The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Ohio Unions, Ohio Thugs, Ohio Police

Posted on | March 4, 2011 | 13 Comments

From the Columbus Dispatch:

The volatility surrounding the collective-bargaining debate spilled into the night Wednesday when police were called to a German Village restaurant after a group verbally accosted a gathering of Senate Republicans.
After the vote on Senate Bill 5, seven Republican senators, including President Tom Niehaus, R-New Richmond, grabbed dinner at the Easy Street Cafe. As the lawmakers neared the end of their meal, a group of five to 10 union supporters angry about the passage of the bill hours before burst into the restaurant and began shouting. . . .
“It was planned,” LaRose said. “They gathered as a group and waited until they had about 10 people before they caused a disturbance.”
When the group burst into the restaurant, the woman, Monica Moran, deputy director of public affairs for SEIU District 1199, raised her hands in the air, yelled “Can I have your attention?” and then shouted “something nasty,” LaRose said. Soon after, the rest of the group of men and women joined in with a chant.
“They stormed through my dining room,” said George Stefanidis, owner of the Easy Street Cafe. “I told them they had to leave, and they wouldn’t.”
Stefanidis said he called 911 when the protesters refused to leave. LaRose said there was pushing and shoving with the restaurant staff. . . .

Read the whole thing. We should scarcely be surprised that socialists have no respect for personal privacy or property rights. It is disturbing, however, to see police making common cause with such lawless thugs:

When Ohio’s state Senate voted 17-16 Wednesday to approve S.B. 5, Frank LaRose became a target in the latest battle over government-employee unions. Not that LaRose is a stranger to battles — the 31-year-old is a former Army sergeant and decorated Iraq War veteran. But the fight over S.B. 5, which would limit the power of public-sector unions in Ohio, gave the freshman Republican state senator a baptism by fire into the world of political combat. After he voted in favor of the bill, once of the fiercest salvos was fired in a message posted Wednesday on LaRose’s Facebook page.
“Funny thing about cops, they hold a grudge,” said the message from Mike Piotrowski. That caught the eye of a group of College Republicans from the University of Akron who had supported LaRose in last year’s election, which the GOP candidate won by a decisive 57%-43% margin. The students quickly discovered that Piotrowski is a lawyer for the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, and complained that his message could be seen as a threat toward LaRose. Piotrowski denied intending to threaten the senator, but in a reply to one of the students, the lawyer snarled: “You don’t know what you are talking about. When Republicans talk about ‘Union Thugs’ they may as well be calling people the n-word.”
This was the latest provocation in the increasingly bitter confrontation between public-sector unions and Republican state officials. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

Comments

13 Responses to “Ohio Unions, Ohio Thugs, Ohio Police”

  1. Donald Douglas
    March 4th, 2011 @ 3:23 pm

    Linked with some fabulous linkage: ‘Britney Spears V Magazine Photoshoot’.