Fire In the Skies
May 27, 2008
This AP article details something quite crazy …
The FBI is looking into a flaming projectile that was seen near a Cleveland-bound Continental Airlines plane just after it departed from Houston.
Scott Wilson, the spokesman for the bureau’s Cleveland office, says the plane wasn’t in danger and landed safely on Monday.
Wilson says the pilot described seeing a flame and smoke trail with the projectile, which passed in front of the jet over Texas.
The FBI’s Houston office is investigating whether a rocket club shot something into the air.
That rocket club better be more careful!
More Economic Woes
May 27, 2008
I don’t know if I am just in one of those moods, but the two posts that I have written thus far today both deal with the lousy shape of our economy. The Columbus Dispatch tells us of Ohio colleges and universities that are also feeling the same angst as the rest of the county lately.
Senator Hillary Clinton has advocated for plans to make college more affordable for all students during this election cycle. We can only hope that something will happen to help, and that it will happen sooner rather than later.
None of the colleges knows what its final figure will be because of “summer melt” — a trickling-off of committed students who decide not to go to the school after all. Some receive late offers from their top-choice college and go there instead. Others put school off for a year or decide not to go at all because of family emergencies, financial concerns or other reasons.
Everyone is waiting to see how the sluggish economy — including increasing home foreclosures, layoffs, record gasoline prices, soaring food costs and fears of a student-loan squeeze — will affect families’ ability to pay for college.
All the colleges have received more student appeals for financial aid, including pleas from families asking for consideration because of a drop in income.
The biggest test will come this summer when parents, particularly those with less-than-stellar credit, go out in search of private loans. Although few if any students are being denied access to loans, college leaders are increasingly nervous about how those looking to borrow will fare as fall classes near.
“Who knows what will happen once the bill arrives at their homes in July and they have to decide how they will finance it?” said Margaret Drugovich, vice president for university enrollment at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware.
How many of you or your parents are feeling the squeeze?
More Evidence of a Slowing Economy
May 27, 2008
For once I wold love to open up the paper and see good news about our economy. It seems like it was so long ago that we had that luxury. A new article in the Columbus Dispatch details more evidence of a downturn in our economy.
U.S. home prices dropped at the sharpest rate in two decades during the first quarter, a closely watched index showed Tuesday, a somber indication that the housing slump continues to deepen.
Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller said its national home price index fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988. The quarterly index covers all nine U.S. Census divisions.
The narrower indices also set record declines. The 20-city index tumbled 14.4 percent during the quarter, the lowest since that index was started in 2001. The 10-city index plunged 15.3 percent, a record in its 20-year history.
I wonder where Ohio ranks in this category?
The New Wave of Election Petitions in Ohio
May 26, 2008
Thanks to the Columbus Dispatch for this article that details the way in which the citizens of Ohio will work to put initiatives on the ballot in the years to come.
The new system uses a “digital pen” that captures signatures electronically on special paper. It transmits them to a BlackBerry, which, in turn, sends the information to a computer, where the signatures and accompanying details are checked visually against a statewide voter-registration database maintained by county boards of elections.
This new system will allow petition organizers to electronically verify valid signatures. This will prevent ballot initiatives from failing due to a lack of signatures after a review finds many to be invalid.
The company piloting this program, the Ohio Petition Co., is taking on a big contract for its first initiative. The company will be collecting signatures to ensure that the Ohio Health Families Act, which you can read more about here, gets to be voted up or down by Ohio voters after an incompetent Ohio legistature has continued to drag its feet on this issue.
The system is adapted from PenVote, a Columbus startup company that is promoting use of the technology to replace voting machines. It uses an electronic pen about the size of a fat fountain pen. When someone writes on the paper, a miniature camera in the pen reads the handwriting in relation to tiny dots imprinted on the paper. It then transmits a signal to reproduce the handwriting on a computer screen. The pens cost about $250 each.
Do you think this is the wave of the future?
Columbus Suburb Going Green
May 26, 2008
Westerville, a surburb on Columbus’ north side, has decided to resurrect a plan to allow city residents to buy more environmentally sound forms of energy, including wind and hydro. The plan was passed approximately four years ago, but was never promoted because energy prices continued to increase.
According to an article in the Columbus Dispatch, the additional cost to residents of Westerville would be approximately $13 per month.
I’m a Westerville resident and would be more than happy to pay the increase. Now this is an example of Ohio politics functioning as it should.
Sickening Story of an Ohio Mother
May 23, 2008
I remember this story from 2005 and just read the update this morning. This is the story of the Ohio couple that kept their children in cages like animals. I remember feeling very angry when I first read about this story. Well, now I feel repulsed.
A mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday for keeping her 17-year-old adopted son caged in her home.
Brenda Sullivan pleaded guilty in January to three counts of aggravated child abuse. Prosecutors agreed to drop lesser child neglect charges.
The teen weighed 49 pounds when child welfare workers found him in 2005 in what appeared to be a cage. Sullivan told a judge at the time that Ohio authorities told her to keep the boy, who had severe medical and emotional problems, in a crib.
“There’s only one conclusion when you look at the medical evidence in this case, and that is that she literally starved him,” prosecutor Julie Schlax said.
Two other children, 13-year-old twins the Sullivans adopted as infants, both testified they were kept in similar cages.
Sullivan’s husband was also arrested, but died in January 2007 while awaiting trial.
This truly is an unjust sentence as her lawyer claimed. The unjust part is that the woman does not spend the rest of her life in a cage herself. Twenty years is far too short.
More Evidence of a Media Bias
May 23, 2008
Here we go again. I was browsing several news articles online and came across one titled, “What Does Hillary Want?”
Interested in reading this article, I was not so surprised to see this blaring photo of Senator Clinton.
So here we go again…more sexism and bias from our traditional main stream media.
Does Strickland Favor Looser Gun Laws?
May 21, 2008
I have to admit that I was pretty shocked when I read this Columbus Dispatch article.
A push by the National Rifle Association to loosen a number of state gun laws is drawing heavy criticism from prosecutors and a variety of law-enforcement groups who argue it will make them and the public less safe.
“It seems clear to the law-enforcement community in Ohio that it is the intent of some to do a ‘jam job’ on these extremely important issues,” Mark Drum, a lobbyist for the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio, wrote recently to Rep. John J. White, R-Kettering, chairman of the House Criminal Justice Committee.
When Bob Taft, a Republican, was governor, he gave law enforcement a big say in whether Ohio gun laws should be changed, but now the NRA has a rock-solid friend in Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland.
He is not concerned that his support for the gun proposal goes against police officers, police chiefs and county sheriffs, a spokesman said. “As a gun-rights supporter, the governor believes these are reasonable and appropriate protections for gun owners,” Keith Dailey, the governor’s spokesman, said, referring to the NRA-backed proposals.
The article goes on to describe what these new ammendments would do.
Among its changes, the bill would let anyone carry a gun in a vehicle, regardless of whether they have a concealed-carry license. The gun would have to be unloaded and in a case, which could be unlocked.
Hanson said current law, which generally says that non-licensees must transport guns in a trunk or locked case, has been “chewed up beyond recognition” by police officers and the courts.
Law-enforcement groups say the proposal makes it too easy for someone in a vehicle to load a gun. They also say the plan would let people carry rifles and sawed-off shotguns in their vehicles.
The State Highway Patrol, which has been very vocal in the past about concerns over guns in vehicles, is now, under Strickland, declining to talk about the issue.
Some additional NRA-backed changes:
• A sheriff could not consider a sealed or expunged conviction in the background check of an applicant for a concealed-carry license.
• The penalty would be reduced for a concealed-carry licensee who had failed to notify law enforcement that he or she was carrying a gun, if the officer or dispatcher knew the person had a gun license.
Landlords would be prohibited from barring tenants from keeping handguns.
• Law enforcement would be prohibited from seizing legally owned firearms in a period of emergency.
Does Strickland want to take Ohio back to the Wild West?
Carnival Number 118 - The Long and Winding Road
May 21, 2008
The new Carnival of Ohio Politics is up for this week and is great. Please check it out!
Hillary Clinton Speech Excerpts After a Huge Win in Kentucky
May 20, 2008
Thanks to the Associated Press for these excerpts:
Tonight, we’ve achieved an important victory.
It’s not just Kentucky bluegrass that’s music to my ears. It’s the sound of your overwhelming vote of confidence, even in the face of some pretty tough odds.
Some have said your votes didn’t matter, that this campaign was over, that allowing everyone to vote and every vote to count would somehow be a mistake. But that didn’t stop you. You’ve never given up on me, because you know I’ll never give up on you.
This is one of the closest races for a party’s nomination in modern history. We’re winning the popular vote, and I’m more determined — more determined than ever to see that every vote is cast and every ballot counted.
I commend Senator Obama and his supporters. And while we continue to go toe-to-toe for this nomination, we do see eye-to-eye when it comes to uniting our party to elect a Democratic president in the fall.
But I need your help. Your support has made the difference between victory and defeat. Though we have been outspent massively, your support has helped us make our case on the air and on the ground, and your help will keep us going.
___
We are in this race because we believe everyone deserves a shot at the American dream, the opportunity to work hard at a good job to get ahead, to save for college, for a home, for retirement, to fill the gas tank and buy the groceries with a little left at the end of each month to build a better life for you and your children.
We are in this race because we believe this new century poses new challenges to meet and new opportunities to seize, if we only had a president ready, willing and able to lead and turn the climate crisis into an energy revolution and create millions of new jobs, to turn the risks of the new global economy into the rewards of new prosperity shared by all of our people.
We are in this race because we believe it will take a commander in chief with the strength and knowledge to end the war in Iraq, safely and quickly, and a president with experience, representing the people of the United States in more than 80 countries, to restore our leadership and moral authority in the world.
And, yes, we are in this race because we believe America is worth fighting for. This — this continues to be a tough fight, and I have fought it the only way I know how: with determination, by never giving up and never giving in.
I have done it — I have done it not because I’ve wanted to demonstrate my toughness, but because I believe passionately that, for the sake of our country, the Democrats must take back the White House and end Republican rule.
This country needs our combination of strength and compassion to help people struggling with their bills, living the hard reality of everyday life, in need of our leadership on issues from health care to energy to Social Security.
That’s why I’m still running, and that’s why you’re still voting.
And I’m going on now to campaign in Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico.
And I’m going to keep standing up for the voters of Florida and Michigan.
Democrats in those two states cast 2.3 million votes, and they deserve to have those votes counted.
And that’s why I’m going to keep making our case until we have a nominee, whoever she may be.
Now, it’s especially sweet tonight because Kentucky has a knack for picking presidents.
This state delivered two terms to a president named Clinton.
And it’s often been said, as Kentucky goes, so goes the nation.
Neither Senator Obama nor I has won the 2,210 delegates required to secure the nomination. And because this race is so close, still separated by less than 200 delegates out of more than 4,400, neither Senator Obama nor I will have reached that magic number when the voting ends on June the 3rd.
And so — our party will have a tough choice to make. Who’s ready to lead our party at the top of our ticket?
Who is ready to defeat Senator McCain in the swing states and among swing voters?
Who’s ready to rebuild the economy and the war in Iraq and protect our national security as commander in chief? Who is ready on day one to lead?
____
You know, the state motto of Kentucky is, “United we stand, divided we fall,” words that have a special place in our history. They inspire American revolutionaries to unite the colonies, to defy an empire, and create a new nation, to invent a new form of government, of the people, by the people, and for the people, and they bound our nation together in service and sacrifice, even in our darkest hours.
We will come together as a party, united by common values and common cause, united in service of the hopes and dreams that know no boundaries of race or creed, gender or geography. And when we do, there will be no stopping us.
We won’t just unite our party. We will unite our country and make sure America’s best years are still ahead of us.
Thank you. And God bless you, and God bless America.
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