Thank God, Cleveland has no news...nothing to report there

The Plain Dealer cut about a third of their newsroom staff on Wednesday, which is just a few months after announcing that the paper's home delivery is being cut back. The Huffington Post has a piece on the situation, which is kind of bleak.

According to the Guild, the paper cut about fifty reporters, photographers, page designers, and other Newspaper Guild covered employees. Naturally the paper didn't release a list of who lost their jobs. Publisher Terry Egger said, "In order to realign out workforce for future growth, we have found it necessary to make additional reductions [to staff]."

The rumor is that veteran reporters are being let go and they will be names readers recognize. Next week The Plain Dealer cuts back their home delivery to three days a week with a "bonus" home delivery on Saturdays. The paper will be printed everyday though it will be only available for purchase every day though outlets.

Additionally, a digitally focused media company called Northeast Ohio Media Group will take over all ad sales and marketing for The Plain Dealer this summer. Northeast Ohio Media Group will also handle operations of Cleveland.com and Sun News. The Northeast Ohio Media Group and The Plain Dealer will provide all content for print and digital platforms.

The Plain Dealer is owned by New York-based Advance Publishing Inc. Other papers owned by Advance Publishing are cutting back with publishing schedules to three days a week.

Union leadership in Cleveland expects the guild-covered employees to remain in the newsroom after the layoffs. The Guild has been waging a campaign to preserve jobs and the seven-day publication schedule.

John Mangels, a reporter who helped organize the campaign and who volunteered to be laid off said, "It's a sad day for northeast Ohio. The community deserves better than this."

I have nothing. Cleveland has been in the news more and more recently because of the crazy. Well, here's to the next awful thing that happens and we have no police to help or papers to report on it. As Castro is being sentenced, I want to remind everyone Cleveland's major paper is cutting back.

So, someone in Ohio has realized that waging war on reproductive choice might not be the best political strategy.

I know, I’m surprised. I’ve begun writing off the state, and the all of a sudden it cleans up well, and I think maybe this time it will be better. Robert Higgs wrote an article for the Cleveland Plain Dealer on Ed FitzGerald’s encouragement of coalition building to fight the abortion restrictions attached to Ohio’s budget that were signed into law by Gov. John Kasich.

Ed FitzGerald is Cuyahoga County Executive and a Democratic challenger to Kasich’s re-election. FitzGerald is calling for Ohioans to take action against the abortion restrictions, which could end up with abortion on the November 2014 ballot. Republicans of course, dismiss him claiming he’s trying to distract voters. The Ohio Republican Party’s Chris Schrimpf said, “I think it’s unsurprising that Ed FitzGerald and the Democrats are trying to take attention off Ohio’s comeback.” Republicans once again reminding us, women and women’s issues are distractions from the real issues. Bastards. Ohio’s Right to Life (of fetuses only) criticized FitzGerald for “playing politics at the expense of victims of rape.”

Fitzgerald argues for a coalition, by initiating a petition, which could force the General Assembly to consider legislation to repeal some of the budget provisions when it convenes in January. If the petition was successful and the Legislature doesn’t act on it then it would open the door for another petition drive to get the issue on the ballot for voters the following November. This would be the same time Ohioans vote on a new governor.

The Plain Dealer a beacon of liberalism, j/k, asked FitzGerald if this would be politically advantageous. FitzGerald answered like a boss, “Look, sometimes good policy is good politics. Sometimes bad policy is bad politics. Do I think it’s good for Gov. Kasich, politically, to insert himself between a woman and the decisions she has to make with her doctor? No. Do I think that’s going to hurt him politically? I do.”

FitzGerald dislikes most of what is in the budget including the provisions with tax cuts for the wealthy, but he thinks we need to be strategic and begin with women. He asserts that Ohioans will find the restrictions on women’s rights the most objectionable. FitzGerald said, “I think they [provisions] could be overturned, and not by a small margin, but the way, but by an enormous margin. I predict you’re going to see polling coming out, especially if any polling is done on this rape crisis issue [preventing rape counselors from discussing abortion as an option for rape victims]—this gag order that is being placed on rape crisis counselors—and I think you’re going to see that the vast majority of Ohio voters, men and women, think that it’s outrageous.”

FitzGerald said his campaign wouldn’t lead the effort, but instead compared the coalition to the 2011 coalition that fought to repeal the state law that overhauled collective bargaining for public workers. FitzGerald defended the Democrats who voted for this legislation, which sucks, saying, “So they [Republicans] basically placed a gun to the heads of the Democrats in the legislature.” Meaning the Dems didn’t have a choice. But that is bullshit.

FitzGerald also urged Kasich to use the line veto on the provision, “At the time I was urging the governor to do the right thing. There were a number of previsions in the budget that were so egregious and so far, I think, outside the mainstream of what voters in Ohio want that is was really incumbent upon him to do the right thing and line-item veto some of those provisions.” But Kasich didn’t. FitzGerald continues, “Now we’re stuck with really, not just one of the most extreme budgets in the history of Ohio, but also one of the most extreme budgets that’s been passed by any legislative bodies in the history of the  country.”

Go Ohio. I’m not optimistic about this whole thing. As the Republicans pointed out women aren’t important, we’re just a distraction. So I don’t know if a coalition will be able to overturn these provisions.

Ohio may shame us, but Cleveland is a rock star

People don’t understand my devotion to the Cleve, but man we’re awesome. Sure, serial killers, men who kidnap and hold women for a decade, and teams who can’t win for losing, but everyone once in a while we pull our shit together. See Cleveland’s problem with sexual violence hardly started with Castro, we had the discovery of Sowell’s collection of corpses in 2009, which caused fear throughout Cleveland, but was then escalated by other serial rapists working in the area. Amanda Marcotte had a great line in her piece, “Clevelanders have been repeatedly reminded of how many monsters live among us, attacking women under the radar, and understandably, they are worried.” Preach. You know it is bad when friends who usually look on the bright side bring it up.

However, it may be a brand new day in Cleveland for rapists because Cleveland is stepping up their game. In a move that can only be described as the resurrection of Elliot Ness from Lake View Cemetery, the Cleveland authorities are taking names, kicking ass, and finally indicting rapists. The Plain Dealer reports:

“Cuyahoga County prosecutors and investigators are revisiting decades-old unsolved rape cases, using DNA evidence to connect serial rapes, tracking down victims and sending cases to grand juries for indictment—often racing against a 20-year statute of limitations.”

 The Plain Dealer has been increasing the pressure for authorities to do something about the rapes in the past few years. In 2011, Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine requested the efforts to connect cases and indict, and the results have been an assembly line of indictments, usually against men who are accused of spending decades attacking women without facing any repercussions.Yes, that is a thing.

The Plain Dealer created a page dedicated to the indictments so readers can follow those since March; it also includes all the stories about the DNA testing. (The photo below is from the page.) We know most rapists are serial rapists, and as a result many of these indictments open up multiple cold cases. Cleveland has set aside about 3,000 untouched rape kits to be processed. That is a lot of work, but with results like this people can’t really argue. The stats from the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center (though dated 2008) put 1,366 sexual assaults and child endangerment cases being reported to the Cleveland PD. Because about 60% of rape cases go unreported, we’re probably looking at more than 3,000 rapes per year (a conservative figure).Dealing with rape kits has been a difficult undertaking nationally usually because of the backlog and the mishandling of the kits in the first place. However, the success in Cleveland is an indication of how powerfully effective rape kits can be if handled properly and the authorities bother to use them.

No would be an appropriate time for “Cleveland Rocks.” The image below is of those who have been indicted. I’m pretty pumped about this given how rare it is to report anything positive from the Cleve. 

Cleveland Police Officer ignored a woman's complaint of potential violence

Thank you hetero-lifemate for this one. Michael Sangiacomo had an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer yesterday on the disaster that is trying to get police to take threats of violence seriously resulting in a Cleveland police officer was suspended for one day for not taking a report from a woman who said her ex was going to physically harm her.

A 2^nd District police sergeant was suspended for failing to act on a woman’s complaint that her ex-boyfriends was going to assault her, which happened a few hours after she left the police station. The 2^nd District is Cleveland near Westside. Sgt. William Lally was suspended for one day without pay. An additional two-day suspension will occur if he has any disciplinary problems before October 2014.

Lally has “a spotless record” according to Lt. Brian Betley, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 8. Police Chief Michael McGrath gave Lally a suspension smaller than what was recommended by the Civilian Police Review Board of the Cleveland Office of Professional Standards. They had recommended a 10 day suspension.

On July 31, Lydia Ruiz and her attorney went to the Cleveland Police Department to file an official report against her ex-boyfriend, Dwayne Canterbury, her threatened to harm her. She showed Lally a message on her via relayed from Facebook.

According to the review board, “Lally made the decision that suspect Canterbury’s comments were not threats. He then willfully refused to honor the victim’s no-contact order, make the police report, protect the victim from additional harm [or] prevent crime.”

After this Canterbury went to Ruiz’s home, assaulted her breaking her jaw and three teeth, and she suffered cuts and bruises. He had been released from jail for burglarizing her home and criminal damage. Canterbury was arrested on August 1^st for the July 31^st assault. Prosecutors combined the assault case with the burglary case, and on December 14^th Canterbury plead guilty in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to attempted assault, retaliation against a witness, and domestic violence. Then he was sentenced to one year in prison.

Betley claims, “The message she showed Sgt. Lally was not the threatening one she later showed police. We don’t dispute that the threat was made before she spoke with Sgt. Lally, but the message she showed him dealt with a courts case and was deemed not threatening. Certainly, if he had seen the other message, he would have told an officer to take a report. Why wouldn’t he? It’s no skin off his back.”

Betley says the situation is a “he said, she said” issue. He continued, “We filed a grievance over it, and it was turned down. We were going to bring it up before our board and perhaps go for arbitration, when Lally said not to bother. He just accepted the consequences.”

Ruiz said, “The sergeant should be restrained, disciplined and the entire 2^nd District should be told to take reports from citizens when they come in.”

Betley described Lally as, “He’s a good guy, a hard-working officer. This goes against his character. We’re maintained she showed him the wrong message and everything went wrong from there.”

Here that guys? He’s a good guy, and it was her fault for showing him the wrong message. Sounds like victim blaming to me. And can we even take in that sentence? One year for breaking a person’s face and one day for facilitating it. 

Ohio and Right to Work Part II

The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Robert Schoenberger and Alison Grant had a piece Thursday morning on what Right to Work might look like in Ohio. They posit that there would be an ugly public fight despite the best attempts by the legislature to get a bill through. So why?

Well, Ohio is awesome. Ok, fine, we’ll use facts. In Michigan, the legislature attached an appropriations bill to the measure making it difficult for ballot repeal (not that ballot repeal matters in Michigan after all legislation repealed in November was rushed through the Lame Duck session as well). Michigan law prevents recall votes on spending because it would destroy the state’s ability to pay bills.

In Ohio, we like chaos. In 2011, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the gerrymandering could be challenged by voters, spending provisions be damned. The court ruled that the spending provision was separate, and the voters could challenge the non-spending provisions.

If Republicans try to push right to work through in Ohio things could get ugly and fast. Naturally, right to work would bring the Ohio unions out, backing the recall efforts. Essentially, it would be SB5/Issue 2 Part II, and Ohio Republicans and their business allies don’t want that. Gov. John Kasich was left pretty roughed up after the political thrashing organized labor in Ohio gave him. They all seem a little put off coming at unions again. What, you mad?

Ohio danced the right to work dance once before in 1958, but the defeat resulted in a long memory. It was an ugly and high profile fight the first time.

Gov. Kasich has alluded to other priorities other than right to work (the Plain Dealer article claims he made a direct statement to this effect, but I’m not familiar with one.). Kasich is finally seeing a recovering in his popularity after the fight with the union…it still isn’t good.

So everyone is well aware that right to work will not end well for conservatives in Ohio. Well, everyone except Ohioans for Workplace Freedom. As previously mentioned they are gathering signatures. These are the same people who tried to repeal Obamacare in Ohio. Ohio voters approved the issues by a 2 to 1 margin (which makes me weep for the masses), but the US Supreme Court upheld the mandate so it doesn’t matter. This group is very optimistic. They need 385,000 signatures to get a proposed constitutional amendment, but so far have less than 100,000. They are trying to raise money, but the businesses and politicians have been less generous than they were with Issue 2…someone’s learning. However, if right to work does should its face in Ohio then we can expect to see big contributions from anti-labor groups again.

Ohioans for Workplace Freedom is splitting hairs claiming right to work doesn’t impact unions just that they want more options. LIES! We all know right to work undercuts unions, and anyone who doesn’t is a liar or an idiot. No one has to join a union, and I get tired of saying that over and over, you do however have to pay dues if you benefit from a union negotiated contract. Right to work allows people to benefit from the union without paying into it. We also know right to work states have more workplace injuries and deaths than non-right to work states. There is also no evidence that right to work states attract businesses. Seriously, none at all.

Now, close your eyes and think of your favorite teamster raising his or her arms and saying “come at me bro.” Mine has a mustache. Right to work won’t come up right now because Kasich is still licking his wounds, as he should be. Also because he doesn’t want to be a one term governor, and taking on labor in Ohio would mean being a one term governor. His popularity is only now coming back almost a year later. He pulls out right to work by the time that shit show is over he’ll be running for reelection. If we vote him out, and I hope we do, then we might see a conservative legislature and governor pulling a Michigan, but that would be assuming Dems don’t take control of the legislature after the last few shitshows. We are going to see right to work in Ohio at some point, but I don’t expect to see it for at least another year, or maybe another governor’s term.