Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Residency Requirements Off Life Support For Now

Local residency requirements have officially been upgraded from critical to guarded condition.  As I posted here in February the reports of the death of local ordinances requiring municipal employees to live within city limits was a bit premature.  Now a third Ohio appellate court has weighed in on residency requirements and affirmed the two previous rulings in favor of cities with such requirements.  Not only is the health of residency requirements looking up for now but his friend home rule is feeling better these days.  The report from GONGWER offers this snippet:
The 6th District Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 opinion that a new state statute prohibiting such residency requirements was "an obvious attempt to circumvent constitutional municipal home rule authority."
The main opposition to residency requirements has come from police and fire unions who state that an undue hardship is placed upon their members.  These groups assert the residency restriction limits the options of housing and other quality of life choices that inevitably lie in the greener grass just on the other side of the city limits.   Now I have worked for a large metro that had a residency requirement and didn't mind it at all.  In fact I was informed of the requirement prior to excepting the job there.  Are the safety forces contending that there has been some deception on the part of muni's that maintain residency rules?    In writing the lead opinion Judge Thomas Osowik offered this somewhat right wing-ish statement:
"Terms and conditions of employment and the choice of whether to accept employment with certain terms and conditions are inherent in all employment decisions in a free market economy,"
Seriously, is it that bad to have to live in a city whose citizens depend on police, fire and EMS personnel to maintain the collective health and safety of the community?   If you prefer not to live in Akron or Cleveland y then you have the right to work for a city that doesn't have a residency requirement don't you?   There are currently two potential cases, including the City of Akron case, that could be heard by the SCO so the final judgement has yet to be rendered.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Akron METRO Sales Tax Follow Up

Akron METRO was able to get a quarter percent sales tax increase passed in March. All that is left for the regional transit authority is sit back and watch the money roll in. The tax will provide METRO with approximately $18 million in additional revenue and that may be about $17 million more than METRO currently needs to stay afloat.

Since sales tax is also a meat and potatoes revenue source for county government the movement of such a large chunk to METRO is making some of the financial types at Summit County uneasy. Tough times over the horizon makes for creative solutions to manage fiscal hardship. That is why Summit County will be suggesting that the new found wealth be shared. In what may be called de facto regionalism the County is going to be aggressively searching for ways to have METRO to invest that extra revenue into economic development projects that could perhaps benefit the region and spare county coffers. This is of course all contingent on being able to pry the cash from METROs cold dead hand.

If the county is successful maybe they can set their sites on freeing up some of those tax dollars from MRDD and the Summit ADMH boards.

Friday, April 25, 2008

A Plus Up for Petraeus

General Petraeus always the loyal soldier will be taking over Central Command later this year. With General Ray Odierno moving up from number two take the reigns in Iraq the "smash brothers" will have complete control of the Middle East Theater. Obviously the appointments signal the administration's intent to change absolutely nothing in Iraq but, that shouldn't come as a surprise.

In terms of U.S policy toward Iran this can only mean a greater chance of some military intervention in the near term. It has been said in some media outlets that the current CentCom chief Admiral Fallon was standing in the way of escalating the conflict with Iran. With Fallon out of the picture and the potential for a President McCain (I cringe) to be in charge in early 2009 the outlook for more war looks great.

As for Iraq, country is is great hands. With Odierno in charge the number of cordon and search missions will probably hit all time highs. This guy has a history of being a relentless hard-ass and at times his tactics haven't meshed the counterinsurgency plans. This From yesterday's McClatchy report:

Many believe that Odierno, the III Corps commander in Fort Hood,
Texas, redeemed himself during his stint as the No. 2 commander in Iraq
last year. He came to the post under a cloud of controversy after some
charged that his strong-arm approach to warfare lacked the nuance that
counterinsurgency required.

Indeed, in his previous post as the
commander of U.S. troops in northern Iraq, he called for aggressive
tactics against the insurgency, at times inflaming tensions between
U.S. troops and Iraqis.

Petraeus will most likely be too busy running for vice president to play good cop to Odierno. Eventually in Iraq the money and guns won't be enough to keep the Sunni militias in line and Odierno will have to resort to more bad cop policies to pacify any unrest. All the more reason taking on Iran at the same time is not a good idea.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Dimora's Ameritrust Anxiety Comes Out

Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora's outburst (no,rant) at Thursday's BOCC meeting was actually a primal release of pent up anxiety. The two PD reporters, Mark Puente and Henry J. Gomez, that had been "hounding" the Commish about what was basically a patronage hire got more than they bargained for. You see Dimora himself said he's been in the business thirty years. The man has seen his share of patronage hires that have failed the smell test. A seasoned politico like Dimora doesn't get his giant panties in a bunch over questions on a single patronage hire.

What the Commissioner is actually suffering from is Ameritrust Building Anxiety. The press didn't do much with this story until last year, almost two years after its inception. The flood gates finally opened and the backlash against the mishandling of the project and questionable contracting has been mounting ever since. Even though the Board has come to terms to sell the building and get out of the project it is not doing so unscathed. The County and taxpayers will still have to eat several million (like around 10) asbestos laden dollars after the building is unloaded to a private developer. Even when they find a way out their problems don't go away.

The County faced with an aging portfolio of buildings still has to come up with a plan to either consolidate into one site or address the large capital costs of maintaining the existing sites. The last three years have essentially been wasted with the failed attempt to make the Ameritrust site work out as planned. The County is now back to square one and has already burned a lot of time, money and good will with nothing to show.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Is Joe Lieberman a Maoist?

Obama is not a Marxist. I couldn't say if Joe is or isn't a Maoist. It's certainly something that could be looked into further. I mean Marxism and Maoism are equally prevalent in today's society aren't they?

Joe's good friend John McCain is certainly not a Marxist. He just proposed relinquishing even more fiscal responsibility through more tax cuts. This time its the federal gasoline tax that is holding us back. How about we triple the gas tax and use the money to pay for your pet project in Iraq?

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Proxy War Not Going Well Either

The regular war in Iraq is bad enough now we have to worry about some proxy war. According to the administration, specifically Ambassador Ryan Crocker the U.S is also engaged in proxy war with Iran. In an interview Friday Crocker lamented Iran's role in screwing up the path to a stable Iraq and meddling in Iraqi affairs. The problems in Iraq apparently aren't all related to the U.S. occupation. Iran's support of Shiite militias is a major point of contention for the U.S. As reported in the Sunday New York Times Crocker directly called out the Iranian interference in the interview:
While Bush administration officials have long denounced what they have
described as Iran’s meddling in Iraq, Mr. Crocker’s language was
unusually strong, reflecting fresh concern about what he described in
Congressional testimony this week as Iran’s role in supplying militias
with training and weapons, including rockets used in recent attacks on
the Green Zone, in Baghdad.
Although he claimed the U.S. is not engaging in an proxy type involvement against Iran. That seems to contradict the piles of cash and weapons we have been providing the Sunni groups in Al Anbar. Those groups would be a hedge against overt Iranian and Shiite influence in Iraq once th U.S. begins to decrease it's presence there. So this would serve as a proxy to Iran's proxy, I guess. While Iran is meddling in everyones business in the Middle East none of our allies inte region are lending much of hand, Crocker's complaints again from the Times article:

During the interview, Mr. Crocker accused Iran of meddling in
Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza, in addition to Iraq. He also faulted
Iraq’s Arab neighbors for refusing to help, noting that a promised
Saudi Arabian Embassy had yet to materialize.

Maybe the U.S. should consider engaging Iran in a proxy nature and get our so called Sunni allies like Saudi Arabia to get of there asses and spend some petrodollars on staunching Iran's influence in their own backyard. Doing nothing to even the score while the oil producing fat cats sit around and watch is no way to run a proxy war.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Tommy Franks Was Right

Another one of the architects of the Iraq invasion has been making the rounds with the latest book full of excuses. Straight from the "where are the war architects" file comes Douglas Feith. If you know the narrative of how we got into the biggest foreign policy mess ever then Feith's name is a familiar one. He was most recently on the Diane Rehm Show this past Thursday. I've been trying not to hear any of the lame-ass garbage Feith has been pawning off to respected media outlets like 60 minutes but I gave in and listened to the whole one hour segment.

Surprisingly or maybe not Feith has been pushing the idea that the real blame for what went wrong lies with Colin Powell. What I gathered from the interview is that He thinks Powell should have done more to stop the civilian war planners from going ahead with the invasion. To further his point Feith basically stated to Rehm during the interview that if then Secretary of State Powell had a better plan he didn't let on. I come away with this summary. Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolofwitz and the other neocons used bizarro world logic to set off an ill-conceived and ill-planned invasion of Iraq. Colin Powell is to blame because it was up to him to stop them because they didn't know any better. There is a mountain of evidence out there that says they wouldn't have listened anyway.

Feith asserts that his account is based on the record and that's what gives his book real juice. Feith also boasts that the planning was a collaborative effort in which all points of view were entertained. You don't have to go any further than the pages of the book Fiasco by Tom Ricks to see how Feith's "on the record" account contrasts starkly with what actually happened. In the chapter of Fiasco titled "The Run Up", Ricks covers how the lack of attention to objective input from other sources soured the war planning. There were two very large scale and comprehensive reports created by dozens of security experts, military planners and Mideast scholars. Both of these studies where ignored by Feith's office. Ricks summarizes this phenomenon in his book:

"What is remarkable is that again and again during the crucial months before the invasion, such warnings from experts went unheeded-or even unwelcome. Almost no Middle Eastern experts inside the military were consulted on the war plan, in part because the plan was produced on a very close hold basis that involved few people , and even then only parts of it were shown to most of those involved."

Despite the non-attentiveness to the counsel of all of these experts Feith still defends one of the
biggest blunders of the occupation, disbanding the Iraqi army. He claims in his "on the record" version of events that military planners agreed with this decision. The historic facts recounted in Fiasco point to military experts stressing that the Iraqi army not be disbanded. In December of 2002 a report produced by military experts at the Pentagon (a third report in as many months) stated unequivocally the error of folding the Iraqi army after the invasion:

"...To tear apart the army in the war's aftermath could lead to the
destruction of one the only forces of unity within the society."

Feith's claim that the Iraqi army was already broken and had to be rebuilt clearly contradicted the advice being given at the time of the run upto the war. This is just one major example of the incompetent way Feith's office handled the planning and execution of the invasion and
subsequent occupation of Iraq. In the end it was the incompetence from key war planners like Feith that lead to the abysmal failures that have morphed into the never ending disaster that is the occupation of Iraq. General Tommy Franks is quoted in Fiasco as summing up Feith's level of competence with this morsel, "the dumbest fucking guy on the planet". I don't know if I'd go that far but he has a point.

Feith's book smells like pure revisionist crap if you ask me. The only good that may come out of his new book is that he plans to donate all the proceeds to charity. I think a charity that supports the families of fallen Iraq war veterans would be a good start.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Praying For Rain In Northern France

What's better than bikes racing on ancient sections of cobblestone roads in the Ardenne? Bikes racing on wet and muddy sections of cobblestone roads. Paris Roubaix also known as the "Hell of the North" is this Sunday and the riders are expected to be met with rains and wind. This a good thing if you are watching the race and not riding in it. The past few years the peleton has been spared from the brutal wet and cold conditions that normally claim tires, forks, handlebars and the occasional face. I think this could be big George Hincapie's year if he can stay upright, this may be his last chance to claim a victory here.

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The Petraeus Take Away

We're not going anywhere anytime soon. General Petraeus made that abundantly clear with this automated response at today's hearing as transcribed by the Washintgon Post:

At the end of that period, he said, he has recommended starting "a
process of assessment to examine the conditions on the ground and, over
time, determine when we can make recommendations for further
reductions." He strongly counseled against setting any deadlines for
withdrawal.


I called Central Command Headquarters and they have this message playing on the answering machine so they got the memo. Maybe we'll know more in December.

Monday, April 07, 2008

Petraeus is Coming! Petraeus is Coming!

Another six months and another status report from the king of the surge. General Petraeus makes his way to Capital Hill tomorrow to give his latest assessment of the conditions in Iraq. I can't imagine anything new is going to be divulged by either the general or U.S. ambassador to the fortified Green Zone, Ryan Crocker.

General Petraeus has already gone on record as saying not enough political progress has been made by the Iraqi government. I almost wanted to throw in the adjective nascent before the words Iraqi government but by now the new car smell has worn off. That statement made a couple of weeks ago will probably be fodder for inquiring minds at the Congressional hearing and should elicit some tough questioning. I'm sure Petraeus and Crocker will be ready for the onslaught and will repel any suggestions that all is not well with healthy doses of "surge must be given more time to work" medicine. American's will once again be told that we need to stay in Iraq even if it means sacrificing more lives and resources for a failed policy.

The real success of surge has been its ability to buy more time on the political front for the administration. Tomorrow's performances are intended to extend the deployment beyond the election and pass it off to the next commander in chief. I know it's a cynical outlook but god dammit can you blame me?

Saturday, April 05, 2008

Job Losses Bad News For NEO

The latest round of bad economic news arrived this week in the form of more job losses. If that isn't enough to bum you out then the impact of the downturn in NE Ohio will. George Zeller from the Center for Community Solutions spells out out the impending hard times for NEO in his latest information release:

In Ohio, our year over year job growth has been a loss for the last
12 consecutive months. It is likely that we will see the same in the
March 2008 figures when we get them on April 18.

Of course, we have no evidence at all that Ohio or Cuyahoga County
ever recovered at all from the 2000s recession. Thus, the new federal
figures today for the whole country are not a good sign for us
locally. We have now gone more than one quarter with job losses in
the USA. In another two months, unless job growth resumes, we will
have two quarters of national job losses. Even then, until the
Conference Board sees two negative quarters of GDP, they probably
will not declare an official recession. But, there is obvious
significant weakness in the national economy right now, and that is
very likely to spill over into our local situation.
Therefore, despite a lack of a local component in today's new
figures, the national employment figures are discouraging for us in
Ohio and in Cuyahoga County.
Zeller has had the unfortunate role of chronicling our economic woes. As he mentions we are already vulnerable due to the lack of a true recovery from the previous recession. The take away here is that the ebb and flow of the Dow Jones Index and Fed bailouts are only a small portion of the economic picture. These latest indicators point to adeep and troubling times for NE Ohioans.

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

The Lessons of Basra

The dust is finally starting to settle in Basra after last week's ill fated offensive by the Iraqi government and their U.S. handlers. The amount of devastation and carnage resulting from the uprising or whatever that was is a harsh reality check on the state of our deployment in Iraq. As usual McClatchy has been on point with its coverage of the situation on the ground. The plan to de-surge or stand down (because they have to stand up) has hit a new snag.

As part of its post-surge plan, the Pentagon planned to reduce troop levels by one brigade a month, thin out its presence in Iraq and lean more heavily on Iraqi forces. But the Basra offensive has some in the U.S. military fretting that Iraq's forces, while better than they were six months ago, cannot fully defend their communities.

An unintended consequence of the surge has been the reliance on bottom up self governance to claim reconciliation has been occurring. As an example the Sunni awakening and relative calmness in the Kurdish north has been sited by surge fans as proof of its success. Not too quick. What has been visited upon Iraqis this week in the form of a proto-civil war is this lesson: correlation is not causation. Didn't the event of the past week demonstrate that the cease fire issued by Sadr was the real reason behind the success of the surge? The Maliki offensive turned into a clash between central governance (the original plan) and local power centers like militias. The top down approach didn't fair too well.

Relying on local players to maintain stability gave the surge an appearance of success. The problem is that this stability was proven to be a mirage once the interests of Sadrists no longer lined up with the central government. When the decision was made to break that calm, whoever is to blame is almost irrelevant, the stability evaporated and fighting erupted. When the Iraqi forces were not enough to quell the Shia fighters the U.S. forces had no choice but to "Fallujahize" the city with air strikes and artillery. The after effects of that offensive are turning the residents of the once somewhat allied south into haters. Another piece from McClatchy details the carnage resulting from the air strikes and the collective dismay of Iraqi hearts and minds being lost. It seems that the surge is approaching the end of its shelf life before the stated goals were ever realized.