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Hemp For Ecological Victory!

I spoke at the Hemp Festival tonight at Ohio State University, sponsored by the Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. I’ve never been able to understand why you would outlaw a miracle plant like hemp – that doesn’t even get you high — just because it’s the male cousin of marijuana. It’s a bit like outlawing corn because somebody can make cornmash from it during Prohibition. Or outlawing barley because it’s used to make beer. The famous but ignored Popular Mechanics article from the 1930s called hemp “the wonder product” and talked about 25,000 products that can be made from it. Hemp can be used for multiple purposes: fuel, food products, oils, clothing, paper products or a whole car, as Henry Ford demonstrated.

The war on drugs that Reagan pushed was really targeted against marijuana, after all, the CIA’s assets (like the Contras) were bringing in cocaine by the carload and the Reagan administration told the CIA that they didn’t have to report it to the DEA. Read more

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Airbrushed From History

With the clamor over Bobby Kennedy’s article in Rolling Stone, that has thankfully re-ignited interest in the theft of the 2004 election, I want to make sure that certain people aren’t airbrushed out of the picture. This important grassroots history was left out of the article.

First, let me make it clear that the original Kennedy article included specific references to the Free Press (the paper and website I publish) and my good friend Harvey Wasserman. Harvey and I wrote a piece prior to the 2004 election outlining how Bush was planning to steal the vote. Most of the evidence turned up about Ohio was a result of public hearings about election irregularities held on November 13 and 15, 2004 in Columbus, Ohio under the auspices of the Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism/Free Press. The co-sponsors of the hearings included: the Alliance for Democracy, CASE-Ohio, and the League of Pissed Off Voters. Cliff Arnebeck of the Alliance and Susan Truitt of CASE played key roles in the hearings and were two of the four lawyers who challenged the election results in Ohio. Amy Fay Kaplan and Jonathan Meier of the League were invaluable in organizing the public hearings where sworn testimony was taken. Read more

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Call To Action: Help Stop David Duke Klan Member Hate Rally Against Undocumented Workers

So the organizers of an Ohio Statehouse rally attacking undocumented workers is being sponsored by a white supremacist hate group. The name of the organization, Americans for America, should have tipped us off that they were fascists. Much like in the 50s, when authoritarians terrorized believers in the First Amendment by creating the House Un-American Activities Committee in the US Congress.

The usual suspects are involved. The organizer is one of David Duke’s boys. You remember Duke’s grand dream of merging the Klan and Nazis into one big white supremacist network. Every election year the right-wing storm troops come out of their bunker to whip up race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic and cultural hatreds. It’s their job. By promoting wedge issues that divide the population along falsely created identity lines, they can get the vast majority of people who work for a wage or a salary to hate the targeted group that changes from year to year.

In 2004, it was gays and gay marriage. Read more

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From Robert Kennedy Jr. And RollingStone – Pollster Lou Harris Said “Ohio Was A Dirty Election” And How 350,000 Votes Disappeared In Ohio

The first thing you should do today is go to the Rolling Stone website and see if the article “Did Bush Steal the 2004 Election?: How 350,000 Votes Disappeared in Ohio” is posted. There’s been other articles, of course I’ve written many in my own publication the Free Press and posted them on the freepress.org, and there was Christopher Hitchens article in Vanity Fair “Ohio’s Odd Numbers” as well as Mark Crispin Miller’s article in Harper’s that was part of his seminal book “Fooled Again.” But the heavily footnoted Bobby Kennedy piece has the most explosive news — the reputable pollster Lou Harris going on the record to announce the theft of the election in Ohio. Bradblog reported yesterday: “Pollster Lou Harris of the Harris Poll — described in the piece as ‘the father of modern day political polling’ — says: ‘Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen.'”

This should finally silence the spineless New Democrats and the hipster progressive de-bunkers at Mother Jones and other outlets like tompaine.com. Once you get the story, immediately email it to your entire list. It’s important that democracy be restored and those who stole the election in Ohio be publicly damned for their actions. 
 

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Bush And Hackwell About To Be Stoned

Check out Leftyblogs.com – the Top 50 Headlines of the Week includes a blog by Cincinnati’s Andrew Warner. He’s asking Strickland to drop out of Ohio’s governor race, so as not to be a “spoiler” for my campaign. Thanks for the insightful analysis, Andrew!

This Thursday, Rolling Stone subscribers should be getting a historic issue of the magazine with one of the most anticipated articles ever written. Voting rights activists are excited about the article written by Stone reporters, as well as an extended piece by Bobby Kennedy, Jr. on the Ohio 2004 presidential election. The article should be on the web by Friday.

We need to buy as many copies as we can get and make sure they’re widely distributed before the Bush White House breaks open one of its secret slush funds to keep this important article from being disseminated.

If you want to get a feel for what might be in the article, my good friends at the Ecological Options Network have now posted all their videos through Google, so enjoy these and let me know what you think:

Here are the Google links: 

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End The Atrocities In Iraq

This Memorial Day I reflected on the war dead in Iraq. Not just the U.S. soldiers, but the more than 30,000, and possibly as high as 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians killed in this unjust war. When individuals make such atrocious mistakes, based on misinformation and lies, they should immediately cease their sinful actions and offer restitution. Rest assured that our president is a war criminal, guilty of conspiring, planning and waging an aggressive and illegal war on a country that posed no threat to us. J. Kenneth Hackwell, a well-known buddy of neo-con Richard Perle, supports the same policy of regime change embraced by the Bush administration. I believe that all life is intrinsically valuable and I like to call this position pro-life. That’s why I am opposed to war except as a last resort in an act of self defense.

The U.S. Marines who slaughtered the 24 innocent Iraqi civilians in the western town of Haditha are murderers and must be tried and condemned as such. The war in Iraq is over. We have lost the hearts of minds of the Iraqi people. Not that we ever had them. We were told our troops would be greeted with sweets and flowers – an absurd lie, and no imperialist occupying force has ever been thus treated. Now, as in Vietnam, our troops can’t tell the difference between the “good” Iraqis and the “bad” Iraqis. We are in the middle of a civil war, which is draining our country financially and militarily. The Bush regime is perhaps the most hated political regime in American history. Hated not only by the people of the world, but despised by the vast majority of U.S. citizens. If you love this country and support its troops, you’ll do all you can to bring them home and disassociated them with this illegal and immoral war.

As governor of the state I plan to issue a direct order prohibiting the Ohio National Guard from serving in Iraq and to appoint a commission of legal scholars and academics to investigate whether or not the president should be indicted for war crimes. That is the Ohio I would be proud of, the same one that stood firm against slavery during the Civil War. Not one that blindly supports an irrational war-mongering, war-profiteering faux Texan.

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Minimum Wage Is Not Living Wage

When the Republicans that control the state recently raised Ohio’s minimum wage to match the federal rate of $5.15, there was little cause for rejoicing. The federal minimum wage has not been increased since September 1997. Five fifteen an hour comes out to $10,700 annually, to support oneself or family. There’s a statewide initiative that I support that will raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $6.85 and increase the income of one in seven Ohio workers. An estimated 297,000 workers in Ohio make less than $6.85 an hour, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Another 423,000 people would be affected by a “spillover” effect that would cause their slightly-above minimum wages, but less than living wages, to rise. In all, an estimated 730,000 workers, 58% of them women, would benefit from higher wages if the $6.85 an hour initiative goes through.

Not only should the initiative go through, but I propose if I am governor, to tie minimum wage increases to the rate of inflation. It is the poor and the working poor who are hit the hardest by the highly inflationary fuel prices. Moreover, I will instruct Ohio state agencies to only contract with companies that pay a livable wage. Even at $6.85 an hour, workers would only be paid $14,248 a year, which is still 14% below the federal poverty level. All public jobs in Ohio should be paying at least $10 an hour. When we make the state more livable for the least of our brethren, we make the state more livable for all people.

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Granny D Arrested In Washington DC Fighting For Clean Government

I had the privilege of having breakfast with Doris “Granny D” Haddock today. Granny D, who lives in the woods between Dublin and Peterborough, New Hampshire, came to Columbus to campaign for clean money in the state and to end the culture of corruption. Granny D is most famous for walking across the country at the age of 89 in support of campaign finance reform. The single greatest problem in our system is the fact that 1% of the population provides 90% of the money for political campaigns and political action committees (PACs). To clean up politics, you’ve got the get the dirty money out, particularly the corporate money, and get clean citizen-subsidized money into the process.

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New Emancipation Movement Needed

What do we make of the Columbus Dispatch headline today: “Senate Debate Turns Nasty”? Senator Ray Miller (D-Columbus) was confronted by Republican Senator Jeff Jacobson of suburban Dayton. Bizarrely, the confrontation occurred during a debate over a bill declaring September 22 as Emancipation Day in Ohio. As the Ohio Government TV channel faded to black during the Senate debate yesterday, viewers could see Jacobson walking up on Miller. Miller was giving a speech purportedly about President Lincoln’s views on slavery, when he was gaveled down by Republican Senate President Bill Harris of Ashland. Miller called Harris’ actions “outrageous and discriminatory.” That’s when Jacobson confronted him. Jacobson claims that he walked over to talk with Miller only to debate Lincoln’s views on slavery. The Dispatch reported that the Sergeant of Arms of the Senate had to step in between the two legislators. Ironically, the bill passed 33-0

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Redistricting Bill in Ohio – What’s the Hurry?

My colleague, attorney Cliff Arnebeck, testified today on HJR 13, the redistricting reform bill. First of all, Arnebeck raised the key question: “What’s the hurry?” As polls show, the scandal-ridden Republican Party, in serious trouble nationally and in the state of Ohio, is scrambling to create their version of a “bipartisan” state redistricting apportionment board. Unlike Texas under the influence of Tom Delay, we still redistrict in Ohio the old-fashioned way – every ten years following the census. The real focus should be on securing the November 2006 election from the likes of Ken Hackwell.

Arnebeck asked why the Republicans opposed the 2005 Reform Ohio Now (RON) proposal as likely to produce politicians cutting deals in smoke-filled back rooms. Arnebeck is right in insisting that competitiveness should be at the core of any future redistricting and that we should probably wait until after the 2006 or even the 2008 election before we rush a redistricting plan through in what hopefully will be the last totally Republican-dominated Ohio legislature.

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