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Bill Cohen, Statehouse News With Dr. Fitrakis

Third Party Candidate For Ohio Governor Vows Fight To The Finish 

Bill Cohen, Ohio Public Radio

COLUMBUS, OH (2006-09-18) His name is on the ballot in this year’s race for ohio governor, but he’s been shut out of the debates and is rarely mentioned in news reports. He’s Bob Fitrakis, the favorite of the Green party and activists on the political left. Fitrakis is a lawyer and political science professor from Columbus and he has sparked headlines by helping file two lawsuits, claiming Republicans stole Ohio’s last presidential election and, with it, the national election. Statehouse correspondent Bill Cohen has this audio portrait of a candidate who admits he’s a long shot but isn’t giving up:

 

(original link http://tinyurl.com/r68a4)

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If The President Is Spying On Americans

http://tinyurl.com/roa55

Blackwell Faces Green Challenger in Ohio Governor Race

By Matthew Cardinale, News Editor and National Correspondent
Atlanta Progressive News (September 16, 2006)

(APN) ATLANTA – “People need somebody running who can keep Blackwell from stealing an election. Democrats can’t say ‘Quit stealing,'” Bob Fitrakis, 50, told Atlanta Progressive News.

Fitrakis has won the Green Party Nomination for Governor of Ohio and this November he will be facing Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and Democrat Ted Strickland.

“There’s a socialization process in the media that ‘By god, you don’t challenge the results of the election.’ Because the corporate media would fry them,” Fitrakis said.

Fitrakis is running for many reasons, but one of these is to “give me some [legal] standing,” in case of elections integrity issues in the 2006 Gubernatorial Election in Ohio.

Fitrakis is an amazing person. In addition to running for Governor of Ohio, he is a Professor of Political Science at the Columbus State Community College, the Editor of the Columbus Free Press Newspaper, and an attorney.

Fitrakis’s Republican opponent Blackwell is pretty amazing too.

While apparently treating Blacks not-so-well as Secretary of State during the 2004 Presidential Election in Ohio, Blackwell was also the Co-Chair of the Bush/Cheney Reelection Committee in Ohio. Read more

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J. Katrina Blackwell

J. Katrina Blackwell hates the anniversary of the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. When you want to run the Bush Bantustan of Ohio and you’re counting on peeling black voters from the Republican Party, there’s nothing more disturbing than to recall black faces floating down the streets of New Orleans and desperate African Americans trapped on roofs. Once Ohio’s African American voters are reminded that Blackwell is a front for the Bush crime family, and he’s never really called their policies into question in New Orleans, his black vote evaporates. 

So, when you think of the anniversary of the greatest domestic policy failure in our nation’s history, remember that a vote for Ken Blackwell is a vote for Bush and his racist Katrina policy. 

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Two Candidates Do Not A Dictatorship Make

Heard Ted Strickland speak the other day at the Chamber of Commerce gubernatorial candidate breakfast at the Holiday Inn on the Lane in Columbus – best moderate Republican political talk I’ve ever heard. American politics runs in cycles. We’ve swung dramatically to the right since the appearance of Ronald Reagan and his CIA sidekick George the Elder. I walked out before I was condemned to the rhetoric of J. Kenneth. I wasn’t invited anyway.

Part of the problem with inviting third party candidates like Bill Peirce and I, is that there would be actual debate and innovative ideas. The next thing you know, a marketplace of ideas would flourish. There would be real political debate and, heaven forbid, democracy might break out. By merely having Strickland and Blackwell, you can span the political spectrum from theocratic Christo-fascism a la Blackwell, to modern 50s Republicanism a la Strickland. I suppose you could make the argument that having two candidates constitutes one more than a dictatorship.

If we are to change the disastrous course the Bush regime is on, Strickland cannot make arguments appealing to the right. He must feel the heat of the progressive forces to his left. If Strickland wins the governorship of Ohio by embracing Republicanism, the people of Ohio will lose. If you really believe in democracy, you should fight for democratic principles. That includes all certified candidates in the debate.

Bob Taft understood this. Why doesn’t Ted Strickland?

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Tremendous Void In Columbus’ Black Community With The Loss Of WVKO

It was great to be back live on “Front Street”, the public affairs radio talk show that used to be on WVKO 1580AM here in Columbus – back with my old pal Charles Traylor.

For ten years I was the only white talk show host on a black-owned and operated radio station, thanks to the late and legendary Bill Moss. First, I was on WSMZ starting in 1996 until 2002 when I moved to WVKO, a black gospel station.

The station, like the Free Press was committed to Old Testament righteousness. Speaking truth directly to the powerful. Sadly, it went off the air on May 5, 2006. Convenient for Ken Blackwell, since it was the station that broadcast live the hearings we held in Columbus to hear testimony from voters about the 2004 election debacle.

There’s a tremendous void in Columbus’ black community with the loss of WVKO, and there’s a greater need than ever for alternative voices. That’s why I’ll continue to blog, stream and podcast my thoughts throughout this election. We must break the corporate for-profit oligarchy that controls the infotainment business.

All power to the people!

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War, Strickland And Dems Like WHIGs, Blackwell Ran Out Of Room

In their first joint press conference, Ted Strickland and Ken Blackwell upheld the tradition of Ohio politics by not going into great detail on the great moral issues of the day. Of course, Strickland is infinitely preferable to the opportunistic Bush family sycophant, J. Katrina Blackwell.

One thing they could agree upon was excluding the Libertarian and Green Party gubernatorial candidates. Apparently, they were massively afraid that a real debate might perhaps break out and democracy might flourish. Indeed, there’s nothing more subversive than a marketplace of ideas. When asked by Bill Cohen, of Ohio Public Radio, what he thought about the two “minor” party candidates being left out of the event, Blackwell looked uncomfortable and mumbled, “Keep working,” and then ran. Literally ran out of the room. The video will be on the website soon.

I’ve thought long and hard about the bizarre nit-picking debate on the internet blogs over my exact words on how I would handle the Ohio National Guard situation. So let me be as frank as possible. If they would have let me in the debate, here’s what I would have said: I will do everything humanly possible to end the unjust and criminal war being illegally waged in Iraq. I will issue every order possible to block the deployment of the Ohio National Guard. I will give sanctuary to every soldier who seeks to disobey the illegal orders of the president of the United States. I will convene a committee of noted human rights scholars like Professor John Quigley at Ohio State to see whether the president should be tried as a war criminal.

Now my pragmatic friends, what’s Ted Strickland’s position on the war? Or, J. Kenneth Blackwell? The Democratic Party risks going the way of the Whigs, who refused to take a stand on the moral issue of its day – slavery. On basic principles of human rights, we cannot compromise on torture, illegal spying and criminal illegal wars. What defines us as Americans is not how much ass we can kiss with the powers that be, but that long tradition of direct dissent against the powers that be. Is my position clear enough?

Is my position clear enough?

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Ohio’s New Jim Crow Brought To You By Blackwell And The GOP

The front page of Friday’s Columbus Dispatch screams out “500 New Voters Might Not Exist” referring to ACORN’s paid voter registration gatherers falsifying registrations. What it fails to point out is that 500,000 voters may not get to vote in November because of the state’s new voter ID law. A few days ago, the Dispatch editorial writers wrote about how the new “poll tax” in the form of a driver’s license is not that bad.

In the third line of Friday’s article, the Dispatch revealed that the alleged voter registration fraud was caught when: “Election workers verifying new-voter forms discovered signatures with the same handwriting, addresses that were for vacant lots, and incorrect information for voters who already were registered.” Note, they caught the fraud not by picture IDs, but by old-fashioned signature comparison. As part of the repressive House Bill 3 to require voter ID, the bill also included a positive provision: to make voter registration gatherers sign their name on the new registration cards.

The oddest part about the voter ID law is that while you can bring in a utility bill, bank statement or government check stub, the official voter ID issued by the Board of Elections does not count.

Voting should be made as easy as possible to promote participation by all people. The state of Ohio should be issuing free voter identification cards. The state’s failure to take such action reflects the lack of commitment to democracy by the Ohio Republican Party. In this case, repressive elements of HB 3, like the voter ID, are ignored by the Dispatch and minor improvements in the law, like requiring the signature gatherer to include his/her name on the new registration cards, are touted.

But the bottom line is the statement by Matt Damschroder where he points out that this was not about voting nonexistent people, but about a few paid voter registration gatherers trying to make a quick buck. What should be on the front page of the Dispatch is “Ohio’s New Jim Crow Brought to You By Blackwell and the GOP: 500,000 voters might not vote.”

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Big Lies Blackwell Loses Appeal Reichwing Bizarro World Mantra Continues

Deb Riechmann of the Associated Press has issued the single biggest lie of any mainstream corporate media outlet since Kenneth Blackwell orchestrated the theft of the 2004 presidential election. She refers to Ken Blackwell as the “honorary co-hair” of the Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign in Ohio. Blackwell was a very active and involved co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney Re-election Campaign. This is like referring to Hitler as the honorary Fuhrer of the Third Reich. And, he prided himself in being a very partisan activists, bragging that it was his idea to put the gay-bashing Issue One on the November 2004 ballot claiming that led to Bush’s victory. To now pretend that he held some honorary inactive role is false and disingenuous.

The Dispatch reported today that “…Blackwell has lost his appeal of a court decision, ordering him to pay $64,613 dollars in attorney’s fees related to a lawsuit filed during the 2004 presidential election.” Voting rights groups sued Blackwell, in part, for waiting too long to issue a directive on provisional voting in Ohio. Blackwell ruled late that votes in Ohio would not be counted if people were registered in the right county but at the wrong precinct, which sometimes means the wrong table at the same polling place. This disenfranchised thousands of urban Ohio Kerry voters. Meanwhile, rural Republican counties like Miami admit they refused to enforce Blackwell’s directive and even used the term “merged” voter to allow voters registered in other counties, but now residing in Miami County, to vote.

As part of Blackwell’s “Big Lie” campaign, he was a mere “honorary co-chair” for Bush and the lackey he’s training to replace him, Greg Hartmann, has a similar ludicrous talking point. Hartmann told the Cincinnati Enquirer today that Ohio’s election system is “the best in the country.” What Blackwell and Hartmann understand is that if you’re the laughing stock of the democratic world, you simply repeat the same mantra to the corporate media asserting the opposite. If you’re the most biased repressive state in the Union when it comes to voting rights and your elections are the most notoriously corrupt, you simply claim you’re number one. Then raise millions of dollars from rich Republican donors to run propaganda ads selling the Big Lie.

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Bill Moss-Carter-Baker Commission-Dr. Fitrakis-We The People-Stand In The Gap

On August 2 one year ago, my dear friend Bill Moss passed away. We had talk about him running for governor this year and envisioned a three-way race with three black men: Bill Moss, Michael Coleman, and J. Kenneth Blackwell – sort of the good, the bad and the ugly of Ohio’s black politics, although Mike’s not really bad, just wishy-washy. That adjective was never associated with the only independently-elected black man in Columbus history. Moss, who ran for mayor as a Democrat and for State Rep, was elected to the Columbus School Board repeatedly without the endorsement of the Democratic Party.

I dedicated my book “A Schoolhouse Divided” to Bill, because he was the key source and the inspiration for giving all children a quality education. Before Bill’s tragic and untimely death, he was working hard to expose the corruption in the 2004 election. His last major performance before the Election Assessment Committee in Houston, Texas was a classic. There he confronted the Chair of the Carter-Baker Commission and asked them what they planned to do when they realized a lot of the suppression of voters in Ohio was pre-planned and criminal.

I wish Bill had lived and I was managing his campaign. All I can hope for now is to follow a few of his last words to me: “Stand in the gap.” Even though he had just suffered from a stroke, there was plenty of fight left in him and he was still planning to restore democracy in Ohio and America. Bill Moss was a warrior and a soldier, but what people didn’t understand – he relished the fight against the forces of oppression and what he called The Money Party.

To Bill, it was always the people vs. the Titans. And he always believed that the people would prevail in the end. He believed in his heart that the choice was between serving God or mammon.

Help me stand in the gap and continue the fight that Bill Moss started.

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Rep. Jim Trakis Introduces Ohio HB 638: Allows Independents To Choose Partisan Label Before Election

Congratulations to Republican representative Jim Trakas for believing in democracy. He introduced House Bill 638 in Ohio on July 27, 2006 that would allow independent candidates to choose a partisan label before an election. No more “Other Party” label and praying to get 5% of the vote. Any name can be used as long as it doesn’t mimic the name of an existing party, and isn’t overly long.

The Republican Party itself is the most successful third party in history. Back when the Whigs were whipping the populists into a religious fervor while looting their pockets, much like today, small parties at the state level with names like The Abolition Party and The Free Soil Party pressed the great issue of the day – abolishing slavery. Out of that grew a larger third party coalition known as the Republicans.

With the Republican and Democratic Parties agreeing to span the political spectrum from A-B and engage in the most boring, stilted and irrelevant debates in modern history, it is more important than ever to hear new voices and political perspectives. In many ways, the mainstream corporate media mirrors the boring political non-debates of our day. The great moral issues call out for debate and redress: an illegal war in Iraq, a president who embraces torture, the spying on American citizens, the repression of minority and poor voters’ rights.

Let the Libertarians and Greens flourish and the Republicans and Democrats wither and hopefully, go the way of the Whigs.

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