Oh the Irony - Voting No on Issue 2

I wonder if anyone else noticed the irony on the front page of The Athens Messenger yesterday?

Since it was the day after election day, they naturally had the election results on the front page with the headline, "Voters reject union limits". The focus was the rejection of SB5 with an 80% no vote in Athens County on Issue 2.

Any time the topic of Issue 2 came up in conversation, face-to-face or on facebook, I mostly bit my tongue. Once I asked "Did you read the bill?", and got the usual response of "No" or "I read some of it", it was only a baby step to the realization that there was no way to try and convince someone who was so willing to eat the union garbage to vote Yes on Issue 2. They had made up their minds and there was no changing it.

Of course, one of the arguments to vote Yes was the jobs that might be saved. To my way of thinking, it came down to: Do you want more jobs or more money for fewer jobs? The 'no' crowd evidently wanted more money.

Ok. Back to the newspaper. At the bottom of the front page was a small article: "Looking like county will have fewer workers in 2012". It went on to explain the budget woes and how there were likely going to be layoffs or staff cuts by attrition in various county agencies. An article in today's paper went into a bit more detail and included whining from the heads of departments about how they have no where else to cut their budget and the rest of the typical resistance to the commissioners telling them the money just isn't there. And of course, Sheriff Pat Kelly didn't pass up the opportunity to campaign for his re-election.

If I were a commissioner, which will never happen because I'm just way too conservative for this county, I wouldn't be able to resist an appropriate or inappropriate comeback, depending on which side of the aisle you're on, of: "Well, maybe you should have endorsed Issue 2."

So Issue 2 goes down in flames while our local government department heads complain about budget cuts. I don't want to give credit to the death of SB5 as the reason just yet, but I will next year.

But not being one to always see the glass as half empty, I did find a positive way to look at things. Those of us who love to follow the Constitution to the letter and expect our elected officials to do the same, we do want less government, right? Well, we'll be getting it in 2012 in Athens County.