Local

Fri, April 5, 7-9pm
Just North United Church of Christ (UCC), 2040 W. Henderson Rd.
BluesSwing will play blues and swing tunes from the 1930s to the present to benefit SSCM Food Pantry. facebook.com/BluesSwingBand.

Thursday, April 4, 5-6:30pm
Sen. Rob Portman's office
37 w. Broad St.
Trump appointed Attorney General Barr failed to meet Tuesday's deadline for releasing the Mueller report to Congress. Therefore, Central Ohioans will join people across the country in coordinated actions to demand full transparency and accountability from our government. #ReleaseTheReport

On March 23, Amber Evans body was recovered from the Ohio Scioto River.  She had been in the river since January 28, 2019.  The community of Columbus and people across the nation had been waiting since January 28th for the police to recover Amber’s body as there was clear evidence that she was in fact, in the Scioto River.  They found her car near the river, they found her cell phone near the river and all evidence pointed to the fact that Amber would be found in the river.  How she got there was to be determined, after they found her body.  

I understand the pain, fear and the torture of having to wait for the police to tell you that your loved one, that has been missing for several weeks, has been found.  On March 3rd, 1977, on my 21st birthday, my father’s first cousin, a woman that he grew up with, loved and considered his “favorite cousin’s” body was recovered from the river in Indianapolis, Indiana.  She had been missing since December 1976, when her family found her door unlocked, her purse and keys on her kitchen table and no signs of her, anywhere.  

Mayor Ginther: Unopposed and Unindicted

Mayor Andrew Ginther is running unopposed in this year’s election. His major accomplishment in his first term was successfully remaining unindicted in the RedFlex camera scandal.

Ginther perfectly personifies the so-called “Columbus Way,” and that way is pretty straightforward. You suck up to multimillionaire and billionaire developers who don’t live in Columbus and give them massive tax breaks. In return, they fill your coffers for re-election.

Also as part of the Columbus Way, you make it difficult for any oppositional forces to get on the ballot. Municipal election signatures on candidate petitions cannot be gathered until after the November election. You have Thanksgiving, Christmas and then the coldest month of the year in January to try to get signatures. You require 1000 valid signatures for Mayor.

The Mayor with his power of patronage, appointment and abatements can gather a coterie of sycophants looking for favors.

Portia Yiamouyiannis knocked down a wall in Porta’s Cafe and opened the expanded new coffee shop and deli concept “Portia’s Next Door” on Indianola in Clintonville on Feb 11, 2019. I’m already delighted with the “eggless salad” and the many prepared deli-style salads one can discover there. Portia has also teamed up with Eric “Tofu Louie” Ma creating a dynamic duo for delectable vegan sushi pop-ups featuring “vegan carrot lox, cucumbers and cream cheeze” rolls; “scallops” (mushrooms); and a “sashimi with avocado roll.” Spare the fishes and get your sushi on with sustainable, socially-just, healthier consuming plants. That amazing breakfast sandwich is the cholesterol-free, low-on-the-tropic-level-biomagnification, healthier option bomb, too.     

Everyone who read the adventures of Peter Pan knows the directions to Neverland – first star on the left and straight on ‘til morning. But after a heavy night of bourbon swilling directions can get a little muddled up, especially when your truck starts making that weird whining noise as you’re pushing it off your neighbor’s lawn. All the stars start running into each other, and the next thing you know you’ve cruised right past Neverland and arrived in a strange region where the towns have names like Abilene and Dogpiss.

This is ‘Murica, a place where heavily armed work comp fraudsters order 50 Big Macs while seated on a Wal-Mart scooter parked in the back of their cousin’s girlfriend’s truck while flags cover the sky and Lee Greenwood rolls around naked in the street screeching for beer money. A bacon-soaked world where there are always plenty of bottle rockets at the trailer park, and where misguided promiscuity is never hindered by literacy.

New Chief:There’s a new Interim Columbus Police Chief in town – 29-year CPD veteran Thomas Quinlan – replacing embattled Kim Jacobs during the nationwide search for a permanent chief. Lucky him, walking into this mess…see below.

FBI investigation:Enough said.

The Stormy Daniels saga: Although the allegations that the debacle was pre-planned and politically motivated, the Internal Affairs Bureau found the Columbus Police arrests of Stormy Daniels and two other women at a strip club event to be “improper.” The city spent $150,000 in a settlement with the two women arrested with Daniels.

Finally. Dare I say, FINALLY, hemp has arrived in Ohio. After decades in the shadows, confused with its more popular cousin marijuana, hemp is getting the attention it deserves. It owes this glow to two important developments.

First, the Agricultural Improvement Act of 2018, aka 2018 Farm Bill.At the end of last year, an amazing transformation, right out of left field, found U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) hastily shepherding hemp through Congress. While agricultural in title, the text within was revolutionary.

Hemp-became-legal!

Erasing 70 years of prohibition, this remarkable plant reclaimed its long-lost domicile as a seamless source for food, fuel, concrete, clothing, cosmetics, and, yes, CBD. The bill removed hemp from the definition of marijuana as a strictly controlled substance so long as THC content falls below 0.3%.

Monopoly Media

"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one," said American journalist A. J. Liebling.  Who owns the press in America?  The class who owns the rest of America: the capitalist class. Today 90% of the media are dominated by just six corporations: GE, News Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS.  The World Wide Web is no better.  Our search for information is filtered by the powerful duopoly of Google and Facebook.  You don't have to be a Noam Chomsky or an Edward Herman to figure out that corporate media are not inclined to give fair representation of governments or movements that challenge the interests of capitalists. They would rather exclude them altogether or portray them as villains to be defeated.

Voices of Chavistas  in  Venezuela,  Solidarity Activists in the  United  States

The Columbus Police Department (CPD) is out of control. And, they are getting away with murder. Within recent years, the CPD has shown excessive and lethal force which has left several citizens dead or wounded.  Among the dead are Tyree King, Jaron Thomas, Henry Green, Donna Dalton – all victims of excessive force and brutality.

To add insult to bleeding injury all offending officers (except for one) were not charged and were returned to the force. The CPD has refused to charge their officers and they are the only entity that is allowed to review their action other than a grand jury if they kill someone.

Columbus Mayor Andy Ginther, fearing CPD or Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) backlash, has ceded his power and oversight to the police alone. Likewise, City Council is too busy counting its kickbacks from downtown developers shows little concern over excessive force by the police. There is no willingness to demand accountability from offending officers. Citizen efforts demanding justice and responsible law enforcement leadership have been ignored or papered over.