By Irving Leemon, Contributing Columnist
Congratulations Ohio. You’ve successfully defeated extremists from taking over your state. These people and others want to take away your right to make your own decisions about your life, money, and what you do with them. They almost succeeded by passing a law against workers organizing unions. These people attempted to take one of the more powerful means the ordinary worker has to try and better their working conditions and salaries. If they had won, the next target would have been unions in the private sector.
This would have left corporations in charge of your lives. They’ve already helped to plunge this country into a recession that too many are feeling as a depression. Jobs have been shipped over seas, and those that are left are low paying, or in the trades that most of the younger generation doesn’t want to learn; except for the people born over seas, education is being downgraded and has become prohibitively expensive (how many doctors and scientists are still native born in this country?). At the same time, prices for food, transportation, and clothes are on the increase. All of this while a select few are getting richer and more powerful.
In addition, the boards of the larger companies consist of CEOs, presidents, and others from each other’s companies. They have been successful at driving down the price of labor while raising each other’s compensations. I sometimes feel that there is a serious attempt to turn most of us into economic slaves to the corporations and wealthiest few. Some people are trying to keep women from making decisions about whether or not to continue a pregnancy. It would not have mattered if the pregnancy was the result of a rape or if it threatened the life of the mother. They tried to make any termination of a pregnancy against the law. This shows a lack of sensitivity towards women, and is against common sense. It also ignores the fact that the earth is warming and the total human population on earth is getting to the point that there will not be enough water to drink and food to feed all of us. Science to provide ever more of these necessities does have its limits.