Editorial
Poverty is inexcusable when as many as 45-million Americans are classified at or below the federal poverty guidelines. The Poor People’s Campaign of Rev. William Barber says that 140,000,000 Americans of all colors and races are ‘poor.’
Analysis of the track record of Wall Street’s boom/bust pattern of perpetual economic disaster leads to the conclusion that the system’s brokers make money on the uptick and by selling short do so on the downturn.
The last great recession that began in 2007 with the collapse of the fraudulent Wall Street bundling of spurious mortgages was followed by federal reserve intervention to shore up the very banks that precipitated the crash.
The next recession may be caused by the collapse of the automobile market when the surplus of unsold cars collides with the failed leases used to artificially prop up the disappointing sales of their highly inflated price vehicles. Or, it may come about from the failure of the Fracking Industry to produce enough oil and gas to repay their near-zero interest loans.
As September begins, Ohio’s newly formed medical marijuana program continues to be plagued by various delays and failures. As a direct result, our state’s patients, who are in dire need of the treatment cannabis provides, will have to wait even longer for the legal relief they require.
The program was supposed to be up and running by September 8, but has seemingly hit every speed bump along the way. On July 31, Buckeye Relief in Eastlake planted the first legal seeds, a momentous day only made possible because the cultivating facility finally received its certificate of operation from the state four days before. The state’s department of commerce can only give up to 12 of these certifications before the September 8 deadline, with potentially more on the way. However, the late start with cultivation means the crops won’t be ready until November, and then they must be sent to a processor to be transformed into approved consumable products for patients. As of now, these approved products only include edibles, oils, patches and other non-smokable methods.
To accomplish something means that you have successfully achieved what you set out to do when you started a task. If you accomplish something you are a person that has done well, typically because of study or practice. It takes hard work and dedication to accomplish anything successfully in life and on the job.
Columbus Police Department Chief Kimberley Jacobs is one of those people who has accomplished many tasks in her career. She joined the CPD in 1979 and was promoted to Commander in 1995. She moved to Deputy Chief in 2009 and has been in her current position as Chief of Police since 2012. She was the first woman to be promoted to each of those positions.
A hundred years ago, the greatest political show trial in United States history took place. It began in Canton, Ohio when the legendary socialist Eugene Victor Debs denounced U.S. involvement in World War I.
On June 16, 1918, Debs allowed all the elements of his democratic socialist faith to flow forth. Debs’ speech made it clear that there could be no socialism without democracy: “Everywhere they are moving toward democracy and the dawn; marching toward the sunrise, their faces all aglow with the light of the coming day. They are the Socialists, the most zealous and enthusiastic crusaders the world has ever known.”
Debs’ political strategy for advancing democratic socialism was straightforward: “To turn your back on the corrupt Republican and the corrupt Democratic Party – the gold-dust lackeys of the ruling class – counts for something.” Debs told the crowd “Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourself. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.”
What has become of the Columbus Dispatch, that cranky, one-sided, right-wing, influence-peddling, friend-rewarding-and-enemy-punishing, black and white with a splash of color and read all over, or at least in break rooms and doctors' offices?
Three years ago, almost to the day, the Capital City's morning friendly was sold by the Wolfe family to New Media Investments/GateHouse Media, owned and controlled by SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate.
I wrote then that the new ownership had an opportunity to transform it into a newspaper of the people after way too long as a publisher's propaganda play toy.
My reasoning was simple. Once Republican, Columbus and Franklin County have turned dark blue Democratic while the Dispatch was still embracing the Republican good old days.
Wolfe consigliore Ben Marrison, who held the title of executive editor, departed in 2015 to become auditor and attorney general wanna be David Yost's flack. Maybe Marrison's protégé and successor Alan Miller would lead the paper's editorial stands and coverage policies in a more responsible if not Democratic direction.
Jobs or the environment? That's the tragic dilemma in which the powers that be seek to trap the global working class forever, convincing us that we cannot have both. We desperately need to find a way out of this dilemma . . . before the capitalist system, with its relentless drive to make more and more profit at any cost, makes this planet unlivable for the human species.
The Right knows how to politically exploit this dilemma: pretend to prioritize jobs over the environment -- until the products become unprofitable and the workers become disposable. That will fool some of the people in swing states all of the time, or so hopes the Party of Lincoln in the age of Donald Trump. Unlike the GOP, the Democratic Party, torn between its capitalist donors and working-class base, wishes to present itself not only as the defender of both jobs and the environment, but also as good for both workers and capitalists, an impossible balancing act that frequently fails.
“Our food is our medicine, our medicine is our food” the ancient Greek Philosopher is reported to have said. In this modern era on July 15, 2018 many people believe that our food is our poison that no medicine can overcome. The following websites are suggested for your information: Responsible Technology.org (Jeffrey Smith) Well.org (Pedram Shojai) [GMOs revealed] Dt, Patrick Gentempo. And criticalhealthnews Dr. Joel Wallach
Let’s be honest.
There are many reasons that people decide to build an organization. Anger is one. A rage at injustice or an action by the government coupled with a recognition that your one voice, even yelling, will neither be heard nor will it create change, is often enough. Sometimes it is a mutual agreement between friends or like-minded individuals to all stand together and dive into the deep end of the pool and see if an issue can be attacked, a campaign created, or maybe an organization formed. Sometimes it is neighbors or fellow workers aggravated about a persistent issue or grievance that forces collective action. Sometimes it starts, as it usually did with ACORN, with someone knocking on your door. There can be all manner of triggers that begin organizations and without care, there can be as many that stunt its development or suffocate its future from birth.
Issues, grievances, inequities, and injustices are all reasons to build campaigns, but for an organization to live and win it has to have structure. It is important to be humble to the task, even while hopeful of the future.
The US Supreme Court (by the usual 5-4 vote) has certified Ohio’s Jim Crow stripping of more than a million mostly black and Hispanic citizens from the 2018 voter registration rolls.
In an age of computerized registration books and extensive ID requirements, there's no real reason to strip people’s names from voter rolls. In the European Union, governments are required to register voters.
Unless the Democrats effectively respond, a GOP victory in the 2018 mid-term election may be a done deal.
The decision approves Ohio’s race-based assault on the right to vote. Secretary of State Jon Husted has been stripping citizens who don’t vote in consecutive federal elections. His office mailed some 1.5 million queries to registered voters. He got back fewer than 300,000 responses – and then stripped some 1.2 million voters from the computer files.
Husted (now running for lieutenant governor) says he’s sent voters a notice after they skip a single federal election. If they don’t vote or respond in the next four years, they lose their ballot.