Local
Let us recall both the political careers of Michael Coleman and Andy Ginther advanced primarily due to their involvement in covering up scandals. Coleman, then an attorney at Schottenstein, Zox and Dunn, stepped forward to aid billionaire Les Wexner’s alleged bribery of City Council President Jerry Hammond. Remember $220,000 was funneled from friends of Les to the Major Chord jazz club in the Short North. The deal was that New Albany would get water and sewer services extended from Columbus and paid for by city residents and Hammond would get a jazz club.
When the scheme was busted, Coleman took the lead role with attorney Larry James in explaining how the apparent investment bribe was really supposed to be a non-profit contribution to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center. Coleman had the paper to prove it and a newly appointed seat on Columbus City Council.
Ginther was appointed to the Columbus School Board, where he covered up the “data-rigging scandal” by forcing out the School’s internal auditor who was on the investigative trail. This is how Ginther won his chops to serve on Council and become the Council President.
Amos Lynch
(19252015)
Everyone refers to Amos Lynch as the “godfather” of black journalism. But he was more than that.
He helped set the black political agenda in Columbus as well as covering stories of Jim Crow
practices that inspired progressives to action. For 33 years he edited the Call and Post and launched
the career of perhaps Ohio’s most famous black writer, Wil Haygood. I remember reading the front
page of the Call and Post in the 80s and 90s and contrasting it with the Dispatch and the difference
was literally black and white. All the great moral issues of the day were covered first and more
complete in the Call and Post. Whether it was freeing Nelson Mandela or police brutality – the
actual existing conditions for the poor and minorities and advocacy on their behalf was to be found
in the papers edited by Amos Lynch. The Free Press hopes that we can, in a small way, carry on
his legacy. Lynch died at age 90 on July 24, 2015. ~ Bob Fitrakis
Monday, the Tenth day of August in the Hundred-Score-and-Five-and-Tenth year since B.C.(E.)
We wanted to see Die Antwoord and we got word the opener, Get Weird, wasn’t worth watching, so DJ and I intentionally showed late just as the wayward warmup got offstage and what we’d paid to see got underway. The LC Pavilion was filled with White people from all walks-of-life and economic backgrounds. But so many White people at a hip-hop show? Why?
White rappers.
I played “spot the other non-Whites” and found a total of maybe two-dozen Brown people and ten Black people, not counting those who appeared masked onstage. I may have miscounted, but the multitudes were White. I felt like Ahab, swallowed into the Great White Whale.
Here at the Free Press’s Department of Etiquette and Common Decency, we have been receiving a great deal of inquiries with respect to the propriety of male musicians performing onstage while wearing shorts. It is not entirely clear as to whether these queries are being propounded by the genuinely confused, anticipatory contrarians, or outraged audience members seeking something definitive in writing. Regardless, it is apparent that the wearing of shorts on stage is becoming increasingly frequent, and that the issue needs to be conclusively addressed.
As a general matter, the answer is that shorts (or cut-offs, umbros, jams, jorts, hot pants, bermudas, footer-bags etc.) should not be worn by any performer who is or might be in view of an audience and is not AC/DC’s Angus Young. Most sources agree on an exception for certain members of thrash metal bands, and there appears to be some support in instances of life-threatening heat (although this is far from universal acceptance). Beyond these carefully circumscribed exceptions, however, there is uniform consensus that wearing shorts on stage makes you look like a fucking idiot.
On Monday morning the protesters outside the the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio were fewer in number than in June, but no less determined to prevent a consumer bailout of FirstEnergy's Davis-Besse nuclear plant and Sammis coal-fired plant. After three postponements, the PUCO was holding the first evidentiary hearing on FirstEnergy's request for a rate hike to support the aging power plants.
"We are on the brink of a major breakthrough," said Harvey Wasserman, editor of nukefree.org and history instructor at Capital University. "We have a nuclear plant and a coal-fired plant that this utility is begging, tin cup in hand, to keep operating. About a decade ago, we heard FirstEnergy and others say that they wanted competition in the electric power business. Now they are begging for more money to keep these reactors open, because they can't compete in the market.
39th HOT TIMES COMMUNITY ARTS & MUSIC FESTIVAL,
Sept 11, 12, 13, 2015
240 Parsons Avenue, (Main & Parsons)
Hours:
Fri – 5PM - midnight
Sat – Noon - Midnight
Sunday – 11AM - 8PM
3 Stages - The Main Street, Parsons Avenue and Porch Swing Stages
The Hot Times Annual Art Car Show is the largest gathering of Art Cars in Ohio
Great vendors line the Loop Road creating a lively Street Fair
Fabulous Food!
Whole line up at www.hottimesfestival.com
The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is proud to announce in their 2014 Annual Report that their already record-low recidivism rate has dropped again and is now 27.1 percent and continues to be well below the national average of 49.7 percent. Recidivism is the act of a person repeating an undesirable behavior after he/she has either experienced negative consequences of that behavior, or have been treated or trained to extinguish that behavior.
The report attributes Ohio’s reduction in recidivism to the use of evidence-based programs such as reintegration units within the prisons, programs to connect offenders with families and resources while incarcerated, community corrections programs and their continued work with local communities and reentry coalitions.
ColumbusMediaInsider
Click cut is glimpse of Dispatch future
By John K. Hartman
It is just a TV magazine. Why do we care?
Most people get their TV listings from the on-screen program directories provided by cable and satellite providers and streaming services. Years ago weekly TV magazines in newspapers were profitable items, chocked full of advertisements adjacent to the listings and widely used by viewers at home. Now the weekly TV magazines are thin because they contain only listings, not advertisements, and are little used.
The Columbus Dispatch calls its magazine Click and until recently inserted the magazine in its Sunday paper. In his column on Sunday July 26, editor Alan D. Miller announced that Click would no longer be inserted in the Sunday paper, but would be moved to the Saturday paper, effective Aug. 1.
New owners shielded
The Columbus Free Press has been no great fan of city council president Andrew Ginther’s undistinguished career in the public sector; his face graced our 2013 Halloween cover, and we invited readers to use it as their Halloween mask as Ginther seems to be something that he was not – that he was a Republican masquerading as a Democrat, in our article “Gintherstein – A Democrat with Republican Chops,” http://columbusfreepress.com/article/gintherstein-democrat-republican-chops)”. And now it looks like the wheels are coming off his planned coronation as the city’s Mayor, and we feel a little nostalgic about that. I mean – if we don’t have Andy Ginther around, who in the hell will we have to expose or lampoon anymore? His tenure has provided such rich material for alternative press as he has turned Columbus into a crony-supporting corrupt political backwater of a town, while he stumbles from one abuse of public trust to the next.