During the past year CityBeat has spent a lot of energy reporting on countless Republican screw-ups, from typical shortsighted policies to legislation that is straight-up offensive to women, minorities, gay people and the poor and working class. But we didn’t realize that by pointing out how offensive and irrelevant the country’s GOP leaders were acting, that we were inadvertently killing America.

That's why we would like to formally apologize to the Lebanon tea party in Warren County. The email you sent to The Enquirer today hit us pretty hard — the fact that you’re literally wearing black and mourning America because “socialists, welfare and unions took over this country” is super sad. In our haste to ask questions of elected leaders, fact check their statements and put their beliefs and policies into perspective over the past few months, we forgot how badly people in Warren County wish America could be like the 1950s again, when women knew their place and black people had to operate the elevators and never say anything whites didn’t want to hear. Mad Men is a great show. 

We didn’t mean to be tricked by President Obama’s stimulus bill — we (stupidly) believed the economists who said it staved off a depression caused by under-regulation of the housing and financial industries (we tried to believe Mitt Romney’s concept of further reducing regulations so the job-creators can stimulate the economy in the private sector thus giving our wealth back to us, but it was maybe too complicated for us to understand?). 

Some people we know kept their jobs when the president didn’t allow the American car companies to go broke even though they’re the ones that decided to max out profits on SUVs with truck beds on the back. Other people we know spent time last year without health care, and this country’s health care costs are somewhere around twice as much as any other country’s so we were like, “Yea, reforming that system sounds about right.” But we admit that we don’t know what it’s going to be like for the 15 percent of this country living in poverty to all of the sudden have access to preventative care. Someone in Cincinnati died of a tooth problem last year, and we don’t even know if that’s covered. 

We realize that it wasn’t Mitt Romney who used the term “legitimate rape,” but it made us want to throw up, which slowed down productivity that might have allowed us to figure out that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was the only thing keeping our country’s military from turning Afghanistan into a European-style gay disco. 

We thought it was kind of gross when the president killed Osama bin Laden, but everyone was really happy about it so we focused our attention on the results of the president’s home buying and refinancing programs that helped stimulate the economy and saved people’s houses, even though we’re all a bunch of renters who don’t even know how to use a level. 

So we’re clearly at fault for your expectation of the downfall of this country, and we realize that you’re upset and probably right about America becoming a socialist nation within months. We messed up bad this time, but we want you to know that we’re not blind to it — your press release has put our actions into a perspective that we wish we had yesterday or, even better, several years ago before we learned how to do our jobs the right way. 

At least you have the local daily newspaper to publish your emotional reactions to historical election results and to continue endorsing GOP candidates no matter how ill qualified and misguided they are. Please don’t mourn long — there’s still hope for the type of social regression you’re looking for, especially in Warren County. 

Activists continue to protest Western & Southern’s treatment of the Anna Louise Inn, which has been helping women in the Lytle Park neighborhood for more than a century. CityBeat last week reported the details of Western & Southern’s failure to purchase the property when it had the chance and the company’s subsequent attempts to force the Inn to leave the neighborhood anyway. 

The Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, released a statement on Saturday describing the protest banner as proof for local and national leaders that Western & Southern’s actions won’t be tolerated. The statement read: “We will continue to up the ante until you stop attacking the hard-working women of the Anna Louise Inn.”

Josh Spring, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition, said in an email to CityBeat that the plane flew for two 30-minute stints on Sunday. Spring said protesters distributed 2,000 flyers outside the tournament’s gates and that the people who learned what Western & Southern was doing generally expressed frustration. The banner was made possible by contributions from several local organizations, including Occupy Work and Wages, Amos Project, the Homeless Coalition, SEIU Local 1, Mount Auburn Presbyterian church and other concerned citizens and groups. 

The banner asks people to go to stpws.com to learn more. The website redirects to www.southernwestern.net, which is the site where activists finally were able to publish a satirical video parodying a Western & Southern spokesperson proud of his company’s attacks on the Anna Louise Inn. The video was originally posted in June to YouTube and Vimeo, but was removed for copyright infringement shortly after Western & Southern found out about it. Western & Southern didn’t return CityBeat’s calls back then asking whether or not W&S was involved in forcing the removal of the video. The website includes a change.org petition asking Western & Southern to stop suing the Anna Louise Inn.

Cincinnati’s Historic Conservation Board is scheduled to hear arguments on Aug. 27 that could lead to a conditional use permit and allow the Anna Louise Inn to move forward with a renovation Western & Southern stalled by suing the Inn. It will take place 3 p.m. on the seventh floor of 805 Central Ave.

Read this week's CityBeat cover story on the issue here.

A new Census Bureau report reveals that from 2005 to 2009, a segment of Over-the-Rhine had the highest income inequality of more than 61,000 communities nationwide.

The segment — known as Census Tract No. 17 — is the northeast quadrant of Over-the-Rhine. The findings were featured in an article Tuesday by McClatchy Newspapers, which attributes the disparity in the tract partially to gentrification and the influx of young professionals into the predominantly low-income neighborhood.

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A social worker that has written a new book criticizing Cincinnati’s development efforts in Over-the-Rhine will conduct a book signing Thursday.

Alice Skirtz, a Cincinnati native, is the author of Econocide: Elimination of the Urban Poor. She will host a book signing from 4:30-6:30 p.m. at Skirtz & Johnston bakery at Findlay Market, 113 West Elder St.

Proceeds from book sales at the event will be given to the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. Skirtz is the founding organizer of the coalition.

The book profiles growing economic inequalities in the city that is reflected in policy debates over contentious issues like panhandling, homelessness, planning and funding for affordable housing, zoning for social service agencies and site selection for shelters.

Written from a social worker’s perspective, Econocide focuses on advocacy for people who are most vulnerable in society to promote and make sure they’re included in the socio-economic policies of local government.

"Based on over 40 years of experience in working with the urban poor, I wrote this book to call attention to how they have become increasingly at risk of being removed permanently from the community and civic life," Skirtz said. "The growth of privatization has led to increasing economic inequities, lessening influence in administrative and legislative affairs, and decreasing access to housing and even public spaces. I intend for this book to lead to a change in how we treat the urban poor."

The book includes a blurb by David Mann, a local attorney who also is an ex-Cincinnati mayor and former congressman.

“You cannot read her book without tears coming to your eyes at some point and without wondering why a supposedly enlightened society cannot better balance the needs of the least among us with overall economic health and viability,” Mann wrote. “You will ask yourself why we cannot do better.”

A federal judge has ordered police to stop ticketing Occupy Cincinnati protesters after the group filed a lawsuit against the city for banning people from Piatt Park when it closes. The city has already ticketed protesters approximately $25,000.

J. Robert Linneman, one of the attorneys who filed the suit, according to Bloomberg Businessweek:

"This case is not about the whether you agree with the political views of Occupy Cincinnati or Occupy Wall Street; it's about the right of the people to assemble in a public park and to engage in protected speech."

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The Occupy Wall Street movement plans to occupy Sawyer Point this Saturday from 11 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., one of several protests planned in other cities since the protest over corporate money in politics began more than three weeks ago in New York. (UPDATE: The protest has been moved to Lytle Park due to an already scheduled event at Sawyer Point.)

The Cincinnati Enquirer did its usual muckraking on the subject, determining that the movement's “goals are vague” and then linking to a story quoting a member of the movement describing its goals quite succinctly:

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Bengals wide receiver Jerome Simpson has some explaining to do after being caught yesterday receiving a shipment of 2.5 points of weed to his home. Authorities found another 6 pounds inside the Crestview Hills house, which Simpson owns. Here's how the incident will affect your fantasy football team, should you have made the mistake of drafting Jerome Simpson.

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Amid the recent controversy about possibly adding more publicly subsidized housing for the poor in Green Township, local Republicans will hold a special forum tonight to discuss methods for blocking the expansion.

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“Dealing in this state, for example, you think so much about the painful days in the deep South — the overt schemes to deny the right to vote,” Jackson said on Tuesday, the last day to register to vote in Ohio.

“We saw Ohio as a kind of beacon of light, the beacon of hope once we ran across the river coming north. This year we’ve seen Ohio and Pennsylvania take the lead in trying to purge voters and suppress the vote to determine the outcome.”

Jackson’s comments came on the same day Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court the Six Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to allow early in-person voting on the three days before Election Day.

The three days had previously only applied to military personnel and their families.

Republicans like Husted have cited cost as the reason to not allow in-person voting on the three days before the election. But in an Aug. 19 email to The Columbus Dispatch, Franklin County Republican Party chairman Doug Preisse said “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine.”

Pennsylvania, meanwhile, tried to require voters take a photo ID with them into the polls. A state judge blocked the law from going into effect for the 2012 election.

Jackson said restrictions as to who can vote when and where undermine the purpose of democracy. 

“Open access, free, transparent voting makes democracy real,” he said.

Flanked by a tapestry portraying President Barack Obama, Jackson touted the president’s accomplishments in his first term and urged those assembled to give him a second.

Jackson was in Toledo Oct. 5 pushing early voting. He said he was in Cincinnati because “Ohio matters” and he saw it as a way to penetrate Appalachia because “poverty is not just a black problem.”

Child poverty and its causes will be one of the main focuses of the conference. Nearly 15 million children in the United States, or 21 percent of all children, live in families below the federal poverty level, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP). A study from the NCCP found Cincinnati has the third-worst children’s poverty rate at 48 percent. Only Detroit and Cleveland were worse, with 53.6 percent and 52.6 percent, respectively.

“We’re going to look at all the range of policies and practices and the impact of those and what we can do,” CDF President Marian Wright told WVXU today. “It’s going to be a real teach-in on what we must do to move forward and stop the move backwards, which I think we’re in the midst of.”

The conference will also look at education issues. It seeks to shine light on the issue of the achievement gap between the poor and non-poor and racial disparities. A 2011 analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics found black and Hispanic students are behind their white peers by 20 test-points in math and reading tests provided by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The difference equates to about two grade levels.

The conference will also look at child health care services, zero-tolerance discipline policies in schools and tools and programs that can be used to improve the lives of struggling children.

Anyone is free to register at CDF’s website to join the conference. Experts, doctors and activists will also be there.