Thursday, September 30, 2004
Maybe the Best Rationalization
To watch the debate tonight. I already wrote that I'm not, but this from SI.com sports writer Josh Elliot makes a good case:
First presidential debate tonight. I'll do my best to keep The Blog apolitical, but let's just say a verbal set-to between the world's least charismatic human and a walking malaprop will make for great fender-bender TV: no one gets hurt, you can't take your eyes off it, and the clearer you see, the harder you laugh. I'll stick to the football game.
At Almost Breakneck Speed
For Pennsylvania alcohol laws. This is a state that moves at glacial rates when it comes to alcohol laws. Now, there is an attempt to allow beer distributors to be open on Sunday.
You know you're in trouble because you live in Pennsylvania, where beer distributors haven't been allowed to open on Sundays since at least the early 1930s. While you could go hunt for a tavern that's allowed to sell six-packs on Sundays, you might prefer the idea state Sen. Sean Logan says he has. The Democratic ex-mayor of Monroeville said yesterday he plans to introduce a measure next week to allow beer distributors to sell cases of beer on Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. A distributor wouldn't have to open on Sundays -- it would be voluntary, Logan said. Allowing Sunday sales for beer distributors "is a matter of fairness, a matter of leveling the playing field," said Logan, referring to the recent change by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board to open selected state stores Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. for sales of liquor and wine. "Outside of car dealerships, what businesses in Pennsylvania aren't allowed to be open on Sundays in this day and age?" asked Logan. Bar and tavern owners and their lobby group are expected to fight it. Along with the same anti-drinking groups and bible-thumpers.
Ohio just started allowing Sunday sales a couple weeks ago. Beer and wine sales on Sunday were already permitted.
Over a year and a half ago, Pennsylvania started permitting some of the liquor stores in the state to have Sunday hours. If this keeps up, the Pennsylvania ownership of liquor stores might actually end in my lifetime.
Eastlake -- Meet the New Budget
On local news. My deficit ridden city outside of Cleveland has put its recovery plan before the state oversight committee and received an initial blessing. There are 3 parts of the plan I dislike.
First, the city plans on turning $13.6 million in short-term notes for the Eastlake Ballpark into long-term bonds. This means more debt in the long-term to pay off the minor league ballpark, as part of avoiding the short-term costs that weren't supposed to cost the taxpayers in the first place.
Two. The city bases part of its recovery on being able to sell property at at least market value.
- Close and sell recreation department garage - $30,000 operating cost savings, sell for no less than $225,000.
- Sell former Fire Station No. 2 for no less than $125,000.
These are, based on the structures there, commercial properties. Do they understand how much vacant and unused commercial property is already in the city? What's the incentive for someone to buy these particular parcels?
The final item is the slight reduction in overall salaries, but no further layoffs. They aren't replacing a few retiring workers, but all this means is that the city payroll will still be a long-term issue they are once again trying to push off from the present.
Only one City Council member didn't vote for this plan. And it just so happens he represents my ward. Good for him.
Councilman Bruno Razov has voted against the plan. He said more salaries and positions should be cut.
"I really don't see this working," Razov said. "I don't feel comfortable with it. We just cannot continue operating this way."
Others on council are upset that Razov was not present at any of the five meetings council's finance committee held to discuss the recovery plan.
Razov had an excused absence from one of the meetings.
Razov said he did not feel it was worth missing work to come to the meetings.
"I work second shift," Razov said. "For me to come in Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and listen to the same thing is baloney." I like him. Never met him, but I like that response. He seems to get where some real cuts have to happen.
The Lone Petition Circulator
Nothing locally today on voter registration issues -- I mean beyond the stupid paper stock issue, which was just a silly old bureaucratic rule that was over 10 years old.
The fraudulent petition signatures in Summit County that got the anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot, have apparently been traced to one circulator. Plenty of contrition and relief.
Absentee balloting has begun in Ohio. Applications in Ohio for the absentee ballot are due by October 4. Apparently both sides are pushing hard for people to go this route. Strangely enough, the wife has yet to receive anything about requesting an absentee ballot from the Democratic Party or the Dem leaning groups. I, on the other hand, received a flier from the RNC last month to do an absentee ballot, and received another one today from the Ohio GOP -- along with a list of who to vote for on a straight ticket down to the county level.
It bothers me to see absentee balloting pushed so hard. Not to be used as a necessary tool for those infirm, elderly, away at school or serving in the military; but as a way to get straight ticket voting locked in early.
Slashing Through Ohio
Both Bush and Kerry have spent a lot of time in Ohio. You read a lot of reports about how they are criss-crossing the state. That's not really true. They mostly slash through the state. The large majority of the state's population runs diagonally from the Northeast to the Southwest. Here is a map of the state
The numbers represent the rank in terms of voting population from the 2000 Presidential election from the Ohio Secretary of State. I have Northeast Ohio counties in a separate color for other reasons I hope to get to in the next week or so. The counties in white are to account for the Cleveland Plain Dealer interpretation on Northeast Ohio, from their " 5 Ohios" reports. The Toledo area gets hit, usually on the way up to Michigan. Otherwise, the candidates stick to places they can reach via I-71 (along with I-90, -77 and -76 in Northeast Ohio) .
This should also provide visual aids for the counties mentioned, to help those of you coming here from Bill Hobbs and his national voter fraud round-up.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
You Want Fraud, You Need Fraud, You've Got Fraud
Hey kids, can you guess the word of the day? Rhymes with odd. Yes, you are correct -- fraud! And my is it a broad level of fraud.
Starting with the gay marriage amendment on the ballot for Ohio. More faked signatures from the petition that got the measure on the ballot are coming to light -- dead people, claims of lies about what the petition concerned, etc. I would love to see this kicked off the ballot, but the article doesn't seem to indicate that would be an option at this point.
The sad thing, is that it took thank you cards from the Summit County Republican Party to petition signers to bring this to light. Where were all the concerned activists and lawyers to fight to verify all the signatures on these petitions? Something so important and clearly about abridging the rights of a group. Especially a loyal constituency of the Democrats. Oh, right, they were busy getting Nader officially kicked off the Ohio ballot.
Ohio's top elections official knocked independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader off the state's November ballot late Tuesday. Republican Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell upheld a hearing officer's recommendation to scrap dozens of petitions challenged by Democrats, leaving Nader 1,292 signatures shy of the 5,000 required. Nader was backed in recent polls by about 2 percent of Ohio's likely voters a small but important slice of the electorate in one of the year's most critical swing states. His removal is good news for Ohio Democrats, who worked hard to get Nader off the ballot, in part because the polls showed that he would draw more Democratic voters than Republicans. The decision leaves no serious third-party opposition for the tightly matched mainline candidates: Republican President George W. Bush and Democratic Sen. John Kerry. But Nader vowed to fight back. His spokesman, Kevin Zeese, said the campaign intends to sue to force Blackwell to revisit 9,000 signatures invalidated by local elections boards before the latest challenge. Good luck Ralph, you'll need it.
Meanwhile the voter registration fraud keeps piling up. Even small counties like Portage is having problems. While a lot of the problems seem to be happening (or at least being reported) in Northeast Ohio, there are also some problems in Franklin County (Columbus) as well. The thing to keep in mind, is that these problems are handled at the county level. They are processed by the county boards of election. When they find enough or a significant pattern, then they turn over the investigation and potential criminal activities to the county sheriff or the FBI. The state has no real involvement, so reporting on the problem will likely be spotty.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
Oh, Woe to Democracy
A real thumb-sucker of an editorial from the Cleveland Plain Dealer Editorial Board on the upcoming Presidential debates.
Call it a 90-minute prime-time photo op. Or dueling recitations. Or even a presidential beauty contest. But don't call what is scheduled to transpire Thursday evening in Miami a debate. Any resemblance to the kind of frank and far-ranging exchange of views that most people historically associate with such formalized verbal combat will be purely against the rules - all 32 lawyer-crafted pages of them. Debates involve give-and-take between the verbal combatants. But in this made-for- TV event, all the giving came from the organizers; the candidates' legal staffs have done the taking. What no wistfulness for the Lincoln-Douglas debates? Oh, the horror! Weep for our nation.
Look, this may come as a shock to the PDEB, but Presidential debates have been meaningless for anything other than soundbites and well-planned zingers basically since they started being put on television. Maybe each year it seems a little more rigid and more rules but the basic premise hasn't changed.
The televised debates are all about looking good, reassuring the voters, and not screwing up. Been that way since the Nixon-JFK debates when Nixon drowned in flop-sweat. And guess what? The media (print and video) has been a willing agent of reducing the debate to this. Why actually talk about the issues and what was said in the debates when it is far easier and more fun to talk about how they looked, how they sounded, what were the good one-liners or quotable lines, and who accomplished their "goals" (read: connected with voters).
Actually, I'm grateful in a way the debates are reduced to this. It makes it that much easier to watch the Pitt-UConn football game (ESPN2, Thursday at 7 pm). The only way I would watch the debate would be if I was in a drinking game with it or drunkblogging it. Since I can't drink to that level around my 2 year-old, I'll stick to a few drinks while watching my alma mater play.
Eastlake -- Change the Motto
The slogan for Eastlake is: "The crown jewel of Lake County." Eh. Whatever. I firmly believe just about any city in Northeast Ohio should consider changing the city slogan in tough times to this: "Hey, at least we're not East Cleveland." Consider.
Long before she entered political life, East Cleveland Mayor Saratha Goggins stabbed a boyfriend to death. Goggins, who has for years evaded questions about the case, acknowledged Thursday that she killed O'Neal Price in a dispute 22 years ago. She would not discuss specifics of the slaying but said she acted in self-defense. "It was an unfortunate incident that occurred in a time of my life," she said in one of several interviews. "There is nothing I can do to change it. I have moved on. I am going to survive it." Her disclosure came after the Plain Dealer obtained a certified copy of a coroner's report that says she admitted stabbing Price during an altercation in the kitchen of his Glenmont Road home on Sept. 30, 1982. The late Coroner Sam Gerber ruled that Price, 48, a divorced father of three, died from a single stab wound to the heart. His report says that Goggins identified Price as her boyfriend. Rumors about Goggins' past have circulated for years. They reached a peak this month, when she replaced Emmanuel Onunwor as mayor after Onunwor's conviction on corruption charges. At the time of the slaying, Goggins was married and not involved in politics. News accounts were sketchy. A story in The Plain Dealer did not identify Goggins by name, reporting only that police arrested a 31-year-old East Cleveland woman who was screaming as she tried to get into a parked car. What happened next remains unclear. Court records available for public inspection contain no mention of Goggins being prosecuted. See, when you compare an aspect of a city to East Cleveland -- the politics, the economy, the infrastructure, the schools -- any aspect. The comparing city just looks good. Eastlake needs to consider this, even if the city got some "good news" about the overcharged and long spent excess sewer levy money.
Cash-strapped Eastlake probably will not have to repay $5 million in property taxes it should not have received, the Lake County prosecutor said. There is no legal precedent to reduce the city's future tax collections to offset the overpayment, Charles Coulson said Friday. And he acknowledged that Eastlake could ill afford a cut in taxes given its current financial crisis. Eastlake Law Director Randy Klammer said the city's official position remains the same, that the city doesn't owe the money because the Lake County Budget Commission approved the payments.
...
More than $2 million of the extra money was used to pay loans for a new City Hall, which opened in 1994. And $1.6 million has gone for interest payments on loans for a minor league baseball park. The rest of the $5 million was used for payments on smaller loans.
I would translate this to mean that the Lake County powers realized they were just as culpable in their own negligence -- the job of the County Auditor, you would think would be to check and verify money demands -- and would have had to help pay it back if they pushed the issue. Ass-covering by all. Plain and simple.
Amusingly enough, while I didn't see this story reported in the News-Herald, the N-H maintains its position of, um, ambiguity on what happened to the money (payments for stadium loans) . From an article the other day saying that sewer levy payments would be cut this year.
Former Eastlake Finance Director Jack Masterson acknowledged that money from the sewer levy was placed into the city's debt service fund, which is the fund from which all city debt is paid, including that on the Eastlake Ballpark.
However, whether any sewer levy money went toward stadium debt remains to be seen.
Vuckovich said to date, the city has paid a total of about $1.6 million in interest and principal on the notes and bonds issued for the stadium project.
Sources lined up specifically to generate money for the stadium have brought in $1,444,529.
The Ohio Arts and Sports Commission also has contributed $850,000.
That brings the total stadium revenue to about $2.3 million, which would have been enough to cover the payments to date. Care to put that on a timeline to prove it? It's almost comical. The backflips and spin to avoid admitting to the reality.
Speaking of comical, there are now members of Eastlake City Council proposing the elimination of the position of Mayor. Replacing him with a City Manager to be hired by City Council. Now, I don't know enough about the differences to have a solid opinion. My initial response is suspicion because the reasons given don't really pass the "sniff" test that well. Part of it is the claim that having a mayor made things more dictitorial, but that council would be more accountable if they hired the city manager. Say what? The Mayor isn't dictator, unless the City Council rolls over for him every time -- which is what this council appears to have done during the DiLiberto years. As it stands, the denials and claims of "we were kept in the dark" from the City Council and finance committee should tell you all you need to know about the feeling by members of the city council for accountability.
More arguments against are found at the bottom of the article in the reader comments. Including a no vote from a present city council member and mayoral candidate.
Welcome to Florida Ohio
Where the recounts are in full swing before a ballot is even cast.
While Democrats in Ohio and around the country fight like hell to keep Nader off the ballot -- using every legal argument and wanting every name, signature and address scrutinized, analyzed and DNA tested -- voter registrations are a different matter. In that case, the procedures are too cumbersome. The rules too stringent, too much risk of spoilage, provisional ballots are not sufficient or still too unwieldly, etc. (Yes, Republicans are doing the exact same in reverse for the two issues.) So what if voter registration groups that have targeted Dem leaning/heavy wards for the registration and caused a lot of the problems.
Some local election officials say voter groups bear responsibility for the registration backlog because they have turned in too many cards that are duplicates or incomplete, forcing the boards to track down the voters. In Cuyahoga County, for instance, Project Vote and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, worked together to submit the most cards. But they also produced the highest percentage - about 15 percent - of incomplete cards. Meanwhile the incredibly stupid Ohio gay marriage ban has its own fraud issues.
Hilary Labbe has been a registered Democrat for as long as he can remember. Aside from the 2000 primary when he jumped ship for one ballot to vote for John McCain, the Cuyahoga Falls man said he's always been faithful to the Democratic Party. So when the retired B.F. Goodrich worker walked to the mailbox last week and found a letter from the Summit County Republican Party thanking him for signing a petition seeking to amend the Ohio Constitution to ban gay marriages -- he said he was stunned. Labbe, 78, said he never signed the petition and wants to know how a signature purported to be his made its way onto one filed recently with the Summit County Board of Elections. Sadly, it looks as if the narrow-minded, short-sighted morons who filed the petitions for the referendum have more than enough ballots to cover the fraud.
Obviously someone in the VRWC forgot to send a memo to the Summit County Republicans. A lot of the fraud perpetrated by the so-called "Citizens for Community Values" wouldn't have been revealed if they hadn't sent out thank you cards based on petition signatures.
Looks like I'll need an extra bottle of booze for election night. Looks to be a really long one.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Back But Not
Hello, again. Never mentioned that we had a road trip to see my family in Pennsylvania. Figured I would post something when I got there. Unfortunately, I am spoiled by broadband, and had insufficient patience to spend any time on dial-up.
Left yesterday, but rather than leave around noon like we planned, we did a trip to the outlets first so the grandparents and great-grandmother could by stuff for Angie (what can you do?). So we didn't hit the road until nearly 4 pm. Then there was apparently a brutal accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike just after the Cranberry exit (around mile marker 22) that blocked both lanes heading west. That delayed us another hour-and-a-half -- we got off the turnpike and hung out in a Burger King for a while.
Needless to say Angie had been out cold for a while ,and put right into bed when we got home near 11 pm. That, however, meant she woke up around 6:30 am this morning. Not her usual 9 am time. So, I had no quiet time this morning. Squeezing this post in while she's on a Sesame Street fix.
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