A federal judge is ordering Secretary of State Jon Husted to appear in court to explain why Husted is ignoring a recent ruling. The judge ruled Friday that Husted must enact in-person early voting for all voters on the weekend and Monday before Election Day. Husted told county boards of elections to ignore the ruling until after an appeal process. Republicans have consistently blocked the expansion of early voting, citing racial politics and costs.After a merger with Progress Energy, Duke Energy will rebrand itself. The details are sparse, but CEO Jim Rogers promised in a letter last week that the company will be going some big changes. Even a name change was hinted at in the letter, which promised the commission “a rollout of the new logo and name-change occurring at the end of the first quarter of 2013 and beginning of the second quarter.” An activist group is demanding the U.S. Department of Labor investigate allegations that Murray Energy forced its miners in Bealsville, Ohio to attend a campaign rally for presidential candidate Mitt Romney. CREDO Action, the group filing the petition, wants the Department of Labor to see if any laws were broken in the process. Murray Energy’s CEO says workers were told the campaign rally “was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend.” But that explanation makes no sense.Cincinnati hospitals and medical centers saw higher expenses and revenues in the past few fiscal years. Urban hospitals and centers in particular were more likely to see higher costs and income, while rural hospitals and centers sometimes saw decreases.Voters First is mocking the redistricting system with a new graph. The graph shows a real email exchange between politicians carving out districts for personal gain. The exchange only lasts 13 minutes and has no questions asked before Republican redistricting officials agree to redraw a district to benefit Rep. Jim Renacci, a Republican. Voters First also held a 13-minute press conference to mock the exchange further and explain the redistricting process.I-75 will be undergoing a massive widening project starting in 2021. The project is estimated to cost $467 million.Three downtown buildings have been sold to 3CDC for $10. The company currently has no plans for the buildings.Ohio is hosting an international venture capital conference. The National Association of Seed and Venture Funds conference is in Cleveland between Oct. 15 and 17. The nonprofit organization has 200 members, and 22 of them are in Ohio. Venture capital has come under fire during the current campaign season due to Romney’s campaign and Romney’s work as CEO of Bain Capital.The Miami University frat that was suspended is dropping its $10 million lawsuit. The frat was suspended after a fireworks battle led to police finding illegal substances inside the frat.Ohio farmers from all counties are now seeking disaster aid after severe storms and drought hurt crops this summer.Former Gov. Ted Strickland got “God” and “Jerusalem” put back in the Democratic Party’s official platform. There was some booing after the pandering addition was made. Former President Bill Clinton made a speech defending President Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention last night. In the speech, Clinton points out that Republicans were in power when the recession began, and Obama inherited a horrible situation from them. But Clinton passed the largest deregulatory law in history when in 1999 he repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, and the severe lack of regulation is often blamed for the financial crisis that helped spur the Great Recession.A scientist is linking global warming to the amount of exploding stars in the sky.

There are a lot of things that don’t make it into any given news story. When you attend an event as a reporter, such as Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s visit to Union Terminal last Saturday (as I did), you wait in line for about an hour, then wait inside for another hour while security checks every visitor. During that time, you’re talking to people who are attending, taking notes to provide color for the story (things such as what songs are playing, slogans on shirts or signs, the general mood or atmosphere) and getting information from the event staff, such as how many tickets were given out, how many people are estimated to attend, etc. Then there are the speakers — about an hour of politicians talking. After that, there’s the counter press conference with local Democratic officials. Then you make phone calls to fill in any gaps. With all of that material and the average reader attention span on 800 words, a lot of information gets left out of any given piece. So here are some things I found interesting from Romney’s visit that didn’t make it into my story that day. The most popular attire seemed to be Reds items. Many event-goers wore Reds T-shirts or caps, and U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, who spoke at the event, wore a Reds ballcap and opened his speech with “So Cincinnati, how about these Redlegs?” and talked about Jay Bruce’s homer the previous night.U.S. House Speaker John Boehner attended the rally. I remember seeing him on TV at the Republican National Convention and commenting that he didn’t look as tan anymore. Must have been the cameras. In person, he was at least five shades darker than the pasty Portman.U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot also spoke at the rally. While most speakers stuck to short speeches meant to pump up attendees and introduce Romney, Chabot got local. He encouraged attendees to vote against Issue 2, a ballot measure appearing in November that would change the way redistricting is done in Ohio. Currently congressional redistricting is done by the Legislature, which can give one party an advantage if they control both houses and the governor’s mansion. Chabot said Issue 2, which would set up an independent commission to redraw congressional districts, would allow special interest groups to take voters out of the equation and have the lines drawn by “unelected, unaccountable” people. (CityBeat covered this year's redistricting issue here and here.)As politicians do, speakers from both Republican and Democratic camps tried to spin the message. Portman told rally attendees that we were in the midst of the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, a statement independent fact checkers determined to be false. UPDATE 9/5/12: According to Republicans in the Joint Economic Committee and a report by The Associated Press economic growth and consumer spending have recovered more slowly from this recession than any time since The Great Depression. A PolitiFact check of Romney's claim that it was the slowest jobs recovery was deemed to be false.Meanwhile, in their press conference after the rally, Democrats had maybe a dozen local Cincinnatians in a small public area near Music Hall. Obama’s campaign provided signs and had them all crowd behind a podium where local politicians spoke. For the TV cameras, it probably looked like a sizeable crowd, which is an old trick.

The activist branch of a liberal telecommunications company has filed a petition asking the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate allegations that Murray Energy forced miners in Beallsville, Ohio to attend a rally for Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. CREDO Action Campaign Manager Josh Nelson told CityBeat that the group emailed the petition with 4,021 signatures to the Department of Labor Wednesday morning. The petition reads: "Requiring employees to attend a Mitt Romney political rally without pay is totally unacceptable. I urge you to conduct a thorough investigation to determine whether Murray Energy violated any federal laws on August 14th, and to hold it fully accountable if it did." Romney appeared at the event to attack what he called President Barack Obama’s “war on coal.” He was flanked on stage by hundreds of miners with soot-stained faces. Dozens of those miners told WWVA-AM West Virginia talk show host David Blomquist that they were pulled from the mine before their shift was over and not paid for the full day of work. The miners, who Blomquist did not identify, said they were told that attendance at the rally was mandatory. Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore told Blomquist on his radio show that managers “communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend.”  He said that people who did not show up to the event, which organizers say drew 1,500 miners and family members, were not penalized for their absence. “Forcing Ohio workers to participate in a political rally is unacceptable, so we're joining our friends at SEIU in calling on the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct an investigation to determine whether or not any federal laws were broken,” Nelson wrote in an email to CREDO Action’s Ohio activists on Sept. 1. A spokeswoman for the Labor Department was not immediately able to confirm whether the department had received the petition or planned to launch an investigation. This post will be updated with comment from the Labor Department when it becomes available.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Saturday laid out five steps that he said would have America “roaring back” during his first campaign stop since formally accepting the Republican nomination.At Cincinnati's Union Terminal, Romney was joined on stage by his wife Anne, who spoke briefly, echoing her convention speech meant to humanize her husband.  He said his plan involved encouraging development in oil and coal, implementing a trade policy that favored American companies and not “cheaters” like China, making sure workers and students had skills to succeed in the coming century, reducing the deficit and encouraging small business growth. “America is going to come roaring back,” Romney told the crowd of thousands packed inside Union Terminal. Not everyone was so impressed with the GOP nominee’s promises. About an hour after the Romney campaign event, Cincinnati Democratic leaders held a news conference to rebut the Republican’s speech. “Much of his (Romney’s) speech was like his speech in Tampa, which is where Romney gave Cincinnatians nothing more than vague platitudes, false and misleading attacks without one single tangible idea on how to move forward,” said Democratic/Charterite Cincinnati City Councilwoman Yvette Simpson. Simpson, along with Democratic Councilman Cecil Thomas and Bishop Bobby Hilton, attacked the tax plan put forward by Romney and his running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan. They said it would cut taxes for the richest Americans while raising taxes on the middle class by about $2,000 per household, citing an analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. “Mitt Romney’s plan would take Ohio and Cincinnati backwards, and we don’t have time to go backwards,” Hilton said. Hilton credited Cincinnati’s revitalization and urban development in part on federal money obtained from Obama’s stimulus plan. “We deserve better than this. We deserve better than Romney/Ryan,” he said. Romney would have disagreed with Hilton’s assessment of Cincinnati’s growth. During his speech he praised Ohio Gov. John Kasich, crediting him with bringing jobs and businesses to the state. Romney also took time to attack President Barack Obama’s record in office. The GOP nominee said in preparation for his convention speech he read many past convention speeches — including Obama’s. “He was not one of the ones that I wanted to draw from, except I could not resist a couple of things he said, because he made a lot of promises,” Romney said. “And I noted that he didn't keep a lot of promises.” Romney also criticized what he called the bitterness and divisiveness of Obama’s campaign, saying as president he would bring the country together. He mentioned the “patriotism and courage” of the late Neil Armstrong, who was honored in a private service in Cincinnati on Friday. “I will do everything in my power to bring us together, because, united, America built the strongest economy in the history of the earth. United, we put Neil Armstrong on the moon. United, we faced down unspeakable darkness,” Romney said.  “United, our men and women in uniform continue to defend freedom today. I love those people who serve our great nation. This is a time for us to come together as a nation.” The candidate’s remarks ignited the crowd of thousands, many of whom wore shirts with slogans like “Mr. President, I did build my business,” in response to a remark made by Obama about businesses being helped to grow by government contracts and infrastructure, and “Mitt 2012: At least he never ate dog meat,” referring to a passage in Obama’s 2008 memoir during which he recalls being fed dog meat as a boy in Indonesia. Steve Heckman, a 62-year-old environmental consultant from Springfield, Ohio, said he voted for Obama in 2008 but will likely vote for Romney in this election.  He said he’d written “some pretty ugly stuff” about Romney in the past but felt jobs was the No. 1 issue and thought the Obama administration’s policies were sending them out of the country. “The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) has, to me,  become a little too almost like a fringe group, putting so much pressure on businesses that they are moving to Canada,” Heckman said. “Things like air permits, the EPA is taking too long to issue them. It’s not just power plants they’re affecting, but all manufacturing.” Heckman said he didn’t blame the president personally but thinks whoever he put in charge of the agency is being too strict. “I grew up when the EPA was first put in place in the '70s, and they were, in my opinion, doing God’s work,” he said, citing the cleaning up of rivers such as the Cuyahoga near Cleveland, which famously caught fire because of pollution in 1969. “I support the EPA, but it’s driving businesses out of here.” Speaking ahead of Romney were U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Rob Portman, U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, Ohio treasurer and GOP senatorial candidate Josh Mandel and Republican U.S. House candidate for Ohio’s 2nd District, Brad Wenstrup. “This election is all about changing Washington,” Mandel said. “The only way to change Washington is to change the people we send there.”

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is coming to Cincinnati tomorrow. He will be speaking at Union Terminal at 10 a.m., with doors opening for the event at 8 a.m. Romney is expected to need Ohio to win the presidential election, but he is currently behind Obama in aggregate polling by 1.4 points. Romney gave his speech at the Republican National Convention last night with a focus on jobs and the economy. The speech has been generally well-received by political pundits. However, there has been some news recently that when he was in Bain Capital, Romney looted a dying company for executive bonuses when the company owed the government millions of dollars. The story puts a damper on Romney’s “We Built That” mantra, which claims entrepreneurs create businesses without any government assistance.Ohio’s texting-while-driving ban goes into effect today. Strategies to End Homelessness is losing federal funding, but it will still continue efforts to combat homelessness in Cincinnati. The organization coordinates efforts between anti-homelessness groups in the area to prevent homelessness and assist people who have already fallen into homelessness.California-based iHerb could bring 600 jobs to Northern Kentucky in the near future. The company, which has been in business for 16 years, is a seller for food supplements.In 2010, the University of Cincinnati spent $11.1 million on its football program, but it came out with about $13.3 million in revenue. In comparison, Ohio State spent $34.3 million, but it took in $61 million.A $10.4 million affordable housing program broke ground in Florence, Ky.Ohio’s e-schools are having technical issues due to an influx of new students. Unfortunately, statistics show that influx of new students may be getting an inferior education.The Ohio House is getting ready to pass public pension reform. The reform will raise premiums, lower benefits and make eligibility more difficult. Republicans say the plan will keep pension funds solvent at a time when budgets are tight.Republican Speakers at the Republican National Convention have avoided two words: Tea Party.Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman, says people are only poor because they’re lazy drunks. She says people should stop being lazy and work to become millionaires, although Rinehart inherited her wealth.Clint Eastwood talked to an empty chair during his speech at the Republican National Convention last night.

The City of Cincinnati and Duke Energy are still fighting over the streetcar. The city and company are both disputing who is required to relocate utility lines and pipes in order to accommodate for the streetcar. Cincinnati officials say Duke Energy is required to do it under state law, but the company disagrees. The city is considering legal action, so the feud might soon be heading to court.A recent campaign event might have been mandatory for workers at a mine in Beallsville, Ohio. The miners were allegedly pulled from work, refused pay and required to attend the event with presidential candidate Mitt Romney and senatorial candidate Josh Mandel. Romney, Mandel and the mine owner have all been criticized for the move.Cincinnati Bell and StarTek plan on bringing back 200 outsourced jobs to Cincinnati. StarTek will also hire another 136 workers.President Barack Obama’s administration finalized new regulations yesterday requiring the average gas mileage of new cars to be at 54.5 mpg by 2025. The new standard is double today’s standard. Lisa Jackson, EPA administrator, said on Twitter the new standards will reduce national oil consumption by two million barrels a day. The United States currently uses about 20 million barrels a day. That reduction in consumption could help combat climate change, which is partly blamed for Arctic Sea ice hitting record lows this summer.A federal judge ruled Ohio boards of elections must count defective provisional ballots if the ballots were counted defective due to errors from poll workers. The ruling protects voters from mistakes by poll workers. Secretary of State Jon Husted is expected to appeal the ruling because he says it disagrees with state law.Husted ended up firing the two Democrats on the Montgomery Board of Elections that voted for extending in-person early voting to include weekends. Democrats say not allowing weekend voting is voter suppression, but Republicans cite racial politics and costs as deterrents. New rules for juries stop the use of Twitter and Facebook during cases.The Republican national convention is underway in Tampa, Fla. Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio will be there. For coverage, check out Twitter’s Republican convention page, which tracks all mentions of the convention.Romney apparently agrees with Mandel that fact checkers don’t matter. This is despite Romney’s claim that President Barack Obama should stop running ads after fact checkers find them to be false or misleading. Mandel previously said he will continue saying wrong statements even after they’re declared false or misleading by fact checkers. Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland criticized Romney on his plans for Medicare. The former governor said the Romney-Ryan budget plan would “destroy Medicare as we know it.” Republicans like to say that Obamacare will get employers to drop health insurance, but a new survey has found zero out of 512 employers plan on dropping health insurance.The U.S. economy grew at a 1.7 percent annual rate in the second quarter. The growth isn’t great, but it slightly beat expectations.Apparently computer grading programs are judging student essays better than teachers.And some scientists want to use HIV to fight cancer.

I, for one, was comforted to hear the warm Southern drawl put on by Ohio treasurer and senatorial candidate Josh Mandel while he campaigned for Mitt Romney before Beallsville coal miners on Wednesday. As someone who recently spent six months living and working in Montgomery, Ala., it brought me back to simpler times when summer nights were spent drinking sweet tea spiked with rum on a porch and it was for some reason still OK to refer to a grown black man as “boy.” So when I heard Josh Mandel extoll the virtues of coal in a drawl reminiscent of fresh butter spread on cornbread, I immediately thought, “shucks, this guy gets me — he’s one of us.” Wait, what’s that? Mandel hails from Lyndhurst, a Cleveland suburb that’s the Hyde Park of Northern Ohio? He’s never even eaten cheese grits? (Editor’s note: CityBeat could not independently verify that Josh Mandel has in fact never eaten cheese grits.) Well now I just feel put on. LINK TO VIDEO Y’ALL The Enquirer reported that Mandel had never publicly used a Southern accent before. "As if blowing off work and hiring unqualified campaign workers and friends at taxpayer expense wasn't evidence enough of his blatant disregard for the people who elected him treasurer expecting that he'd do his job, Josh Mandel has now stooped to faking his accent as a means of earning votes," Ohio Democratic Party spokesman Andrew Zucker said in a statement. "It's sad, it's pathetic and unfortunately it's concrete proof that he is just another politician who can't be trusted." Sounding folksy or down-homey is nothing new in presidential politics. When campaigning in Alabama, Romney famously dropped “y’alls” into his speech and spoke of his newfound love for “cheesy grits” and catfish (my editor in Montgomery was quick to point out to me, another carpetbagger, that any real Southerner knows they’re cheese grits, not cheesy grits). If there’s one thing Southerners don’t take too kindly to, it’s Yankee pandering. “If you’re going to pander, at least pander well, and this isn’t pandering well,” Stephen Gordon, a Republican consultant based in Birmingham, Ala., told the Boston Herald shortly after Romney made his remarks.  “People in the Deep South have a bit of a natural distrust for Northerners, especially folks from the Northeast,” said Gordon, who is not affiliated with any campaign in the Republican presidential contest. “There are cultural differences, stemming all the way back to the Civil War, and they affect the way people perceive Mr. Romney.” Romney is by no means the first to affect an accent to fit in with the natives. Both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton adopted drawls while on campaign stops in the South. Though those two former presidents, from Texas and Arkansas respectively, had the bona fides to pull it off.