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2012 Third Congressional District Democratic Candidates Political Debate

You are invited to attend the –

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

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Bob Fitrakis For Ohio U.S. Representative District 3 Green Party

Bob Fitrakis

 

Office sought: U.S. Representative District 3

Ohio Green Party Co-Chair Bob Fitrakis successfully filed petitions to be placed on the ballot in the new Franklin County 3rd Congressional district. Fitrakis, a lifelong educator is an educator of political science at Columbus State Community College and an attorney, who represented the Green Party in its attempt to place the Green Party officially on the ballot in 2008.

Fitrakis plans to advocate for:

Full employment through a Green Jobs Initiative that creates manufacturing jobs in Ohio in renewable energy technology

Health Care:

Single-payer health care.

Voting:

Constitutional amendment to make voting a universal Constitutional right. He will call for Congress to overturn Citizens United, stating that money is not speech and corporations are not people.

Occupy:

Fitrakis also supports the Occupy movement and pledges that his policies will expose the power and privileges of the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

Energy:

As a candidate, Fitrakis is committed to closing down Ohio’s nuclear plants and halting all fracking practices in the United States.

Bob Fitrakis Biography:

Bob Fitrakis is the co-chair of the Ohio Green Party and ran for governor of Ohio for the Green Party in 2006.

Professor:

He works as a Political Science Professor in the Social Sciences department at Columbus State Community College, where he won the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow to the Michigan State legislature.

Journalist:

He is the Editor of the Free Press and founder of freepress.org. He has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Wayne State University and a J.D. from The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. He co-authored “What Happened in Ohio? A documentary record of theft and fraud in the 2004 election” (New Press) and has authored or co-authored eleven other books. Fitrakis has won eleven investigative journalism awards from the Cleveland Press Club, Project Censored, and the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists, among others. He appears in eleven documentary films. He was a columnist and investigative reporter for Columbus Alive for seven years.

Broadcaster:

He currently hosts radio talk shows on Talktainmentradio.com internet radio on Wednesdays from 7-8pm and WCRS 98.3/102.1 community radio in Columbus.

Find us on:

Facebook at Fitrakis for Congress

or email us at fitrakisforcongress@gmail.org

WVKO 1580am “Fight Back” radio show 11am-12noon Saturdays – call in at 614-821-1580

              Campaign Facebook website:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fitrakis-For-Congress/284399558288330

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Two important events Tuesday February 22

Ohio Rally Against Senate Bill 5

Tuesday, February 22, 2011, starting at 1:00 p.m. and continuing into the evening there will be a massive rally at the Statehouse to oppose Senate Bill 5. Members and supporters are requested to stop by the OEA Building at 225 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio 43215 on Tuesday starting at 12:00 noon to pick up signs, updated talking points and instructions before heading over to the Statehouse. The rally is expected to gear up at 1pm. Click here to RSVP for this event!

The Senate Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee considering SB 5 just published the hearing schedule, which will start at 4pm. In order to most fully organize and mobilize in opposition to this bill, we have decided, along with our community and labor coalition partners, to stage this rally starting at 1pm and running into Tuesday night. If you are unable to come during the day Tuesday, please plan to come to Columbus after school on Tuesday, stopping by the OEA first and then on to the Statehouse. This is an all-hands-on-deck week coming up, so please talk with your colleagues, neighbors and friends and bring them with you on Tuesday!

Please begin sharing this information and helping our members organize a tremendous turnout on Tuesday. While we do not know when the hearing will end, we do expect significant media attention all day Tuesday and into the evening. We need to demonstrate that all of Ohio is opposed to this bill. RSVP’s are helpful, but not required. We encourage you to continue to make your voice heard and contact your legislators about your opposition to Senate Bill 5.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2011
7:30PM

Free Press Free Film Night

THE POLITICAL PROSECUTIONS OF KARL ROVE
by Project Save Justice

In the hands of renowned filmmaker John McTiernan, director of the Hollywood blockbusters, Predator, The Hunt for Red October, and the Die Hard trilogy, The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove offers a documented record of the pervasive misuse of the Justice Department. Sadly, as the film documents, Democrats were targeted at all levels of the system and in many states across the country. The film reveals startling evidence supporting the use of the U.S. Department of Justice to create a permanent Republican majority. In fact, statistics show that in the 15 months leading up to the 2008 general election, indictments of elected Democrats increased by nearly 50%. The soul-stirring documentary offers convincing evidence to indicate that a vigorous and comprehensive strategy was pursued toattack lower levels of the Democratic Party designed to completely uproot and undermine any challenges to Republican political power.

Brought to you by the Free Press, the Drexel Theater, and the Central Ohio Green Education Fund.
Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St. Bexley
truth@freepress.org
253-2571

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Giuliani, Ground Zero And The New Gott Mit Uns Movement

Bob Fitrakis
September 13, 2010

It’s happening here: mindless nationalism coupled with the acceptable of cold-hearted mass murder. Former mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani’s appearance on Meet the Press underscores the rise of the new American jackboot movement.

Giuliani emerged as an apologist for forces in America that seek the clash of cultures, many driven by a longing for Armageddon and a Christian fundamentalist notion of the rapture. This idea of salvation through apocalypse echoes the Nazi belief that God was on their side during the World War II in the holocaust against perceived lesser people.

Giuliani shamelessly attacked Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for wanting to build an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan. This makes no sense. Should we fight against building Christian community centers in Oklahoma City that are within a few blocks of the old federal building? After all, Tim McVeigh was a member of the racist and radical Christian Identity sect. Shouldn’t we suspect all Christians of being terrorists and murderers because McVeigh was a Christian?

There’s the good Imam and the bad Imam, Giuliani told David Gregory. Here’s the case for Rauf being the “bad” Imam: “..there’s the bad imam who said America is an accessory to September 11.” This is worth discussing openly. The United States government helped create al Qaeda in its battle against the Soviet Union. Our nation worked closely with the Saudis to finance and train this terrorist network. We also incubated the Taliban in the madressas of Pakistan. Several of the hijackers learned how to fly in the U.S. in Oklahoma, Florida, and New York. Sure, Presidents Reagan and Bush were calling them “freedom fighters,” but they were always terrorist thugs. So, an argument that our government was an accessory is more than plausible.

Giuliani’s next accusation was that the Imam is “bad” because he said that “America has more Muslim blood on its hands than vice versa.” We should not attack the Imam because he knows basic math and refuses to tell a convenient lie. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War alone, half a million Iraqi children died as a result of our illegal and inhumane bombing of the Iraq infrastructure. When asked by CBS’ Lesley Stahl on 6o Minutes asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright “We have heard that half a million children have died [as a result of sanctions]. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Albright replied: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

After the first 3½ years of the Iraq War, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reported that 654,965 Iraqis as a direct result of the U.S. invasion. The Hopkins study correctly used a “but for…” analysis, a common U.S. legal analysis. That is, had the U.S. not invaded Iraq, dismantled their police and army, and shocked and awed their people and infrastructure with massive bombings, how many more people would be alive today based on the expected death rates in the country. The U.S. military only likes to count the casualties we directly kill, not the ones who die as result of the ill-planned and haphazard invasion and occupation.

The vast majority of people killed in Iraq were Islamic. We can see from these two examples alone that the U.S. government is responsible for the deaths of more than a million Muslims. This is a holocaust against a Muslin country that was not a threat to the United States, had no weapons of mass destruction and, indeed, could not fly over two-thirds of its sovereign territory due to U.S. military presence.

The government of the United States, both the Clinton and W Bush administrations, has far more Muslim blood on its hands than the small U.S.-trained Islamic terrorist group al Qaeda has American blood on their hands. But, the key point is that terrorism is terrorism, and crimes against humanity are crimes against humanity whether done by the Bush administration or by bin Laden.

As long as the U.S. government continues to deny that its last president George W. Bush is a war criminal who should have been hung along with Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity, we will proceed along a path that leads to endless war against Islamic people. This new crusade, that is blasphemy against Jesus, the Prince of Peace, will be embraced by opportunists like Giuliani. Giuliani’s rhetoric about Ground Zero signals that facts don’t matter, only blind nationalism, and that genocide against Muslims is acceptable. Gott Mit Uns.

—
Bob Fitrakis is Editor & Publisher of https://freepress.org, where this article first appeared.

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 11/20/1996 With friends Like These…

11/20/1996
With friends like these…
by Bob Fitrakis

Vincent Carbone, or was it Vito, called Tommy Banks an “exquisite gentleman” when asked about Tommy’s controversial building project with the Governor’s former Chief of Staff Paul Mifsud. This is understandable since the Carbone family and Banks are in the construction business together.

What is equally clear is that Mayor Greg Lashutka’s investigation of Police Chief James Jackson will involve his self-proclaimed “cousin” Tommy, and here’s why. In the spring of 1995 or thereabouts, Tommy allegedly was facing possible rape charges involving an incident at his newly built home in Gahanna. Law-enforcement sources say that Banks invited a teenager working at his property into his big new house for a tour, and it turned ugly. Allegedly, Tommy sexually assaulted the teenager, at least that’s what she told her employers and others. Sources report that Tommy “stuck real close” to Chief Jackson during this period. Reportedly, pressure was put on the victim, as well as insinuation that nothing would come of her complaint. Maybe that’s why the alleged victim never filed a formal charge.

Hard to believe? Not hardly, if you know Tommy’s track record. For example, while Columbus Alive was investigating the above incident, another report turned up on Banks. The Gahanna Police Department filed an Ohio Uniform Incident Report on April 29, 1996. The report, #96-00916, contains allegations from a Gahanna resident who claimed that Tommy Banks stalked her for over two months from February 15 to April 28, 1996. The victim, according to the report, stated that Banks “continually harassed and threatened” her. Allegedly, the married Banks repeatedly asked her out and harassed her by phone. He appeared at her place of employment and “damaged her vehicle when she tried to leave,” according to the report. Banks, the file notes, “threatened to harm her or her family.”

And then it gets even more interesting. The victim stated “that Mr. Banks had told her he has connections with the Mafia and is extremely wealthy and powerful; and that if she refuses him he’ll have her killed.” The complainant told police that she simply wanted to document the threats in case Banks took the action, the report states.

This is typical Banks, according to those who have worked with him. Upper Arlington architect Dennis Green, currently involved in a civil suit with Banks, has stated under oath that Banks threatened him as well. “Tommy Banks was flashing around a Teamster ring, it looked like a Masonic ring, saying he didn’t think I’d show for the meeting and he might have to have some of the boys from Cleveland ‘pick me up,'” Green said.

A former Banks employee who worked with Tommy at his Huntington office, which features double-paned glass and where visitors have to be buzzed in, told Alive that Tommy’s office manager and close personal friend Nancy Rogers, who keeps many of Tommy’s business secrets, “…could never leave here because they’d find her at the bottom of the river.”

“He [Banks] always carries a gun,” the employee stated, “As a joke he likes to take it halfway out of the holster and threaten to shoot you.”

Some sense of humor; no wonder the Chief likes to run with him. Banks, a former employee of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department, was fired by Sheriff Earl Smith. As part of a legal settlement, Banks is still allowed to play cop on “special duty” directing funeral traffic. Smith recalls that the settlement limits Banks to carrying his gun while on-duty only. The Gahanna Police report lists Banks as a “Franklin County Sheriff’s Officer-Reserve.” It also lists Banks’ pager number. When I paged Banks for comment, he left a brief message on my answering machine. A call from his lawyer, Ritchey Hollenbaugh, soon followed. Banks’ paid counsel demanded to know how I got Tommy’s pager number. When I told him about Tommy’s “menacing by stalking” file, Hollenbaugh pleaded ignorance. But still, he wanted to know “Why are you hounding my client?”

Seems Hollenbaugh regards my columns and the news stories in the Columbus Alive as inappropriate, particularly a recent one that dared point out that Banks’s construction application to The Ohio State University for the $75 million Schottenstein arena management job contained two obvious factual errors. One, Tommy had neither the bachelor’s degree he claimed to have been awarded-by OSU-in business administration; and two, he doesn’t really have the OSU master’s degree in engineering he listed. But Ritchey was able to clarify that for me. “It’s not a misrepresentation, it’s a mistake. Misrepresentation would be a falsification. A mistake is inadvertent, like a typo,” he explained.

Now I understand. I have Tommy all wrong. He’s made a few mistakes. And so has the Chief for allegedly protecting him. Inadvertently. I should have known, with my double Ph.D’s in Astrophysics and Brain Surgery. Oops! Typo. And I really appreciate Ritchey’s parting counsel, or was it a threat? “Be careful out there,” he said.

Fitrakis has a Ph.D. in Political Science. Honest.

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