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Blackwell And The New Kleptocracy

Let a thousand lawsuits bloom! The coalition of civil rights groups that sued the state of Ohio and Blackwell, is to be congratulated. Voting should be a guaranteed constitutional right, like free speech. Voting should be standardized, universal and easy.

What the Republican Party is doing, all too often with spineless Democrat acquiescence, is shrinking the electorate while their corporatist Christo-fascist politics dedicated to war and massive war profiteering are alienating the majority of Americans. Blackwell’s latest anti-democratic directive, requiring each person who registers voters to individually return the form, is ludicrous – just like his directive for 80 bond un-waxed requirement for voter registration forms in 2004.

In a real democratic country, Blackwell would be serving time in jail for violating constitutional rights, not running as the gubernatorial candidate of a major party. Blackwell’s policies led to mass purging of voters in the 2004 election with nearly 25% of all the voters purged in the city of Cleveland. It led to the unnecessary and widespread use of provisional ballots. While Blackwell likes to point out there were a high rate of provisional ballots approved, that’s because in Republican-dominated counties the boards of elections never enforced his absurd rule that if you were a registered voter voting in the wrong precinct, but the right county, your vote wouldn’t be counted from the county level to the presidency.

Blackwell claims he’s not repressing “African American” votes although, despite being black, he loses the African American vote by 20% to Democratic opponents. This is true. Blackwell represses not only black voters, but the elderly, poor and college students – that is, all the traditional Democratic voting blocks and the core of liberal and progressive voters in Ohio.

There are many other areas that Blackwell should be sued over, but more than anything, there should be a criminal investigation on how he became a multi-millionaire while on the public payroll and the obvious trail on the 2004 stolen election. Instead of rewarding him for helping Bush (and now himself) steal elections, he should be punished. Blackwell symbolizing the death of democracy and the rise of a new kleptocracy – rule by thieves.

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Blackwell Chooses A Flake

What do we make of the aptly named Rev. Floyd Flake, president of Wilberforce University, signing on as Ken Blackwell’s Co-Chair? First, the press release is one of the weirdest in gubernatorial history. Blackwell, a former Democrat, calls the former Democratic Congressman Flake an educator, a statesman and a national leader – ironically, all the things that Blackwell is not. Flake says that “Ken Blackwell’s the leader Ohio needs right now.” Well, I suppose with George Wallace and Mussolini dead, there’s a dearth of theocratic neo-fascist ultra-nationalists who repress minority votes, so why not elect Blackwell?

Flake goes on the say that Blackwell understands the challenges faced by institutions of higher education. Indeed, Blackwell’s higher education plan and his economic policies would make it even more challenging as he cuts aid to higher education. It’s not often you’ll see a reverend flat-out lying, but what else can you make out of the bizarre statement that “Ken Blackwell’s solid, proven leadership will get Ohio cities back on track”? I guess, if the track is hunger, homelessness, and catering to rich white suburbanites, Blackwell’s capable of that track. Kind of a retro-white-is-right track.

Blackwell and Flake are both members of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), a group of black self-proclaimed leaders who are funded primarily by white charities. This is an old tactic. W’s daddy, former CIA Director George Herbert Walker Bush, hated the civil rights movement and was elected as an anti-civil rights Congressman in 1966. But, after white supremacy and racism were no longer in vogue in the 70s, Bush the Elder embraced the United Negro College Fund and pushed wealthy white donors in that direction.

Already Black activists have called for a boycott of Wilberforce and the resignation of Flake. Students at Wilberforce waited for hours to vote in the 2004 election at the historically black college. Blacks waited 4-7 hours to vote in Franklin County during the 2004 due to the directives of Blackwell.

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How We Got On The Ballot

Here’s a breakdown from the Secretary of State regarding the filing of the Fitrakis/Rios gubernatorial slate. We filed 1,199 petitions representing 81 of Ohio’s 88 counties. In Franklin County alone, my home, we filed 7,124 signatures. We also filed 1,283 in the Cleveland area (Cuyahoga County) and 757 signatures in the Cincinnati area (Hamilton County). We filed 322 in the Toledo area (Lucas County), Anita Rios’ home, and 163 in the Akron area (Summit County). We also filed 102 in Lorain County and 1071 in the Dayton area (Montgomery County). We did well in the college towns of Athens (Ohio U) with 111 and 244 in Greene County where Antioch College is in Yellow Springs. Major party candidates only have to file 1,000 signatures, but the bipartisan bluster of two effete corporate lapdog parties are in agreement that independents and third party candidates should have to file 5,000 valid signatures.

Overall, we filed 12,295 signatures and the Secretary of State approved 7,853. What these numbers show is that the Green Party has a massive and active grassroots network throughout the state of Ohio, due in no small part to the fact that they stood up for the rights of the voters when the Democratic Party faded away following the 2004 election. The Greens funded and initiated the recount, and my running mate for Lieutenant Governor, Anita Rios, was a plaintiff in many voting rights actions before the court.

Tim Kettler, Green Party candidate for Secretary of State also gained ballot status this week. Kettler was instrumental in forcing Coshocton County to recount all its ballots by hand in 2004, the only county in the state of Ohio to do so.

Once again I want to thank all my signature gatherers and those who signed. We look forward to building a real party of the people. I know some of you are concerned about the Greens playing a spoiler role, so I intend to ask Ted Strickland to drop out of the race, as suggested by blogger Andrew Warner, so a real progressive can run against Blackwell. But here’s another idea: why don’t all the candidates – Democratic, Republican, Green and Libertarian – debate openly in the series of public town hall meetings and let the people decide. Isn’t that what democracy is all about?

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J. Kenneth Blackwell – The J. Is For Jim Crow

Unlike most western democracies, the United States only became a democracy some 40 years ago with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Our country hired federal registrars, who were allowed to pack sidearms to break the tyranny of racist white Dixiecrats.

Now we have the new Jim Crow. You get a black man to do what Bull Connor and George Wallace did forty years ago. J. Kenneth is shrinking the electorate. He’s targeting minority and poor voters. He’s making it a crime to register people to vote. He’s doing the bidding of objectively racist white politicians like Republican Senator Jeff Jacobson of Vandalia, Ohio. The Secretary of State has come up with his interpretation of new registration rules. If you register new voters, you must deliver each voter’s new registration form in person within ten days to the Board of Elections in each person’s county of residence or face fifth degree felony charges.

This is the same Blackwell who threw out 356 votes in Franklin County because voters were in the right precinct, but pollworkers gave them a provisional ballot. This is the same hater of poor and minorities and ass-kisser to the rich, who returned voters’ registration forms because they weren’t on 80-lb. unwaxed white paper. This is J. Kenneth Blackwell, a black face on a red neck.

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Hacking The Vote In Miami County

Well, we finally got to Miami County in Ohio this week to check those strange numbers, as Richard Hayes Phillips wrote, there’s no way there was “a 98.55% turnout in Concord South West precinct or anywhere else in Ohio.  Nor was there a 94.27% turnout in Concord South precinct.”

Hacking The Vote In Miami County

Once again, Phillips and the Free Press are correct. I testified before U.S. Rep. John Conyers’ hearing and brought up Miami County, saying that the voter turnout was implausible. Really, it wasn’t overly hard to figure out.

At the Miami County Board of Elections, while Phillips began to count ballots and audit pollbooks in a moldly warehouse, I was given “revised” internal numbers from Steve Quillen, the Director of the BOE, that now has voter turnout in Concord Southwest at 79%.

Hence, the 98.55% that Christopher Hitchens called “Saddam Hussein-type turnout” in Vanity Fair’s “Ohio’s Odd Numbers,” proved to be an equally fraudulent number in Ohio. It makes you wonder why we’re occupying Iraq to bring democracy when we could have those troops in Miami, Warren, Clermont and Butler counties brining democracy to southwest Ohio.  

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Where Do You Hide With A Stolen Election, Stolen Planet

Having just watched the premier of Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” I couldn’t help but see the parallels between the global warming issue and the 2004 stolen presidential election. Gore related his attempts over the years to get Congress, the media and the public to believe that global warming is a crisis, only to be derided and discredited. Those of us who expose stolen elections often receive the same reaction – mostly from the media.

I had the privilege of seeing Vice President Gore’s presentation live at the Ohio State University on April 16, 2004. So it was no surprise when I heard theatergoers gasp as Gore presented the scientific evidence for global warming. The charts, the graphs, the pictures – all make a clear and convincing case.

My forthcoming book, with co-editors Harvey Wasserman and Steve Rosenfeld entitled What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election (New Press), attempts to put the issue of Ohio’s 2004 election in a similar light.

Mark Crispin Miller recently wrote in his open letter entitled “Some Might Call it Treason,” to Farhad Manjoo, an election theft “denialist” on salon.com, that when “extremely bright” people refuse to consider the possibility of a stolen election, it is often the result of “a subtler kind of incapacity: a refusal and/or inability to face a deeply terrifying truth.” Read more

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Hackwell Admits Crimes

So, Ken Hackwell is taking credit for the high voter turnout in the 2004 presidential election in Ohio. Today’s Columbus Dispatch reported that the Hackwell campaign states “The facts of the record show that Secretary Blackwell’s leadership resulted in record-setting voter turnout and voter registration drives in which one million more Ohioans gained the opportunity to vote.” It’s about time that he fessed up and took credit for his crimes. I have no doubt that Hackwell was responsible for the 131% voter turnout in Clyde, Ohio, initially reported. Also, I think he was behind the 124% and 120% turnout in two precinct in Perry County. And surely, a man of Hackwell’s religious faith was responsible for the glorious miracle of the loaves and fishes precinct in Gahanna Ward 1B, where 638 people voted, and 4258 votes were delivered unto the prodigal son, George W. Bush. And he’s no doubt responsible for that 98.55% turnout in that one precinct in Miami County. Indeed, wherever far-right white evangelicals surge to the polls, unseen to naked eye, at the last second, Hackwell should rightfully claim that cybervote.

Likewise, he should admit to massively repressing the votes of the least of our brethren, in Cleveland and other urban centers. Hackwell did everything he could, as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Committee to make sure that black and poor voters were disenfranchised. Hackwell likes to compare himself to Gandhi and King – what he forgets is that these two giants Enfranchised people, they did not disenfranchise people.

Below is a piece I wrote right after the election that reflected his attack on black voters in Ohio’s inner cities. Hackwell’s “let every white Republican to vote twice campaign” should be placed alongside of Hackwell’s Jim Crow thuggery. Fewer people voted in the city of Cleveland in 2004 than in 2000, despite the “record turnout.” Read more

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The Ohio Left, Out Of The Gubenatorial Debate

So Hackwell and Strickland plan a series of five debates. As always, they don’t invite the other parties, in this case the Libertarians and the Green candidate for governor (me). I suspect that the debates will span the political spectrum from A to B. Strickland will increasingly head to the center right as news articles indicate that he’s now picking up Republican money from lobbyists and corporate interests who see him ahead in the polls and want to invest in the next governor. As Strickland takes this Republican-tainted corporate money, he’s essentially to preserve the “pay-to-play” culture of corruption in Ohio, where donations to the governor are made in expectation of state government contracts being steered back to the firms that donate or to the interests represented by the lobbyists.

Ohio should become a clean money state – with matching funds to candidates who qualify on the ballot. Political candidates should be beholden to the people, not to the wealthiest 1% who give 90% of the money to the politicians. In the long run, this will save the state billions of dollars. Hopefully, I can talk the Libertarian candidate into joining me in crashing the planned Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dumb debates. You know my bias, Hackwell has to be Tweedle-dumb.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t count Hackwell out. As long as he plans to count the votes, I’m sure he already has November’s election results pre-programmed. So the Democrats were right recently in calling on Hackwell to step aside. Hackwell plans to do everything in his power to shrink the Ohio electorate. That’s his only way to win. So, we might expect Hackwell to throw red meat to his far-right-wing Christo-fascist and theocratic debate, during the debate, and drag Strickland to the right. Real issues should be discussed in Ohio, from renewable energy to improving Ohio’s educational system and guaranteeing universal health care for all citizens. Strickland and Hackwell won’t do that. Only by including all candidates will a real democratic debate ensue.

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Who The Hell Is Farhad Manjoo?

Here’s today’s assignment: who the hell is Farhad Manjoo? That’s right, bloggers. I spent a lot of time trying to find his credentials online. I found he was born in 1978 and graduated in 2000 from Cornell, where he wrote for his college newspaper. He also wrote for Wired News and now salon.com. So, the question becomes – why would a 20-something with apparently no advanced degrees in social science or political science be taken seriously by the mainstream corporate press?

Manjoo is much like the Tobacco Institute or the people they used to send around to show us film strips about “Readi Kilowatt” back during the Cold War. They are individuals who have developed a cottage industry as debunkers and denialists. And in a society famed for Know Nothings an anti-intellectualism, of course an opportunist like Manjoo would come forward.

Award-winning journalists are ignored or called conspiracy theorists. Ph.D.s are denounced by the droves. Sound familiar? Yes, that’s the sound of jackboots marching. The attack on the credentialed academy and the deference to the fly-by-night propagandist is a typical authoritarian model. What next? The youth corps tossing the truly credentialed down the stairs and out the windows at the colleges?

Why is Manjoo important? Because he serves the interests of W. Bush and Karl Rove and those who have perfected the art of “benign operations.” Why not go with a real expert – Kevin Phillips, the architect of the modern Republican Party, Nixon’s key strategist and creator of the “southern strategy.” He calls the Bush family “four generations of war profiteers” and stated that the Bush family couldn’t hold an election without a CIA manual.

We should think of Manjoo much like we think of Holocaust deniers. If you can find any REAL credentials he has, please let me know and I’ll post them.

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Reading Hallett And Why The Big D Always Defends The Republicans

Let’s begin with Hallett’s bizarre and disingenuous title to his July 11 op-ed in Columbus’ daily monopoly and Republican mouthpiece rag, the Dispatch. The last time the Dispatch endorsed a Democrat for President it was Wilson in 1916 and the pro-German Wolfe family liked his slogan: He kept us out of war. Hallett’s headline reads: “Democrats keep leveling charges at Blackwell they can’t back up.” The charges leveled against Blackwell prior to Election Day 2004 were primarily leveled by independent and nonpartisan grassroots voting rights activists, Greens and Libertarians. The Dems have generally been too cowardly to take on J. Kenneth, the good buddy of the Bush crime family.

Hallett says that “…Kerry told the Dispatch just a month ago that he did not lose the election because of fraud.” This is strawman argument 101. Bobby Kennedy, Jr. is on the record saying Kerry agrees with his analysis of the election in Ohio. Kennedy attributes the loss to both voter suppression and fraud. Hallett lost his integrity to fraud. In this article, he’s arguing against Kennedy’s article in Rolling Stone by using a Kerry quote that is only part of the story.

Read more

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