Local
John F. Kennedy once said: “There is no city in the United States which I get a warmer welcome and fewer votes than Columbus, Ohio.”
Even if you live on Mars you probably know, “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.” Yet in 1960, Nixon took Ohio, but Kennedy won the election – the last time a candidate from either party won the White House without carrying the Buckeye State.
Incredibly, if the polls hold true, this could happen again nearly half a century later. Don’t pinch yourself, this is no nightmare.
Behind the scenes, however, the reality of Ohio going red for Trump undoubtedly has some wringing their hands and sweating buckets. From Gov. Kasich’s office to Ohio Democrats, to our own city’s effort to attract young professionals, and last but not least, for a lot of Ohioans, the thought of a Trump victory for either Ohio or the White House is a reality that has some wondering what the future consequences could be both culturally and financially. Certainly Gov. Kasich is worried about it. He voted early and wrote in Sen. John McCain.
Monday, November 7, 2016 @ 7pm
The Hub, 1336 East Main Street, Columbus
Free - all are welcome!
https://www.facebook.com/events/174281613032069/#
Although Kevin Boyce’s tenure as Ohio treasurer from 2009-2010 was riddled with scandal, Boyce claims he knew nothing about the corruption carried out by his deputy treasurer, Amer Ahmad, who is now in federal prison. Boyce’s claim was called into question this year by federal Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
Those filings are against others and don’t charge Boyce with any legal violations. But the allegations in them, along with Boyce’s responses, deserve to be considered by voters in deciding whether to make Boyce a Franklin County commissioner in the November 8 election.
The filings involve State Street Bank and Trust Company. According to the SEC, the Massachusetts bank in early 2010 paid not only kickbacks to Ahmad but also contributions to Boyce’s campaign in return for lucrative state contracts to provide custody services for three Ohio pension funds.
Diane Hudson wants a new union contract that will bring her family out of poverty. She works as a janitor at the Columbus Academy, a private PreK-12 school in Gahanna. Hudson supports her elderly mother and struggles every month to make ends meet. A living wage would mean “we don’t have to be under so much stress, living paycheck to paycheck,” she said.
On October 29 hundreds of janitors held a rally at the Great American Tower in Cincinnati to kick off contract negotiations. The new contracts will affect 1,800 members of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1 in central and southern Ohio, including 800 janitors who work in the Columbus area. The current Columbus contract, which expires December 31, covers janitors who clean the offices of Columbus’ largest companies, including Nationwide, Huntington, JP Morgan Chase, and AEP.
A new poll from an unlikely source suggests that the U.S. public and the U.S. media have very little in common when it comes to matters of war and peace.
One of the hallmarks of the Donald Trump campaign, and to a lesser extent the Republican Party, is a call for the end of political correctness. I’ve always felt a little sorry for that term, doomed to the grammatical tragedy of becoming a sarcastic pejorative before it ever had a chance to be a straightforward noun. That said, with a few highly regrettable exceptions, I’ve never had much trouble differentiating the loud, profane, obnoxious, ribald and borderline pornographic from language that hurts, demeans, dehumanizes or demonstrates power over someone else. Be polite, just like your mom told you, and you shouldn’t have to worry about anything.
What would a Frank Sinatra White House look like?
You do know a vote for The Orange Lord is a vote for old-school values, right? When men ran in packs and she-rats pretended to run for their lives, especially when those male rats carried names like Sammy, Dino, Peter and Frankie Baby.
Because if Donald Trump isn't a one-man rat-pack, I don't know who is.
Let us ponder this phenomenon, one that is fast disappearing from our culture as the buffalo were in the late 1870s on the American Great Plains.
Buffalo. Rats. White men. See where I'm going with this? I don't. I'm flying blind. But I'm feeling it. And that instinct got me from the Mediterranean French coast to its north, Verdun, in a day on a motorcycle without the use of a map and I don't speak French, except you know, when I'm loving. But I know when I'm on to something, dear reader. So, onward, monks.
The American male as we know him is a living thing of the past, put out to pasture by, oh, a lack of a fence on our southern border? Nah. More like every movement needs its villain. Thus it was decreed: thanks for setting up this good thang but you're politically expendable. Sorr-ee!
The Columbus Coalition of Reason (Columbus COR) is hosting their fifth annual “Flying Spaghetti Monster Benefit Dinner,” featuring -what else - a delicious spaghetti dinner with vegetarian, gluten-free and take-out options. The event will take place Thursday, November 10 from 6 until 8:30 pm (serving food until 8:00) at the First UU Church, 93 West Weisheimer Road in Clintonville.
Admission is $10.00 for adults, $5.00 for children aged fourteen and under, with proceeds going to the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. In addition, there will be people collecting canned and boxed goods for the Foodbank. Guests can also participate in both a silent auction of handmade pieces by local artists, and a raffle for items donated by community members and local businesses.
Entertainment for the evening will include live music and brief comments from community members. For the children there will be a variety of supervised games and activities.
Video footage from the police cruiser where Black Lives Matter protester Tynan Krakoff was taken into custody is raising questions about Columbus police tactics and why he was targeted for arrest. Krakoff is a lead organizer in the Columbus chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice, a national organization of white people who fight against racial injustice.
I write this column with a heavy heart.
Two fields of endeavor that I care deeply about are disintegrating before my eyes.
In politics, the two candidates for president are deeply flawed and profoundly unpopular.
In journalism, once-evenhanded media institutions and individual reporters have lost their way and become propagandists.
Sadly, I fear that after the election, things will become worse and the warring political camps will start posturing for the next election.
The public has been badly served by all this and now holds both politicians and journalists in disrepute with little possibility of regaining the public trust. The chances of either of them changing their ways and beginning to serve the public without fear or favor -- once the hallmark of a good politician and a good journalist -- are slim.
How did we get to this sad state of affairs?
On the Republican side, Donald Trump, a venom-spewing bully used his superior knowledge of manipulating the media to intimidate his primary opponents and swat them down like flies.