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-Caveat Lector-
read it and weep...
a
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Subject: MAP: Fwd: Major report from Dan Forbes. Please flog.
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 15:29:38 -0700
From: Mark Greer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: Media Awareness Project http://www.mapinc.org/
To: ARO <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Find this at http://www.ips-dc.org/projects/drugpolicy/ohio.htm.
The Governor's Sub-rosa Plot to Subvert an Election in Ohio
Ohio Governor Bob Taft and the highest reaches of his administration
have embarked on a concerted, months-long effort to subvert the state's
electoral process. With overall control of budgets, jobs and sentencing
policy at stake, the Taft administration has organized a sophisticated,
sub-rosa campaign to defeat a drug treatment rather than incarceration
amendment likely to appear on the ballot in November. Starting last
spring, Gov. Taft himself, First Lady Hope Taft, his chief of staff,
Brian Hicks, two of his cabinet members and numerous senior and support
staff have - while on the clock, ostensibly serving the public -
conceived and directed a partisan political campaign.
A four-month long Institute for Policy Studies investigation by
freelance journalist Daniel Forbes details political malfeasance, the
misuse of public funds and the inappropriate use of government resources
in Ohio. The effort has been aided by federal officials, including
President Bush's publicly announced nominee to be deputy director of the
White House drug czar's office (since confirmed), and a senior U.S.
Senate staffer. The drug czars of Florida and Michigan and a senior Drug
Enforcement Administration agent also participated in the scheme.
Ohio officials consulted with and enlisted the aid of the wife of the
former finance chair of the Republican National Committee, who herself
has played a key political role for Jeb Bush, as well as several
taxpayer-supported, staunch anti-drug organizations, including the
supposedly apolitical Partnership for a Drug-Free America.
The Partnership was slated to produce TV ads to sway public opinion in
favor of the Ohio drug-policy status quo. Its four top executives
advised the Taft administration during a day-long strategy session
hosted by that Senate staffer and held in the U.S. Capitol building
itself. A representative of New York-based treatment provider Phoenix
House and one from the federally supported Community Anti-Drug
Coalitions of America also attended.
A mid-October strategy session held at the governor's residence in
Columbus was attended by 19 senior officials and private executives from
Ohio, Michigan and Florida. (A similar referendum will likely be on the
ballot in Michigan; in Florida, proponents have postponed their effort.)
Obtained through Ohio's Freedom of Information process, a five-page memo
summarizing the day's thinking features such overt political
exhortations as: "Beat the Initiative back in the entire country, not
just in each state."
Ohio spent $106 million on "community-based treatment" in FY 2000;
overall control of vast sums of money and vast numbers of jobs underlies
the political struggle. One Ohio official worried that the state will
lose both "its ability to control sentencing policy" and "control of its
own budget."
The effort has entailed hundreds of staff-hours of state-paid time. Last
fall, Ohio's first lady, cabinet officials and senior staffers in the
governor's office attended weekly strategy sessions on the public's
dime. State funds paid for out of town trips and overnight lodging, and
the administration even proposed to divert U.S. Department of Justice
crime-fighting grants to fund their nascent campaign's eventual polling,
focus groups and advertising.
Modeled on a similar measure, Proposition 36, that passed overwhelmingly
in California in 2000, the Ohio amendment proposes to offer treatment
rather than prison to defendants charged with a first or second instance
of simple drug possession. Judges may approve a few other types of
nonviolent offender, but typically any crime beyond possession precludes
participation. The measure is backed by the same rich trio -
billionaires, George Soros and Peter Lewis, and multimillionaire John
Sperling - who have successfully financed drug reform initiatives since
1996, including Prop. 36, and several medical marijuana measures.
Should the Taft effort succeed, it will work to maintain the Ohio status
quo of incarcerating a disproportionate number of racial minorities for
possessing small, personal use amounts of drugs. According to Ohio State
Senator, Robert F. Hagan, though an estimated 13% of Ohio's drug users
are African-American, "77 percent of the people sent to prison for drug
possession last year were black. This brings shame to us all."
The revelations from Ohio question the probity of the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America, which partners with the White House in a
controversial, nearly $2-billion (total-value) anti-drug advertising and
media content campaign. The media campaign has recently come under
attack from Drug Czar John P. Walters himself as being ineffectual.
Its second, five-year appropriation is currently under consideration in
Congress. As the Drug Czar foists the equation that Drugs = Terrorism
upon the land, will Congress now take another look at a program whose
private strategic partner, the PDFA, was willing to insert itself
improperly into an election in Ohio?
Inertia, resentment of liberal outsiders trying to force change,
money-and-jobs turf protecting and both state and national political
calculation explain much of the Taft administration effort. Yet, the
administration also seems to think the very citizens who elected it
possess scant faculties to decide for themselves. So it endeavored to
keep the amendment from the ballot. Such contempt towards the electorate
serves only to erode faith in democracy. As previously proven in print
and discussed in the report, the White House has at least indirectly
meddled with state ballot initiatives for years. In fact, the effort in
Ohio is just a more sophisticated - and wildly blatant - manifestation
of the sort of public funding of partisan drug-war politicking that has
long befouled the nation's electoral landscape.
New York freelancer Daniel Forbes ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) writes on
politics and social policy. He testified before both the U.S. Senate and
the House of Representatives regarding his series in Salon on sub rosa
White House payments rewarding anti-drug content in the media. He
subsequently detailed the paid media campaign's origins as an attempt to
influence voters on state medical marijuana initiatives. (See: Fighting
"Cheech and Chong" Medicine, Salon, 7/27/00.)
Mark Greer
Executive Director
DrugSense
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
DrugSense is working to encourage accuracy, honesty, and common sense
in matters involving the failed, expensive, and destructive "War on
Drugs."
Get Involved - Learn about the Issues
http://www.drugsense.org
Contribute - Help us Help Reform
http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
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