Todd ONeal

Todd Oneal is a good man. Maybe he should run again..

Forward!

Obama won re-election last night.  Hamilton County elected a Democrat for sheriff for the first time in maybe forever.  And even more dramatic to my mind, the Freestore decided to renovate housing instead of tear it down. 

One of my earlier blog posts, in 2007 was about how the Freestore Foodbank was trying to demolish historic buildings in OTR.  That post got tons of hits and publicity.  It also triggered the director of the Freestore, John Young to invite me over to try to convince me his position was correct. 

But when I met with John Young, I was struck by how out of touch he was with the neighborhood surrounding his business.  He was extremely dismissive of Over-the-Rhine, comparing it to the Gaza Strip.  It was obvious he was totally disconnected to all the positive change happening around him.  I also met with his architect, whose name escapes me.  But he too was dismissive of not just OTR, but totally dismissive of the idea that people in America would desire to live in dense urban settings like OTR. He believed only the poor who couldn't afford a car should live in the inner City.  I remember the architect saying that that these buildings they wanted to demolish had a European feel about them, but that people in the Midwest want parking, and that is exactly what the Freestore needed, more parking. 

But what the Freestore clients actually needed was this housing restored.  Housing near services.  Housing near transit, and near jobs.

Today the Enquirer has an article that was already partially covered by Building Cincinnati back in March, that the new director of the Freestore has plans to renovate 1606-1608 Walnut Street.  The Freestore has changed their leadership and their attitude to the neighborhood.  This is fantastic. 

I think that parts of today's Republican party are like the old Freestore management.  They do not see the way our City and our Nation have changed.  Locally, a growing portion of our citizens wants to live in urban areas and care about transit options.   Nationally, a growning portion of our citizens support gay marriage and universal health insurance.  Republicans cannot continue to run on Ronald Reagan's ideas.  Obama is akin to Reagan in that Reagan totally understood the mood of 1980; Obama understands the mood and the needs of our country in 2012

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Our kids made this sign, which somehow ended up on the front of the New York Times today. Wow.

Sickly Fascinated

"Having Palin in office would be like a four year long whitewater rafting trip, it might kill us but if it doesn't we'll end up with a lot of crazy-assed photos"-Mitch McConnell

Morbid Curiosity Leading Many Voters To Support Palin

Pigs Get Fed Hogs Get Slaughtered

"Pigs get fed and hogs get slaughtered.." - Roxanne Qualls, as heard on WVXU this morning quoting Mayor Mallory in regards to the budget battle.

I heard her say this and had no idea what the saying meant. So I googled the saying, and found that Joe Sutter claims to have invented the phrase in 2001 in response to a salesman that tried to gouge customers instead of offering his product at a fair price. He ended up being slaughtered. If he had been satisfied with a reasonable profit he would have been fed.

If I am understanding this correctly, Qualls and Mallory are saying that those who ask for too much in the budget debate may loose, and those who are reasonable may win.

Purposely Inflamatory and False

Got an chain email from a right wing friend today, that linked to the following survey:
 

How naive do you have to be to fall for such hype?

Berta Propagandist

If you want to change your city, what is the best way to go about achieving such change? Say for example, you wanted to improve conditions for the poor and homeless. Seems to me that there are 2 basic approaches, either you can speak about the need for change or you can begin making the change yourself. There is honor in both approaches. Sometimes a non-profit group, say the Drop Inn Center will do both. They will feed and house the homeless, but also be vocal advocates for change. And in different periods in the organization's growth they will do more of one or the other.

But say you stick with the vocal advocate role, and pride yourself on advocacy and protest. What is your strongest weapon? Truth. It is my contention that if you are speaking truth to power, then you better make sure of your facts. In advocacy, if you lack the facts, if you just demonize and repeatedly attack the enemy without facts, then you become just an annoyance, an ineffective propagandist.

And so I come to Berta Lambert:

Here is Berta, holding a sign claiming something for which he has no evidence at all. It is pure propaganda.

On July 19th, the Park Board cut down a dead tree in Washington Park. My wife happened to be walking by and took a picture as they started:

It was an American Elm tree, planted during a memorial service for Buddy Gray in 1996 shortly after he was killed. I never knew that this was a memorial tree, there was no plaque or anything, but my wife concerned about the trees in the park, took a photo.

That morning when they were beginning to remove this tree, Jim Burkhardt a Manager with the Parks Department was there. Jim is an arborist by training and he said he planted the tree in 1996 at the community's request and now he unfortunately had to remove it. I've met Jim several times at different public forums, and he seems to be exactly what you want in a City employee. He loves Cincinnati, and he is completely dedicated to his work in the parks. Oftentimes his job involves removing dead or diseased trees.

The tree It wasn't very big, it was obviously dead, (click on the picture for a bigger view where you can see the leaves are all gone). Did 3CDC have anything to do with this? Highly unlikely. They have stated at numerous public meetings that they will be removing dozens of trees, many of them older and larger than this. They have not started any of the park renovations. They have no reason to kill a single tree out of dozens they plan on removing. The Park Board completely controls the park up to the point sometime in the upcoming months when construction starts.

How many lies can you fit in one simple sign with only 5 words?

So I also noted some of the other signs Berta was displaying:

And this is another annoying sign. Pat Clifford is nothing if not totally dedicated to the Homeless in Cincinnati. Berta is upset that the Drop Inn Center board is supposedly in negotiations with 3CDC and the City about moving the shelter. But there are no details on this. Maybe they will be going to a bigger location. Maybe they will be getting better facilities. Maybe they will stay. I have no idea, and neither does Berta. I trust Pat and the DIC board to do what is best for the residents of the shelter. They always have.

Later Berta put the tree sign down where the tree was cut. Notice the car parked in the grass!!?? Some things never change.

Sprawl vs Conservatism

Sometimes, when I read articles like this, I think that in an alternate universe wherein this was normal conservative writing, I could be a conservative... In that universe, conservatives are truly building strong communities, not just strong corporations, strong families of all types, not just families that fit a 1950s norm, strong transit infrastructure, not just more and more lanes of highways, etc..

...the rise of this hyper-ideological movement conservatism has many roots, but one important and oft-overlooked one is this modern American landscape of sprawl and steel, of suburbs and hour-long commutes, of strip-malls and vast concrete scissures. The distance created by sprawl is both a material and spiritual one. Something is lost when we tear apart the natural, organic community and replace it with long lines of indistinct houses, well-groomed lawns, and endless stretches of highway. The very wrong sort of ‘individualism’ which so infests the modern American left and right is spawned from such distances...
...
Conservatism itself is rooted more in the community and especially in the fertile soil of tradition than in the individual. In a land of strip malls and ten-lane freeways, of rampant materialism and unending competition, tradition and community become irrelevant – become skeletal ghosts on display behind panes of glass....
...
Sprawl is a result of massive statist interventions into our culture and society, and its symptoms are equally enormous. Everything that conservatism has historically stood for is undermined by sprawl. It is not only the physical manifestation of our decline, it is a poison which continues to contribute to that decline. Its repercussions can be felt in our discourse, in our speech, in our way of thinking. This is not merely a matter of aesthetically pleasing communities, but of communities which allow individuals to be a part of the whole. I doubt this is sustainable, this suburban maze – in any way: fiscally, socially, spiritually... - Trueslant

Jeb Bush on Palin

"I mean, I don't know what her deal is, but my belief is in 2010 and 2012, public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity." -Jebediah Bush on Sarah Palin

I can see her fishing with the guys plus ...

"She's a down to earth person who will fight against the government," Millage said. "I can see her out there fishing with the guys. Plus, she's hot."

AP Report on Palin in Iowa

Halloween in Westwood

Westwood Library, 1930 

frankenstien 

 

I talked with a couple of the homeowners who had Democratic signs in their yards, and they all seemed almost apologetic about it! They all knew the candidate personally and said they were good people, but "we usually don't vote that way".

On an election note, I found it very funny the mailer that the Dems mailed out specifically against Winburn to certain neighborhoods like ours. On the front it shows Obama, and says "If Winburn's party had it's way, Obama would not be president", and on the back is a picture of Winburn adjacent to pictures of McCain and Palin. Priceless.

Two Weeks to Election Day

There are several important issues on the ballot November 3rd, and I have read most of the ballot language and have decided how I am voting on every issue. But none of them is as important as issue 9. Not because I believe the streetcar is the answer to everything. Not because I believe passenger rail to Columbus and Cleveland will solve that many transit problems. Not even because I love the Zoo Train. The reason is because if issue Nine passes, rail transit is demoted below all other types of transit, especially those that use asphalt and gasoline.

But roads, especially construction of new roads, already have priority over any other type of construction. I was talking with a manager of a Cincinnati Suburb recently, and he was lamenting the fact that newer areas like Mason are getting all kinds of Federal and State money to build new infrastructure, but his community cannot get any funding to repair existing sewers, roads and storm systems. The system is already built in favor of sprawl and new asphalt. Why should Cincinnati write such lopsided priorities into our City Charter?

Cincinnati has been on its knees for a long time. Crawling forward while other cities are up and running. I sense that things are on the cusp of really changing, perhaps changing in a fundamental way.

Please, vote against the status quo, Vote No on Nine.

I Wanted to Ask Him the Same Question

Mr. Beck, what is "white culture"?:
"ehh,,emm, uhuhuuuuhhh.aaaa,.. uhh....duhh.."

Default Death Panel

Kimi Young, 22 a young vibrant woman with her whole life ahead of her died Tuesday of H1N1 Virus. She had two degrees, worked two jobs, but did not have health insurance:

Young became ill about two weeks ago, but didn’t seek care initially because she didn’t have health insurance and was worried about the cost, according to Brent Mowery, her friend and former roommate.

Mowery said Young eventually went to an urgent care facility in Hamilton where she was given pain medication and then sent home.

On Tuesday, Sept. 22, Young’s condition suddenly worsened and her roommate drove her to McCullough Hyde Memorial Hospital in Oxford, where she was flown in critical condition to University Hospital in Cincinnati.

“That’s the most tragic part about it. If she had insurance, she would have gone to the doctor,” Mowery said.

Blackwell and Palin Two Peas in a Pod

Local Clifton resident, former City Councilmember, and former Secretary of State (of Ohio), Ken Blackwell clearly has delusional presidential ambitions. He resurfaces this week with an editorial claiming that not only does Obama want to kill Grandma, but your injured war vet too. These idiots have no shame.

A couple responses to his article are excellent:

..."Your Life-Your Choices," was not deep-sixed as you claim by the Bush administration, it was re-issued several times. The Obama administration simply re-issued the booklet with updates to language inside, like any other yearly publication.

Pre-counseling veteran's returning from war with debilitating life long injuries to take note of depression and suicidal thoughts is not "a sharp kick?" towards government murder. It is a booklet to help prevent suicide, and to prepare soldiers who's conditions are life-long to make smart educated decisions about any future care like being kept alive on a feeding tube, or DNR orders on the operating table.

You are lying to anyone who reads this article for partisan political purposes. You are doing our soldiers a great disservice by unfairly painting a document provided for their and their families benefit as a government death squad. You are intellectually bankrupt, and morally specious.

...Getting counseling on how to protect yourself and ensure you own wishes and medical decisions is extremely important so as to EMPOWER patients to have control over their end of life care. The whole point is that countless people end up in situations where they have not made their wishes clear, which can be incredibly traumatic for their families. No one is trying to kill them off: they're trying to encourage people to think seriously about what they DO want, and make sure they've taken the steps to ensure it clearly.

Opportunistic harpies like Blackwell and Palin are using this issue to score cheap points at the expense of an actual and very serious issue. In the process they are going to leave a lot of people without clear directives, access to counseling, and so forth. It's absolutely disgusting.

National Debt Revisited

The national debt roughly doubled during the eight years of the Bush administration. It has multiplied almost 10 times what it was when Reagan took office. I blogged about this many times. It is now estimated that it may double again in the next decade. Is there a solution to this?

This article lays out a reasonable series of measures that could control this:

- Reinstate the President's power of impoundment (removed in Budget Control Act of 1974). This would give similar power as a line-item veto, which Reagan was always asking for.

- Start an independent accounting board that would set the rules of accounting for the government. Give it the power to monitor programs and their cost effectiveness. Congress now monitors itself and this is the problem.

- Adopt a limit on total spending so that it could only increase with inflation and growth, unless 2/3 vote to suspend the limit in crisis situations. California had a law like this that they repealed in the early 90's and look what happened to them.

Exempli Gratia: Lawyers vs. Communicators

The recent controversy over the language of the ballot initiative handcuffing rail efforts in Cincinnati highlights, in my opinion, the difference between the goals of a lawyer, and the goals of a communicator. A lawyer serves his client. He is precise where precision is needed and imprecise where it benefits his cause.

The controversy centers around the following highlighted phrase in the ballot language (emphasis mine):

The City, and its various Boards and Commissions, may not spend any monies for right-of-way acquisition or construction of improvements for passenger rail transportation (e.g., a trolley or streetcar) within the city limits without first submitting the question of approval of such expenditure to a vote of the electorate of the City and receiving a majority affirmative vote for the same."

Opponents of the amendment have argued that the phrase is misleading. One issue is that by specifically calling out trolley or streetcar they are leading folks to believe that is the sole thing impacted, though “passenger rail transportation” has a far broader meaning.

COAST maintains that the use of “e.g” clearly indicates that they are two examples of a larger population. But this leads to the second issue. While “e.g” may be commonly used and understood in contracts, non-lawyers constantly confuse it. So, one would expect that the average citizen could misunderstand the phrase on the ballot.

Despite the protestations of COAST, I have been a technical communicator for 20 years. and long ago learned that people (very smart people) are confused by “e.g.” and “i.e.”. The abbreviation “e.g.” means “for example” while “i.e.” means “that is”. So again, you would expect a lot of readers of this ballot issue to read “e.g., a trolley or streetcar” as meaning only trolley or streetcar projects are impacted by this amendment. This is further exacerbated by COAST’s constant reference to the amendment as being anti-streetcar.

You can read a longer treatment of the recent meeting at Building Cincinnati.

I was especially amused by the following quote from that post:

"The language is an extremely simple sentence," Finney said. "It speaks for itself. These people feigning that they can't somehow understand the Queen's English, it seems to me to be a bit contrived."

It seems a little out of touch to me. 1. it is an abbreviation of a Latin phrase, and 2. last I checked Cincinnati was not part of the English realm.

Arrogant FOP

"..I'm not listening to a lot of what Greg Harris is saying right now.." - Cathy Harrell, president of the Cincinnati FOP on WVXU Tuesday.

Greg Harris has a forward thinking proposal to combine the Hamilton County Sheriff and the Cincinnati Police Departments. This is the kind of big thinking that is needed in Cincinnati. But as Greg Harris says in the article, "you would think the sky is falling by the response".

Voinovich Advocates for Gas Tax Hike

The highway trust fund is going broke.

I seem to remember that Voinovich has said he will not run for the Senate again. If that is true, then it seems that he is now free to say what he really thinks.

Transportation Bill in Congress

...The transportation system our country invests in this year will define our nation for generations, just as the highway system we envisioned more than 60 years ago still defines us today.

Congress is working on a bill right now worth nearly a half-trillion dollars in transportation investments over the next six years. If we continue with business as usual, there will be nothing in the legislation to ensure we're investing in the best projects - those that can build communities, make neighborhoods safer, and move people in the cleanest and most efficient ways.

America in the 21st century needs a complete National Transportation System - one that is safe, well-maintained, and efficient for all users. One that connects our highways with our rail lines and public transportation. One that is friendly for those walking as well as those driving and cycling.

Tell your congressman.

Daughters Turn Men Liberal

...We document evidence that having daughters leads people to be more sympathetic to left-wing parties. Giving birth to sons, by contrast, seems to make people more likely to vote for a right-wing party....people who parent only daughters are more likely to hold feminist views... - link