By: Nic Miller

Real conservatives at the University aren’t non-existent, they just aren’t very loud. The loud ones are the liberals. So it’s time someone got loud. The latest shouting lib is Matthew Balsinger with his libelous, contradictory evaluation of our own Governor Kasich.

I wish people could be honest about Issue 2/SB 5. It seems nobody is. Sitting in a class last spring, I was listening to my professor lamenting SB 5 and how destructive it was. I raised my hand and said, “Uh, pardon me, sir. Did you know SB 5 does not affect collective bargain for the wages of public employees?” I thought I was going to be thrown out of the room, and not just by the professor, but a few of the students as well. He thought I was lying. He knew I was lying. But I wasn’t.

Issue 2/SB 5 does not affect collective bargaining for public union employees. So let’s go through Balsinger’s lies and talk about them individually, from his slanderous opening to his apocalyptic, melodramatic closing.

Lie number one (first paragraph): Voting yes on Issue 2 means “destroying the collective bargaining right for all state employees.” To reveal the truth, I quote the law itself: “Public employees have the right to… bargain collectively with their public employers to determine wages, hours, terms and other conditions of employment and the continuation, modification or deletion of an existing provision of a collective bargaining agreement, and enter into collective bargaining agreements.” (Ohio Revised Code 4117.03(A)(4)). Furthermore, as to the blatant lie that SB 5 is a safety risk because it eliminates collective bargaining for safety equipment and training, I quote again from the law itself: “equipment issues directly related to personal safety are subject to collective bargaining.” (ORC 4117.08(F)).

Balsinger, without an ounce of intellectual honesty, submits that SB 5 will “destroy education as we know it in the state of Ohio” and that the true purpose of SB 5 is “set at muting the voice of the people.”

Continuing on the lying spree that is his fourth paragraph, he posits that “Issue 2 eliminates the right of public employees to form unions.” It’s hard to know where to start defending your position with someone who is systematically lying to make a point. Let me just ask, then, this question: why would Kasich and company want to destroy education as we know it, or mute the voice of the people? There is simply no sense in these statements. They are libel, nothing else. And to state that Issue 2 eliminates the right of public employees to form unions is nothing but an outright, categorical, bald-faced lie. Issue 2 simply does no such thing. There is nothing more to say.

Most of the rest of Balsinger’s article is not a lie, just a statement of his philosophy (much of it is based on a false premise… but I digress). “Education does not need to be reformed in this country – it needs to be cared for and supported.” This is like taking the position that if I’m walking down a path with my daughter, and she begins to wander off in a different direction, I should not reform her path, I should encourage and support her for being so adventurous, despite the fact that she will invariably become lost. Critics of SB 5 decried how it victimized teachers. They fail to see that striking down SB 5 creates another victim: everyone else.

I have children who will someday be of school-going age. I don’t want to send them to a school where the teachers are paid based on how long they’ve been teaching. I want to send them to a school where the teacher is paid based on how good he or she is at the job. That’s what Issue 2 is about. And contrary to the mudslingers, there is actually intelligent debate taking place over how to evaluate teachers beyond their students’ test scores. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Paying someone based on how well he or she does a job? Insane!