Bob Fitrakis discusses blowback in Libya
2012 Third Congressional District Democratic Candidates Political Debate
February 22, 2012
7:00pm to 9:00pm
Come to hear what the four Democratic candidates have to say – Joyce Beatty, Ted Celeste, Priscilla Tyson and Mary Jo Kilroy. All are running in Ohio’s 3rd district, which covers most of Franklin County.
Prior to the candidate debate, Bob Fitrakis and Charleta Tavares, Talktainment radio show hosts will do a pre-show from 6-7pm.
Sponsored by Bounce 23 TV, simulcast live on Talktainmentradio.com and rebroadcast on WCRS community FM radio, 98.3 and 102.1.
Location:
King Arts Complex’s Pythian Theater
867 Mt. Vernon Ave.
Columbus, Ohio 43203
Bob Fitrakis on “Fight Back”: Climate Hawk
Bob interviews Alec Johnson, aka “Climate Hawk” on the recent decision by Obama on the Keystone pipeline and other pressing environmental issues.
Listen and call in this Wednesday, February 1
7 – 8 PM eastern time
Call 877-932-9766
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Here’s how to call in to the LIVE INTERNET radio show:
(on your computer – not on your broadcast radio dial)
On Wednesday nights at 7:00 pm
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Call 877-932-9766
Bob interviews former Ohio State House Representative Dan Stewart, currently of Working America, on Ohio Governor Kasich’s State of the State address and the real state of the state.
Listen and call in this Wednesday, February 8, 2012
7 – 8 PM Eastern time
Call 877-932-9766
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Here’s how to call in to the LIVE INTERNET radio show:
(on your computer – not on your broadcast radio dial)
On Wednesday nights at 7:00 pm
Go to: http://talktainmentradio.com
Click on “Listen Live”
Call 877-932-9766
Listen to the show re-play on WCRS 102.1/98.3 FM community radio – Wednesday nights at 8pm eastern time
Bob Fitrakis
September 6, 2011
Labor Day has come and gone, but the real battle over whether workers are actually honored and valued in Ohio will be decided on Election Day in November. To understand what’s at stake, one must begin with the concept of American exceptionalism — the notion that America has its own unique political ideology embracing individualism and entrepreneurship.
The reality is that what makes America different from other western European democracies is simply its lack of a mass Labor Party or a Democratic Socialist Party. The Democratic Party is arguably the second most pro-corporate party in the western world, and President Barack Obama reminds us of this daily. Obama’s numbers have hit record lows with only 26% of the population having any faith in his economic policies.
In a time that cried out for infrastructure development and large scale jobs programs, Obama instead spent his political capital and three quarters of a trillion dollars in taxpayers’ capital bailing out the financial corporations that had wrecked the system and the large corporations known for investing in machines and people overseas, not American workers.
Only the Republican Party, captured by an unnatural coalition of Christian zealots and corporatists are more anti-labor. Thus, it is no surprise in the Buckeye State, when one of Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing populist mouthpieces John Kasich, seized control of the governor’s office and immediately followed the corporatist policies championed by Mussolini in Italy.
Kasich’s agenda of destroying the public sector unions embodied in Senate Bill 5, hides a deeper philosophical contempt for ordinary working people. Kasich has spent his whole life serving wealthy and powerful men at the expense of those who labor.
First, as a young college student in the 70s, Kasich came to prominence in Ohio by becoming one of Nixon’s squeaky-clean campaign-prop youth. After his stint in Nixon’s youth corp, he managed to get himself elected to Congress in 1992 after tying his campaign to the so-called Messiah, Rev. Moon, who had been linked at the time to the Korean CIA.
After leaving Congress, Kasich threw in with the hate-monger and illegal hacker extraordinaire Murdoch and his News Corp. The agenda of his three mentors — Nixon, Moon and Murdoch — has always been to destroy labor in the United States. All three have been masters of promoting so-called wedge issues to divide American working people along race, ethnic, and religious lines in order to deliver more power to a small group of their wealthy backers and friends.
In the fantasy world of America, still taught by mainstream political scientists, we live in a “pluralist” society where people make their political voices heard by joining groups. This concept developed in the 1950s by noted political scientist Robert Dahl. Like economist Charles Lindbloom, Dahl initially argued that the 50s corporations were counterbalanced by organized labor. This “countervailing power” created a certain equilibrium in American power.
As the U.S.-based transnational corporations grew larger and more global in the 1970s and union membership declined dramatically, Dahl began to rethink his political theory in a series of books. At the beginning of the 21st century, Dahl published “How democratic is the American Constitution?” arguing that the Constitution is far less democratic than we openly debate. His realization that two corporate political parties is simply one more than a fascist dictatorship, by that time, was dawning on the current remaining political science theorists.
So, as the major theorists of pluralism bemoan the rise of transnational corporate power and the decline of labor, Kasich’s attempt to squash in the former industrial state of Ohio is arguably the most important issue on the ballot this November in the United States.
If Kasich succeeds in destroying the public unions in Ohio, he will effectively destroy the last vestiges of organizations that allowed people who work for a wage or salary to actively participate in Ohio politics. With the destruction of the unions comes the new 21st century power slogan and sound bite fascism, where the population will be pitted against each other – new immigrant against old, Christians against Muslims, public workers with pensions against private workers whose pensions were looted or denied by corporations – while Kasich’s friends will get richer.
To honor labor in the aftermath of Labor Day, workers who value democracy must campaign and say no on Issue 2, the repeal of SB 5. But, beyond that, they need to develop new political organizations to express their discontent with the right-wing corporate Republican Party and their junior partners, the Democrats.
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Bob Fitrakis is the author of The Idea of Democratic Socialism in America and the Decline of the Socialist Party a book of political theory on American exceptionalism.
Bob Fitrakis on “Fight Back” this week:
James Fetzer – McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth,
a former Marine Corps officer, and Founder of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
Listen and call in this Wednesday September 7
7 – 8 PM
Call 877-932-9766
*************************
Here’s how to call in to the LIVE INTERNET radio show:
(on your computer – not on your broadcast radio dial)
On Wednesday nights at 7:00 pm
Go to: http://talktainmentradio.com
Click on “Listen Live”
Call 877-932-9766
Bob Fitrakis on “Fight Back” this week:
Guest Don DeBar on volatile situation in Libya
Bob interviews anti-war activist Don DeBar about NATO and the U.S. involvement in Libya. Bob and Don visited Tripoli, Libya in 2009.
Listen and call in this Wednesday August 24
7 – 8 PM
Call 877-932-9766
Bob talks to former Ohio Secretary of State Brunner Heading Campaign To Repeal Voter Suppression Bill HB 194
Dr. Bob Talks to Wayne Madsen, investigative journalist who traveled to Libya with Bob at the invitation of former congress person Cynthia McKinney.
Wayne has also been published in the Columbus Dispatch.
Dr. Robert Fitrakis
March 23, 2011
While Ohio public employees’ rights to bargain collectively are under siege, the Ohio Republican Party executed a perfect sleight of hand by disenfranchising nearly 900,000 Ohio voters. In the most vicious and direct attack on voting rights since Bull Connor ran amok in the deep South, Ohio House Republicans passed HB 159 that requires Ohio voters to produce one of four state photo IDs at the polls.
The only IDs that will be accepted in Ohio if this bill passes the overwhelming Republican State Senate are a U.S. passport, a U.S. military ID, an Ohio driver’s license, or an Ohio state ID. This is the most restrictive standard in the nation.
The Republican Party’s target is obvious. Studies indicate that 25% of African Americans nationwide do not have a government-issued photo ID, 18% of voters over age 65 do not have a photo ID, and 15% of voters with incomes under $35,000 lack the ID as well. Besides going after blacks, the elderly and the poor, the bill also sets its sights on college students. What do these people have in common? They tend to vote Democratic.
The Republicans refuse to discuss an amendment that would have accepted a college student ID with a photo from their own state-funded university, including The Ohio State University, one of the nation’s largest institutions of higher education.
Usually cautious critics like Dan Tokaji, Professor of Law at Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law, offered dire assessments: “’Disenfranchisement’ isn’t a word to be used lightly. But it is necessary to capture this bill’s purpose and impact. Passage of this bill would restore our state’s unfortunate reputation as our nation’s capital of vote suppression.”
The Republicans are justifying their assault on the most basic and fundamental right by invoking the myth of “voter fraud.” Not only have academics like Lori Minnite documented in detail the absence of voter fraud in U.S. politics, Tokaji addressed the issue in Ohio: “The only documented case of impersonation I could find in recent Ohio elections involved absentee voting by a mother pretending to be her daughter. This isn’t surprising. The few people who attempt voter impersonation aren’t likely to risk criminal prosecution by showing up at the polling place; they are much more likely to vote by mail. The bill won’t do anything about mail voting fraud.”
Ohio Republicans have frequently cried “voter fraud” while at the same time they’ve hired their political allies like Triad, ES&S and Premier voting systems (formerly Diebold) to secretly count Ohio’s vote with proprietary computer hardware and software.
The only way to understand House Bill 159 is to acknowledge its historical significance as the new Jim Crow, which is an even more insidious form of apartheid. This new apartheid encompasses African Americans, and also fits into a deliberate attempt by Ohio Republicans to wage class war against the Buckeye State’s most vulnerable citizens.
What the Republican Party did first with Senate Bill 5 by attacking the pensions, health care and collective bargaining rights of public employees was to establish the shock doctrine, outlined by Naomi Klein. The Ohio Republicans are using the state’s projected $8 billion debt as an excuse to destroy the political base of the Democratic Party. First they destroy the public unions and now they’re going after those constituencies who are likely to support the progressive programs of the New Deal and Great Society.
Another way to look at the recent activity in Ohio is to see how closely it parallels what the CIA calls “economic destabilization” in the Third World. This tactic throws economies into crisis in order to achieve regime change. Since Ohio is one of the nation’s most important swing states, and no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio, both Senate Bill 5 and House Bill 159 are the obvious opening shots in the Republican presidential campaign.
The Republicans are astute students of numbers and demographics. They understand that they can’t beat Barack Obama in 2012 unless they cheat by restricting voting rights. Sadly, the history of Ohio’s Democratic Party is to roll over and allow the Republicans to do whatever despicable racist and undemocratic acts they wish.
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