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East Palestine residents still waiting on promise

Back when Norfolk Southern was making promises in an effort to halt passage of the Railway Safety Act, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, avoided getting involved with the process. Now, he says, it is clear he made the right call. “In the run up to the markup of the Railway Safety Act, Norfolk Southern and its backers in Congress announced that they had reached an agreement to establish a fund making East Palestine residents whole for the diminution of their property value,” Vance said Monday. “This announcement was a transparent attempt to distract from the fact that they were opposed to ...

A shortage of blood donors impacting American Red Cross

Despite repeated attempts to lure more donors over the past several months, the American Red Cross reports it had even fewer people donate — making the national blood supply dangerously low and reducing distributions of some blood types to hospitals. The shortfall for August alone was 30,000 donations. “Hurricane Idalia further strained the blood supply with blood drive cancellations and reduced blood and platelet donations in affected areas,” the Red Cross reports. With such an urgent need, the Red Cross continues to look for ways to entice donors. For this entire month, donors ...

Local schools just need to keep getting better

Ohio’s Department of Education has released this year’s School Report Cards, and results are underwhelming. Still, the ODE points out “Report Cards are designed to give parents, communities, educators and policymakers information about the performance of districts and schools — to celebrate achievement and success and identify areas for improvement.” In other words, they are a tool that should help us do better for our kids. Nobody is out to bash a particular underachieving district. Just to cast light on a need for betterment. In each of our county newspapers we have been ...

Redistricting process keeps running an obstacle course

What a mess. Ohio’s redistricting process just keeps running up against one political obstacle after another. Late last week there was a double hit, as Thursday night Gov. Mike DeWine canceled a planned Friday meeting of the Ohio Redistricting Commission because Republican lawmakers still cannot agree on who to appoint as their party’s co-chair on the commission. And, state Attorney General Dave Yost again rejected petition language for a constitutional amendment that would change the system for making political maps. Though representatives of Citizens Not Politicians maintain ...

Nazi gesture is a consequence of a poor choice by voters

In a stunning reminder that too many of our politicians have very little understanding of our nation’s (and humanity’s) history — and aren’t embarrassed to display it, Tipp City (Ohio) Board of Education member Anne Zakkour gave a Nazi salute and proclaimed “Sieg Heil” during a school board meeting earlier this week. To be clear, she said the hand / arm gesture and repetition of the Nazi victory salute was meant to be “a sarcastic” gesture because she did not like the way then-board president Simon Patry ran meetings, according to a report by WCTI. Perhaps part of what ...

Redistricting Commission needs to get it together

It’s getting harder to ignore the Ohio Redistricting Commission’s regular, blatant declarations that they are unwilling to do their job for Ohio residents. Last time the process was kicked off to redraw statehouse voting maps with a meeting in which the commission did precisely nothing. Wednesday, the first meeting in a renewed attempt at the process ended with once again not a thing accomplished, and the revelation that members of the commission can’t even be trusted to agree upon co-chairs. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, the seven members of the commission met for the ...