Last winter's Agent Carter mini-series – a spin-off of Marvel's Captain America movies and a prequel of sorts to the Agents of SHIELD TV series – managed in its too-short eight episodes to be one of the best shows of the year. Airing during SHIELD's mid-season break, Agent Carter outshone the longer-running show with its post-WWII style, charming cast, and much more cohesive plot.

Fortunately, ABC saw fit to give the world another Agent Carter mini-series, this time with 10 episodes. But can it live up to the first one? Two episodes in, all signs point to Yes.

I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that the Academy Awards’ nominations for “best actress” haven’t raised as much controversy as nominations in other categories.

It’s a good thing that there haven’t been any obvious snubs—nothing on a par with Will Smith (Concussion) or Michael B. Jordan (Creed) in the “best actor” category. But it’s a bad thing that the likely reason there are no obvious snubs is that minority women were given few opportunities to tackle attention-getting roles in 2015.

If there’s one silver lining to this dark cloud, it’s that the “best actress” nominees are as generationally diverse as they are racially homogenous. Though Jennifer Lawrence (Joy), Brie Larson (Room) and Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn) are all 20-somethings, Cate Blanchett (Carol) is 46. And Charlotte Rampling will turn 70 on Friday (Feb. 5), which, coincidentally, is the same day 45 Years opens in Columbus.

How do we make sense of the current battles within the Democratic Party? Hillary vs. Bernie – and grassroots progressives vs. Boss Bill Anthony, Franklin County Democratic Party Chair, and the corrupt one-party machine in Columbus?

In the case of Sanders, we’re witnessing a critical juncture in U.S. history. Sanders and his followers are single-handedly destroying “American Exceptionalism” – the fact that there is no mass socialist/labor movement defending the rights of working people. The U.S. is now ruled by a corporate capitalist kleptocracy (rule by thieves). Sanders and his activist cohorts are out to stop the looting. Hillary is running as the “realist” candidate who will negotiate with her corporate donors to steal less.

Columbus mirrors the battleover corruption in the national Democratic Party. As Jon Beard, currently running for the Franklin County Democratic Central Committee, puts it: “This Columbus area corruption is like an onion: keep peeling the layers back and it gets more and more stinky. This is what happens when a small group of people sees political power as “theirs” for the exploiting, and not the people’s for serving.”

March 15, 2016 is the Ohio Primary Election and time for the people of certain districts to vote for their House Representative. One of those districts is the 25th district, a “whistle blower” is running for that spot, and her name is Bernadine Kent.
 

Kent has been a teacher and vice principal for the Columbus City Schools and runs the nonprofit advocacy group PASS – Parent Advocates for Students in School. Kent was responsible for blowing the whistle on the Columbus City Schools for theft and fraud in No Child Left Behind (NCLB) funds. When the Columbus Police Department didn’t listen to her, or shall I say, follow up with her complaint, Kent didn’t just say “OK, I tried to tell them what’s going on” and then give up. No, she blew her whistle even louder and in the direction of the FBI, which in turn sparked their investigation into the situation and found that the Columbus School’s tutoring program was not functioning as it should and in fact, fraud had been committed. Kent also helped expose the data

Back in 2008, when the Ohio State University began to rumble that sophomores would be required to live on campus, eight of the largest off-campus landlords commissioned a study to assess what could happen to their rental market.  The study hypothesized if OSU were to pull the trigger it could lead to a “long-term collapse of the area,” and result in a “doomsday scenario.”

The landlords were talking about their own rental properties. And the trigger has indeed been pulled as starting next school year OSU is requiring all sophomores to live on-campus.

What the landlords and others didn’t see coming was that running parallel to the sophomore requirement is seismic change off-campus. Changes initiated over two decades ago by the city and university partnership that is Campus Partners, which redeveloped south campus by turning it into South Campus Gateway.