Does this mean trouble for Obama?

One of the factors the fueled the resurgence of the Democrats in the 2006 midterms and particularly President Obama's 2008 campaign was the enthusiastic backing of the "Millennial" generation -- voters between 18 and 29. But a Pew Research Center study says that the Democrats' advantage over Republicans with this group has dramatically shrunk from a 32 point margin in 2008 to 14 points.

These numbers include both those who identify with one of the two parties, or lean towards one or the other.

The figures come from an ongoing series of reports Pew is doing, based on data it and others have collected from May 1990 to December 2009, comparing the Millennials to past generations, such as the Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers and Silent Generation (1928-1945). The reports cover not only political characteristics of the generations, but where they differ in areas including religion, social mores, and their use of media.

Read the rest of the Politics Daily story here.

New mayor starts term with closed-door decision

"...nearly all of the residents who were interested submitted their [Library Board of Trustees] applications by the deadline published by the city -- except for the three who were actually appointed, all of whom prepared their applications nearly two months late and within a few days of each other." Click on the newspaper image to see the full story with the chart.

During his effort to censor gay periodicals in the Upper Arlington Public Library in 2005, then UA Council member Tim Rankin said,

"If we have to put people on this [Library] board who reflect the values of the community, we'll do that."

According to a story in the February 4th, 2010 edition of ThisWeek [PDF] [JPG], it would seem that UA's new mayor, Frank Ciotola, has made good on Rankin's threat.

Within a few days of being elected Council President, Ciotola made it one of his first acts to appoint three hand-picked recruits to the Library Board. All 3 appointees:

• delivered their applications directly to the current Council President, Frank Ciotola, not to the City Clerks Office (source: UA Clerk's Office)
• submitted applications a month and a half after the posted November 16, 2009 deadline
• completed their applications within 4 days of each other on Jan 6, 8 and 9th, 2010

Ciotola's appointees to the Library Board of Trustees had a fast track outside the normal process, which typically includes a review of applicants with other Council members.

Ciotola: "I wish the deadline had not been published"

And now Ciotola wants to remove what little transparency remains in the current Library Board appointment process. In the ThisWeek story, Ciotola said he wishes the Library Board application deadline had not been published at all!

From National Geographic:

The United States spends more on medical care per person than any country, yet life expectancy is shorter than in most other developed nations and many developing ones. Lack of health insurance is a factor in life span and contributes to an estimated 45,000 deaths a year.

Why the high cost? The U.S. has a fee-for-service system—paying medical providers piecemeal for appointments, surgery, and the like. That can lead to unneeded treatment that doesn’t reliably improve a patient’s health. Says Gerard Anderson, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies health insurance worldwide, “More care does not necessarily mean better care.”

From the speech:

"We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.  There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified... For make no mistake:  Evil does exist in the world.  A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies.  Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms.  To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

This is an excellent response to the furious and unfounded assertions of the right-wing denialists that have followed from the release of private email by climate change scientists.

Popular Mechanics has a good review of Climategate. The final page sums up what we know about global warming.

And here's a concise explanation of what the scientists at East Anglia were grappling with.

By January, he will have accomplished more than any first-year president since Franklin Roosevelt.

Nov 28, 2009

"There's mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—combined with the bank bailout package—prevented an economic depression. Should the stimulus have been larger? Should it have been more weighted to short-term spending, as opposed to long-term tax cuts? Would a second round be a good idea? Pundits and policymakers will argue these questions for years to come. But few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama's decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter. The New York Times recently quoted Mark Zandi, who was one of candidate John McCain's economic advisers, on this point: "The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do—it is contributing to ending the recession," he said. "In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent.""

READ MORE

http://www.slate.com/id/2236708/

Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists will be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street's influence in Washington.

November 29, 2009

The Washington Post reported that the move "may turn out to be the most far-reaching lobbying rule change so far from President Obama," resulting in "hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists" being ejected from federal advisory panels.

Not surprisingly, lobby groups, corporations, and other K Street influencers are up in arms.

"The reaction from the lobbying community has been swift and overwhelmingly negative."

And this week, congressional researchers concluded that the administration’s crackdown has “already changed the relationship between lobbyists and covered executive branch officials” and suggested that Congress might consider enacting similar restrictions on itself.

READ MORE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/26/AR2009112602362.html

and

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/opinion/04fri4.html

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Well, it's really closer to 1300 to one -- the ratio of Army personnel to psychiatrists. This statistic is becoming more important to us because of the terrible events at Ft. Hood this week.

As the New York Times reports, the Army has 400 pyschiatrists for more than 500,000 active duty troops. (See 'Painful Stories Take a Toll on Military Therapists') And "the number of soldiers with the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder has climbed to 34,000."

That's the reason we need legislation like last year's Ohio House Bill 294, sponsored by Ted Celeste (D-Granview Heights), which called for more mental health coverage for patients with PTSD.

In particular, the bipartisan legislation would guarantee that soldiers returning to Ohio from active duty would be covered for the diagnosis and treatment of PTSD.

That kind of law would certainly help those who are back home. But it is equally distressing to read what the NYT article noted: "Since 2001, the military has deployed many soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder or other ailments."

This situation is another example of the mess we are in, thanks to the Bush Administration's shameful decision to use the 9-11 attack as an excuse to invade Iraq.

Let's pray that President Obama will find help for all the military men and women who need mental health care. And that he quickly gets the U.S. out of quagmire that is the Iraq and Afghanistan conflict

City Council incumbent candidates Frank Ciotola's and Wade Steen's campaign flyers are proclaiming how they got Kingsdale done.

But who really negotiated on behalf of Upper Arlington constituents for the best deal with developers? Who had the backbone to stand up and get the best deal for Upper Arlington?

As it turns out, Ciotola and Steen are two of the least deserving of all the praise they are heaping on themselves.

The market idealogues vs. the pragmatists

We heard it 100 times during the Kingsdale debate from Council's right-wing block --- "let the market dictate what goes in at Kingsdale". In this Columbus Dispatch story entitled 'Big-box approach OK'd for Kingsdale', Ciotola thought that UA was negotiating too aggressively on Regency's big box Target store proposal:

"I think municipalities are getting overzealous in dictating what the mix of development is instead of letting the market dictate," he said.

If UA had solely relied on market forces, as Ciotola suggests, Jacksonville, Fla.-based Regency would have "dictated" our future and we'd likely have a big box Target store or something like it at Kingsdale today.

A view of the Continental's proposed Kingsdale site from Tremont Road. Many of us breathed a sign of relief when Regency failed in their bid to build a big box Target store at Kingsdale. If Ciotola had been in charge of the negotiation, the market would have "dictated" the outcome and UA would likely have a Target store at Kingsdale!

And thanks to Council's moderate, pragmatic majority we will have something much better than Steen or Ciotola were willing to settle for.

The audacity of negotiation

Instead of the passive role of government that Ciotola recommended, the city staff and other Council members embraced their responsibility to the community to get the best deal for UA.

By effectively tempering market forces with the needs of the community as described in the Master Plan they brokered a Kingsdale compromise has been well received throughout our community.

The role of government

At the heart of the Kingsdale debate was how active and engaged City government should be in making economic development decisions.

"Upper Arlington has neighborhood schools and does not bus children to school. The result of neighborhood schools and parents unwilling to let their children walk to school has led to traffic issues on streets adjacent to schools in both morning and afternoon hours...

In reality, very few children should need to be driven to school since the majority live within a 10-minute walk or a short bike ride (if facilities existed) of their neighborhood school."

--- UA Transportation Plan

Upper Arlington currently has sidewalks along approximately only 20 percent of its roadway. This poses a significant safety risk for everybody that travels by foot, by bicycle, by car or public transportation. We need complete streets in UA with curbs, gutters and sidewalks.

In UA we inherited a city with no plan for sidewalks, and until recently there never has been a consistent plan to address this issue.

Now UA has a modest and reasonable Sidewalk Policy on the books to build sidewalks along UA's busiest streets:

When rebuilding an arterial or collector street, the City will look at the feasibility of adding a sidewalk on at least one side of the street.

But conservatives Ciotola and Steen have have fought this common sense and generally well-received approach. In 2007 Frank Ciotola, Tim Rankin and Wade Steen tried to remove the money to build sidewalks along Kenny Road. Their amendment failed:

• Voting to kill the sidewalk funding: Ciotola, Rankin, Steen
• Voting to preserve the sidewalk funding: Krauss, Leach, Mauger, Seidel

And again this year, Ciotola and Steen opposed the Sidewalk Policy, but decided not to offer an amendment to remove sidewalks from the Kenny Road rehab project.

"...However, I don't think I would getting support on that, knowing the past voting history of Council, so I will not offer up an amendment [to remove sidewalks from the Ordinance]."

--- Frank Ciotola, July 13, 2009, UA City Council Meeting Minutes

One of several photos submitted to City Council showing children playing on streets with no sidewalks with on-coming traffic. From the April 23, 2007 UA City Council minutes.

Besides offering a safer, walkable community, sidewalks make economic sense, too. The residents on Glenn Avenue have even created their own website promoting sidewalks in their neighborhood near Barrington school. Here's one of many interesting tidbits gleaned from their site:

People are willing to pay more to live in walkable communities. The Urban Land Institute compared four new urban communities (those built within existing urban settings) with their surrounding competitors and found that people spent an average of $20,189 more to live in pedestrian-friendly new urban communities. (Valuing the New Urbanism, 1999). More recent studies show similar results.

With only two moderates running for City Council, the balance between moderate and conservative voices on Council hangs on the results of this election. UAPA believes UA City government needs:

1. a moderate City Council
2. a capable, experienced, moderate mayor --- Mary Ann Krauss

The only way this can happen is if both Mike Schadek and Debbie Johnson are elected to City Council. Here's the situation:

City Council Race Overview

• This year 4 seats are open and 7 candidates are running for these seats.
• Each voter will get to vote for 4 candidates.
• City Council terms are for 4 years.
• Only if Schadek and Johnson replace moderates Leach and Mauger can Council's moderate majority be maintained.

The progressive vote is key

The progressive vote had a race-determining impact in the 2007 City Council election --- only one vote per precinct separated the candidates in 2nd and 3rd place and the candidates in 3rd and 4th place.

DINO (Democrat In Name Only): Life-long GOP supporter and UA City Council candidate Vern Morrison told a local 9/12 group that he switched parties in 2008 to vote for Hillary Clinton, while at the same time telling progressive and moderate voters he's a "Democrat".

In this year's UA City Council race there's a candidate who claims to be a Democrat, but whose background and recent public statements belie that claim.

Vern Morrison is telling progressive voters he is a "registered Democrat." However, UAPA has learned from several sources that he is telling GOP faithful that he switched parties in 2008 to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Ohio primary. It is reported that Morrison revealed his "Limbaugh vote" at a local 9-12 Republicans' meeting on September 24th for folks who support Glenn Beck's right wing radical agenda. (Beck is with Fox News.)

Voting records confirm that Morrison has been a life-long GOP supporter.

You'll recall that during the Democratic primary Rush Limbaugh was encouraging Republicans to register as Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton:

Why We Want to Keep Hillary Alive
March 3rd, 2008

RUSH: The strategy is to continue the chaos in this [Democratic] party. Look, there's a reason for this. Our side isn't going to do this. Obama needs to be bloodied up. Look, half the country already hates Hillary. That's good. But nobody hates Obama yet. Hillary is going to be the one to have to bloody him up politically because our side isn't going to do it. Mark my words. It's about winning, folks!