Vote or Die

(Editor’s note:  Tomorrow is an (admittedly not super sexy) election day.  There are no congressional seats up for grabs and (obviously), no president to vote for.  We’re guessing that most of the new voters that signed up to usher President Obama into office are going to stay at home tomorrow, taking bong rips, playing xbox and eating cheetos.  Strangely, our target audience probably coincides (at least partially) with those same “slackers.”  (The rest of the audience is comprised solely of bearded, expensive jean wearing “hipsters” who find it declasse to vote for anything at anytime.  After all, there’s no way for them to impose their vastly superior will on the sweaty masses.)  We felt a certain civic duty to both remind the readership to vote and to offer our editorial opinions on a few of the juicier ballot issues in Ohio.  For non-Ohio readers, we’re sure that you’ve got some ridiculous shit to vote on on Tuesday, so get your dressy sweatpants on and head out to your polling place.  Voting is a singular action that both empowers citizens and reminds them the (wo)man behind the curtain of democracy is all of us.  And you get a sticker most of the time.)

Ohio Issue 2

TO CREATE THE OHIO LIVESTOCK CARE STANDARDS BOARD TO ESTABLISH AND IMPLEMENT STANDARDS OF CARE FOR LIVESTOCK AND POULTRY

Let me start off by saying when Brian and I originally discussed posting a voting guide we figured we’d do a fairly quick write-up pointing out the obvious reasons why you should vote a certain way. Well several days later I’m sitting here with more info than I can handle. This Issue is a bigger deal than most people could possibly imagine. Researching this Issue depressed the living shit out of me. I haven’t been aware of a more deceitful ad campaign than the one coming from the Vote Yes camp. When you read the ballot language, Issue 2 sounds like a step in the right direction for everybody. Right? They don’t mention that this board will have the power of supreme law. The farmers are voting yes to save their farms from HSUS (Humane Society of the United States, which successfully passed Prop 2 in California, calling for enough room for livestock  to turn around, lay down and spread their wings among other similar issues involving space, California farmers have til 2015 to comply, Ohio farmers were told if this happens in here they will be forced out of business by HSUS’ vegan agenda, they were also told that by voting yes they will be beating HSUS to the punch, securing the future safety of their farms). Oddly, HSUS isn’t part of Issue 2 in any way, the ballot (if attempted) won’t be brought before voters until 2010 at the earliest. This is a scare tactic, but it’s more like fear antics (where the accomplice ends up being the target of the prank). Here’s another link to clarify what I just stated, from the horses mouth.

Ok, moving on. Here’s some info from the OFB (OHIO FARMERS BUREAU) website:

“ Proposals by the Livestock Care Standards Board will be subject to review through the public rule-making process. Members of the Livestock Care Standards Board will go through a public vetting process.”

Now, watch this, more from the horses mouth, it’s unbelievable. I like how it ends too, dude with the mustache is a dick. Another point the proponents of Issue 2 state that they want to keep Agriculture as the number one industry in Ohio. They want to protect that. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well, it’s true, they’re not lying. Agriculture’s outlook is pretty massive if this Issue passes, because once the board members are chosen through lobbying from Big Ag, laws will be implemented to force out smaller farms to make way for factory farms, which these laws will be written to protect. Here’s an analogy for you (I love analogies btw). Say you (Ohio farmers) go to your doctor (Ohio Farm Bureau) and inform him/her that you are sick. The doctor, who you trust, prescribes you a drug (the doctor is getting a kickback for prescribing this drug) that he/she claims will make you better, but you have to hurry up and take it before it gets pulled from the market (or whatever reason to scare you into taking it ASAP). So you take it and little did you know that this drug causes cancer (Big Agribusiness takes over state with factory farms), you can find this cancer causing info everywhere, but you chose not to look because you trust your doctor. Now you have cancer, it spread throughout your body and you die. This is basically what is happening to the farmers of Ohio. The Ohio Farm Bureau is influencing farmers across Ohio to Vote Yes because it will save their farms. What they are not telling them is that this Issue was heavily funded by Big Agribusinesses. The same Agribusinesses that are lobbying to outlaw organic farming. What did I just say? Could I be serious? Sadly, I am serious. And it’s not just organic farming, it’s everything including shooting a quail to eat or gardening in your backyard. I’ll just post a video here, with sources available on the page and the HR 875 language here, the breakdown here.

I’m just going to briefly touch on some other points so you can get back to not being depressed.

So what side do you think OEFFA (Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association) is on? They couldn’t possibly be opposed to this Issue could they? They sure are.

Curious what Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor has to say about Issue 2? “Inappropriate use of the Ohio Constitution”

And maybe the biggest red flag of them all. Check out where the money being donated to fuel Issue 2 is coming from here.

The entire Issue 2 Town Hall meeting in Columbus, Ohio here and all of the clips of the individual questions are on Youtube.

There’s also this great movie online called The Future of Food. It’s very alarming.

Arcade Fire – Wake Up (acoustic)

Ohio Issue 3

PROPOSED CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION TO ALLOW FOR ONE CASINO EACH IN CINCINNATI, CLEVELAND, COLUMBUS, AND TOLEDO AND DISTRIBUTE TO ALL OHIO COUNTIES A TAX ON THE CASINOS

Here’s how this one breaks down: for a one time fee of fifty million dollars and a perpetual 33% tax of casino revenues, Dan Gilbert and a variety of other rich white cats get to build casinos in the four largest cities in Ohio.   Before changing their tune and endorsing this thing, The Plain Dealer noted that the one time fee is a bit of a low ball and suffers from the fact that there’s no bidding involved.  The last couple of similarly built casinos in Pennsylvania apparently went for a higher one-time fee.  (I dug for the article for a second, but couldn’t find it, so my recollection of the facts there might be a little dicey.  Thank god I’m not an actual “journalist,” beholden to silly things like “facts” or whatever.)  The fifty million would be used for “state job training” purposes, which seems kind of vague to me, and the tax would be split up among the counties and the schools.  (The school bit would work like the lottery: as a replacement, not extra dough.  People always ignore this, assuming that the lottery gives schools extra money.  It doesn’t.  And it only exists as a tax for people who are bad at math.)

All this operates as background noise for me.  The core of this thing is that it is a constitutional amendment.  Ohio’s constitution is a pretty sweet document (we had slavery outlawed when it was adopted in 1851, for instance) that Ohio voters have insisted on wiping their asses with in recent elections.  In 2004,  we codified that gay marriage isn’t cool in Ohio, mainly because everyone south of Cuyahoga county is a toothless yokel. (That was a joke, Cincinnati.  Chill out.). Two years later we handcuffed ourselves to a constitutionally mandated annual increase in minimum wage.   The gay marriage thing is reprehensible and short-sighted, the minimum wage thing is just short-sighted.  Now we want to constitutionally mandate casino gambling?  What the hell?  Let’s save dicking around with the constitution for things like giving robots equal rights or codifying a response to an alien invasion.  A constitutional amendment that creates a questionably useful, highly addictive, crime magnet that makes already wealthy people richer and already poor people poorer seems misguided.  Will it create jobs?  Probably.  So would a big fucking art museum.  Where’s the amendment for that?

To celebrate the fact that we’re going to be stupid enough to pass this thing, we’ve got a killer live rendition of “Lost All My Money” by Citizen Dick favorites Floating Action.  Vote “no” on Issue 3 or at least have the decency to lose a shitload at the slots.

Floating Action – Lost All My Money, Live