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Last night, we were up counting and sorting our petitions to qualify the first Green-endorsed ticket for governor and lieutenant governor in Ohio history. As I write this morning at a little after 8am, Anita Rios and I have 10,960 signatures. 5,000 are required. Tim Kettler, the Green candidate for secretary of state, who worked so diligently on the recount in Coshocton County, phoned early to tell me he had over 9,000 signatures and will file with me as well, at 1pm today at J. Kenneth Hackwell’s office.

So, if you’re not doing anything at 1pm today, join us at the Borden building at the corner of 4th and Broad in downtown Columbus and help us make history. A press conference will follow immediately after the filing of petitions at the secretary of state’s office in the Borden building.

Under Ohio law, which is, like many Ohio laws, unfair and ludicrous, the Democrats and Republicans running for statewide office only had to get 1,000 signatures to get on the ballot, while “other party candidates” have to get five times as many signatures. And, under Ohio law, the Democrats and Republicans at the county Boards of Elections get to jointly verify our signatures without our presence. In Ohio, we have a two-party system, only slightly better than a dictatorship. And for every dollar the wealthy send the Republicans, they flip a 50-cent piece to the Democrats. Because they’re beholden to the same corporate money and studies indicate 1 percent of the population gives 90 percent of the money to political candidates, there’s very little real policy debate in Ohio, or the nation in general. Read more

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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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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