| PEACE ACTION FOR A SANE WORLD, the nation's largest grassroots peace network, with chapters and affiliates in over 30 states, organizes our grassroots network to place pressure on Congress and the Administration through write-in campaigns, Internet actions, citizen lobbying and direct action. Through a close relationship with progressive members of Congress, we play a key role in devising strategies to move forward peace legislation, and as a leading member of United for Peace and Justice and the Win Without War coalition, we lend our expertise and large network to achieving common goals. Real change comes from the bottom up. We're committed to educating and organizing at the grassroots level. Peace Action Youngstown , Ohio chapter since 1989, merges the organization's national mission with efforts to build community peace and social justice programs, including neighborhood restoration and the arts. Together, we have the power to be the change we wish to see in the world. |
| FOR MORE THAN 30 YEARS, WE'VE WORKED FOR PEACE THROUGH COMMUNITY COMMITMENT, ISSUES INTERCHANGE AND ARTS PRESENTATIONS |
| IF YOU WANT IT... JOHN LENNON |
| WAR IS OVER |
| "No matter how cynical you get, it's almost impossible to keep up." - Lily Tomlin |
| PEACE ACTION YOUNGSTOWN contact us~people@paytown.org |
| More of the Same An Unlearned Lesson from 9/11 by CESAR CHELALA Sept 10th, 2014 On a rainy morning on April 1958, in Washington DC, Ezra Pound -then a seventy-two year-old man- was declared “incurably insane” by Judge Bolitha J. Laws, who set him free. As he prepared to leave for Italy Pound declared “Any man who could live in America is insane.” I wonder what Pound –one of America’s greatest poets- would think today of the state of the country, which is suffering from a long blood- letting process resulting from unjust, unjustified wars. This situation is particularly evident when one returns to the US after staying from some time overseas. What one sees, as many friends told me, is an American government bent on an almost suicidal road to war. It has been shown almost ad infinitum that following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to cite only the most important ones, that the climate of worldwide violence has increased substantially, and shows no signs of diminishing. And while we are justifiably horrified by the recent beheadings of two American journalists, we were not equally horrified by the killings by drones of whole families in countries overseas. Nor we were equally horrified by the hundreds of Palestinian children and the destruction of thousands of homes of people fighting for the right to live in their own land. In the meantime, meretricious US politicians repeated like a mantra that they supported the right of Israel to defend itself, without any mention of Palestinians’ suffering. In the meantime, few people seem to be concerned about the tortures and humiliations at Guantanamo, Iraq, Afghanistan and so many other countries where prisoners were sent to be tortured by the US authorities. And while President Barak Obama has promised, even before being elected, that he would close Guantanamo this is yet to happen, and the issue has become one of the darkest episodes in the US’s moral history. This is happening while more attacks are being carried out on Iraq and in Syria, the same rebels we have armed, are proving to be a nightmare for US forces and a huge hindrance to eventually reach peace in that region. In the meantime, the US intervention in Libya, rather than democratizing the country, has left a mess of deadly rivalries of conflicting armies without a solution in sight. And while an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program is pursued, new sanctions were imposed on that country that in the least are an irritant and at most an obstacle to an agreement. To add to this panorama of desolation, we see the slow disintegration of Ukraine, the hapless country in the middle of conflicting US and Russian interests. And rather than trying to calm the waters of dissent, the US is slowly encircling Russia through NATO, unconcerned that a similar situation on the US borders would be unacceptable to the US. The “war on terror” has not defeated it but brought more terror to the world. As Rami G. Khouri, a contributing editor to the Beirut Daily Star, and a keen observer of international politics recently wrote, “Dear Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom: before you launch a new global war on terror and another coalition of countries to fight ISIS, please note that the last three decades of your global war on terror have sparked the greatest expansion of Islamist militancy and terrorism in modern history. This partly, maybe largely, because your military actions in Islamic lands usually destabilize those lands, allowing your enemies to organize and take root, and also provide the greatest magnet that attracts mostly fringe and lost young men to give meaning to their lives by joining what they see as a defensive jihad to save Islamic societies from your aggression.” To continue the war on terror is thus not only counterproductive and will not bring peace to the world but will show, sadly, that the main lesson of 9/11 has not been learned. Dr. Cesar Chelala is a winner of an overseas Press Club of America award for an article on human rights. |
| Workers in Maine Buy Out Their Jobs, Set an Example for the Nation By Rob Brown, Noemi Giszpenc and Brian Van Slyke, Truthout | Op-Ed t(On remote Deer Isle, Maine, the movement for a more just and democratic economy won a major victory. More than 60 employees of three retail businesses - Burnt Cove Market, V&S Variety and Pharmacy, and The Galley - banded together to buy the stores and create the largest worker cooperative in Maine and the second largest in New England. Now the workers own and run the businesses together under one banner, known as the Island Employee Cooperative (IEC). This is the first time that multiple businesses of this size and scope have been merged and converted into one worker cooperative - making this a particularly groundbreaking achievement in advancing economic democracy. Getting There: What It Took When the local couple that had owned the three businesses for 43 years began to think about selling their stores and retiring, the workers became concerned. The stores were one of the island's biggest employers and a potential buyer probably would not have come from within the community or maintained the same level of jobs and services. Only a worker buy-out could achieve stability. Because these workers were trying to accomplish something historic, it took more than a year - and it wasn't always an easy road. But the workers' strength lay in their own determination, and in the ability to rely on a group of allies dedicated to growing the cooperative movement. The Independent Retailers Shared Services Cooperative (IRSSC) and the Cooperative Development Institute, helped them develop their management, governance, legal and financial structures. They were also able to secure financing from Maine-based Coastal Enterprises and the Cooperative Fund of New England, both Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFIs). Without that dedicated technical assistance and available capital, it is doubtful the IEC would be here today. More Is Needed While the creation of the IEC maintained dozens of decent paying jobs and a remote community's only nearby access to essentials such as groceries and prescription medications, it also points to a successful model that could be used across the country to expand ownership and wealth to regular working people. This experience shows that if only we had more resources to experiment with grounded, practical economic policies, we could create many more of the living-wage jobs and community-sustaining businesses we desperately need. The Great Recession has led many to consider better ways to organize our economy, as always happens during economic downturns. But the reality is that our economy, even during the "good times," has always been failing working people. So we need to think long term and change our strategies in order to build a durable, democratic, equitable and just economy. The Great Recession in Maine: A Bad Situation Gets Worse In the aftermath of the Great Recession, Maine has won back less than half of the jobs we lost (ranking us 46th among the states): We are second from the bottom for total job growth, and we have one of the highest numbers of part-time workers who want more employment but can't find it. Nearly one-third of unemployed Mainers have been looking for work for more than six months, which is more than twice the national average. And what little growth there has been has occurred almost exclusively in the Portland metro region, in far southern Maine. But it's not as if our workers were prospering before the Great Recession. Over the last 30 years, the incomes of the poorest Maine workers grew by only 27 percent, while incomes for the wealthiest Mainers jumped by 67 percent. Starting in the late '90s, Maine lost more manufacturing jobs per capita than any other state. Maine workers also have the lowest average incomes of all the New England states and, of Maine's 16 counties, 14 of them are among the poorest in the region. As a result, one in seven Mainers overall and more than one in five children live in poverty. Most shamefully, poverty characterizes more than one in four young children, and one in three in our poorest counties. In short, Maine's low wages, limited job prospects, deepening poverty and growing inequality are not just the result of the Great Recession; it is structural and long-standing. We've needed to change the way the economy works for quite a while. And that's exactly why strategies to create sustainable, democratic businesses like the Island Employee Cooperative are so critical. The Island Employee Cooperative: A Model for Maine and the Nation Worker cooperatives hold the promise of fundamentally addressing our long standing economic woes. Because they give members an equal voice in the co-op's governance, a worker co-op will almost never pick up and leave its community. Those jobs are democratically owned by the people who work and live there. In addition, in worker co-ops, employees have an incentive to work harder and smarter, because they benefit from an equitable share of the profits. And when a worker co-op is facing financial difficulty, the first response isn't to lay people off. That's because the worker-owners are sharing the risks and burdens of the business as well. Instead, members often come together to find democratic solutions to their problems, such as temporarily lowering wages or cutting hours for all workers, so that no one person has to lose their job. This is one of the major factors that also make worker co-ops more economically sustainable in low-income communities. For the new worker-owners of the Island Employee Cooperative, the transformation into a co-op will, over time, create profound changes in their lives as they begin investing some of the business' profits into better wages and benefits - something that is extremely uncommon for those in the retail business. The co-op is also already collaborating with the Maine Community College System to deliver education programs on-site so that the workers can improve their knowledge and skills. While retail jobs are often depicted as low-wage and dead-end, these retail workers are now business owners who will learn to make many hard decisions together. And because IEC is one of the island's largest employers, the cooperative ownership model will make a tremendous impact on the community as many more families build wealth through democratic ownership. That's a model we can and should scale up. A New Approach to Economic Development Unfortunately, successful examples like the IEC are rare in the United States because worker cooperative development gets little to no support from city, state and federal governments. Instead, these institutions spend a fortune on economic development programs that create windfall profits for corporations, but very few sustainable, living-wage jobs. The way states have traditionally pursued economic development relies primarily on "chasing smokestacks" and dreaming up new tax giveaways for out-of-state corporations. That serves to benefit the 1% while leaving workers in the dust. A less costly, more effective and more equitable strategy of focusing on worker co-op development would drive investments into grassroots initiatives for economic sustainability. Some support already exists: For example, New York City just passed its 2015 budget and is investing over $1 million in a comprehensive program to support the development of worker cooperatives, including directing existing business-development resources to be more supportive of worker co-ops. Ohio has provided small grants for feasibility studies and technical assistance to employees considering a cooperative buyout of their workplace, using federal funds that are available in every state (but utilized by only a half-dozen or so). Rural Cooperative Development Grants from the US Department of Agriculture support state and regional groups that provide cooperative development services in rural areas (though not just to worker co-ops). There are more examples of supportive policies, but they all amount to a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what is spent on typical economic development approaches that do little for working people. In order to begin scaling up worker co-op development, we need to provide technical assistance and small pre-development grants to people starting co-ops within their own communities, make available better education on how to operate a cooperative, provide loan guarantees for groups who would otherwise struggle to access credit, and offer targeted, accountable tax incentives. Communities across the country would benefit from more initiatives that support development of new co-ops, as well as converting existing businesses into worker-owned ones like the Island Employee Cooperative. This approach would allow many more communities to sustain themselves, cultivate jobs with dignity, improve wages and help more people build wealth through democratic ownership. And then we might see a transformation into an economy that truly and sustainably serves the needs of all. |
| The Last Letter A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney From: Tomas Young I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care. I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans, —my fellow veterans—whose future you stole. I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr.Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans —my fellow veterans—whose future you stole. Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage. I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass- destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level—moral, strategic, military and economic—Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences. I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire. I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul. My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness. |
| In March 2013, Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges published an interview with Young about his worldview and circumstances.Young was in hospice care at the time of the interview, which was conducted at his home in Kansas City. Although he has contemplated suicide on various occasions, he decided "to go on hospice care, to stop feeding and fade away. This way, instead of committing the conventional suicide and I am out of the picture, people have a way to stop by or call and say their goodbyes." He later changed his mind, saying "I want to spend as much time as possible with my wife, and no decent son wants his obituary to read that he was survived by his mother. "Young died on November 10, 2014 in Seattle. In November 2014, Hedges wrote a column on Young's passing, in which he stated that "Young hung on as long as he could. Now he is gone. He understood what the masters of war had done to him, how he had been used and turned into human refuse." |
| Dr. Roberts~ Public Service ~ President Reagan appointed Dr. Roberts Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and he was confirmed in office by the U.S. Senate. From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. After leaving the Treasury, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense & the U.S. Department of Commerce. More on Dr. Roberts and his book at paulcraigroberts,org |
| Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) |
Dr Helen Caldicott The single most articulate and passionate advocate of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises, Dr Helen Caldicott, has devoted the last forty two years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age and the necessary changes in human behavior to stop environmental destruction. Born in Melbourne, Australia in 1938, Dr Caldicott received her medical degree from the University of Adelaide Medical School in 1961. She founded the Cystic Fibrosis Clinic at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital in 1975 and subsequently was an instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and on the staff of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Boston, Mass., until 1980 when she resigned to work full time on the prevention of nuclear war. In 1971, Dr Caldicott played a major role in Australia’s opposition to French atmospheric nuclear testing in the Pacific; in 1975 she worked with the Australian trade unions to educate their members about the medical dangers of the nuclear fuel cycle, with particular reference to uranium mining. While living in the United States from 1977 to 1986, she played a major role in re- invigorating as President, Physicians for Social Responsibility, an organization of 23,000 doctors committed to educating their colleagues about the dangers of nuclear power, nuclear weapons and nuclear war. On trips abroad she helped start similar medical organizations in many other countries. The international umbrella group (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War) won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She also founded the Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND) in the US in 1980. Returning to Australia in 1987, Dr Caldicott ran for Federal Parliament as an independent. Defeating Charles Blunt, leader of the National Party, through preferential voting she ultimately lost the election by 600 votes out of 70,000 cast. She moved back to the United States in 1995, where she lectured at the New School for Social Research on the Media, Global Politics and the Environment; hosted a weekly radio talk show on WBAI (Pacifica)in New York; and was the Founding President of the STAR (Standing for Truth About Radiation) Foundation on Long Island. Dr Caldicott has received many prizes and awards for her work, including the Lannan Foundation’s 2003 Prize for Cultural Freedom and twenty one honorary doctoral degrees. She was personally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Linus Pauling – himself a Nobel Laureate. The Smithsonian has named Dr Caldicott as one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. She has written for numerous publications and has authored seven books, Nuclear Madness (1978 and 1994 WW Norton) , Missile Envy (1984 William Morrow, 1985 Bantam, 1986 Bantam) , If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth (1992, W.W. Norton); A Desperate Passion: An Autobiography (1996, W.W. Norton; published as A Passionate Life in Australia by Random House);The New Nuclear Danger: George Bush’s Military Industrial Complex (2001, The New Press in the US, UK and UK; Scribe Publishing in Australia and New Zealand; Lemniscaat Publishers in The Netherlands; and Hugendubel Verlag in Germany); Nuclear Power is Not the Answer (2006, The New Press in the US, UK and UK; Melbourne University Press in Australia) War In Heaven (The New Press 2007); revised and updated If You Love This Planet (March 2009); and Loving This Planet (The New Press; 2013). She also has been the subject of several films, including Eight Minutes to Midnight, nominated for an Academy Award in 1981, If You Love This Planet, which won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1982, and Helen’s War: Portrait of a Dissident, recipient of the Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Direction (Documentary) 2004, and the Sydney Film Festival Dendy Award for Best Documentary in 2004. Dr Caldicott currently divides her time between Australia and the US where she lectures widely. In year 2001, she founded the US-based Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI), which became Beyond Nuclear. Currently, Dr Caldicott is President of The Helen CaldicottFoundation/NuclearFreePlanet.org, which initiates symposiums and other educational projects to inform the public and the media of the dangers of nuclear power and weapons. The mission of the Foundation is education to action, and the promotion of a nuclear-energy and weapons-free, renewable energy powered, world. The Foundation’s most recent symposium, co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility was held at the New York Academy of Medicine in March 2013, It was entitled The Medical and Environmental Consequences of Fukushima helencaldicottfoundation.org, at http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=hcf. A book – Crisis Without End — emanating from the conference proceedings and edited by Dr. Caldicott was published by The New Press in the Spring of 2014. |
| Crisis Without End The Medical and Ecological Consequences of the Fukushima Nuclear Catastrophe Edited by: Helen Caldicott The world’s leading scientific and medical experts offer the first comprehensive analysis of the long-term health and environmental consequences of the Fukushima nuclear accident |
| “The clock cannot be turned back. We live in a contaminated world.” —Hiroaki Koide, Kyoto University On the second anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, an international panel of leading medical and biological scientists, nuclear engineers, and policy experts assembled at the prestigious New York Academy of Medicine. A project of the Helen Caldicott Foundation and co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, this gathering was a response to widespread concerns that the media and policy makers had been far too eager to move past what are clearly deep and lasting impacts for the Japanese people and for the world. This was the first comprehensive attempt to address the health and environmental damage done by one of the worst nuclear accidents of our times. The only document of its kind, Crisis Without End represents an unprecedented look into the profound aftereffects of Fukushima. In accessible terms, leading experts from Japan, the United States, Russia, and other nations weigh in on the current state of knowledge of radiation- related health risks in Japan, impacts on the world’s oceans, the question of low-dosage radiation risks, crucial comparisons with Chernobyl, health and environmental impacts on the U.S. (including on food and newborns), and the unavoidable implications for the U.S. nuclear energy industry. Crisis Without End is both essential reading and a major corrective to the public record on Fukushima. |
A snappy guide and an indispensible tool to reclaiming the right to dissent—perfect for activist, teachers, grandmothers, and anyone else who wants to exercise their constitutional rights—from the country’s leading constitutional rights group “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” —Howard Zinn Published in conjunction with the Center for Constitutional Rights With a preface by Vincent Warren In the Age of Terrorism, the United States has become a much more dangerous place—for activists and dissenters, whose First Amendment rights are all too frequently abridged by the government.. |
In Hell No, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the country’s leading public interest law organization, offers a timely report on government attacks on dissent and protest in the United States, along with a readable and essential guide for activists, teachers, grandmothers, and anyone else who wants to oppose government policies and actions. Hell No explores the current situation of attacks upon and criminalization of dissent and protest, from the surveillance of activists to the disruption of demonstrations, from the labeling of protesters as “terrorists” to the jailing of those the government claims are giving “material support” to its perceived enemies. Offering detailed, hands-on advice on everything from “Sneak and Peak” searches to “Can the Government Monitor My Text Messages?” and what to do “If an Agent Knocks,” Hell No lays out several key responses that every person should know in order to protect themselves from government surveillance and interference with their rights. Beginning with a preface by Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a frequent legal commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, Hell No also includes an introduction on the state of dissent today by CCR board chair Michael Ratner and Margaret Ratner Kunstler. Concluding with the controversial 2008 Mukasey FBI Guidelines, which currently regulate the government’s domestic response to dissent, Hell No is an indispensable tool in the effort to give free speech and protest meaning in a post–9/11 world. Michael Ratner Michael Ratner is an attorney and president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights. He is well known for his human rights activism and the author of numerous books, including The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld and Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in Twenty-First-Century America (co-authored with Margaret Ratner Kunstler), both published by The New Press. He lives in New York City. |
| Noam Chomsky, author and Institute Professor Emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years. He is author of dozens of books. An updated edition of his book 9-11 has just been published, called 9-11: Was There an Alternative? |
| NINE CORPORATIONS THAT SUPPLY MOST OF OUR PACKAGED GOODS |
| Killing With Impunity The Fifteen Most Outrageous Responses by Police After Killing Unarmed People by BILL QUIGLEY Police kill a lot of unarmed people. So far in 2015, as many as 100 unarmed people have been killed by police. Here are fifteen of the most outrageous reasons given by police to justify killing unarmed people in the last twelve months. First, a bit of background. So far in 2015, there have been around 400 fatal police shootings already; one in six of those killings, 16 percent, were of unarmed people, 49 had no weapon at all and 13 had toys, according to the Washington Post. Of the police killings this year less than 1 percent have resulted in the officer being charged with a crime. The Guardian did a study which included killings by Tasers and found 102 people killed by police so far in 2015 were unarmed and that unarmed Black people are twice as likely to be killed by police as whites. One. He was Dancing in the Street and Walking with a Purpose. On June 9, 2015 an unarmed man, Ryan Bollinger, was shot by police in Des Moines after “walking with a purpose” towards the police car after he exited his vehicle after a low speed chase started when he was observed dancing in the street and behaving erratically. The deceased was shot by the police through the rolled up cruiser window. The murder is under investigation. Two. Thought It Was My Taser. An unarmed man, Eric Harris, ran from the police in Tulsa Oklahoma on April 2, 2015. After he was shot in the back by a Taser by one officer and was on the ground, another 73 year old volunteer reserve officer shot and killed him, all captured by video. While dying he was yelling that he was losing his breath, to which one of the officers responded “F*ck your breath.” The police said the officer thought he was shooting his Taser and “inadvertently discharged his service weapon.” The officer has been charged with second degree manslaughter. Running away from the police so often provokes police overreaction that the aggressive police response has several names including the “foot tax” and the “running tax.” Three. Naked Man Refused to Stop. A naked unarmed mentally ill Air Force Afghanistan veteran, Anthony Hill, was shot and killed March 9, 2015 by DeKalb County Georgia police after police said he refused an order to stop. The killing is under investigation. Four. Not Going to Say. On March 6, 2015 Aurora Colorado police shot and killed unarmed Naeschylus Vinzant while taking him into custody. For the last three months, while the investigation into the killing continues, the police have refused to say what compelled the officer to shoot Vinzant. Five. Five Police Felt Threatened by One Unarmed Homeless Man. March 1, 2015 Los Angeles police shot and killed an unarmed homeless man Charly Leundeu Keunang after five officers went to his tent and struggled with him. One unarmed homeless man threatened five armed LAPD officers? Los Angeles police have killed about one person a week since 2000. An investigation is ongoing. Six. My Taser Didn’t Work. On February 23, 2015, an unarmed man, Daniel Elrod, was shot twice in the back and once in the shoulder and killed by Omaha Nebraska police after he tried to climb a tree and jump a fence to escape police who suspected him of robbery. Police said their Taser did not work, he ignored their demands to get down on the ground, he did not show his hands, and they felt threatened. Video was not made available and the officer later resigned. This was the second person this officer killed. No criminal charges were filed. Seven. Armed with a Broom. Lavall Hall’s mother called the police in Miami Gardens February 15, 2015 and asked for help for her son who was mentally ill. Lavall Hall, five foot four inches tall, walked outside with a broom and was later shot and killed by police who said he failed to comply with instructions and engaged them with an object. The killing is still under investigation. Eight. Throwing Rocks. On February 10, 2015 an unarmed man, Antonio Zambrano-Montes, was fired at 17 times and killed by police in Kennewick, Washington. A video of his killing has been viewed more than 2 million times. Officers said he had been throwing rocks at cars, ran away and then turned around. Nine. Taser Worked but He Didn’t Stop Moving. On February 2, 2015, a Hummelstown Pennsylvania police officer shot unarmed David Kassick in the back with a Taser and when Kassick went to the ground on his stomach, then shot him twice with her gun in the back, killing him. The officer said Kassick, who was running away from a traffic stop, was told to show his hands and not move but continued to try to remove the Taser prongs from his back and the officer thought he was reaching for a gun. The officer has been charged with homicide. Ten. Car going 11 Miles an Hour was going to Kill Me. Denver police fired 8 times at unarmed Jessica Hernandez, 17, who was killed January 16 after being hit by four bullets. The police said she drove too close to them when she was trying to get away and may have tried to run them down as she tried to drive away so they shot into the windshield and driver’s windows. The police said the car may have reached 11 miles per hour in the 16 feet it traveled before hitting a fence. The police were not charged. Eleven. Armed with a Spoon. Dennis Grigsby, an unarmed mentally ill man holding a soup spoon, was shot in the chest and killed in a neighbor’s garage by Texarkana Police December 15, 2015. The killing is under investigation. Twelve. Armed with Prescription Bottle. Rumain Brisbon, a 34 year old unarmed man, was shot twice and killed by police in Phoenix on December 2, 2014, after he ran away, was caught and was in a struggle with the officer who mistook a prescription pill bottle in Brisbon’s pocket for a gun. The police officer was not charged. Thirteen. It Was an Accident. On November 20, 2014, a New York City police officer fired into a stairwell and killed unarmed Akai Gurley. The officer, who was charged with manslaughter, is expected to say he accidently fired his gun. Fourteen. Don’t Mention It. On November 12, 2014, an unarmed handcuffed inmate was shot multiple times in the head, neck, chest and arms by officers while fighting with another hand-cuffed inmate in the High Desert State Prison in Carson City Nevada. His family was not told and did not know he had been shot until three days later when they claimed his body at a mortuary. Fifteen. Armed with Toy Gun. John Crawford was unarmed in a Walmart store in Beavercreek Ohio on August 4, 2014, when he picked up an unloaded BB gun. When officers arrived they say they ordered him to put down the gun and started shooting, hitting him at least twice and killing Mr. Crawford. In a widely viewed video Mr. Crawford can be seeing dropping the BB gun, running away and being shot while unarmed. Likewise, Cleveland police shot and killed an unarmed 12 year old boy, Tamir Rice, who was playing with a toy pellet gun on November 22, 2014. Police said they shouted verbal commands from inside their vehicle in the two seconds before they shot him twice. In both these cases, the police story of shouting warnings and orders looks quite iffy at best. These are the responses of police authorities who face less than one chance in a hundred of being charged when they kill people, even unarmed people. These outrages demand massive change in the way lethal force is used, reported, justified and prosecuted. Bill Quigley teaches law at Loyola University New Orleans and can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com. |
| The Punishment of Gaza Washington is Complicit in Israel’s Crimes by PAUL FINDLEY CounterPunch While viewing the massacre of Gazans, you may wonder why 1.8 million Arabs are crowded on that tiny strip of seashore and are being bombed day and night into death and ruins by Israel’s powerful military machine. A glimpse of history is timely. Facts set forth below are little known in America: Sixty years ago 800,000 Arabs fled their ancestral homes in rural Palestine fearing death as a Jewish onslaught obliterated without a trace over 500 Arab towns, villages and hamlets. Massacres were reported. Those who fled are forbidden to return home. Fifty years later, a survey show the refugee problem staggering: 766,000 in Gaza; 741,000 in Jordan; 408,000 in Syria; and 144,000 in Egypt; smaller numbers in other Arab states. Gaza soon become a part of Israel Occupied Palestine. Refugees and their descendants struggle there for survival. Israeli controls are brutal. Potable water is nearly gone. Most of the population depends for survival on food and water distributed by United Nations officials. If supplies are not increased starvation—not just malnutrition–is certain. Arabs huddle behind high fences equipped with Israeli remote- controlled machine guns. A gate that once served as an occasional opening to freedom is now kept locked by the government of Egypt at Israel’s request. Gaza has long been described as the largest open- air prison in the world. Israeli punishment of Gazans became more severe seven years ago when they exercised the right of self- determination by electing the Hamas Party to manage local affairs. Once Hamas took control in Gaza, Israel and the U.S. government conspired in a sustained but unsuccessful attempt to destroy the organization. Hamas was reelected to a second term and recently achieved a cooperative arrangement with the Fatah organization that maintains a measure of authority in the West Bank.Infuriated because all gates stay closed, Hamas sends rockets over the fence. They do little damage but incite Israelis to launch heavy lethal bombing. Revenge is not commendable, but I understand why people penned up like cattle may welcome pain and discomfort for their oppressors. The current assault on Gaza is Israel’s third in seven years. This is the first time Hamas has used sustained rocket fire, but it is no match for Israel’s artillery, missiles and bombs. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers, Israel has high tech missiles that shoot down Hamas rockets while still in the air. Hamas has no such defense, in fact, no defense at all. The late radical Rabbi Meir Kahane, wrote a book titled “They Must Go.” In it he contended that all Arabs must be removed from Palestine so an all-Jewish Eretz Israel, the dream of Zionism, can come into being. Eretz Israel consists of entirety of Palestine, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, plus the Golan Heights, long a part of Syria, exactly the Arab territory Israel now controls. All Arabs are not gone, but nearly two million are imprisoned in Gaza. Elsewhere in Occupied Palestine, 4.2 million Arabs are abused and denied basic liberties. Their property and livelihood are steadily being seized by Israel to provide illegal housing for Jews-only settlements. These Arabs are squeezed into an ever- shrinking part of their birthright. More than one-half of the Palestinian West Bank is now populated by more than 500,000 Israeli settlers. Zionist dreamers can boast they are more than halfway toward their dream. Who is responsible for this tragic treatment of Palestinians? If you ponder that question, bear in mind that Israel could not possibly commit this criminal behavior without automatic, unqualified, U.S. government support year after year. Pro-Israel lobby pressure controls all major news media. Congress behaves like a committee of the Israeli parliament. No president since Dwight Eisenhower has had the courage to stand up to Israeli wrongdoing. Those who know the truth are afraid to speak out for fear of paying a heavy price– maybe loss of employment. All citizens of the United States must face the truth: Our government is complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity. We should elect a Congress that will suspend all aid until Israel behaves. The bloody standoff in Gaza will stop if Israel opens the gate to Egypt and keeps it open. When that happens Arabs living there can “breathe free,” a precious right our Statue of Liberty proclaims for all humankind. Paul Findley served as a member of United States House of Representatives for 22 years. His books include ”Deliberate Deceptions: Facing the Facts About the U.S.-Israeli Relationship.” |
Political Profiteers Push Ohio's Pot Vote By Liz Essley Whyte, The Center for Public Integrity | News Analysis _ 2015.6.27 A political consultant came up with the idea to legalize marijuana in Ohio through a ballot measure, lined up investors to fund the campaign in exchange for ownership of the wholesale pot market and now plans to pay his own firm $5.6 million to push the 2015 initiative. Columbus, Ohio - Thousands of hastily scribbled signatures fill boxes in the basement of Ian James’ 7,800-square-foot restored Victorian home in the historic Franklin Park neighborhood. James needs these names to win a place on Ohio’s November ballot for a measure to legalize medical and recreational marijuana. But the political consultant isn’t just gathering the signatures. He came up with the idea for the measure. And he recruited a lawyer to draft a constitutional amendment that would put Ohio’s future marijuana market in the hands of only 10 growers — an arrangement that critics are calling a monopoly. Meanwhile, he plans to pay his own firm nearly $6 million to run the campaign. Though James is an extreme example, he’s a member of a much larger and little-known class of professionals that form what could be called Ballot Measure Inc.: a powerful electoral-industrial complex funded by moneyed interests that belies the quaint notion of “citizen democracy” that such efforts are assumed to represent. Active in the 26 states that have citizen-initiated ballot measures, the network of pollsters, direct mail specialists, lawyers, consultants, signature gatherers and voting data whizzes were paid at least $400 million for 85 statewide measures across the country in 2014, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of state records. In presidential election years, state and local measures are a billion-dollar industry, said ballot initiative expert David McCuan. The growth of the industry means that often only those with money can afford to get into the game. In some big states, such as California, where political consultant David Townsend estimates a controversial measure costs at least $25 million to pass, paid signature gatherers are now virtually a requirement to get on the ballot. And this process of direct democracy sometimes appears to directly benefit only special interests: such as the Native American tribes who gave $107 million in 2008 to win measures expanding their slot machine operations in California; the agribusiness giant Monsanto, which gave $10.7 million last year to block labeling of genetically modified foods in Colorado and Oregon; or the plastics industry, which is currently fighting a plastic bag ban in California. “The process has been captured by interests,” said McCuan, a Sonoma State University professor. “It’s been professionalized. It’s expensive.” This has created a market filled with the promise of profits for those willing to work as mercenaries for a cause — or even come up with their own cause. James isn’t the only one known to have done so. The California lottery was famously created by signature gatherers in 1984, and a Nevada political consulting firm came up with and successfully campaigned for anti-union measures in multiple states, beginning in 2010.“The honest and most easy response is: I am going to profit from this,” James told the Center for Public Integrity. “If people are upset about me making money, I don’t know what to say other than that that’s part of the American process. To win and make this kind of change for social justice, it does cost a lot of money.” James’ initiative has drawn considerable heat. The measure would root the 10 marijuana growth sites to particular land parcels, which happen to be controlled by the mysterious companies funding the initiative. They would function as Ohio’s only wholesale suppliers of marijuana, selling to separate retail shops and nonprofit medical dispensaries. James, a 49-year-old Ohio political veteran, has succeeded at this before. In 2009, he persuaded Ohioans to approve four casinos, also rooted to particular plots of land. For Responsible Ohio, as his marijuana effort is called, James wrangled together investors who are willing to bankroll a $20 million campaign, sink in an additional $20 million to buy the land and $300 million more to build facilities. The investors have contributed through limited liability corporations with vague names such as Verdure GCE LLC and NG Green Investments LLC, offering few clues as to who’s behind them. Their hoped-for payoff? Guaranteed ownership of a wholesale marijuana market potentially worth more than $1 billion, according to a prospectus to investors outlining the Responsible Ohio campaign budget and obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. And once the measure passes, James said he plans to open a consulting company helping launch marijuana retail stores. Investing in pot Just off Interstate 71 in Franklin County, Ohio, a 19-acre field on a two-lane road will become an oasis of legal pot if Responsible Ohio’s measure passes. The field’s owner, Kenneth Campbell, said he signed a contract early this year to take the plot off the market and give an unknown buyer the exclusive right to purchase the field by the end of 2015. When Campbell’s name and plot of land started showing up in news reports on marijuana legalization, he was as surprised as anyone. “People saw my name,” Campbell said. “They said, ‘Hey Ken, you’re growing some pot!’ And I said, ‘I am?’ ” Around the state, at least four other sections of land were reserved in the same way — to LLCs that paid for the exclusive right to buy the land by the end of the year or early into 2016. All 10 land parcels will be written into the state constitution should Responsible Ohio get its way. The Responsible Ohio campaign has trumpeted some of the investors, including minor celebrities such as Nick Lachey, former 98 Degrees boy-bander and ex-husband of singer Jessica Simpson; fashion designer Nanette Lepore; and Arizona Cardinals defensive end Frostee Rucker. Others — such as Chicago investor Ben Kovler and Dayton pain specialist Dr. Suresh Gupta — can only be found after digging through documents. These investors declined or did not respond to requests for comment for this story. James said he’s not an investor. Responsible Ohio investor Alan Mooney, a financier who specializes in off-shore corporations, said the limited set of investors would ensure Ohio’s marijuana market has the capital to get off the ground. “I don’t want to throw open the doors like they did in California,” he said. “I know a lot of the street people, the hippies and stoners would love that. This has got be professional business people.” The pre-arranged, limited list of investors doesn’t sit well with some Ohioans. Words such as “monopoly,” “cartel” and “oligopoly” appear frequently in critics’ speeches and newspaper columns. Responding to such concerns, some state legislators are working on a counter ballot measure that would block initiatives benefiting only a small group. As lawmakers, they can refer an item to the ballot without gathering signatures. Major pro-legalization groups such as the Marijuana Policy Project and the Drug Policy Alliance also have distanced themselves from the initiative, despite supporting legalization measures in other states including Colorado, where the number of pot cultivators was not capped. And some longtime supporters of marijuana in Ohio are actively opposing Responsible Ohio, alongside anti-drug activists. “This is egregious to me on many levels,” said Marcie Seidel, an anti-drug activist who opposes all forms of legalization and heads Ohio’s Drug Free Action Alliance. “This is basically wealthy individuals, the 1 percent that we always hear about, that are wanting and asking us as Ohio citizens to guarantee in the constitution that they are going to make millions and millions more dollars so they can become even more wealthy.” It’s not uncommon in the U.S. for moneyed interests who will benefit financially from the outcome of ballot measures to back their campaigns or opposition movements. Corporations and business trade groups gave more than three-quarters of the $266 million contributed by top donors to ballot measure groups in 2014, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis published earlier this year. For example, in Colorado, competing casinos gave more than $36 million in a fight over a 2014 measure to expand gaming at racetracks. And Monsanto and other food-company allies raised $36 million to successfully block measures last year to label genetically modified foods in Colorado and Oregon, while pro-labeling groups fueled by money from natural foods businesses raised $7.5 million in the two states. Ballot measures were the darling of early 20th century progressives, who saw them as a way to circumnavigate corrupt legislatures. South Dakota became the first state to add initiatives and referenda to its constitution in 1898, borrowing from the ideas behind robust ballot measure politicking in Switzerland. By 1918, 24 states and many more cities had adopted ballot measures, according to the University of Southern California’s Initiative and Referendum Institute. But the provisions played a minor role in American political life until 1978 when Proposition 13, California’s anti-tax initiative, heralded the “taxpayer revolt” and new popularity for ballot measures. Now, measures promoted with expensive TV ad campaigns often bankrolled by wealthy interests or activist groups are a way of life in California, where the ballot measure is most popular, followed closely by several other western states, such as Oregon, Washington and Arizona. Ohio typically sees one or two statewide measures per year. Moneyed interests don’t always win ballot measure fights, of course. In 2010, voters rejected California’s Proposition 16 that would have made it harder for municipalities to create their own power companies, despite $46 million spent by Pacific Gas & Electric in support, and less than $100,000 spent by opponents. But if big business is going to win, it needs help to create the network that a true grassroots movement would have at the ready. That’s where the pros come in. "Not a Process for Amateurs" At Responsible Ohio’s headquarters in James’ Victorian home, July 1 looms. That’s the day the campaign must turn in its signatures to the secretary of state — at least 305,591 to get the measure on the ballot. The team has already surpassed that number, but James is hoping to obtain 800,000 signatures and register thousands of new voters — then remind them all to go to the polls in November. To do this, James has assembled a cadre of professionals. The prospectus for potential Responsible Ohio investors outlines a preliminary $20 million budget for the campaign: $5.6 million for signature gathering, canvassing and operations, paid to James’ firm; $702,000 for lawyers and bookkeepers; $278,000 for polling; $350,000 for public relations; $1.5 million for data analysis by veterans of Barack Obama’s two presidential campaigns; $4 million for direct mail and a vote-by-mail program; $7.1 million for TV and radio advertising; and $440,000 for lobbying. In Ohio, this is what it takes to run a ballot measure campaign: more than 500 people working full-time, and election pros running the whole show. “This is a business,” James said. “What we’re doing in changing the constitution to legalize marijuana will lead to more than 10,000 people working in the state, billions of dollars being generated in new revenue. That money is also going to flow into local communities. But no one creates an industry of that magnitude without being paid for it.” James has worked on eight state and local ballot measures in Ohio. He got his taste for politics as a kid going to union meetings with his mother, a teacher. Starting in high school, he volunteered or worked on about a dozen candidate campaigns, he said, and later took jobs in the Ohio statehouse and as a lobbyist for the late entertainer and casino mogul Merv Griffin. He focuses now on ballot measures and said he works 80 hours a week on Responsible Ohio’s campaign. Many other politicos also work exclusively on ballot measures for hefty price tags. Barry Fadem, a California-based attorney, has spent his three-decade career writing ballot measure language. His clients typically need to spend $100,000 even before the measure is filed with the state, he said, just to conduct opinion polls, hire consultants to start organizing the campaign and pay him to craft the legalese. “The initiative process is just not a process for amateurs,” Fadem said. “It’s really not. Because it’s so hard to win.” Some industry members claim only to work for causes they care about, but most combine work that supports their political principles with work that lines their pocketbooks, taking on gambling, land-use or other types of measures that pay well. But industry members said they aren’t getting rich. Michael Arno leads a major signature gathering company, Arno Petition Consultants, that has been paid more than $9.5 million since 2010, according to data from the Lucy Burns Institute and state records. “If I had a nickel for every nickel people thought I’d had, I’d be retired by now,” he said. “We go through long stretches we don’t have any work.” Foot Soldiers With clipboards and pens in hand, Donnie Dawson stood on the sidewalk outside the Franklin County Government Center on a recent afternoon, calling to people shuffling into the revolving doors to pay speeding tickets and lawyers leaving to catch a smoke break. “Legalize marijuana, bro?” he called out to a man in bright red pants. “I don’t smoke,” the man said as he kept walking. “I sell.” The man had a point: His current illegal business would be doomed under Responsible Ohio’ s initiative, because only the 10 for-profit companies that are also funding the campaign would be allowed to grow and sell pot wholesale, though others could set up retail shops. But voters may not know that from listening to Dawson try to collect their signatures. “Basically the 10 companies are for the nonprofit medical marijuana, for research for the medical marijuana,” said Dawson when asked what he tells potential signers curious about the alleged monopoly. "They're there to do the research and invent different strands of weed to help." That leaves out a piece of the picture. Though it’s true the 10 wholesalers would supply nonprofit medical dispensaries, the wholesalers are presently organized as for-profit LLCs and would also supply for-profit retailers. “While maybe not artful, it is accurate,” James said of Dawson’s words. A stream of Ohioans signed Dawson’s petition. None of them read the entire 24-page measure; many of them didn’t seem bothered by the wealthy investors behind it. "It goes hand in hand. It's kind of like Philip Morris and cigarette companies,” said 36-year- old warehouse employee Jorrel Carse, who also said he didn’t know much about the petition when he signed it. “It's all just a part of business." Josh Sword, a construction worker and self-described “street pharmacist,” said he has grown marijuana in the past and would grow it again if Responsible Ohio’s measure passed. Ohio’s potential marijuana market even inspired a copycat measure. But the Better for Ohio group seeks to authorize 40 growth facilities instead of just 10. The right to operate those sites would go to owners of certain $100 bills, with their serial numbers listed in the ballot measure. Better for Ohio said it would assign ownership of the bills at a later date. The backers of the measure aren’t joking — they hired Arno’s California-based firm to gather signatures but will be aiming for the 2016 ballot after running out of money to pay Arno to qualify this year. Massive signature drives, though fraught with claims of fraud and deception over the years, remain the hallmark of the initiative process. Though some measures can still rely on volunteers for the labor-intensive job, at least $20 million was paid to 21 firms gathering signatures for the 2014 ballot, according to data from the Lucy Burns Institute and state records. But Dawson, a professional signature gatherer, isn’t making millions. The 42-year-old father of five did not say how much he makes, but James said signature gatherers are paid a base rate of $9.50 per hour, with the chance to earn more if they bring in many valid signatures. Voices Unheard Responsible Ohio is attracting a motley crew of opponents, from anti-drug activists to pro-pot voters hoping to get other, less restrictive versions of marijuana legalization on the ballot. Mary Smith, a marijuana activist and the former owner of what she called a “run-of-the-mill hippie department store” in Toledo, said she isn’t backing it because she doubts Responsible Ohio’s wealthy investors have genuine empathy for medical marijuana patients. “This is completely about greed,” she said. But so far opponents are without a broad coalition and have yet to muster significant funding to go up against the $20 million campaign from Responsible Ohio. Anti-drug activist Seidel said she thinks some sort of opposition group will form but doesn’t know where the money will come from. Vermilion resident Aaron Weaver and about 20 other pro-pot critics of Responsible Ohio are trying to put up a fight. In April, they formed a new nonprofit, Citizens Against Responsible Ohio. So far the group exists as a website, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. And they are paying out of their own pockets to promote Facebook posts criticizing the measure. Encouraged solely by a tweet from comedian Drew Carey, an Ohio native who voiced skepticism about Responsible Ohio’s plan, Weaver drafted a letter asking him for money. “With your assistance, we can turn the tide and put a stop to these well-polished thugs in their tracks,” Weaver’s letter reads. In an initiative process intended to be the voice of the people, the people are struggling to find the money to get their voices heard, while moneyed interests can afford to pay top dollar for the ballot professionals. It’s an irony not lost on the professionals themselves. “To be quite honest, it’s a lucrative business, but there are certainly questions we all have about the efficiency, and what’s good for democracy and what’s not,” said Paul Maslin, a pollster who has worked on initiatives for 20 years. “Because let’s face it: Sometimes ballot measures can be the purview of special interest groups that may not be linked up with the public interest.” Others are unmoved, even upon hearing that Ian James plans to pay his own firm $5.6 million to promote the idea he created. “It's America,” said David Bruno, an Akron-based consultant who has helped James attract investors. “Good for him. And for the people that want to criticize that, it's a shame they didn't try to do it first.” But for Weaver, Responsible Ohio would crush his version of the American dream: opening a marijuana farm that would double as his business and a retirement plan for his parents if legalization ever came to Ohio. “It’s an absolutely unfair fight,” the 28-year-old administrative assistant said. “It’s a perversion of our process in the state of Ohio and I think any state, really. I mean putting your business plan into the constitution of a state? That’s unheard of. That’s ridiculous.” Liz Essley Whyte is an American University fellow for The Center for Public Integrity. Reprinted with permission from truthout.org |