Everything posted by Ram23
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Ohio Census / Population Trends & Lists
Despite that, they still lost a House seat... by 89 people. Had 89 more people lived in NY at the time of the census, they'd have kept 27 seats.
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Housing Market & Trends
I've been seeing the same. I've had several projects that can't find subcontractors for certain trades because they're all busy and booked out for months. The sort of people who clamor for $15 minimum wage could grab a hard hat and go make double that right now. The lack of available labor causes schedule delays and/or the need to swap out certain materials and products (for example, can't get a mason? no bricks). Costs haven't skyrocketed, though. A few recent projects I'm on have actually come in under-budget. Schedules are what seem to get hit hardest.
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Cincinnati: Bars / Nightlife News
Cincinnati bar getting national publicity: Bar owner refuses to show NBA games until LeBron 'expelled' https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/550114-bar-owner-refuses-to-show-nba-games-until-lebron-expelled A Cincinnati, Ohio, bar owner said Wednesday that he will refuse play any NBA games at his establishment until NBA star Lebron James is “expelled” from the league. “If anyone wants to watch an NBA game, don’t come to Linnie’s Pub,” owner Jay Linneman said in a Facebook post. “We will not air them until Lebron James has been expelled from the NBA.” I found it hilarious that Lebron felt the need to respond! He probably couldn't take the ego hit and thought he was being witty, but really it's about the best publicity this tiny neighborhood watering hold could have asked for. They're going to have a line out the door.
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Cleveland: Housing Market
Not in Cleveland, but in Cincinnati I have a family friend who sold 7 figures work of stock in 2020 and has since purchased four properties with cash. Two were homes for their adult children, the other two are for rental income (also going to their kids). They are a wealthy older couple (well past retirement age) and were worried about possible changes to capital gains taxes, estate taxes, etc.
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Cincinnati City Council Corruption
I wonder if Young will resign. If not, we could end up with another appointed council member. If that were to be a Republican, council would have a quasi-conservative majority (if you consider Smitherman a conservative) for the first time in a long time. Yep - Young's problem was that he had already been ordered to keep the messages before he deleted them. As I recall, he rather unabashedly admitted to deleting them at the time. He either successfully hid something he really didn't want revealed, or he made a very boneheaded and pointless move that will probably result in a jail sentence. Dennard almost infamously dropped her phone in a pool, which would have been a bigger deal if not for the fact that the feds had more than enough evidence to lock her up for her other scandal. The excuse does provide some level of deniability, how plausible is in the eye of the beholder. Young didn't even try to make up a cover story, he just flat out said he deleted them.
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Cincinnati City Council Corruption
^ Rumor on the street is that he may be facing a charge of "tampering with evidence," a third degree felony.
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2022 U.S. Senate Race
^^ Corporate CEO virtue signalling is probably the most annoying phenomenon occurring on the planet right now. These guys make hundreds or even thousands of times more than their average workers but think they can appease the political left by pretending to have some sort of concern about voter laws. They're all total phonies.
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Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine: Development and News
I think Washington Park serves OTR in the same capacity Astoria Park serves that neighborhood. It isn't as big of a park, but OTR isn't as big of a neighborhood (Astoria has nearly 100,000 people). My main point is that you can have a dense, successful, vibrant neighborhood without a park on every block, as evidenced in many cities around the world. To an extent, I'd say too many parks is detrimental towards the goal of density and vibrancy. The fact that parks in NYC are packed adds to the vibrancy of the place. On the other end of the spectrum, if a neighborhood has so many parks that they are all poorly maintained and just busy enough to keep the drug dealers comfortable at all hours of the day, it has too many parks. The city should turn Findlay Playground into a parking garage and market extension, and make Grant the neighborhood park for the northern have of OTR. There are some good opportunities to tie the park into the brewing heritage trail beyond what has already started with the signage. Hannah Playground could be reduced in size and kept as a neighborhood pool, if moving the pool to Grant is too costly.
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Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine: Development and News
I used to live in this area of Queens - it's extremely densely populated and has near zero parks: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7642585,-73.9183247,1425m/data=!3m1!1e3 It all works out just fine. If people want to go to a park, they go to the single large "Astoria Park" that serves the entire area.
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Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine: Development and News
Between Grant Park, Findlay Playground, and Hanna Playground - there are one or two too many parks on a short stretch of McMicken. Grant Park is a 3 minute walk away from Findlay, and Hanna is a 6 minute walk. There's another small park between Elm and the Findlay Market parking lot. The block where Findlay Playground is located used to have a ton of density - if any of the three sites were to be redeveloped, it probably should have been this one (or at least the half along Vine street) - but it sounds like it's too late: Hanna and Grant Parks are older than the current Findlay Playground, but they still occupy sites that used to add density to the neighborhood.
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Cincinnati: West End: TQL Stadium
Tide Pod Park? Tampax Place? In all honesty my guess is that it is the "t" in "FC Cincinnati" It is hanging from the lift like it's a mockup - maybe to see how high it should be mounted, if the text is large enough, how it looks with the lights on behind it, etc. It's common to want to see something like that before you sign off on ordering the rest of the letters.
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Housing Market & Trends
I think that should be an "if," not a "when." I am worried about inflation, particularly within construction costs and the trades. We are seeing a combination of inflationary pressures that is creating a fear we haven't had in a generation. COVID is impacting how people work, live, and play and thus about to drive construction and renovations of all sorts of facilities. $2 trillion is likely to be printed for infrastructure "stimulus" in addition to what's already been printed. Biden's policies have driven fuel costs up significantly, putting pressure on a market that was already seeing delays and additional costs due to COVID impacts. Lumber is a good single item to look at to gauge material costs - and the price per 1000 board feet has risen at an astronomical rate - it's more than 3X what it was a year ago. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lumber
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Cincinnati: Brent Spence Bridge
Only 1/4 of the "infrastructure" bill is going to transit, and of that only 6% is going to roads and bridges. I think it's optimistic to think that the entire bridge project will be covered by it, but when the feds print that much money who knows? That 6% is still over $100 billion. Accounting for cost escalations since the last estimate was done, combined with what very well may be soaring inflation (particularly in construction) over the next decade - I wouldn't be surprised if the overall cost ends up near $4 billion.
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Cars & Vehicles Discussion (History, etc)
Getting a license in general should be much, much harder than it is now and the punishment for driving without one should be severe. And with vehicles getting larger, we might want to think about different classes of licenses for larger ones, each requiring a maneuverability test. I'd go further and say that when you renew your registration, you should have to pre-pay for a years worth of auto insurance and provide proof of payment. There should also be a written exam covering any recent changes to driving laws. For a personal anecdote, I've been in three accidents in my life, and all three were the fault of the other driver and all three times the other driver had no license and/or no insurance. I was out a $1000 deductible each time and probably still see increased rates because of it. Two of the three times the person was driving a large SUV and caused significant damage.
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MLB: General News & Discussion
Most people who have complained about this law don't cite any actual parts of the text because they haven't read it, and many don't care enough to bother. We're well past the point of absurdity when it comes to knee-jerk PC reactions like this. For many, it's more important to look the part than it is to think critically - and I think the reaction to this law is a perfect example of that phenomenon. As for the All-Star Game, who cares? I watch or listen to over 100 Reds games every year (well, except in 2020) and I think I've seen maybe 5 innings of All-Star games in the last decade. MLB reports millions in economic activity but I take that with a grain of salt. How much of that is just the MLB moving its own money around? A couple playoff games are almost certainly better for the local economy than the All-Star game is, especially if they fall on a weekend.
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Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine: Development and News
It is owned by "GOC REALCO LLC" which I understand to be an LLC owned by Gilligan Oil Company.
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Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine: Development and News
I live on Walnut within earshot of that Shell for a little over two years - I called police 5 times. Twice for fights, once for a guy who had OD'd (thought he was dead, he apparently survived), once when a guy pulled a screaming woman into his car and drove off, and once when a guy beat the crap out of a woman. Aside from those 5 times over 2 short years, I think I've only called 911 once in my life - so it's not like I'm a busybody, my "emergency" threshold is pretty high. Remember this? https://www.wcpo.com/news/coronavirus/cpd-is-monitoring-social-media-after-video-of-large-gathering-circulates-online The police were branded as racists when they arrested the organizer of this huge Shell Station/Street party - and they arrested him during the very early days of the COVID lockdown...
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Cincinnati: Complete Streets, Road Diets, and Traffic Calming
I wonder what the other factors are. If anything, I think eliminating a lane of parked cars and replacing it with a bike lane that is mostly open, visually, would encourage more speeding. I know whenever I drive down a street with on-street parking I tend to proceed with caution should someone suddenly swing a door open or pull out of a space. I drive like a geriatric anyway, though, so maybe I'm not the best anecdote. Perhaps the amount of speeding recently has more to do with no cars being parked on that portion of street due to COVID, which makes the right hand lane seem like a giant ~20 foot wide race track?
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2022 U.S. Senate Race
Rupar is (rather lazily) grasping at straws because he has no real, tangible way to attack Vance, and it scares him. The fact that Vance was born with nothing and raised in abject poverty, but managed to pull himself up by his bootstraps throughout his life is a huge threat to modern leftists. Their entire worldview is challenged by his mere existence.
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2022 U.S. Senate Race
What will likely become the most expensive Senate race in Ohio's history is already on its way there: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/03/26/political-group-314-action-pledges-5-million-help-amy-acton-win-democratic-senate-primary-ohio/7007559002/ Acton is kind-of a wet blanket, I think even if big money pours in for her she'll still probably lose to Ryan. I'm a bit curious what happens to all this money (and Vance's $10 million) if they end up not running - neither has formally announced a campaign yet.
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Cincinnati City Council
Cincinnati's budget deficit was originally $25.6 million (down to $18.7 million according to the article), so the $290 million they received is well over 10X the amount of money they actually needed to cover the hardships being faced by COVID. The FY 2022 and 2023 deficits have nothing to do with COVID. The city seems to be spending the bulk of the money on pre-COVID deferred maintenance and feel-good social services.
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Cincinnati: Over-the-Rhine: Development and News
Just today, via the Enquirer: https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2021/03/24/mayor-cranley-campaign-how-much-did-cincinnati-developers-give-him/4553686001/ A form based code or even revisions to the existing code could allow for larger, modern construction projects like this one to proceed without needing months of committee hearings and council votes - and, apparently, without needing to pay politicians tens of thousands of dollars.
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Cincinnati City Council
If Charter Committee members stood by their stated mission, they would have all abstained from that vote as well.
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2022 U.S. Senate Race
Probably not against Vance, though. Vance's story is very relatable to people in Southeast Ohio. IMO, at this point it is his race to lose against whomever the Democrats pick to run.
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Cincinnati: West End: TQL Stadium
I think they'll have difficulty attracting concerts because they have a small niche to pull from - bands that can't fill GABP or Paul Brown, but are too big for Icon's capacity of 8000 and whatever the capacity of the Newport thing is. So they'll be targeting the same groups as Riverbend, but they'll have a worse setup because Riverbend is a concert-specific venue and this will be a soccer stadium rigged up for a concert. The OTR/West End location is a plus for certain groups, but a country band or a band old people like will probably opt for Riverbend's location for access, parking, etc.