State

March 2014 marks the third anniversary of the first reported earthquakes in the Mahoning Valley. The largest one was a magnitude 3.9. These tremors have been proven scientifically to be injection-induced earthquakes due to pumping fracking waste deep underground. March 2014 also saw twelve earthquakes at the Carbon-Limestone landfill in Poland Township, south of Lowellville, Ohio. The depths of these earthquakes were reported between 8,200 feet and 17,000 feet but the uncertainties in these values are very high. According to The Business Journal and The New York Times, Hilcorp Energy Company was fracking one of its wells at the site when the earthquakes occurred. The exact specifics regarding timing, fluid volumes and pressures have not been made public. A completion report for one of the wells puts the horizontal leg at 8,100 feet below the surface. I estimate the Precambrian basement to be an additional 1,500 feet below the well. After four earthquakes occurred between 2:26 and 11:44 am on March 10th, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) ordered Hilcorp to suspend all activity at the site.

March 29 was just another working day for two working journalists from the Toledo Blade. They began by attending a press conference at a Ford factory in Lima, Ohio. On the way back to the office, the pair, Jetta Fraiser and Tyrel Linkhorn, were assigned to update their publication's stock photo library by taking exterior shots of industrial facilities in the area. Their trip to a Heinz ketchup plant was followed by a stop at the General Dynamics tank plant. That is where the camouflage painted face of post constitutional America raised its ugly head and the day turned sour. The conduct of the soldiers on American soil has caused Fraiser and Linkhorn's employer, the Toledo Blade to file a federal lawsuit against the army, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and several individual soldiers. The pair were engaged in a routine, unglamorous journalistic task. Pull up to a building, take some photos of the building, go back to the office, and catalog the photos in case they might one day be relevant to some future story. Fraiser, who was handling the camera, took photos of a driveway entrance to a sprawling plant with an unmanned guard post, a chain link fence and a grass median.

The FreshWater Accountability Project (FWAP) prevailed in court last week in a lawsuit initiated under Ohio’s Open Records Act to obtain the addresses of those who lease residential and commercial property from the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District (MWCD). FWAP sought the records as public information in order to directly communicate with people whose property rights and values can be affected by the Muskingum District's huge lease deals for oil and gas fracking on public lands around the District's reservoirs. The MWCD denied the public records and lost the issue in court. The Fifth District Court of Appeals courts fined the MWCD and awarded attorney fees to FWAP as plaintiff. “To force us to file a lawsuit to obtain records is just another example of how the MWCD believes it does not have to adhere to the principles of democracy and accountability as a public agency receiving tax dollars,” stated Lea Harper, co-founder and Managing Director of FWAP. “The MWCD receives a large amount of its revenue from people like me as a property tax payer within the district.

In a visit to the United States in 1842, Charles Dickens was appalled by our prisons, where a man never left his cell (except to the exercise courtyard) for the duration of his sentence, never got word of his family or news of the outside world. An alternative type of prison was the Silent, which permitted to mix with one another while working during the day…but forbade them to communicate. Fortunately, today’s prisons offer interaction, exercise, education, libraries, family visiting, correspondence and nowadays even a controlled email. But, Ohio’s prisons fail to offer release to prisoners who have 20, 30, 40 years in, because of a cruel parole board. Prisoners continually come to their hearings with a raft of programs they have taken, stellar behavior records (“18 years ticket­free”), volunteer hours, family support, a job waiting.

Space weapons lurking beneath the Ohio countryside sounds like a sci-fi nightmare only the Pentagon can conjure up, but an on-going environmental impact study may find the Buckeye state a great place for shooting down Russian or Chinese satellites as they orbit the planet. World War III would have erupted if the US were shooting down Russian or Chinese satellites, but the recent events in the Ukraine certainly make the future as murky as ever. But when it comes to space warfare, this “mad” future is now, and licking their chops is the Pentagon and their super-rich defense contractors who are eyeing Camp Ravenna in northeast Ohio for a “Ground-based Mid-Course Missile Defense” site, better known in missile defense parlance as a “GMD” site. Like nuclear missiles, GMD “interceptors” are stored and launched from underground silos. If the Pentagon were to give a green light for Camp Ravenna, the money spent on building and maintaining a GMD site would reach well into the billions, and most of it will go to defense contractors such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin.

Yes, Columbus, there is a Columbus Police Department Chronic Complainers List. After publishing a January 30, 2014 cover story “Are you on the Columbus Police’s secret blacklist?”, the Columbus Free Press has obtained a copy of a so-called “Caller Watch List” through a public records request. This list, along with other documents, raises new concerns surrounding the police department’s controversial inaction on phone calls from certain Columbus residents.

Two people listed, James A. Whitaker, Jr. and Bernadine Kennedy Kent, wrote an email to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien claiming they were unfairly included on the Caller Watch List. Their previous work as whistleblowers has provided evidence that led to the felony conviction of a vendor in the Columbus City School’s tutoring scandal.

The Free Press obtained the email trail including Whitaker and Kent’s email to O’Brien, and then another email that appears to be from O’Brien to Jeff S. Furbee, Chief Police Legal Advisor for City Attorney Richard Pfeiffer. O’Brien wrote: “Jeff – This makes no sense to me – is there a secret hit list these persons are on???”

The Lausche Center was the scene of two hard fought victories for Columbus' own hometown heroines on March 8 against 39th ranked Nashville's Music City Roller Girls. Both Ohio's charter team, the OHRG All Stars, and their B-Team, Gang Green, showed their tenacity and endurance as they fought their way to second half wins in front of a near capacity crowd of more than 750 cheering fans. The first bout of the night saw the two all-star teams face off in what was slated to be a classic struggle of offense versus defense but turned into something very different. Nashville brought a solid offense built around jammers Chelsea Daggers and Ann T. Histamine as well as a new defensive tactic of stacking up on the inside line and blocking OHRG's jammers in tandem. The first half began neck and neck through the eighteenth jam with the lead changing hands four times and the score nearly tied at 46 to 47 with Nashville in the lead. Nashville's Phantom Power scored 14 points during a power jam in the nineteenth with Ohio's Outta My Wayman in the penalty box and momentum shifting to Music City.