Food and its distribution have been the spark for more riots, revolutions, and political movements than anything else you can name. Still, in a rich country such as ours, food can ebb and flow as a political issue. The mid-1970s, however, was a time when food was in the forefront of many people's political work. Rainbow Grocery Cooperative started as part of an ambitious food system in 1975 that sought to incorporate collective stores, producers, and distributors into one big counter-cultural network that would destroy corporate agribusiness by providing healthier, less processed, cheaper food alternatives.

While almost all of the food collectives that made up that network have collapsed over the last 30 years, Rainbow has survived, becoming the largest natural foods store in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has gone from an all-volunteer staff to a 200-person worker cooperative, still dealing with the ongoing issues of how to best support its community - and who their community actually is.

Economic Power

No alien penetration, or treachery of double agents, has ever done nearly as much damage to the CIA as the infighting consequent upon the arrival of each new director, charged by his White House master with cleaning house and settling accounts with the bad guys installed by the previous White House incumbent.

            Bush's new director, former Republican Florida Rep. Porter Goss, and his team of enforcers are on a rampage through the corridors of CIA headquarters at Langley. Goss was once an undercover CIA officer, so there's probably a personal edge to his mission of revenge, as he strikes back at the dolts who nixed his expense accounts or poured scorn on his heroic endeavors in the field.

            But Goss's most pressing task is to exact retribution for the stories emanating from the CIA in the months before the election suggesting that the agency's measured assessments of the supposed WMD presence in Iraq were perverted by the war faction headed by (Vice) President Cheney.

The more politically savvy will know Al Franken from his radio show on Air America, while the Saturday Night Live fans may remember him from his hilarious self-help character Stuart Smalley and his behind the scenes award-winning writing. Both contact points are real touchstones which reveal his wicked satirical genius. Franken is at once mischievous and intelligent.

To illustrate the point, he recently pulled a prank that received the attention of John Ashcroft. Franken sent a note to 27 senior Bush administration officials on the letterhead of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. The mailing list included the U.S. Attorney General himself. The letter asked each to “share a moment when you were tempted to have sex but were able to overcome your urges.” The stories would allegedly be used in a book about public school abstinence programs called “Savin’ It!” No doubt the dour Ashcroft was less than pleased.

Bush won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of votes cast are voided – known as “spoilage” in election jargon-because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Palast’s investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted, Kerry would have won the state. On November 5, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported there were a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you add the 92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots.

Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper’s magazine, investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television’s Newsnight. The documentary, “Bush Family Fortunes,” based on his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this month on DVD .

Kerry won. Here’s the facts.

I know you don’t want to hear it. You can’t face one more hung chad. But I don’t have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it’s my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

Moveonpac.org was responsible for bringing Michael Moore to the Palace Theatre on Saturday night, October 30. When I arrived to cover the event I was unexpectedly ushered to the basement for an impromptu press conference. When I entered the press room I was shocked to find that only one of the major media outlets in the biggest city in Ohio felt the need to send anyone to cover the event. With Cleveland polling very much toward Senator John Kerry and Cincinnati going for President George W. Bush, Columbus was believed by many to be the prize of the state.