Back in mid-September, the Republicans in the Ohio legislature tasked with creating the new congressional districts pulled a wild and wacky map out of thin air and pushed it to a vote in 48 hours. That left no one with time to study it and ask questions like, “Why are all the cities split into little pieces?” or “Why does this district meander over half the state and look like Pacman with a hangover?” Observers were scratching their heads wondering what happened to the input from a series of statewide public hearings or the maps submitted by citizens to DrawTheLineOhio, which the legislators promised to review.
Well, we now know. Yesterday, a coalition of groups called the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting, led by the League of Women Voters of Ohio and Ohio Citizen Action, released a report titled “The Elephant in the Room,” based on public-records requests. It reveals that the bizarre map passed by the legislature was hatched in deliberate secrecy behind locked — and taxpayer-funded — doors referred to as “the bunker,” that the man behind the curtain was Congressman John Boehner (Oh-08), and that citizen input was never part of their considerations.
Well, not unless those citizens had money and were willing to give it up to politicians. Among the stinkier revelations: In an email dated September 12 — just before the map was released — Tom Whatman, executive director of Boehner’s campaign arm, Team Boehner, writes to the mapmakers, “guys really really sorry to ask but can we do a small carve out down 77 and put Timken HQ in the 16th.” The request is immediately honored and he responds, “Thanks guys. Very important to someone important to all of us.”
That “someone” is William R. “Tim” Timken Jr, of Canton’s Timken Co., a major major Republican donor, and he’s requesting to have his company moved into the friendly territory of Congressman Jim Renacci.
The revelations — likely only the tip of the iceberg given that some of the coalition’s public record requests have not yet been honored — are likely to fuel the campaign to repeal HB 319, the legislation that created the map. Petition circulations have been gathering signatures since early November, and have until December 23 to turn in 231,150 signatures. — Anastasia Pantsios
This article appears in Dec 7-13, 2011.
It is a real shame that the republican controlled giant corps of our area are hood winking us to hell with the help of the Columbus Dispatch and now the PD as well. Money talks and bull-shit walks is something that is being driven down the throat of us Ohians in chunks of poop more distastefull than the poop flung by the Occupy protestors. I think it might have happened once somewhere, and then the OWS haters said that, rape, and drug deals were what the message was from this unappreciative group of free-loaders. All the while these media pawns pretending to be reporters try to ram the entire right wing up our ass. So Timken and the Dispatch and countless other giant money folks openly cahoots the people of the state of Ohio. Shameless pricks should have poop flung at their sorry asses…on Broad and High at 4pm. You know Columbus is punishing us in Cleveland for Jimmy and Frank acting like Bonnie and Clyde.
Once the punishment valve is opened by the right wing, true american republican party, anyone who has liberal thoughts better shut their pie-hole or find themselves in a world of shit. You think you are jobless now? Keep running your liberal, tree-hugging, poop flinging mouth and you will never work anywhere in the free world again. You think these control freaks can’t make your life miserable with a few phone calls? Maybe one day this will be a paranoid and absurd rambling of an old guy from the sixties. But today, make no mistake, these guys play hard ball. They put rocks in their snowballs and aim for your face and crotch. But kissing their ass only makes things worse—I found out the hard way–but then that’s what I get for kissing thier conservative and rich asses for thirty years or so. Just a bunch of contract making pricks and win-loose negotiators who want the playing field so uneven that even your liberal head will roll down and into their lap…and you know what that means.
Secret meetings – Even though Ohio’s Sunshine Law generally requires
“public officials to take official action and to conduct all deliberations upon
official business only in open meetings unless the subject matter is
specifically excepted by law,” every effort was made to conduct all of the
deliberations in private.
—0—
Apparently, they spent public money secretly, too. I suppose the Attorney General should investigate this, but the AG is Mike Dewine, Republican
Timken is one of the giants in Ohio. Here is the question I have: Should giant corporations be allowed to influence politics or religion or freedom of speech? Big business has many obligations to the society and the world at large. But they will only help those who agree with their political and religious ideas. And what might these positions be decided by? Why those who are in control of the money of the corporation and the use of that money to satisty various objectives. There is a business plan so that the entity can profit more and grow more and take advantage of the opportunities which present themselves, and then there is the perceived debts to organizations, individuals and the community and the world at large. The owners and controllers of giant corporations tell the workers in one way or another what they expect the people on their payroll to believe if they would like to remain employed.
Big business used to be far more free in making demands upon the workers which intruded on their personal ideas and thoughts. I was in the US Navy and I also worked for thirty years as a salesman of high-tech industrial marking and packaging equipment. The Navy was more reasonable where free thinking was invloved than the corporate America which I worked for. I was in the Navy in the late sixties and early seventies so everyone knows the turbulance which was part of our country and part of our world. The Navy made me realize just how similar we all were…shave their heads and give them a shower and they all look like boot-campers of the same bird wearing the same feathers. Yet thinking is still an individual thing even while standing watch or being screamed at. Freedom can still be had just as easy in the military as working for a giant corporation..as a matter of fact, in some ways you are far more free in the military than you are getting fat paychecks from a large company. There is a far more liklihood of a large corporation being run by a religious or political idealology than the military. The captain of a ship can get in real trouble by punishing people for religious or political beliefs than a CEO and his large group of control-freaked out managers.
The biggst thing that giant business is doing is infringing on our freedoms of speech, which are our freedoms of thought. They think it is their right to make people who are in their sphere of influence adhere to their demands…and not just where the job is concerned..but into many aspects of their life. They would like to say it is for our protection that hey demand contracts which sign your rights as an American away and adapt their employee handbook as your terms of employment. Control and money and power are all there is to our current leadership in big business today. Often they are the spoiled brats of the wealthy who get a law degree or an MBA and move into a pushy, cushy job of employee thought control and profit making. These are what many of our leaders are today in business and industry. It was not always this way and it must change or we are done as a leader of the world. So long as we turn over our businesses to this culture of control and greed they will never stop screwing up the America which we fought for..and our fathers and mothers fought for.
In my business text, I explain how big business took over our country. It has always been the case, but over the last thirty years it was done with systematic power plays carried out with ruthless patience and Machiavellian philosophy and politics.
Here is how it was done:
1) Massive accumulation of assets and the leverage which they buy.
2) Buy all performing small and medium businesses possible.
3) Make plans and demands for constant growth of money and power.
4) Replace the culture and thinking of the small and medium businesses which you now own with a uniform corporate rule book and demand list.
5) Get the bad apples off the bus and replace them with your own loyal and trusted men.
6) Keep control within groups made up of money and power, and work with companies of money and power and maybe even political similarities.
7) Take over the world with the help of other members of the billion dollar club.
8) Control politics and wars and make sure there is profit in all things which happen in history.
9) Use ecconomic down-turns to fire bad apples and purge the workforce.
10) Replace the humans with machines if you can.
11) Make all employees feel in debt and lucky to have a job with such a great company.
12) Never say you were wrong.
13) Only apologize if your life depends upon it.
Got to go to work now. Don’t tell my boss about the way I think. Thanks.