Saturday, December 31, 2016

End of the Year

This has not been a great year in politics, overall.  Locally the Democrats actually made some forward strides in Hamilton County, but not much else looked good in Ohio.  2017 is setting up to be a really tough year.  A nasty mayoral race is coming and the knives are already out.  Expect them to just keep slicing.

I may slice a piece off myself here and there.

Council races should be interesting.  There are many new and old names coming back on the Dem side, but the GOP has been very silent.  Other than the expected Smitherman endorsement, I don't hear of any credible candidates they are putting forward.  The Dems stand a fair chance of getting a veto proof majority on council.

With our country about to led by someone who won an incredibly close race by using neo-fascist positions, we are heading into uncharted territory.  We need local officials and candidates to step up and not let the hateful rhetoric from the national GOP filter down. I fear that we may be too late.  With the tone we got from Hamilton County Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou upon his vote in the Electoral College and the insanity from Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones after burning protest letters on his EC vote, I think we are in for the stank of Trumpism to creep into local politics.  We'll know people go off the deep end if illegal immigration becomes an issue in Cincinnati elections. Hold on tight.  It will get bumpy.

Monday, November 21, 2016

Is the Enquirer's Jason Williams Trolling for Clicks?

Why does the Enquirer and particularly reporter Jason Williams continue to report every possible Streetcar accident like its a scandal? The incident they cite ended up not even being an accident.

The amount of time Williams puts into this can logically only be for one reason: get clicks. He knows the hate that exists for the streetcar and Downtown and he's capitalizing on that hate.  He is ginning up any and all incidents, no matter how trivial, so his click rate goes up.

Reporters now have to worry about readership levels, or the number of clicks their stories get online. Streetcar stories are low hanging fruit. There are 100 other more real newsworthy stories to write about in this city, but we get Streetcar accidents. The funniest part is that this was put in the politics section! It's like they are admitting to why they are doing it, but still do it.

This is they type of journalism that is killing discourse and politics. This misinforms the public. This is knowingly misleading the public. If fender benders mattered, there would be a rolling news-wire service dedicated to them, since they happen somewhere practically constantly. We are in another election season and the click rates matter and the political candidates reporters are rooting for are less hidden.

Monday, November 07, 2016

Where are the Election Night Parties?

As if you need any additional reason to drink this election season, there are still the time honored tradition of the Election Night parties.  This year I am sure they will have the high bar tabs in recent memory for all parties.

Here are those known:

Democratic Party: Lachey's in OTR
Republican Party: Horse & Barell in Downtown
Green Party: Boswell's in Northside
Libertarian Party: Firehouse Grill in Blue Ash


If you want something really cool and different and filled with humor and booze, check out the Know Theatre's DEMOCRACY, YEAH! YEAH! starting at 7PM.
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In Person Early Voting Up Over 11% in Hamilton County

The Cincinnati Enquirer is reporting that in person early voting is up 11.11% this year over 2012 through Sunday, with 1 more partial day of early voting to go. This occurred even with the shorted period of early voting this year, thanks to the efforts of the GOP to suppress the vote. It is great that people have taken the time to vote and made it clear that the need for more early voting is there. Waiting in line for nearly three hours to vote is just ludicrous. Ohio and the whole county needs to overhaul our election processes. We need to make voting easier and get turnout as close to 100% as possible.

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

Enquirer Now Using Outsourced Reporters

In a non-surprising move, the Enquirer is using outsourced (duplicated) news reports from FOX19. Here's the latest example.  The Enquirer lists footer calling FOX19 a "media partner."  To be fair, the Enquirer is listing it as part of the by-line.  This time around that was especially helpful to news junkies like me who were confused to read Jennifer Baker's name as reporter on the Enquirer article, but the FOX19 after it does make it more noticeable.  Jennifer Baker is a former Enquirer reporter who now is a reporter for FOX19.  It was going to be surprising to see her return after another round of layoffs just occurred with Gannett.

Tuesday, July 05, 2016

Anti-Clinton Bias From the Enquirer

If you squint you might see something other than Republican Propaganda in this biased article on the Enquirer's website.  When an article has the headline "Local reaction to the FBI's investigation into Clinton's emails," but goes on to list multiple tweets from Trump as examples of those local reactions, you can see the carelessness from a mile away. It is like this reporter is trying out for a job running the website for a conservative talk radio station. Give him the job and get a real journalist instead.

Monday, July 04, 2016

Happy Fourth of July!

Hope you have a safe and mindful holiday. Today is the day we should be thinking about why this country was founded, but also how we can make it better for everyone.

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Trump Twitter Account Author Lying about West Chester Rally

The person running the Trump Twitter account is lying, and the Kaiser is still dead:

The facts: For unconfirmed reasons, the Trump Campaign on Friday evening announced to the media that the rally they were to hold Sunday at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Downtown Cincinnati was cancelled. This happened just before the event in Chicago with the protesters was cancelled. On Saturday morning the Trump campaign announced they were holding an event on Sunday in West Chester, Ohio, an exurb of Cincinnati. The media did nothing but report the event. The event in Cincinnati was cancelled, one is West Chester was added. The Report from the Enquirer.

The real story here is that Trump went from an urban core setting for a rally, like the one in Chicago last night, to one of the most Republican friendly areas of the state. Fear of the 'leftist' protesters must be that great for him to up and move his rally to John Boehner's back yard. Butler County Sheriff and anti-Mexican racist Richard Jones is reportedly set to speak at the Trump event. So Eric Deters and Dick Jones are backing Trump. Who could have possibly guessed that would happen.

Here's how you get tickets to the rally in West Chester.  If you go, please be peaceful.

Thursday, March 03, 2016

Trump's Fascist Follower Matthew Heimbach Not Registered to Vote in HC

The racist thug who 'allegedly' attached a protester at a Trump Rally in Louisville this week is not not listed on the voter registration list for Hamilton County. That means he does not live in Cincinnati or has not bothered to register to vote in Hamilton County. According to a Facebook search he also goes by"Matthew-John Heimbach," but there is no name close to any combination listed on the registration list. This thug, who at best could be described as an asshat, deserves to be prosecuted to fullest extent of the law. I shall not lose a wink of sleep over any heavy fines or civil lawsuits he or Donald Trump face. This type of person does not respect the rule of law and therefore has no place in our society.

Wednesday, November 04, 2015

No On Issue 22 Got More Votes than Cranley For Mayor

The Mayor John Cranley scheme to create a political slush fund went down in defeat last night. To add an additional insult to the Mayor, more people voted against the Mayor's pet issue (34,246), than voted for the Mayor two years ago, (33,428). The voter turnout was higher this year as well. The vote totals for the 2013 race are official, but the No on 22 votes is unofficial and based on not having any provisional votes included, therefore that number should only go up.

Cranley will need to work on getting his GOP vote back for 2017, since he lost that this round.  I think this should remove the last sliver of faux doubt from the Cranley backers claiming he didn't win in 2013 on backs of the GOP voters.

Other than John Cranley, the other big local loser was the Hamilton County Board of Elections. They did not have their act together and that forced a local judge to order the polls stay open an additional 90 minutes.  New technology is never something to not promote to the public.  I had no idea the process changed, and I do honestly pay pretty close attention to such things.  The Local media didn't seem to have that story either.  Our voting process needs a big change.  It won't get that until the state stops being controlled by Republicans bent on voter suppression.

Thursday, October 08, 2015

Cranley Gets the Enquirer to Edit Article

Not a big surprise, but Mayor John Cranley was able to get the Enquirer to pull and edit a story that he initially refused to provide a comment. The article makes this admission subtlety:
Cranley, who initially declined comment but reversed course after an unedited version of this story was inadvertenly (sic) posted Sunday to Cincinnati.com, said he had nothing to do with Harris’ exit or the board appointments.
The article was originally published on Saturday and was back up yesterday after his and the City Manager Black's comments and B.S. denials. It was also conveniently  after the Mayor's awkward State of City infomercial (Cranleymerical?). We don't know how the Mayor's office was able to convince Editors at the Enquirer to make this change, but it happened in a very public and embarrassing way.

Cranley is clearly LYING when he told the Enquirer he had "nothing to do with Harris’ exit or the board appointments." We know this because of who was picked for the board. To say that those were the best choices to serve on a the Historic Conservation Board is something that would ONLY be stated by the Mayor or a member of his staff. You don't get that many Cranley donors together in one place via natural selection. Due to his legal training, Cranley likely has no email trail to Black telling him what to do, but how often do the men hold meetings or phone calls? If they do it often, which I am sure they do, why else would they be doing that if it was not a means for Cranley to tell Black what he wants done on every significant issue put before Black.  We have Mayor who is knowingly overstepping his limited power as Mayor and a City Manager who is so fearful of losing his job that he does what ever the Mayor says, even though he's not his boss.  We have dysfunctional leadership at City Hall and a fractured City Council that can't get six members to consistently stand against the Mayor's over-reaching. Mann and Flynn need to step up and stop walking the fence.

Cranley is a politician and knows how to tell a lie that won't get him into legal trouble. The more Cranley acts as Mayor the more lies we get and the worse our city becomes.

Wednesday, October 07, 2015

FOP Payoffs? More OT and Electronic Paperwork?

City Manager Black's has put out a loose outline of how he would spend the budget surplus. Surprisingly it has 500K for more police OT and 2 Million so cops can sit in their cruisers and do paperwork on their computers.

His plan has nothing that address's the Mayor's plan to get 10,000 kids out of poverty. So, that effort is off to the expected lack of a start.

Yvette Simpson Column Cleary Demonstrates Cranley's Hollow Plan

Cincinnati Council member Yevette Simpson demonstrated she understands the issues facing the city and shows up Mayor Cranley for his failure to effectively communicate what needs to happen and what is happening in this city. We have a Mayor who lacks credibility, but more importantly lacks any real vision to achieve a goal. He called for bringing 10,000 children in Cincinnati out of poverty in Five years, but his only action to move that forward is to create a meaningless commission to deal with it. Yes, a commission. We all know what that means in political speak: do nothing. To be fair the commission does have a purpose: to make those on it look like they are doing something WITHOUT having to actually do anything to help get children out of poverty.

Let's do some math. So 5 years is 260 weeks. That means Cranley needs to average getting 38.41 kids out of poverty in Cincinnati per week to meet his self imposed goal. While that is a noble idea, it is not something he has shown he has any intention of making happen, let alone proposing any policies that could make it happen. If he has those policies in mind, he might have at least shared some that could actually work and get support from City council. It's not like he can do this all by his lonesome, unless he's planning on using his Issue 22 slush fund to actually funnel money to something other than the parks.  It's not like Issue 22 cold stop that from happening.

To help keep him focused on his goal. I suggest we keep a weekly count. The local media should set up a day, say next Monday, one week after Cranley's speech, and ask him or his staff how many kids his policies have gotten out of poverty. Anything below 38 means he's behind on his goal.

I think we all know this is Bullshit from Cranley and we know this because of the lack of plans to use the Budget surplus (created by the vibrant city we are thanks to efforts of the Eight years prior to Cranley getting into office) to meet the goals. Where is the plan to put that surplus into job programs or other assistance for poor families? Assuming that is really Cranley's goal. In order to get a kid out of poverty, you actually have to get the parents out of poverty too. So I guess that raises the number of 10,000 a bit. So let's say it doubles it (accounting for multi-kid and single parents), so that means 20,000 people need to be out of poverty for Cranley to make his goal. So instead of 38.41 per week, we're now up to 76.92. 77 people per week need to be out of poverty to make the Five year goal. This can be done, but it takes someone with the actual will to make it happen, not just pretending to make it happen.

I wonder how many journalists are willing to question the Mayor on this an actually HOLD HIM ACCOUNTABLE. It won't take much money, it will just take someone sending an email and then publishing the response to the email on a mainstream media outlet. Here's an example email:
Dear Mr. Mayor,


As per you goal to get 10,000 kids out of poverty in five years, which really means getting 20,000 people out of poverty, you would need to average about 77 per week. Please provide me the number of people who got out of poverty over the last seven days and document how your policies achieved that act.


Sincerely,


Cincinnati Reporter
Now I am sure that crack staff at the Mayor's office will have those numbers at their finger tips and this plucky reporter will be able to get the facts reported before the end of the day on Monday. Then that same reporter could repeat this act every day for the next 259 weeks or until the running total exceeds 20,000!


Yes, I jest. Yes, I know the media won't do this. They won't do it because the Mayor's office won't have an answer. The question is how often will the media remind the public what the Mayor pledged to do? Will the Enquirer hold Cranley's feet tot he fire? It is the perfect type of conflict. It is an objective (mostly) race for them to cover. As long as they make Cranley prove his numbers, they can watch the number grow and have a horse race (of sorts) to cover.

That assumes the Enquirer actually covers the coming Mayor's race. They have gotten a bye this year, when we should have a council election, except for the foolish four year term fiasco. Since they have off time, they should start the Cranley poverty Tote-Board. Maybe get the Mayor to put it on Fountain Square. We can all watch the number grow over the next couple years like an extended-acid-induced Labor Day Telethon. Or maybe not.

I would prefer hearing more from Yvette Simpson. She is showing that she has the skills, temperament, and honesty to lead this City. I hope she considers challenging Cranley. We need 20,000 fewer people in poverty, but it will take more people like her in office, the Mayor's office, to make that possible.

Saturday, October 03, 2015

Luken and Cranley Appear to Be Chicken

Charlie Luken has bowed out of the debate on October 12th on Issue 22, an amendment to the City Charter giving the Mayor a huge slush fund to help buy votes from a few key neighborhood leaders in hopes of getting elected in 2017. Luken, political mentor and co-destroyer of city finances with John Cranley, was replacing Cranley who refused to debate unless his diva-style debate riders were met. I guess his need for only blue M&Ms and Miller Lite in only cans can be a tough request to fulfill.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Enquirer Demonstrates Bias or Laziness?

In their article this week, discussing who may run for the GOP nomination to fill Boehner's seat, the Enquirer made the choice to outright declare the GOP to be the winners of the special election not even scheduled yet.

It is true that Boehner's district is heavily Republican. It would have been fair opinion journalism to focus on the GOP and state that Dems are unlikely to win. This article is trying to be a straight news story, but failed.  It just skiped over the Democratic party. It was as if they didn't bother to call anyone and picked the least flattering email reference they could find, 'surely' by chance.

It's not like a different Ohio newspaper hundreds of miles away didn't get a hold of Cincinnatian David Pepper, the Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. I wonder if anyone from the Enquirer even tried to call him or the other possible local Dem candidates.

Instead we get a poll that states "Who Will Replace John Boehner?" and below it we read the long list of Republicans. I guess the Enquirer will decide all elections this way? They won't bother to list anyone who they judge has no chance to win, unless they are a Republican, because they need to save time for articles about the sister of soon-to-be former Speaker of the House.

So, biased or just laziness.  I am thinking both.

Friday, September 25, 2015

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Truth About the Mayor of Cincinnati

WCPO's Kevin Necessary has a cartoon that sums up a big problem with the Mayor of Cincinnati.

Please note that is no the only problem with the Mayor, just one of many.