How do we make sense of the current battles within the Democratic Party? Hillary vs. Bernie – and grassroots progressives vs. Boss Bill Anthony, Franklin County Democratic Party Chair, and the corrupt one-party machine in Columbus?

In the case of Sanders, we’re witnessing a critical juncture in U.S. history. Sanders and his followers are single-handedly destroying “American Exceptionalism” – the fact that there is no mass socialist/labor movement defending the rights of working people. The U.S. is now ruled by a corporate capitalist kleptocracy (rule by thieves). Sanders and his activist cohorts are out to stop the looting. Hillary is running as the “realist” candidate who will negotiate with her corporate donors to steal less.

Columbus mirrors the battleover corruption in the national Democratic Party. As Jon Beard, currently running for the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee, puts it: “This Columbus area corruption is like an onion: keep peeling the layers back and it gets more and more stinky. This is what happens when a small group of people sees political power as “theirs” for the exploiting, and not the people’s for serving.”

Gov. John Kasich's bid for the Republican presidential nomination already appears to have cost Ohio taxpayers $1 million.
 

The governor has refused to release the cost of security and transportation, among other items, citing exemptions to Ohio public records laws. Hence, taxpayers cannot learn the expenses incurred by the Ohio Department of Public Safety in protecting and providing transportation for Kasich and his family while Ohio's first family campaigns out of state.
 

The following is a breakdown of the $1 million that the Kasich campaign apparently has cost Ohioans so far:
 

First, there is the cost of Kasich's salary and benefits while he is campaigning out of state and not doing the state's business he was elected twice to do.

In round numbers, his annual salary is $150,000 with another $50,000 in fringe benefits and retirement contributions. That's $200,000. Kasich was campaigning for president out of state about half the time during 2015.
 

Mark the cost to Ohio taxpayers as $100,000.
 

Ten years ago, then-26-year-old songwriter John Rohrer, troubled about loss of a recent job, was experiencing a delayed reaction to a street hallucinogen he had tried. Dazed, he went to visit a friend but entered the wrong house to wait for her. When the true owner returned to the unlocked house, he was not sympathetic as Rohrer tried to explain his confusion and leave.
Rohrer waited while police were called to arrest him. Ross County prosecutors soon swung into action, charging Rohrer with felony burglary, although no offense had been committed other than the entry. For some two years Ross County prosecutors pushed for incarceration for this first offense.

In June 2008, with no one understanding at the time that the offense was drug related, Rohrer was persuaded to enter a plea of NGRI – “not guilty by reason of insanity.” To Rohrer, who was terrified of the penitentiary, it seemed the only way. Ten years later he understands how this became his initiation into indefinite psychiatric lockup.

I was in attendance at a conference in Beirut last year when it was reported that Syriza, the left-wing Greek party, originally founded in 2004, had just done the impossible—or at least what we all thought was impossible. There was talk about ending austerity measures and Greece leaving the Eurozone: Grexit. Surely, a people’s victory in the US was just around the bend?

Black Americans spend over $1.2 trillion dollars every year – making Black America one of the largest economies in the world. Out 196 countries, Black America would rank 15th. However, currently only 3-5% of Black dollars are spent with Black businesses. This revelation is stated on the blackoutcoalition.org, a website promoting the new Black Power movement as an “economic revolution.”

There’s a resurgence of Black rights movements some of the largest and most militant since the 60s-70s? Proclaiming that Black lives matter is not only a demand for justice following police abuse and murders of Black citizens, but a call to the general society for economic justice in the Black community.