After the fires of anger have been blow (sic) out, the next stage is a desperate round of bargaining, seeking ways to avoid having the bad thing happen. Bargaining is thus a vain expression of hopethat the bad news is reversible.
Bargaining in illness includes seeking alternative therapies and experimental drugs. In organizations, it includes offering to work for less money (or even none!), offering to do alternative work or be demoted down the hierarchy. One's loyalties, debts and dependants may be paraded as evidence of the essentiality of being saved.
it's past one pm. im skipping the protest bold progressives invited me to on Capitol square. i have and need to keep a job. last week i meandered over to the capitol's lawn to listen to some testimony (mostly supporters of SB5). there was a lot of red (anti-SB5), and red (pro-SB5); there really should have been a memo. one guy, i think he had on firemen's clothes, had a big paper bag over his head. it actually seemed like a decent idea. at least, for everyone like me in ohio in a union, and who also feels as i do: like there's a cross-hair on my head.
i have heard a lot of posturing and political hay-making on this whole union-breaking issue. at the core, what i think the real Kasich strategy here is to make the unions appear juvenile. the pols who are going to pass this bill (and it will be passed, or it will be embedded in the budget; ergo, it will pass) have one thing they are trying to accomplish. that is to disenfranchise organized labor and decentralize bargaining efforts. whether you think that is for better or worse, that is what they are doing. they are doing so by making the unions seem like corrupt children who deserve no place at the bargaining table. you may say, 'well yeah they dont,' and thats fine. but dont pretend like theres some greater principle at stake, you just dont like organized labor. and thats fine. you probably fit the Kasich mold; there are grown-ups who need to make decisions, and the workers are basically on trained chimps on welfare (they have jobs).
thats one bit of the governor's perspective that isn't articulated. he doesn't think people with jobs are entitled to want to better their lot in life. (a job is for paying the bills, an investment account is for bettering your lot in life.) so no upward mobility to begin with when it conflicts with corporate interests, but especially if they are government employees. it appears Kasich believes that private employees deserve whatever scraps theyre left; the government employees, they can have the refuse of the private employees' scraps.
Kasich honestly seems to think that workers are on the dole if they (a) work in the public sector, or (b) belong to a union. His sentiment that 'they should be happy to have a job' belies a frightening specter of development in Ohio. leaving aside ideas of whether people should be allowed to bargain to better their lot in life, and the fact he pays his state appointees quite well, I would like to address the fact that Kasich keeps referring to SB5 as part of a package.
Kasich, as any good tactician should, is explicitly planning a multi-step recovery. He has said as much referring to SB5, and JobsOhio, as part of a package for recovery. What all else comprises this (admittedly difficult to swallow) package I'm not sure of, nor have I dismissed out of hand. But what I have dismissed are Kasich's appeal to paint anyone in a union as the reason for the current economic state, rather than as a co-author of the solution. Everyone in a union has a part to sacrifice (and has been doing so for the past two contract negotiations, including a state-wide pay freeze for three years), its true just like everyone else something to sacrifice. However, when management paints labor as children it sounds like they have no interest in asking the people who will suffer about what they're willing to do without.
I haven't made up my mind. And two years from now, if there is some kind of recovery, paid for by lost wages and raised premiums (but not higher taxes, thanks GOD not higher taxes), don't bother to stop to wonder where the gratitude is.
"Stop trying so hard. He doesn't like you. Jesus, don't kiss an ass if it's in the process of shitting on you."
2:23PM in 
Self-Promotional Quickie:
