He may be out of the national spotlight but that doesn’t mean he’s gotten any more rational. In delivering the kickoff speech Thursday night in Nashville at the National Tea Party Convention (I know; you’re kicking yourself for forgetting to register), Tancredo delivered this stellar piece of “other”-demonizing: “Something really odd happened — mostly because we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who cannot even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. Name is Barack Hussein Obama.”

Actually, Tancredo should probably be careful what he wishes for. Most of those naturalized citizens he fears — the ones who perhaps speak Spanish — had to take a citizenship test and are probably pretty familiar with Constitution. Most of the teabaggers cheering Tancredo’s xenophobia probably think the Constitution consists of one item: their right to own a whole bunch of guns. I’d like to start Tancredo’s own “civics literacy” test with this question: Define “socialism.” Sorry, Tom, step out of the polling place — you’re not even close. — Anastasia Pantsios

Cleveland’s small but lately tenacious Critical Mass crew has not yet made the Innerbelt Bridge a part of their monthly bicycle ride (which they note does not block traffic, but shows the motoring world that they are part of traffic). But one wonders what it would take for anyone who is not driving a car or truck to get any consideration from the massive load of bureaucratic inertia that is ODOT.

Cyclists and alternative transportation advocates have for years been attempting to persuade the state transportation agency to include a multipurpose path — separate from the motor vehicle lanes — on the planned new Innerbelt Bridge. Such a path would offer bicycle and foot commuters — and even people who just come to check out what will be stunning views — equal access to what will be one of the most expensive transportation projects in the state.

And they are not alone: The City of Cleveland Planning Commission has steadily supported the idea, to the point that late in January they approved a resolution supporting the inclusion of such a path in ODOT’s request for proposals. Among the many other supporters are former Cleveland Planning Director and Jane Campbell chief of staff Chris Ronayne, industrialist Dan T. Moore, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich. But the RFP went out earlier this week without indicating that bidders on the $450 million design/build contract should include bike/pedestrian lane in the plan.

But since the design has not yet been chosen, the game is not over, says Ohio City Bicycle Co-Op director Jim Sheehan. He’s encouraging supporters to come and make themselves heard Friday morning (February 5) when ODOT officials will attend the Planning Commission meeting.

If you think a half-billion-dollar “signature bridge” connecting Tremont to Downtown — which would have spectacular views of the city, river valley, and Lake Erie, and which will connect two of Cleveland’s most attractive neighborhoods — ought to offer equal access for all, including the one-out-of-four Clevelanders who don’t own cars, then this is the meeting for you. It’s at 9 a.m. Friday, February 5 at City hall Room 514. For background on how badly ODOT has managed this project, check out this recent installment of WCPN's The Sound of Ideas. — Michael Gill

After nine months of difficult negotiations, management at Cleveland’s WKYC-TV3 has broken off labor negotiations and implemented a unilateral pay cut for union members.

The National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America (NABET-CWA) says the station is in violation of its contract, which should have been in place for another 18 months. It’s filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board and is now seeking a federal injunction to enforce the contract.

For the pay period that began January 10, management implemented pay cuts for union members that amount to reduction of between 8 and 18 percent. Last week, 54 employees received their first reduced paycheck. Most of them have technical jobs, from broadcast maintenance to videography. The union says the station also implemented other unauthorized changes affecting work hours, sick days and vacation days.

The union’s national representative, Lou Fallot, has been traveling from Washington, D.C., to Cleveland for bargaining. A federal mediator became involved in September, but the station’s stance remained firm.
“From day one, they made statements saying they were going to get economic concessions by this or any other means,” says Fallot.

Early last year, non-union employees took a pay cut between 4 and 6 percent and accepted a one-week furlough. “We were willing to take the same pay cuts that the non-union people were talking,” says NABET-CWA Local 42 vice president James Kolendo. “They turned that down.”

Fallot says the union’s last offer was a five percent wage reduction. “The station said it wasn’t even worth a counter [offer],” reports Fallot. “They’re hellbent on achieving their proposals without doing any further bargaining.”

Fallot, who represents the union at a dozen stations, says the situation is “very unusual. I find Gannett [Broadcasting, WKYC’s parent corporation] to be the most greedy, arrogant company I’ve ever had the pleasure of negotiating.”

WKYC General Manager Brooke Spectorsky had no comment on the situation and characterized the cuts as “new posted conditions after reaching an impasse.” He said the station’s cuts would remain in effect “until such time as we sit back down and negotiate a new contact.”

A membership meeting is scheduled for February 13. Fallot would not discuss whether the union was considering a strike. — D.X. Ferris

The photo here is by Clevelander Johnny Joo (who also goes by John Kyo). Check out more of his work here.

Dayton City Commissioner Dean Lovelace had the quip of the day. “I thought Darth Vader only existed on film,” Lovelace said, according to the Dayton Daily News. “Obviously, there is a real one in Kasich, coming from the dark side to destroy services. We can’t have this kind of nonsense in the state of Ohio.”

In Cleveland, a small group of city council members warned that Kasich’s plan would suck money from the city's budget and deplete jobs and services. Their message: Don’t mess with Cleveland’s local government fund, which accounts for about 10 percent of the city’s general fund, or $56 million.

Kasich’s plan, while still nebulous, became a bit clearer after state representative John Adams introduced a bill that proposed an income tax phase-out over 10 years. That plan would cost state and local governments and libraries nearly $900 million in its first years, and losses would rise to more than $12 billion by 2020, according to an Ohio Legislative Service Commission analysis.

In Cleveland, says council president Martin Sweeney, every $1 million lost could cost the city 12 police officers or 20 non-safety city employees. Sweeney was joined by Majority Leader Phyllis Cleveland (Ward 5), Jeff Johnson (Ward 8) and Martin Keane (Ward 19). Cleveland dismissed the income tax plan “voodoo economics.” To Republicans, she said, “Poor people don’t matter, working-class people don’t matter. In their mind, you get what you deserve.”

Zombie Reagan Raised From Grave To Lead GOP

Given a chance to fix a mistake they made in recruiting a candidate to replace Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner — now running for U.S. Senate — the Ohio Democratic Party doubled down on the mess they created. After six months of turning a deaf ear to concerns among their base about the anti-choice, anti-gay marriage positions of their candidate, Marietta-based State Representative Jennifer Garrison, and telling activists “If you don’t like her, go find someone else,” the party responded to those who did just that by pushing Garrison overboard unceremoniously, bullying the grassroots-backed candidate out of the race and pulling another candidate out of thin air, whom they’re presenting as their “official” choice, “strongly supported” by Governor Ted Strickland — before rank-and-file Democrats across the state know anything about her.

That Garrison’s feelings were ruffled is suggested by the fact that she not only withdrew from the SoS race, but also said she won’t seek reelection to the House, virtually guaranteeing her seat in her conservative district will go Republican. Given the extensive blowback about her candidacy from the Democratic faithful, the party could have had a gracious conversation with her months ago about her inappropriateness as a statewide candidate. Instead, they waited until desperate Democrats had responded to Dayton attorney (and 2008 congressional candidate) Sharen Neuhardt’s willingness to be a candidate. Insiders say the party told her they would take her candidacy seriously only when she got pledges for $100,000 — which she did. She spent the past two weeks reaching out to Democratic groups and leaders.

Late Monday, Neuhardt withdrew her candidacy, following calls, perceived to be threatening, from party officials to people who had pledged their support to her. She said that although she was prepared for attacks on herself, she did not want to create a divisive situation for the party.

In reality, the Ohio Democratic Party created the divisive situation itself. O’Shaughnessy may indeed be the “best candidate” candidate they’re saying she is. But she’s off to a rocky start, with enthusiasm among hardcore Democrats dampened twice over — once by the party’s failure to take their early concerns about Garrison seriously, second by the heavy-handed insistence that the party must dictate who replaces her. It’s not a good place to be in an election that will likely be determined by which party is more successful in energizing and turning out their base. — Anastasia Pantsios

"One of my first sex dreams, during high school years. Arriving home from school walking up the driveway, my girlfriend and I decided to go underneath a pine tree and have sex. We were in a fort, all the branches hung down low so we would not be seen, must have spent about an hour under there going at it, oral and sex."

"I remember having my first really sexual dream when I was in 4th or 5th grade so I was still young and I was a Nightmare on Elm Street fan. So it very bizarrely starred a well endowed Freddy Kruger. Weird."

"I lived in a huge mansion with a Seaworld-style tank with whales and dolphins. One night I ordered two hookers (blond and brunette). Right before we get to work, I hear a knocking on the door. It was three of my friends. One of my buddies recognizes the blond hooker because she has a paternity suit against him in New Mexico. They argue and then the hookers leave. After than we have to defend my house from a biker gang. Cockblocked in my dreams!"

"Doing it with Toby Keith! What a fine specimen of American male!"

"For some reason, my car broke down on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. The only car I'd seen for hours was a big ol' Mac Truck. So I thumbed a ride. Me and semi-hot trucker dude are chit-chatting because we know it's going to be two hours before we get to the next town with a towing facility. We get to talking about some pretty hot stuff … then the trucker pulls over and starts ripping my clothes off …

Have you divulged your secrets yet? Lust Survey polls close February 5.

According to Scientific American, a recent study claims you can tell the Republicans from the Democrats just by looking at their head shots.

• Ever-tan John Boehner hopes to make it on the second season of MTV's Jersey Shore.

“The authors [of the study] concluded that people possess ‘a general and imperfect’ ability to infer political affiliation based on facial appearance, which is related to stereotypes about Democrat and Republican personalities.”

“To investigate the basis of these judgments, subjects were asked to rate photos of faces on a seven-point scale assessing personality traits such as assertiveness, maturity, likeability and trustworthiness. Subjects consistently associated Democrats with warmth (likeable and trustworthy) and Republicans with power (dominant and mature).”

Come on — be honest: The real tipoffs were the unnatural tans and fluffy hairpieces (Republicans), and the combovers and policy-wonk pallors (Democrats). — Anastasia Pantsios

"I understand, as a member of the minority, we did such a bang-up job that we got thrown out in 2008. But the fact of the matter is we do have ideas, and I'm willing to work with people. As a matter of fact, if you look at [Congressional Quarterly], [they] came out with [an analysis of] who votes with the president more than anybody else, and I vote with President Obama, when he's clearly identified his position, 62 percent of the time. There are members of his own party that don't do that. So I'm ready to take his hand if he wants to extend it and I hope he means it."

That sounds so … rational. And note the apparent pride in voting with a president who many fellow Republicans are convinced is a foreign-born socialist. Weird. Refreshing, but weird. Let's hope he doesn't turn out to be another hypocritical hack. — Frank Lewis

AAA supports a bill that would ban texting while driving in Ohio:

Text messaging is one of the most dangerous things a driver can do while behind the wheel of a moving vehicle, yet survey after survey shows that an alarming number of drivers do it. AAA is calling on the Ohio General Assembly to help remove this menace from our roadways by passing either House Bill 415 or Senate Bill 164, both recently introduced by Reps. Michael DeBose and Nancy Garland and Senator Shirley Smith, respectively. Both bills ban all drivers in the state from text messaging while driving.

A growing body of research confirms that taking your hands off the wheel, eyes off the road, and mind off the driving task radically increases your chances of causing a crash. A recent study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute showed that for commercial truck drivers who are texting, crash risk increases by 23 times. The study also demonstrated that the average time spent looking away from the road while writing and sending a text was 4.6 seconds. This amount of time with eyes off the road clearly distinguishes texting as the most dangerous distraction. …

AAA East Central is joining AAA clubs nationwide in a campaign to pass laws in all 50 states to ban all drivers from text messaging. Currently, 19 states and the District of Columbia have such laws, with 10 more states prohibiting teen or new drivers from texting while driving, often part of a broader ban on teen cell phone use. AAA also continues, through driver training, public education and safety programs, to discourage motorists from yielding to any kind of distraction while behind the wheel.

Texting while driving is more dangerous than driving stoned: "[D]rivers who sent or read text messages were more prone to drift out of their lane, the research found, with steering control by texters 91 per cent poorer than that of drivers devoting their full concentration to the road. This compared with a decline of 35 per cent by drivers under the influence of cannabis." — Frank Lewis

Local television news can be pretty pathetic in general, but is it bad for your mental health?
Humor web-site Asylum thinks so and has ranked Cleveland as a top city for most depressing television newscasts. More than a quarter of Cleveland TV news stories feature crime, according to Asylum's informal survey of its readers.

• From Newsweek article "The Roots of Fear"

Action 19: Gun found at Cleveland school; Cleveland strangler wants out-of-town trial; Cleveland neighbors homeless after gas explosion; a new Carl Monday caper.

Fox 8: Gun found at Cleveland school; cop killer asks to be executed; death row inmate with Sonny Bono-hairdo gets sheared; Cleveland strangler wants out-of-town trial; Anna Nicole Smith/John Edwards tabloid fodder.

WEWS 5: Gun found at Cleveland school; Cleveland strangler wants out-of-town trial; old man punches grocery clerk; Apple unveils new expensive gadget.

WKYC 3: Gun found at school and strangler stories, again (isn't there anything else going on today?); Obama's State of the Union address; Conan O' Brien's last show.

There you have it: guns, creeps and a shameless network plug by WKYC. Aside from Carl Monday, not much to laugh about here in Cleveland. — Damian Guevara

Former Free Times photographer Keith Marlowe (pictured below) is shooting in Haiti for Life. See a gallery of his work here.

The latest report from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections shows that five candidates have now pulled petition to vie in the Republican primary for a chance to face Dennis Kucinich next November for the 10th district congressional seat. Good luck with that, guys.

The problem is that all five are unknowns without any record of past campaigns or holding elective office. Only Thomas R. Olschlager has a web site, where he shares fun facts like “Under the socialist/communist healthcare plan in the Soviet Union during the early part of the 20th Century, the average number of abortions grew to 12 per female regardless of age. Some women had as many as 20, thus causing a sharp rise in uterine damage and related injuries and cancers.” He’s been endorsed by Doug Hoffman, the teabagger candidate who recently caused the Republicans to lose a congressional seat in upstate New York they’d held for over a century.

The other four potential contenders — James Brihan, Peter J. Corrigan (not the Democratic common pleas judge of the same name), Willard “Benjamin” Franklin and Michael Grusenmeyer (who had previously pulled petitions to run as a Democrat, Republican and Independent in the U.S. Senate race, but has now withdrawn ) — are complete ciphers without any discernable campaign presence.

In 2008, Kucinich faced his toughest contest since he was elected in 1996 when his opponent was James Trakas, a former state representative and former Cuyahoga County Republican Party chair. Clearly the strongest opponent the Republican Party had put up against Kucinich, Trakas still lost by an overwhelming 157,268-107,918. Most of Kucinich’s previous opponents had lost by margins of around 2-1. It doesn’t look like this time will be any different. — Anastasia Pantsios

Since Franklin County (Columbus) commissioner Marilyn Brown bowed out in the fall, the only candidate has been state legislator Jennifer Garrison from Marietta. But she won her seat in the legislature in a campaign in which she ran to the right of her Republican opponent on gay marriage, and she has taken fringe right-wing positions on reproductive freedom, like banning virtually all abortions, lack of support for pregnancy planning and passage of a “fetal personhood” amendment. She even opposes stem-cell research. Many Democrats feel that, at a time when the far right has been energized and motivated by the so-called “teabag” movement, the party can’t afford not to present a clear alternative and motivate its own base by advocating strongly for its core positions — including reproductive choice and LGBT rights.

Cleveland Marshall law professor and noted elections expert Candice Hoke briefly considered running before the holidays, but decided against it. Neuhardt’s name, which had been bandied about in the fall, came up again last week, and it turns out she is seriously considering entering the race. She’s spending this week gauging the support for her run. Neuhardt, from central Ohio’s seventh congressional district, ran for the congressional seat in 2008 but lost to Republican Steve Austria. She’s an attorney with Thompson Hine, based in the firm’s Columbus and Dayton office.

Because she doesn’t have an official campaign treasurer and can’t accept donations yet, Ohio Daily Blog is asking people to pledge to her campaign, promising to give the list of supporters to her if she decides to run. So far, it’s gotten $6,555 in pledges from 40 people. In addition, there’s the Draft Sharen Neuhardt page on Facebook, and a Twitter feed at #runsharenrun. — Anastasia Pantsios

UPDATE: Apparently, the response was good. Neuhardt, who had said she would spend this week assessing the level of support for her to enter the race to become the Democratic candidate for Ohio secretary of state and come to a decision by the end of the week, made up her mind early: She’s in. She has pulled petitions and will start gathering signatures immediately to meet the February 18 filing deadline.

The party had challenged members to find another candidate, so they did. The race is on. Visit the Draft Sharen Neuhardt Facebook Group for more information on Neuhardt’s campaign as it develops. — Anastasia Pantsios