To the Editor:

The Ohio Republican State and religious supporters spent last week attempting a constitutional coup via Issue 1.

I spent last week helplessly subjected to LIFE-changing, unaddressed greed. Personal data was repeatedly used for fraudulent unemployment claims. The “hotline” multi-stepped then said they were too busy for fraud reporting and hung up. On hold for four hours, I heard dozens of “Unemployment fraud is a serious issue … report fraud!” While the Republican State targeted permanent reversals of men and women making their own family and health choices, our “claimant” changed deposit accounts, staying ahead of the millions-of-dollars-lost Republican Unemployment Office.

After that anxiety-ridden day, I tried to sleep, only to be suffocated again by the nightly trash burning of neighbors, farmers and contractors (bringing job site trash home). Open burning is illegal. It says the few dollars saved not legally disposing of trash are more important than LIFE. When a family or farm burns plastics, tires, insulation, paint, treated posts, PVC, etc., it enters downwind bodies permanently. The nearby private dump removed after years of burning industrial dairy and multiple residences’ waste was producing a localized environmental catastrophe almost every night.

Jefferson Township trustees allow well-waste dumping on our unimproved roads so yellow mustard gas clouds of radioactive and otherwise toxic dust plumes fill cars on the roads and every residence along them. Does the township receive money so that the roads the trustees live on can be paved – so their babies don’t experience this insidious and deadly reality?

The Republican system prolongs fraud denying victims simple reporting and excludes system flags blocking cash transfers to criminals. It has weakened environmental safety for air, land and water, resulting in pervasive, unavoidable health threats. It has stroked oil and gas industries in mutual oil-exporting cash fests inflicting harm to every local or visitor that travels our “country” roads. It allows Muskingum Watershed reserves to be converted into endless gallons of poisons openly dumped or injected.

How do they do it? By using abortion as the golden voting handle. Take this away by using your energies to remove the most clearly oppressive, LIFE-destroying and unproductive single-issue governments this state has ever seen. 

Diane Stutz

Danville