If Their Lips Are Moving . . .

. . . then they're lying. So says the old joke about car salesmen. It also applies to a pretty fair number of Ohio state senators, including the three blind rats shown here. They're the main water-carriers for the union-crushing SB 5: Senate President Tom Niehaus, bill sponsor Shannon Jones, and Labor Committee Chairman Kevin Bacon.

Yesterday all three were on the same page in the hymnal, each one stating publicly that no, no, no, the intent of SB 5 is not to bust unions, but merely to give the state financial "flexibility" and to "restore taxpayer rights."

What a load of spin-speak horseshit! If you legally forbid collective bargaining and binding arbitration, you effectively bust the union, intent or not. Laws which would do that are about as far from fucking flexible as you can get. And exactly what the hell are taxpayer rights? And why do they need to be restored? Did they go somewhere? It's divisive Rove-ian phraseology designed to cast the public in the role of management, nobly doing battle against Evil Organized Labor. What it really means is increased management rights, but taxpayer rights sounds softer, more palatable. The phrase is a meaningless red herring. Management has plenty of rights. Always has, always will.

A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans believe that unionized workers are either paid appropriately, or are somewhat underpaid. Poll after poll finds that most people are not in favor of eliminating collective bargaining. The number of protesters outside the Statehouse is growing. (I was there again yesterday and the crowd was definitely bigger.) Inboxes for state senate email and voicemail are filled to capacity, with the large majority in opposition to SB 5. One senator estimated it at 90% against. The financial benefits of the bill would be minimal at best, and the huge budget-balancing task would still remain. Even if you fired every single state employee and never replaced them, you'd still only "solve" about one quarter of Ohio's budget problem.

The geniuses pictured above insistently deny these realities. And their lips are moving. SB 5 is in fact all about union-busting -- they know it, you know it, everybody knows it.

Don't let 'em do it. Call your state senator today at 1-888-218-5931 and tell them to vote no on SB 5.