Glass City Jungle

Officials have confirmed an event Sunday in Toledo that will include an appearance from likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Mayor Carty Finkbeiner, speaking from the Democratic National Convention in Denver said the event is planned for 1 p.m. at the Main Library on Michigan Avenue downtown. The mayor said he was ordering T-shirts that will read “Obama, O’Biden, Ohio, 08.”

That’s according to the Blade, however, according to the page for the Main Branch of the Downtown Library? they are closed on Sundays. Unless the event is being held outside the Library? Questions come to mind…
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The “This Strikes Us” in this week’s Sojourner’s Truth was a bit of a surprise, the editorial suggests the key to Obama winning is:

…he has to sink to the Republicans’ level and engage in every possible personal, negative attack against his opponent, Senator John McCain.

The truth is – negativity works and it has been working for the Republicans since Lee Atwater fashioned the George Bush attack ads of 1988 and invoked, among other things, the name of Willie Horton and fixed that albatross around the neck of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis.

This directly contradicts polling done by the AARP that states for undecided voters:
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Not long ago when I blogged about the Self-Sufficiency Standard for Lucas County it was pretty clear that there are people here in Lucas County who are struggling. This was before the latest unemployment numbers, and before the release of the information today that city of Toledo is now ranked among the nation’s poorest cities who have a population of over 250,000.
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Besides of that they are both favorites of mine and they both live in Ohio?

2008 Ohio Society for Professional Journalists Awards Winners:

Best Columnist in Ohio

First: Terry Pluto, Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Second: Connie Schultz, Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Third: Michael S. Miller, Toledo Free Press.
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Shaun Hegarty from Fox Toledo reports…

I’ll update more later. Updates:

Blade, NBC24 (only on the Southwyck loan), it doesn’t appear either WTOL or WTVG thought last night’s council meeting was worth coverage on their websites.

As I was reading the article on the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the jockeying already beginning to decide who will replace the recently deceased U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, this caught my attention:

Congressional sources told The Plain Dealer on Monday that national Democratic leaders do not want to reconvene Congress this year, making a special election meaningless.

It’s only going to be September, that would mean Congress is not going to be back in session until January? It was bad enough seeing the schedule shows them in session from September 4th to September 26th…
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I’m sitting here waiting for the Toledo City Council meeting to come on and instead it’s some infomercial for “Garden Groom” which struck me as funny and then I started thinking about “Swamp Thing” kind of a mix of plants and bioterrorism…We do live in the Black Swamp area and one item on the agenda deals with bioterrorism.

Okay, enough funny stuff, the Council Meeting begins, all members are present and it looks as if the Agenda is a rather short one today, that said, looks can be deceiving when it comes to how long a Council meeting lasts by looking at the agenda. (As you can see, it was not a short meeting.)
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The Toledo Free Press reports that George Sarantou was one of the most recent contestants in “Let’s Tour the United Way” today. What were his thoughts after the tour?

“Clearly, building a new structure based on the information I saw would be much more advantageous in the long run,” Sarantou said. “It would take two decades for them to recoup the cost of remodeling this building. … Economically, [remodeling] is not a good deal for the United Way.”

Sarantou had originally told Toledo Free Press he favored preserving the United Way building, but said he would reach a definitive opinion after reviewing the cost of remodeling versus that of building new.

No one could pretend that political agendas don’t interfere at times in things getting done in government, local, county, state, national. The problem here in Toledo could be summed up with one phrase, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Which reminds me of this movie clip, from Cool Hand Luke, on a variety of levels that I could compare and contrast how this clip fits Toledo government…but
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I admit I’m not a fan of Extreme MakeOver anymore, I used to be before they went overly crazy on what they were doing with the homes as I reflected on how many people could be helped if the focus was on renovations or not creating mansions that can end up in foreclosure. That said, it appears they are coming here to tear down someone’s house and probably build another luxury model…

Which makes me ask…I hope they got the right permits, and I hope that it’s not a house that Paul Sullivan thinks could be saved. I don’t think Toledo wants to be the first on national television to have a project stopped.

It was interesting that for some reason how the Springfield Public School system is doing was not mentioned in the Blade article about how our local school districts were doing. While my only child left in the public school system does attend Toledo, she used to attend Springfield and that’s where my older four also attended. The data is supposed to be up on the ODE website but it’s not as of this morning. This is not the first time Springfield has not been included in a Blade article…

Ottawa Hills earned the number one ranking for the State, and:

Toledo Public Schools got a passing grade with a continuous improvement designation, up from academic watch the previous year. It’s the equivalent of improving from a D to a C.
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Sunlight’s Party Time is a project to track parties thrown at the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions as well as fundraising activities by all lawmakers running for Congress that happen all year round in Washington, D.C. and beyond.

Check out their website at - politicalpartytime.org.

You can also follow them on Twitter.

This in via email from the office of Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken:

COMMISSIONER GERKEN TO POSTPONE RESOLUTION FOR LOAN AGREEMENT WITH MAUMEE AUTHORITY STAMPING INC.

Please see the attached memo that Commissioner Pete Gerken sent to his colleagues requesting that the resolution for the Authorization of a Loan Agreement with Maumee Authority Stamping Plant Inc. not be acted on in tomorrow’s Board meeting.

Commissioner Gerken feels there is still more information needed in order to make a fair and informed decision and would like more time to ask further questions. The resolution to request action will be postponed until Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at the earliest.
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You will notice on your side bar to the right that there is a new feature, it was provided to be able to share some of the thoughts on the convention by current Ohio Treasurer Rich Cordray who is also running for Attorney General. The audio blogging is also on his website but I asked for and was given an embed code to put it here on GCJ.

Looking for information from residents of NWO? That’s possible too, since NBC24 has the husband and wife duo of Milton & Lee Hakel sending in their thoughts from the convention, the first is online.

David Mann and Gabby Seay who are both Obama delegates as well as residents of Lucas County are also blogging about their convention experiences on the newly formed The Dish on Denver. I’ll have to deal with the two of them when they get back for getting the song stuck in my head that they posted. (smile)

There’s been a lot of discussion about the whole five day window when people can register to vote and vote absentee, which becomes even more complicated here in Lucas County since they are moving early voting to a different location. It’s actually a seven day window here in Lucas County and other places that are offering voting on the weekend.

It’s now been reported that machines will not be used during the overlap time period as WTOL reported, which makes sense because if you read the directive issued by the Secretary of State on this issue it states:

A board of elections must register a person as an elector before issuing an absentee ballot to that person.

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Robert has an interesting post over on his blog, Whalertly on his regular election map update as well as an interesting story about an Ohio man who tried to pay his court fine payment in pennies. I recommend heading over and joining in the discussion.

The videos for the We will not be silenced done by Gigi Gaston that are said demonstrates fraud in the Democratic Presidential Primary are now online.

I realize this will probably be an issue that some don’t believe happened, but it is something that is being talked about, the belief behind the creation of the videos is also shared. Whether you believe this was purposely done by the Obama campaign or not, these video clips point out problems with our primary system, especially in caucus states.

If you are interested, the videos and the website is out there for you to view/read and decide for yourself how you feel about what was presented. I also recommend the pdf’s, part one and part two. Part one provides some historical and other information on the primary versus caucus systems.

I was really surprised that this story didn’t get much coverage in the blogosphere, the only post I found on BNN/Ohio was from The Daily Briefing:

According to the court, the flyer said on one side: “Fed Up With The Mess? Do something about it – Vote Democrat.” The top of the reverse side of the flyer said, “Vote Democratic – Help Turn Around Ohio” and showed photographs of the slate of Democratic candidates who were seeking statewide offices that year.
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The title of the cover for this week’s Toledo Free Press is Kapturing the Green which focuses on US Representative Marcy Kaptur’s news that a $1.13 million investment from NASA was coming to the University of Toledo. This would bring the amount of federal dollars for alternative and renewable energy projects in the region to over 50 million dollars since 2002.

The topic of the United Way building is still a hotly debated topic in the media and on the blogs, when I read Michael Miller’s piece, Blocking of Toledo Part II the mix of humor and reporting that Miller penned is a recommended piece, though one comment in particular created a diet pepsi on my computer keyboard experience:

Konop taking Sullivan into that building to ask him if it should be demolished is akin to taking my fat ass to a Baskin-Robbins to determine whether ice cream is good; you know the answer before you ask.

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Some of you might not be aware of who Sean Tevis is, especially since he’s running for State Representative in Kansas, but he’s taken a creative approach to campaigning that has inspired Jackie Brown who is running here in Ohio for the State Senate for District 2. If you have not yet seen what her campaign has come up with, I recommend heading over and seeing how it can be done, without stick figures.