Creative Dems

Kudos for National Dems for not letting a Republican run company from halting their political action. Schmidt must go!

Oh, also when you think Lamar is not Republican run, why was this billboard allowed to go up and not the anti-Schmidt one?

Voter ID Proposal

Of those who are pushing to require ID to vote, who is against either a National ID card and more importantly automatic voter registration when you get your driver's license or state ID? If they are, then it is clear they are all about keeping certain voters from voting.

Automatic registration would work wonderfully. You would be forced to ask to not be registered to vote, kind of negative registration. Additionally, you would be allowed to vote where you are registered inside the state, if you have your ID. This would increase the registration rolls and any fraud could be easily traced via the state BMV database. Adding this type of provision is the only fair way to use ID in the voting process. Without it and it is unfair.

It is clearly an attempt by the GOP to keep poor people and more importantly minorities from voting. It is a GOP tactic to reduce voting. The CW is that the lower the turnout, the better the GOP does. It is very sad that the GOP is forced to do this, but no surprising. What I want to know, how many voter fraud cases have been prosecuted in the last year? How much evidence of fraud exists? If it exists now, why is it not prosecuted? The likely reason is that there are "things" happening that no one wants to prosecute, because some of their friends my get fined and kicked out of politics. Those instances are more of a wife' tale, but it is great way for the GOP to hit the Democratic base via the back door of race/nationality, without having to overtly appear to be bigoted.

More Banks Fallout

The Enquirer hits the Banks story hard. They add in an editorial and Borgman Cartoon.

The deal appears to the media to be deader than Mike Allen's political career.

Bronson?

This column appears to be written by Peter Bronson. It is recycled information, which sounds like Bronson, but it generally has a positive tone about the city, so one must wonder who actually wrote this column.

MIAMI Hockey #2

Love and honor to Miami,
Our college old and grand,
Proudly we shall ever hail thee,
Over all the land.

Alma mater now we praise thee,
Sing joyfully this lay,
Love and honor to Miami,
Forever and a day.

RedHawks jump to No. 2 ranking (Again in the Enquirer, and yesterday it was an update during the day, again WOW!)

As the Council Turns

For those of you who can't get enough of the Mallory-Crowley kerkuffel (and there are clearly a few of you die-hards who keep posting on this dying warhorse of a story), Korte has posted his (hopefully) final word on the whole fiasco. Korte's two questions are:

1. How is this a report if they didn't really meet?
2. On the document, Crowley's name has been added after the fact to the signatory list. Of course, he's also listed as being vice-chair on page three, which makes it look like they just added page 4 to the revised list.

Answer to 1: Don't think of it as a report; it's a motion to council on committees. In the Rules of Council, the mayor appoints chairs, but the council votes on committee members and vice-chairs. So, what this is is a full slate of members for all the positions that will presumably be approved by a voice vote at council. (Since we were not at the first meeting, it would seem based on press reports that the only votes were on Tarbell as vice-mayor and Cole as president pro tem. What does the president pro tem do, you ask? Not much, honestly, but she's third in line to the Big Chair... If this is the case, the committees get approved at the next meeting. If you were there, say something in comments.) Is it a violation of sunshine laws? Not as long as you think of it as a motion, not as a report. After all, if all the assumptions are correct, and Council has yet to appoint the committee, then Rules Committee doesn't exist right now; therefore, this isn't a report and can't be a report. Instead, it's a motion that can (and will) be passed by Council at next meeting (presumably, after asking consent to suspend the rules and vote immediately on the motion), along with the new rules.

Answer to 2: Who cares, really? If it makes this story go away faster, then wonderful. (If it's a lousy story, then why are we writing about it? Why not? That's what blogs are for, right?)

Also, there's one thing that Korte doesn't call out--on the "report", Crowley is listed as vice-chair of both Neighborhoods and Health/Education/Recreation on the PDF of the report.

After all Crowley's email supposedly read:

I learned tonight that Mayor-Elect Mark Mallory choose not to give me a chairmanship position on ANY City Council Committee for the term starting tomorrow. In fact, Mallory did not even recommend me for the vice-chair position of the committee I currently chair.

Read the whole "report" if you're interested in how the committees break down.

Cranley Making News, Already

One place Steve Chabot is going to really suffer is John Cranley's ability to make the newspaper constantly where he can drop moderate or even quasi-conservative viewpoints like this:

"We need a real energy policy to make us independent of Middle Eastern oil. We need to bring the deficit down and not give corporate welfare to oil companies making record-high profits. We need to improve our homeland security.

"None of this is being done four years after 9-11. That really is the fault of Congress and needs to be changed. Steve Chabot is part of the program - the things that John McCain talked about. He has gone along with the program."

Chabot is going to need to be back in town all the time. Cranley can just be Councilman, doing something for the community, while we never hear Chabot's name. Cranley needs to stay away from any negative city story, but be out in front of every other city story. He then needs to find a way to break deeper into the West side and Butler County. The formula exists, he just needs to find out what it is, and replicate it.