So the Republican Party pulled it off. On Friday, March 7 Ohio Libertarian governor hopeful Charlie Earl and his Attorney General candidate Steve Linnabary found out they were no longer candidates. Through thuggish and authoritarian tactics the Republicans managed to knock the gubernatorial candidates of both the Ohio Libertarian and Ohio Green Parties off the 2014 primary ballot. How did they do it? Like any two-bit dictator, they did it by usurping the U.S. Constitution and simply outlawing all minor parties in the state of Ohio. It is very difficult to get signatures for a candidate when your party has been banned from the ballot. In legal terms, it is called “irreparable harm.” Before he was banished from the ballot, Earl was polling at 6 percent of the vote. Political pundits across the state speculated that he might cost John Kasich to lose his re-election bid. The day Earl initially announced for governor, a Republican Party Senator introduced a bill that would kill all minor parties in Ohio. Critics aptly nicknamed the bill “The John Kasich Re-Election Protection Act.”

At the March 5, 2014 Local Governmental Officials Conference, Ohio’s State Auditor David Yost recognized Carolyn Smith, the Internal Auditor of the Columbus City Schools, as a “Taxpayer Hero.” Auditor Yost said of Smith and the other awardee (Heather Winchell, formerly of the Fairfield County Clerk of Courts Office) “these two heroes took personal risks for the public good … by sticking their necks out they helped shine the light on two huge fraud cases, and I am proud to present them with Taxpayer Hero Awards.” Carolyn Smith was the key public servant who unveiled the District’s nearly 10 year attendance and data scrubbing scheme, through which the District and its individual schools manipulated data to make them appear as though they were performing better than they were. The issue came to Smith’s attention when a school social worker, informed Smith that record changing was going on that was resulting in delinquency cases being thrown out of court and students from getting their diplomas. Smith verified the same, and went to Superintendent Gene Harris expressing her alarm about the practice, which started the public scrutiny and subsequent state auditor investigation.

White flight, corporate flight . . .

I grew up just outside Detroit and have felt an ache in my heart for this bleeding city for so many years now. It’s long been one of the country’s designated loser cities, beginning in the 1960s, when change hit it hard. The phrase at the time was “urban blight,” a social cancer with unexamined causes that, in the ensuing years, has gotten progressively worse.

A year ago this week, the city, which is predominantly African-American, lost its self-governance when the Republican governor of Michigan appointed an emergency financial manager, an overboss with powers superseding that of all elected officials — including the ability to rewrite laws, break contracts, privatize services and much more — on the premise that only an autocrat could straighten out the city’s disastrous finances. Four months later, Detroit made headlines as the largest city to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, but of course it wasn’t “the city” that did so; it was the emergency manager.

The city, in all its soul and complexity, had been reduced to a single voice: the voice of austerity and, of course, corporate interests.

The frontrunner to become the next president of the United States is playing an old and dangerous political game -- comparing a foreign leader to Adolf Hitler.

At a private charity event on Tuesday, in comments preserved on audio, Hillary Clinton talked about actions by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in the Crimea. “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s,” she said.

The next day, Clinton gave the inflammatory story more oxygen when speaking at UCLA. She “largely stood by the remarks,” the Washington Post reported. Clinton “said she was merely noting parallels between Putin’s claim that he was protecting Russian-speaking minorities in Crimea and Hitler’s moves into Poland, Czechoslovakia and other parts of Europe to protect German minorities.”

Clinton denied that she was comparing Putin with Hitler even while she persisted in comparing Putin with Hitler. “I just want people to have a little historic perspective,” she said. “I’m not making a comparison certainly, but I am recommending that we perhaps can learn from this tactic that has been used before.”

The Lausche Center was the scene of two hard fought victories for Columbus' own hometown heroines on March 8 against 39th ranked Nashville's Music City Roller Girls. Both Ohio's charter team, the OHRG All Stars, and their B-Team, Gang Green, showed their tenacity and endurance as they fought their way to second half wins in front of a near capacity crowd of more than 750 cheering fans. The first bout of the night saw the two all-star teams face off in what was slated to be a classic struggle of offense versus defense but turned into something very different. Nashville brought a solid offense built around jammers Chelsea Daggers and Ann T. Histamine as well as a new defensive tactic of stacking up on the inside line and blocking OHRG's jammers in tandem.