Start fundraiser to keep St. Joseph Catholic School open | Letters
If the St. Joseph Catholic School community wants to keep the school open, they should open a GoFundMe account and have it control by a respected nonprofit. I assume there are a lot of people in Cincinnati who would like to see a good inner-city Black school continue to exit. Try to raise the money to repair the building and maybe it could be reopened. Show the Archdiocese that Cincinnati cares.
David Fitz, Sycamore Township
I'm thankful for our current Supreme Court
The Supreme Court recently made three significant judgments.
The first was about affirmative action. The court said that according to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, the equal protection clause says that there can be no discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity or religion. Therefore, affirmative action in college admissions is racial discrimination and is illegal and must be ended.
The second said the First Amendment, freedom of speech clause says neither the government nor a court can force a private citizen to make a statement which is against their religion or their belief. The baker cannot be forced to make a gay pride cake.
The third is that Congress is in charge of the purse strings and the president cannot transfer debt from college students to private citizens.
All the above required ignoring the Constitution. With big-government ideology, to take care of the endless list of real and perceived injustices, the Constitution must be done away with, we must go into great debt, and our government would become a dictatorship.
I am very thankful for our current Supreme Court.
William C Schmidter, Montgomery
Issue 1 uses a sledge hammer to swat a gnat
I would like to encourage all Ohioans to carefully consider the long-term consequences of the Aug. 8 special election on Issue 1, which is the proposed Ohio constitutional amendment that would make it drastically more difficult to modify the state constitution.
If passed, this law would dictate that all future proposed amendments would need to receive the approval of at least 60% of individuals voting on the revisions and would establish other strictly restrictive conditions for placing proposals on a general ballot. Under this format, 41% of voters would negate the will of up to a 59% majority of voters. Translated into a sports analogy, that would mean a basketball team that loses by 18 points in a game would still be awarded a win.
Supporters of Issue 1 seem to be primarily promoting their campaign as an anti-abortion vote. That is to say, it is needed to prevent future changes in the law regarding this topic. Secretary of State Frank LaRose has been quoted as saying, "This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution." It appears that some Ohio politicians are willing to use a sledge hammer to swat a gnat.
It has become painfully apparent that, in actuality, this effort is an attempt to negate the principles of "one person, one vote" and the basic tenet of a mathematical majority rule, which have been inherent liberties in the U.S. Constitution from its creation. As former Republican Governor John Kasich has stated in speaking against Issue 1, "Ohio is stronger when we can all lend our voices and we all have an equal chance to participate in the work of our state’s democracy."
Just suppose that in the future a group you support, irrespective of any political, economic, social, or religious affiliation, wants to propose a new constitutional amendment. Such changes under these newly stated criteria would seriously reduce the likelihood of any citizen-initiated bill making it onto a ballot, let alone becoming an enacted law. Passage of this radical revision to the existing standard practices in Ohio will greatly disadvantage voters from across the entire political spectrum. It is shortsighted and must be defeated to preserve the democratic process.
Please act for current and future Ohio voters and mark your ballot “NO” on Issue 1 on Aug. 8.
Lanthan Camblin, Clifton
State government now exists to benefit the few
Your July 5 front-page article on the condition of the Goshen fire house a year after it suffered tornado damage caught my attention, mainly because I was reading David Pepper's 2021 book, "Laboratories of Autocracy," and the Goshen disappointment in terms of lack of help from the state mirrored an incident reported early in this alarming book. Pepper reports how citizens of Manchester, Ohio, alarmed by the decline of their once promising town, approached a state legislator for advice on how to rejuvenate this community. His advice? "Why don't you just move?"
What can we expect from our state government? According to Pepper, while I, and I suspect many, were focused on national politics, our state government, and many across our country, began failing their citizens as democracy becomes little more than a memory. State governments exist to benefit the few. Gerrymandering, as well as templates for creating autocratic rule, are commonplace. And Ohio is mentioned as the most corrupt state in the nation. The author makes a very convincing case for this alarming state of affairs. And it's not just at the legislative level.
I remember news footage of Gov. Mike DeWine standing next to Mayor Nan Whaley after the Dayton shooting in an entertainment district. He looked appropriately concerned as citizens chanted, "Do something!" And what did he do? He signed the state law forbidding the passage of gun control laws by municipalities. Years later, mass shooting are much more numerous.
The last section of the book suggests strategies for confronting this loss of our democracy and giving citizens a voice. We need to take this threat seriously. Please read this book, or at least visit www.laboratoriesofautocracy if you think democracy is important. It's worth effort from all of us.
Melanie Garner, Hyde Park
US outsourcing military supplies and materials to its biggest enemy
Tell me this isn't scary. The Biden administration's preoccupation with supplying Ukraine with war materiel has allowed our country to fall way behind in maintaining our own military stockpile. At the same time, and perhaps even more importantly, China has begun to put a chokehold on the materials we need to produce radar, satellites, LEDs, and other military hardware. According to Reuters, the Department of Defense is now "rushing" to increase the domestic mining of gallium and the processing of cobalt in order to try to make up for China's willful behavior. This begs the question of why our country has outsourced so many of our supplies and raw materials to our most serious international enemy?
Barron Bishop, Erlanger
Issue 1 is dirty politics designed to take power from voters
My appeal to Ohio voters (regardless of your party affiliation): In the upcoming election on Aug. 8, we’ll need to vote on a very important issue. The issue is whether to make it harder to amend our state’s constitution. For the past 100 years, we’ve needed a majority of greater than 50% to do so. This proposed issue will increase this threshold to 60%.
It’s a power grab. The lawmakers just decided last year to outlaw holding special elections in August and yet, here they are. Most U.S. states require a simple majority to pass amendments; makes sense. This proposed amendment is an effort to take away our right to "one person, one vote" and destroys the idea of majority rule.
I encourage you to vote no on this issue. It’s dirty politics designed to take power away from the voters. You can vote early in-person starting July 11, or you can request an absentee ballot online from your local board of elections, or just show up to your voting location on Aug. 8.
Angela Storch, Morrow
Vote no on Issue 1 to save democracy in Ohio
The ballot issue that Republicans in the Ohio House and Senate have approved known as House Joint Resolution 1 and Senate Joint Resolution 2 is another attempt to weaken the rights of our democracy as we know it. If these frivolous resolutions are passed it would mean 40% of the people would make decisions for 60% of the people. On Aug. 8 vote no to save our democracy and keep it in the hands of the people, not the power hungry politicians
William Kelley, Columbia Township
Tax increases won't solve national debt problem
I've always wondered if it was apathy or a lack of economic intelligence that kept Americans from understanding the implications of the massive national debt both political parties have allowed us to accumulate. The Congressional Budget Office, one of the few independent government bodies, recently released a report that concluded that the Democrats' solution (massive tax increases) won't solve the problem. Instead, the CBO indicated that government spending is what drives the huge deficits. If the debt continues to increase, by 2051, the interest alone on it will cost more than we spend on Social Security, a situation that obviously isn't tenable. The bottom line is that when the Biden administration calls for increased spending in order to solve some of our problems, lend a skeptical ear.
Edgar Caye, Mount Washington
Recruitment struggles rooted in bad police culture
Regarding, "Lawmakers seek to tackle shortage of police officers," (July 7): It’s no surprise to me that police departments are having trouble recruiting new employees. Who wants a job where people in the community hate you, where your fellow employees are bigots, homophobes and sociopaths? Who wants to have a job where the goal is to make other people’s lives as miserable as possible, where you are judged at how much money you bring in from traffic tickets, and where you have to wear a hot uniform and a heavy toolbelt? Why would anyone want to work in a quasi-military organization, where butt-kissing is required for advancement and cruelty to anyone "under" you is a given.
Until police departments start to act like their job is to protect and help the citizens and not to kneel on their necks, you will only get the most debased people applying for these jobs, if anyone applies at all. The amount of pay wouldn’t matter so much if the job was worth having.
Police, by their rampant misbehavior and terrible treatment of anyone not like them, have created their own problem. Even non-patrol employees suffer in the current environment of modern police departments. Until the culture and practice of policing is changed, they can expect that decent people will not want to do the job or be associated with police departments in any way.
But that is a reality current police departments seem unwilling to face. Moaning and complaining about staffing shortages is not going to change anything.
Marilyn Mazziotti, Montgomery
Democratic poll workers should consider boycotting August election
While they perform an under-appreciated and underpaid civic duty, it seems to me that Democratic poll workers should question what goals they are furthering if they participate in the August Issue 1 election. Each polling place is required to have both a Republican and Democratic representative, but this Issue 1 election borders on being fraudulent.
The current General Assembly that called for this election is illegitimate. At least twice in 2022, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that the current Ohio legislative districts are unfairly gerrymandered and in violation of the Ohio constitution. Such rulings did not faze the Ohio Republican Party, and they delayed on remedying the districts long enough until it was too late to change them for the 2022 elections, and thus, the gerrymandered districts were used. Now this illegitimate General Assembly has scheduled this August election for Issue 1 which is intended to repeal 110 years of Ohio history by changing the necessary approval of voter constitutional initiatives from the current 50% (plus 1 vote) to 60%.
The General Assembly has cited no abuse of the current process in the past 110 years, and this is just a further attempt by the Republicans to try to ensure a stranglehold on government by shutting down any opposition. Since the Republican perspective is so far divergent from mainstream Americans, the only way they can hope to retain power is by gerrymandering and preventing a voice by a majority of the citizens. Furthermore, this faux General Assembly had the audacity to schedule this election in August when, within this past year, the same General Assembly banned August elections as being too costly and unnecessary.
The Republican proposal for Issue 1 in Ohio is not an unique event. In many other Republican-controlled states, there are efforts being discussed or made to limit initiative proposals by the majority of citizens, and thus, prevent them from having a voice in their own government.
Thus, in my mind, I question whether Democratic poll workers are really performing a civic service by participating in this Issue 1 election (and in any further elections with tainted legitimacy), or are they being somewhat complicit by participating in an election organized by an unfair General Assembly and for the sole purpose of trying to strengthen the Republican domination of Ohio citizens?
Chris Noell, Hyde Park
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Start fundraiser to keep St. Joseph Catholic School open | Letters
