People who follow local politics were probably surprised recently to read Mayor Mark Mallory's response to the news of a pending budget deficit next year. When Cincinnati City Council received its monthly financial report in late May, members were informed that the city potentially faced a $40 million deficit in 2010 due to a drop in earnings tax collections. The news prompted some council members to contemplate possible layoffs at City Hall or cuts in services to citizens. But when The Cincinnati Enquirer contacted Mallory, who was in Las Vegas attending a convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers, the mayor did his best impersonation of Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman: What, me worry?
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Cincinnati neighborhoods could use more businesses like Milton's Prospect Hill Tavern. The watering hole, located roughly where Mount Auburn touches Over-the-Rhine, usually features an interesting cross-section of customers: young and old, black and white, straight and gay. In short, its crowd is often a microcosm of the city. But twice during the span of a week, on May 25 and May 31, the bar was robbed while it was open. Frustrated with the lackluster police response, Milton's owner is holding a fundraiser June 28 to help pay for security upgrades like indoor video cameras, increased outdoor lighting and fencing to enclose a patio area.

It's complicated and not very sexy, but don’t fool yourself: The messy debate going on in Congress right now about health care reform will affect every single American. Forty-six million people, including 9 million children, are uninsured in the U.S. To put that statistic in perspective, that's just a tad less than the combined populations of California and Ohio and is larger than some Third World nations.
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It shouldn’t come as too much of a shock that — some 140 days or so after he took office — President Obama has acted in a way on two important issues that shakes the confidence placed in him by many supporters. As I told some skeptical Democratic friends during the weeks after the election, Obama might have campaigned as a progressive to shore up support, but he’s really more of a centrist ala Bill Clinton.
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I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and this is an instance in which a local Republican is right and his two Democratic colleagues are flat out wrong. Hamilton County Sheriff Simon Leis Jr. wants to spend a federal Homeland Security grant to buy a $98,691 sport cabin boat, which his office will use to patrol the Ohio River.

It’s certainly true that good people can come to different conclusions and disagree on an issue. Sometimes, however, good people are led astray by those with ulterior motives. For more than a year, an unusual coalition of arch-conservatives, civil rights groups, Libertarians, Green Party members and others have joined together to mount several petition drives that have made the ballot and let voters decide on issues that otherwise would have been made by elected officials.
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Ever since David Pepper finally confirmed last week what CityBeat first reported online in mid-March — that the prominent local Democrat will run for Ohio Auditor next year — speculation has run rampant about who will campaign for the seat he's vacating on the Hamilton County Commission.
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There was a time, not too long ago, when if someone loaned you money and charged you 29 percent interest they'd probably be called a "loan shark" and hauled off to jail. That term, loan shark, is one you don't hear much these days because the practice of usury has gone all respectable on us. It's no longer the neighborhood wiseguy or shady character who employs it — it's used by the bank down the street as well as most major U.S. lenders who issue credit cards.
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Here’s an incident involving the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) and Tom Streicher that most residents probably haven’t heard about. Sometime between midnight and 10 a.m. on the day after Valentine’s Day, Streicher fired a shotgun through the front window of Seventh Street News, an adult bookstore, while he was on-duty.
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I bet Peggy Noonan would feel differently if it was her son being waterboarded. Thats one of the first thoughts I had upon hearing the amazing comment uttered from her mouth during a recent discussion on an ABC political talk show. Noonan, 58, was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and now is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal.
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