The Columbus Free Press has been no great fan of city council president Andrew Ginther’s undistinguished career in the public sector; his face graced our 2013 Halloween cover, and we invited readers to use it as their Halloween mask as Ginther seems to be something that he was not – that he was a Republican masquerading as a Democrat, in our article “Gintherstein – A Democrat with Republican Chops,” http://columbusfreepress.com/article/gintherstein-democrat-republican-chops)”. And now it looks like the wheels are coming off his planned coronation as the city’s Mayor, and we feel a little nostalgic about that. I mean – if we don’t have Andy Ginther around, who in the hell will we have to expose or lampoon anymore? His tenure has provided such rich material for alternative press as he has turned Columbus into a crony-supporting corrupt political backwater of a town, while he stumbles from one abuse of public trust to the next.

The latest politician to leap toward the GOP nomination is widely known as America’s most anti-green governor. But he has a critical decision coming up that could help change that. Ohio Gov. John Kasich has established a national reputation as a leading enemy of renewable energy and enhanced energy efficiency.
   When he took office in 2011, he opened fire by killing a $400 million federal grant to restore passenger rail service between Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati. Columbus is the largest capital city in the western world that people cannot get to by train. It also has no internal commuter rail, making it what some have called “the mid-sized town technology forgot.” The rail grant had been painstakingly crafted over the better part of a decade by a broad bi-partisan coalition. It was poised to create hundreds of jobs and provide new opportunity for a number of small towns languishing along the restoration route.

Black Lives Matter activists are under surveillance and attack here in Columbus.
   A Columbus Police report obtained by the Columbus Free Press indicates that the police would have been justified in shooting Torri Sablan, a prominent local civil rights activist, as she rode along with friend Ashley Henderson when they transported Alexander Paraskos to the hospital on August 1st this year.
    The police report included the chilling abbreviation Just. Hom. Circ. This means “justifiable homicide circumstance” – indicating the police would have been justified in killing Sablan.
   Police records describe LEOKA circumstances, indicating a “Law Enforcement Officer Killed or Assaulted.”
   How a going-away party thrown by activists and an innocent asthma attack turned into a potential police homicide situation is hotly disputed. Sablan and Henderson are black females and Paraskos is a transgender male -- all well-known political activists.

Fascism From West Point

By

http://warisacrime.org/content/fascism-west-point

This headline in the Guardian is completely accurate: West Point professor calls on US military to target legal critics of war on terror.

Mon, August 31, 10am, Public Utilities Commission of Ohio [PUCO], 180 E. Broad St.

The PUCO has postponed the hearings for the third time, to August 31, for which date we will reschedule our rally. Postponing is likely a good sign. PUCO has gotten a lot of push-back from the public, showing statistics that contradict the propaganda being fed to them by FirstEnergy. They will have a harder time rubberstamping the request and any complicity with industry would stand out.

Rally with the Sierra Club and others at the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Tell them, “Don’t charge electric ratepayers $3 billion to bail out FirstEnergy’s unprofitable coal plants and the aging, accident-plagued Davis-Besse nuclear reactor!”

FirstEnergy led the fight that overturned Ohio’s renewable and efficiency standards. Boo! Now the PUCO is going to decide whether to hand them an enormous monetary gift, at the expense of the public health and purse.

No bailouts! No kidding!