Tag Archives: Ohio

What Have Unions Done for America?

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Labor unions have been getting somewhat of a bad rap lately, and partly rightly so, most not so much. Labor unions were formed to protect workers and demand equal treatment. It's a contract negotiation between two parties. Some things that have come from such negotiations are unsustainable benefits and poor managerial of resources, but much of that is the fault of poor negotiations. Not "greedy union bosses". Most union members don't want to rip off the company. They realize that if the company can't make money, the company can't have any workers, regardless of union contracts. The unions should also pay attention themselves and know when too much is being asked, in case there's a repeat of Detroit Auto, where the benefits ruined the futures of many of it's own union members because the companies couldn't afford it. But what good have labor unions done for America as a whole?
  1. End child labor
  2. 8 hour work day
  3. 40 hour work week
  4. Paid Overtime
  5. Weekends (yes, they didn't exist as days off before unions)
  6. Workers compensation for people injured on the job
  7. Unemployment insurance
  8. Paid sick leave, vacations, and holidays as standard benefits for most workers
  9. Health Insurance for many workers
  10. Pensions or 401Ks for many workers
  11. Improve workplace safety and reduce on the job fatalities
  12. Pushed for Civil Right Acts and Title VII which outlaws job discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin
  13. Occupational Safety and Health Act
  14. Family Medical Leave Act
  15. Push for livable minimum wage
  While discussing what role unions have in America today, lets not forget what benefits most workers in America have today that's taken for granted.  Those of you saying "Thank God it's Friday!", also remember to thank unions or there's a good chance you'd be working tomorrow.

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Ohio Is A Piano

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There are 88 keys on a normal piano.  Anyone that enjoys playing or forced into piano lessons can tell you as much.  Well someone recently realized there are also 88 counties in Ohio. So what's a geek to do with this discovery?  Why he created a program that created a piano out of Ohio's counties! Now he didn't just assign a key per county, no, that would be too easy.  He assigned keys based on different information that you can choose from, name, population, density, no. of farms, etc. The result?  Well, it often sounds like an out of tune piano when playing music, but interesting none the less.  Play around with the "Assign note according to:" and see what you can come up with.
ohioPianoApp 300x225 Ohio Is A Piano

Ohio Is A Piano

There are many directions one could go from here. I have chosen a few ways to see the geography of music (songs) and hear the music of geography (data, metro areas, or sequences based on Google Maps routing). In my experience, most of it sounds like crap, apart from the provided simplified bits of actual songs of course, although even those might sound wrong (but hey, blame the sheet music I found). But I would be very interested to hear if anyone discovers any patterns that sound decent. What’s missing, of course, is the ability to compose your own geographic music, that is, bringing in your own songs, sequencing counties into songs, seeing the data and grouping it in different ways, making your own chords and routes, and so on. That and controlling the music from the piano as well as the map. Compositionally, for now you’re stuck with just moving the mouse over the map, but perhaps you can imagine how this concept could be turned into a full-fledged crazy musical cartography application.
Ohio is a Piano

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Rep: Foreclosed owners should squat in their own homes

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CNN has recently done a report on an Ohio Congresswoman urging people that have been foreclosed on to not leave their homes.  There are many laws protecting  the home-owner, and even evidence that many banks have "lost or destroyed" the paperwork proving they hold the ownership of the loan, letting many people off the hook if challenged. Full story here.
If you're poor and the bank is coming for your home, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has a plan for you. Just squat, she says. Yes, this Ohio Democrat is actually encouraging her financially distressed constituents whose homes have been foreclosed upon, to simply stay put. In a Friday report, CNN's Drew Griffin explored the case of Ohioan Andrea Geiss, whose home was foreclosed upon in April. "Behind in payments, out of work, a husband sick, she had nowhere to go," said Griffin. "So, she decided to follow the advice of her Congresswoman and go nowhere." In Lucas County, Ohio, over 4,000 properties were foreclosed upon in 2008, reports CNN. "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes," said Congresswoman Kaptur before the House of Representatives. "Don't you leave." She's called on all of her foreclosed-upon constituents to stay in their homes and refuse to leave without "an attorney and a fight," said CNN. "If they've had no legal representation of a high quality, I tell them stay in their homes," Kaptur told Griffin. Kaptur is a high-profile advocate of an increasingly popular mode of fighting foreclosures best known for it's key phrase: "Produce the note." By telling a bank to "produce the note," a homeowner can delay foreclosure by forcing the lender to prove the suing institution is actually the same which owns the debt. "During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street," explains the Consumer Warning Network. "In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to the produce the note strategy." And Friday's segment on this growing foreclosure fighting "movement" was not the network's first. Earlier in January, CNN explored one person's strategy in demanding her bank "produce the note," only to find that the lender had "lost or destroyed" the evidence of debt ownership. Such a revelation can significantly strengthen a homeowner's position when asking to renegotiate a mortgage. That these banks, many of which received billions of dollars in government bailout funds, continue to boot defaulted owners from their homes, makes them "vultures" says Kaptur. "They prey on our property assets," she said. "I guess the reason I'm so adamant on this is because I know property law and its power to protect the individual homeowner. And I believe that 99.9 percent of our people have not had good legal representation in this."

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Ohio 2008 State-wide Issues.

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Issue #1 - To provide for earlier filing deadlines for statewide ballot issues To amend Sections 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1g of Article II of the Constitution of the State of Ohio. The proposed amendment would: require that a citizen-initiated statewide ballot issue be considered at the next general election if petitions are filed 125 days before the election; establish deadlines for boards of elections to determine the validity of citizen-initiated petitions; standardize the process for legal challenges to citizen-initiated petitions by giving the Ohio Supreme Court jurisdiction to consider these cases and establishing expedited deadlines for the Court to make decisions. Issue #2 - To authorize the State to issue bonds to continue the Clean Ohio program for environmental revitalization and conservation To adopt Section 2q of Article VIII of the Constitution of the State of Ohio. This proposed amendment would authorize the state to issue up to two hundred million dollars (,000,000) of bonds for conservation and preservation of natural areas, open spaces and farmlands and other lands devoted to agriculture; provision of state and local park and recreation facilities; and land, forest, water and other natural resource management projects. It would also authorize the state to issue bonds up to two hundred million dollars (,000,000) for environmental revitalization and re-development of publicly and privately owned lands, including environmental remediation, assessment or clean up of contamination or pollution. Additionally, it would limit the amount that could be borrowed in any one fiscal year for either conservation or revitalization purposes to no more than fifty million dollars (,000,000) plus the principal amount of those obligations that in any prior fiscal year could have been but were not issued. Issue #3 - To amend the constitution to protect private property rights in ground water, lakes and other watercourses To adopt Section 19b of Article I of the Constitution of the State of Ohio. This proposed Amendment would: make explicit that a private property owner has a right to make reasonable use of the ground water that lies beneath the owner's land, although this right is subordinate to the public welfare; make explicit that a private property owner who owns land on the border of a lake or other watercourse has a right to make reasonable use of the water in such lake or watercourse located on or flowing through the owner?s land, although this right is subordinate to the public welfare; not affect the public?s use of Lake Erie and other navigable waters of the state; and prevent the rights confirmed under this proposed amendment to the Ohio Constitution from being impaired or limited by the operation of other sections of the Ohio Constitution. Issue #4 - Pending Statewide Ballot Issue: Initiated legislation requiring paid sick leave for employees in Ohio To require certain employers to provide a minimum amount of paid sick leave to employees in Ohio by enacting Chapter 4114 of the Ohio Revised Code Issue #5 - Pending Statewide Ballot Issue: Referendum on Legislation Making Changes to Check Cashing Lending, Sometimes Known as "Payday Lending," Fees, Interest Rates and Practices To lower the maximum loan amount to , provide borrowers with a minimum of 30 days to repay the loan, and set a maximum interest rate of 28% annual percentage rate (APR) on loans. Issue #6 - Pending Statewide Ballot Issue: To Amend the Constitution by Initiative Petition for a Casino Near Wilmington in Southwest Ohio and Distribute to All Ohio Counties a Tax on the Casino To adopt Section 6a to Article XV of the Ohio Constitution

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Uh...... WHAT!?

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BELLEVUE, Ohio -- Police said an Ohio man has been arrested for allegedly having sex with a picnic table. Police arrested Arthur Price Jr. after an anonymous tipster dropped off three DVDs that reportedly showed Price in the act.According to NBC Toledo, Ohio, affiliate WNWO-TV, the videos show Price tilting the metal round picnic table on its side and then laying up against it to have sexual intercourse with the table. Afterward, he can then be seen cleaning the table and the deck. During questioning, he reportedly admitted to having sex with the table. Police said he also admitted to bringing the table inside his home for sex.Price faces four counts of public indecency. He was freed after posting $20,000 bond, authorities said.
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