Local

I couldn’t find a spot closer than Neil Avenue. Having been deserted by my brother and nearly squashed by a bus when I attempted a High Street drop-off, there is no choice remaining but to park the car and start hauling equipment up the hill to Dick’s Den. When I finally get there, a little out of breath, I open the door and walk into mayhem. The place is absolutely jammed. I am literally pushing through the crowd, trying to keep my guitar from being knocked out of my hands. It’s the 9th annual Columbus tribute to the late, great Townes Van Zandt. Dan Dougan is onstage, opening the event with the self-penned “Song for Townes.” I squeeze my way into the pool room, which has been turned into a de facto musician’s lounge.Veterans of the event have preemptively scotched any attempt to start a game by loading the table with guitar cases. I add mine to the pile, take a deep breath and head back to see the end of Dougan’s set. Wowee, there are a crap-ton of people here and they are all very drunk. Townes Van Zandt (1944-1997) was one of the great American songwriters of the 20th century.

Schoolboy Q sold out the Newport Saturday. The Southern-Central L.A. rapper’s new album Oxymoron had debuted on the Billboard charts as the number 1 album in the country earlier in the week. While one would assume both of those facts have an obvious correlation, I would also offer that his chart and touring success is a testament to not sensationalizing the extreme negative in marketing makes for a good financial decision in terms of touring the Live Nation/Clear Channel type of venues. There are plenty of ways to make money in rap. But this is probably the most efficient. And as the saying goes: If You Don’t Work. You Don’t Eat. Not that this a new phenomenon: A$ap Rocky packed the Newport when I saw Schoolboy Q open for him in October of 2012 and so on and so forth. In between songs, Schoolboy Q extolled the virtues of smoking weed on stage to the adulation of his audience.

I wonder how the late Townes Van Zandt would feel if he knew two or three of his songs provided 15 minutes of fame and spotlight to a dozen-and-a-half performers in a crazy little time warp of a place called Dick's Den? Given the sometimes ragged but nearly always heartfelt performances Friday night in a very packed Den, I think he would've been mildly amused and secretly deeply satisfied. Because there is something very, very special about TVZ's lyrics. Has anybody lyrically captured the essence of lives lived with more naked poignancy? And with novella-like depth and tight economy, never a wasted word or an unnecessary image? If nothing else, if that were my work being sung, sometimes butchered, I'd have been prouder than a three-legged dog winning the Kentucky Derby. The glory was ragged, but the work stands. It should be noted, in my opinion anyway, Townes is probably the single greatest underrated American songwriter in our recent musical history. As much as I love tribute nights to the Beatles, Stones and Dylan, I think it's great guys like Eric Nassau organize these TVZ nights. And it's reassuring so many aspiring singer/songwriter types love his work.

Earlier this week, the Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government filed new petitions seeking a campaign finance reform law for Columbus elections for Mayor and City Council.

So the Republican Party pulled it off. On Friday, March 7 Ohio Libertarian governor hopeful Charlie Earl and his Attorney General candidate Steve Linnabary found out they were no longer candidates. Through thuggish and authoritarian tactics the Republicans managed to knock the gubernatorial candidates of both the Ohio Libertarian and Ohio Green Parties off the 2014 primary ballot. How did they do it? Like any two-bit dictator, they did it by usurping the U.S. Constitution and simply outlawing all minor parties in the state of Ohio. It is very difficult to get signatures for a candidate when your party has been banned from the ballot. In legal terms, it is called “irreparable harm.” Before he was banished from the ballot, Earl was polling at 6 percent of the vote. Political pundits across the state speculated that he might cost John Kasich to lose his re-election bid. The day Earl initially announced for governor, a Republican Party Senator introduced a bill that would kill all minor parties in Ohio. Critics aptly nicknamed the bill “The John Kasich Re-Election Protection Act.” The blatantly unconstitutional bill struck down by the U.S.

Intertextuality be the name of the game y'all. A few weeks ago, I focused on the way Western media employs Vladimir Putin as a useful villain for its imperial narratives. Not even a day after I emailed the piece, I was in an airport walking past a newsstand when I saw the cover of Bloomberg Markets, and this was pre-Crimea. On the cover was a giant picture of the dear Comrade with the headline “Russia's CEO.” The tag was “Vladimir Putin is using oil giant Rosneft to tighten his grip on the country's economy.” When trying to understand why certain places or governments occupy such villainy in the media landscape, from Russia to Venezuela, it's important to remember that there is one word more than any other that strikes fear straight into the heart of the capitalist class: expropriation. As a head of state, you can feel free to oppress your people at will and expect relative silence from the West, but expropriate one little oil company (like Rosneft did with Yukos Oil), and like clockwork, you can expect the headlines calling you a power-mad dictator to start rolling in. Truly, you will be an enemy of freedom. Political freedom, yes, but more importantly economic freedom.

At the March 5, 2014 Local Governmental Officials Conference, Ohio’s State Auditor David Yost recognized Carolyn Smith, the Internal Auditor of the Columbus City Schools, as a “Taxpayer Hero.” Auditor Yost said of Smith and the other awardee (Heather Winchell, formerly of the Fairfield County Clerk of Courts Office) “these two heroes took personal risks for the public good … by sticking their necks out they helped shine the light on two huge fraud cases, and I am proud to present them with Taxpayer Hero Awards.” Carolyn Smith was the key public servant who unveiled the District’s nearly 10 year attendance and data scrubbing scheme, through which the District and its individual schools manipulated data to make them appear as though they were performing better than they were. The issue came to Smith’s attention when a school social worker, informed Smith that record changing was going on that was resulting in delinquency cases being thrown out of court and students from getting their diplomas.

Yes, Columbus, thereis a Columbus Police Department ChronicComplainers List. After publishing aJanuary 30, 2014 cover story “Are you on the Columbus Police’s secret blacklist?” the Columbus Free Press has obtained a copy of a so-called “Caller Watch List”through a public records request. This list, along with other documents, raises new concerns surrounding the police department’s controversial inaction on phone calls from certain Columbus residents. Two people listed, James A. Whitaker, Jr. and Bernadine Kennedy Kent, wrote an email to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien claiming they were unfairly included on the Caller Watch List. Their previous work as whistleblowers has provided evidence that led to the felony conviction of a vendor in the Columbus City School’s tutoring scandal. The Free Press obtained the email trail including Whitaker and Kent’s email to O’Brien, and then another email that appears to be from O’Brien to Jeff S. Furbee, Chief Police Legal Advisor for City Attorney Richard Pfeiffer.