Videos: Prison Rally, Saturday April 7, 2012 Dowtown Columbus
“We are not only the Green Party, we are the clean party!”
Click Photo to enlarge
The right to organize unions, bargain freely, and strike when necessary is being destroyed by employers and their representatives in government. One out of ten workers involved in union organizing drives is illegally fired by employers. As union membership falls, so do the wages of all working people, union and non-union. We support the right of workers to form a union and bargain collectively.
1. The Green Party supports workplace democracy, which includes the following:
a. The right to elect representatives to sit equally with management on the Board of Directors.
b. The right to fair and democratic elections of union officers.
c. No permanent replacement of striking workers.
d. No forced overtime.
e. Flexible work schedules to deal with personal and family concerns
f. All workers, temporary or permanent, must be paid a living wage.
g. All workers must have health care coverage until the passage of universal health care.
h. All workers must have unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and access to a jobs search program when they are unemployed.
i. Require minimum pensions for all workers, fully vested and portable, that do not reduce social security benefits
j. Mediation must be the first available solution to labor–management disputes with an agreed-upon time limit.
k. Labor has the first right to buy out a company that is for sale or is going bankrupt, or being outsourced to another state or another country.
l. A law requiring employers who purchase or merge with other companies to honor all existing collective bargaining agreements and contracts.
2. We support the enactment of living wage laws that apply to all workers.
3. Agricultural and other excluded workers must be covered by federal labor laws, except where existing state laws offer more protection.
4. All workers have a right to a safe and humane working environment. Failure to apply or enforce OSHA laws puts many workers at risk.
5. We stand firmly opposed to privatization and contracting-out of public services. A government that works for us would provide critical goods and services that should not be run for profit.
Contact us: FCGreenParty@gmail.com or Facebook “Franklin County Green Party”
Bob Fitrakis
April 11, 2012
The Private Companies behind The Curtain: The Great And Powerful Advocates Of Faith-Based Electronic Voting
In this election year, the most important companies to watch are two you’ve probably never heard of — Smartech and Triad.
In the 2004 presidential election, Averbeck worked closely with the late Michael Connell, the CEO of New Media Communications. Connell was Karl Rove’s IT guru before his untimely death in a suspicious plane crash. As the FreePress.org has previously reported, then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell contracted with Averbeck to provide back-up computer services to report Ohio’s official election results.
Ohio Secretary of State’s office claimed they were unable to tabulate Ohio’s votes within the state in real time because their computers had a supposed “denial of service” attack in the wee hours of the morning after the 2004 Election Day. Vote tabulations were then shifted to the Old Pioneer Bank building in Chattanooga, Tennessee where Averbeck ran his internet service company Smartech. (See New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked)
Averbeck’s Airnet Group, Inc., doing business as Smartech, is a key company in the private, well-connected Republican world of electronic election systems. According to Airnet Group’s website it is a “…a leading of advanced Internet hosting, network and application solutions for business, delivery services via secure state-of-the-art Internet Data Centers.”
Airnet started as a staffing firm in 1994. The Chattanooga Times Free Press quotes Averbeck as saying he “…backed into political work” when he was hired to solve the Republican National Committee’s internet problems in the 2000 presidential election.
During the 2004 presidential election, Averbeck told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that his company had dedicated six web servers to handle his political business and was “negotiating for more broadband capacity to handle the growing demand for electronic political information.” In August 2004, Smartech hosted the Republican National Convention’s website as well as the Bush-Cheney campaign website – www.georgewbush.com.
The GOP paid Smartech $2.3 million in the 2004 election cycle, according to SourceWatch.
Prior to emerging as owner of the premier internet hosting company for Republicans in the United States, Averbeck had been affiliated with Pathway Press, the publishing arm of the Church of God in Cleveland, Tennessee. “Pathway provides award-winning magazines, books, and innovative discipleship curriculum materials for the Church of God and to the wider Evangelical and Pentecostal community,” according to its website.
In 2006, Smartech earned even more money, $3.3 million, from the Republican Party.
Averbeck and Connell not only teamed up in Ohio during the controversial 2004 election in Ohio, but also worked with notorious political operative Paul J. Manafort on the 2004 campaign of Viktor Yanukovych in the Ukraine. The U.S. State Department accused Yanukovych’s campaign of rigging that election. Only a massive outcry by the Ukrainian people reversed those election results.
In 2010, with Connell deceased, Averbeck and Manafort once again worked on Yanukovich’s campaign. Allegations of election rigging emerged once again. This time, despite the charges of an election fix, Yanukovich was declared the winner.
While Connell’s New Media designed the Ohio election reporting system in 2004, Smartech hosted the back-up vote tabulation. The maintenance on the electronic voting machine maintenance in Ohio was done by primarily by a third secretive right-wing company, Triad. The Rapp family owns Triad Governmental Systems, also known as Triad GSI and the following companies: Rapp Systems, Corp.; Psephos Corp.; and Odyssey Online.
Connell, Averbeck and the Rapps — or New Media, Smartech and Triad — were all heavily committed to the Right-to-Life movement and far-right Republican politics.
The Rapp family, led by patriarch Tod A. Rapp of Xenia, Ohio, emerged in the public eye in 2000 after it was revealed that Psephos Corp. designed the infamous butterfly ballot in Florida. Tod Rapp started his first company, Rap Systems Corp. in 1979. In 1983, Tod Rapp and David E. Snoddy incorporated Triad Governmental Systems, Inc. Its stated purpose was “…to develop, promote, sell, distribute, market and service computer systems, software, and hardware and to consult with federal, state and local government authorities and private industry.”
During the recount of the 2004 presidential election in Ohio, allegations were made that the Rapp family was aiding in rigging the recount for George W. Bush. Triad Governmental Systems maintained the computers in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties, mainly in southern rural counties. In the last statewide election, public records indicate that Triad now services the computers in 57 of the 88 counties. Following their notoriety in the 2004 elections, Triad Governmental Systems started marketing itself as Triad GSI.
The Rapp family is well-known in the Greene County Right to Life movement. In Triad GSI’s website, the company says “It is our desire to develop the highest quality election software and hardware systems available in the elections business.”
In September 2011, Averbeck announced he was planning to build new data centers in Ohio and California but is committed to staying in his highly secured site in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Averbeck, the Rapp family, Smartech and Triad — these are the private, far-Christian Right companies that will be counting the vote on Election Day 2012 in the Buckeye State.
—
Originally published by https://freepress.org
By Bob Fitrakis
May 25, 2009
Article below.
Video Below article!
The Republican National Committee recently dropped its resolution to brand the moderate pro-corporate Democratic Party “Socialists”. As the late, great Democratic Socialist leader Michael Harrington liked to tell it when he testified before a dying Senator Hubert Humphrey on the Humphrey-Hawkins Work Bill, that would theoretically guarantee every American a right to a job, Humphrey bluntly asked him “Is my bill socialism?” Harrington replied, “Senator, your bill’s not half that good.”
Here’s why the Democratic Party is also not half that good. Obama’s “Me too” bailout policy to the largest and most irresponsible banks and investment houses has nothing to do with socializing capital. Democratic Socialists believe in democratizing and socializing money matters. They favor credit unions and co-ops with democratically elected boards over large welfare checks to transnational corporations. In fact, there’s little difference between Obama’s approach to the big bankers and George W. Bush’s.
If the Democrats were European Democratic Socialists or Social Democrats, they would have never allowed 20% of all U.S. workers and 47 million people in the U.S. to live without health care. They would have at least called for a general strike to shut down the system until the injustice was stopped.
If you want to look at the history of democratic socialism as a barometer for that esteemed label in American history, let’s start with the legendary Eugene Victor Debs. Unlike the cowardly Democratic Party and its then-leaders – John Kerry and Hillary Clinton who both supported Bush’s illegal imperialist occupation of Iraq to remain politically viable as presidential candidates – Debs went to jail to oppose World War I.
Not only that, he ran as a Socialist Party presidential candidate from jail and received a million votes defending the First Amendment. What was Debs’ great crime? Claiming the rich have always declared war and the poor and working class have always fought and died.
Historically, U.S. Socialist leaders like Debs, Norman Thomas, and Michael Harrington were not cowards hiding behind pragmatism and popularity polls. When virtually no U.S. politicians spoke on behalf of accepting Jewish immigrants from Nazi Germany during the Great Depression, Thomas fought for their admittance.
Martin Luther King, Jr. called Norman Thomas “the bravest man” he ever met. When Thomas gave his nominal blessing for the last remains of the Socialist Party to merge into the Democratic Party in 1960, he did not surrender his conscience. For example, he called John F. Kennedy “all profile and no courage,” particularly in regards to the President’s civil rights actions. In 1965, Thomas spoke at the first major anti-Vietnam War rally in Washington D.C. and announced he had come to “cleanse” the American flag, not to burn it.
Thomas spoke out and wrote a book against the torture of pacifists during World War I, asking the key question, “Is conscience a crime?” He understood that when you strung pacifists up by their thumbs, it was torture. I’m sure if he had ever been briefed on it, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi allegedly was, he would have denounced it immediately.
Michael Harrington was the architect of the Great Society and the War on Poverty. His book, “The Other America,” stands as a lasting monument to the principles of Democratic Socialism. When both the Democrat and Republican Parties were ignoring the 22% of U.S. population living in poverty during the Eisenhower years, it was Harrington who documented their desperate plight.
Harrington later went on to champion the rights of the wretched of the Earth in his book “The Vast Majority.” He helped write the policy perspectives that tilted the European Social Democrats toward massive aid to Africa, Asia and South America.
Debs, Thomas and Harrington came to realize that democracy was more important than socialism and that decision-making from the bottom up was the key. To label the timid, triangulating Obama Democratic Party as Democratic Socialists is absurd. Not only is Obama not half as good as Debs, Thomas and Harrington, he’s not yet a pale imitation of FDR. And we can only dream that he would adopt the infrastructure programs and progressive tax policies of President Dwight Eisenhower from the 50s.
Perhaps the best we can do is raise the slogan demanding that Obama “Be like Ike.” America needs a Marshall Plan, that’s something an FDR or Ike would understand. Debs, on the other hand, would be calling for an army of a million men to arrest Bush and Cheney for crimes against humanity. And Debs would be talking about his desire to resurrect from the dead the more than a million dead Iraqis killed in a corporate capitalist war for oil.
That’s the legacy of American Democratic Socialism.
Bob Fitrakis, Ph.D., J.D., is the editor of the freepress.org and author of The Idea of Democratic Socialism in America and the Decline of the Socialist Party which is for sale at the freepress.org online store.
Dr. Robert Fitrakis
Bob’s WVKO 1580AM radio show Saturday, April 14 – 11am-12noon
Call in @ 1-614-821-1580
Talking about the OSU project on the near east side including Poindexter Village with Deborah Steele of Jobs with Justice and others.
Also:
Listen and call in Wednesdays
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
All shows rebroadcast on WCRSFM community radio 98.3/102.1 Wednesdays at 8pm
———————————–
Also you can find podcasts on WCRSFM from former shows @ :
http://www.wcrsfm.org/node/897
or from a site search:
http://wcrsfm.org/search/node/Fitrakis
April 5, 2012
Contact: Suzanne Patzer, media contact,
374-2448, fitrakisforcongress@gmail.com
Green Party Congressional candidate Bob Fitrakis
calls for end to the death penalty
In response to U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost’s ruling that allows Ohio to resume the death penalty, Green Party Congressional candidate Bob Fitrakis (3rd district) called for the abolition of the death penalty in the United States. He echoed the Green Party’s official position: “We oppose the death penalty. Capital punishment is ineffective, racially biased and leads to errors which are unacceptable.”
“There is nothing the state of Ohio can do to fix its barbaric and broken death penalty process. I agree with the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Blackmun, ‘The process is so fatally flawed that the only solution lies in abolishing capital punishment,’” said Fitrakis.
“The European Union and virtually all western industrialized democracies have outlawed the death penalty, even the former Soviet Union, Russia, has banned it. Out of the nearly 200 nations of the world, only 20 allow their government to kill people. The United States is in the top five, with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq,” Fitrakis stated.
In his book The Fitrakis Files: Free Byrd and Other Cries for Justice, Fitrakis documented the flaws of Ohio’s death penalty, the racist and classist nature of its application, as well as other brutalities in our state’s prison industrial complex. “Approximately 25% of all the death row inmates in Ohio are sentenced in Hamilton County, which has a corrupt system that has sent many people to death not on factual evidence, but on the words of snitches,” Fitrakis said. In 1992, Fitrakis served as presidential candidate Jerry Brown’s spokesperson at the Democratic Party Platform Hearings and at the Democratic National convention where he introduced a plank seeking to abolish the death penalty.
Fitrakis will speak this Saturday, April 7 at a rally against the prison industrial complex and the death penalty. The rally will begin at 1pm at the Ohio Statehouse, Broad and High Streets. Participants plan to march west on Broad Street to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.
Double click image Below to go full screen
http://www.gp.org/tenkey.shtml
Ten Key Values of the Green Party
Originally ratified at the Green Party Convention in Denver, CO, June 2000.
TKV Flyer w/Spanish translation (PDF)
Democracy is Coming (to the USA) Brochure (PDF)
1. GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY
Every human being deserves a say in the decisions that affect their lives and not be subject to the will of another. Therefore, we will work to increase public participation at every level of government and to ensure that our public representatives are fully accountable to the people who elect them. We will also work to create new types of political organizations which expand the process of participatory democracy by directly including citizens in the decision-making process.
2. SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
All persons should have the rights and opportunity to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment. We must consciously confront in ourselves, our organizations, and society at large, barriers such as racism and class oppression, sexism and homophobia, ageism and disability, which act to deny fair treatment and equal justice under the law.
3. ECOLOGICAL WISDOM
Human societies must operate with the understanding that we are part of nature, not separate from nature. We must maintain an ecological balance and live within the ecological and resource limits of our communities and our planet. We support a sustainable society which utilizes resources in such a way that future generations will benefit and not suffer from the practices of our generation. To this end we must practice agriculture which replenishes the soil; move to an energy efficient economy; and live in ways that respect the integrity of natural systems.
4. NON-VIOLENCE
It is essential that we develop effective alternatives to society’s current patterns of violence. We will work to demilitarize, and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, without being naive about the intentions of other governments. We recognize the need for self-defense and the defense of others who are in helpless situations. We promote non-violent methods to oppose practices and policies with which we disagree, and will guide our actions toward lasting personal, community and global peace.
5. DECENTRALIZATION
Centralization of wealth and power contributes to social and economic injustice, environmental destruction, and militarization. Therefore, we support a restructuring of social, political and economic institutions away from a system which is controlled by and mostly benefits the powerful few, to a democratic, less bureaucratic system. Decision-making should, as much as possible, remain at the individual and local level, while assuring that civil rights are protected for all citizens.
6. COMMUNITY-BASED ECONOMICS AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE
We recognize it is essential to create a vibrant and sustainable economic system, one that can create jobs and provide a decent standard of living for all people while maintaining a healthy ecological balance. A successful economic system will offer meaningful work with dignity, while paying a “living wage” which reflects the real value of a person’s work.
Local communities must look to economic development that assures protection of the environment and workers’ rights; broad citizen participation in planning; and enhancement of our “quality of life.” We support independently owned and operated companies which are socially responsible, as well as co-operatives and public enterprises that distribute resources and control to more people through democratic participation.
7. FEMINISM AND GENDER EQUITY
We have inherited a social system based on male domination of politics and economics. We call for the replacement of the cultural ethics of domination and control with more cooperative ways of interacting that respect differences of opinion and gender. Human values such as equity between the sexes, interpersonal responsibility, and honesty must be developed with moral conscience. We should remember that the process that determines our decisions and actions is just as important as achieving the outcome we want.
8. RESPECT FOR DIVERSITY
We believe it is important to value cultural, ethnic, racial, sexual, religious and spiritual diversity, and to promote the development of respectful relationships across these lines.
We believe that the many diverse elements of society should be reflected in our organizations and decision-making bodies, and we support the leadership of people who have been traditionally closed out of leadership roles. We acknowledge and encourage respect for other life forms than our own and the preservation of biodiversity.
9. PERSONAL AND GLOBAL RESPONSIBILITY
We encourage individuals to act to improve their personal well-being and, at the same time, to enhance ecological balance and social harmony. We seek to join with people and organizations around the world to foster peace, economic justice, and the health of the planet.
10. FUTURE FOCUS AND SUSTAINABILITY
Our actions and policies should be motivated by long-term goals. We seek to protect valuable natural resources, safely disposing of or “unmaking” all waste we create, while developing a sustainable economics that does not depend on continual expansion for survival. We must counterbalance the drive for short-term profits by assuring that economic development, new technologies, and fiscal policies are responsible to future generations who will inherit the results of our actions.
Ten Key Values from other state and local Greens.
There is no authoritative version of the Ten Key Values of the Greens. The Ten Key Values are guiding principles that are adapted and defined to fit each state and local chapter.