, and then look at Patricia Frost-Brooks, President of the OEA, comments in that same mentioned article from The Dispatch.
“If you lower the wages, and your health insurance goes up, then what does that do to a family? How is the family going to sustain their livelihood?” said Patricia Frost-Brooks, president of the Ohio Education Association.
Patricia goes into great detail attempting to demean Governor Kasich before the election. The OEA is a lobby group in Columbus where Patricia Frost-Brooks is president of the Ohio Education Association, a statewide union representing 130,000 members in k-12 schools, public colleges and universities and education support professionals. So when you listen to what she says, consider that she has one primary job and that is to protect her members. And in her view, she if protecting her members by driving up their wages, paying them very well, so they will have the expendable income to give back some to her lobby group. It’s that simple.
But Tom Ash, director of governmental development for the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, said school boards may not do away with all automatic pay increases.
“At milestones during their career, I think there should be step increases in an attempt to retain those people because you don’t want to lose them,” he said. “But the notion that you should do it every year, I don’t know that that’s necessary when you’re also providing an increase on the base salary.”
Mr. Ash is speaking my language. That’s the reality of the situation. For some teachers that are exceptional, I’ll use Lakota as an example, like Mr. Duff, who is a science teacher that I think is great, I don’t want to see him go anywhere. I’d be happy to tell the school board to throw money at a teacher like that. He should make 70 to 80K per year. But for every teacher like him, there are 4 or 5 that are just cruising through their careers, and they do not deserve to make more than 55K per year, no matter how much education they obtain for themselves.
You have to understand that this whole thing is a system. The OEA for years has lobbied to create legislation that creates incentives for teachers to obtain a master’s degree. For many teachers, obtaining a master’s degree is practical and necessary. According to the U.S. Department of Education, 52 percent of teachers hold a master’s degree or higher. Although some states require teachers to obtain master’s degrees, teachers often seek advanced degrees to increase their salaries and obtain new skills.
There is a reason Patricia and the OEA wants its teachers to have a master’s degree. That is because the OEA also represent teachers who work for universities and if every teacher working in Ohio continues their education and gets a master’s degree so they can qualify for the financial rewards of obtaining that degree then the money funneled into the colleges can help pay the salaries of the professors staffed at those institutions. It’s what the “working people” in know would call, “job security.” The OEA knows that their teachers at the K-12 level are likely to seek that higher degree if they can afford it with good wages to begin with, but the promise of even higher wages are at the end of that degree. Here are the tuition costs at Ohio State, as listed at their website. Estimated Costs for U.S. Students
All costs are subject to change without notice. A complete list of quarterly tuition charges by program may be found at the Office of the Registrar’s website. http://gradadmissions.osu.edu/Costs.html
• $11,298 – tuition cost for a U.S. citizen, permanent resident, aslyee, or refugee and a legal resident of the State of Ohio; • $28,746 – tuition cost for a US citizen, permanent resident, aslyee, or refugee whose residence is outside of Ohio; • $13,980 – estimated annual expenses for room, board, insurance, books and supplies
The truth of the matter is it’s all about money. It’s always been about money, and it’s a game played at the tax payers’ expense and it has to stop.
Look at this ad from “Teacher World” which is a teacher recruiting website.
With an average teacher salary of $55,931,* teaching in Ohio is a great career choice. Whether you like bustling cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland or state capital Columbus, or prefer smaller towns or rural communities, Ohio has it all. Learn about teaching in Ohio on Teacher World. http://www.teacher-world.com/statespages/Ohio.html
The OEA knows what it’s doing. It’s a shell game. They manage to obtain for their teachers above average wages so they can funnel some of that money into the higher education system. They also have to create the incentive for teachers to make more than enough money so they won’t suffer when they must pay their union dues, because the OEA needs that money to lobby elected officials and participate in the political system.
Once the school board members are taught what they can and can’t cover as board members, the implementations that are put in place by the OEA are safe from scrutiny. This is why the first and only thing school boards are allowed to deal with are the costs associated with direct operating expenditures, which only occupy under 20% of a school district budget. Notice how many times teachers and administrators mention in that video that the only hug a child gets in a day or hot meal they eat comes from the school system. It is ironic that they sell their service and the necessity for the massive amount of money flowing within it by creating the perception that they are the only chance kids have for success in life.
What do the parents think about this behavior? Listen to a mom read a note from her son during the last school board meeting in Mason, Feb 22nd 2011. Her son went to Mason several years ago, he graduated in 2007. This proves that the recent news went on for quite some time. The woman’s testimony is at approximately the 1/4 mark of the video. George Coates named in this video was the AP who’s genitals were found on Stacy Schuler’s computer upon her arrest and was a direct supervisor to Ms. Schuler.
The question is, will the communities of Ohio allow themselves to see through the smoke screens and do what is obviously right or will they choose to allow themselves to be scammed by a ruthless adversary. Only time will tell.
Should a teacher have to pay dues to a union in order to work for a public school? Of course not, yet that is exactly what’s happening in Ohio and many other states. Such a policy is no different from organized crime, where protection money is required in order to avoid some retaliatory measure. This type of behavior has absolutely no place in modern education!
Doc Thompson talks to Tracy Bailey of the Association of American Educators about alternatives to teachers unions and politics along party politics. It is a fascinating discussion that deserves review. If you are truly hungry for facts, make sure to listen to this interview. Bailey discusses how teachers are listed at the top of many public opinion polls as to people society trusts. But union leaders are viewed equal to used car salesmen in a trust worthy factor, and there is a growing disconnect between those two gaps.
Yet the stories of impropriety continue among the tax payer employees known as teachers. Lakota had a major scandal recently in January from Ryan Fahremkemp and Mason had one with Stacy Schuler in February and there are more to follow on her coat tails. Read this next bit of information coming out of Mason.
Here’s yet another Mason teacher, Daniel P. Little, who is still teaching in the district.
Several of our readers said we didn’t report enough detail about Mason teacher Dan Little, 28, and his arrest in the midst of his sex and drugs two-day party spree in Room 403 at the Hampton Inn on Crescent Avenue in Covington, Kentucky. Also present at the party when the arrests took place were five other people: another Mason teacher Russell Fallon, Mason assistant wrestling coach Jabree Jones, Tasha C. Davis, Carrie Little (Dan’s wife), and John L. Miller.
____________________________________________________
It is certainly not new, this idea that teachers want to have sex with students, or administrators are having sex with teachers, or teachers like in the case involving Daniel Little are getting together with a group of other teachers along with his wife to engage in extremely bad behavior. This wasn’t just one teacher and one isolated incident much like the Schuler case wasn’t just sex with one student. She was involved with the Assistant Principle also, which has not been discussed much. And Dan Little wasn’t just having a crazy drug party with his wife in a hotel room. It was with several other teachers, people we expect to teach our kids about the negatives of drugs.
But schools hire public relations people known as “spokesman” to clean up these issues and present a public face that the media can assist in portraying. Notice how Dan Little is portrayed on the Mason School System website.
Staff Awards and Honors Mason City Schools’ staff members are at the top of their profession. • 31 Mason teachers earned National Board Certification, MMS science teacher Dan Little and Mason Heights second grade teacher Greg Hill won the Rising Above Teacher Award sponsored by Panera Bread Company
Check it out for yourself. http://masonohioschools.com/district.cfm?subpage=185
Do you think Panera Bread wants it’s Rising Above Teacher Award going to a drug abuser? Of course not. And would the public be inclined to pass another school levy if they knew about such bad behavior? Of course not. So it doesn’t get talked about. It gets spun and twisted so a moral judgment cannot be made, and by the time the next levy hits the ballot box, the voters have forgotten, because all they see is the awards that were won and published by the school.
Administrators and I know this is a hundred percent true because I know some of them personally, spend their time protecting image and not enforcing policy. The inmates do run the asylum and everyone knows it, within the school systems. It is a running joke.
Now I get a lot of letters from people who don’t want to see it. Or they get mad at me for pointing it out, because in their minds, they want to maintain the illusion that they want to believe. And I say to those people that they are irresponsible participants of destructive behavior which directly corrupts our youth. If they cannot see the error of their self-imposed blindness, then they are as bad as the people who commit these terrible acts, because the public trusts these tax funded employees to care for their children.
I never had illusions that S.B.5 would avoid a referendum. After all, when it comes to union activity, they have a history of pushing and shoving until they get what they want, so a referendum that is well financed by the union is a certainty one way or the other.
If I’m wrong, which is about as rare as an eclipse, I’ll be happy to buy Cunningham a hot fudge sundae from UDF. But my bet is that these new elements that exist in the political landscape will tip the balance of power in a new direction not to the liking of the public sector unions.
To display this argument I submit exhibit “A.” Witness David Letterman talking to Rand Paul and you can see how the world of yesterday “thought” and how the world of tomorrow will “think.”
This interview with Doc Thompson below is especially potent. If you have any doubt about impropriety among the public sector employees, then listen to this broadcast. If you want to continue walking around blind and gullible, than only read the latest news from Lakota also below. If you want the whole story then read the article and listen to the broadcast together, so take a break from your schedule and enjoy the broadcast. While you listen compare what you hear to the news released from Lakota, as reported by Lindsey Hilty, about the specific cuts announced by the Lakota Administration. I will save my closing comments for the end of that article.
By Lindsey Hilty, Staff Writer Updated 8:22 AM Thursday, February 24, 2011 LIBERTY TWP. — Tensions ran high at Lakota East High School Wednesday night as more than 200 concerned parents and community members listened to how cuts would impact students next year. “We’ve looked at all areas of our budget — everywhere,” interim Superintendent Ron Spurlock said. “…We have to start living within our means.”
Many of the budget cuts, he said, likely could be permanent even with the passage of a levy. “It’s not a pretty picture,” Spokeswoman Laura Kursman said. “And it’s hard to communicate bad news.” Another meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Lakota West High School to hear about how $12.2 million in proposed cuts to the operating budget may be implemented pending school board approval. Parents who can’t attend sessions are asked to fill out a survey on the district’s web site to help with some of the future tough choices.
“I’m very worried,” parent Tricia McCaffrey said. “The Lakota School District I moved in to eight years ago is not the school district I have now when it matters for my son. Losing electives and going to state minimums is not why I chose to pay Lakota taxes.”
Elementary reductions: $3 million, 50 employees cut The goal is to maintain reading supports, supplemental classes taught by specialists, media center access and an accelerated gifted programs. To be cut: sixth-grade band; third-grade gifted program and services for grades four through six; gym, art, music and library time to 30 minutes each per week for grades one to six; one reading specialist per school; three media specialists sharing 14 schools; literacy coaches and two fewer English as a Second Language instructional aides.
Junior school reductions: $1.7 million, 25.5 employees cut Reduce day from eight bells to seven with 26-minute study hall, four core content classes and two electives. Programs eliminated include wood shop, English double block, band team teaching, jazz band, an intervention math class and department performance supplemental contracts. There will be two fewer media specialists. High School reductions: $1.9 million, 28 employees cut
Elective classes to be based on enrollment numbers with limited options, elimination of seventh bell; class size increases and 23.5 credits possible with 21 needed to graduate.
Special Services: $858,500, 19 employees cut Six fewer special education aides, one counselor per junior school and reduced nursing aids. Athletic reductions: $1 million cut
No funds for junior school athletics; $550 per high school athlete per sport with no family cap; supervision supplemental and sports information directors positions eliminated, and decreased transportation budgets. Central Office: $874,143, 5.5 employees cut
Elimination of an assistant superintendent and several central office support positions. Changes to contracted services and a hold on filling positions also led to savings. Transportation: $2.8 million cut
Already implemented in part, but in August, no student within two miles of school will receive transportation. This will impact half of Lakota’s student population.
They don’t have one. They are going to have to think differently. Because asking for more revenue to feed wages they’ve allowed to escalate irresponsibly is not going to work. It’s a complete lack of management.
It’s time for a new plan, or to step away and let people who know what they’re doing to manage the situation. The old way won’t work because the community isn’t poised to pass another levy no matter how they chose to spin it with their new spokesman. “Lakota hasn’t passed a levy since 2005.” What will never be forgotten, because I’ll never let people forget it, is that after that levy was passed, in 2008, the LEA bent the community over backwards for increased wages which drove up the costs we are seeing today. So we won’t be traveling back down that path again, no matter how it gets manipulated to the public.
I am working on a motorcycle journey from Alaska to the bottom of South America. It will cost a lot of money, so I have to find a way to assemble some investors and a documentary crew so there can be a return on the investment. But I’m planning the trip as a grand adventure of endurance. I assembled this video to show what a trip like that might look like, so I put a year of my life into a roughly 15 minute video.
In Ohio only 655,000 people belong to a union both public and private. That’s 13.7 percent of the 4,787,000 people employed in the state. Yet this minority has dictated an extraordinary expense upon the tax payers through taxes improperly collected and distributed.
The Republicans that are of that selfish ilk, they care about issues so long as their world is convenient. Those are the conservatives that have made the conservative philosophy look bad for years. They are Republicans because it makes them money. They are the first Judas’s to report to a Roman guard what goes on in the garden in order to save their own necks, and this again is a pathetic by-product of the unions which have subsequently weakened our society. Lawyers, and police heads that are Republicans, but benefit off of legal antics driven by union activity, they have difficulty thinking clearly. These people are the type of Republicans that say ending collective bargaining is a bad political move because the unions have the power to put the issue on a referendum to overturn such a law as S.B.5 proposes to do. Those Republicans are afraid that they will lose office holders in the next election if such bold legislation is created.
Do something bold, get rid of collective bargaining. Get rid of the money and influence built around the Democratic Party. And don’t play politics like it’s a football game where there are this many Republicans and this many Democrats and whoever has the majority wins. Take the chips off the table and the majority concerns with it. Take away the special interest of union influence and lets see what Ohioans really think politically, and we’ll have a better representation of what the state really wants from its elected officials.
If you are a frequent visitor to this site you know that Jeff isn’t an isolated politician when it comes to understanding reason. There are hundreds of hours of such conversations documented here just like the one you just heard. I admit there are hundreds of thousands of words written here and many hundreds of articles, videos and sound bites, so it can be overwhelming. That information is here like a library to help discuss topics that aren’t covered by the popular press. You can search for that information by checking the calendar off to the side of this article.
You can also pull them up by Googling “Overmanwarrior” along with whatever topic you want info for.
Some Senators have given the unions hope because of comments these Senators have made, and they are the targets of these protests. The protests are designed to break these senators’s resolve to reason out of fear from reprisal or the possibility of not being re-elected.
The reality is 15K, 20K or even 70K is not very many people. The real mass is out there in the plains and hills of Ohio, and they are busy working and watching. And if politicians waver from their task, those politicians will be removed and new ones put in place until reform does happen. It’s as simple as that.
Congratulations Jeff Berding for reaching across the aisle and showing the kind of boldness these times require. It may hurt politically in the short-term, but it will give you a proud story to tell your grandchildren someday when they are looking for a hero and you can offer them one with your grand story. Because doing what’s hard is what we take pride in when life darkens around us.
And Senator Sietze, I was inspired by your speech last year calling on Governor Strickland to “lead.” Well, now you have a Governor willing to “lead.”
I get the high and low negotiation process. I’ve done it myself many times. But when it comes to the kind of activity that goes on in collective bargaining, use the strong cards you have when you have them, and play the game to win in the long run. Not just to appease the current masses. It’s best to avoid a referendum process, but consider how many of those people in unions vote purely as Democrats because of their pay check. So long as there are public unions involved in politics we will never know what is the true nature of our Republic, because the numbers will always be skewed. Unions tell people how to vote and that’s a problem.
The Gunfighter's Guide: 