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Thursday, March 22, 2007

Blackwell says Strickland "is abandoning" our youth

Ken Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State and Republican candidate for governor last year, stressed the importance of abstinence education today before a speech about marriage.

One out of every three babies in Ohio is born out of wedlock, Blackwell said.

"Unless you're totally giving up on character development of our young people, abstinence education is a must,'' Blackwell told reporters. "I believe that young people of character can overtake instincts to engage in premarital sex."

Blackwell said he would not get into the specifics of Gov. Ted Strickland's first budget plan -- which would cut $1 million over two years in the abstinence-only education program -- "but I want to talk about the principle of abandoning the (state-funded) abstinence programs. In effect what you're doing is abandoning our young people. . .He's not just abandoning programs. He's abandoning our youth."

Strickland, a Democrat, has said he thinks abstinence programs don't work well in the long run.

Blackwell argued there's evidence abstinence-only programs work.

"I will engage in the budget discussion next month after we've had an opportunity to get into the particulars of the proposal," Blackwell said.

Blackwell, who works as a fellow with the Buckeye Institute in Columbus and Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., spoke today to more than 100 people at a luncheon sponsored by the Healthy Marriage Collaboration of Central Ohio.

"Marriage is a union between a man and a woman that frequently needs our attention,'' Blackwell said.

Blackwell drew the longest applause when he proclaimed, "I've been married to the same woman for 39 years,'' referring to his wife, Rosa, who is superintendent of the Cincinnati Public Schools. "Marriages that stay together and show that two individuals can commit themselves to one another happen to be the most powerful examples for our young people."

Afterward, Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey said, "The governor believes that, considering the very challenging budget environment we find ourselves in, that this is an unwise use of tax dollars because there is no conclusive evidence that suggests the (abstinence) program works."

Dailey said Strickland has proposed other pro-child programs, including early care in education, that reduce teen pregnancy rates.

Labels:


14 Comments:

at 3:57 PM, March 22, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

"...Blackwell argued there's evidence abstinence-only programs work...."

Come on buckwheat, abstinence programs are nothing more than a government give away to the fundamentalist fanatics, period !

Can you say: Separation of church and state ?

Let sex education be taught in the public school system !

Abstinence-only within the religious community !

The religious community needs to step-up and become more action with less talk !

They certainly will oppose taxes and then advocate 10% donations !

More people wih character building and less temple building is in order !

You don't need tax dollars to promote your failed religious agenda !

Tell us, did god tell you to suppress the black vote ?

PATHETIC HYPOCRITE !

HAD ENOUGH, VOTE DEMOCRAT 2007 !

 
at 4:14 PM, March 22, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who's Ken Blackwell?

 
at 5:06 PM, March 22, 2007 Blogger JohnDWoodSr said...

Jon Craig,every time you give credence to Ken Blackwell for anything he has to say on any subject, you remind your readership of the moronic endorsement your paper made in the last election.
Blackwell and his ideas were overwhelmingly rejected last November, so maybe you guys should take the hint and consign him to the dustbin of total irrelevance where he belongs.

 
at 7:56 PM, March 22, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Blackwell argued there's evidence abstinence-only programs work."

Show me the data.

Standard mindless Republican "Ideology Over Facts" rhetoric.

 
at 11:20 PM, March 22, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ken should be subpoenaed for his (major) role in subverting the will of the American people in the '04 election. He does not deserve a public stage unless it's to confess his sins for election malfeasance. Even with the electronic voting (which tests the other day in Montgomery Co show an obsene failure rate ie vote flipping) and disenfranchising Dem voters, he was not able to overcome the strong will of Ohioans in rejecting him and his lack of principles. I guess Karl Rove is looking into a new mathematical fomula for '08.

Please, Mr Craig, let this man fade into obscurity, until the time comes when he receives his subpoena.

 
at 11:26 PM, March 22, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ken Blackwell should keep his religion out of our state. If he wants a public forum, perhaps he can explain why he funnelled taxpayers dollars to GOP backed corporations that supplied voting machines that didn't work:

Nearly half of voting machines tested fail


Montgomery officials tested the 5% of machines that drew complaints; 56 of those 125 machines failed.



By Lynn Hulsey
Staff Writer

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

DAYTON — After two days of tests, the results are in: About 2,500 people cast ballots in November on 56 malfunctioning electronic touch-screen voting machines in Montgomery County, said Steve Harsman, county board of elections director.

He said it is impossible to know how many people finalized their electronic ballots without realizing that the Diebold Elections Systems machines were inaccurately registering their votes. But people had three chances to review their votes before finalizing them, and all the machines accurately tallied the votes that were finalized by voters, Harsman said.



On Tuesday, county election officials completed testing of 125 machines identified in voter complaints collected by Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, which called for the investigation. Some 2,530 voting machines were used in the county on Election Day.

Harsman said several malfunctioning machines were clustered at certain precincts, indicating they may have been damaged during delivery by a trucking company that hauls the machines to the polls.

-snip



http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/03/21/ddn032107elex.html?UrAuth=`NbNUOaNUUbTTUWUXUVUZTYU_UWU^UbUZU]UbUcTYWYWZV thre‰

 
at 11:31 PM, March 22, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

If Ken wants a public forum, perhaps he can explain why Ohio election results where routed through a site connected to the RNC:


1. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/7/144314/082

Ohio website for live Election Night Dashboard moves from State of Ohio to
SMARTechcorp.net IP address managed by the Republican National Committee

AND


2. From betterwhois.com:

AboutUs: GWB43.COM


Registrant:
Republican National Committee
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US

Domain Name: GWB43.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Republican National Committee dns@RNCHQ.ORG
310 First Street SE
Washington, DC 20003
US
999 999 9999 fax: 999 999 9999


Record expires on 16-Jan-2008.
Record created on 16-Jan-2004.
Database last updated on 21-Mar-2007 17:45:46 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

NS1.CHA.SMARTECHCORP.NET
A.NS.TRESPASSERS-W.NET


AND


3. Look who was hosting the OHIO election result site on NOVEMBER 3, 2004:

Windows 2000 Microsoft-IIS/5.0 3-Nov-2004 64.203.98.137 SMARTECH CORPORATION

 
at 11:58 PM, March 22, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr Craig,

Here is some other information to ask J Kenneth Blackwell about (re: OH SOS Election Night Server contract with SmartTech ):

Some other sites hosted by SmartTech
gop.com
rnc.org (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.rnc.org )
georgebush.com
bushenergy.com
gopteamleader.com
republicanvictoryteam.com
rnchq.org
johnmccain.com
speakergingrich.com

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/hosted?netname=SMARTECHCORPNET,64.203.96.0,64.203.111.255

BTW for those following the US Atty Scandal and the 3,000 emails (aka document dump) turned over, you'll find the name SmartTech come up. It seems the WH used both it's internal server and one connected to the RNC to communicate with. TPM.com is providing excellent coverage of this.

Mr Craig, Would you mind asking Ken Blackwell to comment on this?

Ken Blackwell outsourced the design of the Election Night Project to Mike Connell who is a GOP operative and the principal of New Media Communications and GovTech Solutions. Their association may go back as far as the George H. W. Bush era. Connell's long-established association in the online political, campaign and fundraising arenas, in addition to his technological expertise, made him a shoe-in for government and non-government services where pay-to-play is the standard..

On April 7, 2000, Blackwell certified the woman-owned (Connell's wife, Heather), small business that Mike Connell spunoff of New Media Communications in order to provide government contracting service a 'non-partisan' face. When Blackwell stamped 'approval' on that incorporation, he'd previously approved the merger of DCI Group and NewMedia Communications.

So what exactly have we stumbled onto with the SMARTech Corp nameserver?

1. We know that the RNC has large contracts with a company named SMARTech Corp.

2. We know the owner of the company is a fairly large contributor to the RNC.

3. We know that not only does the company have a contract with the RNC, it also has contracts with many other right-wing organizations. These include political action committees, a right-wing election results company, and even FrontPage Magazine.

4. We know that the same nameserver as well as e-mail server is used to provide the White House political staff with non-government e-mail. This may be required by law, the avoidance of using public funds for political gain or it may be illegal because government business appears to have taken place on this server. That's a extremely wide range of possibilities, and it means someone needs to look into this matter further to narrow it down.

5. We know, most strikingly that the Secretary of State of Ohio was hosted on this same server. That's pretty interesting, because that website provided the most official-appearing results in the 2004 election. It also suggests that a government contract in Ohio was corruptly given to a crony company.

Right now the Ohio Secretary of State site is hosted on an official government address, but we can use the Internet Archive's WaybackMachine to find that at one time is used this address, listed as using SMARTech's nameserver:

http://web.archive.org/web/20031010082405/http://ohsosonline.com



***UPDATE***
Here is the website used to find all of this out, it's the list of other sites that use the same nameserver as gwb43.com, listed in the DOJ US Attorneygate document dump:
http://www.robtex.com/dns/gwb43.com.html

Would love to hear comments from Mr Blackwell since he longs to be in the public eye.

 
at 9:43 AM, March 23, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mr Craig,

Could you kindly ask Ken Blackwell to comment on his relationship to Diebold electronic voting machines (like the ones that showed massive failure in testing conducted in Montgomery Co.) Is he willing to testify under oath whether he ever received financial benefit from Diebold or any lobbyists associated with Diebold:

Undue Influence After the Florida fiasco in 2000, Diebold saw an opportunity. To persuade Rep. Bob Ney to promote its machines in a package of election reforms he was drafting called the Help America Vote Act, the company hired two lobbyists with close ties to the Ohio congressman. Diebold paid at least $180,000 to David DiStefano, Ney's former chief of staff. And it shelled out as much as $275,000 to the lobbying firm of the best-connected man on Capitol Hill: Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff has now been convicted of bribing Ney -- but Americans will be paying for the results of Diebold's influence for years. As part of the Help America Vote Act, every precinct in America is now required to install at least one machine accessible to disabled voters -- a mandate that has already fueled the spread of touch-screen technology and cost taxpayers almost $3 billion. ''These vendors have a Halliburton-like hold on the Republican leadership,'' says Rep. John Conyers.

Diebold's influence extends to Ohio, where top Republicans have pushed hard to install the company's machines. Matt Damschroder, the chair of the Franklin County Board of Elections, was fined a month's pay last year for accepting a $10,000 check from Diebold made out to the county GOP in 2004, on the same day the board accepted bids for new voter-registration software. Once he was caught, Damschroder ratted out his friend, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, telling authorities that a Diebold consultant boasted of funneling $50,000 to Blackwell's ''political interests.''

Blackwell and Diebold deny the transactions ever took place. But in April of last year, after engaging in secret negotiations with the company, Blackwell emerged with the triumphant announcement that he'd reached a deal to equip Ohio with Diebold machines at a cut-rate price. He didn't bother to mention that he had just bought nearly $10,000 in Diebold stock -- a ''mistake'' he now blames on his financial manager. He also neglected to reveal that as part of the deal -- as revealed in a company e-mail to Blackwell -- Diebold insisted he use his influence as secretary of state in a way that would guarantee the company a state monopoly. Blackwell complied by setting such an early cutoff date for counties to select their new machines that other manufacturers would be unable to get their equipment certified in time. A lawsuit filed by a Diebold competitor and thirty-two counties in Ohio eventually forced Blackwell to roll back the deadline. But in the end, Diebold still wound up selling its machines to forty-seven of the state's eighty-eight counties -- just in time for elections this fall.

-snip
http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/html/eng/2361-AA.shtml

 
at 9:51 AM, March 23, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

There is a reason Blackwell got his ass handed to him in November. His ideas are awful.

 
at 9:57 AM, March 23, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Is there some collective amnesia on the part of this news paper. Endorsing Blackwell is bad enough but covering this drivel is entirely over the top. Abstinence programs fail period. They make no sense. They also discourage safe sex and taking responsibility for your own body.

I can't believe that this paper endorsed Blackwell for governor. What a joke. This fine city deserves much better and it will get it when votes are counted fairly and the Congressional delegation turns over completely.

I guess the paper didn't notice that Blackwell stole a few elections like 2004 and the 2005 special measures election. The Enquirer is just limited but the Dispatch, author of the poll that showed Blackwell messed with the special measures, The Dispatch, is gutless. They know it was rigged, with the 60-30% pre election switch to 60-38% for one of the special measures. NOBODY believes that, unless it's the collective delusion of the folks like you who see the facts but don't register the events.

Ken Blackwell is to elections what Robert Mablethorp is to Hallmark Greeigng Cards.

 
at 11:23 AM, March 23, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Seriously, what is the deal with the Enquirer's love affair with Ken Blackwell?

Why are you still giving him equal coverage to Strickland? No one cares what he has to say except for the Enquirer's reporters. What possible angle is there? You dont ask John Cranley or Vic Wulsin about everything Chabot or Schmidt does.

A better angle would be to ask Blackwell why he let Cuyahoga County get so bad that two people were convicted, the Director and Deputy Director were fired and now the Secretary of State has to get rid of the entire Board after 3 years of worsening elections failures in ohio's largest county.

Ask Blackwell why he didnt spend less time preaching abstenence and thumping his bible and doing his job by running problem-free elections in ohio.

Blackwell is where he deserves to be. Preaching to the far right drones who cant think for themselves nobody else cares what he has to say!!

He is not only yeaterday's news he is last year's news.

 
at 10:51 PM, March 25, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Who is this ANONYMOUS? Do you have something to hide? I agree with Mr. Blackwell. According to statistics there are 65 million Americans with a Sexually Transmitted Disease. Of those 65 million, 75% have genital warts, with 2/3 of the 75% are between the ages of 15 to 24. Not to mention that there is a higher rate of (Chlamydia)S.T.D. in 13 to 14 year old girls. I don't know who you are, or if you have children, or possibly a carrier of S.T.D. Abstinence-only doesn't have anything to do with church, but has a lot to do with state. There are government(state) programs who fund the medical treatment of these young girls with S.T.D., not to mention the funds spent on abortions and birth control. And to mention that money is being spent on treating the uncurrable disease of genital warts. If in fact the statistics show the percentage of young people who have visible signs of genital warts, there must be many who don't have visible signs, but are carriers of this and many other S.T.D.s I would just like to remind you of your comment, "Ideology Over Facts".
Since you haven't reviewed or even know definition of "facts", maybe you should consider "ideology", you might be suprised to find "character"! HA! RHETORIC!
Sincerely

 
at 12:46 AM, March 26, 2007 Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, I forgot, out of your need for "pomposity", I must say that according to statistics, I would have to agree with you as well, that the program is not working. It could be that "ignorance" of "seperation of church and state" and the inept "character building" that is enabling the future leaders of our country to be self-absorbed. Which in turn will lead to the decline in quality, value, or strength of this country and its military force for lack of desire to serve anyone but self

 
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