Berding Loses Dem Endorsement

It was nearly a foregone conclusion, but the Cincinnati Dems dropped the hammer on Councilmember Jeff Berding today and revoked their endorsement. Berding knew it was coming and he should not be surprised that when you launch a big attack against your party's fellow elected officials and you use negative scare tactics in support of a police union that takes stances regularly inconsistent with your party, someone is going to be pissed off. The question remains, will this hurt him enough to lose? At this point I am sure people will spin it like mad, but this may be an election where we learn a little about party affiliation, the power of the Enquirer endorsements, and how do conservatives actually vote in city election (or how many of them are actually left?).

Tony Fisher, on the other hand, I hope has seen the light and understands that if you want to have a long term political future, you don't diss your party during your first election for public office. You have to earn maverick status, you don't just decide you are to be one as a campaign tactic.

Remembering September 11, 2001 - What Shall The Dead Tell Us The Living?

LEAP

By Brian Doyle

A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.

Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.

The mayor reported the mist.

A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.

Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people "leaping as they flew out." John Carson saw six people fall, "falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting." Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, "too many people falling." Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman's dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.

Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.

But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.

I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.

Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.

No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn't even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that.

See the Ballet's New Works

Cincinnati Ballet's season opener, New Works, is a great introduction to Ballet for the arts fan who wants to explore an art form new to them. Last night's opening was an extra special event with live music from world class musicians all from Cincinnati. Three of the dance pieces premiered with live accompaniment from the song writers, which included Over the Rhine, Peter Adams, and Jake Speed & the Freddies.

Heather Britt's piece set to the new music from Peter Adams (Bad Vein-esque) and Joy Jovet's brilliant interpretation of Jake Speed's music were my favorites of the evening, along with the stunning mix of music, photography, and dance in "Retrospect" by choreographers Missy Lay Zimmer & Andrew Hubbard set to the haunting and bountiful voice of Karin Bergquist (from Over the Rhine)

The remaining performances will be to recorded music, which is too bad, because the use of live music with the dances added so much to the performances. It was a collaboration that I believe is something that is critical to dance, and art form I will admit I've only experienced a few times.

The next performance is 8PM tonight at the Ballet's Studio (1555 Central Parkway, Cincinnati, OH 45214) and the show runs through next weekend, with final show on Sunday afternoon September 20th.

FOP Approves Deal

Via Multiple Twitter posts it is being reported that the Cincinnati FOP membership has approved the concessions plan, meaning no police will be laid off. A very good move by the FOP. The vote was 565-433.

Fire Him

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on the City. This is a repeat offender, his discipline is clear. If you have been fired from your job as a police officer once for excessive use of force and get your job back via poorly created arbitration rules, then you use excessive force again, I don't think there is any question that you should be fired, again. Let's just hope this time it sticks.

FOP Voting?

I believe it was reported that the unions, FOP and CODE, were meeting to vote yesterday and today on the city's plan to save jobs through furloughs. I have not seen any news on how the voting is going. Anyone know when the results will be announced?


UPDATE: Expect some results tomorrow.

The Seedy Seeds in the News

A great review for local band The Seedy Seeds. If you've not had the chance to seem them live, do so! They play the CAC during MidPoint.


For more: www.theseedyseeds.com

Berding Dissed?

Rumors are flying around and credible reports are out there all which indicate that the Union endorsement Berding received for Cincinnati City Council has been or will be rescinded, and Laure Quinlivan shall take his place on their slate.

Based on the poll information included in the Osborne article, Berding is low on the list and still needs the support of Democrats. Does this make him vulnerable?

UPDATE: A source has indicated Berding is being unindorsed because he sided with Melanie Bates against the IBEW contract w/ CPS.

Does Jean Schmidt Agree?

In this You-Tube video from the Tea Bagger Rally on Saturday at the VOA, Congresswoman Jean Schmidt from the Ohio 2nd appears to agree with a "Birther" claiming that President Obama was not born in the USA, and not eligible to be President.
It is not 100% conclusive what she is doing, but Think Progress reports this is not the first time she's what I might call placated a "Birther." If she's just telling this crazy person what they want to hear, just to shut them up, I can understand the idea behind that, but it is not a good one. If a person is nuts or so emotionally out of control as to not be able to think clearly, having a congressman validate their delusions just makes their condition worse. If that is what Schmidt is doing, then she should be ashamed. If she actually does agree with the "Birthers," then she is mentally deficient.

The Return of Neon's

Kevin LeMaster has a really good story about efforts to reopen Neon's in the Main Street area. One of the coolest looking bars around, Neon's was a sad place to see close. The concept behind the new place sounds very reasonable. It doesn't look to be a hot club, it seeks to be a neighborhood bar that has a unique take on what a bar is. It seems to be more like a space that sells beer and wine. It will take a while to get the place open again, they are shooting for next Bockfest, so don't rush over to the 12th Street location just yet.

Disparate Treatment?

Two days before the 2004 general election, President George W. Bush came to Cincinnati and held a campaign rally at Great American Ballpark. His address to the crowd was carried live in primetime by all of Cincinnati's local news channels, preempting network programming. The event was nothing short of a free infomercial in the heart of a "battleground" state just before Election Day.

Today, President Barack Obama came to Cincinnati and addressed a crowd at Coney Island. Given that even the mid-term elections are over a year a way, it's hard to describe the speech as a campaign event. Instead, it was a presidential address, delivered on a national holiday in Cincinnati. This time, though, only channel 19 carried the speech live. Other channels decided that Montel outranks the president, and declined to break into their weekday programming.

It's just despicable how "in the bag" for Obama the media is, isn't it?

Lactating Women Need Not Apply

Jill's comment a few posts below reminds me that I'd intended to discuss the Ohio Supreme Court's appalling decision in Allen v. totes/Isotoner. (By the way, if you're not reading Jill's blog, you should be--although she's on hiatus until after Election Day, as she's busy running for Pepper Pike City Council.) In its opinion, of which no member of our highest court was willing to claim authorship, a three-member plurality found that an employer could lawfully fire a lactating mother because she took extra bathroom breaks in order to pump her breasts. Two members of the court went a step further, writing that post-pregnancy lactation isn't really related to pregnancy, and thus not covered under Ohio's Pregnancy Discrimination Act.

The decision is now two weeks old, so I'm not sure my own discussion would advance much debate. So instead, go read Jill's excellent posts (here and here) on the decision. I'll just add this: each time we insist that a judicial candidate prove his or her allegiance to "pro-business" interest groups, we demand opinions like the one our court handed us in toner/Isotoner. This is the quintessential "pro-business" opinion, in that it expands an employer's power to fire an employee at the expense of Ohioans' civil rights. It's a stark reminder that "pro-business" isn't always good for Ohio. (To be clear: I'm not implying that any of our Supreme Court justices are inherently biased or unfair to litigants. But when we're willing to accept only a narrow range of credentials for our successful candidates, we wind up with a narrow range of viewpoints on our courts.)

Union Concession Issue Isn't Straightforward

Things on Plum Street have gotten uglier, and they're not going to get better as the campaign season really heats up. But somehow, Council has to begin to work together once again. In all likelihood, 8 of the 9 current members will be responsible for next year's budget. They need to find a way to have a budget process that isn't as driven by rancor as has been present in Council chambers over the past three months. Part of doing that requires that Council actually discuss, in open session, the issues impacting the City.

There's plenty of blame to heap on both the majority and the minority on Council as to how we've gotten to where we are: a last minute hail mary effort to save jobs for the rest of the year. No matter how we got there, the FOP, AFSCME, and CODE now face a difficult dilemna. Do they give up money (for the FOP, a little more than a day's pay each month for the rest of the year) to save jobs this year, but with no promises for 2010?

The FOP is certainly not the first union being asked to make concessions in this economy. A friend who works in the aviation industry recently reminded me of the deep, deep concessions Comair pilots have made over the last few years in order to preserve jobs. But usually, when a union gives up something it bargained for, it does so with some assurance of medium- or long-term job preservation. Here, the City has made explicit that there are no guarantees for next year. And I wonder: if a school board were threatening to fire ten percent of its teachers if the union didn't agree to a pay cut of roughly 4-5 percent for four months, would we on the left be demonizing the teachers' union for its reluctance to agree to the extent the left is demonizing the FOP? I doubt it.

I had hoped Council would find some cuts to fill the gaps in the 2009 budget, and then go to the unions for concessions--perhaps much more significant than those currently sought--as part of the 2010 budget process, as the unions would then have some assurance of lengthier job security. That didn't happen. So the FOP will have to decide how much value it places on its newest members. No doubt some members would benefit financially from the concessions. I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect that some of the sergeants being displaced to patrol by the layoffs would lose less money by giving up 4.6 days' pay than they would by accepting a lesser-paying position. And hopefully, the FOP, AFSCME, and CODE can set aside the bitter taste the process has left and recognize that Council has, in the end, significantly reduced the concessions originally sought and found money elsewhere for the unions' members' salaries.

As Council approaches the 2010 budget process, its individual members will have to strive to be more understanding and more cooperative. In particular, a couple members of Council can--and must--do better than they have the last few months. Chris Monzel's fear-mongering (and perhaps race-baiting) press release early this week was regrettable; using the injury and death of citizens to advance a political agenda is simply unacceptable. And Greg Harris's role on Council has been surprisingly disappointing. When he was appointed, most young professionals were excited. We saw him as a problem-solver, someone who, having come from outside the political establishment, would be a leader on Council and above politics-as-usual. Right now, sadly, he acting as a recalcitrant hard-liner more devoted to party than principle. That may be a way to raise campaign money, but it's not any way to govern a city.

Once the ballots are counted in November for City Council, let's all promise to do all we can to force the seemingly broken Council to come together to work for the common good.

Courthouse Plaza Solution

Over the last month, we've been hearing about the increased number of homeless people sleeping out on the courthouse steps, and the mess that this is creating because some of them urinate on the plaza overnight.

Introducing: the pop-up urinal. Believe it or not, the "urilift" is a device (now deployed by a few European cities) that rest in the ground during the day, but pop up at night for those who can't find a public restroom.

Yes, of course I realize that neither the County nor the City has the money to spend on these right now. (Perhaps, though, the Urilift Company might like to donate one or two in order start attracting business from American cities.)

Initially, I was concerned that installation of these would pose an equal protection issue (can the County supply a restroom facility for men but not women?). Apparently, though, Urilift has resolved this problem by introducing the Urigienic:

I call upon Urilift to supply the County or the City with a couple of these devices at no cost in exchange for testimonials from our public officials to other American cities. It could be a great partnership!

Important Ohio Criminal Justice Bill

As this article by Sharon Coolidge explains, an important bill has passed the Ohio Senate, has the support of Governor Strickland, and is now pending before the House. The proposed law, S.B. 77, contains several important reforms for Ohio's criminal justice system. The article focuses on a provision that raises the ire of some of my colleagues, which mandates DNA samples to be taken from all people arrested for a felony. Currently, Ohio law permits DNA collection only upon conviction of a felony. Federal law already requires this for those arrested for federal offenses, but requires the DNA sample to be destroyed if a conviction is not obtained. I've not heard a good answer as to how the Ohio bill handles an acquittal. (Even if the specimen itself is destroyed, the record of it could remain in CODIS, the national DNA database, without a procedure in place to retract it.)

For me, though, there are three other, much more important provisions of the bill (mentioned in the article, but not given enough attention). These would require:

• that all police interrogations be recorded from beginning to end;
• that DNA evidence in violent crimes be preserved even after conviction and that more convicted persons have access to DNA testing; and
• that when line-ups are performed, they are done in a "double-blind" manner, in which the police officer who conducts the lineup does not know who the suspect is.

The interrogation provision is the one that faces the strongest opposition by police and prosecutors' associations. But ultimately, it will prove beneficial to law enforcement. About a year ago on a trip to Chicago, I met a Chicago homicide detective. His department had recently begun taping all suspect interviews, and he explained that it was making his job easier, not harder. He no longer had to worry about a defense attorney insinuating that a confession was coerced or obtained in violation of a suspect's rights. Motions to suppress (a procedural device to prevent the use of an illegally obtained confession) were much less likely to succeed. The tapes proved what police have always contended, the detective said: in the vast majority of cases, the police do things correctly and legally. (I tended to agree with the detective on this.) For more on this topic, check out this report, Police Experiences with Recording Custodial Interrogations.

The identification procedures mandated by the bill are also quite important. Over the last several years, a significant body of scientific literature has arisen regarding the inherent unreliability of eyewitness testimony. The double-blind procedure will help to ensure that line-ups are done in a manner that ensures the greatest possible degree of accuracy.

Republican State Senator Bill Seitz (of Green Township) has been a prominent supporter (and sponsor) of the legislation. On many issues, I often find disagreement with Senator Seitz. But--particularly over the last year--he had an extremely thoughtful voice on criminal justice issues and has been an important leader for crucial reforms in that area.

Riverfest Etiquette

Had I not gone to law school, I likely would have pursued a Ph.D. in sociology (or perhaps in economics, which over the last ten years seems to have expanded to areas that were previously thought to belong to sociology). And if I had pursued that alternate path, I'd likely do some writing on the fascinating issue of space reservation for Riverfest fireworks watching.

The fireworks aren't set to begin until Sunday evening, but since early this morning, people have been staking out their spots along the Serpentine Wall, as well as on the grass atop the Newport levee. As you can see from the pictures, people simply put down tarps (usually secured by duct tape) and leave. The people who leave their tarps make no effort to guard their spot or stay with their claimed space, but instead seem to just trust that they can return tomorrow to watch the fireworks.

This situation presents a departure from the rules governing any other situation I know of in which people wait for a particular event. For instance, when people want to buy tickets to a sporting event or concert, they can't merely show up in line, claim a number, and leave until a few minutes before the ticket window opens. (Yes, I realize that the internet has drastically reduced the camp-out-overnight-for-tickets phenomenon.) People hoping to cash in on limited-supply sales events on "Black Friday" (the day after Thanksgiving) have to physically hold their spot. Golfers hoping to play the famous Bethpage Black course without a reservation subject themselves to a complex set of rules as they wait one or more nights in the course parking lot. And a few years ago when I watched the fireworks from the observation deck of the Empire State Building on the Fourth of July (truly a fabulous experience), we had to stand in our spaces for over five hours; we didn't dare to even take a bathroom break for fear that our group would be forever separated.

So I'm curious: how has the Riverfest tradition developed? Why is it so polite--and, frankly, so easy? What prevents an unscrupulous (or perhaps just eager) fireworks watcher from removing someone else's unguarded tarp and claiming a spot of earth for themselves?

Enjoy the fireworks, everybody. And if you're going to drink down there, have a designated driver or catch a cab.

Miami (OH) vs. Kentucky

About an hour from now, Miami will take on Kentucky at Paul Brown Stadium. There's a good chance that those who attend the game will see the highest quality football to be played at PBS over the next three months. While I'm not going, as a UC fan, I've been trying to figure out who I'd prefer to win.

My inclination is to cheer for Miami. We should support our fellow Ohio schools when possible, right? And perhaps if Miami's season starts strong, UC's BCS standings will be boosted when they trounce the Redhawks on October 3rd. But, still, it's Miami! J. Crew U. Can I really root for that?

On the other hand, certainly I'm not the only downtown resident to be offended by the putrid shade of blue that's invaded our streets over the last couple of days. And Kentucky is an SEC team; no self-respecting Ohioan should cheer on a team from that conference.

I think I'm going to review the rules of the game: is there any way that both teams can lose?

WOW! That Sums It Up

A Christian Moerlein Microbrewery and beer garden at The Banks is a brilliant idea and provides two great elements: something unique and vibrant as well as something the suburbanites will flock to before and after Reds games. I wonder how many of them will know the history of the name and understand it is local? This is a place I will enjoy and I am really congratulate the City and Moerlein CEO Greg Hardman for coming up with a great idea.

Today We Settle All Family Business

Today there will be three council meetings and a deal is close with City Unions. Assuming we get the legal ruling on the Layoffs as well, everything could come together by the end of the day, except for the unions getting formal approval of any concessions.

This is the day to stay out of the way. I would not want to be Ghiz, Berding, or Monzel today. I think the GodfatherMayor may have a few questions for them before he sends them off to Las Vegas with Clemenza.

It is fun when life imitates art.

Local Blogger Exposed By John Matarese!

Well, not really. But I'm pretty sure I saw Kate the Great on the news last night. Matarese did a piece on how the United Way uses donations. (It's a very favorable piece, without even a hint of a scandal; Matarese must be losing his touch.) Katy was United Way's spokesperson for the story.

The WCPO story is online here. And if you've got a few extra bucks, make a donation. (Maybe they'll give Katy a raise!)