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On August 2nd, the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber is hosting “Web 2.0 Blogging Bootcamp.” According to the event description, the bootcamp is for “especially valuable for companies with limited marketing dollars, including non-profits.” Cost to participate in the four-hour long camp?  $300.  As a community service to those area institutions who cannot afford $300 per person, The Cincinnati Beacon is proud to present some totally free suggestions for how to leverage new technologies for an enhanced business marketing strategy.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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One of the arguments made against the proposed half-cent sales tax increase is that it would drive business to surrounding counties since all of them would have a lower sales tax rate.  Recent sales tax collection figures from the Hamilton County Commissioners’ Office shows that this is a real worry.  In fact, in 2006 the amount of sales tax collected was slightly less than that collected in 2005.  And this is without taking into account the rate of inflation so the actual decline in goods purchased was even greater.

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Posted by Michael Earl Patton
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Guest article by Andre Harper.

It’s Cincinnati City Council election season and several candidates have jumped on the jail tax bandwagon proposal by two of the Hamilton County Commissioners to institute a $900 million sales tax increase to fund a jail. Perhaps candidates feel that supporting this measure makes them look “tough on crime” in the eyes of Cincinnati voters. I oppose the proposed tax because the voters defeated it last November. Furthermore, I am not convinced that we need a new jail.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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Last night, the Fox19 10pm news had a short item about some area leaders having a town hall meeting about predatory lending practices.  (Sorry, but there does not seem to be a link available.) That got me to thinking:  what kinds of predators are really more devastating for a community?  The so-called “predators” who might go to a strip club, or those who ruin the personal finances of families through predatory lending practices?  And further, if we are going to regulate a certain industry of business, why is it that predatory lending outfits can be located on every corner, but adult entertainment is banned?

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We have received lots of reports lately from individuals claiming that various “authority figures” on Fountain Square—Downtown Ambassadors, Police Officers, etc.—have told citizens the area is the private property of 3CDC.  Yesterday, I personally confirmed this by talking to Kaitlyn, an employee with Central Parking Systems working on the first garage floor desk (behind the glass, opposite the elevators).  When I asked who owned the garage and the area on the square housing the pay stations, she said it was the private property of 3CDC.  She said she was told this information by her employer.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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Accompanied by a video crew, as well as The Naked Cowboy and a guitar strumming press secretary, Social Ironist Party candidate Sean “The Naked Candidate” Holbrook is taking his political campaign to the streets New York City from July 14-16. His attire: tighty-whities, dress shoes and a tie - because politicians simply must wear ties if they wish to be seen as legitimate candidates by the voting public.

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Guest article by Josh Krekeler, convener for the Southwest Ohio Green Party

The Southwest Ohio Green Party has endorsed Christopher Smitherman for Cincinnati City Council.  Mr. Smitherman is a financial planner and Cincinnati native who served on City Council from 2003-2005.  During his term, he was a champion of environmental justice legislation for the city.  He opposed giving away Fountain Square’s parking garage revenues to 3CDC for the next two generations.  He also called for greater accountability in the police department on issues such as overtime pay and targeted use of money seized in drug-related arrests, and supported collecting taxes on stock options.  Cincinnati is the only city in Ohio that does not tax stock options.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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On April 14th, 2007, Laketa Cole agreed to conduct an email interview with The Cincinnati Beacon.  Despite a few follow-up promises to submit her reply, Cole has failed to complete the interview.  So, before the questions become too old, here is Laketa Cole’s missing interview!

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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Mayor Mark Mallory declared at a press conference Monday that the city’s population is 46,007 more than what the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, or 378,259.  In addition, the city’s average household income is said to be $54,083, not the $43,992 reported by the 2000 Census.  The claim is based on a study financed by several banks (Fifth Third, USBank, KeyBank, Huntington Bank, PNC Bank), the United Way of Greater Cincinnati, Duke Energy, First American Real Estate Information Services, SAS Insititue, ESRI, and the City of Cincinnati.  This analysis is based on 27 different sources of information but not, however, the declining enrollment at public schools.

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Posted by Michael Earl Patton
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This week, some colleagues and I were in City Hall, asking two police officers questions about how certain laws get enforced.  One officer invited us to ask as many questions as we wanted, and the other kept cutting us off, telling us to stop asking questions.  This was confusing.  Ultimately, they decided to order us out of the building, under threat of arrest (charges of “disorderly conduct"), and that if we didn’t like it our lawyers could work it out in court.  Is that the kind of treatment we, the citizens, deserve at the hands of Cincinnati Police inside City Hall, a public building?  That is how some of your fellow citizens were treated this week.  So it’s time for a history lesson:  Coates v. City of Cincinnati, a case heard before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1971.

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If you have never heard of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, read this open letter from Bobby Henderson to the Kansas City School Board.  Henderson, who wanted to protest the inclusion of intelligent design in high school curriculum, wrote his letter that he would like his god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, to be included.  According to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism—whose followers are called “Pastafarians”—the FSM really likes pirates, and has been punishing the world with global warming since pirates have disappeared.  The proof: Henderson has a chart showing an inverse statistical relationship between the number of pirates and the increase of global warming.

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In a message released this morning, Christopher Smitherman, president of the Cincinnati NAACP, claims The Cincinnati Enquirer never contacted him about how many signatures the NAACP has gathered in the effort to put a jail-tax on the ballot.  This is just another chapter in The Enquirer’s continuing exercise in propaganda, supporting the big-money interests behind a prison-industrial complex that disproportionately incarcerates black people.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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Cincinnati City Councilman John Cranley has discovered a loophole in the city’s campaign finance reform rules which allow an individual to write multiple checks to a candidate and far exceed the $1000 limit.  An August 2, 2005 opinion by the Cincinnati Election Commission in response to a question by his campaign states that an individual who owns multiple “limited liability” companies can make a thousand dollar contribution to a candidate from each company, as well as individually.  So if an individual owns, say 5 such companies, that person can contribute up to $6,000 to one candidate.

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Posted by Michael Earl Patton
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The Cincinnati Branch of the NAACP is concerned about the lack of diversity in our Juvenile Court.  Out of two judgeships, there has never been an African-American.  Since the 1990’s our community has had the ability to appoint a third judge to the Juvenile Court.  Our communities’ failure to do so is unacceptable.

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Commissioners Portune and Pepper have repeatedly spoken of the need to build a new 1800-bed jail at the site of the old Kahn’s plant in Camp Washington.  It is therefore curious that the resolutions increasing the sales tax say nothing about actually building a new jail, but refer only to the operation of new detention facilities.  The “purchase or lease” of new facilities is also mentioned, but not whether those new facilities are actually a jail or (for instance) new sheriff headquarters.  Click here for the complete resolution increasing the sales tax.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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I just found Melanie Bates’ new website for her council campaign—and while she does not talk about her murdered husband, she does make “safety” the number one issue on her front page.  And with the approach of summer heat, the City’s corporate press and political system will work to make us all afraid.  But are the citizens really as scared as our politicians would have us believe?

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To justify the building of a big, new jail, Hamilton County commissioners Todd Portune and David Pepper often mention the age of the Queensgate, Reading Road, and Turning Point facilities and how they are inadequate or even “falling down.” A reading of the county’s own Voorhis Report shows that they are not relating the situation accurately.  The Cincinnati Beacon would like to thank Nate Livingston for pointing out that their own report relates how the Ohio Bureau of Adult Detentions (BAD) inspected and passed all three of these facilities in all 63 categories.  Only the relatively new Justice Center failed to pass in all categories.

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Posted by Michael Earl Patton
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Cincinnati’s white Democratic community has been freaking out about the NAACP’s coalition of divergent political groups opposing the regressive sales tax to build a new jail.  (For a sample of how the white Democratic community is thinking, just check out this blog post at CityBeat—they really love the so-called “treatment” options proposed, and view it is a chance to help reduce recidivism.)

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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Local champion of the prison industrial complex, Hamilton County Commission President Todd Portune cannot keep his positions consistent—perhaps signaling an inability to handle the pressures of a hotly contested topic like his desire to impose a sales tax to make an even bigger jail (despite his admission that the jails are filled with people who do not need to be there).  Apparently, Portune wants Hamilton County to have all-around higher taxes than every surrounding County, so we can have a huge warehouse to store people awaiting trial, filtering them into treatment programs that might work better in community, and not industrial, environments.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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In today’s Enquirer, both Councilmember Chris Monzel and big money contributor John Pepper are quoted in a story about the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.  Monzel currently opposes giving any more money to the Freedom Center, saying they once promised to ask for no more public money.  The Enquirer provided the following response:  “Pepper said he doesn’t know anything about anyone ever saying that.” While not a verbatim quote, Pepper absolutely knows something about someone every saying that—specifically, the issue came up in a public exchange of letters between him and Tom Brinkman.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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Mentos proves that 3CDC’s Fountain Square is a corporate advertising space, and not a public one

When I heard about last week’s event on Fountain Square to have a world record for Mentos Diet Coke geysers, I didn’t give much thought as to who would be organizing the event, or as to its advertising might.  But this afternoon, while I drove into downtown Cincinnati, passing some new billboards for Mentos, I realized what the whole thing was about—raising sales for Mentos locally.  The suspicion was made even more concrete when I saw all the Mentos employees distributing free samples of Mentos at Taste of Cincinnati.  This last week, Cincinnati has been ground zero for selling chewy mints.

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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Watch Cecil Thomas get basic facts wrong, as well as share his conviction that Hamilton County should be a dry county and outlaw alcohol!

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Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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This past Saturday, Dan Hurley talked with Professor Tom Dutton about “economic mix” in Over-The-Rhine—specifically how organizations like 3CDC do not mount equitable and socially just development politicies.  Hurley found Dutton’s work, it seems, from reading The Cincinnati Beacon, which he mentioned by names a handful of times.  The article in question:  ”Indian Reservations, Trojan Horses, and Economic Mix.” See the video here.

Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
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I don’t spend a lot of time visiting Charlie Winburn’s web pages, but I noticed today that Melanie Bates has been dropped from his “Criminal Next Door” site—designed as a follow up to the oft-criticized “likely killers” list championed by Winburn, Bates, and Todd Portune.  Given the recent blitz of attention toward the Charter Party, I figured we should spend some time thinking about Bates’ abandonment of Charlie Winburn.

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Laketa Cole is sending solicitation letters out asking for contributions to her campaign based on her association with Jeff Berding—despite the recent controversy Berding’s endorsement by the Hamilton County Democrats caused many rank-and-file party members.  (See video footage of the controversy yourself, thanks to Justin Jeffre’s video journalism here.)

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When the Law and Public Safety Committee met to vote on whether the City’s anti-marijuana ordinance should be extended, Cecil Thomas made some statements to combat objections raised by Vice Mayor Jim Tarbell.  Thomas’ office has failed to respond to multiple requests for records substantiating his claims, so we are forced to conclude that Cecil Thomas not only has no idea what he’s talking about, but that he actually just invented data on the spot to influence his committee to vote the way he wanted them to vote.  Such behavior constitutes irresponsibility of the worst kind.

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A series of new documents have been released regarding the continuous scandal involving Cincinnati-based Chiquita.  Since Cincinnati corporate media couldn’t bother to walk a few blocks to the company’s international headquarters (much less bother to get into any real details), we figured it’s time to roll out some information for Cincinnati readers regarding this developing international story.

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Among other questions, several people today have asked about my shirt in this week’s CityBeat—which featured this fantastic article by Kevin Osborne about problems with the Charter Party.  Yes, that’s right—bursting forth from my official “Dean of Cincinnati” academic gowns is the slogan “Green Shirts Are for Pimps.” I thought I would give the choice of garb some explanation.

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In an email distributed Sunday afternoon, the Cincinnati NAACP has asked citizens to be present on Wednesday, May 9th, and Thursday, May 10th, 2007, to speak out concerning The Banks project.  In addition to inviting NAACP members, Christopher Smitherman has encouraged these details be distributed to increase overall citizen involvement in The Banks project, a huge economic development opportunity for the City of Cincinnati (and hopefully for all of its citizens).

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