Freshets of creativity and excitement pulsing into the nation's bloodstream and improvements in the general quality of life have nothing to do with the presidential elections rolling around every four years, which rouse expectations far in excess of what they actually deserve. As registers of liberal or conservative political potency, American presidential elections seldom coincide with shifts in the tempo of political energy across the country. As vehicles for the ventilation of popular concerns, they are hopelessly inadequate and should be severely downgraded on the entertainment calendars.

 From where I was sitting, John Kerry's performance at last week's Democratic Convention was the most powerful argument yet offered for voting for Ralph Nader. And the fact that Michael Moore dropped to his knees over the weekend in the company of Bill Maher begging Nader to withdraw only fuels my certainty. Across this year Moore has swiveled from Wesley Clark to Kerry, denied to Jay Leno that he supports the Democrats and fibbed about his advice to Nader in 2000, so who wants to be in the same corner as him, assuming he stayed in one corner long enough for anyone to identify it? Here's John Kerry, offering himself as a man of war, as a former prosecutor, as a candidate who hasn't got one single substantive, useful idea about turning the U.S. economy around and improving the overall state of the world. The only difference from Bush he can identify is that he went to Vietnam, killed Vietnamese and collected a bunch of medals, which some of his Navy colleagues who fought there at the same time say he didn't deserve.

The last thing this community needs is a lecture from George Bush on worker productivity and what we need to do to keep America’s jobs in America. If he was serious about keeping America’s jobs in America he wouldn’t be giving tax breaks to companies who move their jobs overseas. If he was serious about keeping America’s jobs in America, he would fight for America’s workers instead of having a trade enforcement record that even Republican Senator George Voinovich calls “abysmal.”

Using our own Timken Steelworkers as a backdrop, George Bush told Canton last year that his tax cut would create a million new jobs by the end of 2004. He said his tax cut would create half a million new jobs in Ohio alone. A year later, the Timken Company is making record profits and announced the potential lay off of 1300 workers. Unemployment in Ohio continues to go up and we are still looking for the 485,000 jobs George Bush promised Ohio. In the last week alone, Stark County lost another two hundred steelworker jobs with the closure World Kitchens.

The truth is George Bush’s tax cut did exactly what it was supposed to do

We write with an almost overwhelming sense of disgust and anger.

Yesterday, Governor Pataki vetoed the minimum-wage bill. To say this caught us by surprise is an understatement. The political class had confidently and uniformly predicted that he would sign the bill.

But perhaps we shouldn't be shocked.

This is a governor with a history of unbridled hostility to funding schools attended by poor children. This is a governor whose recent budget proposals once again slash benefits for the weak and powerless, even as he curries favor with the powerful. Vetoing the minimum-wage merely expands the range of people who can feel the Pataki lash.

The reasons given in his veto message are laughable and often factually wrong. You can read it on our web site.

Whatever his written statement, the real reason for his veto is politics. Pataki is playing to the national Republicans and the local Conservatives, and what better way to make yourself known as a tough-guy than to really stick it to low-wage workers. Plus he did it on a day

The hype and hysteria reached even the sleepy North Shore of Boston. In the weeks leading up to the summer's seminal event in The Big City, local police chiefs were predicting endless commutes and near-constant gridlock. Many advised locals to "go to New Hampshire for the week and don't look back." Thanks to the comfort of an overwhelming Police (State) presence, the terrorists, tourists, troublemakers and travelers were kept at bay.

Poor Boston. $60 million on security, and 0 income for tolls. By the second day, the secret started to leak that our charming provincial capital had become somehat of a ghost town. Of course, there were dissenters in the streets: Veterans for Peace and the Boston Social Form held their own conventions, and United for Peace and Justice, Black Tea Society, Food Not Bombs and many other groups made their presence known as usual. Of course, many activists--including many of us who tried in vain to yank the Democratic Party out of its pro-war stupor--were also convinced to stay home, or run the gauntlet of the Protest Pen, a court-sanctioned cage for protesters designed to make the effort of free