Kasich Blocks Broadcast of Ohio Budget Briefing
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) is a public official accountable to taxpayers. But he is demanding a news blackout tomorrow when he releases the state’s budget plan. Kasich has forbidden reporters to broadcast any videos, photos or audio recordings during or after his afternoon budget briefing for the press.
Instead, Ohio residents will have their first and apparently only chance to see and hear Kasich explain his budget at an invitation-only town hall meeting later in the day that will be broadcast on government television. That should be a free-for-all with tough questions and exacting follow-ups.
What does Kasich have to hide? Maybe the fact that taking away the rights of public employees to bargain for good middle-class jobs doesn’t have anything to do with balancing the budget but his bill (Senate Bill 5) includes it anyway?
The last time we checked, the First Amendment still applied to Columbus, Ohio, unless Kasich found another dirty-trick maneuver to weasel his way around that like Ohio Republicans did to win a committee vote for S.B. 5 last week.
America’s Real Patriot Act: The Employee Free Choice Act
When America’s founders crafted the Constitution, they knew more was needed to ensure the survival of democracy. So they created the Bill of Rights. They made sure that at the top of the list, the First Amendment included such rights as the freedom of assembly. That is, the freedom of all of us to gather together in groups of our choosing. Like, say, unions.
Some opponents of workers’ freedom to form unions seem to have forgotten that forming groups outside government—and corporate—purview is critical to a free nation. In Big Brother-speak, these corporate hacks are attacking the proposed Employee Free Choice Act—which would enable more employees and workers to have the freedom to form unions—as unconstitutional.
Here’s what’s really outrageous:
- Managers following employees and workers to the bathroom and around the workplace to harass them for seeking to form a union.
- Workers so intimidated by employers, they become scared of voting in a ballot for a union so they vote against the union or don’t vote at all, fearing that if they do, they’ll lose their job.
