Ohio voters to decide bargaining rights for public employees (The Christian Science Monitor)

Chicago – Ohio voters this coming Tuesday will decide whether or not to uphold a controversial labor law designed to change the face of the public sector labor force in the state.

If passed, the new law will replace a 28-year-old collective bargaining law with a new version that restricts the bargaining terms for the state’s nearly 400,000 public employees, prohibits striking, and gives management the final say on such topics as health insurance.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) signed Senate Bill 5 into law in late March to replace the 1983 law with one he said would close the state’s budget gap and save the state $8 billion.

Opponents cried foul, saying the bill’s true purpose is to weaken the state’s unions, a charge made often in Wisconsin earlier this year when that state’s Republican leadership pushed through a similar bill that brought hundreds of thousands of people to the state capital to protest for weeks.

National attention on the issue is corresponding to the money filtering into the state from special interest groups.

According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, We Are Ohio, a national labor group opposing the bill, is leading the money drive, having raised $19 million since July. Building a Better Ohio, a group advocating the law, raised $7.6 million in that same time period.

Building a Better Ohio and other groups backing the bill reportedly have ties to billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch and to Mary Cheney, daughter of the former vice president.

Last-minute media blitzes are also spanning the state. This weekend, Ohio voters are receiving robo-calls from former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) asking them to uphold the bill. On her Facebook page, Ms. Palin calls herself “a proud former union member” and said the new bill “will help restore fairness to Ohio taxpayers and help balance the budget.”

Polling suggests that public support for both the bill and Gov. Kasich is eroding.

The Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Hamden, Conn. released polling results last week that showed the bill failing by a 25-point margin. Last month, the same pollsters showed the bill failing by a 14-point margin. Last week’s poll also showed Kasich’s approval rating at 36 percent, a four-point drop from the earlier poll. His disapproval rating is currently at 52 percent.

The governor held rallies last week throughout the state to galvanize support for the referendum. Talking to reporters Thursday before a rally in Independence, Ohio, he said he understood that passing the bill would not be easy.

“I'm not a guy who goes and hides…. This is a tough, uphill fight,” he said.

Among the measures in the new bill:

—    Public workers are prohibited from striking; employers are required to deduct twice a day’s pay for each day of a strike, should it occur.

—    Health coverage is excluded from collective bargaining; management has the authority to decide whether or not other topics, such as starting and quitting times, and work assignments, can be negotiated.

—    Performance-based pay replaces seniority-based scales; an evaluation system is established for teachers.

—    Performance, not seniority, becomes the main factor in layoffs.

—    Employees must pay at least 15 percent of health insurance costs, and management has the option of bargaining for more. Management also determines benefits.

The law has not taken effect with the referendum pending.

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AP-GfK Poll: 37 percent of public back protests (AP)

WASHINGTON – More than one-third of the country supports the Wall Street protests, and even more — 58 percent — say they are furious about America's politics.

The number of angry people is growing as deep reservoirs of resentment grip the country, according to the latest Associated Press-GfK poll.

Some 37 percent of people back the protests that have spread from New York to cities across the country and abroad, one of the first snapshots of how the public views the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. A majority of those protest supporters are Democrats, but the anger about politics in general is much more widespread, the poll indicates.

"They've got reasons to be upset, they've got reasons to protest, but they're protesting against the wrong people," Jan Jarrell, 54, a retired school custodian from Leesville, S.C., says of the New York demonstrators. "They need to go to Washington, to Congress and the White House. They're the ones coming up with all the rules."

"Occupy Wall Street" has been called the liberal counterpoint to conservative-libertarian tea party, which injected a huge dose of enthusiasm into the Republican Party and helped it win the House and make gains in the Senate last fall.

While the troubled economy is at the root of anger at both government and business leaders, there's a key difference. Tea party activists generally argue that government is the problem, and they advocate for free markets. The Wall Street protesters generally say that government can provide some solutions and the free market has run amok.

Of the Americans who support the Wall Street protests, 64 percent in the poll are Democrats, while 22 percent are independents and just 14 percent are Republicans. The protest backers are more likely to approve of President Barack Obama and more likely to disapprove of Congress than are people who don't support the demonstrations.

More generally, many more Americans — 58 percent — say they are furious about the country's politics than did in January, when 49 percent said they felt that way. What's more, nearly nine in 10 say they are frustrated with politics and nearly the same say they are disappointed, findings that suggest people are deeply resentful of the political bickering over such basic government responsibilities as passing a federal budget and raising the nation's debt limit.

This wrath spreads across political lines, with about six in 10 Democrats, Republicans and independents saying politics makes them angry.

Fewer are hopeful about politics than when the year began, 47 percent down from 60 percent. Only 17 percent of respondents say they feel proud or inspired.

Since January, Congress and the White House have engaged in repeated standoffs over federal spending and the size of government as the economy has struggled to recover from recession.

In the past month, fury over all that has spilled into New York's financial district, and groups of mostly young people have camped out in a park.

The protesters cite the economic crisis as a key reason for their unhappiness. The unemployment rate hovers around 9 percent nationally. Many homeowners owe more than their homes are worth. Foreclosures are rampant. And many young people — the key demographic of the protesters — can't find jobs or live on their own.

"They all have college educations, and some have advanced degrees, and they're unemployed?" says Alice Dunlap, 63, a retired speech language pathologist from Alexandria, Va. She supports the protests because, she says, anger lingers at those who profited while the nation's economy tanked.

"We all got ripped off by Wall Street, and we continue to be ripped off by Wall Street," she says. "You can look at my portfolio, if you like."

The poll found that most protest supporters do not blame Obama for the economic crisis. Sixty-eight percent say former President George W. Bush deserves "almost all" or "a lot but not all" of the blame. Just 15 percent say Obama deserves that much blame. Nearly six in 10 protest supporters blame Republicans in Congress for the nation's economic problems, and 21 percent blame congressional Democrats.

Six in 10 protest supporters trust Democrats more than Republicans to create jobs.

Most people who support the protests — like most people who don't — actually report good financial situations in their own households.

Still, protest supporters express more intense concern than non-supporters about unemployment at the moment and rising consumer prices in the coming year.

Norton Shores, Mich., retiree Patsy Ellerbroek, 65, is among those who have little empathy for the Wall Street protesters.

"Everybody ought to own their own business before they start complaining," Ellerbroek says.

Eight years ago, she and her husband sold "The Fun Spot," a roller rink they owned for three decades. Now she's a member of neither political party, and she gets frustrated when she sees politicians like the Republican candidates for president being disrespectful. Or Obama "flying around the county on our taxpayer dollars, politicking."

"With all the politicians, it's like, the heck with the people who put them there. We need another Mr. Smith goes to Washington," she said.

The poll was conducted Oct. 13-17, 2011, by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cellphone interviews with 1,000 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The poll included 384 respondents who said they were supporters of the Wall Street protests. Among that group, the error margin was 6.5 points.

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Online:

Poll results: http://www.ap-gfkpoll.com

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Going public: Strauss-Kahn accuser tries rare path (AP)

NEW YORK – The hotel housekeeper accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her is telling her story publicly, she says, because she wants the former International Monetary Fund leader behind bars. But it's hard to say whether her striking move will help or hobble her goal.

Nafissatou Diallo's decision to speak out in media interviews is an unusual and risky move for an accuser at this point in a criminal case, legal experts said.

It gives her an empowering chance to tell her side of the story as prosecutors weigh whether to press ahead with the case amid their concerns about her credibility. But it also enshrines a version of events that defense lawyers could mine for discrepancies with her grand jury testimony or use as fodder to argue she was seeking money or public attention.

Whatever the outcome, "it's an extraordinary turn of events, I would say, for her to go on a kind of lobbying, public relations campaign to get this case tried," said Pace Law School professor and former prosecutor Bennett L. Gershman.

After staying silent for nearly two months about an alleged attack that Strauss-Kahn vehemently denies, Diallo gave her account to Newsweek and ABC News.

Adding details and her own voice to the basics authorities have given, Diallo said the former IMF leader grabbed and attacked her "like a crazy man" in his $3,000-a-night Manhattan hotel suite on May 14 as she implored him to stop and feared for her job.

"I push him. I get up. I wanted to scare him. I said, `Look, there is my supervisor right there,'" she told Newsweek in an interview in her lawyer's office. But Strauss-Kahn said no one was there to hear, she said, and he went on to yank up her uniform dress, tear down her pantyhose, forcefully grab her crotch and then grip her head and force her to perform oral sex.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers on Monday called the interviews "a desperate distraction from the key fact that Ms. Diallo has had to admit to misleading" prosecutors.

The interviews come with the case against Strauss-Kahn in limbo after Manhattan prosecutors raised doubts about the housekeeper's overall credibility. They said on July 1 that she had lied about her life story and gave inconsistent descriptions about what she did right after the alleged attack.

The disclosures prompted her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, to criticize the district attorney, press prosecutors to keep going with the case and even call for a special prosecutor to take over.

Diallo told her interviewers she wants Strauss-Kahn held accountable, and she was going public to tell a story she said had never wavered, to counter misleading portrayals of her and to address doubts about her trustworthiness.

"I want him to go to jail. I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money," she told Newsweek.

Diallo told ABC she didn't know Strauss-Kahn was a high-profile French politician until later.

"I was watching the news and they said he's going to be the next president of France," she said. "I said, `Oh, my God.' I was crying. `They're going to kill me. I'm going to die.'"

Before Sunday, the 32-year-old Guinean immigrant's name had been reported by some French media outlets but not by major U.S. media, which generally protect the identities of people who say they've been sexually assaulted.

"I never want to be in public, but I have no choice," she said, according to ABC News. "God is my witness I'm telling the truth."

But against the backdrop of uncertainty about her believability and motives, the interviews may raise as many questions as they answer, legal observers said.

"On the one hand, there's an upside that perhaps it will encourage the prosecutors to move forward with their case. On the other hand, there's the risk that whatever she says can be used against her in a civil or criminal case, especially with respect to any inconsistencies," said Sanford Rubenstein, a New York lawyer who has represented victims in noted cases — and advised them not to give interviews while the case was ongoing, he said. His clients have included Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was tortured in a New York City police station bathroom in 1997.

Prosecutors generally discourage potential witnesses in criminal cases from speaking outside court while a case is pending, partly to avoid creating multiple accounts that could diverge, even slightly. In a trial, such gaps can become thin edges of a wedge for adversaries to drive doubts about an accuser's veracity into jurors' minds.

"The more that's out there, the more you're susceptible on cross-examination," said Elizabeth Crotty, a defense lawyer and former Manhattan assistant district attorney.

The housekeeper's interviews also could provide an avenue for Strauss-Kahn's lawyers to suggest she was out for publicity or cash, a notion that already has shadowed the case. A day after Strauss-Kahn's arrest, she was recorded alluding to his wealth on a phone call with an incarcerated friend, a law enforcement official has said.

Newsweek said she had not ruled out trying to make some money from her situation, a suggestion that a civil lawsuit could be forthcoming, though she told the magazine, "I don't think about money."

The interviews nonetheless could tempt prosecutors to bow out rather than go forward with the case because "she's already trying it in the court of public opinion," Gershman said.

The DA's office has said its investigation, not external factors, will determine the outcome. Communications chief Erin Duggan said Sunday the investigation was continuing and declined to discuss the case further.

In the interviews, Diallo addresses some of the inconsistencies that already have rocked the case.

She testified to a grand jury that after the alleged attack, she cowered in a hallway and watched Strauss-Kahn leave, then told a supervisor. Prosecutors said earlier this month that she later told them she actually had gone on cleaning rooms before consulting her boss. Diallo told Newsweek she was disoriented and went into the rooms briefly before a supervisor appeared and asked why she was upset, but the maid denied changing her account.

Diallo also lied about her background, including by telling prosecutors an emotional story of being gang-raped in her homeland, they said. She told Newsweek she was raped by two soldiers but acknowledged she had embellished her life story on her 2003 asylum application; prosecutors have said she told them she repeated the lies to them to be consistent.

Strauss-Kahn lawyers Benjamin Brafman and William W. Taylor III rapped Diallo for conducting what they portrayed as a media campaign to pressure prosecutors to pursue Strauss-Kahn as she perhaps plans to sue him. They have said whatever happened in the suite wasn't forced, and they are pressing for the case to be dismissed.

"Nothing can camouflage the lies and misstatements that Ms. Diallo has consistently put forward against an innocent person to law enforcement, friends, medical professionals and members of the media," they said in a statement Monday.

Thompson fired off a statement of his own Sunday, saying Strauss-Kahn's lawyers "have conducted an unprecedented smear campaign against the victim of a violent sexual attack."

The American Bar Association's professional conduct rules tell lawyers not to make public statements out of court that are likely to prejudice the case. But the rules don't apply to their clients and in a heavily covered case like Strauss-Kahn's, it's questionable how much any lawyer's remark "will affect the jury when there's so much publicity already out there," said Ellen Yaroshevsky, a legal ethicist at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

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Jennifer Peltz can be reached at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Congress seeks debt solution, Obama goes to public (AP)

WASHINGTON – Racing the debt clock, Congress is working on dual tracks while President Barack Obama appeals to the public in hopes of influencing a deal that talks have failed to produce so far.

"We have to ask everyone to play their part because we are all part of the same country," Obama said Saturday, pushing a combination of spending cuts and tax increases that has met stiff resistance from Republicans. "We are all in this together."

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama said the wealthiest must "pay their fair share." He invoked budget deals negotiated by GOP President Ronald Reagan and Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill, and Democratic President Bill Clinton and Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich.

"You sent us to Washington to do the tough things, the right things," he said. "Not just for some of us, but for all of us."

As a critical Aug. 2 deadline approached, the chances that Obama would get $4 trillion or even $2 trillion in deficit reduction on terms he preferred were quickly fading as Congress moved to take control of the debate. At a news conference Friday, Obama opened the door to a smaller package of deficit reductions without revenue increases.

Obama's communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, said the president, Vice President Joe Biden and White House aides were discussing "various options" on Saturday with congressional leaders and House and Senate aides from both parties.

The White House held out the possibility of arranging a meeting with the leaders on Sunday.

House Republicans prepared to vote this coming week on allowing an increase in the government's borrowing limit through 2012 as long as Congress approved a balanced-budget constitutional amendment, which is highly unlikely.

In the Senate, the Republican and Democratic leaders worked on a bipartisan plan that would allow Obama to raise the debt limit without a prior vote by lawmakers. The talks focused on how to address long-term deficit reduction in the proposal in hopes of satisfying House Republicans.

A weekend deadline that the president gave congressional leaders to choose one of three deficit reduction options became a moot point after House and Senate leaders made it clear to the White House on Friday that they were moving ahead with their own plans.

In the Republicans' address Saturday, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah argued for passage of a balanced-budget amendment. He blamed Democrats for failing to embrace adequate budget cuts and said "the solution to a spending crisis is not tax increases."

An amendment that requires a balanced budget, he said, "would put us on a path to fiscal health and would prevent this White House or any future White House from forcing more debt on the American people."

The government said Friday it was using its last stopgap measure to avoid exceeding the current $14.3 trillion debt limit. Administration officials, economists and the financial markets have warned that missing the Aug. 2 deadline and precipitating a government default would send convulsions through an already weakened economy.

Obama had held five straight days of meeting with congressional leaders at the White House, but none of the three options he proposed — deficit cuts of $4 trillion, $2 trillion or $1.5 trillion over 10 years — were unlocking enough support to increase the debt ceiling by the $2.4 trillion Obama wants to make it last beyond the 2012 elections.

Essentially declaring those discussions over, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Friday: ""Now the debate will move from a room in the White House to the House and Senate floors."

In search of a deal, Obama has used a combination of private meetings with congressional leaders and high visibility press conferences, radio addresses and public statements in an effort to win the public to his side. His pitch is also aimed at independent voters, to whom he is presenting himself as a willing compromiser.

In a White House video distributed Saturday by Obama senior adviser David Plouffe to supporters, Obama is shown praising the virtue of compromise to a group Democratic, Republican an independent students. He noted that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation permitted slavery in border states loyal to the Union, in an attempt to hold the nation together.

"Here you've got a wartime president whose making a compromise around probably the greatest moral issue that the country ever faced because he understood that `right now my job is to win the war and to maintain the union,'" Obama said.

"Can you imagine how the (liberal news outlet) Huffington Post would have reported on that? It would have been blistering. Think about it, `Lincoln sells out slaves.'"

He told the students: "The nature of our democracy and the nature of our politics is to marry principle to a political process that means you don't get 100 percent of what you want."

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Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: www.youtube.com/gopweeklyaddress

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