2018 Couldn't Tell You

Black and white photo of bald black man smiling and singing into a mic with a flowered shirt on

Not to imply you were concerned. But I notice if a different gas station clerk is working during my routine. I notice if gas prices decrease. Maybe you noticed I haven't written in the Columbus Free Press a few months. There are myriad of reasons that do tell a story that I needed to wait until the midterms were behind us to comprehend.

If anyone wants to publish a book by me...my 800 words wouldn't suffice.

The short version: I didn't feel comfortable typing pragmatic Democrat writings while someone who works for the paper was running for Governor. I felt like would be undermining someone's hard work. I also knew politics isn't my expertise. I climbed to something that I hadn't intended.

No one from the Columbus Free Press told me what to do. There wasn't a conversation to follow a party line. The Columbus Free Press has worked passionately for social justice since the 70s.

I like rap music and sometimes rock ‘n’ roll. If you feel like you’re the fool. Close your mouth.

Activists: Take care of yourselves

Black woman holding up a sign that says we will not be silenced

Oppression has many layers and one of the most significant and difficult to overcome is internalized oppression. This conditioning, operating on conscious and subconscious levels, leads us to choose what hurts us because we’ve been taught to believe that we have no other options.

For those of us conditioned as passive enablers of white supremacy, we don’t tend to enter the fight in earnest until we feel we have skin in the game. It wasn’t until Mike Brown’s killer Darren Wilson didn’t even get indicted by the grand jury that I realized I was also a piece and the entire game was rigged. The realization left me so disturbed that I physically felt compelled to action. It wasn’t until much later that I understood that my inability to see the humanity in my own people from the point of a life being taken, rather than the point of an institution “failing,” was contributing to the problem of action without movement.

Smart meters may not be so smart

Round thermostat looking device

American Electric Power (AEP) tells us that “smart” meters – now mandatory on your home electric grid – will save you utility money because the meters are “smart” and more accurate. But perhaps the real reason is that AEP will save themselves money by not paying meter readers anymore.

Not only is this depressing news for the current meter readers and the city’s unemployment rate, but the emergence of smart meters and grids raises much more disturbing issues that call into question how smart we are to adopt these shiny new high-tech meters.

In 2017 AEP began to replace old-school electric meters for 1.5 million local customers on a plan that runs through 2021. Starting in Delaware and then moving into Columbus and the suburbs, AEP is installing “innovative” and “highly-flexible smart metering solutions that provide advanced functionality to meet the evolving Smart Grid system needs,” according to their literature.

Ohio minimum wage to rise 25 cents, to $8.55

Sign that says Put Politicians on minimum wage and watch how fast things change
Next month, many of Ohio’s lowest-earning workers will get a pay boost when the minimum wage rises 25 cents, from $8.30 to $8.55. This increase ensures the minimum wage keeps pace with rising consumer prices, something Ohio citizens provided for when they voted to increase the minimum wage and keep it indexed to inflation in 2006. The automatic adjustment, which takes place every January 1st, is a critical safeguard that prevents the minimum wage from losing value over time because of inflation. Ohio’s new minimum wage will be worth just 72 percent of what the federal minimum wage was worth in 1968, $11.83 in today’s dollars. “Ohio citizens voted to increase our state minimum wage in 2006, and every year workers are helped by that forward-thinking move,” said Michael Shields, researcher at Policy Matters Ohio. “Inflation-adjustment preserves the value of the minimum wage.”

Syria Withdrawal Enrages the Chickenhawks

President Donald Trump’s order to withdraw from Syria has been greeted, predictably, with an avalanche of condemnation culminating in last Thursday’s resignation by Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Mattis resignation letter focused on the betrayal of allies, though it was inevitably light on details, suggesting that the Marine Corps General was having some difficulty in discerning that American interests might be somewhat different than those of feckless and faux allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia that are adept at manipulating the levers of power in Washington and in the media. Mattis clearly appreciates that having allies is a force multiplier in wartime but fails to understand that it is a liability otherwise as the allies create an obligation to go to war on their behalf rather than in response to any actual national interest.

Santa Claus

Russiagate Smashes Human Survival Attempts

"There's millions of commies in the freedom fight

"Yelling for Lenin and civil rights

"How do I know? I read it in the *Daily News*"

—Tom Paxton

VICE Film Review

Writer/director Adam McKay’s Vice, an all-star biographical movie about Dick Cheney is among Hollywood’s top 2018 political pictures. It’s utterly uncanny how Christian Bale completely disappears into his role as the former vice president, just as John C. Reilly does as Oliver Hardy in another biopic being released in America during the holiday season, Stan & Ollie. With his bravura performance Bale has Cheney’s look, mannerisms and sound down to perfection and at times, when Bale is onscreen one feels as if he/she is almost watching a documentary or the TV news and not an actor in a feature. How Bale transmogrified himself from playing Batman to fat man Cheney is truly a feat of astounding acting for the ages, reminiscent of Robert De Niro’s star turn in Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Raging Bull.

 

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