It is a common tactic among bullies to be absolutely blind to their own insensitivity toward others while being hypersensitive to any perceived slights against them. And that truism has never been on display more absurdly and hypocritically than at this year’s NRA Convention in Texas. Amid all of the hyperventilated rhetoric about President Obama’s…
The lead for today’s installment of Meet the Press included the tease: “Is President Obama already a ‘lame duck’?” In 1933, the passage of the 20th Amendment shortened the period between the presidential election and the inauguration of the president so that if a sitting president were a “lame duck”—that is, either lost the election…
Historic Highs and Lows in Unemployment In my previous post in this series, I closed by noting that proponents of “right to work” might very well want to emphasize that eight of the ten states with the lowest current unemployment averages are “right to work” states. Those states are Virginia, Oklahoma, Iowa, Wyoming, Utah, South…
The following mission statement is taken directly from the website for the Clean Ohio Fund: “The Clean Ohio Fund restores, protects, and connects Ohio’s important natural and urban places by preserving green space and farmland, improving outdoor recreation, and cleaning up brownfields to encourage redevelopment and revitalize communities.” More specifically, the site delineates the ways…
I thought that this communication from the Ohio Conference might be of broader interest. Ohio Conference Update The Bad News: So-Called “Right-to-Work” Legislation Introduced in the Ohio House They are at it again. Despite the fact that 62 percent of Ohioans rejected the Senate Bill 5 attack on public workers nearly a year and a half ago, the extreme…
Unemployment Rates by State In the first two posts in this series, I made the case the claim that the population shift from the “Rust Belt” to the “Sun Belt” has not been driven by a preference for “right to work” states over pro-labor states, and I examined the degree to which population growth in…
If the GOP wants to “re-brand,” it might start by trying to win elections by attracting new voters, rather than by trying to win elections by suppressing Democratic turnout. Not only have these voter-suppression efforts ended up being counterproductive—making affected voters all the more determined to exercise their right to vote—but they have diminished the…
Testimony of John McNay, Ph.D., President Ohio Conference of the American Association of University Professors Before the House Finance Subcommittee on Higher Education Representative Cliff Rosenberger, Chair March 6, 2013 Chairman Rosenberger, Ranking Member Ramos, and distinguished members of the Higher Education Subcommittee: my name is John McNay and I am President of the Ohio…
The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, a national grass-roots coalition of faculty and staff higher education organizations, is deeply concerned about California Senate Bill 520 and what it could mean, if adopted, for the future of public higher education in California. A well-intended but misguided effort to restore access that has been lost…
This letter has been endorsed by the following faculty groups: the California Faculty Association, the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, the California Community College Independents, the California Federation of Teachers, the California Teachers Association, the California School Employees Association, the California Labor Federation, SEIU California, and USW 5810. April 18, 2013 The Honorable Darrell…