E-mails between mayor and monitor
I am not sure what to make of this. It is more entertainment than informative. It does provide an overall frame of the relationship between Luken and Kalmanoff. I would share Lukens luke warm and later harsh actions towards Kalmanoff. Based solely on these emails, and other published accounts, it would appear that Kalmanoff put forth little effort to work within he city. He instead came at the city very nonchalantly, charging the city money to talk to the media. Kalmanoff did not even say much of anything of value to the media, so did the city pay him money to create his own positive PR? The selection of this man as monitor appears to have been a mistake, but who is to say anyone else would be better. This position is one prime for making a buck at taxpayer expense. I applaud Luken for growing a pair and standing up to what looks to be a dog and pony show hack, looking to monitor the city out of millions of dollars. Demanding a new monitor sounds like a reasonable action for the city to take. I am sure the chicken-littles and boycott bigots will call into the Buzz and claim Luken is a out to destroy the collaborative. I hope Chaz will ignore their knee-jerk race baiting rants and continue standing up to a monitor looking for PR and a payday.
UPDATE: The Post's Take.

Light-rail plan hits a wall of resistance
Well, I for one hope that I will not being living in this city in 20 years. The city will either be dead, or a parking lot.

It looks like all of the Issues in the City went down, except Issue 8, which kills campaign finance reform in the City.

Brinkman has won. The Caveman liveth.

Get Out There and Vote!

Enquirer and Post Endorsements: Something is Missing
Please compare these two slates of endorsements from the Post & KY Post and the Enquirer.

What is missing from the Enquirer's endorsements? Can we say Ohio Assembly House District 34? What they hell is the Enquirer smoking? Tom Brinkman the incumbent caveman conservative, as the Post puts it, against Dave Schaff. The Post picks Schaff, but the Enquirer makes no mention of this race. Last I checked this district not only includes part of the city of Cincinnati, including Mt. Lookout and Mt. Washington, but it includes Anderson Township. In fact the entire district is in Hamilton County. The Enquirer also ignored districts 29 and 30, which also are located in Hamilton county. Here is a graphic the Post was nice enough to include in its opinion page:



Are these races just non-issues for the Mighty Enquirer? Do they want to depress turnout and help the incumbents? Are they lazy asses? Or are they just inept? Who takes the blame for this Wells? Bushee? Or Whipple? It is bad enough they don't put their Editorial Page on the web; can't they at least complete the simple task of picking all of the political races from their home county? In 2000 the Enquirer Endorced Brinkman, why are they not now? If this right wing extremist hell bent on recreating the old west here in Ohio was their man back in 2000, why not speak up about it now?

GOP Robot Telemarketers
On Friday I got a voice-mail at home from Bob Taft. Tonight I got a phone call from a fast talking George Bush, who barely sounded like George Bush "asking" me to support Republicans, but the taking the cake if the phone call from Steve Chabot on Saturday. Chabot's record phone spam also asked me to vote for him. That is all fine and dandy if I was a Republican, but not only am I not a GOPher, I do not live in his congressional district. I know they changed his district on him this time, but I was not in his district in 2000 either, nor any election since I moved to Cincinnati in 1994. Since I am not registered with either party I also have not received any candidate mailings, only Issue mailings.