Fairborn commencement
Badin graduation
Division I regional track finals
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2007 > November
November 2007
Chelsea vs. the Bush girls? Good grief.
Nothing could possibly be stupider and more pointless than an argument about the relative merits of Chelsea Clinton and the Bush daughters. Nonetheless, some people seem to enjoy pointing out that the Bush daughters have taught in inner city schools and done other “social conscience” stuff, whereas Chelsea has an education in finance and has been making big money. So much, these people say, for the notion that Democrats are the ones who care about the less fortunate.
Well, yes, the Bush girls seem to be fine young ladies. Witness Jenna’s book and her well received appearance in Dayton.
Even if they weren’t fine, I for one, couldn’t possibly care less.
However, people whose partisanship has transcended healthy levels by so much that they take some satisfaction in trashing Chelsea might want to keep open the possibility that her education and training are designed to make her qualified to run a philanthropy, such as that of her family. Her friends have speculated on that and seem to see her as very focused on doing good work. She’s been credited with raising $20 million for the Clinton foundation. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/us/politics/31chelsea.html.
Tell you the truth, though, if she just wants to get rich and hang with the Hiltons, I don’t care.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: National politics
Why Kroger Is Closing
I’ve been noticing an awful lot of people from all over town assuming that the reason Kroger is shutting its Gettysburg Avenue store is crime there. So I thought I’d point out that Kroger says this just isn’t so. The issue came up again and again at a community meeting last week. The Kroger spokesmen said as clearly as they could that the problem was not “pilferage” (the term that’s apparently used in the business) or any other security issue. The problem was simply lack of customers and lack of sales.
The company says on the editorial page of the Sunday Dayton Daily News that it tried several ways to increase sales, and nothing worked.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: City of Dayton (non-politics_
Kroger Takes Heat
When Kroger decided to close its Gettysburg Avenue store in West Dayton, Mayor Rhine McLin told the company that it needed to meet with residents and explain why. Understandably, she didn’t want to have to do the explaining herself. This is bad news, after all, what with West Dayton having no other major supermarket.
The public meeting was Monday evening. For whatever reason, Kroger decided to show up. Maybe the company is worried about city cooperation on its pending Wayne Avenue store. Or maybe it just wanted to limit damage in West Dayton, in the hope that people there will continue to shop at its other stores, which many already do.
Anyway, it was quite a night.
Lots of people showed up with lots to say. Lots of emotion. Seemed to me Kroger probably minimized the damage as much as it could without making any actual concessions. But I’m not sure others would agree. There remained plenty of anger.
I will have a column about the meeting in Friday’s paper. The paper is also planning a Sunday editorial about the closing.
(Definitions: A “column,” with somebody’s name on it, is that person speaking; an “editorial,” which is what we call the pieces with no signature, represents the position of the editorial board as a group.)
Meanwhile, we’d be interested in hearing reactions from anybody who was there, or has been at other meetings on this subject, or just has something to say about the controversy.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: City of Dayton (non-politics_
5 minutes with Gov. Ted Strickland
I sat down with Gov. Ted Strickland for about an hour last week at the Ohio Statehouse.
We covered government secrecy, press relations, Hillary Clinton, mortgage foreclosures and local government personnel costs.
I found him to be plain spoken. He seems focused on the famous Bismarckian formulation of politics as “the art of the possible.”
Here’s a video I produced from the interview that condenses the experience to 4 minutes and 59 seconds.
Goldberg’s Voter Tests, Again
The Sunday Dayton Daily News has a column by Jonah Goldberg promoting knowledge tests for prospective voters. He made the same proposal in a column last summer, and I wrote a response here. Here is that response:
The Kristof and Goldberg oped columns in today’s DDN on the book “The Myth of the Rational Voter:”
My parents were never quite clear on the difference between a U.S. senator and a state senator. And, not having high school diplomas, they couldn’t have named the three branches of government. But they knew what they thought of Reagan, Bush 1 and Clinton. If Goldberg had tried to test them to see if they should be allowed to vote, I would have killed him. Well, no. Figure of speech. But it would be the kind of provocation against which Americans would be obliged to take up arms under other circumstances.
Maybe, in the case of Goldberg, I’d settle for lecturing my parents to the effect that this shows why people like them should not be trending conservative in their advanced years.
I haven’t read the book, but I have well-aged views on the rationality of voters. If you look at the historical pattern in presidential elections, you see a clear logic to the way the decisive voters are voting: parties keep the presidency when the country and the government are doing about as well as can be expected by a rational, non-partisan, non-ideological voter looking at the big picture. Otherwise, the other party wins.
The voters who determine the outcome aren’t typically voting for “policies,” but for people. And they’re passing judgment on the parties on an election-by-election basis, with an eye on the big picture.
Of course, that’s not to say that policy views don’t matter in elections. The people who vote for the same party pretty much all the time — the majority of voters — are often motivated by policy views, or at by values. Whether the views are rational can be debated. But the values have to be respected.
On turnout: Goldberg makes an assumption that I’ve heard from others who are against efforts to maximize turnout: that the people who aren’t voting are the ones who don’t know anything. It’s as dubious as the assumption that those people are mainly potential Democrats, an assumption he derides. A study by Cox Newspapers some years ago concluded that non-voters have about the same amount of information as voters.
It’s perfectly reasonable to ask this question: why should a person who declares his own ignorance about political stuff and his own lack of opinions be urged to vote, even if his instinct is not to? But what about the people about whom it can be said that they know a lot, but it’s all wrong. They seem to be more prevalent. I’ll take uninformed vacillation over uninformed certitude. Put the vacillators in a voting booth, and they might make some bad choices. But, as Kristof suggests, add up all the choices, and you’re likely to find something worth respecting.
Permalink | | Categories: Syndicated Columns
Reagan, Brooks, Herbert, Krugman and all that
As you might have noticed, some New York Times columnists have been having a fight on our pages (and theirs). They never mention each other by name, perhaps because of some Times policy. But David Brooks wrote last week about unnamed liberals who seem to include Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman. Neither of them is apologetic.
The issue — for reasons best known to them, and explored below — is whether Ronald Reagan started his 1980 campaign with an appeal to racists.
Here’s the Brooks column: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/opinion/09brooks.html?ref=opinion
Here’s a Herbert rebuttal: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/13/opinion/13herbert.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists
Here’s is me:
To some of us, 1980 is not history, but memory. I happen to have a very clear memory of Ronald Reagan’s opening salvo in the fall campaign. It was not about race at all, either in the form of a pitch to racists in Mississippi nor in the form of a reaching out to the Urban League, which David Brooks cites.
In my memory, it was about Vietnam. Reagan said that the lesson of Vietnam is clear: The next time we move into a foreign country, we must do it in full force. None of this namby-pamby, toe-in-the-water stuff. In other words, the lesson was not the dovish one: We never should have moved in. The lesson was the hawkish one: We should have moved in harder.
His message was striking, because Vietnam was not particularly being discussed theretofore. He went out of way to raise the subject, for some reason.
I’m not sure, but I think he did this on like the Sunday after the Thursday on which he delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican convention. I mean, in my memory, it was RIGHT out of the box.
All of which is not to say that the Times guys have everything all wrong. It’s to say that when we enter into interpreting something that happened 27 years ago, an awful lot is going to depend on the interpreter.
I tend to distrust revisitations of this sort of thing by political warriors. For one thing, it is simply weird, obsessive behavior. It reminds me of the way the conservatives were in the mid-1960s when I was coming of political age. Their leading outlet — William F. Buckley’s National Review — was still obsessed with a guy named Alger Hiss. He was — or wasn’t — some sort of spy, and his case hit the headlines in the late 1940s or early 1950s. And the warriors just would not let go, no matter what.
Now the anti-Reagan liberals are like them. They have their little obsessions — their wounds, their grudges, their discontent with the outcome of past fights — and they simply will not let go, no matter what.
So they have to bring us back to Philadelphia, Miss. in 1980, to make sure we understand that the whole conservative thing is morally illegitimate, being based on appeals to racists. I picture a young person today in my position in the ’60s, wondering if all this carrying on suggests that Philadelphia is something like Gettysburg, a fundamental, pivotal event in American history that i am obliged to know about. And, if not, why are these people carrying on like this?
The answer is no; you do not have to know about Philadelphia.
For whatever it is worth, though, I am pretty much with Brooks on this.
If one wants to equate conservatism with racism, so be it. But Reagan was simply articulating conservatism, and he had every right to do that. He was not George Wallace, going around riling people up about the other race and reaping the political rewards at whatever expense to the fabric of society. Reagan’s rhetoric divided liberals and conservatives, not blacks and whites; he wasn’t a racist himself, and he didn’t communicate racism or any other form of hatred other than the ideological kind.
(He was full of baloney on ideology, but that’s another subject.)
Yes, he knew the words “state’s rights” were music to the ears of the racists. But there was a lot of other music he didn’t play for them. He had a right to argue to the South that he had more in common with it philosophically than the southern president whom many southerners had voted for last time around. It was a campaign, after all.
All the talk about timing — about how early in campaign he did — is just so much noise.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: National politics, Syndicated Columns
A sit down with Mr. Strickland
Gov. Ted Strickland sat down with me for about an hour this morning — in the same office where Abraham Lincoln stood (or sat) when he received word he had been elected president of the United States.
The governor was very gracious and easy going.
Here’s my first take, tapped in from a cubby in the Ohio Legislative Correspondents’ room at the Statehouse:
I started out with a soft pitch about Mr. Strickland’s personal style — specifically, his habit of picking up the phone when reporters call in with inquires leaving them temporarily flummoxed as he says, “Hi, this is Ted. How can I help you.”
The short answer is he feels it’s part of his job to talk to the press, and he mostly enjoys it.
I then brought up U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose presidential bid Mr. Strickland endorsed last week. I asked the governor what he thought of her as a person, what she’s like. The governor said that he and Mrs. Clinton are not social friends, but that she has been a big help to him in his political career. He admires her devotion to public service, and with her upbringing in the United Methodist Church and its social teachings considers her a kindred spirit.
On the public policy front:
— I asked the governor about the mortgage foreclosure crisis and whether the financial services industry should be made to pay — in the form of a special tax — to clean up the horrendous mess it created.
— I asked him about Speaker Jon Husted’s bill that would exempt military pensions from state income tax.
— I asked him about the decline in Ohio’s urban counties, and whether the state has contributed to the problem through by ducking out on its financial responsibilities and failing to fix dysfunctional collective bargaining laws affecting public employees.
I will save his thoughts on those issues for a later day.
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Visions for Bldg. 26 & other historic sites
This is a rendering by Dayton architect Jeff Wray of a concept for Building 26 and how it might be adapted as part of the University of Dayton’s redevelopment of the old NCR property.
For a bigger image, click here: View image.
He says, “This view from the corner of Patterson and Stewart shows an uncovered and restored Building 26 (on the right) as part of a gateway and commercial redevelopment concept for the south side of Stewart Street. Use as an Alumni Center is suggested here as one of many possibilities for the 42,000 square foot two-story building.”
What do you think of this — bearing in mind that there is no financial feasibility study behind it?
What other possibilities do you imagine?
Check out Sunday’s editorial, and help think through some bigger questions:
Building 26 is not the only endangered historic site in the Dayton region, and there are not enough resources to save everything worth saving.
With that in mind, what other properties should make the “A List” for preservation or reuse?
By what process and criteria should this community select the vital few?
How might they be preserved or adapted?
Antioch Gets Good (Re)Start
Here’s a link to a news story in a professional journal about the decision to try to keep Antioch College open: http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/11/05/antioch
And here’s an editorial appearing in the Dayton Daily News of Friday, Nov. 11:
The Antioch College alumni association has done impressive work, coming up with enough money and pledges so that the university trustees have decided to try to keep the college open, after all.
The university announced last summer that the liberal arts college would be closed in 2008 for at least four years, because of declining enrollment, decrepit facilities, massive debt and a pathetic endowment. But some alums still believed that there must be enough emotional commitment to Antioch to keep the venerated school funded.
Others were saying that the heart of the financial problem was that Antioch alums — idealistic to an arguable fault — are not people who make big money. But now there’s $18 million (in cash and pledges) to cast doubt on that assumption.
It’s only a start, but it’s a good one. The alumni association says there’s more where that came from.
In pursuit of funds, the alumni association was certainly helped by the closure announcement itself. Though widely criticized at the time by alums, the announcement did clearly communicate the message that this was serious.
Helping, too, most likely, was all the public gloating by conservative critics of the school. Good old American polarization raised its head: The more something is hated, the more it is loved.
Still, there are a lot of remaining problems. For example, because of the closure announcement and pre-existing issues, the school now has to convince authorities that the college is still a real academic institution, that it’s providing quality services. With one-professor departments and the promise of more cuts, that will be a challenge.
Meanwhile, the school will remain in an official emergency situation, which means that the administration will have special powers to eliminate faculty positions. Potential teachers and students (and students’ parents) will have difficulty knowing what to think about the future of the school.
Impressively as the Antioch community has pitched in, this, too, must be said: Antiochians aren’t talking much publicly about the Antioch issue the outside world is talking about. That, of course, is the campus’ reputation as a politically repressive left-wing bastion, a place where liberals must walk on eggshells, the politically uncommitted have to keep their doubts to themselves, and conservatives … yeah, right, conservatives at Antioch!
Discussion among Antiochians focuses more on university decisions of recent years, including the adoption of a new kind of curriculum that seemed to leave everybody confused, or worse.
Without doubt, the internal critics raise good points. The university trustees seem responsive to some; they have agreed, for example, to move in the direction of granting the college its own board of trustees. That reform is widely seen as necessary if the members of the college community — including financial contributors — are to believe the university is truly committed to the college’s survival.
Still, the school’s situation is so dire — with enrollment having dropped from a couple thousand to 230 over 30 years — that Antioch needs to attack all its problems, including the political reputation.
For all anybody knows, Antioch might have had better luck with recruitment if it had gone ahead with the plan to close for a few years, toward the goal of getting a fresh start, with a physically refurbished campus and a new plan.
But that would have wreaked havoc with the lives of current students and faculty. And that plan was destined to be met with skepticism about whether the rebirth would ever happen.
So now the idea is to get a fresh start on the run. That will be taxing on everybody. The motivation is intense, on the part of students, faculty and, it turns out, fundraisers and givers. That’s a large part of the battle, but only part.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Higher Ed
National Trust offers UD help on Bldg. 26
Jennifer Sandy, a program officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation in its midwest office, called this morning to say that she read today’s DDN editorial calling for a halt to the demolition of Building 26.
She said that she agreed UD is entitled to help from the preservation community, and that her organization is prepared to provide some. I asked her what she had in mind.
She sent me a statement from Royce Yeater, director of the organization’s midwest office, excerpted below:
The preservation community has long maintained that Building 26 could be a huge asset for UD, if the university would only step back from their decision to demolish, which we agree was made some time ago without the benefit of community input or all the information now at hand.
The DDN rightly points out that the preservation community should be a partner with UD in seeking funding for rehabilitation of Building 26. In fact, the National Trust offered to work with UD a year ago to investigate use of federal historic tax credits equal to 20 percent of qualified rehabilitation expenditures for Building 26. …
Since that time, Ohio has passed a companion state historic rehabilitation tax credit equal to 25 percent of qualifying rehabilitation expenditures. As a nonprofit, UD would have to think creatively to make use of these credits, but it can and has been done, and the National Trust (has) offered to assist with making it happen. …
We second DDN’s request for further study by UD and their developer on potential costs involved with incorporating the building into their long-range campus plans. It’s not fair to say rehabilitation would be more expensive than new construction when UD has presented no plans for what new construction might occupy that site.
Yes, preservation of Building 26 is likely to be more complicated than scraping the ground clean, and receipt of tax credits is not guaranteed, as the building would need to be determined eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. However, the State Historic Preservation Office has already noted that if the non-historic material is removed and original materials are intact, the property’s integrity may be re-evaluated. …
U.S. Rep. Mike Turner has pointed out the opportunity to turn Building 26 into a critical and compelling part of UD’s plans for the UD Research Institute. We believe the long-term benefits to the university and the community of saving Building 26 would make the extra effort worthwhile, and we ask UD to investigate all sources of funding to allow the structure to contribute to both the campus and the city’s heritage for years to come.
DDN editorial board, voters mostly agree
For those of you who keep score: The Dayton Daily News made candidate recommendations in eight contests and endorsed three levies.
All the levies we backed (Montgomery County Human Services, Kettering and Oakwood schools) passed.
Of the 17 people (running in 8 contests) that we recommended, 13 won. The winners whom we didn’t recommend were:
Sheila Taylor and Nancy Nerny for the Dayton school board.
Darreyl Davis for Trotwood mayor.
Jerry Petrak for Beavercreek City Council.
Congrats to all the winners.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Elections
Beavercreek, Fairborn voters got it right
You never know what’s going to happen in school board races. But voters in Beavercreek and Fairborn called their contests right across-the-board.
Al Nels and Mike Verlingo won in Beavercreek. Angie Botkin, Tess Little and David Taylor won in Fairborn. Both of those school districts have been through contentious times. They need these kinds of minds and sincere do-gooders on the board.
One of the delights of this election season was interviewing these candidates. Every school district should be so lucky.
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
Tonight’s blow-out goes to now-Judge Mike Murry
Mike Murry beat Pete Certo for Xenia Municipal Court judge 10,336 to 1,774. Uh, that means he got 85 percent of the vote.
Certo didn’t really put on a campaign. He ran as an Independent, and put his name up just in case Murry choked in the primary and didn’t beat the incumbent, Judge Susan Goldie. As an Independent, he was guaranteed a spot on the fall ballot.
There’s no humiliation in Certo’s loss. He didn’t try.
If Certo had any campaign debt, local lawyers would hold a post-election fundraiser for him. That’s just how bad they wanted to ensure Goldie was gone.
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
Kruse didn’t quit in Springboro
Mike Kruse finally won a school board seat in Springboro.
In his third attempt, he was the top vote-getter of three people running for two seats.
R. Douglas Buchy was knocked off the board, and the second seat will be filled by Craig Colston, who previously was on the board.
Some people said Buchy was nasty to people who came to the school board meetings. Those kinds of stories get around in a small town where people expect to be heard — and treated well when they get up in a crowded room to speak.
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
History in Riverside
Ken Curp is the only mayor Riverside has ever had. But he appears to have lost tonight. Look for an effort to deconstruct this one in the Dayton Daily News opinion pages soon.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Local politics
Springboro mayoral candidates tie in Mont. Co. Huh?
The Springboro mayoral contest has been the hot race in that Warren County community.
With 15 of 16 precincts counted, John Agenbroad was winning over Scott Anderson, 1,291-1,220.
Springboro — weirdly enough — has one precinct in Montgomery County.
There, the race ended in a tie, 39-39.
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
Human Services Levy redux
With 88 percent of the vote counted, this year’s results for the Human Services Levy are almost exactly the same as four years ago. Sixty-one percent of voters voted to pass the levy then; 59 percent of voters did so this year.
That’s striking, given how Montgomery County has been buffeted by lost jobs and mortgage foreclosures.
Montgomery County voters seem to have certain things that they really like about this community — and won’t say no to.
Will the fact that the levy passed make it harder for Sinclair Community College to pass a levy next year? What do you think?
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
Newcomer Breaks through in B’Creek
Here’s some stuff from the Greene County Boared of Elections Web site:
BEAVERCREEK CITY COUNCIL
Total
Number of Precincts 40
Precincts Reporting 40 100.0 %
Times Counted 11694/30239 38.7 %
Total Votes 35907
DAVID J. BAKER 2964 8. 25%
JOHN BROUGHTON 1952 5.44%
LINDA A. BORGERT 2856 7.95%
VICKI S. GIAMBRONE 4884 13.60%
PHYLLIS HOWARD 4209 11.72%
ERIC G. MARCUS 2402 6.69%
LUKE MCKELLAR 2476 6.90%
JERRY PETRAK 3719 10.36%
ZACH UPTON 3065 8.54%
JULIE VANN 4968 13.84%
DEBBORAH L. WALLACE 2412 6.72%
If I’ve got this figured right, the percentages represent the percentage of all the votes cast that each of the candidates got, in one big race for four seats by umpteen candidates.
Former council members Julie Vann and Jerry Petrak are returned, at the expense of two incumbents, one of whom had been appointed.
The new winner is Vicki Giambrone, an executive at Childrens’ Medical Center, who was a favorite of the Republican establishment, in the form, for example, of state Rep. Kevin DeWine.
There are no outrages here. Didn’t come out exactly the way I would have voted, but I suspect just about anybody could say that. There were more qualified candidates than seats.
Dave Baker, a former city staffer, brought an awful lot of knowledge to the council.
Permalink | | Categories: Local politics
Consultant’s report on Dayton region
Bill Burgess was the strategy and media consultant for the Human Services Levy campaign. He also does work for Sinclair Community College and has advised Dayton Metro Library.
He offered this observation about the Dayton region. He says the big deal here is leadership. He notes how the Montgomery County Commission went from three Republicans to three Democrats without missing a beat on something as important as the Human Services Levy.
He thinks that’s remarkable.
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
Brother Ray: Time to eat cake
Brother Ray Fitz just said it was time to cut the victory cake — with 79.2 percent of the vote in, the Human Services Levy is up 61-39.
His No. 1 thanks went to Franz Hoge, chairman of the Human Services Levy Council.
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
McLaurin in trouble
Mayor Don McLaurin looks to be in trouble in Trotwood, running well behind, with a lot of votes tallied.
It’s one of those races that is officially non-partisan, meaning that party labels don’t appear on the ballot. But the mayor’s Republican affiliation has become widely known because he’s been put forth by that party for partisan office, specifically the state senate.
That might not be all good in Democratic Trotwood. Meanwhile, of course, he’s had personal tax problems. And Trotwood is struggling to overcome the perception that it’s on a downward trajectory, with the closing of the Salem Mall.
Both the other candidates for mayor sought the endorsement of the Montgomery County Democratic Party. The one who got it, Darreyl Davis, is looking best, according to figures posted at board of elections Web site.
Both the Democrats are on the city council now, and both have been vice mayor.
Permalink | | Categories: Elections
Brother Ray: If current trends hold …
Brother Ray Fitz, former UD president and chairman of the Human Services Levy campaign, has squarely assumed his stance as an engineer. He will not claim victory — even though the levy is way up with more than 65 percent of the vote counted.
But he seems very happy, in the quiet way that he carries himself. Asked what he thinks about the levy if courrent trends hold, he said that he marvels “at the generosity that has been demonstrated” by the community.
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Be ashamed, Mark Owens, be very ashamed
The Montgomery County Democratic Party’s slate card worked.
The three candidates the Democrats endorsed — an endorsement they publicized on a flyer sent to households in Dayton — are winning for the Dayton school board.
It’s so, so sad. Lee Massoud and Mario Gallin appear to have been knocked off. Not only had they been on the board the longest, they were two of the brightest candidates. Massoud especially had potential.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: If the Democrats were backing weak candidates in the suburban school board races, Mark Owens, the party chairman, would be out of a job.
But he and the party can get behind weak candidates in the city and nobody raises a peep.
A weakened school board just got dramatically weaker.
News from Human Services Levy HQ
UD Arena is the gathering place for Human Services Levy supporters. The crowd is moderate, the appetizers light, and the mood upbeat, but expectant.
The big prediction so far: We will have a pretty good idea of the outcome by 9 p.m. and that the final votes in Kettering and Huber Heights will most closely mirror the final outcome.
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Cut off money to local Dems
Montgomery County Democratic chairmen — from Joe Shump to Dennis Lieberman to Mark Owens — can’t resist getting into non-partisan school board races.
Invariably, they make one or more shameless choices.
The party’s recommendations wouldn’t matter except that some voters — especially in low-profile contests — reflexively rely on fliers that the Democratic Party sends to their homes. This “slate card” telling them what candidates to vote for is all the information some people have on Election Day.
This year in the Dayton school board contests, the Dems endorsed two good candidates (Jeff Mims and Stacy Thompson) — and one tremendously weak one (Sheila Taylor). They could have endorsed a fourth person, but they didn’t. (Ann Marie Gallin and Lee Massoud are the other superior choices.)
If the party were messing in suburban school board contests — and making bone-headed recommendations that affect middle-class and rich kids — Democrats who are in the know would end the practice. But the party can favor its campaign workers who want to run for seats on Dayton’s school board and no one gives a whit.
What does that say about the party’s commitment to the poor — and especially poor kids — who are far more concentrated in Dayton?
The people with the big bucks need to go to Owens and have an honest chat: In the future, either he stays out of school board contests in every community — not just the suburbs — or his money is going to dry up like leaves.
The party should pay a price — and be accountable — for its recklessness.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Elections
The Donald hearts foreclosures
The Trump hustle knows no end.
His latest is “Trump University”, an institution for higher learning whose tagline is: “We teach success.”
The current offering in the course catalogue is a “FREE profit from foreclosure investment workshop.”
Here’s the promise: “generate thousands of dollars in immediate profit.”
Here’s the plug:
Hidden Money-Making Strategies: Revealed Foreclosures are on the rise. Don’t miss out on one of the freshest ways to cash in on real estate and finally live the good life. Exponentially increase your income with strategies found only through attending a free Profit from Foreclosure Investment workshop.
Nice, huh?
Buy, hey, what better than families being put out on the street as means to a good laugh and a quick buck?
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