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Greens appear to have achieved historic victory

 

 

The Green Party is fighting for its political life in Ohio. The gerrymandered, Republican-controlled state legislature outlawed all minor parties in Ohio in 2013 while both the Libertarian and Green Parties were in the middle of the petition drives for their gubernatorial candidates. Neither the Libertarians nor the Greens achieved ballot status by submitting signatures. While the Libertarian Party sued to maintain ballot status and lost in federal court, the Green Party invoked a seldom used state law that allows a statewide candidate to gain ballot status by getting 500 write-in votes.

The initial canvas of precincts showed the Green Party with 766 write-in votes for their gubernatorial candidate. The number, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, has now dwindled to 628 votes. By state law, all county boards of elections must certify their vote total and forward it to the Secretary of State’s office by May 27. The Secretary of State must post the actual results 30 days after the May 6 election.

Why Increased Fracking Means More Fatal Auto Crashes

States like North Dakota, Texas and Pennsylvania are among those that have experienced the biggest fracking booms in the U.S. They also have reported more auto crashes as a result. To the supporters of oil and natural gas extraction, correlating traffic collisions with fracking will likely sound like another attempt to bash their favorite means of obtaining energy. However, The Associated Press has the numbers to back it up—there are more fatal car crashes in areas of heavy fracking. Many more. “We are just so swamped,” Sheriff Dwayne Villanueva of Karnes County, TX told the AP. “I don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.” The AP’s analysis reveals alarming figures. For instance, the average rate of deaths per 100,000 people in North Dakota drilling areas grew by an average of 148 percent from 2009 to 2013, compared to the previous five years. For the rest of the state, that measure fell by 1 percent in the same time frame. Even in drilling areas where an increase was nowhere near that dramatic, it still tells the same story. In Pennsylvania drilling areas, traffic fatalities rose by 4 percent during that time frame.

What Obama Missed About Our Bought, Rigged and Stolen Elections

 

President Barack Obama has suddenly concluded that the Republicans don’t really like democracy. (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/us/politics/criticizing-gop-obama-says-the-right-to-vote-is-threatened.html?_r=0)

The GOP, he says, is doing all it can to deny the vote to women, the poor, people of color, young people and millions more in the 99%: “Across the country, the Republicans have made it harder, not easier, to vote.”

Welcome to the twilight of American elections. 

Such shenanigans have been with us since the 1790s heydays of Elbridge Gerry, father of gerrymandering (so named because the districts he drew looked like salamanders).

But a whole new level of bought, rigged and stolen elections has re-defined American politics since 2000, when George W. Bush stole the big one from Al Gore, and 2004 when he did it again to John Kerry.

 

Let us count some of the ways:

1) Stripping Voter Registration:

The Intoxilyzer 8000, the state's flawed tool in the battle against drunk driving

One in seven Ohioans has one – a life-long legal scar that has become the voodoo of our generation(s). According to the Ohio Department of Safety, more than 1.3 million licensed drivers in the state have at least one “DUI” conviction. This eye-opening number suggests far too many Ohioans are getting behind the wheel impaired.

But percolating through appeals courts across the state is a growing number of defendants who believe they limited their blood alcohol to a safe level. They’re challenging the state’s certified breathalyzer, the Intoxilyzer 8000, claiming it wrongly inflated their blood alcohol level or BAC.

Defense attorneys across the state say the Intoxilyzer 8000 is fundamentally flawed because its main function is based on bad science.

Several judges subsequently ruled in the defendants favor, calling the breathalyzer “unreliable,” which makes the line between illegally impaired and legally able to drive in Ohio (.08 of BAC) not so clear anymore.

Four still dead in Ohio

Back when “tin soldiers and Nixon” were “cutting us down” in 1970, a group of Ohio State University students and campus activists started an underground newspaper in Columbus. Driven mostly by the murder of four students at Kent State – Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer and Bill Schroeder – shot during a demonstration that was opposing President Nixon’s illegal attack on Cambodia and the Vietnam War, the Columbus Free Press was born. Not surprisingly, the Free Press was the first western newspaper to expose Cambodia’s killing fields thanks to international law professor John Quigley’s reporting from Southeast Asia. In the first issue of the Free Press, the October 11, 1970 issue, a Free Press opinion attacked a special grand jury’s decision not to indict Ohio National Guardsmen for the Kent State killings.

ODNR’s Press Release Raises More Questions Than it Answers

 

 

 

On April 11, 2014 the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) published on its website a press release stating that “recent seismic events in Poland Township (Mahoning County) … show a probable connection to hydraulic fracturing.” This finding is of both scientific and political significance. People in cities like Youngstown are voting on ballot issues to permit fracking within their communities, with wells as close as 150 feet of their homes.

 

Appalling Earth Day Video Actually Thanks Fracking For Reducing Carbon Emissions

It would have been hard to miss the reports of earthquakes, explosions, lack of clean air, nosebleeds and more attributed to fracking. These type of stories have been all over every form of media imaginable in recent years. But according to Energy In Depth (EID), a campaign launched by the Independent Petroleum Association of America, those stories have apparently been drowning out the real story—that fracking is somehow responsible for the drop in carbon dioxide emissions. Yes, this group actually released a video on Earth Day thanking shale gas and fracking for decreasing emissions. You have to see it—and its out-of-context remarks and data—to believe it. The Natural Resources Defense Council also found the video to be off-base, tweeting as much Tuesday morning. That led to a back-and-forth between the organizations, in which EID revealed that it didn’t understand the concept of fracking sacrificing communities. The video in question includes commentary and data from the likes of President Barack Obama and the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Students Take Action to “Boot the Braids”, Demand Ohio State Ends Complicity in Wendy’s Human Rights Abuses

On April 15, 50 students and community allies lead by the Ohio State Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA) gathered to deliver a message to the Wendy’s location on campus in the Wexner Medical Center: that they will not tolerate OSU’s continued business with Wendy’s; a company which refuses to support farmworkers in their supply chain. As readers of The Free Press recall, Columbus has become the epicenter of a national effort to have Wendy’s join its fast food competitors and join the acclaimed “Fair Food Program”, a partnership between farmworkers represented by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), farmers, and 12 multinational corporations which guarantees farmworkers a substantial wage increase and provides an enforceable Code of Conduct outlining rights routinely absent in agricultural labor. Of the top five fast-food corporations in the nation -- McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, and Wendy's -- Wendy's is the only one not participating in the Fair Food Program. It’s a new twist on a familiar story. The Free Press has been following the work of Ohio Fair Food, the local group organizing with the CIW, very closely.

A new fascist resurgence in America

The end of winter has brought an dramatic uptick in far right activity in America. 2014 seemed on course to be no different from 2012 or 2013, which saw very little organizing or activity by Klan and neo-Nazi groups. In the past few weeks there has been an armed standoff in Nevada, a racist murder spree in Kansas, a storming of a union hall by Ukrainian fascists in Chicago and massive KKK flyer drops in Ohio and throughout the Midwest.

In each incident, the response by government agencies has been muted and coddling. Mainstream media sources appear unwilling or not competent to conduct basic background research either the players or the action on the field. Frazier Glenn Miller, a long time white supremacist, decided to start Passover with a murder spree on Sunday, April 13 in Kansas City. Meanwhile in Chicago, activists engaged in a teach-in at a United Electrical Workers Union hall were besieged by a mob of nearly 50 Ukrainian fascists.

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