Tuesday, April 27
7:30pm
“Song of the Soul:
Stories of Hospice in South Africa”
Janet Parrott – Director/Producer/Editor from Columbus, Ohio
Sponsored by the Film Council of Greater Columbus, the Free Press, the Drexel and the Central Ohio Greed Education Fund
Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St., Bexley
truth@freepress.org, 253-2571
10/30/1996
The odor of Oddi
by Bob Fitrakis
What do Gary Hart, Bob Packwood, Thomas Ferguson and Franklin County Clerk of Courts Jesse Oddi have in common? Shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Next Tuesday, without giving it much thought, Franklin County voters are likely to go to the polls and “Retain Jesse Oddi” for Franklin County Clerk of Courts. Maybe the cry should be to restrain Oddi.
I recently talked with employees from the Clerk of Court’s office, who all march in parades for Jesse, raise money for his campaign, and have Oddi bumper stickers on their autos. The public image these employees present is that of adoring their boss; in reality, they say they’re terrified of losing their jobs if they don’t.
Oddi is portrayed as one of the most despicable public servants imaginable-but not by the competition, by his own employees who say he’s a shakedown artist. Employees claim that their supervisors routinely record how many spaghetti fund-raiser dinner tickets they sell for Oddi or whether the Oddi bumper stickers are on their cars. One employee claims that a supervisor “kept asking me for donations. She said ‘What about your job? You ought to worry about your job.'”
Donna Born, a former supervisor now on medical leave from the Clerk’s office, admits that she “forced them to buy these tickets.”
“Yes, my division had 12 people,” she explains. “We would sell 150-200 tickets at $25 apiece. The employees knew that they had to buy or sell a set amount of tickets. I also forced them to march in parades. We would pass around sign-up sheets on county time and they had to give me a reason if they couldn’t march.”
It is illegal for public employees to engage in partisan political activities while on the government payroll. But according to Oddi’s employees, that may be the least of his sins. Born and others claim they routinely cover for Oddi as he engages in repeated liaisons with female staff members, who are reportedly rewarded with job advancement in exchange for granting sexual favors.
“I covered for him,” Born said. “I’d have to tell his wife Elaine that it was me calling his house [instead of another woman] to report that the alarms went off downtown; it wasn’t true,” she said. Oddi-who displays a fondness for open-collared shirts, gold chains and who supposedly had a plaque in his office that read “Italian Stallion”-has cultivated a close personal relationship with one particular supervisor, according to Born and several other employees. Born claims that some employees who have been there “about six years” are making far more money than long-term employees who aren’t as friendly with Oddi.
As Born explains, “Jesse is a real touchy-feely-type guy. He likes to pat your butt and kiss you, to massage your shoulders and rub your body.” One female employee stated that Oddi would “come and massage my shoulders and run his fingers through my hair.” Another female employee was more blunt: “I knew if I went over and gave Jesse a [sexual favor] he’d give me a raise.”
All employees told tales of catching Oddi with his hands either “up her skirt” or “down her blouse.” When pressed for details, employees point to Oddi’s suite at the Great Southern Hotel as a key place for female employees to negotiate a raise after a dinner at Chutney’s.
Jacqueline Bracken, Oddi’s election opponent, has tried desperately to expose Oddi’s sleaziness and corruption. Oddi’s employees tell a similar tale. Employees report that eight Clerk of Courts employees went to the Dispatch almost four years ago, right before Oddi’s appointment, with similar allegations and documentation. The Big D did nothing, they said. Not surprising; while seemingly obsessed with Judge Deborah O’Neill’s alleged sexual escapades, the big boys at the Daily Monopoly ignore Oddi’s odor as they search for the holy grail of journalism, the truth about O’Neill’s “panties.”
Indeed, on Saturday, in another apparent attempt to run Judge O’Neill out of office, the Dispatch put her photo on page one with a story claiming she’d done something wrong by allowing blacks into a jury pool. The Dispatch’s O’Neill fetish kicked the possible Jerry Hessler “mistrial” story to page two, sans photo.
The accounts of Oddi’s misdeeds don’t stop here. One long-time law-enforcement source calls Oddi the “county’s premier fixer.” All employees questioned by Alive report that documents are routinely “backdated” in Oddi’s office, and that Oddi can make legal files “completely disappear.” Think about it: Jesse Oddi, Clerk of Courts, is the man in charge of all the court documents in Franklin County. Bracken says it’s not easy to run against somebody who has the open reputation for being able to make a drunk-driving charge, for instance, disappear. Two employees claim that the system is designed not only to destroy the physical file but the corresponding microfilm as well.
If Jesse Oddi is elected Clerk of Courts in Franklin County, citizens here owe Palmer McNeal an apology. McNeal, a former county auditor run out of office by the Wolfe Family Newsletter for a minor misuse of his county credit card, is a mere peon compared to the “Italian Stallion.” Ferguson and Packwood-pikers. Gary Hart-bush-league lecher.
All hail Jesse Oddi. The little stud that could.
10/23/1996
FEATURED ARTICLE
by Bob Fitrakis
Every 30 years or so, the American Left recreates itself: the Communists and Socialists of the 1930s’ “Red Decade” later became the decentralized, radical Students for a Democratic Society and New Left of the 1960s. And it looks like it’s the multiculturalism and direct action of Anti-Racist Action (ARA) for the ’90s.
The program for the ARA’s Third Annual Conference, held last weekend, screamed: “Do Something!” It had a photo of an activist taking a swing at a bloated, pot-bellied, berobed, coneheaded Klansman. Entering the old North High School, where the ARA conference was held, I got the sense that something was indeed happening here. Grizzled veterans of ’60s and ’70s anti-war and anti-imperialist movements mingled freely with the next New Left. Before the weekend was over, I had attended workshops on racism and fascism, marched and been Maced at-and been cited as the leader of-a demonstration against police brutality. Welcome to activism ’90s style.
At the opening of the conference Friday night, the mostly “straight-edge” Generation X participants-wearing “Fuck Racism” T-shirts, the “Mean People Suck” slogan taken to its logical extreme-exuded an aura that made the Weathermen look like the Brady Brunch. But, how much was posing and posturing? This new generation of anti-racist militants has grown up knowing no movement victories. The Civil Rights movement-which brought the end of legalized apartheid in America in 1965-is ancient history. The anti-war struggle is like those war stories that the World War II GIs used to tell their kids and grandkids in the ’50s.
This new breed of activists has done battle in the cities, suburbs and small towns of North America against the rising tide of neo-fascists and neo-Nazis ushered in by the rhetoric of the Reagan and Bush eras and the infamous political “wedge issues” of immigrant and welfare-mother bashing, a tide not quelled by the hollow promises of President Clinton’s law-and-order-centrist policies.
And this is true not only for the Americans present, but for the large Canadian contingent as well. The dozens of ARA members from Toronto are hardened by their ongoing battle with white supremacists in the Great White North. Toronto is the home of Ernest Zundel, a key player in the international Nazi movement. From his fortress at 206 Carlton, Zundel runs Samisdat Publishing, one of the largest Nazi propaganda operations on the planet. His chief goal is to deny the Holocaust, producing such publications as: “Did Six Million Really Die?” and “The Hitler We Loved And Why.”
Canadian courts have dismissed Holocaust denial charges against Zundel, instead characterizing his work as concerning “ethnic conflict between Germans and Jews.” Yeah, and those death camp ovens were used for making bagels. Zundel’s racist skinhead (“bonehead”) followers revere him as a hero and chant, “Six million more!”
But like the conference cover photo depicts, when government action fails in Canada, this new breed of anti-fascist activist is willing to use other means: Zundel’s property was recently torched. Shedding light on the rise of the American Religious Right on the conference’s opening night was an old friend of mine from Detroit, Russ Bellant. His new book, The Religious Right in Michigan Politics, is the first to investigate and document the origins and objectives of the popular group the Promise Keepers (PK). Many are familiar with former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney’s original 1990 vision: to fill a stadium with Christian men willing to “reclaim” authority from their wives, capitalizing on the male backlash against the women’s movement and the gender-bashing so prominent now on talk radio.
As Bellant explained, the vast majority of men of various denominations that attend these PK rallies come with good and sincere intentions. I know, my older brother Nick and my younger brother Dave, both plagued by marital problems, now call themselves Promise Keepers. Bellant pointed out how McCartney, while serving as assistant football coach at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, “encountered and was deeply influenced by the Word of God (WOG) Community.” WOG, according to Bellant, practices a “shepherding/discipleship” form of worship that requires total submission to a person called “the head.” He calls Promise Keepers’ views fundamentally “anti-democratic” and potentially “totalitarian” in nature.
“The use of sophisticated lighting and sound in a stadium setting, psychologically playing on people’s emotions, breaking down the denominational differences, and merging nationalism and religion really echoes the Nazi rallies of the Third Reich,” Bellant argued. Bellant demonstrated how virtually all top Christian Right leaders-Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition, D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministry, and Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ-have signed on to the Promise Keepers. The “family values” rhetoric and homophobia are part of a larger “cultural revolution” the PKs hope to bring about. Robertson, Kennedy and Bright, along with James Dodson-the author of Promise Keepers Manifesto, Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper-are all members of the super-secretive radical right Council for National Policy (CNP), according to Bellant.
“The Council for National Policy is not an organization most of you have heard of. Unlike the Christian Coalition, the Council wants to keep itself secret. The Council was created by business and political leaders who were also leaders in the John Birch Society. Its membership includes former Indiana Ku Klux Klan leader Richard Shoff, Jerry Falwell, TV censor Don Wildman, anti-ERA activist Phyllis Schlafly, a handful of pro-apartheid activists and registered agents for the old South African regime, and leaders of the Unification (Moonies) Church,” detailed Bellant.
The CNP members represent the political elite of the radical right and essentially they plan and fund the major projects of the American Right, in Bellant’s analysis. The big bucks come from Jeff Coors and family members of Coors Brewing Company, Linda Bean of L.L. Bean, and Richard DeVos Jr. of Amway and Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt.
“While they appeal to black members, their real agenda is to destroy affirmative action, and they have links to white supremacist ideology,” Bellant concluded.
Surviving a radical demo
Activists attended Saturday sessions such as “Leonard Peltier/Political Prisoners”; “Black-Jewish Relations”; “Lesbian and Gay Oppression”; and the essential “Surviving Radical Demos” to name a few. Having attended, participated, organized and covered literally hundreds of protests and demonstrations in my life, I thought I knew how to survive a radical demo in the mid-’90s. To err is human…
I was asked to bring my portable PA system to the conference at 6 p.m. Saturday for the “Copwatch Rally & March.” No big deal, just another case of journalistic participant-observer in the alternative press. Soon I was wondering who was organizing the event. When I arrived at the kickoff point at Arcadia and High, security guru Chris “The Anarchist” handed me a mike and asked me to speak. “About what?” I queried. “You know, about why we’re marching.” Luckily I was saved by a Columbus Copwatch member who politely asked the gathering horde of Klan and Nazi fighters “to remember that your actions will have repercussions on us in this community.” Virtually all got the message: Give peace a chance tonight.
I briefly addressed the assembled. Having a Ph.D in political science, I knew to announce the intent of the march to the estimated 10 percent that were no doubt undercover cops: “We intend this march to be a lawful demonstration, to protest police brutality and walk the streets of America without fear of the police…” I said more about the Antioch students being beaten at the Federal Building, and the TV4 footage showing the brutalization of students on 12th Avenue, but my main mission had been accomplished: protecting myself from “inciting a riot” charges. Wise move.
A small contingent of anarchists from the “Love and Rage” group unfurled a red-and-black flag. Banners were held with slogans reading “No Police Brutality” and “No Nazis, No Killer Cops, No Fascist USA, Anti-Racist Action.” Appropriate slogans for the 20-something generation whose educational benefits have been cut while government prison spending has been quadrupled.
Other marchers lit torches-lawful, but virtually unheard of in Columbus-creating an eerie and disturbing mood. These weren’t drunken freshmen frat boys reveling in a football victory frenzy. We crossed High Street and more than a hundred people began marching south.
Police squad cars with lights flashing immediately began to “escort” the marchers. They persisted, despite our insistence that we knew our way to 12th Avenue. And as a police helicopter began to hover overhead, I heard an unfamiliar chant: “Aim high, pigs in the sky!”
Just before Blake, in front of the Radio Shack and 24-hour video store, shit happened. Stuck hauling the PA system, I heard a scuffle and turned to see a weird scene. My mind at first rejected it: there was a female police officer without riot gear, attempting to arrest a male marcher. He had his hands raised out to his sides and she was screaming and pulling on his arm. Someone was pulling on his other arm, a literal tug-of-war. Someone in the crowd was yelling “Fuck the pigs!” Seems one Jason Robert Maffettone, 27, of Hoboken, New Jersey had stepped off the curb in Columbus, “jaywalkers gulch.” Omigod.
Officer Julie Appenzeller, sworn to serve and protect the people of Columbus from all jaywalkers, foreign and domestic, was just doing her job. Startled and disbelieving male officers stood by their gal as the crowd and I shouted “No police brutality! Let him go!” The infamous “Have Mace-will spray you” Columbus cops drew their black cans. When you’re chanting into a mike, you can’t always pay attention when someone’s aiming at your big round head. Just my luck. I met up with Officer Generic Cop, 6’1″ with black hair and a mustache, who of course finished first at the police academy in Mace target shooting. I didn’t actually see the Mace; I felt it when it drenched my eyes. For 10 to 15 seconds I was really mad. This asshole clearly hadn’t read the U.S. Constitution, nor Columbus police procedure on Macing. He’d flunk my American Guv class. Moot point as my eyes began to burn, lungs sear, and nose clog up. Still, chanting into a mike on a sidewalk does not constitute menacing a police officer.
Let’s see, five minutes into an anti-police brutality march and I’ve been Maced. Go figure. I pride myself on never getting Maced. I hadn’t been Maced since the day after the Klan killed civil rights marchers in Greensboro, North Carolina. My mind raced. When was that? 1979? ’80? Anyway, it was probably tear gas. Or was it pepper gas at Kent State in ’78?
Deja vu all over again. I was on my knees choking and crawling, my Columbus tax dollars at work again. Being the brave journalist that I am, I thought I’d best crawl into the video store to wash out my eyes. Luckily my alternative press fame had preceded me. The clerk greeted me with a cheery: “Hi Bob!” The Earl Smith-Jim Karnes debate over porno shops aside, it seems the only restroom was in the Triple X adult section of the store. Half-blinded but still able to make out the images of assorted sex toys, I made my way to the counter. “Bathroom,” I pleaded. The clerk had seen it all before. “Honest, I’ve got Mace in my eyes. It’s not a Pee Wee Herman thing.” He advised, “Just ride it out. The water will only make it worse.” A voice of authority.
Outside, things had calmed down and I found myself at the end of the march. Fortunately, one young ARA activist was carrying a squirt tube of Bausch and Lomb sensitive eye contact lens cleaner. “It’ll work, dude. Like, I sprayed myself with some Mace and tested it.” It was like a miracle. No Columbus activist should leave home without it.
Freed of the speaker system, now safely stashed at an ARA safe house on High Street thanks to Chris “The Anarchist,” I moved to the front of the march. There I met 30 or so police in riot gear, and reporters from the Columbus Dispatch, TV4 and 10.
I had a new goal. Keep from getting Maced again. Tensions mounted as the marchers, now swelled to nearly 300, found themselves pinned against a construction fence in the middle of the campus. Would the police attack? Undoubtedly, they were wondering the same about us. Instead of confronting the police, we found an opening at the Wexner Center and snaked through the campus. Thank God for secular humanist bastions of liberalism. One lone campus police car escorted us several blocks back to High Street. We figured the campus cops were unlikely to Mace us, but they might order us to do a big group hug.
The moment of truth. Should we walk down 12th Avenue? What the hell, it’s still America, why not? The march ended almost without incident as we re-emerged at 15th and High and gathered in the open space in front of the Wexner Center.
Just before the end of the march, a lone police commander joined the marchers. The word went out that he was looking for Fitrakis. No doubt, I thought, to congratulate me for my fine work in averting a riot. Wrong again. The first tip off was when he wouldn’t shake my hand. And then his first words stung like the Mace: “I’m Commander Marcum. Why are you writing those lies about me?”
How the hell was I to know he’d been reassigned from supervisor of Police Intelligence to riot patrol at OSU? And anyway, those tips about his family’s links to gambling in last week’s Alive were from my most reliable law enforcement sources. I asked him what the real story was, but he wouldn’t tell me. “Your paper’s printing lies.” Later that night the police reported that no Mace was used on the demonstrators.
The next day’s Dispatch reported that I “led” the rally. I didn’t mean to, but as my old marching buddy Mark Stansbery explained it, “There really was no leadership. And after Bob got Maced, he was really pissed.”
The ARA doesn’t really have leaders. It’s a new movement of leaderless resistance to police brutality and the prison industrial complex.
The Dispatch also reported the post-Macing chant as: “Police brutality, we’re sick and…tired of it.” Insert “fuckin'” where the ellipse is. That’s the mood of these young ARA activists. America is incubating a whole new generation of hard-core fascist-fighters that are sick and tired. “And tired of being sick and tired.” They’re not the Promise Keepers, but they are the product of America’s broken promises and dreams.
6:30 PM – Midnight
Holiday Salon. Join local progressives to meet, network, and socialize, with music, art, food. Refreshments. Sponsored by the Free Press and the Central Ohio Green Education Fund.
1021 E. Broad St., parking in front or rear, come to the side door.
253-2571
truth@freepress.org
Tuesday, December 1 at 11pm
Federal Building, 200 N. High, at Spring and High Streets
Please join us at the federal building for a half hour to protest the escalation of the war.
Also, Mark Stanbery has written a draft letter to the editor on the subject. Please use this information and write your own letter to the editor as another outlet to demonstrate the people’s disagreement with the President’s decision:
On the letter to editor, see attached, it is really rough draft with NPP stats of cost of war, “Can we afford this war?” title.
Peace, Mark D. Stansbery
Sample Letter to the Editor: DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT
FIRST EDITION (November 26, 2009)
Can We Afford this War?
The Cost of War in Afghanistan continues to confound people in leadership and on the streets. In tracking the US cost of the war in Afghanistan the ledger must include: an individual cost of war casualty counter, state-level numbers and trade-offs., and Federal Budget Outlays including Supplemental Funding Bills.
Jo Comerford , the National Priorities Project Executive Director, a research organization that analyzes and clarifies federal data, stated that, “With President Obama moving forward with his campaign promise to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, the US public faces two important questions as we reach his administration’s troop escalation: What will be the cost and impact of more troops, for both the US and Afghanistan? And what are the Obama Administration’s long-term goals?”
Seven years ago, the “global war on terror” began in Afghanistan as a military response to the September 11 attacks. In March 2003, the United States also invaded Iraq. Today, US forces are deeply engaged in both countries with some 200,000 US troops in the region, of which 137,000 are in Iraq and about 68,000 in Afghanistan, with the Obama Administration requesting at least an additional 30,000 troops.
Visit www.nationalpriorities.org to access this information and other timely federal budget analysis tools and reports. The American Friends Service Committee can be found on-line at www.afsc.org.
9/04/1996
by Bob Fitrakis
All evidence suggests that since the onset of the George Voinovich administration in January 1991, the governor’s recently resigned chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, systematically engineered the steering of contracts and public funds to political backers and Voinovich family members.
The firing of Joseph Gilyard on July 22, 1991 by the Voinovich administration was a clear harbinger of the governor’s current problems. Gilyard, who had been director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services and a long-time loyal supporter of the state’s Republican machine, was canned shortly after he alleged that he was under political pressure to give the governor’s brother’s company valuable state prison construction contracts.
The firing paved the way for Mifsud, formerly vice president of the Voinovich Cos., to operate with virtually no restraints within the governor’s administration. As chief of staff, Mifsud was put in charge of the Ohio Department of Transportation, the Commerce Department and the Development Department, and used that position of power to serve the interests of political backers and personal favorites.
Recent allegations that contracts were steered towards the Banks-Carbone Construction Company may be just the tip of the iceberg. It’s an open secret in the local construction and architecture industry that over the last five years most major design and construction management contracts have been awarded in a blatantly partisan manner. Many contractors believe that the state’s Department of Administrative Services has repeatedly gone through a charade of soliciting proposals and later interviewing qualified architectural construction management companies for state projects prior to steering the contracts to what appeared to be predetermined winners. According to construction industry insiders, projects that seem to fit this pattern include:
· Five prison contracts totaling $150 million awarded to Knowlton Construction Company to build or renovate five state prisons, despite the company having little or no previous experience as a prison construction manager.
· The $80 million Max Fisher Business School, the $85 million Schottenstein Arena at Ohio State, and the $110 million Hilltop Office Complex to the Gilbane Building Company. In all three cases, the Banks-Carbone Construction Company was selected as the minority partner.
· The $65 million new COSI building to the Ruscilli Construction Company.
· The $20 million reconstruction of the riot-damaged Lucasville prison to the Sherman R. Smoot Company.
· Various contracts to the Voinovich Cos. and Voinovich-Sgro to build and renovate jails, including the Franklin County jail.
Following George Voinovich’s electoral victory in November 1990, Lieutenant Governor Michael DeWine appointed Gilyard director of the Governor’s Office of Criminal Justice Services in January 1991. Gilyard’s previous experience included being executive assistant to George Forbes, Cleveland City Council president; chief of staff for Cuyahoga County Commissioner Virgil Brown; court administrator for Chief Justice Thomas Moyer; and director of the Ohio Court of Claims. As director of the Office of Criminal Justice Services, Gilyard’s tasks were to coordinate planning and funding for all of Ohio’s criminal justice agencies and dispense state funds for area jail construction projects. Over the eight-year period from 1983 to 1991, the Office of Criminal Justice Services awarded some $200 million in jail construction monies.
Within six months of his hiring, Gilyard was disgraced and hounded by several charges-theft in office, lying to the Voinovich administration about his past, and allegations of sexual harassment-that were later all summarily dismissed. Gilyard’s termination and public humiliation served as a head on a spike to all who dared cross Mifsud.
Gilyard’s tenure turned tenuous immediately after an early “get acquainted” meeting with lobbyist Phil Hamilton, head of the Voinovich transition team and former executive vice president of Voinovich Cos.; and Bennett J. Cooper, Gilyard’s predecessor in the administration of Governor James A. Rhodes.
“[Hamilton] had been bugging me and bugging me to come over,” Gilyard said in an interview with Columbus Alive. When he walked up to the office at 8 E. Long Street, Gilyard said he noticed a plaque over the door. “In gold leaf it says ‘Hamilton and Associates, The Voinovich Cos.’ I about passed out.”
In fact, Candace Peters, a criminal justice administrator, had warned Hamilton during the 1990 campaign that the Voinovich Cos. was facing a potential conflict-of-interest situation over the building of local jails in Ohio.
Despite the warning, the pressure from Hamilton and his associates was “never-ending,” Gilyard insists. For example, he says, at “a reception for all the Voinovich criminal justice people, Hamilton is bothering me again. Cooper’s coming over [to his office] every other two, three days. He’s calling me. He’s going on trips with me,” Gilyard recalls.
Both Cooper and Hamilton are on record denying having pressured Gilyard to receive jail construction grants and contracts.
In a memo to DeWine dated February 1, 1991, Gilyard outlined his problems with the initial meeting with Cooper, Hamilton, and his wife, Patricia Hamilton. According to Gilyard, the talk immediately turned to jail construction contracts and Gilyard said he felt he had to excuse himself. Gilyard said he believed the meeting “raised a significant question as to its propriety” since there was a 1987 Attorney General’s opinion that jail construction grants were state contracts and candidate George Voinovich had pledged that his brother Paul’s company would receive no state contracts.
Patricia Hamilton was soon thereafter appointed the chairperson of State Board of Personnel Review, the board that would later approve Gilyard’s ouster as director.
While others mulled the memo, Gilyard’s attention was drawn to Sheriff Earl Smith. In late March, early April, Gilyard began investigating allegations of impropriety surrounding Sheriff Smith’s Franklin County Drug Enforcement Network (DEN). Gilyard’s now-famous April 12, 1991 memo to DeWine basically summarized various allegations of illegal activity by DEN agents. DeWine froze the funding for the program and, Gilyard later claimed, ordered him to “destroy the memo.” The DEN missive-together with the February 1 memo-unwittingly set the stage for Gilyard’s later dismissal.
At about this time, Sharon Downs, an assistant deputy director of Administrative Services-and wife of John Downs, then-personnel director for Earl Smith and a protege of Voinovich transition director Hamilton-accessed a computer file on Gilyard’s personnel history. Prior to accepting his position, Gilyard had interviewed with Secretary of State Bob Taft’s office where he talked openly about a 1975 incident at Indian River School, a juvenile detention facility where he was fired from the staff and convicted for hitting a youth. The misdemeanor conviction was later overturned. Despite the fact that Gilyard made no secret of the incident, DeWine claimed that Gilyard had failed to disclose the incident during his background check and subsequently he fired Gilyard in July of 1991, even though he later conceded that he was aware of the 1975 incident when Gilyard was hired.
As Gilyard recalls, he was originally offered the job to protect DeWine because, like Mifsud, he was raised in the hardball political scene in Cleveland. Gilyard said he was told: “You were in Cleveland politics, and Mike’s afraid that those guys are going to eat him alive.” Gilyard claims that early on, Mifsud surrounded himself with ambitious “young Republicans….We used to call them ‘brown shirts’ like in Germany.” Politically, you couldn’t make any mistakes in dealing with Mifsud, according to Gilyard: “Mifsud would cut your throat off.”
In June, Smith, angered at Gilyard for freezing his drug task force funds, met with Mifsud about instituting a thaw. Smith gave Mifsud an investigation file on Gilyard. In a two-pronged strategy, Hamilton-who was on Smith’s payroll as a $1,000 a month management contractor-met with DeWine and offered to mediate the dispute between Smith and DeWine over task force funding.
In the meantime, pressure from Hamilton and Cooper mounted, Gilyard claims, adding that he felt compelled to approach Mifsud about the Voinovich Cos.’ apparent conflict of interest. He said he went early to a Cabinet meeting. “I said ‘Paul, you have to do something about this jail stuff….I’m telling him this story and literally…he put his hands over his ears like a little kid. ‘I don’t want to know, get away from me, stay away from me,’ and he ran around the Cabinet table to the other side and turned his back on me.”
Around the first of July, Paul Voinovich sent his brother 14 pages of material-including copies of Gilyard’s personnel history-with handwritten comments to the effect that there were problems with Gilyard. It was virtually the same package Smith had given Mifsud in June.
Gilyard had confronted Sheriff Smith about the allegations against the DEN agents. While Smith denied them and insisted that he get his funding back, both he and Gilyard have confirmed that, during the conversation, Smith made Gilyard aware of illegal campaign contributions that the trash haulers had made to the 1990 Voinovich campaign.
Gilyard claims Smith “sent a direct threat to the governor” to back off his drug task force, and immediately Smith began to crack down on overloaded garbage trucks in Franklin County. “Now, what actually happened was, when Earl had told me about the illegal campaign contributions, he actually was making trash trucks dump their trash in the city streets of Columbus. There’s pictures in the Dispatch. Nobody could understand why. I, of course, knew why, and I’m telling the governor and I’m telling these people why and Mifsud’s pooh-poohing me, although he knew better,” Gilyard explained.
In what even he describes as an end run to get to the governor the information about the activities of his brother Paul, Hamilton and Mifsud, Gilyard said he arranged a meeting with David B. Bailey, a Cleveland Republican Ward Committeeman and Voinovich confidante for over 30 years; and former Cuyahoga County Republican Party Chair, Robert Hughes.
Hughes, one of the state’s most powerful Republicans, had recently formed his own political consulting company. “We met with Hughes in Hughes’ basement. It was Hughes, Hughes’ wife, Bailey, my wife and myself. Bob took prodigious notes. Five pages of notes on a yellow pad. He agreed to see the governor, and I believe he made a phone call to Columbus that night,” recalled Gilyard.
Whether or not the governor got the information is unknown. Hughes died in November of 1991 under mysterious circumstances, the victim of carbon monoxide poisoning.
On July 15, 1991, Gilyard sent another troubling memo to DeWine questioning the propriety of the Voinovich Cos.’ lobbying efforts. Within a week, he was suspended and then fired by DeWine, who accused him of withholding information about the 1975 Indian River incident. DeWine also claimed that he hadn’t received any memo from Gilyard regarding the Voinovich Cos.’ intense lobbying efforts. Earl Smith had in the meantime filed theft-in-office charges against Gilyard.
On August 7, Curt Steiner, chief spokesman for Voinovich, stated that DeWine was aware of the 1975 Indian River incident when he first interviewed Gilyard in December. Late in August, a nearly 1,000-page Ohio Highway Patrol report substantially supported Gilyard’s claim that he had sought to repeatedly warn Mifsud of ethical problems.
A little more than a week after Gilyard’s departure, the Columbus Dispatch reported that, “Two well-connected Statehouse lobbyists- one with ties with Governor George V. Voinovich’s brother and another appointed by Voinovich to a state commission-helped clients land unbid contracts as part of a $350 million state bond issue.” Hamilton was the lobbyist for Goldman Sachs & Co., which, along with Lehman Brothers, received the unbid contracts to handle about $175 million in bond issues on behalf of the Ohio Housing Finance Agency.
On October 3, Franklin County Judge Richard Ferrell dismissed Smith’s charges against Gilyard, citing “no probably cause.” On October 18, after months denying its existence, DeWine turned over a copy of Gilyard’s July 15 memo, claiming that he had recently discovered it in a desk at his second home. DeWine dismissed Gilyard’s thoughtful memo as “a goofy, long narrative.” The memo remains a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the current contract-steering allegations against Mifsud.
After Hughes’ death in November 1991, the Ohio Ethics Commission-with new Voinovich appointees-ruled that it wasn’t a conflict of interest for the governor’s brother to take state jail construction funds.
One monument to the political machine that steamrolled over Gilyard stands in Franklin County: the renovated Franklin County jail, built in 1970 by Pringle and Pratt. According to former Sheriff Smith, now running again for his old job, the Voinovich Cos. originally did the architectural assessment for the renovation at the Franklin County jail. They were paid $75,000, and received another $18,000 for their estimate that the jail could be renovated for $2 million. The $2 million renovation has turned into an $11 million-plus project.
Smith said that the Voinovich Cos. recently renovated a kitchen at the jail that had already been renovated “down to leveling the floors” in 1990.
“There was no bid from the Voinovich Cos. They said that since the Voinovich Cos. had done the original architectural assessment, that constituted a bid,” Smith said.
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
November 3, 2008
Barack Obama is heading to Election Day with a razor thin 6 point lead in the popular polls in Ohio, according to the usually reliable Columbus Dispatch poll. This means that the Buckeye state could again decide who enters the White House in January, despite the fact that nationwide Obama’s lead has been registered as high as 11-12 percent.
In a country with truly fair elections, a reliable vote count, and no electoral college, such a lead should be commanding.
But in the America of 2008, it will be enough only if tens of thousands of grassroots election protection activists, rallied primarily through the independent internet, can protect voter registrations, guarantee the ability to vote at the polling stations, and somehow procure an accurate, un-tampered with vote count.
In short, it will depend on YOU and your willingness to protect American democracy. It will not be the punditocracy or the campaign managers who decide Tuesday’s outcome—it will be the get-out-the-vote activists, the poll workers, the monitors and observers, the election protection attorneys, the video-the-voters, and the vote count investigators. Will you be among them?
The story of the stolen elections of 2000 and 2004 is now all too familiar. Three stolen Senatorial races in 2002 gave George W. Bush pivotal clout to wage a catastrophic war and destroy the American economy. In 2006 Democrats made substantial gains in Congress, but were denied numerous additional seats in races where they failed miserably to protect the franchise. Voters in Ohio elected a new governor and secretary of state, but only by overcoming the loss of 12% of the vote predicted by pre-election polls. The votes were stolen by disenfranchisement and electronic “irregularities” or “glitches.”
Throughout the decade the election protection movement has been sustained by the internet. Both the Democratic Party and the corporate media have avoided the question of stolen elections like the plague. Last month the “left” media again attacked grassroots election protection as Andrew Gumbel wrote contemptuously in The Nation Magazine of “underqualified” internet reporters who “breathlessly” document the Bush/Rove larceny.
That means YOU.
Now the Democrats are e-mailing appeals for election protection monitors. Through a message from Florida Congresswomen Deborah Wasserman-Schulz (no relation), the Democrats are raising money for a vaguely defined “protect the vote” effort, ignoring the fact that John Kerry raised $7 million for such an effort in 2004, then walked away from the election. A Democrat video refers to the nightmare of Florida 2000 and “stories” heard about Ohio 2004. James Carville, who loudly threw in the towel from his televised bloviator perch in 2004 while 250,000 votes were still uncounted in Ohio, has also jumped on the election protection bandwagon.
Maybe this year the Democrats will actually do something about protecting the vote. Maybe, if they carry the White House, they will actually correct some of the abuses that put George W. Bush in power, as some have begun to do in Ohio and elsewhere. After all, election irregularities will not only affect Obama, they’ve already affected Oprah.
But ultimately there is only one way Tuesday’s vote will be protected—-if thousands of committed, independent public citizens show up at the polls with your cameras, your note pads, your cell phones and your lawyers, bound and determined to protect this election.
If you’re electronic vote on a computerized voting machine starts hopping from your candidate to another, or just fades away and pollworkers do nothing—we’re asking voters to dial 911 and make an emergency report on felony election tampering. Demand that the malfunctioning machine be immediately quarantined as a crime scene.
If Obama wins, the doubters and deceivers will cry “no wolf” in reverse, and dismiss the efforts of those who have written, organized and shown up at the polls to protect the vote. “He would have won anyway,” they’ll say.
But we will know otherwise. Only if YOU turn up Tuesday will the networks be discussing a McCain/Palin defeat on Wednesday.
If we see you at the polls on Tuesday, we can all share in an internet-based victory party on Wednesday.
Then we can spend the rest of the century working to guarantee that nothing like the Bush nightmare can ever happen again.
—
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, including HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, and AS GOES OHIO, available at www.freepress.org, where this first appeared.
Bob Fitrakis
June 18, 2007
The current scandal involving the firing of U.S. attorneys cannot be separated from the Bush administration’s scheme to suppress black, poor and working class voters. In order to divert attention from its voter suppression tactics that won Bush the White House in 2000 and 2004, the Bush administration created the myth of “voter fraud.” Using fake “voting rights” organizations, obscure groups to finance civil suits and pressure on the U.S. Department of Justice to bring criminal charges against voter registration organizations, Karl Rove and his political operatives like Mark F. “Thor” Hearne have succeeded in undermining the United States’ democracy.
“Hearne was one of the most important Bush operatives that almost nobody in America has ever heard of. He applied his vote-suppressing trade from coast to coast, behind the scenes, in a well-funded systematic effort to undermine democracy and keep voters – Democratic voters – from exercising their legal franchise,” Brad Friedman, Editor of Bradblog, told the Free Press. Bradblog was the first to reveal Hearne’s masquerade as a voting rights advocate.
Hearne’s name recently surfaced in the scandal surrounding the White House’s firing of U.S. attorneys causing the mainstream media to begin scrutinizing his past political activity. The National Journal has pointed out that Hearne is a “common denominator” in the firing of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins and western Missouri U.S. Attorney Todd Graves. At the time of the firings, Cummins was investigating Republican Governor Matt Blunt’s administration, and Graves had refused to indict when partisan charges were brought against the Association of Communities Organizing for Reform Now (ACORN) for a voter registration drive just prior to the 2006 election.
| Columbus mayoral candidate linked to scandal
Republican candidate for mayor of Columbus William Todd has direct ties to two controversial election organizations that are linked to the White House scandal surrounding the firing of U.S. attorneys. Todd, an attorney at Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP, is challenging Columbus’ first African American Mayor Michael Coleman in this fall’s election. Between 1993 and 2006, Todd served as an attorney at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey whose website stated that, “Mr. Todd served as litigation counsel in these election matters for groups such as the Free Enterprise Coalition, the American Center for Voting Rights and the Ohio Republican Party.” The Free Enterprise Coalition (FEC) and the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) emerged as key players in the Bush administration’s voter suppression plan in the 2004 presidential election. Financing from the FEC funded a racketeering charge against grassroots voter registration groups including the NAACP. The ACVR is widely regarded as a fake voting rights organization created to repress minority and poor voters in urban areas while perpetuating the myth of “voter fraud” among Democratic voting blocks. The Squire, Sanders & Dempsey website also showed Todd as general counsel for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and its affiliated Citizens for a Strong Ohio (CSO). In 2005, the Ohio Election Commission fined the CSO for operating illegally as a Political Action Committee (PAC) and making illegal corporate expenditures to influence Ohio Supreme Court races. The CSO was also linked directly to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In a legal complaint against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, election rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck exposed the fact that the Chamber had illegally moved $14 million in funds to Republican Supreme Court candidates between 2000-2004, to take over the highest court in Ohio. The role of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove and the Bush White House needs to be explored in more detail. Brad Friedman of Bradblog, an expert on the ACVR, pointed out that Todd’s connection to the ACVR would likely be enough to sink his candidacy. “Even the mainstream media is paying attention now,” he said. It will be interesting to see if the Columbus Dispatch reports on Todd’s connections to voter suppression groups and his ties to the U.S. attorney scandal. |
Hearne “believed that the U.S. attorney . . . Todd Graves was not taking seriously allegations that ACORN workers were registering people who did not qualify to vote,” noted the National Journal. Also, Republican attorney William Mateja, “repeatedly contacted” Cummins during the Blunt investigation “. . . at the behest of Hearne, whose law firm [Lathrop & Gage] had retained Mateja on Blunt’s behalf,” wrote the Journal.
After Graves’ dismissal, he was replaced by Bradley Schlozman, who issued an indictment against ACORN workers less than a week before the 2006 election. Cummins was also replaced by Karl Rove operative Timothy Griffin.
The National Journal also reported that two other fired U.S. attorneys, David Inglesias and John McKay, said they believed they were fired because “Republican activists in their states complained that they weren’t doing enough to pursue voting-fraud cases.”
Who is scrubbing the Thor Hearne websites?
As the heat is turned up on Hearne, his past appears to be vanishing from the internet.
As Bradblog noted on June 12, “Mark F. ‘Thor’ Hearne must really want to hide something about his discredited past as the frontman for the GOP front group calling themselves the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR).”
Hearne testified before Congressman Bob Ney’s Committee on House Administration hearing in Columbus on March 21, 2005 as general counsel for the newly formed “voting rights” group, the ACVR. Incorporated a week before the hearing, the ACVR was ordained by Rep. Ney as a legitimate voting rights group, despite the fact that Hearne served as election counsel to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and had no references on his resume to any non-partisan voting rights groups. Congressman Ney is now known as federal prisoner #28882-016 for corruption as a result of his taking gifts from Jack Abramoff, among other charges.
In February 2005, at the urging of Karl Rove and the Bush White House, Hearne founded the ACVR, according to the National Journal. Co-founder Jim Dyke is a former Republican National Committee (RNC) communications director. The ACVR was a “non-partisan” 501(c)(3) legal and educational center committed to defending the rights of voters and working to increase public confidence in the fairness and outcome of elections, stated their website. The long-standing voting rights group, the League of Women Voters, charged that the ACVR was a Republican front organization.
Hearne’s testimony at the Ney hearing was placed on the Moritz College of Law Election Institute website along with Professors Ned Foley and Dan Tokaji. Hearne was given equal billing with Norman Robbins, the head of a non-partisan voting rights group from Cleveland.
Not only does Hearne’s Wikipedia page no longer refer to the controversial ACVR, but Hearne’s testimony before the Ney hearing is no longer linked to the Moritz College of Law Election Law Institute website. Also, the ACVR website recently disappeared and the National Journal reported, “The group now appears to be defunct.”
Hearne and the myth of voter registration fraud
As the Free Press reported in 2005, Hearne, with the help of Republican attorney Alex Vogel, concocted a story that the main problem with the 2004 elections in Ohio was that the NAACP was paying people with crack cocaine to register voters. Based on scant evidence and an incident of a volunteer being linked to crack use, Hearne pushed a version of voter fraud in Ohio that directly attacked not only the NAACP, but ACORN, the AFL-CIO and ACT-Ohio. By attacking this combination of groups, Rove and Hearne were targeting the leading forces for registering blacks, poor, union workers and young people in Ohio – those most likely to vote Democratic.
Aided by Vogel, then-attorney for Republican Senate Majority leader Bill Frist, and a front group connected to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Free Enterprise Coalition, local Republican operative Mark Rubrick filed an Ohio corrupt practices lawsuit (RICO) against all the voter registration organizations listed above in Wood County.
The civil RICO case, backed by financing from the Free Enterprise Coalition, alleged that the voter registration groups provided “. . . payments made in connections with the violations (in the form of, among other things, ‘bounties,’ payments or other rewards for collecting and/or processing the registrations including but not limited to illegal drugs, paid to individuals actually engaged in the violations), . . .” At the bottom of the document filed by attorneys Jeffrey Creemer and Douglas Haynam of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick of Toledo, the following words appear: “jsc\Free Enterprise Coalition\Amended Complaint.doc” calling into question who was behind the lawsuit.
The suit was later quietly withdrawn after election rights attorney Cliff Arnebeck discovered that the Free Enterprise Coalition had indemnified Rubrick and had promised to pay any and all expenses related to his RICO suit. “I told Rubrick in no uncertain terms that his accusations that the NAACP was a criminal organization were false and that the indemnification from the Free Enterprise Coalition wasn’t worth the paper it was written on,” Arnebeck said.
In writing about the Free Enterprise Coalition (FEC) on May 28, 2007, the website SourceWatch contains the following quote: “No website, no employees, a disconnected phone and a lapsed corporate registration. Without the 990s, you’d be hard pressed to know the GOP funneled $2.8 million through the Free Enterprise Coalition to fund election-related legal expenses between 2004 and 2005.”
The vanishing of the FEC is directly tied the growing Department of Justice (DOJ) scandal.
| Mark F. “Thor” Hearne & election fraud timeline
1976 – Hearne began his association with the Republican Party by serving as a page at both the national and Missouri GOP convention 1980 and 1984 – Hearne was an alternate at the Missouri GOP Party convention 1986 and 1987 – Hearne worked for the Reagan administration’s Department of Education Office for Civil Rights as a law clerk and attorney 1988 – Hearne ran for U.S. Congress as a Republican from the Missouri 3rd congressional district 2000 – Counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign and served as the Vice President and Director of Election Operations for the Republican National Lawyer’s Association. Hearne was also an operative in the so-called “Brooks Brothers” riot that stopped the Florida recount in one county after the 2000 presidential election. Hearne served as a Republican election observer in Broward County during the 2000 presidential recount 2002 – Hearne was the Republican lawyer who led the Missouri legislative redistricting fight 2004 – Counsel to Bush-Cheney re-election campaign 3/21/05 – Hearne shows up masquerading as a “non-partisan voting rights activist” and testifies under the auspices of the newly created American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR) hearing on irregularities in the Ohio 2004 presidential election, accusing voter registration groups of fraud 4/27/05 – Free Press exposes Hearne’s role in Ohio in an article “How Blackwell and Petro Saved Bush’s Brain” 8/05 – Hearne testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitutions, Civil Rights and Property Rights 8/18/05 – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reveals partisan nature of ACVR, that it is a sham voting rights group and a Republican partisan operation 10/6/05 – Bradblog reports that ACVR co-founder Jim Dyke was working for the Bush White House to push the President’s Supreme Court nominee 12/30/05 – Freepress.org publishes article “Fake voting rights activists and groups linked to White House” 2006 – U.S. prosecutors fired 12/5/06 – Hearne is given a seat as an expert on the federal Election Assistance Commission 3/16/07 – The New York Times reports that bogus voter fraud claims are linked to the purging of U.S. prosecutors 4/5/07 – New Mexico’s U.S. Attorney David Inglesias is pressured by Republican operatives to bring vote fraud charges against voter registration groups in that state 4/11/07 – The New York Times reports that the original bipartisan EAC draft which was never released concluded that fears of voter fraud were overblown 5/2/07 – Hearne admits that he hired powerful GOP connected attorney William Mateja to intervene in the DOJ investigation of Missouri Governor Matt Blunt 2007 – All traces of Hearne’s connection to the ACVR and Free Enterprise Coalition vanish from the internet |
A press release from ACORN spelled out the reasons why Rove and Hearne attacked their organization, which is committed to registering poor people. In the 2004 election cycle, ACORN registered some 1.15 million low-income and minority citizens in 26 states. They also contacted 2.3 million citizens in their Get Out The Vote efforts.
Two similar suits had been filed in Florida as a result of ACORN’s activity in that crucial swing state during the 2004 election and dismissed around the same time.
Hearne spins Congress and the DOJ
From the outset, Hearne, who specialized in exaggerated and bizarre claims of voter fraud – what Arnebeck denounced as old racist stereotypes about blacks and drugs – lobbied the DOJ for a full-scale investigation of these imaginary drug-crazed volunteer voting registrars. In an initial letter to the DOJ, Hearne wrote that there was, “substantial evidence to suggest criminal wrongdoing by organizations such as Americans Coming Together (‘ACT’), ACORN, and the NAACP – Project Vote.”
Hearne told the DOJ that, “We understand that local Ohio law enforcement authorities are pursuing criminal prosecution against some of the individuals involved in this activity ‘which activities include paying crack cocaine for fraudulent voter registration forms.'” At the Ney hearing, Hearne assured U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones that he was basing his claims on “facts not anecdotes, affidavits, first hand accounts.”
When testifying before Ney’s committee in March 2005, Hearne blamed the voter suppression on “the Kerry campaign” referring to alleged events in Republican-dominated Marion County, Ohio. Arnebeck and other voting rights activists have dismissed Hearne’s claim that the Kerry campaign directed voters to the wrong polling places and telling them to vote on Wednesday, November 3 instead of Election Day, November 2, 2004. The facts in numerous legal filings, like the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville v. Blackwell and Moss v. Bush, suggest just the opposite.
Ironically, the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign was accused in hundreds of sworn affidavits of engaging in racist voter suppression tactics in Ohio’s urban centers. Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati’s majority black wards were littered with posters and fliers telling Democratic voters to vote on Wednesday, November 3. Both the Columbus Dispatch and the then-black-owned radio station WVKO documented calls directing voters in the inner city to the wrong polling places, where they waited up to three to seven hours, only to then be told they were at the wrong site.
Hearne claimed “the ACVR is a nonpartisan watchdog legal defense and educational center committed to defending the rights of voters and working to increase public confidence in the fairness of the outcome of elections.” He told the congressional committee that: “Ohio citizens deserve the confidence that they – the voters – not trial lawyers, activists judges and special interest groups soliciting fraudulent votes with crack cocaine determine the results of Ohio elections.”
What Hearne failed to tell the Congressional Committee, as he earnestly portrayed himself as a non-partisan voting rights activist, was his well-documented role as Bush-Cheney election counsel, the role of the Free Enterprise Coalition in financing the case against voting registration groups, and his role as a Republican operative with high-level ties to Karl Rove.
Hearne, with no real academic credentials, also had himself named as an academic advisor to the Carter-Baker Commission on election reform.
Caught in this masquerade
The National Journal called Hearne, “. . . a Republican Party operative who had served as national elections counsel for the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and played a behind-the-scenes role in both cases [the firing of Cummins and Graves].”
One wonders how Hearne was able to masquerade for so long and testify before the Ney Committee without being immediately outed. His ties to the Republican Party reach back to the 70s and are well-documented in his posted online biographies. (See timeline, pg, 17)
“Hearne’s role provides a window into how a Republican activist was pushing Bush administration officials – and perhaps in some cases working in concert with them – to use the Justice Department for partisan purposes,” wrote the National Journal.
Part of the Rove/Hearne strategy was to “cage” and intimidate Democratic voters while at the same time to register as many Republicans as possible. It is well documented that the Republican National Committee (RNC) threw around millions of dollars to hire Sproul & Associates to do voter registration. Election and law enforcement officials in several states investigated complaints that the company’s temporary workers were registering only Bush supporters and trashing thousands of registrations collected from suspected Democrats.
The New York Times reported on April 12, 2007 that the Bush administration’s five-year crackdown on voter fraud, according to Justice Department statistics, had only led to charges against 120 people, the majority of them Democrats, with only 86 convictions. The DOJ found that many cases simply involved mistakes and a misunderstanding of voting eligibility rules, suggesting that the Rove/Hearne obsession with voter fraud may have been covering deliberately designed voter suppression tactics directed from the White House, facilitated by Hearne, with a compromised and intimidated Department of Justice.
Why was it so important to Hearne for voter registration groups to be accused of fraud in the 2004 election? The calculated targeting of voter registration groups – subjecting them to civil RICO suits and criminal prosecution – is part of a larger strategy to shrink the electorate. Nothing chills volunteers and grassroots organizations like the threat of legal problems or jail time. And nothing distracts the mainstream media away from the new Jim Crow tactics used by the Bush administration to suppress voters than the myth of black voter registrars using crack and accusations of racketeering. A corrupt and partisan Department of Justice is essential to furthering the Bush administration’s injustice against poor and minority voters.
—
Bob Fitrakis is co-author, with Steve Rosenfeld and Harvey Wasserman, of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO. This article was originally published at https://freepress.org/columns/display/3/2007/1555.
Cover from Amazon
Gook examines McCain’s partnering with leading white supremacist Richard Quinn, as well as McCain’s endorsement of hate group lecturer George Wallace, Jr. for lieutenant governor, both actions fitting with his support for the Confederate flag as an official state symbol.
Gook: John McCain’s Racism and Why It Matters
Dr. Bob had an interview with Mr. Tang on WVKO 1580 AM Thursday, October 16, 2008.
Dr. Fitrakis has a show, “Fight Back” Monday through Friday 5-6 P.M. on WVKO 1580 AM.
Reviews:
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The Columbus Dispatch is at it again. This time it’s Thomas Suddes on the Sunday October 12 Op-Ed page. Suddes sank to a new low even by Fourth Reich-style Dispatch rhetoric and propaganda standards. Suddes wrote: “To weigh Obama’s Ohio prospects, Al Gore’s 2000 tally might offer some hints, except to conspiracy freaks who know 2000’s vote-count was rigged by GOP munchkins in a Columbus basement. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, ‘When paranoia walks in the door, facts go innuendo.’”
The only one who has ever offered this conspiracy theory is Suddes himself. The Ph.D.s and professors at Penn and NYU who challenge Bush’s 2004 results have never questioned the 2000 election results in Ohio. Suddes knows this, but the he prefers that facts be banished from the room and door be barred.
Gore did not contest Ohio in 2000. Nor was the real-time apparatus linking the county boards of elections to ultra-partisan J. Kenneth Blackwell in place in 2000.
For Suddes to perpetrate conspiracy theory and attribute it to fact-based social scientists is an old trick perfected by Hitler’s co-horts and sycophants. It is a fact that Ohio’s real-time vote count was outsourced in 2004 to the old Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It is true that Smartech, the company that provided the servers at the Tennessee site, was hosting a who’s who of right-wing Republican political operatives from the swift-boaters to gwb43.com linked to the White House.
Suddes is offering the classic sleight of hand by forging and manufacturing absurd facts so he doesn’t have to deal with unpleasant realities. Suddes has to be regarded as a political operative, or paid political whore. Whichever one he is, history will record that it was bought and paid for journalists or brown-nosing hacks like Suddes who helped destroy American democracy.