BREAKING: Ohio Senate Bill 5 PASSES!

The Ohio Senate has voted on Senate Bill 5 in general session and the bill PASSED.

Ohio Senate Bill 5 is a very controversial piece of legislation that deals with union control over the political process and requires public employee unions to cover more of their benefits costs.

Essentially, as noted on Ballotpedia, the bill does the following:

# Eliminate tenure as the only consideration in deciding lay-offs
# Require employees to pay 20% of their health insurance premiums
# Implement merit-based pay for some government workers.
# Restrict the ability of teachers, firefighters, and to collectively bargain

The bill passed with a 17 – 16 vote in the Senate.

Saul Alinsky visits Ohio for Senate Bill 5

The following was written by Tom Zawistowski, Executive Director, Portage County TEA Party.

Fellow Patriots, this past week many or our members and our groups, for the first time since our movement began, actually faced hostile crowds in numbers significantly larger than we could muster.  This was a new learning experience for most of us and, as you will see, it was not a pleasant experience.  After a rally in Youngstown on Thursday, February 24, 2011, it became clear to me that, though our groups and members were learning from our experience, we were not doing a good job of sharing that experience, and as a result we were unknowingly and unnecessarily putting our members in harms way.  Which is why I am writing this essay for you to read.

Many of you are familiar with the book “Rules for Radicals” by Saul D. Alinsky, and if you have not read it, you should get a copy and read it now.  It will make you sick.  I had to actually stop and put it down several times because what Alinsky endorses is so disgusting and so demeaning that it is hard to believe anyone could stoop so low to win power.  But that is the point of the book and that is why you need to read it. We must know our enemies and their tactics; and what you will learn from Alinsky is that there is nothing the left will not do to beat you and take power. Nothing. With that introduction, I am going to proceed to show you the “Saul Alinsky tactics” that were employed against the TEA Party and Patriot groups in Columbus on February 17th, in Canton on Tuesday, February 22nd, and in Youngstown on Thursday, February 24th, in an effort to intimidate us and our legislators and defeat Senate Bill 5.

Columbus – Thursday, February 17, 2011

First of all, the unions knew about

Ohio Senate committee switch helps with yes vote from Senator Gilmor

UPDATE: Looks like the bill was passed out of committee and will get a vote today!

For those wondering where we are on Ohio Senate Bill 5, the bill that would push back on union power in Ohio, hopefully this post will help bring you up to date.

A lot of the negotiating on SB5 is not yet pubic. Right now it’s very difficult to get information on where the bill is and how the Senators are voting.

Today SB5 went to committee… the Senate Insurance, Labor & Commerce Committee. Difficulty was expected in the committee and rumor had it that Senator Karen Gilmor was a strong no vote on the legislation as it stood.

GOP Senators have, according to sources, offered Senator Karen Gilmor a Chair or

The tactics of the “progressives” never cease to amaze

There is a significant contrast between the two sides of the political fight happening in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio regarding union power. I plan on writing more extensively about this in the next 24 hours, but I wanted to bring attention to the way the “left” has unified their efforts in a 2.0 world.

This morning I stumbled across an ad at the top of HotAir.com for fun looking game called “Angry Buckeyes.” Because I’m currently in Ohio this immediately caught my attention. I must also admit that yes, I’ve also downloaded and played the iPhone app “Angry Birds” this campaign was clearly modeled after.

Angry Buckeyes is a well designed, 2.0 style marketing “mini-site” aimed at

Public employee union members don’t get it

While standing in line for the Senate Committee on SB5 in Ohio this morning I had the opportunity to gain a much better understanding of the arguments being made by the public employee unions.

A woman in front of me was holding a piece of material she was planning on using to make her point about collective bargaining in the committee. The material was a fireproof “firewall” that sits above the gas tank in automobiles.

The woman, who clearly represented the views of the public employee unions (she stated it several times), said that SB5 would strip public employee unions of the ability to bargain for this safety device.

According to her statement, if the auto-makers installed the panels while building the

Ohio Senate Bill 5… Everything on the line for unions

With the launch of StandWithOhio.com I’ll be spending the week in Columbus, Ohio. The purpose of the visit is two fold:

A) I’m helping the tea party groups in Ohio coordinate a counter-rally against the unions and in support of SB5
B) I’ll be filming and documenting the union rally on Tuesday (March 1) and the counter rally by tea partiers on Wednesday (March 2)

For those who are not yet familiar with Ohio Senate Bill 5, please click here and gain some

Happy Birthday to the Modern Day Tea Party Movement!

Today is Friday, February 25th, 2011. This means that two years ago today Juliana Johnson and I put out this press release announcing the “Chicago Tea Party” that would take place on February 27th, 2009.

I write extensively about what this week entailed in my upcoming book about the movement (announcement coming soon) but wanted to touch briefly on it here.

Often times the February 27th “Nationwide Chicago Tea Party” is overlooked. The April 15th “Tax Day Tea Party,” which we planned some six weeks after, was much bigger and

Jon Erpenbach says GOP opposition to union rule is a “takeover?”

After watching Megan Kelly take Wisconsin State Senator Jon Erpenbach (D) to the woodshed this morning I started digging around and found quite a bit about his agenda.

Erpenbach is one of the fleebaggers currently hiding out in Chicago, refusing to go back and do his job in the Wisconsin legislature.

As Kelly and Erpenbach approached a hard break (Fox News) Kelly asked him if he could stick around to continue the conversation after the break. Erpenbach said he didn’t have time to stay on the line and would have to go.

That’s interesting… especially considering the fact that

Mitch Daniels not getting it right on the union fight?

UPDATE: Please vote in the poll below!

In case you missed it, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels backed down in the face of the Right-to-Work fight happening in the Indiana legislature.

There is a deep debate happening now about what this all means for Mitch Daniels. Most believe he came down on the wrong side of the issue and it will badly damage his chances of a Presidential bid.

Many, however, don’t subscribe to that line of thinking and are

Thank you, Fred Levenhagen!

I’ve been saying this for days, but now I’m getting very specific emails confirming it.

Wisconsin teachers protesting Governor Walker’s budget bill aren’t doing themselves any favors with the electorate at large.

The following came via email this morning. It’s a copy of an email that was sent to Fred Levenhagen, the leftist teacher who lied to get out of work and then claimed Fox News lies, from one of my readers.

Fred,

I want to thank you and offer my support as you express your feelings. You and others have helped beyond anything you can imagine in showing us what the problems are in education. Millions of people are looking at your selfish childlike behavior and seeing that we are correct to reign in on the unions. The fact that a man of your maturity and intelligence is guiding our youth is saying it all. Unions protect the employee…not the children.

Thanks again, keep up our good work.

Greig McDonald