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Dennis Spisak for Ohio Governor

In Ohio, Green Party candidates are organizing to hold politicians in the Democrat and Republican Parties accountable for decades of right-wing misrule.  For the office of governor, Dennis Spisak is running on a platform to increase revenue, pushing for single-payer health care, creating jobs through green energy policies, and boosting education.

http://www.votespisak.org/gove…

Spisak for Governor

548 Poland Ave.

Struthers,Ohio 44471

Donate the full amount and receive the full tax credit. Remember to file this donation with your 2010 Ohio Income Tax to receive the 2010 credit. Act now. Don’t let these funds go unused!

Ohio law mandates that your check must have your full name and address on it – PO boxes are not allowed. Contributions over $100 must include your employer’s name.

On a more local level, Green Party candidate David Ellison is running for the county executive position that was ostensibly created in response to the huge corruption scandal now plaguing Democrat Party leaders.

http://www.electdavidellison.com

The above link is to the main campaign web site.  To volunteer or donate, see below.

http://www.electdavidellison.c…

http://www.electdavidellison.c…

Make checks payable to:

The Committee to Elect David Ellison

6403 Detroit Avenue

Cleveland, OH 44102

If you want a look at Ellison’s plans for Cuyahoga, here is the link to read them.

http://www.electdavidellison.c…

Also, Green Party candidate Alan Crossman is running for a seat on the county council in Cuyahogs.

http://alancrossman.us

For statewide office, in addition to the governor’s race, Dennis Lambert is running for the position of State Representative, District 89.

http://www.newmenu.org/dennisl…

Others have dishonestly claimed that the non-Democrat left is not organized.  But the fact of these and other candidacies from left-wing activists shows that, yes, we are indeed organized.  One can make legitimate criticisms as to the level and quality of that organization, but it does exist.  

So you want to move Democrats to the left? Stop voting for them.

There comes a time when it is necessary to re-evaluate failed strategies.  Insulting the left by calling us “Naderites” if we fail to show up to vote for a right-wing candidate to replace the late Ted Kennedy didn’t cause swarms of invigorated Democrats to vote Martha Coakley into office.  Insulting us as “poorly informed” about things we already knew doesn’t work, nor does self-congratulatory back-patting.  And frankly, up and joining with the very gatekeepers we’re supposed to be fighting isn’t going to cut it either.

It’s long past time for the left to publicly acknowledge that tying its meager fortunes to the Democrats is a lost cause.  You cannot fight a beast from within its belly.  You can only be digested and shat out.

You may not like the suggestion I’m about to make.

But I’ll make it anyway: Vote third party, a LEFT-wing third party.  MAKE the Democrats’ self-inflicted losses in November be because they were too right-wing and the public, having been lied to for too long, chose to leave for a party that represents its interests over those of Big Business.

You must do this not only to send the right message, but because it is the ONLY way any Democrat will be made to realize just why he or she lost and what the party needs to do to win and keep power.  That’s not going to happen by sitting out elections, which is what the powerful want us to do anyway and only allows the far right to keep shaping the narrative that Democrats lose because they’re perceived as being too liberal.

Bloggers Behaving Badly: Rayne at FireDogLake.com, Part Deux

And the attacks on the left by the so-called left just keep on happening.  Rayne is at it again, this time using analysis of the failure of Howard Dean’s organizational methods as cover for once again insulting the left.

Right off the bat, Rayne dismisses the left as being “poorly informed” about how and why the Democrat Party victories of 2006 and 2008 have gone once again to the very likely prospect of huge losses in 2010.

For the last several weeks there’s been an increasing number of posts which bash all manner of Democrats, from the president to the party itself and plead for alternatives. The anger driving this bashing is understandable since the country’s economy has floundered and promises made and values shared haven’t been kept under a Democratic president with a Democratic majority in Congress.

The anger also stems from disillusionment; after the great double-emotional high of the first person of color and Democrat winning the White House in 2008, there was the expectation that winning could continue, sustained in terms of legislative initiatives.

But unfortunately, much of this anger is poorly informed. There’s backstory which explains in part why we are here today.  . . .

I find it difficult to believe that, as someone who regularly posts on a blog that goes out of its way to inform its readers about what the far right in the Democrat Party does on a daily basis, Rayne would think the left is “poorly informed” about how and why we’ve gone from victory over the GOP to facing a repeat of ’94.

Bloggers Behaving Badly: Rayne at FireDogLake.com

Over at FireDogLake.com, you’d better not post anything too critical of Israel.  Moderator and abuser of power Rayne will probably step in to disrupt the thread, issue threats, and order people to cease asking questions she doesn’t like.

Rayne’s latest round of abuse began when truthexcavator posted an entry on what turned out to be a five-year-old news article about an israeli soldier acquitted of murdering a 13-year-old Palestinian by filling her body with enough bullets to drop a charging rhinoceros.  Truth made the horrendous mistake of comparing what Israel is doing to palestinians to what the Nazis did to Jews during the Holocaust.

I was shocked when I heard about this story, but I am less shock of the verdict by the Israeli Army. I’m passed the point of getting mad at Israel. I don’t even think of it as a country anymore. I wish it was a country because the Jewish people deserve better. But it’s not a country, just as Nazi Germany wasn’t a country.

Unemployment Rates for Ohio and Other States, and Tips for How You Can Help

In January, the Associated Press reported that Ohio’s unemployment rate stood at 10.9% as of December 2009.  That rate has fallen slightly in the six months or so since that news article, standing now at 10.7% according to the Dayton Daily News.

The number of unemployed workers in May dropped to 641,000 from 652,000 in April. During the past 12 months, the number of unemployed has gone up by 22,000 from 619,000. The May 2009 unemployment rate was 10.3 percent.

Anyone looking to call this an improvement needs to explain that thinking, because these are more than likely seasonal jobs that either have disappeared or will disappear.

For my home town of Cleveland, the unemployment rate is even worse: 17.1 percent according to Simply Cleveland.  (In the interests of fuller disclosure, I have been unemployed since at least December of 2007, existing on financial aid and what food I can get from food pantries.)

Cleveland has an unemployment rate of 17.1%, compared the national average of 6.9%.

According to our Cleveland Trends data, the number of Cleveland, Ohio jobs has decreased by 28% since November 2008.

Graph Showing Employment Decline

Scandal may sink Strickland’s chances for re-election.

According to a report issued by the office of Ohio’s inspector general Thomas P. Charles, one of governor Ted Strickland’s cabinet members perjured herself to protect his boss from a criminal investigation.

As reported in The Columbus Dispatch and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Public Safety Director Cathy Collins-Taylor put the kibosh on an investigation into Strickland’s apparent laxness of supervision in an inmate work program at his home.  Prisoners are alleged to have used the opportunity afforded them to smuggle tobacco products and weapons from Strickland’s residence and into prison.

“Lt. Joseph Mannion, Strickland’s top personal security officer,” according to the Plain Dealer article, was accused of lying under oath to investigators during the course of their probe into the matter.  

Politics Daily recently reported that Strickland is so far maintaining only a “shaky lead” over Republican rival John Kasich.  That his top aides lied under oath to state investigators, thereby breaking the law, to protect their boss’s reputation has had the opposite effect – Strickland’s campaign may now have suffered a terminal blow going into the November election.

Third Party candidates for U.S. Senate in Ohio

You wouldn’t know it to read to blogs and major media sources, but there are non-Democrat and non-Republicans running to replace retiring U.S. senator George Voinovich in Ohio this year.  They are (as listed on www.USelections.com):



Eric Deaton (Independent)
– An apparent teabagger, Deaton’s profile uses populist rhetoric to try to fool voters into thinking he’s not a hardcore Republican-turned-independent.  According to his web site’s positions page, Deaton opposes affirmative action, gun control laws, “government-run healthcare,” and other things supported by progressives and most Ohioans.  This one can be dismissed as being a disaffected GOPer who is a card-carrying member of the teabagger movement.

Eric LaMont Gregory (Independent) – A scientist by trade, Gregory is running on a platform of ending poverty, providing full employment, protecting Social Security, universal health care for people (free if over 62), and fair taxation, though his web site does not appear to have a solid positions page laying out more specific positions.  Chalk this one up for the “maybe” category.

Stephen Lahanas (Independent) – The only link USelections.com had for who it described simply as a businessman is his blog.  (He does offer some insightful political perspectives — among them an analysis of the two major parties, however, it’s obvious that Lahanas doesn’t even have a campaign web site to explain his positions.)  He expresses some food-for-thought opinions, but I’m not sure he’s even really running.

Adam Shaffer (Independent) – Described as an IT consultant, Shaffer appears to be running more to educate and involve people in the political process than for anything else.  He doesn’t seem to state any positions on the issues, and he probably won’t even get enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.



Jeremy Swartz (Independent)
– Described as a ” FEMA Disaster Specialist, Ex-Police Officer & ’06 State Rep. Candidate” on the USelections.com web site, the link to his campaign site appears to be dead.

Information gotten from here for the next round of candidates.)

Dan La Botz (Socialist Party) – Socialist and proud enough to say so, La Botz is running on a democratic socialist platform.

Dave Meyers (Independent) – His “About” page doesn’t state his positions other than telling readers he will represent our wishes.

William G. Pierce (Independent) – Former Republican who unsuccessfully challenged then-incumbent Mike DeWine in 2006 for U.S. Senate — from the right!  Forget him.

Michael Pryce (Independent) – A Ron Paul-esque Libertarian type, if his issues page is any indication of where he stands.  Another one to dismiss.

Those are the independent candidates vying for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Voinovich.  Of them all, Dan La Botz seems best suited to represent Ohioans in the Senate.

Blog Talk Radio – Progressive Independence Radio – 8PM EDT

We’ve got a lot to talk about tonight: Ohio’s Green Party gubernatorial candidate Dennis Spisak, one of incumbent and Democrat Ted Strickland’s creatures stalking Spisak on the ‘net, Don Blankenship and why he should be in prison, more about the Full Court Press (I talked with fellow blogger Jeff Roby last week on the subject), and finally, porn starlet Stormy Daniels’ run for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana to replace GOPer David Vitter.

The call-in number is 1 (347) 884-9121 if you want to call in and talk with us.  The URL is here.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/p…

Friday at 8PM EDT on Blog Talk Radio

After calling in to Diane G’s Blog Talk Radio program last Friday evening, which dealt with 9/11 conspiracy hypotheses, I decided to revive my own show for a special continuing discussion on the subject since I wasn’t able to fully discuss my own interpretation of that day’s events.  The show will last two hours and will air at eight o’clock Eastern Daylight Time this coming Friday.

I’ll be debunking some of the wilder beliefs about what actually happened on September 11, 2001 and offering my own hypothesis about the government’s refusal to take action in the months leading up to the attacks.  (I want the truth to come out too, but I think the search for it has veered way off course and taken us places that can only lead to continued frustration.)  I’ll also be taking calls so people can discuss the Democrats’ Republican health insurance bill and what the consequences are both for Americans and for the Democrats in November.  And if time allows, the final portion of the show will deal with this week’s latest mining disaster, how deregulation helped it happen, and what must be done to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again.

Here’s the link to the show.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/p…

The call-in number is  1 (347) 884-9121

I hope to hear from Diane G. and all other interested listeners out there.  Thanks for reading!

Green Party candidate Dennis Spisak is running for Ohio Governor.

Being from Ohio, elections here are especially important to me as they have a more direct impact on the Buckeye State than do federal elections.  So it was heartening to read at USelections.com that there is an independent candidate from the left who is running for governor and who isn’t culled from the pools of Big Business.  His name is Dennis Spisak, and he is running for governor this year.  You can check out his web site by clicking this LINK.

Other candidates for governor are incumbent and Democrat Ted Strickland, Republican and businessboy John Kasich, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for U.S. president in 2000, and building contractor Ken Matesz on the Libertarian Party ticket.

Growing Discontent with Democrats & Access-Bloggers Leaves an Opening for Genuine Progressives

Lately there has been a spate of diaries at such web sites as FireDogLake and “Open” Left wherein lay members – typically under attack from site moderators, who act as Democratic Party hacks and gatekeepers – have sought ways to bring back the Progressive Party, or join the Greens, or build up some other institution, that will allow progressives to act together as a cohesive political unit.  (I posted an entry there myself, only to end up being attacked by site moderators, threatened with banishment, and ultimately banned when I refused to back down against their incessant bullying.)

FDL’s iphelgix explains the reason for leaving the Democrats.

Fellow FDLer TalkingStick points out the wisdom of studying the teabaggers for ideas about how we progressives can rebuild our own movement.

Mason calls for progressives to join him in building a Progressive Party from the ground up, apparently not aware that it already exists in states such as Vermont and Washington, and as Green Party affiliates inMissouri and Wisconsin.   He is joined in this effort by MadHemingway, who posted the 1912 platform the Progressive Party ran on.

FDL members are not alone in Left Blogsylvania in expressing their utter disgust with the Democrats; at “Open” Left, such lay members as Arthur Lukas gripe about where progressives are and asks where we should go from here.  Even at the Daily Obama, whereupon I also post, a poll I put up asking if it is time for progressives to break away from the Democratic received a fifty percent yes-vote.

Such discontent is often met by moderators and site owners with derision, insults, threats, and banishments of the “offending” members.  Nevertheless, it has grown more difficult for the access-bloggers to bully progressives into submission, a lesson FDL’s Jason Rosenbaum refused to learned after the beat-down his contemptuous post before the Massachusetts special election received.  In short, no one on the left is buying into the Big Lie that Democrats are any different from Republicans in terms of substantive policies, nor are we responding to threats and insults anymore for “failing” to be bullied into supporting Democrats no matter what.

This discontent and refusal to be bullied has created an opening for progressives seeking to organize the left back into a cohesive and more importantly, effective movement in opposition to the far right.  There are angry voices aplenty, people outraged by the betrayals of the man they though they were electing president in ’08 and the endless capitulations to the GOP made by Democrats.  Here we have an advantage.

The only thing lacking in the new political environment is effective leadership among progressives.  We will not find it among the self-appointed “leaders” of the ‘netroots, the access-bloggers like Chris Bowers, Markos Moulitsas, and the aforementioned Rosenbaum whose only real goal is to gain access for themselves – and only themselves – to the inner circles of “serious” political power and corporate media recognition.  It is therefore up to us to take on leadership roles and organize the left.

If we can take charge, we the progressive base, then we can finally begin the work of taking back America from the fascist elements that have usurped it for their own ends to the detriment of everybody else.  The Full Court Press is one tool for doing that, and it’s a very good start.

Enough waiting. Let’s rebuild the Progressive Party of the United States.

At what point do progressives stop being Democrats’ whipped dogs and start acting like a movement capable of putting the Dems in their proper place as the party of the people?  David Sirota wrote today about Obama’s latest call to increase war spending beyond its already ludicrous proportions.

How many of the extreme right-wing and criminal policies of Bush-Cheney has Obama adopted?  How many of those extreme right-wing policies has he exceeded?  Last month, knowledge that Obama has gone a step further than Bush, authorizing the executive branch to murder American citizens on the flimsiest of rationales.  This sh__ has GOT to end.

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