Ohioans tell their stories about gas prices

Having to choose between groceries and gas? Here are some stories from Ohio collected by ProgressOhio.org:

Parents can't afford to drive their kids to daycare. Trucks and tractors have come to a standstill. Families are weighing groceries against medicines and mortgages.

From Elizabeth in Reynoldsburg, who spent $80 the last time she filled her tank: "We live in constant fear that any week we could lose everything. We had to move closer to my husband's work. We lost our house. Change our kid's schools. Everything has changed."

Jean, a senior citizen in Wooster, reports "We are on a limited retirement income; we have to choose between food and fuel." She recently paid $92.50 at the pump.

Whether they're paying $3.86 per gallon in Dayton or $4.72 per gallon in Newton Falls, Ohioans' lives and livelihoods have been turned upside down by rising gas prices.

Click here to read their stories, and to add your own.

Obama Retains Lead, Clinton Makes Case for Going On

by Joel Wendland

While Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) managed to stake a claim for staying in the race for the Democratic nomination with a split victory on "crucial Tuesday," Mar. 4, she failed to overcome numerical odds against her capturing the nomination of that party.

Barack Obama held on to a roughly 100 delegate lead, by most media estimates. But with a mere 600 pledged delegates remaining and both candidates more than 700 away from clinching the majority needed to win, it is increasingly likely that the Democratic nomination will be decided late into the spring and quite possibly by the much maligned superdelegate voting process.

The night began with Obama's 12th straight victory in Vermont, but quickly unraveled from there. Clinton opened an early commanding lead in Ohio that narrowed to a 10-point victory after the votes had been counted.

A ballot shortage in Cleveland-area precincts, an Obama stronghold, sparked some controversy. Though Obama campaign lawyers convinced a judge to keep the polls open an extra hour and a half, no outside estimates exist on how many votes may have been lost in the process.

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who oversees Ohio's controversial elections process and who has endorsed Hillary Clinton, denied that ballot shortages in Cleveland caused lost votes.

Obama's campaign efforts in Ohio included a massive virtual phonebanking effort that claimed to reach more than 1 million voters in Ohio and Texas. Activists from Michigan, West Virginia, and Illinois poured across the border to canvass and turn out the vote.

Hundreds of Obama supporters in Columbus, Ohio staged a march to the polls to participate in the early voting process last weekend.

In the end, however, these efforts may not have been enough to overcome sharply negative campaigning from the Clinton camp. According to exit polling, a majority of Ohioans thought that Clinton had lobbed unfair attack ads, but in the end, a majority of them sided with her at the polls.

Notably, the Clinton campaign circulated a TV ad known as the "3 am" ad, copied from a 1984 Walter Mondale commercial, which claimed that Obama would not be ready in an international crisis. Obama responded by stating that the 3 am crisis had already come in Iraq in 2003, and both Hillary Clinton and John McCain made the wrong choice to go to war.

Voters from union households in Ohio numbered approximately 34 percent and backed Clinton by margins roughly proportional to the statewide totals. Union voters played a huge role in bringing economic issues to the foreground in that state's primary.

Voters who cited the Iraq war as their top concern backed Obama.

One major issue was the role of NAFTA and other free trade deals in decimating Ohio's manufacturing economy. While both candidates pledged to revisit the unpopular trade deal and find ways to prevent it from causing job losses, Obama could not overcome Clinton's claim that members of his campaign told Canadian officials that Obama's views on NAFTA were mere campaign rhetoric.

A report in the Washington Post, Mar. 4, showed that the Feb. 8 meeting between Obama campaign representative Austan Goolsbee and the Canadian consul-general for Chicago actually included a discussion of Obama's goal to revamp NAFTA in favor of the labor and environmental concerns of US workers.

According to the memo released by the Canadian government Goolsbee told the Canadians that they sought to remake the trade deal "in favour of strengthening/clarifying language on labour mobility and environment and trying to establish these as more 'core' principles of the agreement."

Labor and environmental advocates accuse the Clinton administration of sidelining workers' rights and environmental concerns in the original NAFTA negotiations back in the 1990s in order to win Republican backing for the agreement in Congress.

Obama's point that Clinton had long been a supporter of NAFTA until her recent campaigning in Ohio failed to overcome Clinton's spin on the affair as one in which Obama had two views on the subject.

The day before the primaries, Sen. Clinton delivered what many commentators saw as her most controversial argument. On Monday, critics of the Clinton campaign argued that Clinton appeared to endorse John McCain over Obama when she stated, "I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Sen. John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he’d bring to the White House."

Media reports also suggest that when pointedly asked, Clinton failed to denounce strongly false rumors about Obama's religious views, hinting that he might be a closet Muslim.

Negative campaigning in Ohio and Texas helped sway last minute, undecided voters in Clinton's favor, polls showed.

In Texas, Clinton and Obama appeared to split the state's "prima-caucus" system, with a razor-thin victory for Clinton in the primary and a similar advantage for Obama in the caucus, though final tallies in the caucus were not turned in at the time of writing. Vermont fell to Obama by large margins, while in Rhode Island, Clinton held off a last-minute Obama rally.

In her victory speech, Mar. 4, Clinton made an argument for staying in the race despite failing to win by large enough margins to overcome Obama's lead. "We're going on, we're going strong and we're going all the way. Millions of Americans haven't spoken yet and they want their turn," she told a small but exuberant crowd in Columbus, Ohio.

The Obama campaign downplayed the results. According to it, March 4th saw Clinton's huge February leads in the polls in those four states crumble. Obama supporters claimed a continuing lead in the popular vote for all 41 primaries and caucuses to date, a more than 100-point delegate lead, and victories in 28 states to Clinton's 13.

"Time is running out," said Obama campaign spokesperson David Axelrod. "And at some point, the party is going to coalesce around the nominee, and the nominee is going to be Barack Obama."

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Time to shower and vote

COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 4, 7:00 a.m. Running behind, but I will still make it to the polls this morning. The talk on most of the news outlets is a recent flap over NAFTA between Clinton and Obama. Here in Columbus, Ohio, NAFTA doesn't have a big impact. This is a university and a service industry town, the manufacturing and trade crisis has not hit as hard here. Most people I've talked to are expressing concern over the war and the economy in general. Gas prices and the resulting increase in food prices, the high cost of child care and the increase in cost and decrease in service of health care are the some of the most pressing issues among my colleagues at work. Among my African-American friends, Obama seems to be the top choice, while Clinton has the occasional fan. If signage were a true polling indicator, then Obama would have it all wrapped up- his signs adorn yards all over my blue-collar and racially-mixed neighborhood. Time to shower, dress and go vote.

--Ty

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Knocking on a million doors in Ohio

By John Bachtell

CINCINNATI -- Washington DC Mayor Adrian Fenty fired up the crowd of hundreds of volunteers here ready to go door-knocking in southern Ohio for Senator Barack Obama. Fenty said the campaign will "knock on a million doors" in Ohio.

"It's 43 hours until the polls open," Fenty said. "We've been waiting a long time for this moment. Maybe some have never seen this kind of thing in their lifetime. And it's riding on the good people of Ohio."

Fenty said no matter what your race, religion or region of the country is "to solve the toughest problems people have to work together." And that's what the Obama campaign is about, he said.

Current polls have it as a dead heat in Ohio. Obama has whittled down a commanding lead by Sen. Hillary Clinton. Clinton, too has volunteers pouring into the state.

Fenty said many people are asking, "How will an Obama administration run the country?" So he answers that change is made by the people and the people will have a big impact on how country will be run, the people and their organizations.

Some 110 people filled two buses organized by Chicago's 46th Ward Democrats to be part of the volunteer effort. Hundreds of other volunteers from Chicago had gone by bus and car to other parts of Ohio to canvass as well.

The buses were filled by canvassers from the 46th Ward and from across the city. Groups came from the Black Nurses Association, high school students with the civics group Mikva Challenge and their teachers from the Westside neighborhood of North Lawndale and students from suburban Naperville North High School, to activists from the Evanston Democratic Party organization.

One African American activist said this was the first campaign she had been in since the election of Mayor Harold Washington. "This is the first time I have been inspired in the same way by a candidate," she said.

Leading the canvassing were State Senator Heather Steans and State Rep. Julie Hamos. They have been working closely with Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Alderman Joe Moore to organize canvassing for Obama in other states like Iowa and Wisconsin. Moore had led a group to Cleveland.

There are signs everywhere for Obama in this Cincinnati neighborhood that is predominantly African American. There are 11 or 12 staging areas for volunteers throughout the city. A few days ago there was a big rally of 13,000 people.

This neighborhood is made up of single-family homes with apartment buildings scattered throughout. Economically, the neighborhood seems like it's been pretty hard hit with a number of vacant homes. Our staging area was in a mall that seemed like it was mostly shutdown.

People want change. And the change they want seems to be in the message given by the Illinois senator, shared prosperity, opportunity, unity and hope.

Altogether canvassers knocked on 10,000 doors throughout the hilly neighborhoods and returned to Chicago feeling like they had helped to make history. As the bus made its way home from the staging area on Reading Road, it passed blocks of Obama sign wavers encouraging people to get out and vote. A chorus of honks from passing motorists responded enthusiastically to them.

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Winds of Change Blow Strong in a Rustbelt City

By Tim Wheeler

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio—Wade through a foot of snow to a voter’s door here and it doesn’t take long for the subject to turn to NAFTA’s carpet-bomb destruction of jobs in the Mahonning Valley.

The 30-year plague of plant closings is issue number one on voters’ minds as we plod from door to door getting out the vote for the March 4 Ohio primary. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have brought busloads of canvassers to go door to door here and both are facing those searching questions.

“I think NAFTA is horrible,” said Dorinda Anderson, who lost her union job at Delphi Packard that manufactures components for GM cars including the nearby Lordstown plant.

Delphi is still open, she said, but with only about 600 workers after a downsizing in which she lost her job. She had been a Clinton supporter until she heard Barack Obama speak at an overflow rally at Youngstown State University a few days ago. She was an instant convert to his message of hope and change.

She was working as a volunteer receptionist at Obama headquarters, the Greater Mill Creek Community Center when I spoke with her. “NAFTA is the reason we have lost so many jobs here in Ohio,” Anderson continued. “The steel mills have closed down. Everything is leaving, jobs are leaving, people are leaving. They don’t even give us any advance notice. Just recently we lost another 3,000 jobs at Delphi. Now its down to about 500 or 600 workers.”

If John McCain is elected in November, “we will have a third term of George W. Bush. It will be more of the same. I thought it was horrible that Bush was asked about $4 a gallon gas and he answered, ‘What! Nobody told me.’ Bush is a lame duck living in a bubble.”

To be accurate, the economic crisis here predates NAFTA enacted in 1994. Youngstown Sheet & Tube closed down it’s Campbell Steel works in 1978 destroying thousands of jobs.

But NAFTA, sold by President Bill Clinton as an antidote that would create millions of new jobs in fact destroyed three million manufacturing jobs. Hillary Clinton has a heavy burden to explain Bill Clinton’s role in signing NAFTA even if she now criticizes it, Anderson said.

The shutdowns and layoffs continue at a dizzying pace and the ruination is obvious in the thousands of empty and abandoned homes we plod past as we go door to door. Youngstown once had a population of 160,000. Now it is 60,000.

Willy Williams, a former Lordstown auto worker who likewise lost his job in a GM downsizing, is also campaigning for Obama. An active United Auto Worker retiree, he scoffed at Bush’s claim that the U.S. is going through a temporary “slow down,” not a recession.

“Its been a recession here for a long, long time,” Williams said. “But if we do the right thing, get the right President in there, I think we can bring it together, bring us out of the economic crisis we are in. Obama is the man.”

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich) warmed up the crowd of volunteers at Obama headquarters. “Ohio is going to go Obama, March 4,” Conyers said. “He is the ‘come-from-behind’ candidate. He has a ground operation all over the state of volunteers like you. We can change America and move in a new direction.”

That night, an Obama rally turned into a “Town Meeting” at New Bethel Baptist Church. It was sponsored by the Change to Win labor federation. Attendance was swelled by Teamster union members, and SEIU hospital workers. A busload of volunteers traveled from Baltimore and a delegation of 75 Penn State students.

Two young white students from Michigan State University in Lansing spoke. “Its spring break at Lansing and many of our classmates are down in Florida,” one of the MSU students said. “I have no regrets that I decided to stay here and not go to Florida. We found nothing but Obama supporters out there.” The crowd roared.

Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick, said that he, like Obama, is from Chicago’s south side and faced questions about his “funny name,” Some said “it is not your turn” to be governor, he said. “We are saying it is his TIME,” Patrick said. “We are going to decide who is electable.” The crowd cheered.

During an open-mike, Guy Djoken, president of the Frederick County, Maryland, NAACP hailed the grassroots movement that has sprung up for Obama. “What are we going to do with this movement after we get him to the White House?” Djoken asked.

Patrick said a November victory is just the first stage. A new stage “will start the day he gets to the White House,” Patrick said. “Its hard to govern with the grassroots. Its new to America.” But without that grassroots power, there will be no change, he said.

SEIU President Andy Stern likened Obama to a sailing ship skipper. “He can have all the navigational skills in the world but without wind in wind in the sails, the ship will just go in circles,” Stern said. “We are the winds of change in those sails, for equal rights, equal pay.”

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Definitive Blog on Primary Election

by John Wojcik

This post considers only the narrow issue of who is going to get the Democratic nomination. It does not pretend to be balanced. It is, however, absolutely certain, scientific, factual and free of any wishful or subjective thinking whatsoever!

Wisconsin was Hillary Clinton’s Waterloo, no ifs ands or buts about it.

Barack Obama is the frontrunner, unequivocally.

He is only ONE MORE VICTORY AWAY from clinching the deal.

A victory in EITHER Ohio or Texas will more likely than not force Clinton out of the race.

A victory in both will absolutely force her out.

These conclusions are supported by the following facts:

Obama is on an incredible winning streak, as we know – ten to nothing since Super Tuesday. All of the victories were huge blow outs.

The Wisconsin victory by 17 points was actually his poorest showing since Super Tuesday. With poor showings like that, who needs strong ones?

He’s gone from a narrow pledged delegate lead and overall delegate deficit on Feb. 6 to what is unarguably an insurmountable 150 plus pledged delegate lead.

If you factor in the superdelegates, he’s still ahead by 80.

All signs point to the superdelegate gap closing perhaps as early as the end of next week. By March 4 he is likely to gain 25 or more superdelegates. (This is a reasonable, conservative estimate.)

We can expect that Clinton will pick up almost no super delegates between now and March 4 and that some of the ones she now has may also switch to Obama.

The only thing that could propel Clinton to the nomination is if Obama makes a bunch of mistakes or some huge mistake that makes him unelectable. While this is theoretically possible it is scientifically unlikely.

A sustained negative campaign by Clinton is a possibility but will not amount to a winning strategy for Clinton. Clinton cannot damage Obama to the extent that she would have to without damaging herself politically, in the Senate and for the future. She is not suicidal.

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Ohio union members say it's about jobs

By John Wojcik

In Toledo, Ohio, a 100-year-old plant that makes plumbing fixtures is closing. Two hundred men and women who make $19 an hour at the American Standard plant will be out on the streets.

In the same city, Johnson Controls, which made seats for the vehicles at the Jeep plant, lost its contract to a company in India.

The Ford stamping plant in Toledo’s suburbs, where workers make fenders and dash panels, will close soon.

It is much the same throughout Ohio, which has lost over 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000. “Manufacturing is getting its head handed to us around here,” said Thomas Joseph, business manger of Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 50, which represents workers all over northwest Ohio.

The two Democratic presidential candidates, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, have promised a fight to change this and organized labor in unionized Ohio has jumped into the 2008 elections to push for that change.

Some unions support Obama and others back Clinton. Signs are, however, that labor’s unity on issues will pull all unions together behind the eventual Democratic nominee and that many outside of organized labor will join in.

Infrastructure investment supported by the AFL-CIO could create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Many in Ohio see their state, with a huge reserve of skilled workers, as the perfect place to build an economy based on renewable energy technology.

Toledo itself is a historic center for the glass industry, which could benefit from government-backed efforts to increase the use of solar energy.

The 6-million-member Change to Win federation has endorsed Obama because he says he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Unions see NAFTA, with its lack of decent labor and environmental standards, as responsible for the loss of millions of U.S.
jobs.

The 10-million-member AFL-CIO has not made an endorsement. Some AFL-CIO unions, including the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the American Federation of Teachers and the Machinists, are backing Clinton.

Unions have jumped into the Obama and Clinton campaigns because each has called for significant infrastructure investment, development of alternative energy and other green collar jobs and strengthening labor standards for both existing and any future trade agreements.

The AFL-CIO has called for repeal of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, extension of tax cuts to working people and tax credits to help working families pay for college.

Obama and Clinton both support these positions and say government has a responsibility to protect workers who are struggling.

All the unions in Ohio are concerned about the mortgage crisis. In the Toledo area home prices average $100,000, yet the city is in the top 20 in the nation in number of foreclosures.

Obama calls for $10 billion in bonds to help workers avoid foreclosure. He would also give a tax credit to struggling homeowners to cover 10 percent of the interest on their mortgages each year. Clinton would temporarily freeze foreclosures and interest rates on adjustable rate mortgages

John Anklam, 39, is a recently laid off autoworker enrolled in a Teamster-endorsed truck driver training program in Toledo.

“His stand against NAFTA and his inspiring style is why I’m for Obama,” he said. “We need a fair shake and we can’t get it if they can dump us for cheaper labor somewhere else.”

Asked what he would do if Clinton becomes the nominee, Anklam said, “McCain would be a disaster. I’ll support her if that happens. She may not be as exciting but she’s got brains and she’d fight for the jobs.”

Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO political department director, said, “Labor will be united for the election of a pro-worker president in November. The unions will be mobilized on the issues that unite most Americans: an economy that works for all, universal health care, support for the Employee Free Choice Act so that everyone can exercise their right to form a union, and an end to the war in Iraq so that money will be available to rebuild our country.”

At its executive council meeting in San Diego, March 4–6, the federation’s leaders are expected to authorize $54 million for grassroots organizing around the elections. Total spending on 528 races, including presidential, senatorial, congressional and state legislative races and ballot initiatives, is expected to reach $200 million, according to Ackerman.

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NAFTA destroyed auto in Ohio

by Joel Wendland

NAFTA has moved front-and-center in the race for the Democratic nomination, not because any one candidate moved it there, but because free trade policies have hollowed out Ohio's manufacturing industry. Workers have forced the issue back into the spotlight.

According to a brief report by the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute, Ohio has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000.

EPI admits that since NAFTA was implemented about 15 years ago, the automotive trade, a sector crucial to the economies of states like Ohio and Michigan, between the US and Mexico has grown. But "the effects on Ohio and other industrial states have been overwhelmingly negative."

In auto parts, for instance, the U.S. had a $2.4 billion surplus with Mexico in 1993; by last year the deficit was $12 billion. The auto deficit in total, reports EPI, stood at about $31 billion 2007.

EPI doesn't really get into finger-pointing, which is fine. But a little more analysis would be helpful.

NAFTA eliminated trade barriers between Mexico and the US. This fact made it profitable for GM, for example, to close factories in Ohio and Michigan and other places and move production to Mexico.

In the process good union jobs with good benefits were killed here – with attendant ripple effects like a weakened tax base for stable communities and public services, growing unemployment problems, internal migration etc. – in favor of low-pay and weak labor rights in Mexico.

Only the labor movement and the UAW have stood in the way of a complete breakdown of unionized auto production in the US.

While right-wing xenophobes are quick to blame Mexico and Mexicans, the real culprits in this affair are the corporations and the profit system that puts profits before our communities and our needs. Additionally, politicians who side with corporate interests and fail working families are also culpable.

The NAFTA debate in Ohio is crucial because both Democrats (Clinton a little more recently than Obama) are promising to renegotiate NAFTA in order to stem the flow of jobs out of the economy.

By contrast, John McCain traveled to Ohio and told voters there that they should just get used to it and kiss good paying jobs good bye.

No more stark difference ever existed.