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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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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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Public Functions in Private Spaces

Yesterday, when the Fitrakis/Rios for Ohio Governor and Lieutenant Governor campaign turned in our final tally of 10,960 signatures, we were told by one of Secretary of State J. Kenneth Hackwell’s employees that we probably won’t be approved for the ballot until late June, or early July, hence impairing our ability (and that of other third parties) to raise money as ballot-approved candidates for the fall 2006 election. Because a few members of the entourage took photos outside the Borden Building, the privately-owned building housing the secretary of state’s office, building security pushed a camera into the face of one of the photographers and called the police on us.

This is how the game works. Instead of building a state building, which would belong to the people and which could be sold during hard times as an asset, Hackwell pays a ton of our tax money to the private owners of the Borden Building. That way, Hackwell and his staff can play “good cop” while the private security company harasses his political opponents. Recall that Hackwell had former U.S. Congressman Dan Hamburg arrested in December 2004 while he sat at a table at the café in the Borden Building. Also, Hackwell had private security forces harass black activist Judith Powell when she went to his office with WVKO 1580AM Radio talk show host Charles Traylor to talk about voting irregularities.

The only thing the Democrats and Republicans can agree upon is that it is OK to harass.

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10,960 Signatures

Last night, we were up counting and sorting our petitions to qualify the first Green-endorsed ticket for governor and lieutenant governor in Ohio history. As I write this morning at a little after 8am, Anita Rios and I have 10,960 signatures. 5,000 are required. Tim Kettler, the Green candidate for secretary of state, who worked so diligently on the recount in Coshocton County, phoned early to tell me he had over 9,000 signatures and will file with me as well, at 1pm today at J. Kenneth Hackwell’s office.

So, if you’re not doing anything at 1pm today, join us at the Borden building at the corner of 4th and Broad in downtown Columbus and help us make history. A press conference will follow immediately after the filing of petitions at the secretary of state’s office in the Borden building.

Under Ohio law, which is, like many Ohio laws, unfair and ludicrous, the Democrats and Republicans running for statewide office only had to get 1,000 signatures to get on the ballot, while “other party candidates” have to get five times as many signatures. And, under Ohio law, the Democrats and Republicans at the county Boards of Elections get to jointly verify our signatures without our presence. In Ohio, we have a two-party system, only slightly better than a dictatorship. And for every dollar the wealthy send the Republicans, they flip a 50-cent piece to the Democrats. Because they’re beholden to the same corporate money and studies indicate 1 percent of the population gives 90 percent of the money to political candidates, there’s very little real policy debate in Ohio, or the nation in general. Read more

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More Voting Machine Problems

The debate over e-voting rages on. In Ohio’s Franklin County, the Board of Elections had a 4-page insert placed in the Daily Monopoly (The Columbus Dispatch) explaining the new voting machines that will be in place for our May 2 primary. Some are excited that the machines aren’t Diebold – Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder could hardly  purchase Diebold machines after being suspended without pay for taking a $10,000 check/bribe from Bush and Hackwell’s favorite voting vendor – but Election Systems & Software (ES&S) has clear Republican ties through Sen. Chuck Hagel’s ownership interest in the company. 

While the ES&S machines sound wonderful in the Dispatch ad, when BOE employee Howard Heard first presented the machine to the Commissioners for demonstration, it didn’t work and had to be brought back for a second presentation.

Also, voting rights activist John Gideon has pointed out problems with ES&S optical scan machines in Ohio’s Summit County. ES&S admitted to making mistakes with the memory card and had to replace 70% of the instrument that records the vote.  So the memory card is one area voters should pay attention to.

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Ferris is Fraud

It looks like American Blackout II. In the award-winning documentary film “American Blackout,” Ian Inanda chronicles how Republicans crossed over in the primary to beat one of America’s most progressive Congressional representatives, Cynthia McKinney. Now, Barbara Anne Ferris, a 52-year-old “Democrat,” is being endorsed by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, over incumbent Dennis Kucinich. When I spoke to Ferris on Sunday, I was dressed in a golf shirt and tan dress slacks to gather signatures at the Earthfest at the Cleveland Zoo. I asked her if she was a Democrat. She said, “You have to be one in Cleveland to win” and pointed out that a lot of Republicans were supporting her. Her website recently directed Republicans to ask for a Democratic ballot to defeat Kucinich.

Now, what are Kucinich’s great sins? According to the Plain Dealer, it is the fact that he “cobbled together a creaky, left-slanted platform” in the presidential primary. The Plain Squealer also noted, that “His legislative initiatives, whether for universal health care or his long-talked-of federal Department of Peace, are most informed by his place well to the left of all of Ohio’s other representatives.”

Thus, the Republican-owned Plain Dealer, the Republican Party, and a Republican candidate in Democratic trappings are conspiring to oust the populist Kucinich, whose only sin is trying to bring health care to 44 million Americans – the type of universal health care available in every other democracy.

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Hackwell. Hypocrite.

Finally, someone used the “H” word against J. Kenneth Hackwell. Jim Petro decided to state the obvious: that Hackwell is a blatant amoral hypocrite. If you haven’t seen Petro’s new commercial yet, you should catch it on the web. Hackwell’s used to going unchallenged: when he steals elections; disenfranchises voters; returns their voter registrations because they aren’t on 80-bond unwaxed white paper. Indeed, he quotes Martin Luther King, Jr. in inverse proportion to how many minority and poor votes he steals and suppresses.

Petro, his Republican primary challenger, actually pointed out that it’s hypocritical to claim that you’re right-to-life while investing in a pharmaceutical company that manufactures a morning-after pill. That it’s hypocritical to claim you’re appalled by gambling and then you’re shocked to find you have stock in the company that makes the slot machines for the industry.

Politics is getting exciting in the Buckeye State as this bare-knuckled brawl in the Republican primary exposes the utter bankruptcy of the Republican front-runner. Of course, it’s still impossible to believe Hackwell will lose the election to Petro when Blackwell will count and certify the vote. The fact that this would not be allowed in any other Democracy has eluded the corporate mainstream media in Ohio.

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Earth Day Musings

Today I spent seven hours at the Cleveland Zoo for an Earth Day event. Not only did we collect hundreds of signatures, but we got some of the most politically educated and active people in the state of Ohio.

I am more convinced than ever that we are at a tipping point in Ohio and the United States. People see clearly that we need to develop alternative energy and build urban transit systems and light rail throughout our great state. There are plenty of solutions out there to make this a green and sustainable state. Our problem isn’t with our people. It’s with two decrepit and corrupt political parties that are wedded to the status quo and to the special interests that pollute and poison our planet.

I was asked whether I believed a two-party system can work. Generally, I believe no. We need to hear from many alternative parties and voices on the ballot. But, perhaps if those two parties were the Greens and Libertarians, we’d have a much better chance than the same old ruthless Republicans and spineless Democrats.

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