Negotiate, don’t run away

Negotiate, don’t run away

The current Wisconsin State employee protests will be coming to Ohio and other debt ridden states. The American people should learn the facts on this issue before rendering an opinion. The state workers claim that the Republicans are trying to bust the unions.

Gov. Walker’s plan does not want to eliminate the unions. Wisconsin is facing a $3.6 billion deficit. The state can no longer afford to pay the union-bargained agreements unless they raise taxes. The governor is asking the state employees to come to the table and pay a portion of their health-care premiums and contribute to their pensions. There is no wage reduction requested.

The public sector benefits are paid by the taxpayer. For almost two decades, private companies have increased their employee premium to 25 percent of the health-care cost. Very few companies even have a defined pension plan — most have gone to 401K’s where all employees must contribute to their future retirement planning.

What the union should be doing is negotiating the ability to keep the youngest state employees from getting laid off rather than fighting for lucrative benefit packages.

What example did the Wisconsin teachers give to their students? When in disagreement, skip work and protest.

Public outcry should be directed at the 14 Democratic senators who, rather than do their job, “ran” out of the state so as not to vote on the Wisconsin budget.

Ninety percent of Americans are non-union and will not have empathy for state union employees who will not address lucrative benefit packages which contribute to state bankruptcies.

This is indicative as to why private companies have fled the union states and gone to “right to work” states in the south (such as Texas and Florida). Do we want Ohio companies to flee and move South? Stand behind Gov. Kasich and State Bill 5. He will also be addressing the Ohio state deficit.

Cathy Liguori Lukasko, Brookfield

Unions are last line of defense

By now, I’m sure most people have heard and maybe even formed opinions on Ohio’s Senate Bill 5, which would strip public employees of their collective bargaining rights. Besides being a blatant attempt at union busting, this bill and its Wisconsin counterpart also represent something far more sinister: an assault on democracy and economic fairness? Think I’m being dramatic? Of the top 10 political contributors in the last election, only two organizations (the labor unions SEIU and AFSCME) were progressive in ideology.

As far as money goes, unions are the last line of defense against right-wing corporate interests. In terms of economic fairness, despite what free-market diehards would have one believe, unions helped build the middle class. Without them, there would be little to differentiate America from the third-world oligarchies of Latin America. To those who deride the Wisconsin senators for fleeing the state, I would argue that when the deck is stacked against you, the best thing to do is to refuse to play by the crooked rules. In fact, fleeing is probably the best embodiment of their duty to check the governor as it brought the controversial bill to a total halt.

I have never belonged to a union, nor has anyone else in my family, but I know overgrown bullies when I see them, and John Kasich and Scott Walker fit the bill to a T. Their arrogance and their “my way or the highway” attitudes (to say nothing of John’s derision of people who pull him over) are more befitting of schoolyard bullies or Third World thugs. Both governors would be advised to remember this piece of advice: those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind. In threatening their opposition’s very existence, they have awakened a sleeping giant that could put both of them out of work.

Luke Tochtenhagen, McDonald

Religious test isn’t the one to use

A Feb. 3 letter to this col- umn purported that “blind acceptance” of evolution clouds us to “significant problems with it [evolution].”

We agree completely that “every theory needs to be tested and sometimes adjusted or even rejected.” If not for this basic tenet of scientific inquiry we would still live on a flat earth in a geocentric universe. Hypothesis testing has built step by step the fundamental paradigms of modern science, technology, and medicine — the germ theory of disease, the central dogma of molecular biology (i.e. the roles of DNA, RNA, and proteins), and, ultimately, evolution. Yet of all of these and many more, it is evolution that perennially attracts unfounded pseudo-scientific challenges.

Unfortunately, when we seek to employ (intangible) religious faith to judge principles of science, just as if we employ (tangible) scientific methods to test basic articles of faith, we do so to the detriment of both. Yes, “our youth need to learn how to question theories and evaluate them fairly, and we should do the same.” This is exactly why we teach the paradigm, not theory, of evolution as the only plausible and undeniably scientifically supported framework for life on Earth.

Thomas P. Diggins, Youngstown

The writer is an associate professor of biological sciences at Youngstown State University. The letter was signed by him and 16 other members of the faculty of the YSU Department of Biological Sciences.

Reagan’s legacy was oversold

We are all supposed to hail the declaration of Ronald Reagan as the savior of the world, as the individual who was singularly responsible for termination of the Cold War ... again and again and again.

The Feb. 13 column by Dr. Mark Hendrickson contained several statements that fly in the face of reality, including that Reagan understood economics better than any other American president. Sorry, but Ronnie’s Trickle-Down theory created two results not generally avowed by economists: inflation and those darn budget deficits. (Bill Clinton ended his presidency with a budget surplus.)

The Cold War ended in Russia because they could not sustain an economy based on vodka. The Berlin Wall came down because the people of East Germany were hungry and starving. As to the blurb about liberty and those who love liberty, does that include things like trading drugs and guns in the Iran-Contra fiasco?

Given the whole truth, Mr. Reagan’s elevation to sainthood should die a quick, silent death.

John Zordich, Youngstown

Wasting money on the condemned

On Feb. 17, Frank Spisak was put to death, after over 27 years on death row. What was the cost to feed, clothe and house this person for this long? Multiply this by the number of people on death row, and you have a staggering cost.

In these times of budget deficits, this money could be better spent. I think Ohio, and every state in the union, should take a look at the cost of keeping these criminals for so long. Instead of cutting social programs to help people in need, take a look at the amount spent on convicted, condemned killers and put a limit on these sentences.

Jay McCabe, Poland