We have to stop allowing greedy capitalists to farm us
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor:
The recent hearing regarding the challenge to the Medina County Board of Elections’ rejection of the petitions to give Medina County residents a right to have a say on the NEXUS gas pipeline was a political show trial, as much a charade as any Stalinist trial in the days of the Soviet Union.
The Ohio legislature, in Ohio House Bill 463, has passed a preemptive block to the constitutional rights of the people to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Ohio Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, notes the freedom of citizens to petition the government for redress of grievances, shall not be “abridged.”
This is precisely what the unholy alliance between wealthy commercial interests and the local and state gatekeepers of access to power have done. The hearing was to provide the form of justice without material effectiveness.
When this profane alliance wants to promote commercial interests, such as the improperly permitted Osborne concrete recycling plant in Medina, conveniently, due process is not followed. When commercial interests, who form an atavistic megalith with political power brokers, might be challenged at the ballot box by the voice of the people, procedural roadblocks are invented that violate the constitutional rights of the people and desecrate the spirit of “one man (sic), one vote.”
This is in keeping with the dark vision and braggadocio of Karl Rove who derided those who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do” (“Forbes,” July 20, 2017).
Five hundred people have died, and 4,000 have been injured in pipeline accidents since 1986. Three and one half percent (3.5 percent) of the accidents were due to operator error (see “Propublica,” Dec. 6, 2016).
We have to stop allowing venal, greedy capitalists to farm us, at the expense of our health and safety, by pushing cheap opioids on us (cf. drug companies’ fines for flooding states with opioids), addicting us to sugar/corn syrup (cf. diabetes epidemic) and forcing dangerous pipelines on us that create large potential risks and add carcinogenic toxins to our air, water and land. We are human beings not herd animals.
Keith A. Rasey
Medina
The recent hearing regarding the challenge to the Medina County Board of Elections’ rejection of the petitions to give Medina County residents a right to have a say on the NEXUS gas pipeline was a political show trial, as much a charade as any Stalinist trial in the days of the Soviet Union.
The Ohio legislature, in Ohio House Bill 463, has passed a preemptive block to the constitutional rights of the people to petition the government for redress of grievances. The Ohio Constitution, and the U.S. Constitution, in the Bill of Rights, notes the freedom of citizens to petition the government for redress of grievances, shall not be “abridged.”
This is precisely what the unholy alliance between wealthy commercial interests and the local and state gatekeepers of access to power have done. The hearing was to provide the form of justice without material effectiveness.
When this profane alliance wants to promote commercial interests, such as the improperly permitted Osborne concrete recycling plant in Medina, conveniently, due process is not followed. When commercial interests, who form an atavistic megalith with political power brokers, might be challenged at the ballot box by the voice of the people, procedural roadblocks are invented that violate the constitutional rights of the people and desecrate the spirit of “one man (sic), one vote.”
This is in keeping with the dark vision and braggadocio of Karl Rove who derided those who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do” (“Forbes,” July 20, 2017).
Five hundred people have died, and 4,000 have been injured in pipeline accidents since 1986. Three and one half percent (3.5 percent) of the accidents were due to operator error (see “Propublica,” Dec. 6, 2016).
We have to stop allowing venal, greedy capitalists to farm us, at the expense of our health and safety, by pushing cheap opioids on us (cf. drug companies’ fines for flooding states with opioids), addicting us to sugar/corn syrup (cf. diabetes epidemic) and forcing dangerous pipelines on us that create large potential risks and add carcinogenic toxins to our air, water and land. We are human beings not herd animals.
Keith A. Rasey
Medina
