But I didn’t, and I wonder why …

Well, I did eventually cut my grass, but not till latter May. And it’s no wonder why — I’m slow to mow to start with, and the very rainy spring in the land south of Lake Erie this year often left the yard too soggy to mow.¹ But the lack of mowing had a benefit — a nice showing of wildflowers, with honeybees working them. And it saved some time and gasoline. So, I imagine I’ll let that yard grow again next year — especially since I found some advice on meadow care that suits me: “Mow once a year in early spring before new growth begins.”² That’s it. So that’s the plan.

Here are some pictures of the yard in bloom, 14 May 2011:

Golden Ragwort

Wild Blue Phlox

Ajuga, in Two Shades

Honeybee

What is the white flower among the grass?

Sources

(1) ‘Temperature and Precipitation Maps March – May 2011’ – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – National Climatic Data Center

(2) ‘Lawn Alternatives’ – Organic Gardening
Page 2: U.S. region-by-region advice

By Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com, Copyright 2011

‘Videos: The People’s Parade to Repeal SB5’ – ProgressOhio.org

Video: Unloading the petitions from the semi-truck.

Sources

(1) ‘Kasich signs controversial SB5’ by Marc Kovac, The Daily Jeffersonian, Cambridge, Ohio, 2011-04-01

(2) ‘Senate Bill 5 — Summary’ – Stewart Jaffy and Associates Co.

(3) ‘Ohio Referendum Information’ – Stewart Jaffy and Associates Co.

(4) ‘The Rachel Maddow Show’ for Wednesday, June 29, 2011 – transcript

MADDOW:  How will Democrats and the Democratic base get those many, many signatures you guys need in the next 90 days to get a ballot referendum?  I mean, 231,000 signatures is a very high bar.

STATE REP. ARMOND BUDISH (D), OHIO:  And that‘s 231,000 valid signatures.  We‘re going to have to collect 450,000 signatures or more to get the right number that are valid.  And what we‘re going to do, we‘re going to work like hell and fight like hell to do it.  That‘s all we can do.

…

MADDOW:  Members of the grassroots group We Are Ohio delivering 1.3 million signatures to the Kasich administration today—one day early and five times the required number.
They held a parade in Columbus before they delivered the signatures today.  Beforehand, they expected about 1,000 people to show up for the parade.  They got more than about 6,000, according to the local press.

The signatures delivered in 1,502 separate boxes.  They came in from all of Ohio‘s 88 counties.

If about, again, 230,000 of those 1.3 million signatures are validated, that means that the repeal of this union-stripping thing will be on the ballot in Ohio on November 8th.  So far, statewide polling suggests that a clear majority of Ohioans will vote to repeal the union-stripping law.

(5) ‘We Are Ohio Holds Million Signature March/People’s Parade and Celebrates Historic Achievement with Thousands of Volunteers’ – press release

(6) ‘SB5 – Bill Summary’ – Ohio Legislative Service Commission

(7) ‘Madison Protesters: Collective Bargaining About Workplace Democracy, Not Just Pay, Benefits’ By Micah Uetricht, In These Times, 2011-02-19

(8) STEVEN GREENHOUSE, _The New York Times, March 30, 2011

But James Brudney, a labor law professor at Ohio State University, said the bill effectively crippled collective bargaining. “There’s a kind of mask or illusion element in this,” he said. “The essence of collective bargaining is when you can’t agree on terms of a contract, you have a dispute resolution mechanism, by strikes or perhaps binding arbitration. Here, you have none of that. That’s not collective bargaining. I’d call it collective begging. It’s a conversation that ends whenever an employer decides that it ends.”

(9) We Are Ohio – citizens group for repealing SB5

By Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com, Copyright 2011

That was how a state agency, the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, worked under the administration of the Democratic governor, Ted Strickland. But now Ohio has a new, Republican governor, former Fox News host and Wall Street bank exec, John Kasich.¹ +² Gov. Kasich is at the fore among Republican office-holders that are now swinging a meat axe at the commonwealth: public health, safety, schools, transportation, the social safety net, and so on.³ +⁴ In addition, Kasich calls for cutting the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel’s budget by half — even though its funding comes not from the state, but entirely from the utility companies.⁵ Should that go through, then next time there may be no one to goad AT&T to ease up on somebody’s old pappy.

Sources

(1) ‘John Kasich’s Work at Lehman Brothers Connected to Hit That Ohio Seniors Have Taken in New TV Ad’ SEIU, 2010-09-09

According to the Columbus Dispatch (May 12, 2010), Kasich “tried to persuade two state pension funds in 2002 to invest with Lehman Brothers while he was the managing director of the investment banking house’s Columbus office.”
Despite only claiming two contacts Kasich also called a third pension fund in 2002 and tried to pitch Lehman’s brokerage services.
Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Ohio pensions took a $480 million hit, according to the Associated Press (April 2, 2010).
Kasich, who is now running for governor of Ohio, made nearly $590,000 in salary and bonuses as a Lehman Brothers managing director in 2008 before the banking giant collapsed later that year (Associated Press, 4/2/10)

(2) ;Fox platform gives Kasich a boost’, By MICHAEL CALDERONE, Politico, 3/2/10

… But in the meantime, it is Kasich, host of “Heartland With John Kasich” from 2001 to 2007 and guest host on Fox’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” who is running against Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio and finding that the old ties to Fox can be very handy.

(3) ‘REPORT: In 12 States, GOP Plans To Slash Corporate Taxes While Increasing Burden on Working Families’ – Paul Breer and Kevin Donohoe, Think Progress

Gov. John Kasich (R ) has proposed cutting 25 percent of schools’ budgets, $1 million from food banks, $12 million from children’s hospitals, and $15.9 million from an adoption program for children with special needs. A Kasich staffer revealed yesterday that these cuts are more about politics then budget-balancing, telling the Cincinnati Dispatch that “even if there weren’t an $8 billion deficit, we’d probably be proposing many of the same things.” The plan includes tax cuts for oil companies, a repeal of the estate tax and an income tax cut for the rich that former Gov. Ted Strickland (D) halted last year because of the state’s fiscal crisis.

(4) Plunderbund — Kasich budget

(5) ‘Kasich’s budget gives utilities a tax break by slashing consumer watchdog agency. Corporate Win-Win’ by ModernEsquire, Plunderbund, on March 17, 2011

By Quinn Hungeski, TheParagraph.com, Copyright 2011

Photos

Photos from some of the rallies in support of Wisconsin public servants and collective bargaining rights across the nation on Saturday, February 26, 2011:

Madison, Wisconsin (Andy Manis / AP)

Columbus, Ohio (Jay LaPrete / AP)

Albany, NY (Twitter user @_1134)

Augusta, Maine

Austin, Texas (Stephen C. Webster)

Boise, Idaho

Boston, Massachusetts (Rick Tudor)

Washington, D.C. (Jeff Bloom and Josh William)

Denver, Colorado (Twitter user @RadicalRonRand)

Green Bay, Wisconsin

Asheville, North Carolina (Douglas Ross) / Jackson, Mississippi (Landon Wilson)

Juneau, Alaska (Dan Kantak)

Montpelier, Vermont (Lance Mills)

New York, New York (William Brown)

Phoenix, Arizona (Pat Kofahl)

Sacramento, California (Robin Kozloff)

Salem, Oregon (‘Derrick’)

Salt Lake City, Utah (Ryan Kowalchik)

San Francisco, California (Stephen Pawley)

Santa Fe, New Mexico (Alf Abeyta)

Seattle, Washington (Howie in Seattle)

Springfield, Illinois (Wayne Sedgwick)

St. Paul, Minnesota

Tallahassee, Florida (Jeanette Castillo – more here)

Sources

1. ‘12 Things You Need to Know About the Uprising in Wisconsin’ by Joshua Holland, AlterNet, 2011-02-18

Walker’s bill would strip public employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything but higher pay (and would cap the amount of wage hikes they might end up gaining in negotiations). His intentions are clear — before assuming office, Walker threatened to decertify the state’s employees’ unions (until he discovered that the governor doesn’t have that power).

2. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 23, Item 4: Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

3. ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work – Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining

The freedoms to associate and to bargain collectively are fundamental rights. … These enabling rights make it possible to promote and realize decent conditions at work. …

The recognition of the right to collective bargaining is the key to the representation of collective interests. It builds on freedom of association and renders collective representation meaningful. Collective bargaining can play an important role in enhancing enterprise performance, managing change and building harmonious industrial relations.

Collective bargaining, as a way for workers and employers to reach agreement on issues affecting the world of work, is inextricably linked to freedom of association. The right of workers and employers to establish their independent organizations is the basic prerequisite for collective bargaining and social dialogue. …

4. Supreme Court of Canada – Health Services and Support – Facilities Subsector Bargaining Assn. v. British Columbia, 2007-06-08

Item 82: The right to bargain collectively with an employer enhances the human dignity, liberty and autonomy of workers by giving them the opportunity to influence the establishment of workplace rules and thereby gain some control over a major aspect of their lives, namely their work (see Alberta Reference, at p. 368, and Wallace v. United Grain Growers Ltd., [1997] 3 S.C.R. 701, at para. 93).  As explained by P. C. Weiler in Reconcilable Differences (1980):

Collective bargaining is not simply an instrument for pursuing external ends, whether these be mundane monetary gains or the erection of a private rule of law to protect dignity of the worker in the face of managerial authority.  Rather, collective bargaining is intrinsically valuable as an experience in self-government.  It is the mode in which employees participate in setting the terms and conditions of employment, rather than simply accepting what their employer chooses to give them …. [p. 33]

6. National Laabor Relations Act — Wikipedia

The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act (after its sponsor, Senator Robert F. Wagner) (Pub.L. 74-198, 49 Stat. 449, codified as amended at 29 U.S.C. § 151–169), is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands.

7. National Labor Relations Act — U.S. Code TITLE 29 > CHAPTER 7 > SUBCHAPTER II > § 151

It is hereby declared to be the policy of the United States to eliminate the causes of certain substantial obstructions to the free flow of commerce and to mitigate and eliminate these obstructions when they have occurred by encouraging the practice and procedure of collective bargaining and by protecting the exercise by workers of full freedom of association, self-organization, and designation of representatives of their own choosing, for the purpose of negotiating the terms and conditions of their employment or other mutual aid or protection.

8. Labor-Management Relations, Collective Bargaining, and the Public Sector: Collaborative Solutions in Alameda, California, Edward J. Martin, Ph.D., The Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration, California State University, Long Beach

In 1962 John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10988 made collective bargaining a lawful practice in public sector negotiations. For the first time, it allowed federal employees to engage in union organizing and collective bargaining. Later, this order was expanded upon by Richard Nixon’s Executive Orders 11491 (1969) and 11616 (1971), and Gerald Ford’s Executive Order 11838 (1975), which formalized the bargaining process for federal employees. Finally, in 1978 under Jimmy Carter, the Civil Service Reform Act stipulated that the president no longer had the authority to regulate the collective bargaining process on his own behalf (Kearney, 1998; Martin, 1979; Brooks, 1971; Chamberlain, 1965). As a result, clearly established procedures had been established for regulating public sector collective bargaining (Robertson and Seneviratne, 1995).

9. ‘Thousands rally at Wisconsin Capitol to protest anti-union bill’ – Associated Press, February 16, 2011

Wisconsin … passed a comprehensive collective bargaining law in 1959 and was the birthplace of the national union representing non-federal public employees.

10. ‘Factbox: Several U.S. states consider union limits’ – Reuters, 2011-02-25

Public unions have the right to collectively bargain in about 30 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

In some states in the south and west, public employees do not have the right to collectively bargain, and in Virginia and Texas, it is illegal to enter into a formal bargaining relationship with the public sector, according to Paul Secunda, Marquette University law professor.

11. ‘Volunteers help Wis. protesters keep up the fight’ By JASON SMATHERS – Associated Press, 2011-02-26

12. ‘Live blog: Americans answer call to protest for workers’ rights’ by By Stephen C. Webster, The Raw Story, Saturday, February 26th, 2011

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Haplocanthosaurus, where it belongs. Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Here is an example from Wisconsin in 1905 of a law banning corporate influence on public policy:¹⁰

No corporation doing business in this state shall pay or contribute, or offer consent or agree to pay or contribute, directly or indirectly, any money, property, free service of its officers or employees or thing of value to any political party, organization, committee or individual for any political purpose whatsoever, or for the purpose of influencing legislation of any kind, or to promote or defeat the candidacy of any person for nomination, appointment or election to any political office.

Penalty: Any officer, employe, agent or attorney or other representative of any corporation, acting for and in behalf of such corporation, who shall violate [this act] shall be punished upon conviction by a fine of not less than one hundred nor more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment in the state prison for a period of not less than one nor more than five years, or by both … and if the corporation shall be subject to a penalty then by forfeiture in double the amount of any fine so imposed … and if a domestic corporation, it may be dissolved, … and if a foreign or nonresident corporation, its right to do business in this state may be declared forfeited.

Similar Ohio Law, 1908

Section 1, That no corporation doing business in this state shall directly or indirectly pay, use or offer, consent or agree to pay or use, any of its money or property for, or in aid, of any political party, committee or organization, or for, or in aid of, any candidate for political office or for nomination for any such office, or in any manner use any of its money or property for any political purpose whatever, or for the reimbursement or indemnification of any person or persons for moneys or property so used.

Section 3. Every corporation which violates section 1 of this act shall be punished by a fine of not more than five thousand nor less than five hundred dollars… Any officer, stockholder, attorney, or agent of any corporations which violates section 1 of this act who participates in, aids, or advises any such violation, and any person who solicits or knowingly receives any money or property in violation of this act shall be punished by imprisonment for not more than one year or a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or both at the discretion of the court.¹¹

Other Wisconsin Laws

From research by Jane Anne Morris:¹

• corporations were required to have a clear purpose, to be fulfilled but not exceeded.
• corporations’ licenses to do business were revocable by the state legislature if they exceeded or did not fulfill their chartered purpose(s).
• the state legislature could revoke a corporation’s charter for a particular reason, or for no reason at all.
• the act of incorporation did not relieve corporate management or stockholders/owners of responsibility or liability for corporate acts.
• as a matter of course, corporation officers, directors, or agents could be held criminally liable for violating the law.
• state (not federal) courts heard cases where corporations or their agents were accused of breaking the law or harming the public.
• directors of the corporation were required to come from among stockholders.
• corporations had to have their headquarters and meetings in the state where their principal place of business was located.
• corporation charters were granted for a specific period of time, like 20 or 30 years (instead of being granted “in perpetuity,” as is now the practice.)
• corporations were prohibited from owning stock in other corporations in order to prevent them from extending their power inappropriately.
• corporations’ real estate holdings were limited to what was necessary to carry out their specific purpose(s).
• corporations were prohibited from making any political contributions, direct or indirect.
• corporations were prohibited from making charitable or civic donations outside of their specific purposes.
• state legislatures set the rates that corporations could charge for their products or services.
• all corporation records and documents were open to the legislature or the state attorney general.

All of these provisions were once law in the state of Wisconsin. And similar ones were on the books in most other states.

Sources

¹ ‘Fixing Corporations: The Legacy of the Founding Parents’ by Jane Anne Morris, Madison, Wisc.

² ‘Some Like It Hot’ By Chris Mooney, Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

In 1989, the petroleum and automotive industries and the National Association of Manufacturers forged the Global Climate Coalition to oppose mandatory actions to address global warming. …

…

[W]ith the release of the IPCC’s third assessment in 2001, a strong consensus had emerged: Notwithstanding some role for natural variability, human-created greenhouse gas emissions could, if left unchecked, ramp up global average temperatures by as much as 5.8 degrees Celsius (or 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2100. “Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science,” wrote Science Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy in a 2001 editorial.

Even some leading corporations that had previously supported “skepticism” were converted. Major oil companies like Shell, Texaco, and British Petroleum, as well as automobile manufacturers like Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler, abandoned the Global Climate Coalition, which itself became inactive after 2002.

Yet some forces of denial—most notably ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute, of which ExxonMobil is a leading member—remained recalcitrant. In 1998, the New York Times exposed an API memo outlining a strategy to invest millions to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours with Congress, the media and other key audiences.” The document stated: “Victory will be achieved when…recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the ‘conventional wisdom.’” …

Though ExxonMobil’s Lauren Kerr says she doesn’t know the “status of this reported plan” and an API spokesman says he could “find no evidence” that it was ever implemented, many of the players involved have continued to dispute mainstream climate science with funding from ExxonMobil. …

³ ‘Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank’ Mother Jones May/June 2005 Issue

ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million [from 2000 to 2003] into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe.

⁴ ‘Medicare for All: The Only Sound Solution to Our Healthcare Crisis’ By Guy T. Saperstein, AlterNet, January 16, 2007.

The United States has the most expensive healthcare system on the planet. Even including the 47 million uninsured, the U.S. healthcare system costs almost double per capita what single-payer systems in Europe, Japan and Canada cost; in the United States, healthcare costs were $5,635 per person in 2005.

⁵ Bill Moyers Journal, July 10, 2009

The House Energy and Commerce Committee found that the major private health insurers had rescinded the policies of approximately 20,000 people in a five year period, to avoid paying out approximately $300 million in benefit claims.

⁶ ‘Familiar Players in Health Bill Lobbying Firms Are Enlisting Ex-Lawmakers, Aides’ by Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy, July 7, 2009, The Washington Post

The nation’s largest insurers, hospitals and medical groups have hired more than 350 former government staff members and retired members of Congress in hopes of influencing their old bosses and colleagues, according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures and other records.

…

The hirings are part of a record-breaking influence campaign by the health-care industry, which is spending more than $1.4 million a day on lobbying in the current fight, according to disclosure records. …

The push has reunited many who worked together in government on health-care reform, but are now employed as advocates for pharmaceutical and insurance companies.

⁷ ‘An Inside Story of Wall Street Bank Crashes’ The Paragraph, December 26th, 2008

⁸ ‘Capital City’ by Kevin Drum, Mother Jones, Jan.-Feb. 2010

let’s take a virtual stroll down K Street and see what everyone is spending on the world’s second-oldest profession. It’s all laid out for us by OpenSecrets.org. The defense lobby? Pikers. They contributed $24 million to individuals and PACs during the last election cycle. The farm lobby? $65 million. Health care? We’re getting warmer. Health care was the No. 2 industry, at $167 million.

And the finance lobby? They’re No. 1, with a very, very big bullet. They contributed an astonishing $475 million during the 2008 election cycle. That’s up from $60 million almost two decades ago.

⁹ ‘Don’t Reinflate the Old Bubbles’ By Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post, October 14, 2009

What we’re witnessing here is pretty simple: another bubble in financial assets. All that “liquidity” created by the Federal Reserve and other central banks has accomplished its task and prevented a global financial meltdown. But unless they move now to begin sopping up that liquidity, the central bankers run a serious risk of reinflating many of the same bubbles that got us into this mess in the first place.

…

The problem is that because we didn’t get into this recession in the normal way, the normal analysis and remedies are not appropriate. Slow growth and high unemployment are indeed going to be a big problem over the next several years, but they aren’t going to be solved by pumping out lots of cheap money that is used to speculate in stocks, bonds and commodities rather than be invested in the real economy. And if all this speculation has the effect of driving up the price of commodities and driving down the value of the dollars we use for imports, then it is perfectly possible to wind up with high inflation and high unemployment at the same time — as happened in the late 1970s.

The right policy response is for the Fed to begin withdrawing some of this extraordinary monetary stimulus even as the rest of the government steps up its effort to stimulate the real economy. That means more money for extended unemployment benefits; more aid to the states so that they can maintain the most vital public services; and more money to expand mass transit, state college and university systems, efficient energy production and basic scientific research. The economist Paul Krugman estimates that for every dollar in extra debt that will be required to finance this fiscal stimulus, about 40 cents will be repaid almost immediately in the form of tax revenues from higher short-term economic growth. And if the money is invested wisely in quality projects with high returns, the other 60 cents could wind up being a boon to future generations, rather than a burden.

¹⁰ ‘Wisconsin statutes. 1919: embracing all general statutes in force …, Volume 2, section 4479a’ edited by Lyman Junius Nash, Arthur Frederick Belitz

¹¹ ‘DEMOCRACY FOR SALE: How Ohioans Kept Corporations out of Politics; How and When They Re-entered’ — American Friends Service Committee

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at TheParagraph.com

Now in my job I travel around the world and I occasionally play to big stadiums or crowds like this, just like Senator Obama does. And I continue to find out that wherever I go, America remains a repository for people’s hopes, their desires. It remains a house of dreams. And a thousand George Bush’s and a thousand Dick Cheney’s will never be able to tear that house down. That’s something that only we can do, and we’re not going to let that happen.

…

[O]ur house of dreams has been abused, it’s been looted, and it’s been left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power, and for influence, for a quick buck. It needs strong arms, strong hearts, strong minds. We need someone with Senator Obama’s understanding, his temperateness, his deliberativeness, his maturity, his pragmatism, his toughness, and his faith. But most of all it needs us — it needs you and it needs me. And he’s gonna need us. Cause all that a nation has that keeps it from coming apart is the social contract between us, between its citizens. And whatever grace God has decided to impart to us, it resides in our connection with one another, and in our life and the hopes and the dreams of the man or the woman up the street or across town — that’s where we make our small claim upon heaven.

Now in recent years that social contract has been shredded. We look around today and we can see it shredding before our eyes. But tonight and today we are at the crossroads. We are at the crossroads, and it’s been a long, long, long time coming.

…

So I don’t know about you, but I know I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back! Now is the time to stand with Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.

Bruce Springsteen’s monologue — CNN

This Land is Your Land:

Sources

Bruce Springsteen’s monologue, Cleveland, 2008-11-02 [VIDEO] [TRANSCRIPT]

Set List – Point Blank

• The Promised Land
• Youngstown
• Thunder Road
• Working on a Dream (with Patti Scialfa)
• This Land is Your Land
• The Rising

‘Obama rally draws crowds to downtown Cleveland’ – The Plain Dealer Politics Blog

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

Ohio Voter Information

• Register by Monday, October 6th: If registering by mail, the envelope must be postmarked on or before October 6th. You can also register in person at a public library, motor vehicle bureau or county board of elections. For info and an online form to fill in and print out CLICK HERE.

• Check your registration: The State of Ohio now provides a search form to check that you are registered and give your polling location — CLICK HERE. If the online search does not find your registration, you can call your county elections board to check — for a directory of elections boards CLICK HERE.

• Absentee ballot: You can vote an absentee ballot by mail or in person at the elections board, without giving a reason, from Tuesday, September 30th, till the day before the election — INFO HERE. For an online absentee ballot request form to fill in and print out CLICK HERE

• Register and Vote same day: You can register and vote an absentee ballot the same day, from Tuesday, September 30th, through Monday, October 6th, at your county elections board office — for a directory of elections boards CLICK HERE.

• Vote (and bring ID): Election day is Tuesday, November 4th, voting hours are from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Bring your driver’s license, state photo ID or an ID showing your voter registration address, such as a utility bill — INFO HERE. For an Ohio sample ballot CLICK HERE.

• No vote challenges allowed at polling places: In 2004, long lines at some polling places were further slowed by Republican vote challengers. State law now requires challenges to be issued before election day.x⁹¹x⁸⁷

• Contribute: You can contribute to state candidates and get your money back as a credit on your Ohio income tax — up to $50 filing singly, or $100 filing jointly. The credit applies to these offices: governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor of state, treasurer of state, attorney general, member of the state board of education, chief justice of the supreme court, justice of the supreme court, or member of the general assembly.x⁸⁹

Sources

Ohio Secretary of State’s Office

⁸⁰ ‘Analysis: Ohio 5-Day Window Suit’ by Sarah Cherry, Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University, September 25, 2008

Every newly registered early and absentee voter in Ohio — not just those who apply to vote an in-person absentee ballot— could be affected if the court decides that the Republicans’ interpretation of the law is correct and that a voter must be registered for 30 days prior to applying for an absentee ballot. Local officials probably do not currently check all absentee voters’ records to make sure the voter has been registered for 30 days before issuing an early or absentee ballot. However, with this lawsuit, the Republicans are now seeking to make that the practice. Changing the process by which local officials process ballot applications and distribute absentee ballots this late in the election season could cause substantial confusion and disorder.

⁸¹ ‘Ohio election officials brace for early voting’ By STEPHEN MAJORS, AP, 2008-09-30

For weeks, the Ohio GOP accused the state’s Democratic elections chief of interpreting early voting law to benefit her own party in a crucial swing state.

But the Republican-dominated Ohio Supreme Court decided on Monday that Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner was following the law when she ruled there is a six-day window in which voters can register and vote at the same time.

The decision — also backed by two separate federal judges — means election officials are preparing for the rush of early voting Tuesday, the first day absentee ballots are accepted in advance of the Nov. 4 presidential election.

⁸² ‘Vote Caging and the Attorney General’ by J. Gerald Hebert and Brian Dupre, The Campaign Legal Center, July 23, 2007

The Republican National Committee has been under a federal consent decree not to engage in the practice since getting caught in the 1981 gubernatorial election in New Jersey. Despite the injunction, which remains in effect, vote caging schemes continue to be used as an integral part of an ongoing campaign to suppress minority voting rights.

To bring these schemes to an end will require vigorous prosecution by the United States Department of Justice. But the Department’s priorities have shifted over the years, with the Bush-Ashcroft-Gonzales Justice Department not only ignoring vote caging schemes, but actively working to give them a boost in the courts.

⁸³ ‘Inside the Vote Cage: Griffin, Goodling and McNulty (No, Not Another Lawfirm)’ by J. Gerald Hebert, The Campaign Legal Center, June 20, 2007

“Sometimes vote suppression is as important in this business as vote-getting.” – Carl Golden, Republican Campaign Spokesperson

…

Vote caging is an illegal voter suppression technique used to keep minorities (mostly blacks) from voting. It’s a relatively-unknown cousin in the nefarious family of vote suppression techniques. The practice has been adopted and perverted from a practice utilized by direct-mailers to clean up their mailing lists by sending out mail to specific individuals and seeing what comes back. The real problems start when political operatives start cherry picking areas likely to vote against their candidates. And it’s inextricably connected to concerns about the politicization of the Justice Department being raised on Capitol Hill.

⁸⁴ ‘Ohio secretary of state prevents vote caging’ By BEN ADLER, Politico, 9/13/08

Kevin DeWine, a Republican in the Ohio State House of Representatives who authored the 2006 law, says it is not an undue burden on people whose mail is returned to show an identification card at the voting booth or to vote provisionally. “People think provisional ballots are a bad thing,” he said. “I think they are a safeguard on the integrity of the ballots.”

⁸⁵ ‘GOP Plans and Denials to Challenge Foreclosed Voters Examined’ By J. Gerald Hebert , Campaign Legal Center Blog, September 29, 2008.

As for Ohio, the initial story there suggested that an Ohio GOP official would not rule out the possibility that the party would challenge voters at the polls stating. Quoting the Franklin County GOP chairman, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Priesse “didn’t rule out challenges before Nov. 4.”

The latest story this week on possible efforts to challenge foreclosed voters came from the NY Times, and contained this passage: “Asked whether his party planned to use foreclosure information to compile challenge lists, Robert Bennett, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party, said the party did not discuss its election strategies in public.” While this is not an admission that a plan exists to use foreclosure lists to challenge voters, it sure isn’t a denial either.

⁸⁶ ‘Secretary Brunner Clarifies Challenge Laws to Protect Voters’ – Ohio Secretary of State’s office, 9/5/2008

Providing guidance to local election officials, Secretary Brunner directed that 60-day notices sent by boards of election to voters that are returned as undeliverable cannot be used as the sole reason for cancelling an Ohioan’s voter registration. These notices are required by law to be sent to voters by boards of elections.

Secretary Brunner also called on the General Assembly to amend this voter registration challenge law passed in 2006, urging that the law conflicts with federal law and violates the U.S. Constitution.

…

In Friday’s directive, Secretary Brunner also advised boards of elections that providing due process on challenges to voter registrations will diminish the likelihood of election lawsuits that can disrupt election planning and administration. The directive requires: providing every challenged voter with notice and an opportunity to be heard; holding a public hearing on all challenges; and holding all hearings prior to Election Day.

⁸⁷ ‘Foreclosed-on voters using old addresses could snag election’ By Robert Vitale, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH, July 6, 2008

Although pre-election challenges still are possible, state law now bars party challengers at polling places.

⁸⁸ ‘Ohio elections chief challenges registration law’ The Associated Press, September 07, 2008

A review conducted by her lawyers found that the state law violates federal voting rights laws and the U.S. Constitution, making Ohio counties vulnerable to lawsuits should they use the returned mail as the sole reason for canceling a registration, Brunner said.

Undelivered election notices become public records when they are returned to county boards of elections. A political party could then file a public records request and challenge those voters’ eligibility, especially in precincts where the opposite party has a majority. The process is known as “vote caging.”

The 2006 law enables local election officials to side with the challengers before giving the voters a chance to respond, Brunner said.

⁸⁹ League of Women Voters of Ohio

Any Ohioan who pays state income tax is entitled to claim a 100 % tax credit for contributions to Ohio candidates, up to a limit of $50 per individual or $100 for two persons filing jointly. The tax credit applies only to statewide (including the Ohio Supreme Court but not including U.S. Senate) and to state legislative candidates.

⁹⁰ ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ by ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Rolling Stone, Jun 01, 2006

To stem the tide of new registrations, the Republican National Committee and the Ohio Republican Party attempted to knock tens of thousands of predominantly minority and urban voters off the rolls through illegal mailings known in electioneering jargon as ‘‘caging.’‘ During the Eighties, after the GOP used such mailings to disenfranchise nearly 76,000 black voters in New Jersey and Louisiana, it was forced to sign two separate court orders agreeing to abstain from caging.(63) But during the summer of 2004, the GOP targeted minority voters in Ohio by zip code, sending registered letters to more than 200,000 newly registered voters(64) in sixty-five counties.(65) On October 22nd, a mere eleven days before the election, Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett — who also chairs the board of elections in Cuyahoga County — sought to invalidate the registrations of 35,427 voters who had refused to sign for the letters or whose mail came back as undeliverable.(66) Almost half of the challenged voters were from Democratic strongholds in and around Cleveland.(67)

There were plenty of valid reasons that voters had failed to respond to the mailings: The list included people who couldn’t sign for the letters because they were serving in the U.S. military, college students whose school and home addresses differed,(68) and more than 1,000 homeless people who had no permanent mailing address.(69) But the undeliverable mail, Bennett claimed, proved the new registrations were fraudulent.

By law, each voter was supposed to receive a hearing before being stricken from the rolls.(70) Instead, in the week before the election, kangaroo courts were rapidly set up across the state at Blackwell’s direction that would inevitably disenfranchise thousands of voters at a time(71) — a process that one Democratic election official in Toledo likened to an ‘‘inquisition.’‘(72) Not that anyone was given a chance to actually show up and defend their right to vote: Notices to challenged voters were not only sent out impossibly late in the process, they were mailed to the very addresses that the Republicans contended were faulty.(73) Adding to the atmosphere of intimidation, sheriff’s detectives in Sandusky County were dispatched to the homes of challenged voters to investigate the GOP’s claims of fraud.(74) — LaRaye Brown, ‘‘Elections Board Plans Hearing For Challenges,’‘ The News Messenger, October 26, 2004.

⁹¹ ‘Was the 2004 Election Stolen?’ by ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR., Rolling Stone, Jun 01, 2006

In another move certain to add to the traffic jam at the polls, the GOP deployed 3,600 operatives on Election Day to challenge voters in thirty-one counties — most of them in predominantly black and urban areas.(157) Although it was billed as a means to ‘‘ensure that voters are not disenfranchised by fraud,’‘(158) Republicans knew that the challengers would inevitably create delays for eligible voters. Even Mark Weaver, the GOP’s attorney in Ohio, predicted in late October that the move would ‘‘create chaos, longer lines and frustration.’‘(159)

…

In fact, Blackwell gave Republican challengers unprecedented access to polling stations, where they intimidated voters, worsening delays in Democratic precincts. By the end of the day, thanks to a whirlwind of legal wrangling, the GOP had even gotten permission to use the discredited list of 35,000 names from its illegal caging effort to challenge would-be voters.(162) According to the survey by the DNC, nearly 5,000 voters across the state were turned away at the polls because of registration challenges — even though federal law required that they be provided with provisional ballots.(163)

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

27-mile-long boat trail (Google Map)

The Vermilion River cuts into the shale at Mill Hollow. (Lorain County Metro Parks)

Vermilion River at Mill Hollow (Back Roads and Beaches) Photo by Mark Teleha

Marina on the Vermilion River in the city of Vermilion (myphotoalbum.com)

Lorain Harbor lighthouse (ckpiros @ webshots.com)

Black River in Lorain, Ohio (Back Roads and Beaches Blog)

The boat trail passes under a hiking trail in the Black River Resservation. (Lorain County Metro Parks)

A Great Blue Heron takes off from the Black River (Back Roads and Beaches Blog)

See more Lorain County photos at Lorain County Photographer’s Blog.

Sources

¹ ‘Metro Parks to dedicate boat trail’ by Alison Dietz, The (Elyria) Chronicle-Telegram, 2008-07-18

² ‘Ohio Navigability Report’ – American Whitewater

Summary: Ohio is kind to recreational boaters. Ohio allows the public to use streams capable of floating recreational boats (e.g., kayaking and canoeing). Factors for determining whether the public has a right to use a stream (besides physical characteristics of the stream) include the stream’s history of public use for recreational boating and the existence of public access. There is some evidence that Ohio boaters may have the right to portage, although no definitive law on the subject exists.

State Test of Navigability: Navigation for pleasure and recreation is regarded as just as important as navigation for a commercial purpose by the Ohio courts.1) A watercourse in Ohio is navigable if it is capable of being used for recreational boating.2) If it is a naturally navigable watercourse, it is public. …

By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

On Saturday the 8th the ore boat Charles S. Price shoved off at Ashtabula, Ohio, into Lake Erie with a load of coal and without its first assistant engineer. Milton Smith had chosen to skip the last voyage of the 1913 season — and any early November gale that might arise — and had taken the train home to his wife and children in Port Huron, Michigan. After midnight on Sunday morning, as the Price steamed up the St. Clair River and past Smith’s house into Lake Huron, a gale was blowing in from the northwest. That afternoon sailors on the downbound (south-going) H.A. Hawgood saw the Price fighting its way upbound as it passed. The Hawgood had been heading into the storm north of Saginaw Bay, when it turned around to seek safety at the St. Clair River and let the gale blow itself out. But, instead of blowing out, the gale became the White Hurricane. By dark the snow “got so thick we couldn’t see the smokestack”, reported the Hawgood‘s captain. “The seas went right over the pilothouse.” Later, the Hawgood ran up on a beach at the southern end of the lake, and its crew survived. Likely the Price also turned and headed back toward the foot of Lake Huron, where it would have had to turn again to avoid running aground. On that final turn, the Price may have gotten caught sideways in a deep trough between the waves, and rolled. Its upturned hull floated for several days, and the papers speculated on the identity of “the mystery ship”, until a diver went down to read its name. On Tuesday the 11th, after the storm had quieted, seven bodies of sailors from the Price washed ashore in Ontario near Port Franks. On Thursday, a week and a day after leaving the Price, Milton Smith boarded the train in Sarnia, and headed for the makeshift morgue to identify the bodies of his shipmates.

Another ore boat upbound on Lake Huron that Sunday, when the White Hurricane raged, was the George C. Crawford. The boat fought the waves to north of Point Aux Barques with winds “blowing great guns”, according to Captain Walter C Iler. Waves rushed over the deck and boilerhouse through a broken skylight into the engine room, smashed the ship’s galley and drenched the crew’s sleeping rooms. So, like the captains of the Hawgood and the Price, Captain Iler decided to turn his boat around to seek calmer waters. While heading back down, Iler could make out the passing upbound ore boat Argus through the snow and waves. He later recalled what he saw just after the boat passed by. “The Argus seemed to crumple like an eggshell,” he said. “Then, she was gone.” Bearing that horrible image, the crew of the Crawford had to tend their boat as it ran fast with the wind and the mountainous waves towards the foot of Lake Huron. “It snowed for a solid twenty-six hours,” Iler later recalled. “We hadn’t seen a thing, but were guided by the sounding machine. It gave us excellent service.” Not being able to see to find the St. Clair River, Iler decided to turn around before running out of lake and ripping into the shoals. But the boat got stuck in a trough and could not climb out, so the captain ordered the anchors thrown. The anchors grabbed and the ship came around, but soon the anchor chains snapped, and once again the storm pushed the Crawford towards the shore. Around 2 A.M. Monday a lull in the wind allowed the boat to turn, and it once again battled upbound on its original course towards the Soo Locks. On Tuesday the battered boat reached the St. Marys River that leads to the Soo. In the calm, the crew wielded steam hoses to melt the thick ice off the deck, and found something stunning. Hundreds of rivets were missing, and cracks ran across several of the inch-thick steel deck plates. The crew might have pictured then how their own boat could have crumpled like the Argus. Records show that the Crawford did not finish its last voyage of 1913, but turned back to Toledo for repair. And in the spring of 1914 it set out again.

The Detroit News, November 13, 1913

the upturned bow of the 504 ft (154 m) Charles S. Price

Source: ‘White Hurricane: A Great Lakes November Gale and America’s Deadliest Maritime Disaster’ by David G. Brown, 2002, International Marine / McGraw-Hill

After the press of westward settlement, and the U.S. Army, drove out the Indians, the government fashioned a road through the Great Black Swamp to the land of milk and honey beyond. “A bank of muck and mud twenty feet wide and about three feet high was build mostly by Ox Power,” wrote a dweller, C. H. Opperman, of the Maumee and Western Reserve Road (now US 20)x⁵⁷. “Nearly all … who took the swamp route regretted their unwise decision, for many of them had ox teams to draw their high-wheeled covered wagons. Often the Oxen would sink to their bellys and the wheels to the hubbs and in many cases made only a mile or two of progress in a day.” So 31 inns rose to stand along the 31 miles of road and aid the slow moving pioneers⁵⁸. Some men would claim a mud hole and charge money to pull wagons out of it. One traveling pioneer spent his life savings of $100 on getting pulled out of mud holes. So he stopped and staked out his own mud hole, and made his money back before he carried on.

After settlers claimed the land around the Great Black Swamp, later settlers turned their sights inside it. “No night was too dark or precinct too sacred for [the mosquitoes] to get in their work,” wrote J. R. Tracy of living on the 80 acres his father bought on a sand ridge in the heart of the Great Black Swamp (where Bowling Green now stands)x⁵⁹. “Many a meal was eaten with a smudge under the table and many a would be sleeper owed what rest he secured to the smoke that overspread his bed and compelled his bloodthirsty assailants to retire.” The mosquitoes also brought malaria to swamp dwellers. Tracy described his bout with it: “If there is anything in this world that will stay by a fellow when it has found him it is the ague. My! How it will snuggle up to him, and hug him, and squeeze him, and shake him, and freeze him, and then bake him and fry him, until it would seem every drop of moisture is out of him …” After receding, the fever would sometimes return with double strength in a day or two: “And so the round went on, week by week, month by month, sometimes year by year (Brother Isaac was held two years, didn’t go to school or do a day’s work in that time).” Another swamp settler, Robert Fenton, also lived the hardship of malaria, as well as slow travel, dangerous animals, and the lack of a local mill to grind the grain⁶⁰. But he looked back on it like this: “We were happy, since we all were on about a common level and the exigencies of the situation made us alert, active and energetic. We had to be up and doing and we rather seemed to enjoy it.”

In 1840 the Great Black Swamp stood at its last years of full glory. From then on more settlers came in and cut down trees, and some dug ditches to drain water off their land – often on to their neighbor’s⁶¹. After a big outbreak of the waterborne disease cholera, the Ohio government in 1859 gave counties the power to seize land for more effective ditching. When farmers found that surface ditching left their land still too soggy, some tried underground drains of loose stone, or of pairs of planks nailed into a “V” and laid open end down. These underground drains did not work nearly as well as clay tile, but it was too costly to bring clay tile in. Then in the 1860’s, after someone discovered the bed of clay under the topsoil, many drainage tile factories arose. The factories’ kilns were fed by the swamp’s clay and fired by the swamp’s trees. And by 1900 the kilns’ product had drained and dried the Great Black Swamp. In its place lay fine farmland, with crops growing on a 10,000 year-old compost heap.

The Great Black Swamp (Maumee Valley Historical Society)

The Everglades (USGS)
The Everglades historic boundary is marked here by the yellow line. It includes the area of sheet water flow from Lake Okeechobee to the sea, and excludes some adjacent wetlands.

Black Swamp Conservation and Restoration Area
A 110 acre tract in Wood County, Ohio

Sources

⁵⁰ ‘Lost Ohio’ by Randy McNutt, 2006, Kent State University Press, P.114

⁵¹ ‘Wetlands – Did you know?’ – Ohio EPA

The Great Black Swamp was Ohio’s largest wetland. The swamp was once 120 miles long and about 40 miles wide. In 1859, the “ditch law” was passed to allow the installation of pipes to drain the swamp for agriculture and development. Today, only five percent remains in scattered areas throughout northwestern Ohio.

⁵² ‘Background of the Entire Everglades/Florida Bay Ecosystem’ – South Florida Water Management District

The present Everglades has been subdivided by the construction of canals, levees, roads and other facilities and has resulted in the loss of connections between the central Everglades and adjacent transitional wetlands. …

… the historical Everglades that once extended over an area approximately 40 miles wide by 100 miles long, from the south shore of Lake Okeechobee to the mangrove estuaries of Florida Bay.

⁵³ ‘The Great Black Swamp’ by Jim Mollenkopf

For thousands of years much of northwest Ohio lay covered by a vast, luxuriant swamp. According to early observers parts of it were watery meadows, veritable seas of living, moving green that would undulate beautifully in a summer breeze. Other parts of it were majestic and untouched forests, cathedralesque stands of oak, sycamore and hickory trees that soared skyward and blocked out the sun. Still other parts of it were thick, impenetrable brush and wild growth. Its thousands of square miles spread over all or parts of 12 counties stretching east to west from Sandusky, Ohio to near Fort Wayne, Indiana and north to south from the Maumee River valley to near Findlay, Ohio.

⁵⁴ ‘THE HISTORY OF LAKE ERIE’ by Michael C. Hansen

Fertile clays deposited on the lake bottom during high-water stages and the wetland areas that remained when lake levels dropped form one of the richest agricultural regions of the state. The beaches which formed along the shorelines of these higher lake stages are preserved as ridges elevated above the nearly flat former lake beds. …

…

The sandy beach deposits rising above the nearly flat lake plains, especially in the region called the Black Swamp, in northwestern Ohio, captured the attention of Native Americans and European explorers and settlers because the ridges provided dry passage through the swamps formed on the former lake beds.

⁵⁵ ‘Frontier Fauna – Ohio’s Wild Heritage’ – OHIO STATE PARKS MAGAZINE, FALL/WINTER 2005/2006

As Ohio’s frontier days came to a close, the impenetrable woods of the Great Black Swamp of northwest Ohio became a last refuge for elk, wolves and lynx. …

⁵⁶ ‘The Great Black Swamp II’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 2000 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, P.37

… For the Indian, “the Maumee River was a delightful homne and a secure retreat,” one unknown early writer recorded. “Its banks were studded with their villages, its rich bottomlands covered with their corn, while their light canoes glided over a beautiful current which was at once a convenient highway and an exhaustless reservoir of food. Forest, stream and prarie produced, spontaneously, and in superabundance, game fish, fruits, nuts, – all things necessary to supply their simple wants.”

⁵⁷ Ibid, P.114

⁵⁸ ‘The Great Black Swamp’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 1999 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, P.41

⁵⁹ ‘The Great Black Swamp II’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 2000 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, pp.49-52

⁶⁰ ‘The Great Black Swamp’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 1999 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, pp.24-25

⁶¹ ‘The Great Black Swamp II’ by Jim Mollenkopf, © 2000 Lake of the Cat Publishing, Toledo, Ohio, pp.59-62