On November 3rd, there will be a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot in Ohio. This is no ordinary ballot initiative. Its very existence and marketing has been bought and paid for --to the tune of millions--by national and international agri-business corporations, such as Pioneer Hi-Bred International (owned by DuPont, a "developer and supplier of advanced plant genetics"--healthy!--and grantee of 100K to the effort),the National Pork Producers Council (113K), and the United Egg Producers (200K!).

(Join our Facebook Group and help us stop this travesty!)

Now why, you ask, would these Big Agra players get involved in a state issue, and to support a campaign that is for touchy feely things like "food safety" and "local control?" I'm not sure, but it might be that this corruption of Ohio's Constitution will provide "food safety" much like George W. Bush provided "healthy forests," "clear skies" and a "mission accomplished." In other words--and I know this will shock you--they're lying. And they're lying with millions of dollars they've acquired, by being, like their "products," pigs at a trough.

So what is Issue 2, what will it do, and why should you care about it if you're not a resident of the Buckeye State? It's simple: Issue 2 was put on the ballot overnight by state legislators bought off by Big Agri-Business and their mouthpiece here, the Ohio Farm Bureau. Why? So that they can corrupt Ohio's Constitution to give the Governor the power to appoint a board of unaccountable agri-business cronies to make decisions in smoke-filled rooms about all farming practices in Ohio.

I know what you're thinking. Unaccountable, corporate-influenced governing has worked out so well with TARP money and preemptive war, we might as well try it with farm policy.

With Issue 2's passage, those only interested in their bottom line can (and you can bet will) stuff millions more animals into smaller and smaller crates together, increasing the likelhood of H1N1 and E. Coli outbreaks and mutations and their capacity for animal cruelty. They can ignore the waste caused by big factory farms that contaminates the water we drink. They can allow workers to be exploited and placed in situations that endanger their health, while putting family farms--held for generations--out of business.

And why should you care if this passes in Ohio? For all the reasons above, but also...because you're next. This amendment was a reaction to successful efforts to rein in their greedy, dangerous and abusive practices in California (Prop 2), Arizona and Florida, among others. If they can use the camouflage of bought off Democratic and Republican Establishments, millions of dollars in lies, and an off-year low-turnout election to enshrine their corporate malpractice into state constitutions, they can fly under the radar while endangering our health, undermining the people's right to petition (another amendment would be needed to overturn it if passed, as the new board's decisions would supersede ballot initiatives, legislative decisions and opinions by the State Department of Agriculture) and spiking their profits.

How can you help? Well, we only have 10% of their budget. But we have the grassroots energy. We have you.

So please join our Facebook group. Tweet this. Blog it. Call and email everyone you know in Ohio. And be prepared when this garbage dressed up as a gift inevitably makes its way to your state.

(Watch this video for more on this - the 1st minute and then from 5:22 on)

Full Disclosure: I am proud to be a consultant in the effort to beat back Issue 2 in Ohio

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

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Rep. Marcy Kaptur cites an example of how bailing out the banks has done little to help struggling home owners in Ohio. Bill Moyers also asks Kaptur about her speech on the House floor where she urged foreclosed homeowners to be squatters in their own homes.

This was a really fantastic segment from Bill Moyers Journal and I encourge everyone to watch the entire interview with Kaptur and Simon Johnson at Moyers' site.

MARCY KAPTUR: Let me give you a reality from ground zero in Toledo, Ohio. Our foreclosures have gone up 94 percent. A few months ago, I met with our realtors. And I said, 'What should I know?' They said, 'Well, first of all, you should know the worst companies that are doing this to us.'

I said, 'Well, give me the top one.' They said, 'J.P. Morgan Chase.' I went back to Washington that night. And one of my colleagues said, 'You want to come to dinner?' I said, 'Well, what is it?' He said, 'Well, it's a meeting with Jamie Dimon, the head of J.P. Morgan Chase.' I said, 'Wow, yes. I really do.' So, I go to this meeting in a fancy hotel, fancy dinner, and everyone is complimenting him. I mean, it was just like a love fest.

They finally got to me, and my point to ask a question. I said, 'Well, I don't want to speak out of turn here, Mr. Dimon.' I said, 'But your company is the largest forecloser in my district. And our Realtors just said to me this morning that your people don't return phone calls.' I said, 'We can't do work outs.' And he looked at me, he said, 'Do you know that I talk to your Governor all the time?' He said, 'Our company employs 10,000 people in Ohio.'

And I'm thinking, 'What is that? A threat?' And he said, 'I speak to the Mayor of Columbus.' I said, 'Why don't you come further north?' I said, 'Toledo, Cleveland, where the foreclosures are just skyrocketing.' He said, 'Well, we'll have someone call you.' And he gave me a card. And they never did. For two weeks, we tried to reach them. And finally, I was on a national news show. And I told this story. They called within ten minutes. And they said, 'Oh, we'll work with you. We'll try to do some workouts in your area.'

We planned the first one after working with them for weeks and weeks and weeks. Their people never showed up. And it was a Friday. Our people had taken off work. They'd driven from all these locations to come. We kept calling J.P. Morgan Chase saying, 'Where's your person? Where's your person?' And they finally sent somebody down from Detroit by 3:00 in the afternoon. But out people had been waiting all morning and a lot of people that's how they treat our people.

BILL MOYERS: You did a remarkable thing on the floor of the House recently. And I want to show my audience a clip of a speech in which you urge people to break the law.

(BEGIN VIDEO)

MARCY KAPTUR: So why should any American citizen be kicked out of their homes in this cold weather? In Ohio it is going to be 10 or 20 below zero. Don't leave your home. Because you know what? When those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his or her finger on that mortgage, you don't have that mortgage, and you are going to find they can't find the paper up there on Wall Street. So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave. In Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and all these other places our people are being treated like chattel, and this Congress is stymied.

(END VIDEO)

BILL MOYERS: Wow. You are urging them to resist the law when the Sheriff shows up to throw them out of their home.

MARCY KAPTUR: I'm saying that they deserve justice, too. And that the scales of justice in front of the Supreme Court are supposed to be balanced, and they're not. And that possession is 90 percent of the law. And that you have legal rights, as a home owner. You have a right to legal representation. You have a right before the judge to have the mortgage note produced by whomever in the system has it. Judge Boyko of Cleveland threw out six cases, because when the foreclosures came up, the financial institutions couldn't produce the note. Our people deserve their day in court.

Ohio Republican John Adams has re-introduced a bill that would make it illegal for a woman to get an abortion without the written consent of the biological father:

An Ohio lawmaker has re-introduced legislation that would include a father's rights in the abortion decision-making process. Under Roe v. Wade, fathers are left out of the equation when a woman considers whether or not to have an abortion that would end the life of their child.

Rep. John Adams, a Republican from Sidney, wants to change that and the legislation he introduced today, House Bill 252, would require the biological father's consent before an abortion can be done.

Adams told the Daily Reporter newspaper that abortion centers would "need to get consent from the biological father" before the abortion can proceed and he called the measure a "father's right bill" to protect the interest of fathers who are given no say in the abortion process.

He also said the bill provides for criminal penalties for women seeking abortions who do not obtain consent properly.

Ladies, don't even think about trying to find a stand-in daddy, that will land you in the slammer, and if you don't know who the father is, you're just s*it out of luck:

"Providing a false biological father would be a first-degree misdemeanor the first time, which means not more than six months and jail, and a maximum $1,000 fine," Adams said. "And on the second occasion, providing false information would be considered a fifth-degree felony."

Adams told the newspaper that, in cases when the mother does not know the identity of the father, the abortion would be prohibited. Read on...

Adams says that this is about trying to keep the biological mother and father together, which is a gross encroachment on individual freedoms. For someone who belongs to a party that supposedly wants smaller and less intrusive government, Adams would have to create a whole new bureaucracy to pull this off.

"There needs to be responsibility for actions," Adams said. "As someone who is pro-life, this is also an attempt and a hope to keep the two people who have created that child together, and I suppose if you just go back to the simple beginning, there is merit to chastity, and to young men and women waiting until marriage."

Finally, there appears to be nothing in this bill requiring the man to take care of the mother or the child once they've forced her to bear their child.

Dear Minority Leader Boehner:

During Sunday’s Meet the Press, your Republican colleague, Senator John Ensign, said the following:

SEN. ENSIGN: But the other thing, to get back to what Congressman Frank said, is that, you know, we're going to be laying off teachers and firefighters. You know, that's just fearmongering. We're not going to be doing that in any of the states. The states have grown, in their budgets, faster than population growth, faster than inflation for the last several year--actually, probably about the last 15 years. Their budgets are bloated, the federal government's budget is bloated. What we should be doing is cutting back. Instead of just spending money, we should eliminate wasteful Washington spending and also require the states to have some fiscal discipline.

I understand you both share a strong opposition to the stimulus, but I wonder if you also share the same view as Sen. Ensign? Before answering that, let me ask if you have seen the local news, which, in a twisted sense of irony, was published the same day Sen. Ensign made these comments:

Because of budget cuts, the Butler County Sheriff's Office has made a number of changes, including restructuring and job cuts.

These moves — coupled with job reduction in the minimum security jail contracted through Resolutions Community Solutions and the elimination of $500,000 from the budget of the new radio system to come online this year — will save the county about $1.4 million, Sheriff Richard K. Jones said.

Three jobs have been eliminated and pink slips handed out to the crime prevention officer (a part-time position) and two officers assigned to the child support enforcement division. Meanwhile, the number of employees in the information technology division has been decreased from three to two, according to Jones.

(emphasis added)

Now I understand the Sen. Ensign said “teachers and firefighters”, but I think it’s a safe assumption that his thinking would couple police with firefighters under a larger blanket of public safety.

So Mr. Boehner, after reading that the very people charged with protecting your home and family is suffering from severe budget cuts, attributed to our down turning economy, can I ask if you agree with your colleague? Do you also believe that saying localities will have to make these kind of cuts is “fear mongering”.

I will be patiently awaiting your answer.

Signed – your constituent, Jamie Holly.

The Senate Guru:

In the last week, speculation ran rampant over whether Ohio Republican George Voinovich would announce a re-election bid or a retirement. It was reported that he would be having a big conference call today, Sunday, with major donors to inform them of his 2010 plans. So what's the decision? Politico has the scoop:

Voinovich to announce retirement

Ohio Republican George Voinovich is expected to announce Monday that he won't seek reelection to the Senate in 2010. ...[..]

We'll know for sure tomorrow, but it looks likely that we can add Voinovich to a list of Senate Republican retirees that already features Florida's Mel Martinez, Kansas' Sam Brownback, and Missouri's Kit Bond. Further, Texas' Kay Bailey Hutchison may resign before 2010 to focus on her gubernatorial campaign. And we're less than two weeks into 2009. (Iowa's Chuck Grassley, Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, Kentucky's Jim Bunning, and Oklahoma's Tom Coburn are still all potential retirees.) New NRSC Chair John Cornyn must be losing it.

Former Congressmen Rob Portman and John Kasich are the two Republicans most frequently mentioned as stand-ins should Voinovich retire, but both are flawed. Portman served in George W. Bush's administration as both U.S. Trade Representative and Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Think it'll be hard to tie Portman to Bush's economic record? And how do Ohioans feel about the trade agreements that Bush supported? As for Kasich, his political career peaked a decade ago as House Budget Chairman considering a Presidential run. Since leaving the House in 2001, Kasich spent time as managing director of Lehman Brothers' Columbus division, wingnutted it up on Fox News, and demurred from an '06 gubernatorial run.

On the Democratic side, the top choice appears to be Congressman Tim Ryan, though Ryan would be sacrificing his seat on House Appropriations if he ran. Other Ohio Democrats on the fairly strong bench are Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher, Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and Congresspeople Betty Sutton and Zack Space.

I'm not convinced that the Republican Party should count their Ohio chickens just yet, although much depends on the success of how the Democratic majority negotiates through this tough economic situation. It should be said that Voinovich did show occasional glimpses of party independence, though sadly, not enough when it counted.

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From Democracy Now Dec. 22, 2008.

AMY GOODMAN: A top Republican internet strategist who was set to testify in a case alleging election tampering in 2004 in Ohio has died in a plane crash. Mike Connell was the chief IT consultant to Karl Rove and created websites for the Bush and McCain electoral campaigns. He also set up the official Ohio state election website reporting the 2004 presidential election returns.

Connell was reportedly an experienced pilot. He died instantly Friday night when his private plane crashed in a residential neighborhood near Akron, Ohio.

Michael Connell was deposed one day before the election this year by attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis about his actions during the 2004 vote count and his access to Karl Rove’s email files and how they went missing.

Velvet Revolution, a non-profit investigating Connell’s activities, revealed this weekend that Connell had recently said he was afraid George Bush and Dick Cheney would “throw [him] under the bus.” Cliff Arnebeck had also previously alerted Attorney General Michael Mukasey to alleged threats from Karl Rove to Connell if he refused to “take the fall.”

Well, Mark Crispin Miller joins us now, a professor of media culture and communication at New York University, the author of several books, including Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 and Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too. Mark Crispin Miller joins us now in our firehouse studio.

Transcript to follow.

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Today's Washington Times has an article talking about a battle going on between the Ohio GOP and John McCain:

In Ohio, long-boiling friction between the McCain campaign and the state Republican Party on a variety of issues reached a new intensity over a complicated local gambling question. The state Republican Party's central committee had voted to oppose a proposed state constitutional amendment to permit a casino in Clinton County. The state party included its "vote no" view on the "slate card" of recommendations it sends to early voters.

The McCain campaign unilaterally removed that recommendation from the mailer, overriding Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett and threatening to block funds to pay for the printing and distribution. Mr. McCain favors legalized gambling, and his campaign did not want to appear to support it some states and oppose it in others.

The state party worked with the opponents of the amendment to send another mailing, using the pictures of U.S. Sen. George V. Voinovich, Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted and Mr. Bennett, along with their words of opposition on the gambling question.

"Why in the world would anyone want to amend the Constitution of Ohio and put a monopoly in for one individual to build one casino in the state of Ohio?" Mr. Voinovich asks in his statement.

Joe Sudbay brings up the fact that McCain has serious ties to the gambling industry, which could be his reason for breaking with the Ohio GOP. That is most likely only part of the reason though.

Continue reading »

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Ohio Republicans were just handed a defeat by the Supreme Court for the voter registration controversy:

The Supreme Court is siding with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices on Friday overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat, faced a deadline of Friday to set up a system to provide local officials with names of newly registered voters whose driver's license numbers or Social Security numbers on voter registration forms don't match records in other government databases.

We will have video shortly of Pete Williams explaining the decision on MSNBC.

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The national media has spent the week covering storm torn Texas' damage from Hurricane Ike. Something that appeared to fall off the radar though was the damage Ike left in other parts of the Midwest.  Here in the Greater Cincinnati area, we were hit with high winds last Sunday, gusting upwards of 80 mph. These near hurricane force winds wreaked havoc on an area that isn't used to such weather systems.

By the time the winds died down on Sunday night, our area saw close to a million people without power. Ohio overall saw close to 2 million in the dark, and as of today there are still about ¼ million people without power in the state.

Luckily, I escaped damage to my home. I was without power for about 12 hours, phone for 4 days and internet for 6 days. There are others who weren't so lucky. The picture above is a couple miles from me where a tree ended up crushing a car. This was a common scene around Ohio, and cars weren't the only casualties. Four deaths were caused by the storm in the Greater Cincinnati area and numerous houses sustained massive damage from down trees and limbs.

However the story doesn't stop there. People ended up losing refrigerators full of food. Gas stations had hour long lines, what restaurants that were open were running out of food, and grocery stores had to throw away millions in stock (including Kroger, which is based out of Cincinnati). The saddest part is all the people on fixed income who had to toss away their food.  Luckily, state and local officials are working to issue food stamps to these people so they can restock.

At least normalcy seems to be trumping the frantic week we saw. They are hoping to have power back on to all those affected by this Sunday and we might see a normal week of school and work around here. It did take me by surprise that the media was rather silent on this aftermath of Ike. I saw a blurb about it on the crawl of MSNBC in the middle of the week, but that was it. If you have any stories to share about this massive storm, please do so in the comments. It will be interesting to hear how other people weathered this past week in the area.

 (Additional photos and video of the damage Ike left in the Greater Cincinnati area can be found here.)

How are these things still legal?

WaPo: (h/t miss kitty)

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier [formerly known as Diebold] and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.

It never ceases to amaze me that eight years after the whole Florida debacle, and four years since the shady Ohio vote count, that virtually nothing has been done to fix all these voting "irregularities." It's really inexcusable.

For an idea of how easily these electronic machines are hacked, see HBO's Hacking Democracy.

The New York Times:

From malfunctioning machines to poorly trained poll workers, Ohio has become this year’s example for electoral flaws….

        Rep. John Conyers, Jr, and other Representatives along with Rev. Jesse Jackson will be holding a congressional forum in Columbus concerning new evidence of election irregularities and fraud in Ohio and to discuss legislative and other responses to the problems.

WHAT:   "2004 Election Forum"

WHEN:   Monday, December 13th @ 10:30am

WHERE:  North Hearing Room, Ohio State Capitol, Columbus, OH

WHO:    Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
        Rep. Ted Strickland
        Rev. Jesse Jackson, Founder Rainbow Push Coalition
Prof. Robert Fitrakis, Editor, The Free Press
Cliff Arnebeck, Arnebeck Associates
John Bonifaz, General Counsel, National Voting Institute
Gregory Moore, Executive Director, NAACP National Voter Fund

C-SPAN Part II

Here are more highlights!

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