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Radioactive Nuclear Waste:  The August and November issues of The Columbus Free Press had articles about the dangerous nature of the depleted uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) radioactive waste – contaminated with plutonium – at the Portsmouth Nuclear Site in Piketon, OH, and at the Paducah Nuclear Site in Kentucky.  This waste was generated from the gaseous diffusion uranium enrichment process that went on at the two sites for the better part of 50 years, starting in the 1950s and ending in 2001 at Portsmouth and continuing until 2013 at Paducah. Uranium was first enriched at both sites for nuclear bombs, then later for nuclear power generation.  The enrichment process separates the one percent of fissionable (able to generate a nuclear reaction) uranium isotope from the bulk of the uranium.  

Corroding Cylinders: Chemical reactivity is causing the cylinders that hold the DUF6 to rust and leak. Many of the corroded cylinders are over 60 years old. There are over 24,000 of these 14-ton cylinders at Portsmouth and 40,000 at Paducah.

It seems that the cleaning companies who employ janitors in Columbus have awakened to a new reality: they are dealing with a fighting union. On December 3 about 750 Columbus janitors ratified a new 3-year contract. Negotiations were concluded much more swiftly than for the previous contract, and the janitors’ employers made significant concessions.

The janitors, who are members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1, will receive between $2000 and $3000 more in wages per year over the life of the contract. The contract also strengthens protections for members, including discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity. It also adds funeral leave for the first time.

The cleaning companies probably didn’t want a repeat of 2013, when the janitors organized numerous protests, held rolling strikes in downtown Columbus office buildings, and were arrested during sit-ins at Fifth Third Bank and PNC Bank.

On Monday, December 5 the Free Press and Democratic Socialists of Central Ohio joined with the community to honor local activists at the annual awards event. The event was held at the HUB CDC, a community center and small business incubator. During the beginning of the evening, there was usic by Greg Kilcup and Ewan Todd, as people gathered and had some light refreshments.  

Free Press Editor Bob Fitrakis welcomed the crowd and President of the Board Pete Johnson was master of ceremonies. Asad Shabazz, owner of the HUB, talked to the audience about the mission of the HUB and upucoming events.

The ceremony started off with the Bill Moss Award for Outstanding African-American Activists. Named for legendary School Board member and local activist Bill Moss, the award was presented by Ruth Moss to Sherri and Butch Hamilton of Black Central. Next, Simone Morgen of the Democratic Sociaists of Central Ohio presented the Eugene V. Debs Award for Political and Educational Advocacy to Michael Vinson.

“How will the electronic vote count in the 2016 election be verified?” The answer is simple: “It can’t be.” ~ Fitrakis & Wasserman, March 31, 2016

Back in 2004, then Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb put it bluntly: “The greatest threat to American democracy is the belief that we have one.” That is so true today.

When candidate Donald Trump charged that the 2016 election was somehow being rigged, both establishment and progressive pundits erupted in unanimous outrage that the vaunted integrity of America’s “exceptional” electoral system was being impugned.

An Epidemic of Cognitive Dissonance and Denial

On the morning of the 2016 election, the New York Times, vaunted ‘paper of record,’ gave Trump a 15 percent chance of winning. So much for the NYT. The vaunted Washington Post is now claiming – with no evidence – that ‘Russian hackers’ gave the election to Trump. So much for the WaPo.

Christian Parenti speaks for many head scratching progressive commentators when he writes, “My point is not that we should like Trump but rather that the Left must understand why almost 60 million Americans voted for him.”

610 WTVN on your AM dial, Central Ohio’s conservative windbag and of course home to big fat idiot Rush Limbaugh, ran an extra number of gun sale commercials the afternoon of the Ohio State tragedy inflicted by a legal immigrant and student who lost his mind through hate. Coincidentally, interspersed among these same commercials were a lot of callers speaking angrily that if many OSU students were packing guns, the tragedy would have never happened in the first place.

The Free Press, in an effort to understand why conservatives hate immigrants, blacks and poor people so much, regularly turn into the channel’s John Corby Show in the afternoon. After shooter situation massacres, 610 seems to refrain from running gun advertisements, but they do run an abnormal number of freeze-dried food commercials for all their prepper listeners who fear the apocalypse could happen at any moment (and under President Trump, some freeze dried eggs sounds like a good idea). And while John Corby and his crew would never, ever claim to be aligned with the alt-right, they sure as heck sound like bigots when they implicitly complain about immigrants, blacks and poor people.

The November 2016 election of the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, has enticed people to protest, march in the streets, insult and physically attack both Trump and Hillary supporters and some have even demanded a recount of votes in three states.

Now that the year 2016 is ending, Americans, black and white, male and female, old and young, educated and uneducated, rich and poor are all wondering what the new year will bring under the political leadership of Trump. 

Women are wondering what it means for them now in the work place. After hearing the remarks made by Trump in regards to men with power being able to “grab” women in their private parts. They fear that they will now have to deal with an increase of unwanted, unwarranted sexual abuse on the job.  Is the glass ceiling going to be lowered even more for the working woman?

The impatience across much of the media is palpable. 

Recount?

Oh groan. That’s not going to change the election results. The consensus “truth” writhing just below the surface of the mainstream, eyeball-rolling disapproval of Jill Stein’s call for and financing of a presidential vote recount in Wisconsin (and perhaps in Pennsylvania and Michigan) is that the political and media consensus has already established who the next president is. Like it or not.

Joan Brunwasser: Welcome to OpEdNews, Bob. The 2016 election has come and gone. What, if anything, is there to talk about now?

Bob Fitrakis: The big news is that Jill Stein’s Green Party presidential campaign is asking for a recount of the votes in three states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. All of these states are significantly outside the margin of error from the unadjusted exit poll numbers contrasted to the reported vote count. I am acting as an of-counsel attorney, pro bono, for the Stein campaign. I believe this is a historically important effort due to the lack of transparency in our elections, that allow private, for-profit, partisan companies to program our computerized voting machines and central tabulators.

JB: Agreed. How did Stein decide to do this action? It’s unusual, to say the least. Can you give us some background, please?

Stein/Baraka Campaign Launches Recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to Restore Confidence in our Voting System

Today, the Stein/Baraka campaign announced their intent to file for a recount of votes in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, leading a multi-partisan effort to check the accuracy of the machine-counted vote tallies in these states in order to ensure the integrity of our elections.

Jill Stein observed, “After a divisive and painful presidential race, reported hacks into voter and party databases and individual email accounts are causing many American to wonder if our election results are reliable. These concerns need to be investigated before the 2016 presidential election is certified. We deserve elections we can trust."

If this year's U.S. presidential election was held in a foreign nation, the U.S. State Department would not certify it as a "free and fair election." If this occurred anywhere else in the world the report by our government would conclude that there is a "suspicion of fraud or error."

On Monday, November 7, 2016 the U.S. government denounced elections in Nicaragua, stating that they were “deeply concerned by the flawed presidential and legislative electoral process” and that they were concerned there was no “possibility of a free and fair election” in that country on November 6. The statement explained that: “In advance of the elections, the Nicaraguan government sidelined opposition candidates for president, limited domestic observation at the polls and access to voting credentials, and took other actions to deny democratic space in the process. The decision by the Nicaraguan government not to invite independent international electoral observers further degraded the legitimacy of the election.