At last night's Free Press Second Saturday Salon; lifelong activist Harvey Wasserman presented an alarming trend of bribery attempts, harassment, and even physical assaults on Ohio Senate Bill HB-6 ("Nuke Bailout") referendum Petition Gatherers in Ohio. Joe DeMare and Rebecca Calhoun shared their first-hand experiences being confronted by paid "blockers" while attempting to exercise their civic right of informing the public of a referendum and gathering petition signatures.

So the state of Virginia is going to be run (House, Senate, and Governorship) by members of the Democratic Party for the first time in decades.

This means either that the go-to excuse of elected Democrats is going to become something other than “It’s the Republicans’ fault,” or that change is actually upon us.

Why not take this opportunity to consider what a changed government might look like?

The state of Virginia could, if it chose, take any number of progressive steps. It could create single-payer healthcare, tax wealth, make college free, make the minimum wage a living wage, end the death penalty, ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, pass the national popular vote bill, replace three-quarters of the mandatory testing in schools with actual teaching, abolish the pledge of allegiance, pay teachers better, enforce the right to unionize, and so on.

Maybe City Council’s Elizabeth Brown forgot the Columbus Partnership was paying close attention.

Or maybe, just maybe, she was being genuine and didn’t care what the Columbus Partnership thought. Mrs. Brown on Tuesday night said this to WOSU Public Radio about Yes We Can candidates Joe Motil, Tiffany White and Liliana Rivera Baiman:

“Our opponents in this election are not our opponents in the fight to move this city forward. We have work to do in the city of Columbus. It will take all of us, pushing forward together, to get it done. Together, we can deliver.”

As we can tell, Mrs. Brown not only extended an olive branch but perhaps an invitation to a Yes We Can candidate that they have earned a future appointed seat to City Council. Yes We Can (YWC) did win 1 of 3 votes on Tuesday.

What Mrs. Brown is truly thinking is hard to tell. The Freep has asked to speak with Sherrod Brown’s daughter but we have not heard back.

What we do know is City Council is besieged by special interests such as the Columbus Partnership, the corporate influence that insists on shaping Columbus “Their Way.”

In a landmark letter organized by San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, twenty-two California mayors and several other public officials this week asked that Pacific Gas & Electric become a community-owned entity. 

PG&E was once America’s largest privately owned utility. But it is now on federal probation stemming from felony crime convictions due to a 2010 gas explosion that incinerated much of San Bruno, killing eight people. The disaster was caused by the company’s failure to properly maintain its pipelines.  

BANGKOK, Thailand -- In a surprise reversal, the Dalai Lama said his
Tibetan Buddhist tradition of reincarnated dalai lamas "should end
now" because the hierarchy created "a feudal system," a description
echoing decades of communist China's condemnation.

The Dalai Lama's public statement comes amid attempts by Beijing to
control who can be legally recognized as a reincarnated lama in Tibet
and what laws they must obey.

"Institutions need to be owned by the people, not by an individual,"
the self-exiled 14th Dalai Lama said in a speech at his residence in
McLeod Ganj, a small town on the outskirts of Dharamsala, India.

"Like my own institution, the Dalai Lama's office, I feel it is linked
to a feudal system. In 1969, in one of my official statements, I had
mentioned that it should continue...but now I feel, not necessarily.

"It should go. I feel it should not be concentrated in a few people
only," he told college students from Bhutan and India on October 25.

"The tradition should end now, as reincarnation has some connection