As the FBI continues to scrutinize the relationship between Mayor Michael Coleman and Chinese business woman Jianhua Li, their investigation has exposed a tiny window into how local power brokers are wooing foreign nationals to ship their foreign-manufactured goods into Columbus’ booming and secretive Foreign Trade Zone hub at Rickenbacker airport. Where the corporate taxes are low and a significant number of workers are temporaries who “pick pack” the imported goods and paid $9-an-hour while being treated like second-class citizens, say local labor activists.
  The Free Press earlier this year wrote about Rickenbacker’s “Free Trade Zone #138,” an FTZ that by all accounts is growing into a juggernaut. In 2013 over $6.3 billion worth of merchandise was imported into Rickenbacker, ranking it in the top-ten for the nation’s 177 FTZs.

In early June The Columbus Dispatch and related publications were sold to New Media Investments for $47 million and became part of the hedge fund’s GateHouse Newspapers. Part of the deal reportedly was that current employees would keep their jobs for 90 days before the news owners could make cuts.
  That 90-day moratorium on layoffs ends around Labor Day, Sept. 7. How ironic that heads will likely roll around the time that we celebrate the working women and men of the United States.

  Typically, when a big chain purchases a family owned newspaper, the newsrooms are gutted to the tune of 25 to 50 percent. That means that dozens of Dispatch journalists will walk the plank and that eventually the paper will be a shade of its journalistic self. When the number of layoffs from other Dispatch departments is added to the journalist departures, it may cause a boost in the jobless rate in central Ohio.

  You won’t read about any negative consequences of the Dispatch takeover in the Dispatch because its editors are walking on pins and needles to please their new owners, hoping to save their jobs.

Ten years ago on August 2, 2005, the city lost an extraordinary man, Bill Moss. As an independent politician – with no Party machine to fund him, handle him, or promote him – he built his own movement of people who voted him onto the School Board for five terms.
   He fought relentlessly for equality for all children and a quality public education. He was an uncompromising advocate for the poor and the and repeatedly exposed corruption and sweetheart deals. His actions saved WCBE from being privatized and sold for pennies on the dollar.
   But Bill was more than a political maverick. He was a soulful prophet who warned us of the shape of things to come. He was Columbus' Berry Gordy, his Capsoul record company standing as a monument to his creative genius. He was the Nassau Daddy of barbeque and as “the Boss with the Red Hot Sauce,” one of the best damn disk jockeys in the city. The Reverend Moss also could preach a great sermon a la the Rev. Al Green and provide a rousing gospel music show to heal the afflicted and afflict the well-heeled.

Rocco Di Pietro is a renowned composer and pianist based in Columbus, Ohio. He is also a writer (among whose many publications is Dialogues with Boulez) and educator (currently teaching at Columbus State Community College). Visit www.dipietroeditions.comfor some of his works available online.

Q. What is the title of your latest work reflecting upon the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

   My latest work is called Taubes VII (Hiroshima Set). It is part of an ongoing series of interactions between photographs and other visual elements with a programmatic, even syncretic, interplay between music and visual art, which I relate to ectoplasms in sound extracted from a visual presence.

Under the state constitution and the Columbus City Charter, everyday citizens have the right to propose legislation using the citizen initiatives process. In short, if citizens can collect 10 percent of valid signatures from registered Columbus voters, the Columbus City Council is required to put the question on the ballot for a vote. Two groups have recently sought to use those provisions. In a tough year for citizen initiatives, both have failed for lack of sufficient signatures – but those failures exposed apparent manipulations of city government seemingly designed to make the process even more arduous – if not impossible for citizens to exercise their constitutional rights.
   City Council President and Mayoral Candidate Andrew Ginther is leading the chorus of citizen suppression, with City Attorney Rick Pfeiffer serving as hype man for the new band, launching “yeah boyyyeeee” whenever Ginther clamps down more on local democracy. Pfeiffer has provided legal ammunition to keep citizen initiatives off the ballot and has tried to strengthen Ginther’s claims that he was not bribed as a Redflex executive said in her federal guilty plea.