Editorial
The situation in Gaza has been horrifying. Provoked by Hamas attack and killing of Israelis at a concert two years ago, Israel has launched a devasting attack on
Palestinians throughout Gaza and even encouraged actively and passively settler violence in the West Bank. More than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed and millions were dislocated in a way many experts and observers call genocide and see as war crimes committed by Israel. One headline described the reaction among both Palestinians and Israelis as “elation” in greeting the ceasefire and the coming release of the remaining prisoners. No matter the rationalizations on all sides about the justification and necessity of war, the people love peace, hopefully making it impossible for the ceasefire to not be permanent.
Fewer governments, including the one currently in the United States, seem to be advocates for peace, despite the news from Gaza. Trump, while covetous of a Nobel Peace
This year’s Columbus City Council race is a battle between grassroots progressives and well-heeled incumbents. Challenging the status-quo, Jesse Vogel is a Democrat running for Columbus City Council - District 7 against establishment darling Tiara Ross. Vogel knows he can’t do it alone. So he’s building a coalition of progressive allies. One of them is Kate Curry-D’Souza, the third candidate from the May primary who recently endorsed Vogel. Vogel respects her a lot as “a principled, progressive leader who I’m honored to have on our team,” Between the two of them, Jesse and Kate received 60 percent of the votes in the primary, indicating a desire for a different kind of leadership. By partnering now, they’re able to show how people on the left are engaged and working together to win.
When we Ohioans trust a state treasurer with billions of public dollars, we expect integrity, transparency, and independence; what we have in Robert Sprague, however, is a career politician who has blurred the line between stewardship and self-interest. From his financial entanglements with Marathon Petroleum, to his role as a national promoter of Israel Bonds, Sprague has turned Ohio’s treasury into a political slush fund, at our expense.
Since 1993, Ohio treasurers from both major political parties have invested in Israel Bonds, but under Sprague, those investments have ballooned. In 2016, as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives, Sprague amended the anti-BDS bill, House Bill 476, to double the amount of funds that state and county treasurers can invest in Israel Bonds.
An interview recently with the United Auto Worker’s (UAW) Sean Fain was a time and temperature check on the reform movement in the union that propelled his election several years ago. Before that, the long running efforts of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) is known to many and continues to be active. We talked to Ken Paff of the TDU several years ago on Wade’s World and it’s clear the fire still burns.
More than fifty years ago, the reform movement that caught all of our attention was centered on the Mine Workers of America, which, even though declining, was still in the 60s and 70s, a major factor in both the labor movement and the US economy. The Miners for Democracy (MfD) rose in reaction to the assassination of Jock Yablonski and members of his family, a reformer who had lost a contested election unfairly to Tony Boyle. MfD was a rank-and-file effort that consolidated around Arnie Miller, a leader among miners campaigning to get health relief from black lung that was killing many. This was a huge campaign that attracted attention both inside and outside of the labor movement back then, even though not well-known now.
On September 13, the British public was startled when more than 110,000 people turned out for a raucous far-right rally in London featuring racist conspiracy theories, anti-Muslim hate speech, and violent assaults upon police. Whipping up the crowd, Tommy Robinson―a popular far-right agitator, march organizer, and five-time convicted criminal―told the assemblage that British government officials believed “that Somalians, Afghans, Pakistanis, all of them, their rights supersede yours, the British public, the people that built this nation.” Signs carried by the demonstrators invoked racist and xenophobic themes, such as: “Why are white people despised when our money pays for everything?”
As Winston Churchill aptly put it, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.” Although Churchill wasn’t referring to our present “system” of healthcare, he surely might as well have been! So, here we explore that “right thing” that will supersede everything we have tried thus far.
Medical care in the United States
Gunshots bring only bad news in America. This time a young rightwing activist was shot and killed while speaking at a big university south of Salt Lake City, Utah. His name was Charlie Kirk, and he was unfamiliar to me, but he seems to have been a principal at Turning Point USA, an organization which was active in voter turnout among young conservatives in the 2024 presidential election. He seems to have been a well-known figure in conservative circles, sufficient to have commanded a college speaking tour. As of this writing, the shooter has not been comprehended, though videos show someone lying on a roof about 200 yards away and running after the gunshot. A kill shot at that distance is seen as something that a hunter of average, but not exceptional skill, could accomplish, which likely is a reasonably large pool in Utah, though the killer home state is unknown.
There's nothing quite like watching Democrats condemn dark money in politics while lobbyists are literally handing out talking points in the same room where they're voting.
That's exactly what happened at the Democratic National Committee's summer meeting in Minneapolis, where party officials simultaneously passed resolutions condemning secret political influence and allowed pro-Israel lobbying groups to orchestrate the defeat of a Gaza resolution through classic dark money tactics.
The irony was lost on no one really paying attention.
Democracy Theater Meets Real Power
While DNC members were busy congratulating themselves for supporting campaign finance reform and transparency in politics, Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) was running a textbook influence operation inside the Resolutions Committee room itself.
When trying to get a preview of what Zone In could do to Columbus’s most popular corridors and neighborhoods, it’s looking more and more likely this future of “density” will drastically alter Old North first.
Old North is also known fondly by many a campus kid as “North Campus,” but those who have spent a lifetime here prefer Old North. What remains of its early-to-mid-20th century buildings stretch from Lane and High to Glen Echo Ravine. And in this popular corridor the last morsels of old-school Columbus live on, such as Dick’s Den, the (new) Blue Danube, and Ace of Cups, for example.
But two large mixed-use developments separated by just a few hundred feet are moving forward on North High Street in Old North and there’s no way to stop them, says Seth Golding, an Old North activist and homeowner. Both developments also include apartment towers, and the tower proposed for Lane and High could reach 16-stories and not offer a single parking space, he says. Before Zone In, passed by City Council in 2024, the highest a developer could go on High Street near campus was six stories.