News
March 8th was International Women’s Day and the whole month is dedicated to women’s history, so the Free Press is taking a look at the status of women here in Ohio.
Innovation Ohio analyzed Ohio Governor John Kasich’s 2015 budget and its impact on Ohio women. There are definite positives and negatives for women to watch out for this year.
The good news is that the bill contains more funding for child care, preschool, maternal health and training on ways to deal with sexual assault at public colleges and universities.
Here’s the bad news. According to Innovation Ohio, proposed tax changes benefit the wealthy and raise taxes on lower income Ohioans. Not a surprise, but unfortunately most low-income Ohioans are women.
By now, if you follow marijuana in Ohio, you probably know of a group called Responsible Ohio (RO). It seemingly came out of nowhere last summer, bringing with it exorbitant sums aimed at financing a citizen-led initiative to place the legalization of marijuana on the Ohio ballot.
Bringing this useful plant back from decades of prohibition has been an arduous process. Since 2000, six legislative bills concerning cannabis – aka marijuana – have graced the Ohio legislature, none making it past committee, all while 23 other states have established a legalized marijuana system, whether medically-focused or broadened to include adult use. The apparent success of these systems in Colorado, Washington and other states has ignited a modern-day gold rush, with the prospect of billions drawing a new class of advocate – the investor – into marijuana policy reform. These investors lack the magnanimity of their poorer predecessors, less interested in social justice and more concerned with ROI, the SEC and LLCs. Such is RO.
During a press conference on Monday, March 16, Siddique Hasan announced that a hunger strike was underway at the Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP). Hasan had called in to the press conference from a phone within OSP, also known as the “Supermax” prison, in Youngstown, Ohio. He told the reporters he had missed his last three meals.
Hasan is one of the four “Lucasville Five” inmates who are on death row at OSP as a result of their presence at the Lucasville prison uprising in 1993. His fellow Lucasville Five members, Bomani Shakur (Keith Lamar) and Jason Robb are also participating in the hunger strike.
Hasan outlined the reason for the current hunger strike. The root of the problem began when a new inmate at OSP stabbed a guard in the neck and punched one in the face. Instead of dealing with that one individual, OSP prison officials applied collective punishment to everyone in OSP under Level Five security.
Federal Judge Michael Watson, fearing democracy might break out in Ohio, upheld a Republican state law that makes it virtually impossible for minor parties to get on the ballot. Judge Watson sided with Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, who argued that if minor political parties were treated as they are in other democracies, it would add "additional cost" and would cause “the risk of overcrowded ballots and frivolous candidates."
The United States, recently rated last in election integrity among the world's 76 long-standing democracies, is the only democracy that has a two-party system. America's two-party system is often referred to as "American Exceptionalism." Every other democracy has three or more political parties.
The Green Party of Ohio stands alone as the only ballot-qualified minor party in the Buckeye State.
Last time, they committed treason to prolong a war.
This time, they’re apparently trying to start one....
The backstabbing letter sent by 47 Republican members of Congress warning Iran off a possible nuclear weapons treaty is a haunting re-run of what Richard Nixon did to Vietnam peace talks in 1968.
Back then, Nixon was in a close race for the presidency with Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey was Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President, both of them neck-deep in the catastrophic assault on Vietnam.
By fall 1968 the war had just about undone the Democrats. Draft card burnings, huge demonstrations at the Pentagon and around the US, and a deep malaise of anger and betrayal gripped the country. On March 31, Johnson announced he wouldn’t seek re-election. Four days later, Martin Luther King was murdered. Robert F. Kennedy was killed in June. In August the Democratic Convention in Chicago was torn to pieces.
It was one heck of a David and Goliath moment.
On October 10, 2011, news broke at Davis-Besse that cracking in the concrete containment shield building had been discovered, during breaching operations to install the third lid in a decade atop the problem-plagued reactor. As revealed much more clearly by a photo included in a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report (but not until eight long months later!), that original cracking discovered was actually quite wide. The photo that NRC displayed prominently on its homepage, however, showed cracking that was more difficult to make out.
FirstEnergy and NRC have called such concrete containment cracking “unique OE [Operating Experience].” But at Crystal River, Florida, however, a “self-inflicted wound” proved fatal – containment cracking due to a botched steam generator replacement so severe, the only fix would have been a multi-billion dollar containment replacement. Crystal River was permanently shutdown.
As the world’s nuke reactors begin to fall, none crumbles faster than FirstEnergy’s infamous Davis-Besse, near Toledo. But Ohio citizens now have a good chance to shut it down---if we act quickly. You can start by contacting the PUCO directly, as below.
Those of you who want Davis-Besse shut can write the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio at docketing@puc.state.oh.us. Use this label in the subject line of the email, as well as the body of the email message, so PUCO can route the public comments to the correct proceeding: OPPOSITION COMMENT UNDER CASE # 14-1297-EL-SSO.
FirstEnergy wants the PUCO to rubber-stamp a $3 billion-plus bailout for Davis-Besse and a decrepit 50-year-old coal burner.
It’s a scam.
The company says DB is needed for “baseload” power. But it’s a nonsensical smokescreen rooted in obsolete models meant only to profit the utility.
Over fourteen hundred international election experts gathered data last year and pronounced the United States last in election integrity among long-standing democracies. On a 100-point scale, the U.S. received an integrity rating of 69.3 percent -- one notch ahead of the narco-drug state Colombia at 69.1 percent and just behind the nearly-narco-drug state of Mexico at 69.8 percent, neither country with a long-standing democracy.
The Ohio legislature knows that you're concerned about the algae blooms that threaten our state's drinking water sources, so they're rushing to pass legislation to address solutions. But until they recognize a major culprit to our water pollution — factory farms — and that drinking water all over the state is impacted, the Clean Dirty Lake Erie Bill will never achieve its supposed goals. Tell your state legislators that they must protect our drinking water by reining in factory farm pollution.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked you to take action on the Ohio Senate Bill that they're calling the "Clean Lake Erie Bill," meant to address the hazardous algae blooms that left half a million Toledoans without water last summer. The senate has since passed the bill without any significant improvements. Indeed, the bill got worse. And now the Ohio House has introduced their own legislation — but this bill is just as bad, so we're calling it the "Dirty Lake Erie Bill."