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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 6/05/1996 Copwatch

6/05/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

Put a hundred of “Columbus’ finest” in riot gear and you can count on a riot–usually a police riot.

The police tactics on Friday, May 17 are simply the last in a long series of police-instigated rioting and misconduct in the campus area. Last Friday, May 31, I spoke with a dozen students and a lizard exercising their First Amendment rights on the northwest corner of 12th and High. Their demonstration posed a simple question: “Is South Campus a student neighborhood or a penal colony!?”

Neither. It’s condemned and occupied territory, thanks, in part, to the hysteria whipped up by Campus Partners. All that “neighborhood in decay” rhetoric has been taken to heart by the Columbus Police Department.

Tom Vigarino, one of the first arrested on May 17, reports that he was “tackled from behind by a couple undercover cops” that he never saw and who have failed to identify themselves as officers. As they beat him, he recalls one of them warning, “Motherfucker, don’t ever come back to 12th again!” Vigarino, who lives two blocks away on 10th, wonders why he can’t walk the streets in his neighborhood. He is charged with “rioting” for allegedly throwing a bottle at the police, a charge he and various witnesses vehemently deny.

Other witnesses report that police officers purposely shoved Shomas Jones, a third-year criminal law major, over a chain-enclosed planter. Jones was attempting to videotape police activity, and as he lay defenseless on the pavement he was repeatedly Maced and his camera smashed. When police returned his tape, the video had been erased. Another triumph for the Columbus police’s interpretation of the First Amendment.

The police then beat, Maced and arrested Chris Wisniewski, a fourth-year journalism student, for complaining about Jones’ treatment. “I was knocked flat on my ass from behind. We were in back of the police by High Street watching what they were doing on 12th, away from the action, and they just turned on us because Shomas had a camera,” recalls Wisniewski.

Wisniewski says he was taken to the Zettler Hardware parking lot near campus and held. When students complained about their treatment, they were met with the flippant comments of officers, including one who encouraged others to “get ’em riled up, so I can Mace ’em again.”

Writing in the Lantern on May 24, Eric Sims, a senior majoring in journalism, recounts how he and a friend were accosted while walking to a convenience store on May 17 by police who offered helpful hints like “…What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Turn around, NOW!”

“They chased the students down, beating the ones they caught, Macing the others. Students were screaming and almost trampling each other to run back to their houses,” wrote Sims.

The students all tell the same story. No problems, no fights, prior to the police invasion. In fact, area residents had complied with earlier police requests to use plastic fencing to contain their guests and even made public announcements over a PA system asking residents to cooperate with police. Only after the police actions were bottles thrown and items set on fire. But, that must be put in the context of the indiscriminate beatings, excessive Macing and random assault with “knee-knockers”–rubber riot bullets–and other anti-riot devices. Throw in the mounted riot police and cop helicopter and you’ve got the makings for police-state mayhem. But, the students are fighting back.

The demonstrators announced the formation a new and long-overdue organization: Copwatch. They plan to monitor police activity and take legal action to prevent what has now become a long stream of abuses.

Let’s recall the most obvious. After Ohio State’s last big win at home over Michigan, unlike other universities that enjoy victory celebrations, Columbus cops Maced the hell out of celebrating fans attempting to tear down the goalpost. Last spring, riot police Maced and brutally beat Antioch students for holding a peaceful demonstration at the federal building opposing cuts in student loans. And last fall, police fired tear gas canisters and “knee-knockers” indiscriminately into south campus streets and residences making the air in a four-square block area virtually unbreatheable, and then beat and arrested students fleeing to fresh air.

The seeds of the problem germinated in bad social policy. First, an asinine decision to raise the drinking age. This only makes sense if raising the drinking age means that the students would comply; they won’t. College students always drink alcohol. If the drinking age is 18, they drink it in local bars; if it’s 21, they drink at house parties. If you close and burn down the bars, they’ll drink in their cars and alcohol-related fatalities will rise. In our society, it’s a rite of adult passage. The college and the city should be promoting responsible drinking, not police rioting.

What message was being sent when the police department decided to crack down on “drunk walkers” in the campus area a year or so ago? Again, why not crack down on drunk walkers at Christopher’s after the Ohio legislature adjourns on any given day? If the police would contact me, I could gladly give them the names of a few senators and representatives I’ve never seen sober.

Stop the police repression and brutality. Have the police read the Constitution. And if this is what the Columbus Public Safety Department means by a new policy of “community policing,” I wonder about their definition.

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: 5/28/1996 “Whiny Dems And Jews” (Anti-Semitism)

5/28/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

From Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium to Columbus’ Riffe Center, anti-Semitism is in vogue. But in the state capital, instead of chastising the bigot, we literally fire the messenger. Ask Devon Rice.

On May 8 at approximately 8:30 a.m., Rice, a messenger with the Legislative Service Commission, was delivering forms to House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson’s office on the 14th floor when he heard Ohio House Sergeant-at-Arms Robert Foster loudly proclaim: “The Jews are just like the Democrats, all they do is whine.”

After Foster “repeated himself several times,” Rice confronted the Statehouse official and said, “Could you do me a favor, next time you make anti-Semitic remarks, could you lower your voice so I don’t have to hear you?”

Rice says Foster initially denied that his remarks were anti-Semitic and reluctantly offered a half-hearted apology. Rice then dashed off a letter to Speaker Davidson (R-Reynoldsburg), informing her of the incident and stating: “As a citizen of Ohio, as a human being and as a ‘Jew,’ I felt compelled to inform the gentleman that I heard him, that I was offended, and that his behavior was intolerable.” Foster was sitting at his desk in the reception area at the time the remarks were made.

Rice wrote “I personally do not care what the Sergeant-at-Arms says at home, at a bar, or on the golf course. However, this type of behavior clearly has no place within his official capacity as an employee of the Ohio House of Representatives. His behavior was, aside from being ignorant and offensive, unprofessional.”

Speaker Davidson seemed to concur. She ordered an immediate inquiry into the matter. Foster admitted that he had called two specific groups–the ACLU and the Jewish Defense League–“whiners just like the Democrats.” Foster denied he ever referred to “Jews” specifically. Nevertheless, Davidson concluded in a letter dated May 15 that Foster’s conduct was “entirely inappropriate and should not be condoned in the House of Representatives.” Davidson directed Carol S. Norris, the executive secretary of the Ohio House, “to verbally reprimand Mr. Foster for his ‘inappropriate’ comments.” A copy of her letter to Rice was forwarded to the director of the Legislative Service Commission, Robert Shapiro. Within a week, Rice was given his six-month evaluation and told that his services would no longer be needed after the session ended.

Instead of talking to Rice face-to-face, the evaluation from his immediate supervisor Eric Rodriguez and Office Manager Cathy Kamer was simply left on his desk. Rice claims every time he was five minutes late was suddenly highlighted, although no one had ever spoke to him about tardiness before. And, curiously, a vague reference to having “gone above a supervisor on one occasion . . .” appeared.

Rice resigned after the evaluation, rather than finish the session, and he requested an exit interview with Kamer and Shapiro. When he showed up at the appointed time, he found State Trooper Sergeant Moore waiting to escort him out of the building. “It’s insane. The trooper threatened me with arrest,” Rice offers.

Shapiro acknowledges that he saw Davidson’s letter, but refused to give Kamer’s or Rodriguez’s names when asked who evaluated Rice or whether they had seen Davidson’s letter. “I’m not going to help you, you’ll have to find out yourself,” Shapiro told me. Shapiro has recently been under fire for withholding corporate donation information from the press and the Legislative Service Commission is still recovering from the recent Puerto Rican junket scandal.

Shapiro claims he was unaware of the state trooper incident and suggests “not so convincingly” that Rice’s evaluation had nothing to do with the letter. A true professional.

School Board Coup

The Wolfe Family Newsletter writes: “Party politics didn’t come into play when the Columbus Board of Education unanimously tapped the Reverend Leon Troy Sr., a Republican, this week to fill a Board vacancy.” Oh? The Daily Monopoly had been touting Troy as above the fray. That’s the usual B.S.. What was left out of the reporting was the fact that the late Sharlene Morgan was a progressive Democrat and Troy fought against her and sided with the Chamber of Commerce on most key issues.

Recall Superintendent Larry Mixon’s on-and-off again “resignation.” As Bill Moss stated at the time, “Troy was the Chamber and Dispatch’s front man” to silence the progressive anti-tax abatement block on the Board and to get Mixon to stay.

Sources in the Franklin County Democratic Party claim that school board members Loretta Heard and Mary Jo Kilroy were against Troy’s appointment in executive session and Karen Schwarzwalder was “up front” about her support. But it was school board President Mark Hatch”described by a Democratic Party staffer as a “weasel”,”who never came clean and cut a deal behind closed doors.”

Hatch has a history of double-dealing and stabbing the local Democratic Party in the back. Remember his vote for the Republican Bob Teater that denied Mary Jo Kilroy the school board presidency a few years back?

As for Kilroy, who rallied her progressive supporters this past campaign by denouncing the Republican agenda, she’s got some explaining to do. But, she wasn’t in the mood. When asked to explain her public support and vote for Troy, she commented, “I’m not interested in the story.” Of course. Can charges of “sellout” be far behind?

Bob Fitrakis ran for Columbus School Board in 1995.
 

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Bob Bytes Back Archives: 5/08/1996 America Needs A Raise (Labor)

5/08/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

Last Wednesday at Columbus City Hall, local community and labor organizations sent a graphic and powerful message to our city and nation: America Needs a Raise! The AFL-CIO is sponsoring a series of town meetings across the country where workers can speak out publicly about their increasing insecurity and reduced standard of living. And so they came: the tired working poor, haggard working single mothers, laid-off and anxious middle-level managers, and downtrodden temps.

Those reading the Wolfe Family Newsletter (aka Dispatch), may have missed the event since they tucked the small article on an inside page of an additional Metro section. That’s not surprising, the highly paid and tightly leashed Wolfe family lapdogs regularly sprinkle the editorial pages with shocking tales of wealthy woes. Usually it’s about some poor millionaire denied a tax abatement by greedy inner-city Columbus schoolchildren or CEOs unable to purchase their third mansion because of heartless workers demanding the minimum wage be raised. Read more

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Ohio Secretary Of State Confirms 2004 Election Could Have Been Stolen

Jenny Brunner :)

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
December 14, 2007

Ohio’s Secretary of State announced this morning that a $1.9 million official study shows that “critical security failures” are embedded throughout the voting systems in the state that decided the 2004 election. Those failures, she says, “could impact the integrity of elections in the Buckeye State.” They have rendered Ohio’s vote counts “vulnerable” to manipulation and theft by “fairly simple techniques.”

Indeed, she says, “the tools needed to compromise an accurate vote count could be as simple as tampering with the paper audit trail connector or using a magnet and a personal digital assistant.”

In other words, Ohio’s top election official has finally confirmed that the 2004 election could have been easily stolen.

Brunner’s stunning findings apply to electronic voting machines used in 58 of Ohio’s 88 counties, in addition to scanning devices and central tabulators used on paper ballots in much of the rest of the state.

Brunner is calling for widespread changes to the way Ohio casts and counts its ballots. Her announcement follows moves by California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen to disqualify electronic voting machines in the nation’s biggest state.

In tandem, these two reports add a critical state-based dimension to the growing mountain of evidence that the US electoral system is rife with insecurities. Reports from the Brennan Center, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Government Accountability Office, the Conyers Committee Task Force Report, Princeton University and others have offered differing perspectives that add up to the same conclusion.

Coming in the state that decided the 2004 election for George W. Bush, Brunner’s confirmation of the electoral system’s vulnerabilities adds huge new weight to the charge that the Buckeye State’s vote count was stolen.

In a series of investigative reports dating to well before the 2004 election, the Columbus Free Press and Freepress.org have documented several dozen different means used by the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign to steal the official 2004 vote count.

The final official tally for Bush—less than 119,000 votes out of 5.4 million cast—varied by 6.7% from exit poll results, which showed a Kerry victory. Exit polls in 2004 were designed to have a margin of error of about 1%.

In various polling stations in Democrat-rich inner city precincts in Youngstown and Columbus, voters who pushed touch screens for Kerry saw Bush’s name light up. A wide range of discrepancies on both electronic and paper balloting systems leaned almost uniformly toward the Bush camp. Voting procedures regularly broke down in inner city and campus areas known to be heavily Democratic.

In direct violation of standing federal election law, 56 of Ohio’s 88 counties have since destroyed all or part of their 2004 election data. The materials were additionally protected by a federal court injunction in the King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit (in which we are attorney and plaintiff). To date, no state or federal prosecutions have resulted from this wholesale destruction of presidential election records, including 1.6 million ballots, cast and uncast, needed for definitive auditing procedures.

However, two Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) election officials have been convicted of felony manipulation of an official recount. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the state’s largest newspaper, recently editorialized that there is “no evidence” the 2004 election was stolen, but omitted mention of the destruction of the electoral records by more than half the counties in the state. The Plain-Dealer and other mainstream media have consistently ignored findings by the Free Press and others indicating widespread manipulation and theft of the kind Brunner has now confirmed was eminently do-able within the Ohio system.

Brunner says “the results underscore the need for a fundamental change in the structure of Ohio’s election system to ensure ballot and voting system security while still making voting convenient and accessible to all Ohio voters.” Among other things, she advocates replacing touch-screen machines with optical-scan units that include a paper balloting system.

The study was managed by the Battelle Corporation, and conducted by Columbus-based MicroSolved Inc., SysTest Labs of Denver along with a consortium of academic subcontractors. It was reviewed by a dozen county officials, and included scrutiny of voting systems produced by Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Hart Intercivic and Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold).

Brunner is the Democratic successor to Republican J. Kenneth Blackwell, who administered the 2004 election as Secretary of State while also serving as state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. The report comes as part of her pledge to guarantee a fair and reliable vote count in the upcoming 2008 presidential election.

Under Blackwell, Ohio spent some $100 million installing electronic voting machines as part of the Help America Vote Act, passed by Congress in the wake of the scandals surrounding the 2000 election. Former Ohio Congressman Bob Ney, HAVA’s principle author, now resides in a federal prison, in part for illegalities surrounding his dealings with voting machine companies.

Blackwell, who was defeated in a 2006 race for the Ohio governorship, outsourced web hosting responsibilities for the 2004 vote count to a programming firm that also programmed the web site for the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. Blackwell’s chosen host site for the state’s vote count was in the basement of the Old Pioneer Bank Building in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the servers for the Republican National Committee, and the Bush White House, were also located.

Brunner has now recommended that all Ohio’s voting be done on optical scan ballots, with reliance on central tabulation. Voters with disabilities could use AutoMark machines with bar coding devices that allow the marking of ballots with little or no additional assistance.

“It’s a testament to our state’s boards of elections officials that elections on the new (federally) mandated voting systems have gone as smoothly as they have in light of these findings,” Brunner said.

Conversely, it is also a testament to the ease with which the 2004 election was stolen by election officials who had clear conflicts of interest aimed at keeping George W. Bush in the White House.

—
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA’S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008 (www.freepress.org) and of WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO? (The New Press) with Steve Rosenfeld. THE FITRAKIS FILES are available at www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared. Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org.

 

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Dr. Fitrakis Vblog Nov. 27, 2007, Stolen Presidency 2004

Speaking Truth to Power. This is a synopsis laid out showing general and specific evidence refuting the the conspiracy theorist label on the 2004 stolen Elections.

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Bytes Back Archives: Dirty Little Secrets (Death Row)

4/24/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

The death penalty is primarily political. It’s about power: who gets killed; and who gets elected prosecutor, judge, attorney general and governor. You may recall our own Dewey Stokes, Franklin County Commissioner, ran pro-death penalty commercials although it is totally unrelated to his office. No doubt Dewey wants to fry all the Hueys and Louies on death row, but what about Attorney General Betty MontgomeryÑ “The Great Expediter”? Betty wants to hide “the dirty little secrets” of Ohio’s death row by speeding up the executions. But those of us who are more concerned with justice than expediency, or Ms. Montgomery’s political future, need to expose her secrets.

Secret #1. Tony Apanovitch, a small time crook, stands convicted of rape and murder based on circumstantial evidence. Apanovitch is a top priority of the Central Ohio Amnesty International organization. The prosecution withheld crucial evidence that surely would have caused a jury to conclude that there was “reasonable doubt.” For example, Apanovitch voluntarily supplied hair, blood and saliva samples to the police. Police investigators recorded that the samples were “not consistent” with the killer. A hair found on the victim did not match hers or Apanovitch’s. But the hair was consistent with a serial rapist that had attacked and brutalized six women in the same neighborhood. Also, police investigators confirmed Apanovitch’s alibi of his whereabouts the night of the murder, but failed as required under law to inform Apanovitch’s lawyer. Moreover, the prosecutor, eager for a win, misinformed the jury about the odds of Apanovitch’s semenÑ”type A”Ñbeing found in the victim. It seems the prosecutor failed to mention that the victim was also a “type A” secretor, making the evidence meaningless. Apanovitch has been on death row for 12 years, and is seeking a new trial that would undoubtedly free him.

Secret #2. John G. Spirko Jr. was convicted on circumstantial evidence of murdering Elgin, Ohio’s postmaster Betty Jean Mottinger. Unlike the O.J. Simpson case, there was no physical evidence linking Spirko to the death scene. Former Ohio Public Defender Randall Dana stated that public defenders were “…convinced that, for whatever reason, the Postal Department had set about proving this guy did it ÑSpirko did itÑwhen in fact, someone else was guilty.” Former investigator Chester “Briss” Craig produced a notarized affidavit dated March 17, 1988 from William Green, a prisoner in the Marion Correctional Institution, swearing that his cellmate, John Willier, confessed in the great detail to the killing of Betty Mottinger. Green’s affidavit reads: “When John Willier related this aforesaid account of the kidnapping and killing of the post mistress to me, he was crying and appeared to be in an emotionally overwrought state.” Spirko was scheduled to die on January 5, 1995, but received a stay of execution and his case has since been picked up “pro bono” by a prominent Washington, D.C. firm.

Secret #3. There may be at least 14 other Apanovitchs and Spirkos on Ohio’s death row. In January 1992, Chester Craig filed a formal complaint with the Ohio Inspector General that reads “Some of our investigators previously assigned to Ohio Public Defender’s clients before they were convicted had not met with or conducted any kind of investigation on behalf of these clients….” Craig has personally identified to this writer the names of the following death row inmates who may not have received due process as required by the U.S. Constitution: David Steffen, Ernest Martin, John William Byrd, Michael Bueke, Billie Joe Sowell, Robert Buell, Gregory Esparza, Donald Williams, William A. Zuern, Rhett de Pew, William Wickline Jr., Alfred J. Morales, Martin Rojas, and Jeff Lundgren.

Craig claimed, “…Many of these clients, mostly black, indicated they had never heard the name of the investigator mentioned and that they had never met with such person.” Craig concluded that investigators for the Public Defender’s Office where he was a supervisor, “were turning in false time reports and were not providing the support services to the attorneys as required.” A 1994 report by the Office of Investigative Services substantially supports Craig’s allegations. Additionally, Linda Leisure, who worked for one of the investigators, told the Columbus Free Press in January 1995 that she was asked “to falsify time reports and interviews on these murder cases.”

Unlike O.J., who with six lawyers and millions of dollars won acquittal, or the Menendez brothers, whose vast fortunes allowed them to skirt the death penalty despite their confessions, Apanovitch and the others who have little money cannot afford simple justice under our system. They can’t buy the Dream Team lawyers, expert witnesses and top notch investigators. If O.J. were poor, all an Ohio prosecutor would’ve had to say to a jury is: “This is undeniably the hair of a black man in this glove.” Guilty as charged. And he would’ve gotten the death penalty for killing an upper-class white woman. If his victim had been another poor black man, maybe he would have gotten four years in prison.

That’s why we need to go slow, despite Betty’s political ambitions. If she had her way, both Apanovitch and Spirko would be dead by now.

Bob Fitrakis presented an anti-death penalty plank at the 1992 Democratic Platform hearings on behalf of Governor Jerry Brown and, after the plank was disallowed, sued the National Democratic Party and presidential candidate Bill Clinton.

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Advocates 2004 Vote Want An AG probe

Advocates who say there were serious problems in the 2004 vote want an AG probe

By Bill Cohen – November 20, 2007 Bill Cohen, critics are continuing to claim the election was stolen

Three years after the controversial presidential election in Ohio that put President Bush back into the white house for a second term, critics are continuing to claim the election was stolen. And now, they’re asking Ohio’s top cop to join their crusade. Statehouse correspondent Bill Cohen files this report.
http://tinyurl.com/3ykddya

Original Article:

http://statenews.org/story_page.cfm?ID=10830&year=2007&month=11

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: Nader for President

1982 Ralph Nader

4/03/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

You’re in the booth this fall. You scan the names for President: Clinton, Dole, Nader, Buchanan, Perot. For the first time, instead of voting for the mainstream, we may have the choice of the radical left, right and center respectively.

Nader’s already on the ballot in California and the Northeast Ohio Greens are pledging to put him on the Ohio ballot as an Independent. Perot is hinting he wants to run, mostly by shouting to anyone who’ll listen: “Draft me!” Whether or not Buchanan ends up on the ballot depends on how much Dole dumps on him at the Republican convention in August. Pre-existing right-wing parties with ballot status like the U.S. Taxpayers Party could provide safe haven for the routed Buchanan Brigades and the troops necessary to get him on the ballot and turn out the vote.

If Clinton runs to the center with nothing new to say this campaign season, many progressive Democrats like myself will have little trouble pulling the lever for perhaps the most principled man in American public life–our beloved Ralphie. Sure, we understand that Newt Gingrich recently led the “barbarians to the gate,” but his social Darwinism and his George Wallace with a Ph.D schtick seems like a spent political force. If Dole runs as a centrist also, it won’t matter that much whether Bill or Bob is the Presidential caretaker. As corporations continue to downsize, rightsize, riff, pink slip and write off U.S. workers, Bill will, no doubt, feel our pain more than Bob. But unless he proposes to do something about it, as Ralph, Pat and Ross surely will, there’ll be a proverbial plethora of third party votes.

In mid-February, the Labor Department reported that median wages for fulltime male workers is almost nine percent less than it was in 1979. The New York Times points out that pay for top level corporate executives has “soared to nearly 200 times that of the average worker, compared with only 40 times that of the average worker two decades ago.” The arrogance of the corporate elite in the global economy is now well established. Steven Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley predicted a “worker backlash” even before Buchanan rode the NAFTA issue to a shocking political upset in the New Hampshire GOP primary. NAFTA now stands as a metaphor for economic despair and anxiety. While it didn’t start the trends toward lower wages, NAFTA sure as hell helped accelerate them. It’s a manifestation of the greater problem of top-down corporate control and undemocratic dominance over our lives.

On January 1, 1994, when NAFTA–a truly strange and bizarre idea to merge the world’s most advanced high-tech economy with a third world country–was implemented, what was then a small trade surplus with Mexico is now a $15 billion a year deficit. Clinton took a bundle of money from the notorious K Street international trading crowd–essentially Dole’s donors–to push a conservative multi-national corporate pact that won more Republican than Democratic votes in the House. The President conveniently points to the European economic community as precedent. Yet he fails to mention that the European Common Market was put together over a couple of decades and it includes all first-world developed countries, a freely elected European Parliament as well as continental environmental and worker safety standards.

The NAFTA issue isn’t going to go away. A recent poll shows that 55 percent of U.S. citizens now regard NAFTA as a bad deal. In fact, anti-NAFTA sentiment is what’s creating the openings for Nader, Perot and Buchanan in presidential politics this year. It is vitally important to understand why each is opposed to the pact that both Clinton and Dole promote.

Loss of the U.S. manufacturing base is why Perot’s followers, despite the failure of his Reform Party to gather enough signatures, are motivated and most likely to place his name on the Ohio ballot as an Independent come August. His being a wacky and semi-paranoid billionaire aside, Perot, while on the Board of General Motors, consistently fought to keep auto manufacturing in the United States. Perot upholds the tradition of Henry Ford. Fordism, while not in and of itself progressive, argued that a stable middle-class society can only be achieved by paying stable middle-class wages. Perot is not overly concerned with the human rights abuses or ecological disaster associated with NAFTA.

Nationalist and isolationist voters, prone to Buchanan’s appeal, are driven by anti-immigrant hysteria and job loss. This “Fortress America” national front sees not the exploitation of U.S. and Mexican workers and environmental degradation, but hordes of little brown people swarming our territory and taking our jobs. They need to realize that what we call the southwest United States was formerly the northern half of Mexico prior to the Mexican-American War. And the real enemy are those in the corporate boardrooms who are equal opportunity debasers and degraders of workers and the environment. It’s not likely that a “Know-Nothing” coalition uniting xenophobe and homophobe is the future of U.S. populism.

Nader, on the other hand, will show real compassion, not only for the nearly one million estimated U.S. workers who have lost their jobs due to NAFTA, but for the even more unfortunate Mexican workers being mercilessly exploited by U.S. corporations in the sweatshops known as the maquilladoras. And he’ll also eloquently speak out against the factories spewing toxins that know no border.

–Bob Fitrakis visited the maquilladoras in January 1993 and co-produced a video entitled The Other Side of Free Trade.

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First Of Dr. Fitrakis Video Blogs: October 29, 2007 Local Progressive News

Published October 29, 2007

Podcasting Truth T o Power

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Bob Bytes Back Archive: Seeing Red (ACTV)

 3/13/1996
by Bob Fitrakis

Did you ever notice that if you look at Mayor Lashutka quickly from the side he looks a lot like former Soviet premier Brezhnev? When Greg speaks, it’s Leonid without the charisma. More importantly, the mayor’s policies are that same drab, debilitating 1970s Soviet gray. Hyperbole, you say?

Communism is known for its vehement disdain for free speech; recently so is the Lashutka administration. Last week, Maureen Conley, director of Columbus’ Department of Administrative Services, was quoted as saying that “the original intent [of public access TV] doesn’t matter.” She concedes that the original intent was the exercising of free speech. Maureen, and we presume the mayor, wish to go “forward” into a brave new world where the public’s voice is controlled. This wasn’t always the case. Just a few short years ago, the mayor made a public service announcement for ACTV, Columbus’ public access channel: “…In today’s democracy, the television camera is as important as the quill pen was to the founding fathers. ACTV is your TV, it’s your soapbox, your stage, your talk show. Make freedom of speech part of your daily life….”

Arbitrary and oppressive administrative fiats are now Lashutka’s style. Leonid would be impressed. Conley claims that “currently the cable access channel, according to our cable providers, is one of the lowest-viewed channels on the spectrum.” Yet, Warner Cable’s PR and marketing departments claim that no such data exist. One would think that Conley, as a former employee of Warner Cable–now charged with negotiating their contract with her current employer, the city–would know this. Or does she have a special relationship with Warner Cable that gives her access to secret information denied the public? More likely, Warner Cable’s attitude toward cable access–they could be making money off the channel–colors Conley’s opinions now that she oversees ACTV’s budget at City Hall.

Anyway, maybe it’s just Lashutka reverting back to his glory days when he chaired Citizens for Bork. You remember Bork? Reagan’s Supreme Court nominee who argued the doctrine of “original intent”–that the First Amendment only applies to the national government but not the states. And now it appears that it doesn’t apply in Lashutka’s Columbus.

And what about Lashutka’s trash policy? When Michael D. Long, director of the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, demonstrates that it’s far cheaper to let the free market work and bury trash in the Franklin County landfill at $13 a ton, the mayor tells him to shut up and burn it at $32 a ton. Lashutka demands that Congress impose a costly and unwarranted “unfunded mandate” on local governments by enacting “flow control.”

Just like Soviet industry, Lashutka insists on a Brezhnev-era “command economy” measure to protect his inefficient, wasteful and polluting trash-burning power plant. And just like Soviet Communism, he’s willing to destroy the environment and poison people to promote the bankrupt and backward policies of his regime.

Now, if we can only get the Wolfe family lapdogs on the Dispatch editorial board to denounce Lashutka’s communism like they recently denounced Gus Hall, chairperson of the Communist Party USA. But both the mayor and the Dispatch editors conveniently ignore or rewrite history. Whether it’s belief in Bork one day or free speech the next, reality is twisted for political expediency.

The Dispatch editors write: “As Hall entered his golden years, a million, perhaps even three million, Cambodians were being murdered by their communist Khmer Rouge countrymen…” implying that there was a world Communist conspiracy. In reality, the U.S. was backing Cambodia’s leader Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge killers–they were Henry Kissinger’s guys–because they were Chinese Communist allies. The Soviets opposed Pol Pot and supported the Communist invasion to overthrow him. Moreover, the Dispatch turned a blind eye to Communist Chinese human rights abuses and shilled for their Son of Heaven exhibition in Columbus, even after that government ran over unarmed, peaceful and democratic students with tanks in Tianamen Square.

The Dispatch and Lashutka both understand and apologize for Chrysler’s need to build Jeeps in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the company can hire virtual slave labor for 40 cents an hour, that will surely lead to the inevitable closing of the Jeep plant in Toledo. Just last year, the Dispatch wrote glowingly of Governor Voinovich’s trade mission to Communist China where he personally negotiated sweetheart deals for major political donors, even though Amnesty International cited that country for “human organ harvesting” from political prisoners. But the authoritarian government that presides over more than a billion potential Chinese Wendy burger scarfers can’t be all bad.

The Soviet Communists rightly fell because they were undemocratic, bureaucratic and serving the interests of a small elite. Meet the new Columbus communist boss, same as the old Russian boss. Republished @ 10/24/2007 www.fraudbusterbob.com

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