[WINNER]
CITY COUNCIL: In decades past, Cincinnati City Council typically would do whatever the Fourth Street crowd would tell it. In the authority-loving, hierarchically driven Queen City, CEOs have ruled the roost, even more so than in other cities. So we’re surprised and pleased that City Council decided to grow a collective backbone and reject a request from the Western & Southern Financial Group to block federal funding for a battered women’s shelter on Lytle Street downtown. The company was eyeing the property, located near its corporate headquarters, to develop high-end condos. But the Anna Louise Inn has been a presence in the area since 1909 and hasn’t bothered anyone. A City Council majority reaffirmed its earlier decision to award $2.6 million in federal grants, which will be part of a $12.5 million renovation that begins this spring. Hey, Western & Southern, there are plenty of vacant properties downtown that you can play with.
[LOSER]
DENNIS KUCINICH: Surprised to see him here? So are we. We usually like Kucinich, the Democratic congressman from Cleveland who stands up for his progressive principles and broaches topics that spook many of his timid colleagues. But we’re deeply disappointed in the diminutive lawmaker for filing a lawsuit against the House cafeteria over an April 2008 incident in which he says an unwanted olive pit in a sandwich injured his teeth; he sought $150,000 in damages. “This injury required nearly two years, three dental surgeries and a substantial amount of money to rectify,” Kucinich said. Yet C-SPAN footage shows the congressman speaking on the House floor on the same day, so it wasn’t that severe. Tellingly, the operator settled the claim within days. Still, the good congressman has a Cadillac health-care plan, like all federal lawmakers, making us question his motives. Sometimes, Dennis, you just need to let it go.
[WINNER]
CINCY TECH: When Ohio voters decided to renew and expand the state’s Third Frontier program at the polls in May 2010, they were told it would help create cutting-edge, high-tech jobs. Now we’re seeing the fruits of that labor. The Ohio Third Frontier Commission recently announced a $2 million investment in CincyTech, which will allow the firm to continue providing startup capital for eligible new companies here in the Queen City. CincyTech already had raised $2.3 million from other sources, bringing the total of its latest funding effort to $4.3 million. Other partners include Castellini Foundation, Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Greater Cincinnati Foundation. Launched in 2007, CincyTech is a public-private partnership that offers management assistance and seed-capital investments for firms involved in information technology and life sciences. Actions like this help the region embrace the future, not fear it.
[LOSER]
CHICK-FIL-A: CityBeat has reported before how the fast-food chain regularly co-sponsors annual golf fund-raisers for the odious Citizens for Community Values (CCV), a group of pompous, repressed suburbanites who want to control what you read and who you love. Now there are calls for a nationwide boycott of the Georgia-based purveyor of chicken sandwiches — which is owned by a fundamentalist Christian family — after The New York Times revealed it was giving free food to an anti-gay marriage seminar being held in Pennsylvania. In the past, Chick-Fil-A also has had partnerships with the ultra-right Focus on the Family, so it’s not entirely unexpected. The company eventually broke ties with the seminar, but will it remain cozy with our own CCV? For now, we say it’s best to forego chicken and either eat some beef or go vegan. (And KFC is better, anyhow.)
