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Bush And Hackwell About To Be Stoned

Check out Leftyblogs.com – the Top 50 Headlines of the Week includes a blog by Cincinnati’s Andrew Warner. He’s asking Strickland to drop out of Ohio’s governor race, so as not to be a “spoiler” for my campaign. Thanks for the insightful analysis, Andrew!

This Thursday, Rolling Stone subscribers should be getting a historic issue of the magazine with one of the most anticipated articles ever written. Voting rights activists are excited about the article written by Stone reporters, as well as an extended piece by Bobby Kennedy, Jr. on the Ohio 2004 presidential election. The article should be on the web by Friday.

We need to buy as many copies as we can get and make sure they’re widely distributed before the Bush White House breaks open one of its secret slush funds to keep this important article from being disseminated.

If you want to get a feel for what might be in the article, my good friends at the Ecological Options Network have now posted all their videos through Google, so enjoy these and let me know what you think:

Here are the Google links: 

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End The Atrocities In Iraq

This Memorial Day I reflected on the war dead in Iraq. Not just the U.S. soldiers, but the more than 30,000, and possibly as high as 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians killed in this unjust war. When individuals make such atrocious mistakes, based on misinformation and lies, they should immediately cease their sinful actions and offer restitution. Rest assured that our president is a war criminal, guilty of conspiring, planning and waging an aggressive and illegal war on a country that posed no threat to us. J. Kenneth Hackwell, a well-known buddy of neo-con Richard Perle, supports the same policy of regime change embraced by the Bush administration. I believe that all life is intrinsically valuable and I like to call this position pro-life. That’s why I am opposed to war except as a last resort in an act of self defense.

The U.S. Marines who slaughtered the 24 innocent Iraqi civilians in the western town of Haditha are murderers and must be tried and condemned as such. The war in Iraq is over. We have lost the hearts of minds of the Iraqi people. Not that we ever had them. We were told our troops would be greeted with sweets and flowers – an absurd lie, and no imperialist occupying force has ever been thus treated. Now, as in Vietnam, our troops can’t tell the difference between the “good” Iraqis and the “bad” Iraqis. We are in the middle of a civil war, which is draining our country financially and militarily. The Bush regime is perhaps the most hated political regime in American history. Hated not only by the people of the world, but despised by the vast majority of U.S. citizens. If you love this country and support its troops, you’ll do all you can to bring them home and disassociated them with this illegal and immoral war.

As governor of the state I plan to issue a direct order prohibiting the Ohio National Guard from serving in Iraq and to appoint a commission of legal scholars and academics to investigate whether or not the president should be indicted for war crimes. That is the Ohio I would be proud of, the same one that stood firm against slavery during the Civil War. Not one that blindly supports an irrational war-mongering, war-profiteering faux Texan.

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Minimum Wage Is Not Living Wage

When the Republicans that control the state recently raised Ohio’s minimum wage to match the federal rate of $5.15, there was little cause for rejoicing. The federal minimum wage has not been increased since September 1997. Five fifteen an hour comes out to $10,700 annually, to support oneself or family. There’s a statewide initiative that I support that will raise Ohio’s minimum wage to $6.85 and increase the income of one in seven Ohio workers. An estimated 297,000 workers in Ohio make less than $6.85 an hour, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Another 423,000 people would be affected by a “spillover” effect that would cause their slightly-above minimum wages, but less than living wages, to rise. In all, an estimated 730,000 workers, 58% of them women, would benefit from higher wages if the $6.85 an hour initiative goes through.

Not only should the initiative go through, but I propose if I am governor, to tie minimum wage increases to the rate of inflation. It is the poor and the working poor who are hit the hardest by the highly inflationary fuel prices. Moreover, I will instruct Ohio state agencies to only contract with companies that pay a livable wage. Even at $6.85 an hour, workers would only be paid $14,248 a year, which is still 14% below the federal poverty level. All public jobs in Ohio should be paying at least $10 an hour. When we make the state more livable for the least of our brethren, we make the state more livable for all people.

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New Emancipation Movement Needed

What do we make of the Columbus Dispatch headline today: “Senate Debate Turns Nasty”? Senator Ray Miller (D-Columbus) was confronted by Republican Senator Jeff Jacobson of suburban Dayton. Bizarrely, the confrontation occurred during a debate over a bill declaring September 22 as Emancipation Day in Ohio. As the Ohio Government TV channel faded to black during the Senate debate yesterday, viewers could see Jacobson walking up on Miller. Miller was giving a speech purportedly about President Lincoln’s views on slavery, when he was gaveled down by Republican Senate President Bill Harris of Ashland. Miller called Harris’ actions “outrageous and discriminatory.” That’s when Jacobson confronted him. Jacobson claims that he walked over to talk with Miller only to debate Lincoln’s views on slavery. The Dispatch reported that the Sergeant of Arms of the Senate had to step in between the two legislators. Ironically, the bill passed 33-0

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Ohio: A “Bill of Rights Enforcement Zone”

As governor, I will proclaim Ohio a “Bill of Rights Enforcement Zone,” unlike the current governor Bob Taft, who has joined the U.S. government in illegally spying on U.S. citizens. I would move to expose any illegal spying programs on the people of Ohio and the citizens of the United States. A few years back, Taft pledged to turn over Ohio public records to the government when it was plotting its infamous “Total Information Awareness” campaign. Thankfully, civil libertarians killed the Pentagon’s attempt to spy on U.S. citizens.

Revelations in the USA Today documenting the largest databank in U.S. history run by the National Security Agency (NSA) and three phone companies – AT&T, Verizon and Bell South – should be seen as another move by the authoritarian right to harass and intimidate U.S. citizens. Recall that the NSA was behind MH-Chaos in the 1960s. Its domestic arm run by the FBI, COINTELPRO, functioned to illegally spy on, disrupt and harass the peace and civil rights movement.

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Thou Shalt Not Kill

When I was growing up in the 60s, the United States didn’t have the death penalty. Only nasty, brutal countries like the Soviet Union and the racist South Africa killed people. That was Michigan, where they still don’t have the death penalty. Now I live in Ohio, a state where they think nothing of taking an hour and a half behind closed curtains to viciously execute a man while, the Columbus Dispatch reported, “moaning, crying out and guttural noises” could be heard by the witnesses. Joseph Clark, the man who was tortured to death in the execution gone bad, died after the second attempt to kill him.

Any doctor or medical personnel who takes part in cold blooded murder by the state should lose their license as a health care provider. Any doctor taking part in an execution is clearly violating the Hippocratic oath. Remember, it was the Nazis who brought us the medical injection for killing their own “defective” citizens. While the Nazis gassed Jews, gypsies and gays, they preferred the medical injection for their own German inferiors.

As governor, I will immediately call for a moratorium on the death penalty and commute all death penalty sentences to life in prison without parole. I pledge to also review all cases to make sure that no prisoners were railroaded and order DNA tests if possible when a plausible claim of true innocence is put forward.

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The “New Totalitarianism”

Fraudbuster Bob Fitrakis and his longtime colleague and co-author Harvey Wasserman have written a new analysis of the current political situation entitled, “The ‘New Totalitarianism’ Now Defines A Desperate Neo-con End Game,” which is available in full at the Columbus (Ohio) Free Press website:  https://freepress.org/departments/display/20/2006/1946. Here are the first few paragraphs:

As the Bush/neo-con kleptocracy disintegrates in a toxic cloud of military defeat, economic bankruptcy, environmental disaster and escalating mega-scandal, its attack on basic American freedoms – its “New Totalitarianism” – has escalated to a desperate new level, including brutal Soviet-style prosecutions against non-violent dissidents and an all-out offensive for state secrecy, including an attack on the internet.

In obvious panic and disarray, the GOP right has turned to a time-honored strategy – kill the messengers. While it slaughters Americans and Iraqis to “bring democracy” to the Middle East, it has made democracy itself public enemy Number One here at home.

The New Totalitarianism has become tangible in particular through a string of terrifying prosecutions against non-violent dissenters, an attack on open access to official government papers, and the attempted resurrection by right-wing “theorists” of America’s most repressive legislation, dating back to the 1950s, 1917 and even 1797.

Bush’s universal spy campaign is the cutting edge of the assault. The GOP Attorney-General has told Congress both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln engaged in electronic wiretapping. He has deemed the Geneva war crimes accords a “quaint” document and treats the Bill of Rights the same way.

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Justice for Carol Fisher!

The rise of fascism always begins with the corruption of the police. The recent conviction of Carol Fisher on two counts of felonious assault on two 200+ pound Cleveland Heights policemen must concern all Americans who believe in the Bill of Rights.

Carol’s real crime was posting the World Can’t Wait posters that demanded that Bush “step down.”  The cops, as foot soldiers of the Constitution, should have been defending Carol’s First Amendment right to post fliers. Instead, as thugs of the Repugnican Party, they assaulted Carol.

This is an old game, and I’ve seen more than more cop laugh about testi-lying. In this case, the lie was obvious. They were the victims. They were assaulted. Again, just another pair of lying jackbooted thugs who do the bidding of the Bush junta.

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Katrina Victims Deserve Right to Vote

The civil rights movement is alive and well in New Orleans.  On April 1st, thousands of people marched across the Crescent City Connection Bridge to support the right of displaced New Orleans citizens to vote in the election scheduled April 22.  In a symbolic action that mirrored the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama that generated a nationwide groundswell of support for the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, the “March for Our Right to Return, Vote and Rebuild” in New Orleans was designed to ensure that the displaced residents of New Orleans are not disenfranchised and that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is protected.

Marchers also supported the right to return home for those scattered in 44 states across the nation, as well as a priority to be given to “Katrina survivors” when jobs, contracts and training opportunities are dispensed along the Gulf Coast.

The main reason for the protest, led by Rev. Jess Jackson and others, is the city’s upcoming April 22nd election, which currently excludes two-thirds of the voters who formerly lived in New Orleans. The election has been pre-cleared by state officials and the U.S. Department of Justice, even though voters do not know who is running for office and those seeking office do not know how to communicate with the voters. Organizers of the April 1st event want the Secretary of State and Attorney General’s office to provide the public and candidates an updated voter list, including the FEMA list of Katrina survivors scattered across the nation.   Not to do so, they contend, would amount to a “public election with secret voter rolls,” which is a clear a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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We Must Defend Cynthia McKinney

Progressives should rise to the defense of Rep. Cynthia McKinney. Having read Michael Rupert’s brilliant essay, “The Beloved Cynthia McKinney,” I can only wonder how twisted the politics are in this society where a possibly drunken Vice President can shoot his hunting partner and not answer to the police, while McKinney is vilified as a possible felon for a minor scrape with a Capitol police officer.

To understand McKinney’s relationship with the Capitol police, people should view the groundbreaking documentary “American Blackout.” The gutless and soulless mainstream Democrats that denounce McKinney are exactly the reason why the party has been in the minority for the last 12 years in Congress, and has allowed the Bush crime family to steal the last two elections.

McKinney is a national treasure. Whatever minor mistake she made, we should not allow a criminal presidency that is waging illegal war, responsible for the death of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens, to tell us who should be reprimanded in Congress and pursued for criminal charges.

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