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This show was recorded 10-31-2006.

11:00 AM
Green Party candidate Bob Fitrakis. 

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Moderator

Jon Craig at the Cincinnati Enquirer is doing a great job writing about politics. They had the full Robert J. Kennedy Rolling Stone piece on their blog: http://frontier.cincinnati.com/blogs/gov/

The Enquirer plans to ask very direct questions to all the gubernatorial candidates and they included me as an independent. I plan to give them very direct answers. Here are the first two questions they posed and my answers:

Question: On May 15, President Bush announced a National Guard mobilization in which more than 150,000 troops could be sent to border states to help stem the flow of illegal immigrants. Gov. Bob Taft has said he would support Bush by sending troops from Ohio.

As governor, would you support sending Ohio National Guard troops to border states?

Bob: No

Question: In one to three sentences, feel free to explain why or why not.

Bob: This is the job of the border patrol. Moreover, it’s a pathetic symbolic action which reeks of militarizing our border with a friendly ally. The problem is not to patrol our border with an armed National Guard, but to take a look at the minimum wage in Mexico and other conditions that are driving desperate workers into the United States.

Question: House Bill 228 would make it a felony to carry out abortions in Ohio or transport a woman across state lines to have one. Would you sign this abortion bill?

Bob Fitrakis: Never.

Question: Explain why or why not in one to three sentences.

Bob Fitrakis: I believe that Roe v. Wade is good law and that the decision is between a woman and her God, not the self-proclaimed God squad — I would no more sign this bill than I would sign one on witch burning. To criminalize transporting a woman across state lines for an abortion will make Ohio the laughingstock of the midwest. I would do everything possible to make sure no woman has to terminate a pregnancy because of economic circumstances and do everything I can to ensure day care and preschool for all children.

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

I’ve always found it ironic that we would be building a large fence to prevent Mexicans from coming into Los Angeles, San Antonio and the state of New Mexico. When I think of immigration, I start with the fact that the American Southwest is the former northern half of Mexico, won through the Mexican War and the rebellions in Texas and California.

We’ve always had nativist reactions to the latest wave of immigration. The only non-immigrants I know are my brothers and sisters at the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio. Having been raised in Detroit, I got used to carloads of illegal Canadians coming in to take high-paying jobs in the city. Just as they got used to me crossing the border to take advantage of cheap currency and free health care at malls in Windsor.

If we really wanted to stop illegal immigration, we should start at the root of the problem – the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allows U.S. corporations to massively exploit the people of Mexico with low wages and toxic pollution. I believe in true international unions that negotiate a fair and livable wage for all people in North America. I favor a continental minimum wage and a generous guest worker program that allows labor to flow in a free and legal way across what are often becoming meaningless borders in a globalized economy.

By now, most are aware that the Republican Party deliberately gay-baited in the key swing states during the 2004 election. States like Ohio, where gay marriage was already illegal under state statute, adopted an absurd and repressive constitutional amendment outlawing all forms of domestic partnership. The issue passed overwhelmingly, particularly in Ohio’s rural counties — those that were hard hit by the economic downturn — where there’s no openly gay people or gay institutions.

This is the nature of vicious Republican wedge issues. It is basic divide and conquer, where people are so busy focusing on an emotional non-issue, you can impose massive economic hardship on them.

Following the 2004 election, commentators began to predict that “immigration” would be the divide and conquer issue during the 2006 congressional midterm elections. So, right on cue and as predicted, the country is busily debating immigration while Bush plots to attack Iran and make his cronies richer by looting the U.S. Treasury. While people worry about immigrants, they forget the fact that their President is a war criminal who got us into Iraq by openly lying and who committed a felony by ordering the leak of the name of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Read more