Turning Cincinnati Around

Cincinnati has been losing people for well over a decade. We have been losing people for a couple of main reasons. The perceived inadequacies in what the Cincinnati Public School System can offer, and crime have been hurting this city for years. These two factors alone have driven many people and jobs away from Cincinnati. Our leaders have been slow in responding to these issues, and now Cincinnati is where it is at today because of the lack of response. We need new leaders that are will to make the changes necessary to help Cincinnati come back from the what is the brink of becoming another Detroit.

One of the first issues that must be addressed is the perceived racial issues within Cincinnati. I say perceived because I do not believe that it is as bad as the Jessie Jackson wanna be Chris Smitherman makes it. I do though believe that enough people believe there is a problem that it must be addressed. The question is how do we do that? I feel the best course is to find true leaders in the community and get them to become vocal advocates for Cincinnati and what it is truly about. I also feel that we can come up with incentives for new and existing small business owners and for residents of Cincinnati that would actually help the minority population specifically and Cincinnati as a whole. We must become a city that looks within and uses our resources and people that live in Cincinnati to turn Cincinnati around.

The second issue we need to turn around is the problem with the Cincinnati Public School System. This problem is not unique to Cincinnati, many school districts in urban area’s struggle with their school systems. Cincinnati is making strides in making it’s public school better. The biggest problem we have is again is with perception. We have a perception problem because we fail to market what we have that is great about our school system. We need to do a better job of marketing, and this something that if the school board won’t do, that the city leadership must work with the school board to get done.

The third issue this city faces is a leadership issue. We need new leaders with a new vision and voice to turn Cincinnati around. For to long we have elected the same people and have expected different results. I think that in Cincinnati there is a real disconnect between the people of Cincinnati and their elected officials. It seems like most of our elected officials don’t understand the day to day struggle most of us face. The biggest example of this is the Laketa Cole lead Cincinnati budget that did away with the 5% budget cuts that were originally agreed upon. We need new leaders that understand and can relate to all of our needs and that will make turning Cincinnati around their number one priority.

Cincinnati can become the most livable city again. We can do this by bringing people back to live in Cincinnati. To do this it will take a lot of hard work by our city leaders. We will have to sell Cincinnati to the people that left that this isn’t the same city it was 10-15 years ago. To do this we need a new vision and new voices to bring about this change.

Time for Burris to Resign

How can Senator Burris be allowed to continue as Senator after he today admitted that he basically misled everyone. This administration is starting to make President Clinton’s look clean. In less than three weeks there has been over 1/2 dozen appointments that have had some sort of serious ethical issues. This is Chicago politics in full force. I guess we better learn to deal with it because this seems to be what the status quo will be for at least the next four years.

Another one bites the dust!!!

So this is how the most ethical and clean administration of all-time is going to look? How many Obama appointments will it take for the American people to wake up and realize that this President is no different than any other one. Having one nominee run into issues with taxes is excusable, but THREE!!! And one of them is running the IRS. If this would have been you or I that had did this, some how I think we would be in a little more trouble than what these three are facing. Ladies and Gentlemen this is Chicago Machine Politics at work, and the sooner we realize it, the fast we can get over our fantasy of the Great Obama saving us all.

Hopefully now that some of the shine has been tarnished off of the Obama administration Republicans in the Senate will follow their peers in the House and stand united against an administration that has yet to give us any real answers to our nations problems.