News

Cop’s hand injured – civilian executed with eight shots in return: Once again a Columbus Police Department (CPD) officer dubiously reveals what a pathetic abject coward he really is (though the Free Press is cautiously suspicious of every version of an officer-involved killing that involves the phrase “I feared for my life.”)

In Franklinton on August 23, Officer Andrew Mitchell shot 23-year-old Donna Dalton (Castleberry) eight times in his cruiser after she allegedly stabbed his hand with a knife.

Think about it. You are a 30-year grizzled veteran on the CPD vice squad. You’ve got 80 prostitution arrests under your belt just this calendar year, because your beat is the west side of the city where young women gather.

You are undercover. You are in an unmarked car. The rest of the story is unclear.

Of course, we don’t have a “he said, she said” situation since “she” is dead. And there are no witnesses.

Columbus citizens voted five times not to spend public taxes on private sports arenas like Nationwide. So why is the Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) trying to extort taxpayer dollars under the guise of supporting “arts and culture” to bail out the Columbus Blue Jackets and the Nationwide Arena boondoggle?

The first open forum on GCAC’s proposed 7 percent ticket tax faced stiff opposition Wednesday night, August 22 at the Vanderelli Room art gallery and event space with standing room only. The ticket proposal would place a 7 percent increase to all Columbus cultural and sports events except for high school and college sport events.

The tax is estimated to generate $14 million a year. GCAC is straightforward in their fronting for the Arena’s needs. Point Four of their handout entitled “The Proposed Ticket Fee Helps All of Columbus and Franklin County” specifically states that the tax will “…fund up to $4 million annually in efficient, essential renovations to Nationwide Arena, to maintain the facility and attract major concert shows, and sporting events that add so much to our economy and quality of life.”

Columbus is still in the running to become the home of HQ2 — the second headquarters of Amazon in North America. Amazon narrowed its list of candidate cities down to 20 finalists in January. The company is expected to further narrow the list very soon.

Cities are competing for the privilege of hosting HQ2 with economic incentives. Columbus is offering a 15-year, 100 percent property tax abatement and a 15-year, 35 percent income tax rebate for new employees at HQ2.

Here is what Amazon is putting on the table: investing over $5 billion in building the HQ2 facility, and creating 50,000 high-paying jobs over ten years. The company’s web site promises even more: “In addition to Amazon’s direct hiring and investment, construction and ongoing operation of Amazon HQ2 is expected to create tens of thousands of additional jobs and tens of billions of dollars in additional investment in the surrounding community.”

The members of the Franklin County Board of Elections are the Free Press enemies of the people, after effectively stripping 560,000 Columbus citizens of their right to vote on a ballot measure entitled Community Bill of Rights for Water, Soil, and Air Protection and to Prohibit Gas and Oil Extraction and Related Activities and Projects Ordinance. The local group, Columbus Community Bill of Rights (CCBOR), qualified the measure, gathering more than 12,000 signatures. The Columbus City Council approved the measure to advance to the ballot on July 30.

Denying Columbus voters the right to vote on the initiative were:
Ed Leonard, Franklin County Board of Elections Director (D)
David Payne, Franklin County Board of Elections Deputy Director (R)
Doug Preisse (R)
Brad Sinott (R)
Kim Marinello (D)
Michael Sexton (D)
 

CHILLICOTHE, OHIO:  On August 8th, the Fourth District Court of Appeals dismissed the Athens County Bill of Rights Committee’s (ACBORC) appeal to place their rights-based county charter initiative on the ballot. Athens County residents were denied the right to vote on forming a county charter government in the November 2017 election. The Athens Board of Elections and the Common Pleas Court blocked the people’s initiative, which also banned fracking wastewater injection wells, despite residents duly qualifying the measure.
 

The appellate court claimed there was a technical mistake made at the Common Pleas Court, thereby justifying the higher court’s refusal to issue a decision. ACBORC asks why the court took more than six months to decide not to decide.
 

The Commander-in-Chief, President Donald Trump, has announced a new mission into the realm of martial excess. It is one that will surely enrich the aerospace industry while spreading the global battlefield to a new dimension.

Trump is calling for the creation of a new Space Force as a sixth branch of the U.S. military, to militarize the heavens.

“It is not enough to merely have an American presence in space,” Trump told a meeting of the National Space Council in mid-June. “We must have American dominance in space.”

To this end, the President has taken a page from Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” playbook. Reagan’s scheme, according to a recent article by Karl Grossman, was built around “nuclear reactors and plutonium systems on orbiting battle platforms providing the power for hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons.”

Grossman, a journalism professor at State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and author of the book The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program’s Nuclear Threat to Our Planet, has been reporting on the militarization of space for decades, says the move will likely spur a new international competition to weaponize space.

AUGUST 6, 2018—On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, followed three days later by an attack on Nagasaki. Tens of thousands perished within seconds. For some who died, the only evidence they existed was a radiation shadow found on a concrete wall. The stated justification for this horrific crime was the need to hasten the end of World War II. But not only was Japan already attempting to surrender, it made the final decision to do so because the Soviet Union declared war—Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not need to be bombed.

Most Columbus residents assume that our city is safe from the fracking industry. It is not. There are currently 13 injection wells of toxic radioactive frack waste in the Upper Scioto Watershed area, Columbus’ source water protection area.

This waste contains radium 226, which has a half-life of 1600 years, and up to 700 chemicals. Many of the chemicals we know about – some are hidden as “proprietary secrets” – are carcinogens, neurotoxins and hormone disruptors. Each of these injection wells contain millions of gallons of this toxic stew.

Now comes the Columbus Community Bill of Rights (CCBOR) to the rescue. To prevent Columbus residents from being exposed to these dangers and future polluters, an all-volunteer group of concerned citizens has gathered 18,404 signatures over the course of a year for an initiated Columbus city ordinance that would protect our city’s air, water and soil from frack waste. Members submitted all signatures to City Hall at the end of June. Thereafter, the Franklin County Board of Elections validated more than 12,000 signatures, much more than the 8,890 required to put the ordinance before voters for adoption.

Progressive activist Joe Motil has often gone in front of Columbus City Council on a Monday night urging them to not hand out another tax break, and he recently spoke out against a tax-abatement proposal for CoverMyMeds, which is owned by the McKesson Corporation, one of the nation’s largest corporate opioid “pill pushers.” Put more simply, a corporation that’s lead the US into a heroin epidemic.

You would think Motil’s statements before City Council would make the nightly local broadcast news stations of WSYX, WBNS and WCMH. Perhaps even lead their 11 pm broadcasts, and be often repeated the following morning.

But per usual, our local broadcast news stations ignored a concerned citizen who urged City Council to not hand out such a ridiculous tax break to the unscrupulous and undeserving McKesson Corporation.

Indeed, City Council unanimously approved a $77.7-million, 100 percent tax-abatement over 15 years for CoverMyMeds so they can build a new office in Franklinton. CoverMyMeds helped the McKesson Corporation earn over $200 billion in revenue for 2017.

I want to highlight that the article “Fighting the Klan could get you 15 years in prison” is inaccurate and needs to be corrected. There are many inflammatory and inaccurate comments. I have highlighted some below and also included more information and a fact sheet.

The bill itself doesn’t apply to only one organization – it impacts any group or person that deprives somebody of Constitutionally-protected rights while wearing a mask. So the bill applies to the KKK, Antifa, and any other group that intimidates other of their constitutional rights while wearing a mask. So saying that “would have to do is claim they were triggered by counter protestors” is false.  The “injures, oppresses, threatens or intimidates” language comes directly from existing federal civil rights statutes dating from 1948.