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Ohio: A “Bill of Rights Enforcement Zone”

As governor, I will proclaim Ohio a “Bill of Rights Enforcement Zone,” unlike the current governor Bob Taft, who has joined the U.S. government in illegally spying on U.S. citizens. I would move to expose any illegal spying programs on the people of Ohio and the citizens of the United States. A few years back, Taft pledged to turn over Ohio public records to the government when it was plotting its infamous “Total Information Awareness” campaign. Thankfully, civil libertarians killed the Pentagon’s attempt to spy on U.S. citizens.

Revelations in the USA Today documenting the largest databank in U.S. history run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and three phone companies – AT&T, Verizon and Bell South – should be seen as another move by the authoritarian right to harass and intimidate U.S. citizens. Recall that the NSA was behind MH-Chaos in the 1960s. Its domestic arm run by the FBI, COINTELPRO, functioned to illegally spy on, disrupt and harass the peace and civil rights movement.

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“American Blackout” – A Must-See Film

Whether Ken Hackwell wins in Ohio as governor may depend on whether or not there’s a blackout on one of the most important movies of the year – “American Blackout,” a winner at Sundance and the Cleveland Film Festival this year. American Blackout documents and reminds us of the blatant racism in our voting system. While focusing on Republican attempts to defeat Rep. Cynthia McKinney, the film also documents a triumph by underfunded grassroots forces against the slush-fund money-laundering organized crime approach preferred by the Republican Party.

Rep. McKinney made an appearance at the Arena Grand Theatre last Sunday night in Columbus, where “American Blackout” played to a nearly full crowd. McKinney also spent some time afterwards at Victorian’s Midnight Café with director Ian Inaba and local activists, like Cliff and Sibley Arnebeck. McKinney suggests that there needs to be a grassroots tour for the film throughout Ohio, particularly in the heavily African American wards of Ohio’s inner cities. She believes that the African American community needs to be reminded of how they were treated as second class citizens on November 2, 2004.

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Diebold and Dead Canaries

Reuters is reporting that Diebold, the notorious and partisan maker of electronic voting machines, now faces an informal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) inquiry about how the company reports its revenue. As the saying goes in the voting machine business, there’s not much profit in selling machines, but there’s a lot in selling election results. Maybe that’s why Venezuela recently got into the voting machine business. They recently bought Sequoia, a major e-voting machine company used in the United States.

Critics have long charged that the Diebold machines are easily susceptible to manipulation, a fact confirmed by the General Accountability Office (GAO) regarding e-voting machines in general. News reports show election officials with Diebold machines across the nation are close to hitting the panic button. They already have in Pennsylvania, where
on Friday, May 5, 2006, elections officials impounded all of their Diebold touchscreen electronic vote machines “after a major firmware flaw was revealed which constitues a ‘major national security risk.'” Hacking into and disturbing election results fits nicely into what the Pentagon warned about in its briefing paper “Info Wars.”

And Diebold has had more than its share of malfunctions and problems. Utah officials are worried about their Diebold opti-scan machines – the same ones used in Cleveland and the same technology used in Toledo that malfunctioned so famously in the 2004 election. The covers of the November 2004 issues of both Popular Science and Popular Mechanics warned of the dangers of e-voting machines. The recent Cuyahoga County fiasco is just another dead canary in the cage. At a certain point we’ll realize they’re not dying of natural causes. We’ll find out that there is a deadly poison in our democratic system.

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Obvious Conflicts of Interest

Finally, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Chris Redfern has requested the obvious. That Hackwell remove himself from investigating the voting malfunctions in Cuyahoga County based on conflict of interest. Hackwell is responsible for negotiating the unbid contract with Diebold in Ohio. Diebold is a partisan, Republican firm that practice nontransparency in all its software and hardware. Hackwell and former Dieblod CEO Wally O’Dell worked together to get Bush re-elected.

Hackwell is a partisan hack who has taken advantage of his public office to become a multimillionaire. Hackwell should neither be responsible for counting the votes in his own election nor for investigating election irregularities in Cleveland. Hackwell will treat the information as practice for sabotaging this November’s election in the Democrat-rich city of Cleveland.

Hackwell believes in purging voters, switching precincts at the last second, changing long-standing precincts to confuse voters, causing long lines at the polls, and finding obscure and ancient Ohio laws in order to suppress votes. Hackwell’s speaking style is to mouth clichés like “Earth to Barbara Boxer,” or “He can run (Strickland), but he can’t hide,” and pretend like he invented them and that they’re very profound.

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The “J” Is For Judas

Today I’m launching, in honor of the Columbus Dispatch’s poll on religion in Ohio, my “The ‘J’ is for Judas” campaign. If you wish to donate any money to my campaign by going to http://www.bobforohio.com/donate , I would like to begin buying billboards and bumper stickers and radio commercials.

J. Kenneth Hackwell is Judas. He took more than 30 pieces of silver. In fact, he’s a multimillionaire and he accomplished this while on a meager public salary as state treasurer. Remember, in 1978, Hackwell, then the Vice Mayor of Cincinnati, was co-chair of liberal Democratic Lieutenant Governor Richard Celeste’s campaign for Governor. People who knew Hackwell in the mid-70s constantly refer to his Black Power and progressive rhetoric. He still likes to use it as needed, to invoke Martin Luther King, Jr. while stealing the votes from poor and black people.

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Strickland: SPAN No-Show

Yesterday at the SPAN-Ohio rally (Single-Payer Action Network), Tim Kettler, the Green Party’s candidate for Secretary of State, and I were there to show our solidarity. Tim spoke as a small business owner, and called upon other business owners to pay a slightly higher rate of tax in order to insure all people in Ohio.

The SPAN rally was on the Third Street side of the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. On the other side of the Statehouse, bikers (as in motorcycle riders) were holding their own rally. As irony would have it, Ohio Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland was reportedly schmoozing the bikers, according to Columbus Indymedia. Meanwhile, some union forces and SPAN coalition members were just a bit hostile to Green Party candidates, who support their efforts – in contrast to their candidate, Strickland.

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Everyone Deserves Health Insurance

For the United States to regain its moral stature in the world, we must quit waging illegal wars and instead act like every other advanced democracy by providing universal health care for all our citizens. 44 million Americans and 1.3 million Ohioans lack access to health insurance. In the 21 other western industrialized democracies, the figure is zero.

That’s why in my gubernatorial campaign, I support the Single Payer Action Network (SPAN) initiative to bring single-payer health insurance to Ohio. Single-payer means that one fund, administered by a non-profit government agency accountable to the public (not shareholders) would make payment for all medical services.

By creating universal health care, we would not be socializing medicine. Doctors and hospitals would operate on their own. By covering all Ohioans, we would become a more productive state and a state with a much better business environment. Additionally, I would allow state funds to be used for cities and towns in Ohio to issue bonds to create democratically and locally-controlled health care clinics, and money would go to subsidize doctors to set up practices in communities that are currently underserved.

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Primary Day Disasters

Readers of this blog might want to consider the major malfunctioning of the voting machines in Ohio in yesterday’s primary. It is only going to get worse in the fall. Here’s a breakdown of some of the day’s problems from the Columbus Dispatch and the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Cuyahoga (used Diebold machines)
– court-ordered extension of voting hours, requested by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, because they didn’t open until 1:30pm. Ordered to stay open until 9:30pm.
– poll workers could not get new Diebold touchscreen machines to work in Cleveland housing project
– some people had to vote on paper ballots

Franklin County (used ES&S machines)
– Matt Damschroder, Franklin County BOE Director, claimed 50 people walked away without voting (according to Columbus Dispatch)
– ballots loaded without school levies included
– 20% (160 precincts) opened late
– ES&S placed a dozen company representatives on the ground
– voters complained about the open viewing of voting machine screen and lack of a curtain
– Worthington, Westerville and Hilliard – voters complained locals school levy issue was not on voting machines

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Thou Shalt Not Kill

When I was growing up in the 60s, the United States didn’t have the death penalty. Only nasty, brutal countries like the Soviet Union and the racist South Africa killed people. That was Michigan, where they still don’t have the death penalty. Now I live in Ohio, a state where they think nothing of taking an hour and a half behind closed curtains to viciously execute a man while, the Columbus Dispatch reported, “moaning, crying out and guttural noises” could be heard by the witnesses. Joseph Clark, the man who was tortured to death in the execution gone bad, died after the second attempt to kill him.

Any doctor or medical personnel who takes part in cold blooded murder by the state should lose their license as a health care provider. Any doctor taking part in an execution is clearly violating the Hippocratic oath. Remember, it was the Nazis who brought us the medical injection for killing their own “defective” citizens. While the Nazis gassed Jews, gypsies and gays, they preferred the medical injection for their own German inferiors.

As governor, I will immediately call for a moratorium on the death penalty and commute all death penalty sentences to life in prison without parole. I pledge to also review all cases to make sure that no prisoners were railroaded and order DNA tests if possible when a plausible claim of true innocence is put forward.

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Hackwell’s Cloak of Privacy

To understand the character of Ken Hackwell, you need to understand his policy in running the secretary of state’s office. After reviewing the video of Monday’s scuffle with security when the statewide Ohio Green Party candidate petitions were filed, I see that the security guard was really clear:  no one may take a photo of candidates in the plaza outside in front of the building unless they’re pushed off to a public sidewalk. The only person who gets to decide who may hold a press conference at the Ohio secretary of state’s office is the Borden Building management and the secretary of state’s office. Anyone else must call the secretary of state’s office or the Borden Building management, who are paid by Hackwell to lease space to the secretary of state’s office.

As usual, Hackwell doesn’t see any conflict of interest here. Remember the procedure: Hackwell can hold a press conference in front of the Borden Building and secretary of state’s office by calling himself, and asking if he can have a press conference. All his political rivals must call a private company to which Hackwell’s public office pays a small fortune to every month. Or, call Hackwell’s office.

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