Hello all. I and my intrepid journalist colleagues just finished eating dog treats and drinking beers for a non-news related CityBeat story, so I’m all fueled up and ready to news. Let’s do a quick rundown, shall we?
President Donald Trump will visit Greater Cincinnati Monday to talk about the recently-passed GOP tax plan. He’ll stop by industrial cylinder manufacturer Sheffer in Blue Ash to tout the plan’s benefits for small businesses. It’s his first visit to the region since June last year, when he stopped by the East End to talk about infrastructure. The Republican tax plan has been controversial — its breaks for middle-class earners will roll off in the coming years while bigger tax cuts for wealthy individuals and businesses are more permanent. Most analyses of the plan say it will raise taxes on lower and middle-income earners over time and also widen the federal budget deficit. But the plan’s popularity has been buttressed somewhat by companies that have credited the tax overhaul for bonuses they’ve doled out to employees. Trump is likely looking to continue that makeover with his visit.
• The University of Cincinnati is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a supporter of white nationalist Richard Spencer. Attorneys for supporters of Spencer initially threatened a lawsuit against UC if it did not grant Spencer a venue in which to speak, saying that its status as a public university means that it must grant speakers that right on First Amendment grounds. Now, after Spencer and UC nailed down a March date for his speech, attorneys for the alt-right leader have filed a separate suit because UC is charging $11,000 in security fees for that appearance. Other schools at which Spencer has spoken have paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in security costs. But Spencer’s supporters say the steep fees present a barrier to his exercise of his right to free speech.
• A juror in the grisly 1998 Cincinnati murder trial that convicted and sentenced to death Raymond Tibbetts is asking Ohio Gov. John Kasich to commute his sentence to life in prison, saying he was unaware of Tibbetts’ struggle with abuse, mental illness and drug addiction when he recommended the death penalty. You can read more in our story here about the letter juror Ross Gieger sent Kasich just days before Tibbetts was scheduled to be executed.
• The demolition of historic buildings in a Greater Cincinnati community is getting national attention. CityLab, a vertical for national magazine The Atlantic, recently profiled the battle over four historic apartment buildings that were torn down last December in Greenhills, the suburb north of Cincinnati planned by the federal government during the New Deal. The four badly deteriorated apartments were original to the 1930s-era cooperative community for working class (albeit, only white) Americans suffering during the Great Depression, but would have cost nearly $4 million to rehabilitate. Their loss came as a shock to preservationists who had, just a year prior, celebrated the town’s newly-minted National Historic Landmark status. CityBeat wrote about the legacy of the New Deal in Greater Cincinnati, including Greenhills, in a cover story late last year.
• Tyra Patterson, the woman recently-paroled from Ohio’s state prison system after 22 years behind bars for a crime she says she didn’t commit, was denied a bank account at Fifth Third Bank this week, her new boss says. Ohio Justice and Policy Center Executive Director David Singleton said in a Facebook post that the bank turned down Patterson for an account because her state-issued ID card was less than 90 days old. Patterson, now a paralegal at OJPC, was trying to set up an account so she could accept direct deposit of her pay.
“My offer to vouch for Tyra as her employer fell on deaf ears,” Singleton wrote. “We then went down the street to PNC and opened her account with no problem… this practice must change as it impacts more than just Tyra.”
Fifth Third has since apologized for Patterson’s experience, though it’s unclear if the bank will change its policies about ID cards.
• Two local Republican state lawmakers want to make it illegal for protesters to wear masks in public under certain circumstances, and Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones is hyped about the effort.
House Bill 423, cosponsored by state Rep. Bill Seitz of Green Township and George Lang of West Chester Township, came about after Jones says he saw protests in Berkeley, Calif. and elsewhere and became concerned about masked protesters. Jones then approached Seitz and Lang, who drew up legislation creating a new misdemeanor called “masked intimidation” for those “wearing a disguise to obstruct the law, rights of others or a person’s legal duty.”
Jones will testify in support of the bill at the Ohio State House Feb. 14.
“People are emboldened when they wear masks,” Jones told Fox 19. “They are cowards. I’d like them to be in a room with me trying to assault me.”
Of course, others aren’t exactly excited about the state government levying misdemeanors over apparel.
“This measure is propaganda aimed at cutting down democratic rights, intimidating people from being able to express themselves as they protest and it’s an entree to even more restrictive measures,” Black Lives Matter Cincinnati’s Brian Taylor said, noting that almost all protests involving people wearing hoods and masks have been peaceful.
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 7, 2018.