Local

The Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government (“the Coalition”) has announced that the Hot Times in Olde Towne Festival, September 6-8, will be the last event at which signatures will be collected for the Coalition’s campaign finance reform petition.

The Coalition has been collecting petition signatures in order to enact a campaign finance reform law, saying the high cost of elections in Columbus and the 28 year practice of making council appointments, rather than holding original elections, has eliminated meaningful competition for elected offices and reduced the responsiveness of elected officials to the citizens.

Willis Brown, a member of the Committee of Petitioners that is sponsoring the ordinance says, “the voters passed a charter amendment in 1994, authorizing city council to enact a campaign finance law. Twenty years later, the city council still has not passed a meaningful finance reform law, so we as citizens have written a law and as citizens are bringing it up to Council for consideration.”

For a hot minute, it looked like Eastern European food was going to be The Next Big Thing in Columbus. There was Babushka’s on the north end, Yogi Perogi in Grandview and another ethnic eatery at the North Market.

Today, only the North Market remains in the game with Hubert’s Polish Kitchen.

There are good reasons why Hubert’s survives. It’s got a lush array of colorful treats, all proudly displayed at its counter in big buffet burners. And the service is personable and lightening fast.

Since Eastern European food is the topic, it seems best to get the inevitable pirogi discussion out of the way first. Pirogi is/are on the menu (there’s always some difficulty in working with pirogi in plural form and there are at least three spelling variations: pirogi, perogi and pierogi). Frankly, the local obsession with the pasta has always been puzzling. It seems an awful lot like ravioli, and you don’t see people fussing over ravioli.

But, as far as the pirogi culinary art form goes, it’s good at Hubert’s. A sturdy pasta crescent holds a rich, oniony cheese and potato filling ($1.50). It is what it is.

Recently a Pew poll came out that showed for the first time in the history of the question, more Americans support legalizing marijuana than think it should remain criminal. I was talking it over with someone and I think the bigger issue is not if it should be supported but why? I thought I’d break down why every group should support legalization.

Let’s start with the political parties……..

Democrats: This party should support legalization because the drug war is the new Jim Crow. Every year over 700,000 Americans, mostly young men and women of color, are arrested for possession of a plant. The war on drugs is what is feeding our quickly growing private prison system. Our prisons now hold more people arrested for drugs than they did for all offenses in 1981. America now has 4% of the worlds population but 25% of the worlds prison population and the 62% of local, state and federal inmates who are in prison for nonviolent drug offenses is the reason why. As the party of civil rights they should also support legalization because of our civil right to control over our own bodies.


Just when it seemed things might be under control at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, we find they are worse than ever.

Immeasurably worse.

Massive quantities of radioactive liquids are now flowing through the shattered reactor site into the Pacific Ocean. And their make-up is far more lethal than the "mere" tritium that has dominated the headlines to date.

Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the owner/operator, and one of the world's biggest and most technologically advanced electric utilities, has all but admitted it cannot control the situation. Their shoddy performance has prompted former US Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dale Klein to charge: "You don't know what you are doing."

The Japanese government is stepping in. But there is no guarantee, or even likelihood, it will do any better.

In fact, there is no certainty as to what's causing this out-of-control flow of death and destruction. Some 29 months after three of the six reactors exploded at the Fukushima Daichi site, nobody can offer a definitive explanation of what is happening there or how to deal with it.

I've changed. I've gone sane. Ain't no king of mean no mo'.


My inner Leona Helmsey has been replaced by a kinder, gentler bitch, uh, I mean, PERSON. I am now a Stepford Wife with a by-line, a crowd-pleasing zombie with faraway eyes, a veritable and charitable dork of love saying only nice things nicely so nice readers sleep nicely in their nice houses and preserve their nice delusions of their nice neighborhood. Isn't this what you wanted, Clintonville?


Thanks to a weeks-long, Comfest-ordered stint in summer re-education camp (hate speech wing), I am now, ahem, safe. Neutered of doing violence to others' self-esteem, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, I am but a thesaurus of only praise most positive. The life of abusive honesty has been lobotomized right out of my head like Nicholson's Mac MacMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I could no more write a negative review than spank a cute little puppy, drown a kitten, eat at McDonald's or shop at Wal-Mart. I am correct politically. Though technically I am for all practical purposes dead as a door nail, I have seen the light. Yes, lord. And the light is good. For it let's me eat.

What’s Columbus City Schools (CCS) to do when it’s in the midst of perhaps the largest scandal in its history? Ask the voters for one of the largest levy expansions ever. Scandal, corruption and cover-ups equal “give us more money.”

The levy is controversial in many ways. None more so than the fact that the Columbus Educational Commission (CEC), the people recommending the levy, were appointed by the mayor and are not elected school board members. The Republican-controlled statehouse and governor are mandating a local levy vote through state law.

On July 15, 2013 in a bipartisan ceremony, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed into law a bill forcing Columbus City Schools to place a tax levy on the ballot in November. If the levy passes, residents of the Columbus School district will be forced to give money to both public schools and charter schools. Mayor Coleman was granted the power to sponsor charter schools through the city government.

Hello, I'm Lady Monster. I'm a Certified Sex Specialist.

Sex is my passion, especially sexuality studies. In 1992, I began reading my own sexual stories and poetry aloud. In 1998, I volunteered for Columbus Ohio Sex Information, a hotline providing anonymous, non-judgmental information to callers with questions.

I moved to San Francisco in 2001. I received more training from San Francisco Sex Information and worked on their hotline and events. I progressed to co-producing events at Carol Queen's Center for Sex and Culture and then worked as a Production Assistant for Annie Sprinkle's Love Art Lab for three years. I was immersed in the sex-positive culture of San Francisco.

I have no issues regarding sex, except when they hinge on issues of consent. I maintain the three basics of sex-positive interactions: Safe, Sane and Consensual.

Regardless of the questions I receive in this column, I will respond with positive, non-judgmental information. My goal is to provide educational, progressive and provocative insight to one's most primal of urges, and shine a light into our bedrooms to bring us all closer together.

Are they or aren’t they investigating Governor Voinovich’s administration?
It’s become a semantics debate. Voinovich campaign contributions, yes; administration, no.

The July issue of the Ohio Observer originally reported that the FBI was investigating charges of contract steering in the Voinovich administration. Then a week ago Sunday, the Cincinnati Enquirer confirmed this and filled in many details surrounding the preliminary investigation. Then the Cleveland Plain Dealer had the feds denying it. But the Enquirer stood by its story. And well they should, since they had, in newspaper biz parlance, “back-up”-usually meaning “we taped it, you idiots.” Plus, the Enquirer had confirmation from multiple sources: two in the FBI and one in the Justice Department.

I visited my mother today. Entering the long term care unit in which she spends her final days, I hear the blare of her television. As I sit down next to her hospital bed, I realize that we’re viewing live coverage of the 50th anniversary of the famed 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In an instant, I flash back to myself as a 10 year old girl watching the black and white evening news with her parents, transfixed by this seminal event. It's only in the present that I realize its impact.
This past January, I helped form the Ohio Rights Group to advocate for the medical, therapeutic and industrial uses of cannabis. I then co-authored the Ohio Cannabis Rights Amendment based on the inalienable rights named in the Ohio Constitution’s Bill of Rights: life, liberty, property, happiness and safety.
As echoed from the Lincoln Memorial 50 years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream, "deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed."
Some might ask how cannabis, a scorned drug, fits into Dr. King's dream.

My, my. The coverup starts in the Columbus Dispatch Metro section lead which begins, “[Franklin] County election officials say they think a clerical error is to blame for 19 Columbus police officers having their voting addresses listed as the Downtown police headquarters.”

Now, if a lower-class black male had used his work address as a voting address, and tried to vote in the inner-city Driving Park area, the headline would have read: “Massive voter fraud uncovered in urban inner-city precinct: ACORN is suspected.”

It is a fifth-degree felony to intentionally register to vote at your work address instead of your residence. The police might enforce the laws, but it doesn’t mean they obey them.

As the Dispatch pointed out, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, who supervises the vote in Ohio, “…isn’t particularly concerned about police officers registering their work address.”