Disturbing signs of the time-tested “Strip and Flip” strategy for stealing elections have already surfaced in 2016. Will they ultimately decide the outcome, as they have in too many recent elections?

The core approach is to STRIP citizens of their voting rights, then FLIP the electronic vote count if that’s not enough to guarantee a win for the corporate 1%.

Historically, “stripping” has been based on race. It’s rooted in the divide-and-conquer strategies of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Today it centers on racist demands for photo ID and other scams designed to prevent blacks, Hispanics, the young and the poor from voting.

When Ben Folds performs with the Columbus Symphony Orchestra April 9 at the Ohio Theater, the acerbic singer/songwriter will be making his second stop in six months and his fourth such visit since 2013 to the Capital City. Those who saw his Nov. 14 show at Express LIVE will most likely be in for a totally different experience. And that show was different from the 2014 concert at Columbus Bicentennial Park or the one he gave with the Ben Folds Five in 2013 at the Lifestyles Community Pavilion.

In a telephone interview from New York, Folds said that aspect is one of the many things he enjoys about his career.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance handed me a CD of his high school aged son's band, apparently with the wildly misguided notion that I have contacts in the music industry. He followed up a week or so later, and I gave it a quick guilty spin in my car before calling him back to tell him it was actually pretty creditable. I mean, most of the lyrics appeared to be riffs on a killer house party in Bexley last summer, but the band could play and it sounded professional quality.  

Where was this when I was in high school? In the summer of 1995, my senior year, I had a Yamaha MT120 4-track recorder, the purchase of which had nearly bankrupted me, a collection of RadioShack microphones and an ever dwindling supply of cassette tape on which I made horrific basement demos. My band was so bad I don't even remember our name (Bohemian Snowbeast maybe?), but that didn't stop us from mailing tapes to every record label under the sun.  

You shouldn’t play with guns, unless you do it the way “Jim” apparently did.

His gun play — a (seemingly) satirical petition at change.org — has enveloped the looming Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer in awkward surrealism and forced the three Republican presidential candidates to duck for cover from their own words.

The petition, posted by Hyperationalist, who later identified himself to certain curious reporters as a proponent of gun sanity named Jim, demanded that the Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention will be held, lift its ban on guns in the building and that the Republican National Committee explain “how a venue so unfriendly to Second Amendment rights” was chosen for the convention.

The first time I can remember talking to Correy Parks was directly after a #BlackLivesMatter march took over High Street from Goodale Park in route to the Columbus Police Headquarters. The intent of the protest was to deliver a letter demanding a Civilian Review Board to monitor Law Enforcement misconduct.

This was in Late November of 2014. It made the news as people taking over a major road and then crowding the circumference of the Police Headquarters would.

Here we are in Spring of 2016. I've always been curious what happened from that.

I met up with Correy for this article last week to talk about his newest album, “The Road Less    Traveled.” which takes it's name from a Vermont Poet Laurette Robert Frost writing about perseverance.