Andy Ginther and Columbus City Council continued to show their true colors at the Monday, July 24 Columbus City Council meeting.

Three separate Enterprise Zone 10-year 75 percent abatements were handed out without a blink of an eye totaling roughly $24.74 million dollars. But it doesn’t end there. The generosity of Ginther and company also included more taxpayer funds to help subsidize the construction of the Merchant Building totaling $31 million.

Recipients of the tax abatements included a $4.7 million hand out to the Trident Capital Group whose company assets are valued at about $1.2 billion. Local developer and friend of Ginther, Crawford Hoying, received a $9.6 million property tax gift. And not to be outdone was CCBCC Operations LLC which is the nation’s largest Coca-Cola bottler and who is owned by Coca-Cola Consolidated. Gross profits for Coca-Cola Consolidated in the first quarter of 2023 were $624 million and one share of Coca-Cola Consolidated is currently selling at $646. Do you think that just maybe they might be able to get by with paying their fair share of property taxes?

Wednesday, July 19, 2023, 7:00 PM
In its starred review of War Made Invisible, Kirkus Reviews called the book “a powerful, necessary indictment of efforts to disguise the human toll of American foreign policy” and “an incisive and provocative overview of the consequences of the media’s appalling failures in making important truths known.”

The review summarized War Made Invisible this way: “With formidable clarity, Solomon, the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of War Made Easy, documents how the so-called war on terror has spawned an endless and secretive program of foreign interventions. The author is particularly eloquent in explaining how the media’s exclusive focus on past and potential ‘American suffering’ in framing such activities has meant that ‘there [isn’t] much room to see or care about the suffering of others, even if—or especially if—it was caused by the United States.’

Are you struggling to pay rent in Columbus? Are those creeping student loan payments causing you anxiety? Is healthcare forcing you to pick up extra hours at work?

Well, good news! Your tax dollars are about to be going to work for you by going to an international developer with $1 trillion in assets to build less than 600 apartment rooms that have no guarantee to be affordable to anyone who doesn’t work downtown.

Blackstone, an international investment group owning more than 150 companies, was approved yesterday by Columbus City Council for re-zoning changes as a first step towards tax abatements. According to the Guardian, “Over the past two decades, (Blackstone) has quietly taken control of apartment blocks, care homes, student housing, railway arches, film studios, offices, hotels, logistics warehouses and datacentres.” They are the largest commercial landlord in world history.

In recent years, and again this year, to my knowledge, only a single member of either house of the U.S. Congress has said publicly, prior to voting No on a military spending bill, that he or she planned to vote No because the spending was too high. The same individual has done this more than once, and nobody else has done it at all. That individual is Senator Bernie Sanders. He says he will vote no on his website and in The Guardian. He does not say “I encourage my colleagues to join me in committing to vote No unless military spending is reduced rather than increased,” and I wish he would say that. But, of 535 or so members of Congress, 534 have not done what Sanders has, not this year, and not at any point in recent memory. It’s possible that some Libertarian has done it, advocating for tax cuts for gazillionaires rather than — as Sanders advocates — moving the funding to human and environmental needs, but I’ve publicly asked innumerable times for everyone’s help finding such an example and have yet to find one.

Tuesday, July 25, 2023, 8:00 – 9:30 PM
Across the country and right here in Central Ohio, the far right is using schools for steppingstones to power, scapegoating and endangering LGBTQ kids and enforcing curriculums that teach lies about our country. And they rely on the support of white parents and white voters.  

In deep partnership with SURJ national, the Central Ohio SURJ Chapter is building a program to out-organize the far right in majority white communities in Central Ohio and to work for school systems that serve all students. Whether it's campaigning for local school board candidates, pressuring your local school board to pass a resolution to not comply with the far right's agenda, or joining a national remote team to support the local work, we need you.