Ohio Senate Republicans remove committee member to ensure approval of collective bargaining bill

What I find most confusing about all this is that there seems to be an underlying assumption on the Republicans' part that you can keep qualified employees in state government and at the same time get rid of every perk that makes the low salaries bearable.

I totally get that government is accountable to the taxpayer, and nobody should be paid an unreasonable amount for government work compared to the private sector. But the fact that the state pays X dollars for an employee's health insurance and Y dollars for the employee's pension means nothing unless you compare the total value of that person's salary and benefits to the total salary and benefits of private sector employees working in a similar job with similar education and experience.

In other words, if monthly the state pays $200 for my health insurance and $1,700 for my salary, while someone else in the private sector has the same sort of job making $2,000 but his employer doesn't pay for health insurance, who has the better deal?

James, the governor (no matter who it is but Republicans are worse) view state employees as their personal property--chattel the same as slaves. They think they can do whatever they want to state agencies as far as cutting staff, freezing merit raises, changing the civil service rules and regs at their pleasure, and making the agencies top-heavy with their political cronies who know little to nothing about the particular agency's mission and who only regard state service at a high level as a bullet on their resumes. AND they expect to keep top-notch classified personnel for less than they are worth on the open market. They also expect every agency to "do more with less", assuring the public that closing offices and laying off workers will not affect the timely delivery of services.

Believe me, I know. I retired from state service last October after 37 years. My pension is about two thirds of what I was making. It is enough, but it is certainly not lavish. I am not covered by Medicare so if the state-run insurance program goes private, I could be in deep @!$%#.

What might make more sense than destroying collective bargaining is to stop subsidizing healthcare and pensions entirely, and institute a one-time wage increase to offset the loss to the employees. Then if the state wants to have a debate about whether employees are paid too much, it can have a debate about salaries, and leave the "lavish benefits" out of the discussion.

Plus, people don't understand that, yes, state employees don't contribute to Social Security, but they also aren't entitled to SS benefits. And, if you worked less than 10 years in the private sector, anything you paid into SS during that time is forfeited. If you paid into SS for more than 10 years, you still receive a lower benefit at retirement than someone else who paid the same amount into SS but doesn't collect a government pension. The game is rigged.

The thing to realize is that Republicans have nothing but disdain for government, so they really don't want quality people to work for the government. Their goal is dysfunctional government so they can justify their belief that government is incompetent. Why would anyone want to put people in charge of an organization they have don't believe in.... Kind of like putting Ralph Nader in charge of a big tobacco company and expecting the company to flourish....

James, I worked in a state that does not have collective bargaining for state employees. It is also against the law for us to strike. We depended on the Dept of Civil Service to protect us, but our weasel of a governor (Republican) was busy dismantling the civil service protections we had (such as being required to hire based on test results). I retired just in time. I don't know why state workers are not required to pay into Social Security. That was in place long before I ever started working. In my state, we pay a larger percent of our salaries into our pensions than Social Security--and there is no cap on the deduction as with Social Security.

Mike, they may not want qualtiy people but they certainly demand prompt services for their complaining constituents. So that can be a double-edged sword. Your question is another versio of one I asked throughout my career. I worked for Social Services and I was amazed at the number of Republicans among my colleagues. Why on earth would anyone make a career out of providing services they don't "approve of"?

Looks like it's time for us to get some recalling accomplished, don't cha think? And yes, my household voted straight Democrat as well.

I feel for you Lana. Your fellow residents are a masochistic lot... given the Disaster the Republican machine lead by Taft,Bob Ney and the coingate scandal...now the openly sleaziest slight of hand maneuvering to disgrace a legislative body in this country in a long time.

Hitler "removed" millions of people... Jews, Slavs, labor leaders, socialists, communists, homosexuals. Did you approve of that too?

Nope, just liberals!

Sometimes, those who want to "remove" people, get "removed" themselves. Go ask Adolf.

One More Disgruntled American:

First They came... - Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

If you won't stand up for others different from you, will you at least stand up for yourself? First the unions, next the dissenting politicians and then- YOU!

There is a difference between being "removed" and being "taken away". But hey, it was a nice use of a historic poem, inappropriate application and irrelevant, but nice nonetheless.

Standing up for those that are different from you is different than being mandated to either listen to them on every issue or caving into their demands when you do not agree with the premise of the demand.

There is a difference between being "removed" and being "taken away"

Not in the dictionary there isn't and, from reading some of your posts, I do think you may want to pick one up- consider it a valuable investment!

Quite,

You may be entirely correct about that, but I am confident in saying I would not need it to carry on a conversation with you.

Please look up the term "context", you will find that in the poem the context of the term "taken away" was to concentration camps. In the story that is seeded, the term "removed" is being used in the phrase "has been removed from the committee" was simply unseated and replaced.

So yes, the two terms are NOT the same when you look at the context of their uses. But hey it was fun, please see the girl by the door for your parting gifts for playing today.

I dont think so. We were doing just fine until Quite Contrary opted to insult my intelligence versus simply arguing the point.

Learned well from the Pelosi Democrats. Nothing like a back room deal.

Learned well from the Pelosi Democrats. Nothing like a back room deal.

There was no back room deal, the Republicans were invited to participate and refused.

I agree cavebear, they didn't get the "Party of No" reputation for no reason- or did they?

Actually they got the reputation for saying NO to the Democrats. Just cant find a problem with that.

Disgruntled:

Then you, my friend, are too blinded by party loyalty to really look critically at any of the given issues and make any sort of judgement call. GOP= Good; Dem's= Bad is a simplistic way to go through life, do you think that your party has never been in error? Must be grand to be so assured of one's own infallibility!

Quite Contrary,

Apparently it is not quite as grand as self righteousness and condesending attitudes.

• Please show me in my brief comment where I stated that I agreed with EVERY rejection of the Democrats poposals.
• Please deomonstrate how I have shown that I have NOT made a judgement call on my decisions.
• Please explain how you were able to glean that I stated that the GOP was never in error?

You see, I simply stated that saying no to the Democrats was was a good thing, you however chose to take a simple statement like that and extrapalate it out into some sort of an idiotic insulting theory about me.

Muyst be grand to be so assured of ones own infalibility? I would not know about that, why dont you tell me about it.

Disgrunt:

1. Nope, just liberals!
2. Nope, just liberals!
3. Nope, just liberals!

I really didn't have to do too much research concerning your obvious bias.

Muyst be grand to be so assured of ones own infalibility?

As I said prior concerning that valuable investment in a dictionary (or at the very least, paying casual attention to the bright red underlines- they are there for a reason) you may want to ditch the thesaurus in favor of a good, basic grounding in 8th grade English. Finally:

You see, I simply stated that saying no to the Democrats was was a good thing, you however chose to take a simple statement like that and extrapalate it out into some sort of an idiotic insulting theory about me

If you find insult in the truth, then perhaps you should examine just 'why'. Also, please do not fling superfluous accusations when all I have to do to refute them is slap one single, self-explanatory quote- endlessly. I really do have better things to do with my time!

FYI: the next time you wish to quote my statements, please copy/paste and use that little ol' quotation mark icon hanging out on the bar above- it'll save you the typing, and me the cringing- when you inevitably misspell any of my verbiage.

Probably won't be allowed to vote unless you are in the upper 2 % income bracket by the time the right wing gets done.

There was a purposal that you had to be a land owner to vote. http://thinkprogress.org/2010/11/30/tea-party-voting-property

But it was from the tea party, so I don't think it will ever go anywhere.