Fri Feb 10 2012

Freep Heroes - Spring 2002
by Free Press Staff
April 10, 2002

Michael Moore

The ex-editor of the Flint Voice – the equivalent of the Free Press in Flint, Michigan without the glamour – is at it again. We’re sure that Mike, a good blue collar democrat, chose the Rolling Stones over the Beatles in the 1960’s and ripped the “frat loops” off preppy-boy dress shirts. He’s become the bane of the Bush bunch (or klan) by writing a best-selling book that reveals how the former director of the CIA’s family essentially staged a coup in the United States. It’s called a “demonstration election,” stupids, I mean, Bush supporters. Moore’s brilliant popularization of populist discontent against America’s inbred and verbally-challenged self-proclaimed artistocracy is must reading. Despite the media blackout and Marxist-Leninist-style cult of personality propaganda promoting GW Bush by the mainstream media, Moore’s Stupid White Men book tour draws thousands even at the smallest sites in the smallest cities across the country. Many Americans are coming to the realization that the Bush family stands for war, debt and corporate oppression.

Kent Beittel and the Open Shelter

Downtown developers – feasting on free land and unlimited tax abatements – demanded that Columbus’ Queen of Benevolence Barb Poppe, puppetress of the Community Shelter Board, remove the peasants from the downtown area to an appropriate underclass urban ghetto. Beittel and the Open Shelter folks are sleeping out at City Hall, a visible symbol that not every nonprofit is under the thumb of the wealthy developers and their strings-attached so-called philanthropy. Remember, Al Capone sponsored a soup kitchen, it’s good PR. ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

Joe Deters

In Ohio’s Axis of Evil – Governor Taft, Attorney General Betty Montgomery and State Treasurer Joe Deters – the evilest one from Hamilton County is Joe. So, recent revelations alleging that he was using the Hamilton County Republican Party to launder money into his aborted campaign for Attorney General come as no surprise to Freep readers. Deters’ legendary inability to distinguish fact from fiction and his burning personal political ambition is reminiscent of Richard Nixon. Joe had planned, figuratively – only because the law forbids abuse of a corpse – to drag Johnny Byrd’s dead body around the state to demonstrate he’s tough on crime. I’m sure this would have impressed his good friend Frank Gruttadauria, an investment banker suspected in a $277 million scam who, according to the AP, wrote the Hamilton County Republicans a $50,000 check to help Deters’ campaign “…just weeks before his Jan. 11 [2002] disappearance.” Now, if we could only get Deters to disappear from the Treasurer’s office and reappear in an Ohio prison cell. I’m sure John Byrd’s old friends would be happy to see him.

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