rekxu83

West Price Hill (I'm thinking of the neighborhood between St Theresa and New St Joe's cemetery) is fine. It's still very much a middle class area.

Governments should stick to doing things the market cannot. Like building a streetcar, or leading the redevelopment of a flood-prone riverfront. Giving money to restaurants is simply bad governance. A (minor) misstep from the current administration.

Bravo to John. He gave a fantastic speech and got some well-deserved love from everyone in attendance. :clap:

Exactly. I'm surprised at the relatively strong emotions it seems to bring out in some. It's hardly important anymore and any damage it has done to the street retail/vibrancy is long in the past. Enjoy it for the oddity that it is, tear it down as it makes sense.

I have to say, it makes a nice route for a leisurely family stroll on a lousy day. My little walkers can run around all they want and I don't have to worry about traffic. I do have to worry about random puddles of bum urine in the corners though....

I had the pleasure of calling Norwood home for a few years while attending Xavier. And while Norwood is definitely a working class, mostly white neighborhood, I've never heard about it having any sort of racial tension. I certainly didn't witness anything of that nature. If you're just working in Norwood I wouldn't worry about it at all. The worst thing about Norwood is the semi-functioning municipal government, and police force right out of Reno 911 (including the guy who wears a bullet proof vest all the time).

It's pretty simple. The achievement of economic growth, at the highest level, is a function of two things: increases in the number of working age adults & increases in productivity. Making immigration easier will do nothing but boost the economy. The entire history of our country stands as proof. On the other hand this anti-immigration sentiment is also nothing new. The English hated the Germans, who hated the Irish, who hated the Polish etc.. etc... God Bless America, and all those who want to come here.

Would be a great addition to the already considerable amount of F500 HQ's in the region.

Lakeside is full of kids in the summer, it's very much a family place. That said, most of the homes are owned by what I would call the early-retirement set.

Shut the front door. You captured the good, the bad and the wonderful about Cincy in one long, glorious thread. Mad Respect. PS #21, thanks for coming to Beautiful Bellevue.

The workforce for teachers has been just as warped by the presence of unions and collective bargaining as any other branch of public service. My wife has been an elementary/middle school teacher in the greater Cincinnati area for 6 years now. She had a terrible time finding a job out of college (like the rest of her classmates), and eventually settled on a charter school in Cincinnati. Like everybody that goes into that profession, the goal is to get into a good public district, make tenure, and have a nice life of continued employment ahead of you. After a year at her charter school she got on with a smallish (compared to CPS) district and put in 4 good years there. Flawless reviews, and a noted ability to gain rapport with the worst kids (and this was a bad district). Essentially, she was a star performer, her review actually said this. As she was finishing up the school year (and getting ready to enter her tenure year), she learned that her contract would not be renewed for the upcoming year. The district was facing shrinking student enrollment, and the older teachers were simply not retiring. Luckily she landed a job right away for this school year. In her opinion the administration in this district is much better, the kids are better behaved, and it has largely been a change for the better for her. Unfortunately, this district is also grappling with the reality of lower than projected enrollments, so there is a strong likelihood that they will have to let 4-5 teachers go for next school year. How are they choosing those? Not based on performance, but tenure. So since she was one of the last 3 teachers hired, unless more people retire than expected she's going to get the boot again. And she's a card-carrying member of the teachers union. How does it look to the vast majority of our friends and family, who have no working knowledge of unions and how they operate, that she's going to lose her second job in as many years? She feels like a failure in profession where she is actually extremely talented. Young, energetic, and with genuine concern for the children she teachers. The presence of unions in the public sector leads to gross distortions in the workforce. This is just one example, but I hope it illustrates just how disenfranchised the best and brightest (you'll have to take my word for that, but it's the God honest truth) can become as they struggle to compete in a marketplace where things other than your own ability govern your success.

The sad fact is you are probably right. I have no doubt that behind all his talk of fiscal responsibility and wanting to avoid layoffs, Walker is loving the fact that he has an opportunity to take a big bight out of Democratic support in his state. Also, the fact that Police and Fire unions are exempt is simply an outrage, plain and simple. That said, the fact remains that we're overpaying for public services because of unions. Things like collective bargaining and tenure make it impossible to efficiently manage a workforce. Defined Benefit plans need to be scrapped as well, the demographics simply don't support them anymore. In a perfect world we would have fully engaged (and properly compensated) civil servants, public managers with the flexibility to run their organizations how they see fit, and employment at will. Unions simply cannot be defended on a financial basis.

Unions are a big reason why we haven't seen the same gains in efficiency in the public sector that we've seen in the private sector over the last few decades. An important thing to remember about unions in general: They don't just give workers greater benefits than they would otherwise be entitled in the open market, they make it near-impossible to reward the top performers. Thus the best and the brightest are prone to become disenfranchised and either tone back the energy they put into their work, or flee to the private sector. I'm generally center-left on most issues, but public sectors unions are one where Kasich and I see eye-to-eye.

Cincinnati is a college basketball town, in the same way that Columbus is a college football town. I know the Bearcats have been struggling with attendance this year, but there are no shortage of UC fans. In addition, XU sells 10k to every home game. When you have two quasi-pro basketball teams, with large and (mostly) loyal followings, it's not hard to see why the NBA isn't making Cincinnati a priority. Or indeed why Cincinnati isn't making the NBA a priority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cincy_MtAdams_2007.jpg