DATELINE – Detroit, Mich.

A Detroit newspaper investigation reveals that local businesses are using Caller ID to screen calls originating from traditionally African-American neighborhoods.

A Michigan daily newspaper has published an investigative report outlining a statewide conspiracy to violate the civil rights of African-Americans.

The report accuses merchants in several major metropolitan areas of denying service to residents of traditionally African-American neighborhoods. A month-long undercover investigation conducted by the Detroit Advertiser revealed that store owners would routinely use the Caller ID function of their telephone service to screen out calls originating from “bad neighborhoods.”

The Michigan daily’s investigation even found a number of electronics vendors hawking so-called Color ID Boxes specially programmed to detect a preset list of telephone prefixes. The list, also available on certain Internet sites, indexes the prefixes of predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods throughout the state of Michigan.

Among the cities mentioned in the Advertiser report are Detroit, Flint, Lansing, and Grand Rapids.

The Color ID scandal began to unravel more than a month ago when a Detroit high school teacher moved across the street and began having problems ordering in food.

Willie Kennedy, who teaches calculus at Detroit’s Coleman A. Young Jr. High School, recalls: “For the longest time I didn’t know what was wrong, I thought there was something wrong with my phone.”

It was Kennedy’s inability to order a pizza on her first night in her new apartment that led to revelations of systemic discriminatory practices. When the schoolteacher moved from the west to the east side of Woodward Avenue in mid-October she was assigned a new prefix by the telephone company. From that point on she was unable to call in her weekly order of a “Friday Night Special” pie from a local pizza joint.

“The phone just rang and rang and it was absolutely the same number I’d dialed the week before,” Kennedy told the Advertiser. “It was so strange. I walked across the street to my old house and got through right away.” At first Kennedy believed her telephone line was at fault but a quick test of other numbers soon dispelled that theory.

The mystery would be solved less than 40 minutes later, when her pizza order arrived. After Kennedy joked about the ordeal with the delivery person, the latter asked “Well, what’s your telephone number?” It was then that the restaurant employee explained that certain exchanges were being “filtered out” by the pizzeria to “insure the safety of its delivery people.” The delivery person also mentioned that this was “standard procedure” among many of the businesses that service Detroit’s fringe neighborhoods.

It is illegal in Michigan for a business to refuse service to a location within its stated delivery area. To avoid breaking this law, the Advertiser asserts that some businesses use Caller ID to avoid phone calls from “risky” addresses.

After being tipped off, Kennedy began going through the phone book calling up establishments which ostensibly offer delivery service to her neighborhood. She subsequently found she could no longer reach more than a third of those businesses from her new phone number. Shortly thereafter, Kennedy contacted a reporter friend at the Detroit Free Press who then passed the news to a staffer at the more aggressive Detroit Advertiser.

Within a month, a team of journalists from the Advertiser had confirmed similar discriminatory usage of Caller ID in over a dozen municipalities statewide. By November 16, when the Advertiser ran as its lead story the first of a four part series entitled “Color ID,” the Michigan State District Attorney’s Office had already announced it intended to “conduct a full investigation of the matter.”

Jean-Paul Barloe, a spokesperson for Ameritech Inc., was quick to distance the telephone company from the growing controversy by insisting that “Caller ID and related technologies are not the culprit here.” Barloe went on to add that his company had no prior knowledge of the special Color ID Boxes or the Internet sites devoted to screening minority telephone prefixes.

As for Kennedy, she now avoids even the possibility of being screened out by using a cellular telephone to make outgoing calls even when she’s at home. “The funny thing is,” Kennedy jokes, “I’m like the last person on this side of the street to switch to cellular.”

DATELINE – Homeless, USA.

To the Editor:

Although I have been a loyal reader of your publication since 1983, I have never seen fit to write in with my opinion, (although it was very tempting when you endorsed the youth curfew). But I feel I must respond to the piece you ran Nov. 18, 1998 entitled “Holiday Miracle: Camping Gear Comforts Homeless.”

First, let me say you showed bad judgment in running anything penned by Adam Polanco. In the past, his articles have been riddled with factual errors and inconsistencies ala Stephen Glass. Frankly, writers like Mr. Polanco should not be permitted to stain the integrity of your journalistic endeavors.

But leaving history aside – as we are wont to do these days – the very spirit of the “Camping Gear” story, whether it turns out to be wholly factual, fictional, or somewhere in between, is an assault on the values we in this community hold dear. Values like the right to a living wage. Goodwill to strangers. Compassion and understanding for those in need. Does this ring a bell?

To begin with, the homeless in this community do not “number in the hundreds” as Mr. Polanco would have us believe. The last survey done by Social Services turned up over 1,400 homeless people – and that’s not including families and the like who spend stints at our municipally funded welfare hotels. Second, there are more than “some” U.S. veterans in the mix. My husband, who spends his Saturday afternoons volunteering at the St. Alban’s soup kitchen, knows of at least two dozen men now sleeping on the streets of our downtown. A few of them even did a tour of duty with him in Vietnam.

Now, as to the “Holiday miracle” of a privileged few giving away their overpriced camping gear to homeless men and women – only a shortsighted fool like Mr. Polanco could find any solace in such revolting displays of noblesse oblige. What these down-and-out individuals need is a helping hand, not a high-tech handout.

Is it just me or does anyone else take offense at the thought of malnourished, mentally ill, or otherwise incapacitated individuals living on the streets decked out in last year’s top-of-the-line North Face or Patagonia mountain climbing gear?

Mr. Polanco apparently believes the benefits of “Polarguard® 3D insulation,” “Dead Air Space parka insulation systems,” “Infurno Encapsil fiber treatment,” “neoprene ankle gussets,” “European 775-fill power goose down,” “slant box baffle construction,” and “breathable Gore DryLoft™ fabric” are a panacea to the “challenges” of living outside.

Who buys this stuff? What’s next? Giving the homeless cellphones?

I don’t want to discourage people from trying to do what they can to help the less fortunate in our community. Good intentions go a long way, but they can also lead to folly. Outfitting the homeless with second hand outdoor gear like a “4-pound Marmot Quonset Tent,” “lightweight Stretch Triolet mountaineering parka with two-way pit zips,” (really, Mr. Polanco!) or “Down Time DryLoft Technical Sleeping bag with anti-snag zipper” does little to address the very real security, health, and social problems faced everyday by the citizens who sleep under our bridges, in our doorways, and on top of our steam grates.

The problem is wasted resources. A $400 tent might seem like a nice gift for a homeless person, but what if that $400 were to be donated to a program that creates affordable housing?

Usually your reporting on social issues is balanced. Why did you include Mr. Polanco’s naive puff piece in your spotlight on holiday charities?

I hope that in the future you will consider devoting more space in your pages to people and programs that are providing permanent solutions to the problem of homelessness in our community.

Sincerely,

Dorothy Tagg

Adam Polanco replies: Despite Ms. Tagg’s assertion that she has all the answers to the homeless issue, I believe that the efforts I described are laudable. If you spent a week outdoors you’d appreciate the value and quality of the camping gear being donated. If homelessness isn’t an extreme living experience, I don’t know what is.

DATELINE–The West Bank

Integrated bus rides in Israel’s West Bank bring American Jews and Palestinians together

As President Bill Clinton exhorted Israeli and Palestinian leaders to “break the logjam” at the latest Mideast peace summit, hundreds of Jewish college students from the United States are rallying in the troubled region to stage 1960s-style “freedom rides” in support of civil rights.

Taking its cue from the civil rights movement strategy that teamed up liberal northeastern college students with southern Blacks, Freedom Ride ‘98 brings nearly 300 Jewish college students from the U.S. together with Palestinian activists agitating for peaceful change in the Middle East.

The convergence of young activists on Israel’s contested West Bank was planned months before it was announced that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would participate in peace talks at a resort just outside of Washington, D.C. Officials at the State Department insist that the protests which have garnered international attention had little if any impact on the Wye negotiations.

While both the Israeli and Palestinian camps issued predictions of violence from the other side, the integrated bus rides across the West Bank and Gaza have met only verbal opposition thus far.

“Israel is not just a safe place for Jews. It’s a constitutional state which must afford rights and protections to all of its people, and that includes Palestinians,” exclaimed Paula Goodman, a political economy major from the University of Arizona at Tempe. “I’m proud to be a Jew, but I also want to be able to take pride in the way that Israel treats its non-Jewish residents.”

The government has issued no official response to the student calls for a diplomatic solution to conflict in the West Bank regions occupied by Israel since 1967. Current peace talks are stalled over a proposed Israeli pull out which would leave Palestinians in control of 40 percent of the territory.

While the students are optimistic that their nonviolent mission will have an impact on the soured relations between Israelis and Palestinians, West Bank residents remain skeptical. Shopkeeper Elihu Landau insists that the Americans don’t understand what it’s like to live every day under the threat of violence. “They are naive…they think that because they can talk to a Palestinian, sit next to him, everything is going to be o.k.,” Landau challenges. “What about our right to survive?”

Other observers see the situation in less black and white terms. Alma “Buzzie” Lerner, a 62 year old Israeli living in Jerusalem’s historic quarter, likes the idea of using nonviolent strategies to effect social change but is doubtful if the issue can be settled without more bloodshed. She participated in one of the free nonviolence workshops the student organizers held at a local college campus.

“I wanted to see what the kids had to say…even though they don’t live here, they are an important part of Israel’s future,” she explained. “Maybe they have the right idea, but it’s hard to imagine that a technique can thwart the thrust of history. Still, I hope they come back some day.”

Indeed many of the students have come to Israel not just to protest violence but to forge their own relationship with the Jewish homeland. Alex Bodner, a junior at Brown University, is the product of an interfaith marriage. “My mom and my grandparents are conservative — they didn’t even want me to come on this trip. But my dad whose not even Jewish thought it could be a life-changing experience,” he relates, “and it has been.”

Freedom Ride ‘98 organizers agree. “Jews have always led the way in the struggle for civil rights,” reminds the Matt Gandhoff, a New York City public defender who helped coordinate the event’s nonviolent workshop program. “We’re here not just to try to right an injustice but to inspire the next generation of Jewish moral and political leaders.”

DATELINE – Las Vegas, NV.

A secret computer exudes mystery at Comdex.

Tuesday November 17, at 10:00 am Pacific Standard Time, the doors to room S101 in the Las Vegas Convention Center will be promptly closed and locked. Anyone wishing to enter or exit room S101 after that point will need to pass through two sets of security guards and then only those who bear engraved plastic invitations will be allowed through.

It is, by far, the most important meeting not publicly scheduled at this year’s Comdex trade show. While much of the press and thousands of attendees are eavesdropping on a panel entitled “The COMDEX Crystal Ball: COMDEX Meets Wall Street” in the Convention Center’s main auditorium, the thirty or so guests permitted inside room S101 will truly be looking into the future courtesy of a new technology called “Olmecas.”

The result of an unprecedented corporate collaboration between Intel Inc. and the Monterrey, Mex.-based firm of TLA-Matini Ltd., the Olmecas machine represents no less than a startling departure from Intel’s stated long-term development strategy.

Already much of the fanfare around this year’s Comdex has centered on Intel’s consumer-oriented “Aztec", “Tetris", “Castia” and “Beta” series of personal computers, all of which are said to feature the company’s new StrongARM family of processors. Industry analysts have dubbed the cheap and powerful redesigns of the PC “iMac-inspired” and while Intel, itself, will not be manufacturing the prototypes it is rumored that other companies are already developing market-ready versions in the hopes of cashing in on the unprecedented commercial success of Apple’s latest all-in-one.

Indeed, the pivotal moment at this year’s Comdex was supposed to have been the public unveiling of Intel’s new “pyramid scheme” machine and the StrongARM chip. During the last few weeks, both industry and mainstream press have been publishing carefully leaked photographs of the Aztec computer along with barely restrained notes of bullish optimism.

Such brazen boosterism comes as no surprise to anyone who has been following the trade papers of late. Headlines like “Apple Takes A Bite out of PC’s” and “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” make it clear that the heat is on manufacturers of so-called “Windows machines” – computers that use Microsoft’s Windows™ operating system – to compete with a fully resuscitated Apple Inc. It was hoped that “smart home appliances” like the Aztec would open the marketplace even more to computer makers.

“What’s at stake,” says Mel Villa, a journalist for Wired News, “is creating confidence in a new kind of personal computer: a computer that isn’t even called ‘computer’ but nonetheless quietly lives on inside your VCR, your dishwasher, your water heater, etc.” Such a product might be the silver bullet investors have been awaiting in the face of an inevitable recession.

According to Nadja Nhils, a senior partner with Andersen Consulting, “If there is no sharp increase in consumer demand for computer technology over the next few months, high-tech stocks might begin to drop as steadily as traditional holdings.” Nhils believes this depreciation would usher in “the period of rapid inflation, rising unemployment and low economic confidence” her and other financial analysts have been expecting since the first stirrings of the Asian economic crisis.

All of which makes Intel’s decision to keep the Olmecas project shrouded in secrecy all the more puzzling. Villa asks, “Why would Intel, a veritable giant in the computer industry, introduce not one but two new hardware architectures at the same time? It just doesn’t make sense unless there’s something really big inside the Olmecas machine.”

But what is inside the Olmecas box will remain a mystery even after Comdex is over at the end of this week. Given their reticence to date, it is unlikely that the guest list for Tuesday’s closed presentation will be made public until after the convention has ended. There is even little consensus among industry pundits as to what this unexpected arrival could mean for an industry leader set on conquering the domestic market.

In fact, beyond speculative queries about the actual purpose of the Coppermine and Camino micro-chips, there has been scant mention of the Olmecas project in the coverage of Comdex.

“It’s the intrigue that bugs me the most,” says Villa. Pausing for a moment to look through the official Comdex Event Schedule Planner (ESP) he has downloaded onto his laptop, Villa quips, “For all we know, there could be no one inside that room on Tuesday and nothing inside the Olmecas box…and it would still be a boon for the market.”

DATELINE–Washington, D.C.

Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act outlaws legal residency

In the wake of a controversial Senate vote, Congressional lawyers are scrambling to explain why a law that inadvertently criminalized all forms of legal immigration escaped immediate repeal. The provision in question makes it a crime to live in the United States as a “legal resident.”

Over the weekend, the Immigration and Naturalization Service worked around the clock to gear up to enforce a provision of the immigration reform law that has been on the books for almost two years.

The offending legislation known as the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act created a new immigration category called the “Criminal Legal Resident” in order to expedite the deportation of undesirable immigrants. While intended to target U.S. residents convicted of felonies and certain misdemeanors, a syntax error in the bill’s wording makes legal residency itself against the law.

To deal with the unintended consequences of the error, the INS had requested and been granted two extensions from the Congress which permitted it to take a non-enforcement stance. But on October 5th, what was thought to be routine vote before the Senate on a third extension turned out to be a referendum on the immigration question.

In what insiders attribute to election year politicking, the Senate voted 63-35 with two members absent, not to renew the enforcement extension requested by the INS. House members quickly put the same extension request up to a vote and rejected it by a veto-proof margin.

The law’s original intent was to require mandatory detention of U.S. residents convicted of petty as well as serious crimes. While it is currently unconstitutional to try and punish a citizen twice for the same crime, legal residents aren’t afforded the same protection.

It’s what law theorists term a “legal double jeopardy bind.” Even residents granted suspended sentences by judges would be subjected to an indeterminate period of forced detention followed by deportation proceedings. And because of the error in the bill, those being jailed despite their suspended sentences will be joined by legal residents who haven’t committed any crime at all.

Martina Reyes, executive director of the Chicago, Ill.-based Women’s Immigration Law Clinic claims the legislation is the equivalent to “no strikes and you’re out.” Yet, Reyes is optimistic that the IRIRA will be amended, citing the absurdity of the law as well as its potentially adverse economic consequences.

“It’s not possible to make residents guilty of not being citizens…if you detain someone because they’re not a citizen you’re making it illegal to be a resident,” she remarks. “If you detain them because they were already convicted of a crime once upon a time, that’s lifetime imprisonment for every felony. This is not only terrifying and preposterous, it’s unconstitutional.”

The tide may indeed be changing. The Supreme Court has already agreed to review a New York federal appeals panel finding that granted the right of habeas corpus to long-term residents facing deportation because of criminal convictions. But it will be months before a decision in American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee v. Reno is handed down.

In the meantime, penal experts agree that Section 321b of the IRIRA, if not revised, is poised to add a significant number of inmates to the INS’ already overcrowded system of detention centers. Currently, the INS estimates it has space for only 16,000 detainees nationwide, but it has stated its intent to build sprawling tent camps to accommodate the overflow.

The mass imprisonment is expected to force the release of illegal aliens arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border in order to make prison space available for the U.S. residents awaiting deportation proceedings. According to INS sources, the provision will also likely result in the incarceration and possible deportation of up to half a million U.S. residents in 1999 alone.

DATELINE–Tallahassee, Fla.

Florida Biochemist designs a citrus tree with THC.

In the summer of 1984, 10th-grader Irwin Nanofsky and a friend were driving down the Apalachee Parkway on the way home from baseball practice when they were pulled over by a police officer for a minor traffic infraction.

After Nanofsky produced his driver’s license the police officer asked permission to search the vehicle. In less than two minutes, the officer found a homemade pipe underneath the passenger’s seat of the Ford Aerostar belonging to the teenage driver’s parents. The minivan was seized, and the two youths were taken into custody on suspicion of drug possession.

Illegal possession of drug paraphernalia ranks second only to open container violations on the crime blotter of this Florida college town. And yet the routine arrest of 16 year-old Nanofsky and the seizure of his family’s minivan would inspire one of the most controversial drug-related scientific discoveries of the century.

Meet Hugo Nanofsky, biochemist, Florida State University tenured professor, and the parental authority who posted bail for Irwin Nanofsky the night of July 8, 1984. The elder Nanofsky wasn’t pleased that his son had been arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia, and he became livid when Tallahassee police informed him that the Aerostar minivan would be permanently remanded to police custody.

Over the course of the next three weeks, Nanofsky penned dozens of irate letters to the local police chief, the Tallahassee City Council, the State District Attorney and, finally, even to area newspapers. But it was all to no avail.

Under advisement of the family lawyer, Irwin Nanofsky pled guilty to possession of drug paraphernalia in order to receive a suspended sentence and have his juvenile court record sealed. But in doing so, the family minivan became “an accessory to the crime.” According to Florida State law, it also became the property of the Tallahassee Police Department Drug Task Force. In time, the adult Nanofsky would learn that there was nothing he could do legally to wrest the vehicle from the hands of the state.

It was in the fall of 1984 that the John Chapman Professor of Biochemistry at Florida State University, now driving to work behind the wheel of a used Pontiac Bonneville, first set on a pet project that he hoped would “dissolve irrational legislation with a solid dose of reason.” Nanofsky knew he would never get his family’s car back, but he had plans to make sure that no one else would be pulled through the gears of what he considers a Kafka-esque drug enforcement bureaucracy.

“It’s quite simple, really,” Nanofsky explains, “I wanted to combine Citrus sinesis with Delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol.” In layman’s terms, the respected college professor proposed to grow oranges that would contain THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. Fourteen years later, that project is complete, and Nanofsky has succeeded where his letter writing campaign of yore failed: he has the undivided attention of the nation’s top drug enforcement agencies, political figures, and media outlets.

The turning point in the Nanofsky saga came when the straight-laced professor posted a message to Internet newsgroups announcing that he was offering “cannabis-equivalent orange tree seeds” at no cost via the U.S. mail. Several weeks later, U.S. Justice Department officials showed up at the mailing address used in the Internet announcement: a tiny office on the second floor of the Dittmer Laboratory of Chemistry building on the FSU campus. There they would wait for another 40 minutes before Prof. Nanofsky finished delivering a lecture to graduate students on his recent research into the “cis-trans photoisomerization of olefins.”

“I knew it was only a matter of time before someone sent me more than just a self-addressed stamped envelope,” Nanofsky quips, “but I was surprised to see Janet Reno’s special assistant at my door.” After a series of closed door discussions, Nanofsky agreed to cease distribution of the THC-orange seeds until the legal status of the possibly narcotic plant species is established.

Much to the chagrin of authorities, the effort to regulate Nanofsky’s invention may be too little too late. Several hundred packets containing 40 to 50 seeds each have already been sent to those who’ve requested them, and Nanofsky is not obliged to produce his mailing records. Under current law, no crime has been committed and it is unlikely that charges will be brought against the fruit’s inventor.

Now it is federal authorities who must confront the nation’s unwieldy body of inconsistent drug laws. According to a source at the Drug Enforcement Agency, it may be months if not years before all the issues involved are sorted out, leaving a gaping hole in U.S. drug policy in the meantime. At the heart of the confusion is the fact that THC now naturally occurs in a new species of citrus fruit.

As policy analysts and hemp advocates alike have been quick to point out, the apparent legality (for now) of Nanofsky’s “pot orange” may render debates over the legalization of marijuana moot. In fact, Florida’s top law enforcement officials admit that even if the cultivation of Nanofsky’s orange were to be outlawed, it would be exceedingly difficult to identify the presence of outlawed fruit among the state’s largest agricultural crop.

Amidst all of the hubbub surrounding his father’s experiment, Irwin Nanofsky exudes calm indifference. Now 30-years-old and a successful environmental photographer, the younger Nanofsky can’t understand what all of the fuss is about. “My dad’s a chemist. He makes polymers. I doubt it ever crossed his mind that as a result of his work tomorrow’s kids will be able to get high off of half an orange.”

Biochem 101: How to design a Cannabis-equivalent citrus plant

Step One:
Biochemically isolate all the required enzymes for the production of THC.

Step Two:
Perform N-terminal sequencing on isolated enzymes, design degenerate PCR (polymerase chain reaction) primers and amplify the genes.

Step Three:
Clone genes into an agrobacterial vector by introducing the desired piece of DNA into a plasmid containing a transfer or T-DNA. The mixture is transformed into Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a gram negative bacterium.

Step Four:
Use the Agrobacterium tumefaciens to infect citrus plants after wounding. The transfer DNA will proceed to host cells by a mechanism similar to conjugation. The DNA is randomly integrated into the host genome and will be inherited.

DATELINE–The 50 Colonies

The Truth will set the U.S. free.

Election day is honesty day.

I am the only candidate running on a platform of brutal honesty. Tourette’s syndrome honesty. All of the Jacksons were sexually abused honesty. The honesty of an innocent young child who asks, “Why do you have a beard, grandma?”

Why honesty? Because the truth will set you free. Not free as in “Freebird” or free as in “buy one get one free,” but free as in Emancipation Proclamation. Free, to be you and me.

Why freedom? Because deep down inside, tucked away behind all the torn receipts, unread letters, and specks of lint we all store in the top drawer of our souls waiting for that bright Sunday afternoon when we’ll have the time and the energy to clean it all out, there, down there, is a yearning for liberty. Liberty and Justice. For all.

Truth begets Liberty. Liberty begets Justice. And we be getting too far from the foundations of the great and tragic experiment in democracy we call “America.”

WHY THE TRUTH HURTS SO GOOD

Our nation is under siege.

Politicians don’t tell the truth anymore. They think the truth is going to frighten voters. They talk like the truth is some kind of cold you catch. Like the truth is going to make your eyes water, your nose run and leave you feverish.

So what do they do? They tell you what the pollsters tell them you want to hear. Pollsters are professional stalkers. They go through everyone’s garbage, compile a list of their prejudices and then turn them over to the Freddie Kruegers and James Carvilles who run today’s campaigns. Then come the television ads and the crisp soundbites you hear on the news. Candy-coated doo-doo, all of it.

Well, I say Ben Dover, America, and get ready to get a load of the truth.

Sure, the truth hurts. Everyone gets smacked in the face by the cold, hard hands of Truth one time or another. That ain’t discrimination. That’s Liberty and Justice for all.

WHY WHEN THE LAST EMBER IN THE HOTBED OF FREEDOM HAS BURNED GRAY AND COLD, I WILL STILL BE THE ONLY CANDIDATE.

When the Constitution is amended to permit corporations to establish their own parties, I will still be the only candidate. When the mass media permanently renounce political coverage in lieu of weather, traffic and sports every minute, I will still be the only candidate. When the Cookie in your World Wide Web browser becomes the holy wafer of electoral transubstantiation, whereby the vote of the people becomes the sovereign will, I will still be the only candidate. When the minority majority of Americans are finally transferred to high-tech prisons across the border, I will still be the only candidate. When all the hopeless drug addicts are exterminated, I will still be the only candidate. When the mentally ill are set adrift and abandoned to rot to death in the gutter, I will still be the only candidate. When the poor and the uneducated are fully punished for making the rest of us feel guilty, I will still be the only candidate. And when a little girl named Hope has been laid to rest at the tender age of three after being shot to death with her Daddy’s revolver, I will still be the only candidate.

For I am Ben Dover.

Ben Dover for Congress.

Ben Dover for Governor.

Ben Dover for President.

Ben Dover for America.