Because Gov. John Kasich is playing politics, Tom Noe is rotting in jail. Noe, one of 50,000 inmates in Ohio prisons, holds a unique distinction. He is a political prisoner, kept behind bars to please both political parties. Other prisoners of lesser means and influence remain behind bars, too, also victims of the governor's political motives.
We read about political prisoners all the time in third world, totalitarian and less civilized countries than the United States. Such individuals are put behind bars for a long time on phony or exaggerated charges in a foreign land because they posed a political threat or at least failed to please other countries' political elite.
When we read about political prisoners abroad, we in the United States say "not here." Yet we have political prisoners in Ohio. Tom Noe has been incarcerated for 11 years and is currently locked up in the Marion, Ohio, Correctional Institution after several years in the Hocking Correctional Institute in Nelsonville, Ohio.
Noe, 63 years old, is a senior citizen and at the rate things are going, he will be pushing 70 before he is released.