Universal Purifying Technology is obtaining a permit from the Ohio EPA to install a tire pyrolysis operation.  The comment period is still open, until November 28th.  There is little doubt that they will grant the permit even though over a dozen south Columbus citizens testified against it at the public hearing on November 6, and they have no lease arrangement with the City that own the facility.  The mayor of Grove City said that this should be of concern to all the people in Franklin County.  The city council of Grove City has passed a resolution condemning the plan.

Ohio Citizen Action and Teresa Mills have formed residents in the area into a weekly meeting group that adopted the name, SouthWest Neighbors Protecting Our Environment.  Their plan is to apply pressure on SWACO and the Columbus City Council to prevent UPT from using the facility.  I have never seen this much outrage from a citizen group on environmental issues before.  They are tired of being dumped on, and are determined to make their voices heard.

Contact Information:

Ohio Citizen Action:
(614) 263-4111

Here's a signpost, pointing along the road many are doomed to follow since Clinton's attack on welfare. I found it planted in a dispatch from Ohio by Julian Borger in the London Guardian on Nov. 3. By way of heralding Bush's impending visit to Britain, Borger was edifying his readers with an account of Bush's America, in the form of a visit to a soup kitchen in Ohio, where he reports that "hunger is an epidemic."

            Since Ohio went for Bush in 2000, Borger narrates, the state has lost one in six of its manufacturing jobs, many of them on account of the trade policies espoused by Clinton and now Bush. Two million of Ohio's 11 million population resorted to food charities last year, up 18 percent from 2001. In 25 major cities across the country last year the need for emergency food rose an average of 19 percent.

            Last year, another 1.7 million Americans slid below the poverty line, bringing the overall total to 34.6 million, one in eight as a proportion of the population. Over 13 million are children. The U.S. has the worst child poverty and the lowest life expectancy of all the world's industrialized countries.

Dear Friends:

I am increasingly alarmed at the escalation of violence in Palestine and Israel and the relentless expansion of the Israeli occupation.  The massacres in Gaza, the massive and ongoing demolition of homes, the continued construction of the apartheid wall, and the bombing of Syria are clear indications of the escalating and spiraling violence.

I believe it important that we all take immediate and sustained action.  ADC has joined with various other groups to make November "Palestine Action Month," see: www.adc.org.   This is a month-long campaign of multifaceted efforts in support of the Palestinian people and in support of peace, for more information see: http://www.adc.org/november/Message_nove.htm

There are several ways in which you can take action this month. You can use the features of ADC's website to contact members of the Administration about issues relating to Palestine.  Send letters to members of Congress and other relevant political figures via: capwiz.com/adc/issues/

 To gauge the level of hatred entertained by liberals for the Bush administration, take a look at the best-seller lists. Rubbing shoulders in the top tiers we find Michael Moore, Al Franken, Paul Krugman and Molly Ivins all pouring sarcastic rebukes on Bush2 and, categorically or by implication, suggesting that in favoring the very rich and looting the economy in their interests Bush stands in despicable contrast to his immediate predecessor in the Oval Office.

            So just get a Democrat, any Democrat, back in the White House, and the skies will begin to clear again.

            But suppose a less forgiving scrutiny of the Clinton years discloses that these years did nothing to alter the rules of the neoliberal game that began in the Reagan/Thatcher era with the push to boost after-tax corporate profits, shift bargaining power to business, erode social protections for workers, make the rich richer, the middle tier, at best, stand still, and the poor get poorer.