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In modern times, more accepting of hyphenated names, Columbus should simply be called the Mike and Andy machine after our “Mayor for life” and current City Council President (heir apparent should Coleman abdicate). This machine functions essentially the same way as the older political machines, except for one key point – the new Columbus machine does not do favors for a majority coalition of various racial and ethnic groups. Instead ours rewards a handful of “titans” who do not live in the city.

Say you have made a bad investment in the Blue Jackets and need a quarter of a billion in cool cash to bail you out. Mike and Andy, like Domino’s, can deliver. Say you want to take over the city schools instead of leaving it up to elected Columbus School Board officials. The Mayor will appoint many of his major donors and political supporters to an educational commission and finance the “reform” campaign.

It turns out even zombies have their run-ins with the man.
 

But some local zombies are hoping to avoid any complications this Saturday when they gather for Zombie Walk Columbus 2013. The ghoulish meet up is actually a cleverly disguised canned food drive for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank.
The meeting point this year is in front of COSI, a change from years past when the beasties walked their beat in the Short North.
Zombie Walk co-chairman Joe Knapik said the move was out of necessity.
 

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Having taught Popular Culture for more than 20 years, one of the more frequently asked questions is: “Why are Americans obsessed with zombies, vampires and other post-apocalyptic creatures?”

While there’s no one answer, I believe the best explanation is that these evil beings are a metaphor for corporate America. Remember the words uttered in George C. Romero’s legendary Dawn of the Dead (1978): “When there’s no more room in hell, the dead shall walk the Earth.”

We live in a society that has given similar rights to “natural born citizens” and unnatural entities through so-called “corporate personhood.”

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Just when it seemed things might be under control at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, we find they are worse than ever.

Immeasurably worse.

Massive quantities of radioactive liquids are now flowing through the shattered reactor site into the Pacific Ocean. And their make-up is far more lethal than the "mere" tritium that has dominated the headlines to date.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the owner/operator, and one of the world's biggest and most technologically advanced electric utilities, has all but admitted it cannot control the situation. Their shoddy performance has prompted former US Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dale Klein to charge: "You don't know what you are doing."

The Japanese government is stepping in. But there is no guarantee, or even likelihood, it will do any better.

The Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government (“the Coalition”) has announced that the Hot Times in Olde Towne Festival, September 6-8, will be the last event at which signatures will be collected for the Coalition’s campaign finance reform petition.

The Coalition has been collecting petition signatures in order to enact a campaign finance reform law, saying the high cost of elections in Columbus and the 28 year practice of making council appointments, rather than holding original elections, has eliminated meaningful competition for elected offices and reduced the responsiveness of elected officials to the citizens.

Willis Brown, a member of the Committee of Petitioners that is sponsoring the ordinance says, “the voters passed a charter amendment in 1994, authorizing city council to enact a campaign finance law. Twenty years later, the city council still has not passed a meaningful finance reform law, so we as citizens have written a law and as citizens are bringing it up to Council for consideration.”

Recently a Pew poll came out that showed for the first time in the history of the question, more Americans support legalizing marijuana than think it should remain criminal. I was talking it over with someone and I think the bigger issue is not if it should be supported but why? I thought I’d break down why every group should support legalization.

Let’s start with the political parties……..

Democrats: This party should support legalization because the drug war is the new Jim Crow. Every year over 700,000 Americans, mostly young men and women of color, are arrested for possession of a plant. The war on drugs is what is feeding our quickly growing private prison system. Our prisons now hold more people arrested for drugs than they did for all offenses in 1981. America now has 4% of the worlds population but 25% of the worlds prison population and the 62% of local, state and federal inmates who are in prison for nonviolent drug offenses is the reason why. As the party of civil rights they should also support legalization because of our civil right to control over our own bodies.

What’s Columbus City Schools (CCS) to do when it’s in the midst of perhaps the largest scandal in its history? Ask the voters for one of the largest levy expansions ever. Scandal, corruption and cover-ups equal “give us more money.”

The levy is controversial in many ways. None more so than the fact that the Columbus Educational Commission (CEC), the people recommending the levy, were appointed by the mayor and are not elected school board members. The Republican-controlled statehouse and governor are mandating a local levy vote through state law.

On July 15, 2013 in a bipartisan ceremony, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed into law a bill forcing Columbus City Schools to place a tax levy on the ballot in November. If the levy passes, residents of the Columbus School district will be forced to give money to both public schools and charter schools. Mayor Coleman was granted the power to sponsor charter schools through the city government.

Are they or aren’t they investigating Governor Voinovich’s administration?
It’s become a semantics debate. Voinovich campaign contributions, yes; administration, no.

The July issue of the Ohio Observer originally reported that the FBI was investigating charges of contract steering in the Voinovich administration. Then a week ago Sunday, the Cincinnati Enquirer confirmed this and filled in many details surrounding the preliminary investigation. Then the Cleveland Plain Dealer had the feds denying it. But the Enquirer stood by its story. And well they should, since they had, in newspaper biz parlance, “back-up”-usually meaning “we taped it, you idiots.” Plus, the Enquirer had confirmation from multiple sources: two in the FBI and one in the Justice Department.

I visited my mother today. Entering the long term care unit in which she spends her final days, I hear the blare of her television. As I sit down next to her hospital bed, I realize that we’re viewing live coverage of the 50th anniversary of the famed 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In an instant, I flash back to myself as a 10 year old girl watching the black and white evening news with her parents, transfixed by this seminal event. It's only in the present that I realize its impact.
This past January, I helped form the Ohio Rights Group to advocate for the medical, therapeutic and industrial uses of cannabis. I then co-authored the Ohio Cannabis Rights Amendment based on the inalienable rights named in the Ohio Constitution’s Bill of Rights: life, liberty, property, happiness and safety.
As echoed from the Lincoln Memorial 50 years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream, "deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed."
Some might ask how cannabis, a scorned drug, fits into Dr. King's dream.

My, my. The coverup starts in the Columbus Dispatch Metro section lead which begins, “[Franklin] County election officials say they think a clerical error is to blame for 19 Columbus police officers having their voting addresses listed as the Downtown police headquarters.”

Now, if a lower-class black male had used his work address as a voting address, and tried to vote in the inner-city Driving Park area, the headline would have read: “Massive voter fraud uncovered in urban inner-city precinct: ACORN is suspected.”

It is a fifth-degree felony to intentionally register to vote at your work address instead of your residence. The police might enforce the laws, but it doesn’t mean they obey them.

As the Dispatch pointed out, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who supervises the vote in Ohio, “…isn’t particularly concerned about police officers registering their work address.”