Porkopolis

So Long and Thanks for All the Cliches

I have a drawer full of them — unused cliches and extra commas, too. Greg's favorite job as an editor, aside from removing more than half the commas in anything I write, is killing cliches. "Death to all cliches" will probably be on his tombstone. I know he’d make it his license plate if he could, maybe a bumper sticker to go next to "Compassion, the Radicalism of our Age."

That's only one of thousands of things I learned from my boss in the three years I've written for CityBeat. I started as a freelancer and then joined the staff just over two years ago when he took a chance on a rookie. The most important things he taught me aren't in a book; they came from 16 years of experience as a reporter and over seven years as an editor:

Rumors About 'New Deal' Proliferate

Area political wonks have floated some interesting theories in light of the outrage about a deal cut by Democratic and Republican party chairs to quash competition in this fall’s races for the Hamilton County Board of Commissioners.

Alas, the subjects of the two most prevalent rumors — Jim Tarbell and Ed Rothenberg — say there’s little credence to them.

Under the deal, the Democratic Party promised not to run a candidate against Republican candidate Greg Hartmann and persuaded a potential challenger to drop out of that county commission race. In return, the local GOP wouldn’t endorse any candidate who challenged incumbent Democrat Todd Portune in a separate commission race.

 

Bush's (Latest) Power Grab

With less than a year left in office, many people on both the political right and left would prefer to ignore President Bush as irrelevant, but a little-reported action taken Tuesday by the decider-in-chief should cause Congress to prepare for a constitutional showdown.

Bush took pen to paper and issued another of his notorious signing statements, this time indicating he believes provisions of the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act interfere with his presidential powers and he reserves the right to ignore them. The most significant provision of the law Bush plans to discard is a prohibition to fund permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq.

Islamophobia: A Panel Discussion

Trying to combat the ignorance and narrow-minded perspectives that irrational fear inspire is the goal of "Beyond Stereotypes: Islamophobia and the War on Terror." The free event, sponsored by the Cincinnati chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OH) at Xavier University, will be a panel discussion from 3-5 p.m. Feb. 3.

The community is invited to "discuss attitudes about Islam and how these may be shaped by media images, political statements and other factors including the actions of extremists."

One of a series of discussions around the United States focusing on fear and hatred of Islam and Muslims, this is an opportunity for Cincinnatians to hear from some experts in this area:

Do Parking Tickets Unfairly Burden the Poor?

A Clifton resident is upset with the brusque treatment he received from Cincinnati Mayor Mark Mallory’s staff, saying it shows the office doesn’t care about the city’s system for parking tickets that he believes is inherently unfair to poorer residents.

James T. Vincent wrote Mallory Jan. 22 to complain about how University of Cincinnati students often use all of the free parking on side streets in his neighborhood, which requires some residents to use metered parking. As a result, the residents get tickets if they don’t feed their meters in a timely fashion.

Vincent wrote that it’s unfair that fees for parking citations are doubled if they’re not paid within seven days.

“I feel it is unjust to make residents pay fines seven days after the ticket was given,” he wrote. “This allows the rich to pay less for parking fines. Someone with a low level of income cannot pay the fines in that short of time. Please change this double fine and allow people a fair amount of time to pay their fines. This is only fair.”

Rights Worth Defending

You know those things the government is charged with protecting but tries to convince us are irrelevant when it's inconvenient so that they can do things like wiretap telephones without a warrant — stuff like civil and political rights, freedom of expression, equality before the law, the right to work and the right to education, just to name a few?

Ohioans to Stop Executions (OTSE) and Amnesty International want you to know what human rights are and why they're worth defending, so they’re hosting a conference from 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Feb. 2 in Columbus. The conference will offer workshops on pressing human rights issues such as the situation in Darfur, human trafficking, the death penalty and others. OTSE is offering a workshop on how to talk about the death penalty.

They're Firefighters — Not Janitors

Some Cincinnati firefighters are complaining that they've been called in to fix the mess left by a contractor who built a $3.2 million fire station in Bond Hill that hasn’t been able to pass a building inspection to allow occupancy.

Because the city of Cincinnati is embroiled in a legal dispute with the company that built the facility, firefighters are being used to clean up the construction site and do the remaining work needed to make the building useable. The situation has angered many firefighters and paramedics, who say it's not their jobs to correct the mistakes and that their skills should be used to make fire and ambulance runs.

Drinking to the Chief

George W. Bush’s strange combination of ineptitude and arrogance is enough to drive many people to drink. As the decider-in-chief gives his eighth and — thankfully — final State of the Union address tonight, TV viewers here might want to take a cue from Washington, D.C., bars about how to make sitting through Dubya's rhetoric more palatable.

Some D.C. bars are participating in a drinking game centered around the presidential speech and how often Bush mentions certain words or phrases. Several taverns in the nation’s capitol are offering $1 specials on shots each time the former baseball team owner utters remarks like, "the state of the union is strong" and uses words like, "God," "terror, "troops," "progress" or "border security."

Mean Ohio

During the next census it's likely that the state of Ohio will lose seats in the U.S. Congress because of declining population. Arguments about high taxes and bad schools are frequently noted as reasons for the "brain drain" of businesses and professionals but I think it's because Ohio law can be vindictive, mean and thoughtless. Here’s more proof.

The Ohio Justice and Policy Center (OJPC) has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of Jerome Sewell, Jane Doe and other former sex offenders in Hamilton County. Note the word "former"; these are people who have done time and frequently completed court-mandated treatment programs, but can’t get on with their lives because the legislature has decided to tack on a new sentence.

Senate Bill 10, now called Ohio's Adam Walsh Act, took an ineffective system of sex offender registration and made it worse by dumping people into one of three tiers based on the name of their crime — not their likelihood of committing another offense. Now individuals such as “Jane Doe,” who were in the lowest tier of the old system, will be in the “worst of the worst” category, according to Margie Slagel, an attorney with OJPC.

Portune Vows to Help Other Dems

Some local Democratic candidates in various county and state races may benefit from the party’s deal to quash major competition in this fall’s contests for the Hamilton County Commission.

Thursday night’s meeting of the Hamilton County Democratic Party’s executive committee didn’t yield any debate on the deal approved by Party Chair Tim Burke that has outraged some rank-and-file party members. In fact, the gathering of precinct executives recommended that Burke be reappointed to another term on the county’s Board of Elections, with only a couple of mumbled “no” votes heard in the meeting hall. Burke’s approval is likely when Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner — also a Democrat — makes the final decision in a few weeks.

Under the controversial deal cut earlier this month, the local Democratic Party promised not to run a candidate against Republican Greg Hartmann and persuaded a potential challenger to drop out of that county commission race. In return, the local Republican Party wouldn’t endorse any candidate who challenged incumbent Democrat Todd Portune in a separate commission race.

That leaves the little matter of what Portune will do with the $130,000 he’s already raised for his re-election campaign.

Although Portune criticized media accounts that he’s running unopposed — noting the campaign of Hyde Park real estate broker Ed Rothenberg, a Republican who’s running without the GOP’s endorsement — he conceded that he probably wouldn’t need all the money he’s raised.

The deal will allow Portune to use some campaign cash to “aggressively support other candidates,” he said.