Local

I write this column with a heavy heart.

Two fields of endeavor that I care deeply about are disintegrating before my eyes.

In politics, the two candidates for president are deeply flawed and profoundly unpopular.

In journalism, once-evenhanded media institutions and individual reporters have lost their way and become propagandists.

Sadly, I fear that after the election, things will become worse and the warring political camps will start posturing for the next election.

The public has been badly served by all this and now holds both politicians and journalists in disrepute with little possibility of regaining the public trust. The chances of either of them changing their ways and beginning to serve the public without fear or favor -- once the hallmark of a good politician and a good journalist -- are slim.

How did we get to this sad state of affairs?

On the Republican side, Donald Trump, a venom-spewing bully used his superior knowledge of manipulating the media to intimidate his primary opponents and swat them down like flies.

What a year it has been for marijuana policy in Ohio – so far. The stunning defeat of Issue 3 at the ballot box last year framed the citizen-led initiative landscapes for both 2015 and 2016. The infamous measure sponsored by Responsible Ohio would have accorded Ohio’s nascent cannabis industry to just ten wealthy investors. Some say RO lost because it was a monopoly. Others cited full legal. A few didn’t think it lost at all.

What happens when you want to turn a popular work of literature into cinema but it’s not long enough to serve your purposes?

In the case of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, director Peter Jackson simply padded the story out so much that he was able to stretch the novel into not one, not two, but three super-sized films.

Director Mark Osborne (Kung Fu Panda) has taken a different approach with Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic children’s book, The Little Prince. The beloved tale is so simple and concise that there wasn’t enough content to stretch into even one feature-length film. Osborne’s solution: Embed the original story into another story set in contemporary times.

First appearing in French in 1943, The Little Prince is the illustrated tale of an aviator who crash-lands in the desert with only eight days’ worth of water. He’s feverishly working to fix his plane when he meets a young boy who claims to be a visitor from another planet—or, actually, an asteroid. The boy has left his tiny home after a tiff with his true love: a beautiful, but vain, rose.

I emailed Upski last month because I wanted guidance about the current political climate. Upski’s books Bomb the Suburbs, No More Prisons, and Please Don’t Bomb the Suburbs have hugely impacted and influenced Hip Hop culture, and grassroots activism.

At the same time Green Party candidate for county prosecutor Bob Fitrakis was debating Democratic candidate Zach Klein, a Columbus police officer with a history of questionable shootings killed Tyre King, a 13-year-old African American. King’s shooting occurred less than a block away from Fitrakis’s Near East home.

Opposition to City Council format and city schools levy growing from the grassroots

Feds called to investigate Columbus Police and legality of at-large City Council

Three groups now opposing school levy hike

The Free Press is proud to announce that Project Censored recognized our work exposing election rigging with their 2015-2016 (academic year) Project Censored award for the 4th most censored story in the world. Project Censored cited Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman’s Free Press article “Is the 2016 Election Already being Stripped & Flipped?” posted on freepress.org March 31, 2016 and Wasserman’s appearance on “Democracy Now!” with Amy Goodman broadcast February 23, 2016 where he discussed the book he and Fitrakis released this year: “The Strip and Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows and Electronic Election Theft.”

On Oct. 12, 2016, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) approved a massive subsidy for FirstEnergy to keep their dirty, dangerous and, now they say, uneconomical Davis-Besse nuclear power plant on Lake Erie in operation.

This bailout will force FirstEnergy’s electric customers to pay about $200 million extra per year for the next three to five years. Though the PUCO made statements about FirstEnergy improving the electric grid, there is nothing in the fine print that would force the company to do anything other than hand this money over to their shareholders. The subsidy could ultimately cost customers $1 billion.

FirstEnergy complained bitterly about the PUCO decision, because they had asked for billions more.
An earlier bailout request by FirstEnergy was approved by the PUCO but ultimately rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC.) FirstEnergy’s new request to the PUCO, written slightly differently, is an end-run around the original FERC decision.

A common reason given by progressives for continuing to support the Democrats is party loyalty. “They gave us the New Deal,” they say, “they always save the economy.” Those who use those talking points are absolutely correct. The Democratic Party has done a lot of good for this country; most social and environmental programs were enacted by Democrats. They are also correct when they discuss how Republicans want a Christian theocracy and always ruin the economy.

However, those individuals are deliberately forgetting huge pieces of history. The Republicans ended slavery, started the Environmental Protection Agency, and built the Interstate Highway System. The Democrats dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, resegregated the federal government, and gave us the Defense of Marriage Act. No individual or political party is perfect but everyone must acknowledge their shortcomings in addition to their strengths. Blind, unwavering loyalty guarantees someone support solely because of the (D) next to their name, not because of their policy positions or track record.

Donald Trump has said so many inflammatory things this past year that it's hard to keep track of them all. Yet, as divisive as The Donald's public comments have been, it was the word he thought he was saying in private that raised the hackles of a local activist group. The now-famous Access Hollywood tape that emerged recently in which the phrase “grab them by the pussy” was uttered by the current Republican Presidential nominee some 11 years ago has brought American politics to a new low. But here in the epicenter of the most crucial of swing states, a litter of self-described pussies is having more fun with the whole thing than a kitten with a ball of string.