Tag Archives: Tea Party

Ohio Republicans pass bill to cut bloated union salaries and benefits

From the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

Ohio state senators narrowly approved a bill that would prohibit public-employee unions representing 400,000 state employees from bargaining over health benefits, pensions and working conditions.

While national attention has focused for weeks on a similar battle in Wisconsin, the vote, by 17-16 in Ohio’s Republican-controlled Senate, virtually ensured that the Buckeye State will become the first to strip collective bargaining rights from public employees as a means of grappling with gaping budget deficits.

The bill now goes to the House, where the Republicans have a 59-40 majority. If approved, as expected, it will move for signature to Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who supports the bill.

[…]Republican lawmakers say worker pay and benefit cuts are needed to offset projected budget shortfalls. “If we’re going to grow in Ohio, we cannot raise taxes,” Republican state Sen. Keith Faber said Wednesday.

[…]Union officials began a coordinated effort to try to block bills in Wisconsin and Ohio that would curtail collective bargaining rights for public workers, and right-to-work legislation introduced in 13 states, including New Hampshire and Missouri. Those bills would allow workers in the private-sector to opt out of paying dues or belonging to a union. Such legislation threatens the unions’ funding and their political clout heading into the 2012 elections.

In Wisconsin, Republican state senators passed a resolution fining the 14 Democrats who left the state Feb. 17 to prevent a vote on Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s bill restricting public employees’ collective-bargaining rights. The vote on the resolution didn’t require a quorum, unlike the budget bill that would curb bargaining.

The Wisconsin Democrats, who are in Illinois, will be fined $100 a day for their absence when the Senate is in session. Several of the Democrats went to Kenosha, Wis., Monday to meet with Republican Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, said Fitzgerald spokesman Andrew Welhouse. But the fines seemed to set back efforts to break the impasse.

Remember that Indiana Republicans are proposing a right-to-work bill, which would allow workers to OPT OUT of paying union dues, which are just used to campaign for Democrats and leftists causes anyway. This bill would break the backs of the unions.

Buckeyes and Badgers and Hoosiers, oh my!

Why are we giving left-wing NPR $531 million a year?

Newsbusters reports on the radically leftist NPR.

Excerpt:

Almost the entire media skipped this chilling honor-killing verdict from Arizona on Tuesday, from Reuters: “An Arizona jury on Tuesday found an Iraqi immigrant guilty of second-degree murder for running down his daughter with a Jeep because she had become too Westernized.” Faleh Almaleki killed his daughter Noor in October 2009 because she spurned his arranged marriage and was living with her boyfriend. Apparently, to report this is to be “Islamophobic.”

NPR skipped Almaleki, but they noted the verdict in another horrific killing on Monday night’s All Things Considered: Aasiya Hassan was beheaded by her husband Mozzamil in 2009 as the two headed a Buffalo television project designed to create better understanding about Muslims. NPR reporter Dina Temple-Raston’s objective was to deny this crime was about Islam. Instead, she said, it was simply about domestic violence.

NPR anchor Robert Siegel tried to explain that “at the time, the media seized on the murder as an honor killing. That’s a killing allowed in some Muslim societies when shame has been brought on a family. But NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston reports from Buffalo, the Hassan case is really about domestic violence and it forced an entire community to reckon with stereotypes.”

Yes, most domestic violence involves behadings. It’s not an exclusively Islamic thing, you know.

Republicans have proposed a bill to cancel the $531 million of welfare that NPR receives each year for this “journalism”. But NPR isn’t the only leftist state-run media source.

Here’s another instance of media bias from radically leftist PBS, in which Eleanor Clift says that Scott Walker doesn’t represent the will of the people, even though he was elected after campaigning to reform union pay and benefits to fix their budget woes.

Video and transcripts of response speeches by Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann

Rep. Paul Ryan
Rep. Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan’s response to Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech.

Transcript of Paul Ryan’s response speech.

Here is a collection of news stories about Representative Paul Ryan:

Rep. Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann’sresponse to Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech.

Transcript of Michele Bachmann’s response speech.

Here is a collection of news stories about Representative Michele Bachmann: