Salon Weekly
A Weekly Email Publication of The Lloyd House
Circulation: 525
Growing out of the Monday Night Salon
For info about the Salon, see the bottom of this email
Join us at the Lloyd House every Monday of the year at 5:45 for pot luck and discussion.
3901 Clifton Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio
to Submit events for the Weekly, send (not attachment) me email, subject line "Weekly-Events:(description)", in times New Roman Maroon color
to submit articles, send (not attachment) email, subject line: "Weekly-Articles-(description)", in Times New Roman, Navy color.
Saves me a lot of work that way.
To: Friends on our Pot Luck Salon list.
(to unsubscribe see below, bottom of page).
At the table on 1/2/06: 1/2/06: Marvin Kraus, David Rosenberg, Mira Rodwan, Mike Murphy, Gerry Kraus, Judy Cirillo, Shari Able, Spencer Konicov, Ellen Bierhorst, Diane Marcus, Chad Benjamin Potter, Jennifer Leake, Donna Dawson-Frank
Topics Nominated:
Mira: Snail mail going up to $.39 this next week.
- Shari is moving to Clifton in February.
- Are we locked into a two party system or is there an alternative?
Shari: Women Writing for a Change, open house, this Sunday 1/8, 2 pm to 8, in Silverton. They are moving from the Crazy Ladies building in Northside.
-Minimum Wage.
Mike: I brought in tonight more books for the shelf; pass around The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight the fate of the world and what we can do before it is too late by Thom Hartmann. About PeAK OIL.
WaNT to discuss peak oil few minutes.
Chad Benjamin: read John Howe The End of Fossil Energy: a plan for sustainability. I have borrowed it from our library here, and I give it a h igh review. It¹s a mentality issue. To understand we have to do with less, but we can do more with less. It requires fossil fuel economy to creat the post fossil fuel techniques and substitutes. Photo voltaic cells. ... we should have a city program to reward people for adopting energy saving approaches.
Donna: there are Community Development Block Grant funds for things like this. Comes from the fed. gov¹t. In Evanston, Il., we used PV pannels when we rehab¹d lo income and elderly housing.
Gerry: how come natural gas is suddenly jumping in cost.
Spencer: when they burn coal with nat. gas in p ower plants it makes for more efficiency, lower emmissions.
David: also, it is because we have reached peak gas.
David: why is it that CINERGY has increased our electricity rates when they use plentiful coal for their power plants.
They are considering importing liquified nat. gas because we don¹t have enough.
Mike: if US economy were the Titanic, the captain should be told ³we are now sinking.² We are in a civilization changing moment. We must learn how to get on with only 80% of the power use we now are using.
David: we are consuming 400 times the annual photosynthesis of energy.
Mike: the reason for the war is peak oil. In The war on truth and the new pearl harbor show that. Collusion in the 911, Iraq war based on lies. ... Kunstler¹s book The long emergency is another great one.
Marvin: last week I told about the Neighborhood Summit at the Cintas Center on Feb. 4, Sat, 8:30 - 3:30, free breakfst and llunch. This is for grass roots activists. Register at Invest@investinneighborhoods.com; 921-5502 . Register at www.investinneighborhoods.com
David: In years past it was only a dog and pony show for the politicisans. What¹s changed.
Gerry: last year we boycotted the summit because they passed a bad new zoning code.
Ellen: have three or four talking points, all take a copy, repeat these same points. We could demand, for instance, that there be created an Office of citizen Notice. A person whose job it would be to scan all the City Hall meetings and when there is an issue that involves a neighborhood or special interest group, they would inform that group. Gerry h as been doing that for North Avondale, but there are many meetings, and she is only one person.
David: someone had a good idea of taking over the Charter Party. The annual meeting last month was canceled due to snow so we have another chance. Thurs Jan 12 at 6 at old Ford Plant on Oak St. (?)
Mike: if people go to the Neighborhood summit we should have a common agreement to add the peak oil aspect to everything we say.
David: we have NSP money. (This is money the city gives to each neighborhood organization. ellen) If each neighborhood gave $1,000 we would have about 32k for a person.
Jennifer: I just graduated in Communications and Political Sci. Would love the job.
Discussion:
Chad Benjamin: city innitiative to put solar pannels on buildings, covering 75% of the cost.
Donna: there is a the summit a grants session. ... you can get money for certain things on historical houses like this one.
David: city already has a program, but it doesn¹t work. They are giving 20 year tax free ride for anyone making cap. expend. on their homes. But they don¹t count replacement windows as cap. expend. ... there is more broken here than just lacking new ideas. We just moved the zoning dept out of neighborhoods. Zoning is to protect neighborhoods from bad plans from developers.
Another thing, city departments have meetings and don¹t even put out minutes in a timely fashion. If we hired a person, they would not even be able to get at the information. The minutes are edited by program directors. We saw this again and again.
The meetings are open, but there are m any, many of them.
We¹ve just had a new mayor, open his admin. under a veil of secrecy. We voted for Mallory for transparent government! Gov¹t transparency is a huge issue.
Gerry: we said last week that we wanted Mallory to come back here.
I¹d like to see what the agenda is for this new council and mayor for the next two years. Supposed to be a breath of fresh air. Mallory promised to reinstate OEM office environmmental management; civilian safety director; the $12k NSP per neighborhood reinstated. But they didn¹t do any of that. They got a windfall at the end of the year... gave 500,000 for ³development², 200,000 to Tall Stacks.
Ellen: take advantage of his ³open door² policy.
Gerry: under Luken you had to ring a bell just to come into the room where the secretqaries to the mayor were ... not to mention you had to be searched just to go into City Hall. Now that is cancelled. ... we have to decide what we want to ask him about, and make an appointment.
Donna: I like Jennifer¹s idea for multiple visits, all making the same point.
Marvin: this week we might t hink about what the questions are we want to ask, and the strategy we want to follow. Next week talk about whether to go as a g roup, or smaller groups,... what questions.
David: there is a plan to upgrade sewer system for $1.5 billion, funded through rate hikes for water and sewer services. That is $1500 per man woman and child in the metropolitan area.
Anonymous:: Ellen was pushing for going to the Summit. It isn¹t clear to me what our issues are. Give Mallory a chance.
Request that names not appear in the notes.
(We then had a discussion of whether or not names should appear in the table notes. Ellen argued that it is far more interesting to read when you see the name of the person who spoke. We decided we would continue to use names, but that anyone who wanted their name to be omitted, could just let Ellen Know while she takes the notes at the table.)
Gerry: I read the article in City Beat about Smitherman¹s analysis of his defeat.
David: I have some intelligent friends who get the city news from the newspapers. The papers think Smitherman was hard to work with and a trouble maker. I think that hurt him.
Mira: I supported him and thought he was wonderful and think he is getting a bad rap.
Mike: maybe the watcher we are discussing could be like an investigating journalist.
Ellen: Suggest that it is reasonable for us to ask that our leaders figure out how our interests should be represented. I don¹t have the skill or the time to solve this real, important problem in the functioning of our democracy. Maybe we should just demand that they, as our leaders, should solve it.
Mira: we can¹t trust them to figure it out.
Shari: I differ with you Ellen. What if in 1776 we were to have asked England to figure out how to not tax tea...?
Jennifer: I think what you are saying is idealistic. But their self interest is to represent businesses. ... Indy film ³The Corporation²... highly recommend. Corps. have status of a person, but no obligation to act ethically.
Judy: why doesn¹t each community council have someone go down to oversee the city gov¹t.
Gerry: I want to say at the summit Why aren¹t city laws enforced? On Christmas Eve, people killed at a dance. ... at the facility they ignored the law; had a dance without a permit. All over the city, laws are being broken and there is no enforcement. ... noise. etc. etc.
Anonymous: I am under the impression that there are more laws on the books than can possibly be enforced.
Marvin: under what circumstances could there be too many laws to be enforced? Having a lot of laws is like a menu with many choices. Given a particular act you don¹t like, you have an array of laws to look at to see which ones may be appropriate to the situation. This is a problem police officers have. They don¹t know all the laws. But they can find out. ³What is the best law that that person is violating?² and that is the charge. By having a number of different laws you have more choice. So don¹t worry that there are too many. Pick out the one that fits.
David: This has been a good brain storming session. Clearly we should bring back Campaign Financing Reform. Corporations have MORE rights than people; they have tax deductions for costs of doing business. This isn¹t as hard as you think. We have got a wonderful venu. If you m ake this case from the Weekly and sollicit pledges, you can hire someone if everyone would average $85. I would donate $200.
~ End of Table Notes ~
And... Don't miss the interesting article you want to read below in blue section. It might be one of these:
- Write Post, Enquirer: You wanted Bill impeached ... But NOT George?!
- Bev. Harris: Save U.S. Democracy with your home video camera
- Bev. Harris: Diebold voting system SOOO Hackable!
- Salonista Bill Messer: amazing sound effect at Mosque service
- New salonista proposes a buddy system for Muslim neighbors
- Rubarb for the lobbyist idea
- Jenny Edwards wants to bring Mark Mallory back to the Salon table. Yes!
1 comment:
From Ellen: I am wondering if folks would rather receive the Weekly as simply a link to this site rather than the whole thing put into their email box. Let me know. e.
Post a Comment