By Roldo Bartimole

After voting for Ralph Nader for President in three successive elections, I am forsaking him this time.

It’s not because I’m enamored of John Kerry and John Edwards. It’s not because I’m angry with Ralph Nader.

I’m not even voting for Kerry because I believe he will make the significant changes necessary. I have deep reservations about his ability to get us out of Iraq or to deal with many domestic issues.

It’s simply that a change in this regime is absolutely necessary. It’s just not the time for wasted votes. A vote for a one or two percent third party candidate does not even send a message.

I believe it’s of the utmost importance not to elect Kerry but to punish and extinguish the policies and behavior of President George Bush. His policies of imperial preemptive war with no regard to reality have put the nation and world in jeopardy.

Bush and his crew have taken 9/11 and cunningly used this tragedy in similar fashion to that of the Nazis after the Reichstag fire in 1933. The Bushites have used 9/11 to crush reason and fuel passions. They have used 9/11 to make dissent at home traitorous. They have used 9/11 to promote fear and division. They have used 9/11 as a license to reduce American freedoms. They have used 9/11 to pursue an unnecessary war with tragic results. They have used 9/11 to distort debate on how to handle terrorism. They have used 9/11 to camouflage a shift of wealth to the richest. Finally, they have used 9/11 as a mere election ploy.

Bush and his crew used 9/11 to try to confuse people and to portray Bush as he-man. Their decision-making, however, has all the qualities of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. They have bungled wretchedly in Iraq, fueling terrorism that will eventually come home. They have made the entire world and us less safe.

Additionally, Bush will use a second term to destroy the Supreme Court by stacking it not with conservatives but with right-winger ideologues. He will use 9/11 and the courts to revoke hard-won civil rights and to destroy labor for capital.

Let’s cut this conservative-liberal talk to its essence. This is an election between at most a moderate (Kerry) administration and a right wing, if not neo-fascist (Bush) regime.

We can’t allow the country to drift further right. It seriously threatens our democracy.

A friend, because she knew I had a relationship with Nader, asked me to write him and implore him to get out of the race. I wouldn’t presume to tell Nader what to do. He has the right to run and to get his views before the public. He’s right on so many of the issues.

Nader has been good to me, easy with praise for me in public. He helped me in the l980s when I needed a break from Cleveland by paying my expenses while I did some work for the Multinational Monitor in Washington. I also received an award in D.C. for “civic courage” via the Shafeek Nader Trust, named for Nader’s brother.

So I have nothing but admiration for Nader. I don’t like the way the Democrats and many on the left have treated him and tried to make a pariah of him. If I lived in a state where my vote would not be so crucial I would vote for him again.

However, the stakes are too high right now.

The day after the election will be time enough to begin to demand that Kerry retreat from some of his election-made compromises, particularly continuing the futile war in Iraq. He needs to begin immediately extracting American power from Iraq and get on with the job of creating peace in the Middle East between the Arabs and Israel.

Now, On To The Plain Dealer And Its “Endorsement” Of Bush

It’s no surprise that Alex Machaskee, Plain Dealer Publisher, overrode his editorial board’s desire to endorse John Kerry for President. Machaskee has never had much regard for journalism or journalists or any tradition or ethics of journalism.

He’s a crass businessman, as I’ve shown through the years.

To The Plain Dealer, this embarrassing episode simply confirms vividly that the paper is a Republican corporate rag no matter how it tries to claim political neutrality. The tally of newspaper endorsements being kept by Editor & Publisher includes talk of the PD’s editorial debacle and engenders spirited comments over the internet.

It has also made Machaskee’s meddling a community problem and taken it nationally. He may get more exposure than he’s ever wanted. He’s obviously become sensitive to the public outcry and at about 3PM Monday, as I prepared this report, he wrote back defensively to a citizen complaint, “We haven’t announced our decision yet so your accusations are premature.”

The PD tried to solve its public debacle on Tuesday by naming its choice for President by telling the voters they could make up their own minds. In other words, it copped out and tried to end the inside dispute that became too public.

As I said back in August in Cool Cleveland and What’s Up in Northeast Ohio and Lakewood Buzz, “I’d also be willing to bet that Alex Machaskee, The Plain Dealer publisher and corporate friend of wealth and power, would veto the endorsement of his editors if it veers from his and make the decision himself.”

He has done just that as the delay in the PD endorsement attests.

The question is what do we do?

Passions are high enough in this election that Machaskee’s power move must be seen as a deed that deserves retribution.

It warrants retribution as much as Sinclair Broadcasting deserved – and got – for its attempt to put on a one-sided attack against candidate Kerry. What hurt Sinclair was an avalanche of public protest to the organization and to its advertisers. Guess what? It changed Sinclair’s decision on what it would broadcast and moderated its show apparently more than even those who protested hoped to achieve.

Machaskee has held his power here too long. It’s time for progressive and honest forces to join and tell the Newhouse Family, PD’s owners, that he must go and that the paper must better reflect the community that gives it its profits.

Only when we impinge on those profits will the owners listen.

A final irony. An ad has been running these days in the PD with a picture of a smiling Alex Machaskee. He’s being given another award. National City bank and Sam Miller’s Foundation sponsor the glowing ad for the March of Dimes. Sam Miller. Isn’t that appropriate?

But the title of the award is the real mockery. It is the 2004 Franklin Delano Roosevelt Humanitarian Award for Excellence.

You can all laugh now.

from Cool Cleveland contributor Roldo Bartimole roldo@adelphia.net (:divend:)