Editorial

 Obamacare (The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) PPACA has been alternately called both things. In the hyper-ideological world our political system labors under these days, the reality is that the PPACA is both to different constituencies. Here in Ohio and in the other states whose political power structure maintained the vociferous and unanimous opposition to the law, PPACA is looking less like a godsend and more like a Rube Goldberg contraption that won’t provide the solution to the health care access crisis. In states who have, on the other hand, dealt with reality and implemented the law to the best of their abilities; i.e. set up state exchanges, expanded Medicaid etc, tens of thousands of their citizens are benefiting from gained access to insurance if not financial protection from medically precipitated financial crisis.

We have seen this act before. It always appears innocent to the untrained eye, but those who pay close attention can sense when something is rotten in Denmark, or in this case Dennison Place. Concerned citizen Frank Zindler smelled something foul in his neighborhood when he was notified that this year he wouldn't be voting at the Thompson Community Center, where he's cast his ballot for three decades. Instead Frank was told to go to the Ohio Student Union on campus to exercise his franchise. On the surface it sounds like a reasonable replacement for his usual polling station. It's public, it's open and easy to find. How can anyone complain they are being inconvenienced, as Frank did? Frank saw a fly in the ointment when he launched a recon mission to scope out the new polling place. What he found caused him to write a letter to the Columbus Dispatch. In that letter he explained a clear and present danger to his neighbors' voting rights. There's no place to park. Sure, there's a fairly large parking garage attached to the Ohio Union. But, as Frank pointed out in his letter, there's just one itty bitty problem.

We are in desperate need of documentary filmmakers at Fukushima. The Japanese government is about to pass a national censorship law clearly meant to make it impossible to know what’s going on there. Massive quantities of radioactive water have been flowing through the site since the March 2011 earthquake/tsunami. A thousand flimsy tanks hold still more thousands of tons of radioactive water which would pour into the Pacific should they collapse. An earthquake and two typhoons have have just hit there this past weekend, flushing still more radioactive water into the sea. The corrupt and incompetent Tokyo Electric Power Company will soon try moving 400 tons of supremely radioactive rods from a damaged Unit Four fuel pool, an operation that could easily end in global catastrophe.

By now you've surely seen the cover of this week's issue and may have wondered just what we at the Free Press are up to with our mask of Andy Ginther. Many of you are probably asking yourselves if we are ripping off Columbus's former independent weekly newspaper, The Other Paper. The answer is, yes. And no. Actually we are paying tribute to The Other Paper, an homage if you will. For many years TOP graced its Halloween issue with a mask of someone in the news, either locally or nationally. While TOP was owned by Max Brown and his company, CM Media, they did a good job putting forth an informative and often entertaining paper. We respect those efforts even now. A number of us at the Free Press (including myself, Richard Ades and John Petric) worked for CM Media for many years, and have fond memories of our working lives on Sinclair Ave.