This is what privatization looks like:

CCA took control of Lake Erie Correctional Facility on January 1, 2012, and the problems started almost immediately. Officials in Conneaut, Ohio – where the prison is located – were surprised to learn they may be on the hook for policing the facility because state law prohibited the highway patrol from so investigating crimes in this no-longer-state-owned building. Conneaut taxpayers were not keen on CCA and the state passing the financial burden onto them, and despite the community successfully lobbying the state to change this law last year, Conneaut is still saddled with increased responsibility for policing Lake Erie.

Unfortunately, this is not where the problems end.

In September 2012, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections (ODRC) released its first internal audit report. If this was CCA's first report card, let's just say they would need to repeat the semester. The compliance rating plummeted from the 97.3% compliance rating the prison achieved when publicly-owned to 66.7%. Auditors found outrageous violations like prisoners being forced to use plastic bags for defecation and cups for urination because they had no running water for toilets. Basic conditions were heinous, with black mold, standing water, and spoiled food found throughout the prison. Perhaps even more troubling were reports that the medical department is grossly understaffed and many prisoners go untreated.

CCA is a very, very large contributor to Republicans, particularly the Republican Governors' Association. In 2012, it contributed $225,000 to the RGA, because Republican governors like to give them business. In 2010, the year Kasich was elected, their own report shows that corporate contributions were $722,200. Of course, they were able to bury these in the state-by-state breakdown they published following the totals, because the RGA is a national committee and doesn't break down by state.

This is what happens when public duties are handed off to for-profit corporations. According to CCA's most recent quarterly report, their contract for the Ohio facility is an initial twenty-year term with unlimited options to renew.

As the ACLU report warns, if the CCA wants to manage prisons in your state, just shout NO, over and over and over. Also, it might be good not to elect Republican governors.

Ed explains Preibus' strategy with regard to the electoral college

If you're just tuning into this, watch Ed explain Republicans' strategy for stealing the 2016 election. My hair is on fire --in advance of my head exploding. Preibus' "in your face" cynicism and thuggery is mind-bending.

I wanted to find a way to change the outcome, so I've been hunting down information on the different states to see how these efforts can be countered. Here's what I have so far.

• Virginia: Virginia has made the first move to change how their electors are allocated. Following their efforts to redistrict state Senate districts, a Senate subcommittee moved on Wednesday to make the change. Go to Credo Action and sign their petition which will remind Governor Ultrasound McDonnell that he shouldn't sign any bill that reaches his desk into law if he has aspirations beyond the end of his gubernatorial term. Virginia is also a state covered by the Voting Rights Act, which should mean a serious investigation of Republican efforts to disenfranchise minority voters in the state, who tend to be clustered in the areas. If this becomes law, minority voters will be deemed irrelevant.

There is some cause to hope, however. Republican State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel opposes the plan. She abstained from the subcommittee vote and has said she would "likely" oppose it in committee or on the floor. I hope she means it, because that would break the tie in the Senate and cause the measure to fail.

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Rep. Peter King (R-NY) seems to think that Republicans in the House of Representatives were given a “mandate” by voters allowing them to prevent tax cuts for the rich from expiring, despite exit polls showing voters overwhelmingly support tax hikes. “[T]he fact is, in Congress, the American people have returned a Republican House of Representatives. So we also have, if you want to call it, a mandate.”

Except that’s not quite true, Mr King, and you know it. The American people didn’t vote for a Republican House, the Republicans didn’t actually win the House, and therefore there is no mandate. 53,952,240 votes were cast for a Democratic House candidate compared to 53,402,643 cast for a Republican; in other words, over half a million more Americans voted for Democratic House candidates than for Republican candidates. Republicans received less than half of the vote for members of the House of Representatives, and even lost seats in the House this election. Yet Republicans still took 55 percent of the seats in the House. In effect, they had to steal the House. Here’s how:

In 2010, Republicans won a substantial majority of state governments. Once they were in power, they then deliberately redrew congressional district lines in order to manipulate the 2012 House election for a Republican victory. It’s called gerrymandering, a very old, very nasty technique that has long been successful in affecting the outcome of elections, for both sides. And it’s getting worse now that computer modelling can precisely calculate districts to maximize political advantages. Citizens, advocates and political parties have filed 194 lawsuits challenging congressional or state district maps in 41 states. Lawsuits are still pending in eight states.

Gerrymandering is the process of manipulating geographic borders to create a political advantage for a particular party, obstructing the ability of voters who oppose a state’s ruling party to influence future elections. It works on the principle of “wasted voting” – a numbers game where opposition voters are shifted, or “packed” into districts where their party would win anyway even without their vote, then “cracking” any remaining opposition voters by moving them into districts where they are a significant minority, rendering their vote futile. Voters, of course, aren’t physically moved, just the lines on a map where they officially live, which end up bizarrely twisted and distorted out of any natural proportions. And it’s technically legal.

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Well lookit you, progressives. Ain't you just absolutely the shit?

What a week, what a time to be on the planet. I won't inundate you with all the many, many ways to experience inspiration and schadenfreude there are right now...there are just too many to count.

But buried in President Obama's victory speech was an important detail and a challenge:

I want to thank every American who participated in this election, whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time. By the way, we have to fix that.

Um, yup. Let us be clear: the most vile elements of the GOP didn't steal this election, but it wasn't for lack of trying. We went to Ohio to see for ourselves what was going on in that crucible of democracy--and what we found was disturbing, galling, and surprisingly inspiring.

And there was dancing! Jon Husted ain't messing with my Dougie.

I just love this story. Talk about not agreeing with your in-laws! Josh Mandel is the Republican running against Sherrod Brown for his Senate seat, and some of his family members don't like his position on gay marriage:

With days to go before the 2012 elections, Ohio Senate hopeful Josh Mandel is taking heat from an unexpected source: his in-laws.

On Monday, Mandel’s wife’s cousins took out an ad in the Cleveland Jewish News blasting Mandel for his anti-gay policies. Nine cousins signed the open letter, including members of the Ratner family, a prominent Jewish family in Cleveland that Mandel married into, according to Salon.

In the letter, Mandel’s relatives criticize his opposition to same-sex marriage and his stated belief that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the military policy overturned by Obama that prevented gays from serving openly in the military, should be reinstated. On both points, the letter turns personal, noting how Mandel’s anti-gay policies would directly affect members of his family.

“Your cousins, Ellen Ratner and Cholene Espinoza, are among the many wonderful couples whose rights you do not recognize,” the letter reads. “Their wedding, like yours, was a beautiful and happy occasion for all of us in our family. It hurts us that you would embrace discrimination against them and countless other loving couples in Ohio and around the country.

”

Now that's some real family values!

In an effort to win over auto workers in Ohio and across the Midwest, Team Romney this week unveiled a jaw-droppingly fraudulent ad rewriting Mitt's opposition to the federal bailout that saved the entire industry. But largely overlooked in the shocked response to his bogus claims about Jeep shipping U.S. jobs to China has been the union-bashing that was at the center of Romney's primary campaign to win the Republican nomination for president. As a quick glance reveals, Mitt Romney may profess "I love American cars," but not the Americans who make them.

During the GOP primaries, Governor Romney didn't merely back a national "right to work" law, support Ohio Governor John Kasich's now-overridden SB5 law banning collective bargaining rights for all public employees and denounce President Obama's appointees to the National Labor Relations Board as "union stooges." (That last charge was particularly ironic, given the later resignation of a Republican NLRB member for leaking confidential information to the Romney campaign.) Using vitriolic language his campaign would prefer Ohioans forget, Mitt Romney blasted the United Auto Workers despite the sacrifices its members made to save Detroit. As he boasted in Grand Rapids, Michigan back in February:

"I call it crony capitalism and that's the path that [Barack Obama] is taking. He got hundreds of millions of dollars from labor bosses for his campaign. And so, he's paying them back in every way he knows how. One way, of course, was giving General Motors and Chrysler to the UAW. I saw that Bob King said that I don't care about the auto industry. I'm sorry, Mr. King. I care very deeply about the auto industry. I want to make sure we have good jobs, not just for a few weeks but for many, many years. I want the auto industry to come back in a big way and I've taken on union bosses before, I'm happy to take them on again because I happen to believe that you can protect the interests of the American taxpayers and you can protect a great industry like automobiles without having to give in to the UAW and I sure won't."

Not to content to stop there, Romney in a Valentine's Day op-ed called President Obama's successful rescue of the auto industry a "sweetheart deal" and "crony capitalism on a grand scale."

Instead of doing the right thing and standing up to union bosses, Obama rewarded them...This was crony capitalism on a grand scale. The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.

In reality, there was no truth to Romney's charge that "The president gave the (auto) companies to the UAW." As Politifact explained:

The reality is Obama was in charge of a bailout deal that resulted in the union's health care trust owning stock in Chrysler and GM. But the trust was owed money to pay for health care under the terms of labor contracts the car companies signed. And the union "gave" plenty too -- in the form of wages, vacation and job security. In that light, the arrangement was a tradeoff, not a giveaway.

What tips Romney's claim even further from reality is the fact that the union itself does not own any GM or Chrysler stock. The trust that manages health benefits for retirees is the stockholder, and it is independent from the UAW. It is not a majority shareholder in either company, nor does it have a vote on the board.

While Romney's union-bashing might play well with conservative Republican primary voters, the general election is another matter altogether.

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Mitt Romney claimed he was suspending his campaign today. Sorta. Kinda. Not really.

Actually, he was out schmoozing voters in Ohio under the guise of calling it a "disaster relief" event:

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney urged his supporters on Tuesday to keep up their efforts to help those impacted by Hurricane Sandy, and pitched in to box up donations.

"We have heavy hearts, as you know, with all of the suffering going on in a major part of our country," he said at an appearance in Dayton, Ohio, touted by the campaign as a "storm relief" event. "A lot of people are hurting this morning and they were hurting last night."

He thanked the crowd for bringing goods, which he said will be sent to New Jersey.

"I appreciate the fact people right here in Dayton got up this morning, some went to the grocery store, I see, and purchased some things that these families will need," he continued. "I appreciate your generosity. It's part of the American spirit, the American way, to give to people that are in need."

This warmed the cockles of the talkers' hearts at Fox News, of course, where no one doubted that Romney was not, repeat NOT campaigning. He was just helping box up some canned goods to help in the relief effort, and, heavens, if some photographers or some voters happened to be nearby, that was swell too. (Oh, and by the way, Obama was campaigning because Bill Clinton was out doing events in Minnesota, donchaknow.)

But had anyone at the Romney campaign bothered to ask the Red Cross, they would have been informed that collecting canned goods is exactly what they don't need. From the Red Cross website:

The American Red Cross does not accept or solicit small quantities of individual donations of items for emergency relief purposes. Items such as collections of food, used clothing, and shoes often must be cleaned, sorted, and repackaged which impedes the valuable resources of money, time, and personnel that are needed for other aspects of our relief operation.

The Red Cross, in partnership with other agencies, suggests that the best use for those types of donations is to support needy agencies within donors' local communities.

The best way to help a disaster victim is through a financial donation to the Red Cross. Financial contributions allow the Red Cross to purchase exactly what is needed for the disaster relief operation. Monetary donations also enable the Red Cross to purchase relief supplies close to the disaster site which avoids delays and transportation costs in getting basic necessities to disaster victims. Because the affected area has generally experienced significant economic loss, purchasing relief supplies in or close to the disaster site also helps to stimulate the weakened local economy.

As John Aravosis observes:

It “impedes” relief efforts, it doesn’t help. The Red Cross prefers money because it’s far easier to handle, and can be spent where it’s most needed and on what is most needed.

Afterwards, Romney refused to answer any questions about his previously documented proposal to eliminate FEMA:

"Gov are you going to eliminate FEMA?" a print pooler shouted, receiving no response.

Wires reporters asked more questions about FEMA that were ignored.

Romney kept coming over near pool to pick up more water. He ignored these questions:

"Gov are you going to see some storm damage?"

"Gov has [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie invited you to come survey storm damage?"

"Gov you've been asked 14 times, why are you refusing to answer the question?"

Oh, and here's how the press badges for the event read, via Dave Weigel:

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It's as if Mitt Romney simply can't help himself. Gripped by an irresistible obsession to become President of the United States, Romney will lie to voters on almost any issue, large or small. And on no point is Romney's compulsion to fabricate more pathological than on President Obama's successful rescue of the American auto industry. As his new ad designed to dupe voters in Ohio and across the industrial Midwest makes clear, the same Mitt Romney who was content to "let Detroit go bankrupt" now pretends to be its savior.

The text of the new Romney spot seems impressive. Of course, it would be impressive if any of it was true.

"Who will do more for the auto industry? Not Barack Obama. Fact-checkers confirm his attacks on Mitt Romney are false. The truth? Mitt Romney has a plan to help the auto industry. He's supported by Lee Iacocca and the Detroit News. Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job."

Even by Mitt Romney's standard, the lie-per-second ratio is unprecedented. While his supposed "plan to help the auto industry" remains a mystery, the truth of President Obama's auto rescue is not.

For starters, Jeep is expanding production in the growing market of China and not, as Romney pretended on Friday, "thinking of moving all production to China." It's no wonder the Detroit Free Press reported that "Romney camp silent on his Jeep-to-China gaffe." To call it a "gaffe" is an act of journalistic kindness. But given Paul Ryan's continuing fraud about President Obama's supposedly broken promise to keep GM's Janesville, Wisconsin plant open, Romney's latest fraud should come as no surprise.

Of course, Romney's claim that "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy" is a smokescreen for his November 2008 op-ed opposing President Bush's bailout for Detroit. As he put it four years ago:

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President Obama arrives at Cleveland Airport; 12,000 people roar

All of the pearl-clutching over the close polls was beginning to give me a nervous twitch last night. Then I caught this video of the president arriving at his final stop in his 48-hour, 8-state tour - Cleveland, Ohio.

The roar of the crowd as Air Force One rolled up on the tarmac was amazing, and their energy didn't abate for the entire rally. It reminded me of 2008, when crowds gathered in epic numbers to get a glimpse of him on the stump, and the electricity that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

But I do recall being nervous in 2008, even though the polls were clearly pointing toward an easy win. Why? Because of Ohio. It's always Ohio, it seems. So let's have a look at what the pundits and papers were saying back 4 years ago today, on October 26, 2008, about Ohio:

Toledo Blade headline: McCain goes for broke to keep Ohio 'red'

This weekend s Ohio Newspaper Poll shows the race for Ohio to be a statistical dead heat with a slight edge for Mr. Obama in a state that Mr. McCain characterizes as a must-win for himself if he is to capture the White House.

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Poll gives Obama slight lead in Ohio

Ohio voters, wrong only twice when picking the president in the last 108 years, remain nearly split over their choice for the White House, according to a new Ohio Newspaper Poll.

But while the race remains a statistical dead heat, more voters are siding with Democrat Barack Obama, who has erased Republican John McCain's previous lead in Ohio and now holds a 3-point advantage, 49 percent to 46 percent.

TimesofMalta.com: Battleground States

Herb Asher, a political science professor at Ohio State University in Columbus, and an expert on Ohio politics, believes that although the polls are pointing to an Obama victory in Ohio, it is still up for grabs.

"It will be a close election here," Prof. Asher says.

Obama's ground operation and push for early voting was credited with keeping him in play in Ohio. Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the DNC, released some numbers in a memo Thursday pointing at key statistics for Ohio:

• There is no party registration in Ohio, but counties and precincts that Obama won in 2008 are voting early at a higher rate than GOP counties and precincts
• In counties that Obama won in 2008, 10% of registered voters have already cast ballots. In GOP counties, only 7% of registered voters have cast ballots
• Voters from precincts that voted for Obama in 2008 have cast 408,788 ballots (53%) in 2012 compared with just 355,388 ballots (47%) from GOP precincts
• The difference (D +53,400) is 80% higher than the difference at this time four years ago (D +29,706)

And how did Ohio turn out in 2008? Barack Obama won it 51/47, with less voters voting early.

But this is 2012, you say, and Barack Obama has been beaten up by recalcitrant Republicans and evil tea partiers? Yes, it is. But the numbers and the reports are there for anyone to see. What it tells me is what I've been saying all along: If turnout is high, we win. If we win, he wins.

Via Dayton Daily News:

Steve Quillen, Miami County elections director, on Friday morning submitted his resignation “due to the stress of the upcoming presidential election.”

The Miami County Board of Elections held an executive session Thursday afternoon, and the board accepted Quillen’s resignation via a 4-0 vote at an emergency meeting Friday morning.

I'm thinking about how these things happen. If stress, usually what happens is the resignation is simply submitted to the board and the board accepts it, because stress is usually related to something internal, not external. It creates health issues and the like. Yet they held an emergency board meeting on Friday morning and as a result of that board meeting, accepted Quillen's resignation.

Here's something else that happened at that emergency board meeting:

Also during the meeting, the board voted to terminate a temporary election employee, but Luring would not say if these two actions by board were related.

There appears to have been a significant delay in getting absentee ballots out in this county, too. Due to be mailed out on October 2nd, it seems that it took longer than it should. And then there's the weirdness surrounding orders from Secretary of State Jon Husted, ordering local officials not to contact voters by phone about issues with their absentee ballots. Instead, they must contact them by mail, which means a far longer delay in processing those ballots. Here's one story from Butler County, Ohio, via Democratic Underground:

My father had a stroke a few years ago, and he has trouble reading. He votes absentee, so my mother can help him with the ballot. Well, he sent in his ballot a couple weeks ago, and he did EVERYTHING as instructed. Everything was signed, documented, etc. Proper postage and everything.

Yesterday, he got a letter from the Butler County board of elections saying something was not up to snuff with his ballot, and he had to provide one of the following blah blah blah. One of the choices is his drivers license number, which he already included on the absentee ballot. It says he has to deliver it by hand to their office and his deadline is November 16th.

I can think of a couple of possibilities. One, that this Republican elections director had some shreds of integrity in him and defended an election worker who reached out directly to voters in his mostly rural district if there was an issue with their ballot. Or two, that he saw issues with the new voting machines in this county which were possibly raised by that election worker fired, and found himself being forced to resign after the worker was fired. Or, perhaps it was just a tawdry affair between a worker and her boss. Or his boss. Who knows?

Ohio just raises the hackles on the back of my neck in every general election, and this one is no exception. This story has more to it than just stress and a random firing of an election worker. I smell it, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe one of the crack investigative reporters out there like Lee Fang will be able to get a fix on what's going on.