Someone please stop the Kasich insanity…

I can’t take it.  Now, Kasich has declared war on the public unions.

Here’s Kasich talking about public unions, strikes, and binding arbitration.  (Source: Marc Kovac at Ohio Capitol Blog):

Do you remember during the campaign when Kasich unveiled that he would institute “collective bargaining reform?”  Me, neither.

And yet, during today’s Tax Commissioner appointment announcement, Kasich unveiled a “collective bargaining reform” package in which he called for:

• An end of the prevailing wage entirely.
• An end of the right to public employees to strike or threaten to strike as a bargaining tactic.
• An end of binding arbitration to resolve contract disputes between labor and management, which avoids strike.
• Allow Kasich to go “all Reagan” on any public union that strikes by firing them.

He then ends the press conference with one of the most clearest examples of disconnect in labor history I’ve ever seen.  He talks about all the good things unions have achieved for their members right after declaring he wants to eliminate the very tools that keep those socioeconomic advances in place.

He’s vilifying the public unions as the reason cities have financial problems (despite the fact that public unions have made concession after concession to give up things they were contractually obligated to receive) while he quietly plans to eliminate or effectively cut all financial assistance the State provides local governments, which will cost the cities more than anything public unions have done.

(Incidentally, police and fire unions are already prohibited from going on strike under existing Ohio labor laws.  Binding arbitration was the legislature’s proposed remedy to give those unions a viable alternative to resolve labor-management disputes other than striking.  Now Kasich wants to eliminate both.)

In other words, he wants to eliminate the legal progress unions have made and then eliminate any tools labor has ever had to use in their negotiations with management or attempts to resolve their disputes with management. 

What could possibly go wrong, right?

In other news, I think we’ve seen how Kasich is planning to pay for that income tax cut.  Too bad much of his plan involves him eliminating tens of thousands of Ohioans incomes in the process.