First Contact, Cincy Style?

Feb 2, 2012 by

Aliens from Planet PohsotohpI’ve said previously that I love learning new things about this city. I was born and raised here, so I always feel like there isn’t ton that I wouldn’t have heard or seen before. I’ve been humbled once again, though; this time by Citybeat with this piece on a rash of UFO sightings in the Queen City and all through southwest Ohio in October, 1973. They apparently caused quite a stir and got a fair bit of press:

The Cincinnati police told The Cincinnati Post their phones were “ringing off the hook” nightly about those strange bright lights in the sky. Cincinnati Police said “a mess” of frightened callers saw something just above the tree-tops around Mount Washington, Bond Hill and 14th and Vine, and that some type of machine had landed on the railroad tracks near the 2500 block of Beekman Street.

 

North of the city, in Trenton, some of the townsfolk swore a flying craft of some sort, not from around these parts, landed on Main Street, right in the middle of town. The town of Reading kept going dark due to power outages officials said were due to “equipment failure.”

 

The United Press International reported hundreds of sightings over southwest Ohio; all of them were at night. A woman, hysterical and screaming, cried to police that “some … some … thing” landed in her farm and killed two cows. Near central Ohio, a U.S. Army helicopter had been zapped in mid-air with a green beam of light. And The Enquirer was also on the beat, writing about “a radiancy of lights, frights and brights,” that were “dancing, flashing and hovering,” and “the reports were fast and they were serious.”

 

In Greenfield, police officer Sgt. Hugh, after chasing for several miles a circular white object with a yellow glow that was humming and flying just above the trees, told The Post, “I’ve never believed in UFOs until tonight.”

 

Indeed, even the Governor of Ohio, John J. Gilligan, had a close call with what he said was an amber-colored “vertical beam of light.” Shaken, he felt compelled to tell America during an emotional press conference that the UFO threat was real. “I saw one (UFO) the other night, so help me. I’m absolutely serious. I saw this.”

Now, the article goes on to (mostly) explain the incidents as a result of the kickoff of the military’s Operation Nickel Grass on October 13th. The US had elected to aid Israel in the Yom Kippur war, which meant a massive airlift effort, which meant that tremendously oversized cargo planes were landing at and taking off from Wright-Patterson AFB pretty constantly. If that’s not a good enough explanation for you, it’s also a fairly simple deduction that anyone with the technology to get from there (read: anywhere out there) to here in a reasonable amount of time would probably not have much reason to make a stop anywhere near such a comparatively backwater civilization. If you want an example of what I mean, just try to come up with an interesting conversation piece for a chance meeting with a real, live Neanderthal, and then expand the technology gap between the two of you by many orders of magnitude. In other words, Ug would probably figure out how to use an iPad a long time before we were able to wrap our brains around the physics of efficient interstellar travel.

Still, I suppose that anything is technically possible, so I’m forced to wonder exactly what would happen in Cincy if the proverbial Little Green Men did just pop the hatch on Fountain Square and ask to see our leaders. Ah, I can see the potential headlines on Cincinnati.com now…….

  • FIRST CONTACT IN FOUNTAIN SQUARE: COAST points out that they’ve avoided Over-the-Rhine
  • Mike Brown to demand alien assistance in renovating Paul Brown Stadium
  • Aliens: “Hey, uh, we just came to pick Bootsy back up…”
  • INTERSTELLAR INCIDENT: Aliens allege attempted poisoning, via goetta
  • Aliens lost attempting to navigate West Side roads
  • BREAKING: Aliens did not attend high school in the Cincinnati area
  • UFOs attack and disable WEBN studios, citing “interstellar noise pollution”
  • Aliens return Clooney: “Sorry, with all the attention, we just figured he was in charge.”
  • Aliens….. shop at Furniture Fair? (ah %&&$%$#&%, another ad?!?!? Seriously?!?!?!?!)

(N.B.: This piece of playful fun-poking was also indirectly inspired by  this video, S____ People Say in Cincinnati, which you should watch if you haven’t already; it is priceless, though technically NSFW)

Image Credit: AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike Some rights reserved by Pedro Moura Pinheiro

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Smitherman Targeted in Citizen’s Complaint [Updated]

Jan 20, 2012 by

[Updated below: 16 Feb]

 

According to Citybeat:

A resident has filed a complaint with the city’s Law Department, alleging that Christopher Smitherman’s dual role as a Cincinnati city councilman and president of the NAACP’s local chapter constitutes an abuse of corporate powers.

 

In his complaint, resident Casey Coston states that the NAACP’s status as a 501(c)(4) organization under the federal tax code allows it to lobby City Hall and participate in political campaigns and elections without jeopardizing its tax-exempt status. Such activities are a conflict of interest with Smitherman’s council duties, Coston alleges.

 

The letter was sent today to City Solicitor John Curp by J. Thomas Hodges, Coston’s attorney. It asks Curp to review the matter and also seek an injunction preventing Smitherman from serving as chapter president. Further, it wants Curp to seek an advisory opinion from the Ohio Ethics Commission.

This is more than a little amusing because it’s the same brand of complaint that Smitherman’s COAST friends love to file  (If you’re not familiar with their relationship, Smitherman and COAST buddied up against both streetcar/transit ballot issues, and COAST has been happy to heap praise on him lately).  Just a couple of weeks ago, COAST honcho Mark Miller filed a complaint with the city over Laure Quinlivan and her city-paid staff accessing her campaign website on city time. Quinlivan was fined $1500.13 (the 13 cents was for the bandwidth; yes, I’m being completely serious), and the city was forced to pay $10,000 in legal fees. This is obviously a completely different kind of concern, but it’s certainly the sort of thing that I’d wager COAST would be pumping themselves up over while crying “Corruption!” if it were any other councilperson.

Now, following my usual I’m-not-even-close-to-being-a-lawyer disclaimer, I have to say that it’s easy for me to imagine a scenario where this is found to be a conflict of interest on some level, based on the amount of flak that the NAACP’s fellow 501(c)(4), the AARP, takes on a regular basis without any of it’s leaders actually being in government. On the other hand, if it was that cut-and-dried, I feel like it would’ve come up during the last election. I’ll leave any deeper analysis to the experts.

It will be interesting to see how this winds up playing out. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the NAACP, and I would hate to see their name muddied over a political ethics issue. That being said, though, I think Coston’s question is more than fair. Personally, I oppose just about every policy angle that’s come out of Smitherman’s mouth in the last two years, and disagreeing with him is one thing, but Smitherman’s associations with COAST make me ask some questions about how much I can trust him as an official in general, regardless of whether or not there’s actually an abuse of power occurring (and I haven’t heard anyone directly claim that there is). I was a little surprised that he didn’t just flat-out quit the presidency when he won a seat on council, thinking that this might be an obvious point of attack for opponents. Whatever the outcome winds up being, I hope for the sake of both the city and the NAACP that it’s reached with a  minimum of political mudslinging. I think the letter itself says it best (again from Citybeat):

“The NAACP is an important institution in our nation and the city of Cincinnati. My client holds such (an) institution in the highest regard and has the utmost respect for its mission and role in the community. Neither the city of Cincinnati nor the NAACP’s integrity or authority should be compromised by conflicted leadership. Therefore, it is imperative that the city of Cincinnati investigate and take action to alleviate my client’s concerns on behalf of all citizens of the city of Cincinnati”

UPDATE: 16 FEBRUARY: It turns out that there’s a good reason I’m not a lawyer. According to the Enquirer, City Solicitor John Curp says that Smitherman is not violating any ethics rules:

A letter from City Solicitor John Curp responding to streetcar advocate and blogger Casey Coston’s concerns about Smitherman said that since the city does not have any contracts with the NAACP, there is no conflict.

 

The letter, sent to Coston’s lawyer last Thursday, does note Smitherman should not vote on any issues raised in council that directly involve the NAACP.

 

Paul Nick, the executive director of the Ohio Ethics Commission, told the Enquirer last week that his staff looked into the issue after reading about Coston’s letter.

 

“It would be the same rules, for example, if someone also was a member of the board of the American Cancer Society,” Nick said. “Direct incompatibility? No. Abstentions? Yes.”

Curp said Cincinnati currently has no contracts with the NAACP.

 

“It’s not an issue because we don’t have anything that involves the NAACP in front of city council,” Curp said.

The powers-that-be have spoken on this, and while I may not be thrilled with the answer, the complaint did draw public attention to possibility of a future conflict of interest, so I wouldn’t call it a total loss.

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CincyPAC Slammed: Fair or Foul?

Sep 30, 2011 by

If you enjoy a good political back-and-forth, complete with overtones of “elitism” and references to Soviet Russia, I may have a story for you. On 25 September, an email went out to the CincyPAC mailing list with a link to a blog called CincyPACkOfElitists. The author, Aja Roberto, essentially posted a letter of resignation brimming with accusations regarding how CincyPAC chooses who it endorses for City Council. From the post:

I was horribly disappointed, though, with how the process evolved. The originally agreed upon process in which dues paying members like you had a 100% say in the PACs endorsement eroded, thanks to petty partisan politicking by several board members, many of whom have pledged their support to specific candidates. I am sad to report that the membership vote in the endorsement process will count for a paltry and inadequate 45% of the overall endorsement score that is used to choose CincyPAC endorsed candidates. In other words, an unelected Board of 12 has decided that they know better than you, and will weight their vote in the process more heavily.

 

I was even more disappointed when a board member suggested that we keep our algorithm secret from our membership and the candidates seeking the endorsement. Even more discouraging was the suggestion that we count the votes first, and once the results were known by the board, the weight of the members vote could be changed to influence the final result.

Ms. Roberto goes on to advise her readers that their money would be better spent on individual candidates, and referred to the remaining Board of Directors as a “Soviet-style group of ruling elites”. This reference was pounded home by a graphic of a Soviet hammer and sickle replacing the final “C” in CincyPAC (a sure sign of a reasoned, level-headed argument, right?).

CincyPAC, as one might expect, has a somewhat different view of their process. From the response posted on the CincyPAC website:

The organization’s endorsement process was thoughtfully and thoroughly crafted to vet candidates on their positioning as it relates to our six core values. The CincyPAC board voted and approved changes to the endorsement process this year to maintain and enhance the integrity of the process.

 

After the process was approved, we distributed an eleven-question questionnaire to all Cincinnati City Council candidates on August 29. Candidates who filled out the questionnaire and submitted prior to our September 5 deadline were invited to participate in an in-person, videotaped interview with further questioning related to CincyPAC core values. Candidate endorsements were distributed after tabulating results for membership vote (45 percent), question and answer scoring (35 percent). The board vote made up for 20 percent of the endorsement decision process.

 

Since 2009, CincyPAC has always offered a weighted endorsement process, with membership receiving the largest percentage of the determination. The organization does not allow membership to be the sole deciding factor in the endorsement process as a safeguard to ensure the process cannot be manipulated by an organized effort. We operate as a PAC with established core values, and endorse candidates who represent the YP voice and interest.

That may not be a specific denial of Ms. Roberto’s accusations, but I think it’s safe to say that it’s more a case of CincyPAC not deigning to answer charges they consider to be non-credible rather than one of them avoiding the question. The reason I think that’s the case is that Ms. Roberto is apparently co-hosting an upcoming fundraiser for COAST, a political group which is demonstrably dishonest. This is also relevant to a response that Ms. Roberto posted to CincyPAC’s statement, where she again accused the remaining directors of being “biased” and “partisan”. If COAST’s public statements are any indication, and presuming Ms. Roberto subscribes to a fair number of the viewpoints of the group that she’s hosting a fundraiser for, she is likely just as “guilty” of being biased and partisan as any member of the Board of Directors currently sitting. At the very least, it draws into question any accusations of extreme bias coming from her corner.

That being said, I think Ms. Roberto does make a fair point about the Board’s weighting of their endorsement selections if in fact the membership was led to believe their vote was/would be the primary deciding factor. I attempted to contact CincyPAC to get their position on this and received no reply, but according to their own math, unless the questionnaire is somehow compiled or voted upon by the membership, the CincyPAC Board does at least influence, if not control, 55% of the vote. That makes their assertion that “membership recieves the largest percentage of the determination” questionable at best. However, I also feel that CincyPAC makes a fair point about why they do things the way that they do. If a PAC committed to particular “core values” has an endorsement process that is mostly or completely based on the votes of members, there’s very little (if anything) to prevent a large-enough group of people  with $25 to burn from co-opting the group and pulling it away from those values, and that would most certainly defeat the original purpose of the PAC.

It’s also worth noting that CincyPAC did give money to three Republicans in 2009. Murray, Ghiz, and Zamary (frankly, I was shocked to see Ghiz on the list) each received $250 of the $1700 that was spread out among seven candidates. Their contributions for 2011 have either not yet been made or are not yet accessible from the City’s website, but their endorsements for this year only include one Republican, Catherine Mills. Mills has connections with the group, and as Griff at Cincinnati Blog observes, those connections could have as much or more to do with her endorsement than her positions on CincyPAC’s core issues. Yes, they did go from three Republicans out of seven down to one, but that could simply be due to the current composition of the group as opposed to what it was 2009, or the fact that, frankly, most of this years Republican candidates seem to have gone out of their way to oppose many of CincyPAC’s stated values. At any rate, it certainly doesn’t prove “bias” on the part of the Board.

How much does all of this matter in the grand scheme of Cincinnati politics? It’s debatable, but probably not a great deal right now. CincyPAC’s statements make it sound like they want to become a driving force in government in the city, but they’re not there yet. As I noted above, I have no idea what kind of money they’re kicking around this year, but as of the ’09 election, they’re still being dwarfed by union and corporate PAC’s in terms of contributions. That’s certainly to be expected, as those groups wield massive massive memberships and checkbooks, and CincyPAC was right on par with other citizen/special interest PAC’s at the time (including COAST). On the face of it, there’s no reason they can’t grow to be a force in the future, and I think they’re worth following if you’re interested and/or invested in the city.

In that vein, though, I should point out that while I was doing research and talking to people about the story, the impression that I got from almost everyone familiar with the group was resoundingly negative. “Exclusive social club” was a phrase used more than once, and the sentiment that “diversity” was being talked about more than it was being pursued was repeated several times from both sides of the proverbial aisle. Obviously, this doesn’t even remotely resemble a scientific survey, and the sample size was super small (seven or eight people that I spoke to personally, plus numerous tweets on the topic). It means nothing on it’s own, and to be clear, I’ve never met anyone who was associated with CincyPAC in person, and I’m not a member, so I have no opinion on whether those sentiments are indeed accurate or not. It’s entirely possible that I just happened upon the people that were dissatisfied and thus the most vocal about it. If I were CincyPAC though, I think that I’d at least be trying to determine whether or not I have an image problem, and be working on ways to solve it quickly if I did. I hope that they’re able to work it out if they do. They support values that, at least in my opinion, the vast majority of urban voters can and will get behind. They just need to find a way to cater to a large enough group of people. If they can pull that off somehow, I believe it would be of immeasurable benefit to our city.

 

 

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COASTing Over The Line

Sep 11, 2011 by

(note: since the time that I originally assembled this post, COAST has apparently apologized for their “stupid” and “insensitive” tweet, but have stuck to their guns on their lies regarding the funding, without citing evidence, of course. Vice Mayor Qualls reiterates (again) that the money has all come out of the Capital Improvements budget. Frankly, the apology doesn’t really change my take on things)

Update 14 Sept: Mark Miller has essentially admitted that his tweets were misleading in an interview with Channel 12. “Yea, they can’t take fire department salaries and go out and buy rails with it. I admit that. That’s exactly right, but that’s not what they’re doing. They’re taking money that should be spent on salaries and buying a study.” That’s not what you’ve been saying though, Mark. Hat tip to 5chw4r7z for pointing this out.

 

I’ve seen my share of offensive things on Twitter. It’s likely that I’ve posted a few things myself that people found distasteful. That being said, yesterday I saw something that seriously boiled my blood. Honestly, I waffled on writing about it at all. I’d hate to contribute to getting them any publicity, but I think it’s important for everyone to see exactly what lengths COAST will go to in their attempt to win fraudulently sway hearts and minds to their side.

I understand that the streetcar is a contentious issue. I happen to support it, but I’ll also be the first to admit that it’s possible for a rational person to oppose the idea, and that’s fine. That’s what debates and public forums are for. However, COAST has dedicated itself to flat-out spreading lies regarding how the project has been funded up to this point. Funds for construction come of out of a fund that cannot legally be used to to fund firefighting (or police, etc and so on). Fire companies are not being browned-out to support streetcar construction. It’s simply not true. This is, quite simply, a step too far in the debate (if it even continues to be a “debate” once you’ve lied as much as these guys have). Having an opinion and spreading lies about it is one thing. Co-opting a national tragedy and diminishing it by dishonoring it’s memory through associating your lies with it is quite another.

It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any fallout for them from this, particularly among the politicians they endorse. I suppose it all depends on whether or not the media picks up on it, and I doubt that a lone Twitter shenanigan, no matter how vile, will hit the radar. If it does though, I wonder if the council-people they back will start jumping ship, or at the very least ask them to keep their endorsement to themselves. Personally, I’d have a pretty tough time voting for anyone who knowingly associated themselves with this garbage, but maybe that’s just me. I hope that it isn’t.

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