The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission met Wednesday morning to discuss a change to the Ohio Revised Code which will compel state agencies starting April 7 to approve any request from the oil and gas industry for extraction on public land. 

In attendance at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources office on Morse Road was a group of dedicated users of Ohio state parks and forests who demanded robust public notice and commenting procedures before any state lands are fracked or drilled, as well as calling out the oil and gas industry’s grab of our public land. 

The meeting follows the passage of HB 507, signed into law by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on January 6. HB 507 forces any state agency, which owns a parcel of public land, to allow the oil and gas industry to extract from public land. It changed the phrase “may lease” to “shall lease” under the law.

Saturday, February 4, 9am on Zoom
We have meetings of our State Council every other month to plan the ongoing work of our organization. Everyone is invited to join us, though to participate in voting you must be a member of the State Council. Our next meeting is this Saturday, February 4th, at 9:00 am via zoom. The zoom invite is below.  We would love to see you there.

Writing about, and at present attempting to live in Ohio and Columbus is a daily challenge. It is not for the progressive, civil libertarian, fainted-hearted, sanitarian, diverse community members, or the unsteady walker or driver. As my wife and I ponder how much longer we can remain in radically right-wing Ohio and broken, dirty, corrupt, and mismanaged Columbus, I turn to humor.

Both Ohio and Columbus may rival other states and cities in these achievements despite today’s competition from many names and many lies of Congress-person Santos et al., many ballots of Kevin-athon McCarthy, mis-reader of children’s literature Ted Cruz, and know no rights-know no history Ron DeSantis (aka DeSatan).

Immediately following his election to the US Senate, I first offered to trade Senator (it pains me to type that title) J.D. Vance to three friends in Texas, for Ted Cruz. Cruz makes me laugh, Vance does not. They all turned me down cold.

Then I offered our newbie to friends in Florida for Marco Rubio. Without hesitation, they refused as well. We are stuck, Ohio. A six year sentence, at least.

America, America . . . God kicks thee in the head.

The twisted irony here — the irony of the brutal murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee last month — is that his killers were the ones hired and trained to keep the city safe. Instead, they created half an hour of hell for the young man, kicking and beating and tasing him to death a short distance away from his mother’s house, after a random, and perhaps unjustified, traffic stop.

One of the last words he uttered, as recorded on a pole-mounted police surveillance video of the incident, was a desperate cry: “Mom-m-m-m-m!”

Should we outlaw hell? Or maybe at least defund it?